John Carmack Discuss Mega Texturing 313
An anonymous readers writes in to say that "id Software has introduced a new technology dubbed Mega Texturing that will allow graphic engines to render large textures and terrains in a more optomized way while also making them look better. Gamer Within has Q & A with John Carmack on Mega Texturing."
Re:Ah, but (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, but would you really want to shoot or hack and slash a photo-realistic character for fun? That's pretty sick (IMO).
Why not go procedural? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Article Text (Score:2, Interesting)
So if a mod team wants to make their own map you either need to reuse one of these behemoth textures or find an artist that can wrap their head around the technology and create one themselves.
Procedurally generated textures are a hog and can be very hard to pull off but they still seem like a superior solution to this.
On the other side I am certain that level designers and artists working together can make some really great looking maps with this system. Modders will have a lot of trouble though.
Variation on a theme (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the Myth RTS games from Bungie used very large textures for the terrain, and this moved on to Halo - terrain there is drawn using a large, low-resolution texture - the red, green and blue channels are used for the colour, while the alpha channel is used to determine which of two detail textures should be used - e.g. grass or sand. It works quite well [halomaps.org]. I think Far Cry does something similar, but more advanced still.
The former are still low-resolution, though - but the not-a-game Celestia [shatters.net] has 'virtual texture' support, for rendering silly levels of detail on planet surfaces. Like, up to 128k by 64k pixels [celestiamotherlode.net]. The textures are split into many, many files for each level of detail, which are streamed in from the hard disk when required. Works fairly well.
Combining the two approaches, though, seems very new - the 'Mega Texturing' from John Carmack is probably dramatically different from an implementation point of view, and sounds rather interesting at any rate - the description of the upgraded, non-Quake-Wars version makes it sound like it could uniquely texture a whole world beyond just terrain, so could work for simulating real cities, as opposed to smoke-and-mirrors game cities.
I'm sure he talked about this in a
Re:Article Text (Score:4, Interesting)
Nah, you just need good tools. Use the game itself as a tool and let people run around the level spraying the texture with spray paint cans (or the digital equivalent). Then spit the MegaTexture out after they're done.
Re:On Carmack (Score:4, Interesting)
ClipMapping (or ClipTexture) (Score:2, Interesting)
Video card support for mega texturing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Enough is enough (Score:3, Interesting)
When games become indistinguishable from reality, why would someone waste time killing somebody in reality when you could do the same in a virtual setting without fear of getting thrown in jail? Presumably one would not need to commit crime for financial reasons, as it would be hard to afford a computer otherwise. Personally I enjoy computer games because I can do things otherwise impossible/too dangerous, unless someone invents a real life load/save (or I get insanely rich).
Re:patent? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd hate to see John get into another pickle where he comes up with a great new method (Carmack's Reverse), only to find some other company (Creative in this case) holding a patent wanting to negotiated some ridiculous deal to allow him to use a method he independently discovered. Where's the logic in that?