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I'm always curious how much optimisation is required for these big voxel engines. I assume since all voxels are the same size you can just batch draw them but

by jiggy2011 14y ago

I'm always curious how much optimisation is required for these big voxel engines. I assume since all voxels are the same size you can just batch draw them but even so there is going to be a lot within viewing distance that may be invisible. Are they all just assigned to an octtree and then culled against the view frustum or do you really need some clever occlusion culling?

whatshisface 14y ago
Nobody draws voxels, graphics cards aren't good at them. I don't know about these engines in particular, but in minecraft everything is converted to polygon meshes.
- manveru 14y ago
  Nobody these days, but one of my all-time favorite games is Outcast[1], which used voxels for the terrain and polygons for smaller details. All it needed was a good CPU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcast_%28video_game%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcast_%28video_game%29
  - buster 14y ago
    Haha, i had that too.. fun game.. i think the characters were polygons, though :) Also there was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_series even before Outcast. I don't think it used polygons. It was launched years before 3D graphics cards, too..
eropple 14y ago
Every "voxel engine" I've ever seen just draws polygons. One of my co-conspirators on a side project[1] used surface nets over voxels with density bits to create slope-friendly meshes that are also used for physics calculations. Each mesh is pretty large and there are some economies of scale for drawing larger meshes like these. Minecraft for a long time just batched each visible side, I think even ignoring occlusion, and drew it; I don't know if they precompute larger meshes now. [1] - http://static.largerussiangames.com/voxels/videos/rigidbodies.mp4 http://static.largerussiangames.com/voxels/videos/rigidbodie... (Each 'companion cube' is really attached to a spherical physics body, the physics aren't mapped to the mesh.)
maxogden 14y ago
this and the follow-up post were most useful when developing the voxel.js components http://0fps.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/meshing-in-a-minecraft-game/ http://0fps.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/meshing-in-a-minecraft-...

whatshisface 14y ago

Nobody draws voxels, graphics cards aren't good at them. I don't know about these engines in particular, but in minecraft everything is converted to polygon meshes.

manveru 14y ago
Nobody these days, but one of my all-time favorite games is Outcast[1], which used voxels for the terrain and polygons for smaller details. All it needed was a good CPU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcast_%28video_game%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcast_%28video_game%29
- buster 14y ago
  Haha, i had that too.. fun game.. i think the characters were polygons, though :) Also there was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_series even before Outcast. I don't think it used polygons. It was launched years before 3D graphics cards, too..

eropple 14y ago

Every "voxel engine" I've ever seen just draws polygons. One of my co-conspirators on a side project[1] used surface nets over voxels with density bits to create slope-friendly meshes that are also used for physics calculations. Each mesh is pretty large and there are some economies of scale for drawing larger meshes like these. Minecraft for a long time just batched each visible side, I think even ignoring occlusion, and drew it; I don't know if they precompute larger meshes now. [1] - http://static.largerussiangames.com/voxels/videos/rigidbodies.mp4 http://static.largerussiangames.com/voxels/videos/rigidbodie... (Each 'companion cube' is really attached to a spherical physics body, the physics aren't mapped to the mesh.)

maxogden 14y ago

this and the follow-up post were most useful when developing the voxel.js components http://0fps.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/meshing-in-a-minecraft-game/ http://0fps.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/meshing-in-a-minecraft-...