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Real shame that the ‘voxel’ word got hijacked for cubes, which are obviously polygonal. In ‘Vangers’, the map is made and rendered with real voxels. Now that's

by aasasd 5y ago

Real shame that the ‘voxel’ word got hijacked for cubes, which are obviously polygonal. In ‘Vangers’, the map is made and rendered with real voxels. Now that's some shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9R7QJ5Sh1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9R7QJ5Sh1o Simply having blocky cubes as units is just not the same, at all.

Quikinterp 5y ago
It didn't get hijacked. Cubic voxels are still voxels. There are lots of non cubic voxels games that come out still.
bodge5000 5y ago
From what I understand, theres 2 different definitions of what a voxel is. The first, as is the case with this, is moreso on the data structure side of things, in which a voxel is like a point in a point cloud, but the point cloud is fixed to a 3d grid. The meshes can be anything, but cubes are the most common, and they are almost always polygonal. The second is, as you describe, a fundamentally different rendering method using "3d pixels" instead of polygons. These kinds of voxels almost always use the same data structure above as well, but as you say they aren't polygons. Strange we ended up with the same word for both, unless I'm mistaken
- aasasd 5y ago
  Voxels as in ‘3d pixels’ have been around since the 90s at the least, as evidenced by Vangers. Later, some people took the word and used it to describe Minecraft, in the meaning ‘big blobs that aren't even the smallest atomic unit, as there are clearly items that are made with smaller shapes’.
zesterer 5y ago
If you take 'voxel' to mean '3D pixel', then how does Veloren not fall into that category? What does "real voxels" mean? If you're talking about rendering things as point-clouds or using raycasting, then you're not describing voxels. You're just describing one of many possible techniques for rendering voxels. Isosurface extraction into a polygon mesh is also in that set and is no less valid than the definition you're going for.
remram 5y ago
Here's from Vangers' website https://web.archive.org/web/20100114235648/http://www.kdlab.com/vangers/eng/features.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100114235648/http://www.kdlab....: > All the worlds in Vangers were created with Surmap A.R.T., K-D Lab's proprietary terrain editor, and the accompanying voxel-polygonal technology. How do you figure you can render a voxel without any sort of polygon?
- aasasd 5y ago
  You draw the voxels on the screen. You color pixels according to the positions of voxels, and shove them into the framebuffer. IIRC Vangers could work without 3d acceleration (in the original release, at least), and possibly did not require it at all. Polygons are used for vehicles and items, and there are maybe fifty polygons per a vehicle. You'll notice also that the depth of the voxel terrain is quite limited, as is the main view dimensions. Also, the game engine is open-sourced, though it's the updated re-release: https://github.com/KranX/Vangers https://github.com/KranX/Vangers
  - remram 5y ago
    Do you mean that you draw each voxel as a single pixel? Is that your requirement?

by aasasd 5y ago

Quikinterp 5y ago

It didn't get hijacked. Cubic voxels are still voxels. There are lots of non cubic voxels games that come out still.

bodge5000 5y ago

From what I understand, theres 2 different definitions of what a voxel is. The first, as is the case with this, is moreso on the data structure side of things, in which a voxel is like a point in a point cloud, but the point cloud is fixed to a 3d grid. The meshes can be anything, but cubes are the most common, and they are almost always polygonal. The second is, as you describe, a fundamentally different rendering method using "3d pixels" instead of polygons. These kinds of voxels almost always use the same data structure above as well, but as you say they aren't polygons. Strange we ended up with the same word for both, unless I'm mistaken

aasasd 5y ago
Voxels as in ‘3d pixels’ have been around since the 90s at the least, as evidenced by Vangers. Later, some people took the word and used it to describe Minecraft, in the meaning ‘big blobs that aren't even the smallest atomic unit, as there are clearly items that are made with smaller shapes’.

zesterer 5y ago

If you take 'voxel' to mean '3D pixel', then how does Veloren not fall into that category? What does "real voxels" mean? If you're talking about rendering things as point-clouds or using raycasting, then you're not describing voxels. You're just describing one of many possible techniques for rendering voxels. Isosurface extraction into a polygon mesh is also in that set and is no less valid than the definition you're going for.

remram 5y ago

Here's from Vangers' website https://web.archive.org/web/20100114235648/http://www.kdlab.com/vangers/eng/features.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100114235648/http://www.kdlab....: > All the worlds in Vangers were created with Surmap A.R.T., K-D Lab's proprietary terrain editor, and the accompanying voxel-polygonal technology. How do you figure you can render a voxel without any sort of polygon?

aasasd 5y ago
You draw the voxels on the screen. You color pixels according to the positions of voxels, and shove them into the framebuffer. IIRC Vangers could work without 3d acceleration (in the original release, at least), and possibly did not require it at all. Polygons are used for vehicles and items, and there are maybe fifty polygons per a vehicle. You'll notice also that the depth of the voxel terrain is quite limited, as is the main view dimensions. Also, the game engine is open-sourced, though it's the updated re-release: https://github.com/KranX/Vangers https://github.com/KranX/Vangers
- remram 5y ago
  Do you mean that you draw each voxel as a single pixel? Is that your requirement?