5 ms·

It’s a fun demo but they never go into buildings, the buildings all have similar size, the towns have similar layouts, there’s numerous visual inconsistencies,

It’s a fun demo but they never go into buildings, the buildings all have similar size, the towns have similar layouts, there’s numerous visual inconsistencies, and the towns don’t really make sense. It generates stylistically similar boxes, puts them on a grid, and lets you wander the spaces between? I know progress happens in incremental steps, but this seems like quite the baby step from other world gen demos unless I’m missing something.

serf 11mo ago
>It’s a fun demo but they never go into buildings, the buildings all have similar size, the towns have similar layouts, there’s numerous visual inconsistencies, and the towns don’t really make sense. that's 95% of existing video games. How many doors actually work in a game like Cyberpunk? on a different note , when do us mere mortals get to play with a worldgen engine? Google/meta/tencent have shown them off for awhile but without any real feasible way for a nobody to partake; are they that far away from actually being good?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- jaccola 11mo ago
  There are a bunch of different approaches. Many are very expensive to run. You can play with the World Labs one, their approach is cheap to explore once generated (vs an approach that generates frame by frame). The quality is currently not great and they are very hard to steer / work with in any meaningful way. You will see companies using the same demo scenes repeatedly because that's the one that looked cool and worked well.
- brnaftr361 11mo ago
  I would think the argument for this is that it would enable and facilitate more advanced environments. There's also plenty of games with fully explorable environments, I think it's more of a scale and utility consideration. I can't think of what use I'd have for exploring an office complex in GTA other than to hear Rockstar's parodical office banter. But Morrowind had reason for it to exist in most contexts. Other games have intrinsically explorable interiors like NMS, and Enshrouded. Elden Ring was pretty open in this regard as well. And Zelda. I'm sure there are many others. TES doesn't fall into this due to the way interiors are structured which is a door teleports you to an interior level, ostensibly to save on poly budget, which again, concerning scale is an important consideration in both terms of meaning and effort in-context. This doesn't seem to be doing much to build upon that, I think we could procedurally scatter empty shell buildings with low-mid assets already with a pretty decent degree of efficiency?
jaccola 11mo ago
This is potentially a lot more useful in creation pipelines than other demos (e.g. World Labs) if it uses explicit assets rather than a more implicit representation (gaussians are pretty explicit but not in the way we are used to working with in games etc...). I do think Meta has the tech to easily match other radiance field based generation methods, they publish many foundational papers in this space and have Hyperscape. So I'd view this as an interesting orthogonal direction to explore!
- schmichael 11mo ago
  Thanks! That’s some nuance I absolutely missed
thwarted 11mo ago
> they never go into buildings, the buildings all have similar size, the towns have similar layouts, there’s numerous visual inconsistencies, and the towns don’t really make sense These AI generated towns sure do seem to have strict building and civic codes. Everything on a grid, height limits, equal spacing between all buildings. The local historical society really has a tight grip on neighborhood character. From the article: > It would also be sound, with different areas connected in such a way to allow characters to roam freely without getting stuck. Very unrealistic. One of the interesting things about mostly-open world game environments, like GTA or Cyberpunk, is the "designed" messiness and the limits that result in dead ends. You poke at someplace and end up at a locked door (a texture that looks like a door but you can't interact with) that says there's absolutely nothing interesting beyond where you're at. No chance to get stuck in a dead end is boring; when every path leads to something interesting, there's no "exploration".
- trollbridge 11mo ago
  Sounds like the AI accidentally implemented NIMBY style zoning.
- bc569a80a344f9c 11mo ago
  This comment kind of reminded me of a YouTube channel I completely adore. AnyAustin (https://www.youtube.com/@any_austin https://www.youtube.com/@any_austin) has quite a few videos exploring and celebrating open world video games.
  - QuantumNomad_ 11mo ago
    Also related, YouTube channel Shesez https://youtube.com/@boundarybreak https://youtube.com/@boundarybreak Explores what’s outside the bounds in video games. For example: Off Camera Secrets | Goldeneye (N64) - Boundary Break https://youtu.be/Reaz4aKYci8 https://youtu.be/Reaz4aKYci8 Hidden Secrets in GTA 3 https://youtu.be/xBpNWVDQ5QM https://youtu.be/xBpNWVDQ5QM
- ArekDymalski 11mo ago
  > when every path leads to something interesting, there's no "exploration" While this sentence makes sense from current game design perspective, I have to say it strikes me as very unrealistic. Facing dead ends has always ruined the immersion for me.
ProofHouse 11mo ago
is there a working 'demo' I don't see one?

