The next revolution in gaming - fully explorable procedural cities (awesome)

The cities are procedurally generated. No more locked doors, every room in every building is explorable. The destruction is also procedural, powered by PhysX.

And the technology works on any videocard since Geforce 3.

Here's the site, and here's a tech-demo.

What do you think?

Those walls are like plastic.

A step back in actual graphics, but highly impressive.

Sweet, this could change gaming forever.

Well I am not really interested in procedurally generated content, mostly because it is then difficult to give the buildings an unique touch and things feel like a copy paste job.naval

The problems *fixed* by this software are sometimes there for a reason. Such as locked rooms. Is it realistic, when playing a game, to have every door open? no. However if all games were like reality they would all be bad. .McTock

But it's not realistic to not be able to shoot the doors open, isn't it? Read this.

This is the result of 6 months of work, it's just version 0.1.

I'd be much more impressed if it runs well. Yes, PhysX looks pretty good, but it drestroys most PCs.

Looks Cool < Functional

Interesting idea..could be revolutionary

But are u sure u can open every door in a real life city ?

Impressive, it could change a lot, but who wants to explore every building in a city.

I'd be much more impressed if it runs well. Yes, PhysX looks pretty good, but it drestroys most PCs.

Looks Cool < Functional

Swiftstrike5

Now, yes. When this technology reaches maturity, which means a few years from now, no. It will look cool and be functional too.

Interesting idea..could be revolutionary

But are u sure u can open every door in a real life city ?

invinciblesuman

Yes, with enough firepower.

This tech. looks pretty incredible. Yes, some of the details aren't perfect (textures/shaders are not up to today's standards, destruction looks too "soft" - everything falls apart too easily, none of the buildings/items look particularly interesting or unique), but those could all be changed I'm sure with settings or updates. The technology itself is what's amazing. It could seriously save on development costs and open up an enormous amount of gameplay for users (assuming it's done right - providing the flexibility to the developers to include custom buildings/items and tweak settings to adjust how the city looks and feels).

guys this and stalker:| yes.... yes.. YESSS MAKE IT HAPPEN YES!!:o:o:shock::D

Looks great, but a few things;

- Maybe I missed it, but how does this system make it easier to construct large cities? Unless you come up with some system that can very intelligently put building blocks together to generate unique buildings, you still need someone to model each one, then copy&paste things. Same as they do now

- There seemed to be no regard for the structural integrity of the building :lol: The guy perforated the entire floor of that office building (walls and everything, including the core walls that got shot up like paper) and the upper floors seemed unaffected by the drastic reduction in structural support. Seems it's basically an immovable building skeleton dressed up with destroyable wall panels, which isn't too far off from what we get in games now (other than the larger number of destructible stuff).

Looked very cool, just needs some dynamic interior lighting!

Interesting.

It might be good for devs to use to generate large amounts of content quickly, but they need to be able to go in and tweak it so that its fun. Procedural != fun.

Looks great, but a few things;

- Maybe I missed it, but how does this system make it easier to construct large cities? Unless you come up with some system that can very intelligently put building blocks together to generate unique buildings, you still need someone to model each one, then copy&paste things. Same as they do now

F1_2004

First, I would assume that the company will provide pre-made buildings/objects as packages if you don't want to make your own. Then it would probably just be a matter of pressing some buttons/making some settings and letting it do its thing. Otherwise, yes, you'd have to make your own models. However, you should only have to make one of each type of building/object. Maybe not even a building - maybe all you'd have to make are the parts of the buildings (window, door, wall, floor, ceiling, etc.), and it pieces them all together. Don't know. But the idea was, just as you said, to be a system that could intelligently put the building blocks together to generate an entire city. There shouldn't be any copying/pasting involved if they do it right.

- There seemed to be no regard for the structural integrity of the building :lol: The guy perforated the entire floor of that office building (walls and everything, including the core walls that got shot up like paper) and the upper floors seemed unaffected by the drastic reduction in structural support. Seems it's basically an immovable building skeleton dressed up with destroyable wall panels, which isn't too far off from what we get in games now (other than the larger number of destructible stuff).

F1_2004

As I said in a previous post, I think the level of destructability for each part could probably be set individually (at least I'd hope so - otherwise it would look like everything was made from the same material). However, you're right - I would guess that destroying supports would not bring down the entire floor/building. It's possible they could make it to do that, but that would probably require more work to set certain parts as structural supports and then calculate all the math and physics to determine at what point and where things start to collapse. Heh, would be a cool feature to have though.

This will be amazing technology once it's fully developed.

Could be pretty cool. Now just add hundreds of thousands of people. =)

the basic concept is actually pretty good, even though it seems there is still a lot of work to be done.

I'm a little confused as to how this doesn't totally eat your memory. i get that its randomly generated, but what? is it only generated as you approach it? but wouldn't that mean you can visit the same place twice and it will look different each time?

Impressive, it could change a lot, but who wants to explore every building in a city.

dan-rofl-copter

That is interesting, but I'm not impressed until I see this well-implemented in a good game.

Very interesting algorithms they have running there.

And it doesn't look half as bad. Just a little bit of touch ups here and there

I'm a little confused as to how this doesn't totally eat your memory. i get that its randomly generated, but what? is it only generated as you approach it? but wouldn't that mean you can visit the same place twice and it will look different each time?

REforever101

[QUOTE="McTock"]The problems *fixed* by this software are sometimes there for a reason. Such as locked rooms. Is it realistic, when playing a game, to have every door open? no. However if all games were like reality they would all be bad. .Baranga

But it's not realistic to not be able to shoot the doors open, isn't it? Read this.

This is the result of 6 months of work, it's just version 0.1.

*imagines a left 4 dead style of game in such a free-form city* I'll be keeping my eye on this for sure. I like what I see.