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From my memory: In the 90, if you had anything to do with computer graphics[1] you knew about binary space partitioning trees. Off the top of my head I remembe
by weinzierl 2y ago
From my memory: In the 90, if you had anything to do with computer graphics[1] you knew about binary space partitioning trees.
Off the top of my head I remember two different articles from local German computer magazines (that are still in my basement) discussing and implementing them.
But so were many, many other ideas and approaches.
Not taking away from Carmack's genius, in my opinion it was not in inventing a horse and neither in finding one, but in betting on the right one.
[1] If you were a programmer in the 90s - any kind of programmer - you most certainly had.
- torusle 2y agoCorrect. And every graphic programmer worth it's salt had a copy of "Computer Graphics - Principles and Practice" on the desk and followed whatever came out of the "Graphics Gems" series. We knew about BSP, Octrees and all that stuff. It was common knowledge.
- layer8 2y agoYep, that’s my recollection as well that it was common knowledge to the point of being a (the?) default approach for 3D rendering of any complexity.
- rurban 2y agoIn my university we worked on VR on cheap PC Hardware, and Amadeus, our Windows VR viewer for Hyper-G (the precursor of the WWW) used BSP trees for its scenes, long before DOOM. Implemented by my former boss. It was not considered genius level then, just good old compgeom. We had a lot of very good compgeom researchers back then in Graz.
- HellDunkel 2y agoIf this was true, why did so few games implement BSPs? I remember reading the graphics programming blackbook and it took me quite a while to understand the concept. My guess is that, of all space partitioning techniques BSPs where harder to do right and a lot less common.
- HellDunkel 2y agoIf this was true, why did so few games implement BSPs? I remember reading the graphics programming blackbook and it took me quite a while to understand the concept. My guess is that, of all space partitioning techniques BSPs where harder to do right and a lot less common.