serf 11mo ago

>It’s a fun demo but they never go into buildings, the buildings all have similar size, the towns have similar layouts, there’s numerous visual inconsistencies, and the towns don’t really make sense. that's 95% of existing video games. How many doors actually work in a game like Cyberpunk? on a different note , when do us mere mortals get to play with a worldgen engine? Google/meta/tencent have shown them off for awhile but without any real feasible way for a nobody to partake; are they that far away from actually being good?

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
jaccola 11mo ago
There are a bunch of different approaches. Many are very expensive to run. You can play with the World Labs one, their approach is cheap to explore once generated (vs an approach that generates frame by frame). The quality is currently not great and they are very hard to steer / work with in any meaningful way. You will see companies using the same demo scenes repeatedly because that's the one that looked cool and worked well.
brnaftr361 11mo ago
I would think the argument for this is that it would enable and facilitate more advanced environments. There's also plenty of games with fully explorable environments, I think it's more of a scale and utility consideration. I can't think of what use I'd have for exploring an office complex in GTA other than to hear Rockstar's parodical office banter. But Morrowind had reason for it to exist in most contexts. Other games have intrinsically explorable interiors like NMS, and Enshrouded. Elden Ring was pretty open in this regard as well. And Zelda. I'm sure there are many others. TES doesn't fall into this due to the way interiors are structured which is a door teleports you to an interior level, ostensibly to save on poly budget, which again, concerning scale is an important consideration in both terms of meaning and effort in-context. This doesn't seem to be doing much to build upon that, I think we could procedurally scatter empty shell buildings with low-mid assets already with a pretty decent degree of efficiency?

jaccola 11mo ago

This is potentially a lot more useful in creation pipelines than other demos (e.g. World Labs) if it uses explicit assets rather than a more implicit representation (gaussians are pretty explicit but not in the way we are used to working with in games etc...). I do think Meta has the tech to easily match other radiance field based generation methods, they publish many foundational papers in this space and have Hyperscape. So I'd view this as an interesting orthogonal direction to explore!

schmichael 11mo ago
Thanks! That’s some nuance I absolutely missed

thwarted 11mo ago

> they never go into buildings, the buildings all have similar size, the towns have similar layouts, there’s numerous visual inconsistencies, and the towns don’t really make sense These AI generated towns sure do seem to have strict building and civic codes. Everything on a grid, height limits, equal spacing between all buildings. The local historical society really has a tight grip on neighborhood character. From the article: > It would also be sound, with different areas connected in such a way to allow characters to roam freely without getting stuck. Very unrealistic. One of the interesting things about mostly-open world game environments, like GTA or Cyberpunk, is the "designed" messiness and the limits that result in dead ends. You poke at someplace and end up at a locked door (a texture that looks like a door but you can't interact with) that says there's absolutely nothing interesting beyond where you're at. No chance to get stuck in a dead end is boring; when every path leads to something interesting, there's no "exploration".

trollbridge 11mo ago
Sounds like the AI accidentally implemented NIMBY style zoning.
bc569a80a344f9c 11mo ago
This comment kind of reminded me of a YouTube channel I completely adore. AnyAustin (https://www.youtube.com/@any_austin https://www.youtube.com/@any_austin) has quite a few videos exploring and celebrating open world video games.
- QuantumNomad_ 11mo ago
  Also related, YouTube channel Shesez https://youtube.com/@boundarybreak https://youtube.com/@boundarybreak Explores what’s outside the bounds in video games. For example: Off Camera Secrets | Goldeneye (N64) - Boundary Break https://youtu.be/Reaz4aKYci8 https://youtu.be/Reaz4aKYci8 Hidden Secrets in GTA 3 https://youtu.be/xBpNWVDQ5QM https://youtu.be/xBpNWVDQ5QM
ArekDymalski 11mo ago
> when every path leads to something interesting, there's no "exploration" While this sentence makes sense from current game design perspective, I have to say it strikes me as very unrealistic. Facing dead ends has always ruined the immersion for me.

ProofHouse 11mo ago

is there a working 'demo' I don't see one?