I found a japanese game site called Dan-Ball a long time ago, which creates and hosts java games. They seem to be hobbyists, as their games are simple and they're always experimenting with new methods. A couple of their games have some interesting physics in them which I think Notch should implement some of their techniques into Minecraft. Check em out. (Not spam)
Game 1: Ray Trace Fighters http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/raytracing/
This game uses a dynamic lighting system called ray tracing, imagine this in minecraft with dark shadows cast around your cave instead of block with different lighting values.
Game 2: Liquid Webtoy http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/mc/
This game seems to use a method of water simulation consisting of dyamically shaped triangles with a fixed volume. These triangles would obviously have an extra point added to make them 3D pyramids if they were implemented, but imagine the way that water would trickle down a waterfall in a cave, or how it would ripple in an ocean. The coloring system is interesting too, in minecraft, you could drop a flower in a basin of water and it would change color, and then cloth blocks could be dropped in to dye to make all these:
What do you think? Some of the water physics might get too complicated if you were dumping lots of blocks in water, so it would probably be optional upon creating a map, but I think these would be great.
First off, ray-tracing is not physics (in the sense that its separated simulation-wise from what is traditionally called physics in a game). Second, compared to rendering from a decent (aka non-Intel) video card, its very sluggish.
Ray-tracing works a bit like light in real life. It essentially starts by shooting a ray from a light source to an object. When it hits the object that ray subdivides into multiple rays that then hit other objects and repeat the cycle. What starts off as one ray can potentially become hundreds of rays having to be processed. Typically the ray-tracer will produce one ray for every pixel on screen.
For that demo, the viewport it has is about 200 by 150. That's 30,000 pixels or 30,000 rays. For a modern resolution, like say 720p which most TVs have, that's 1280 by 720 or 921,600 rays. Now look at how overly simple that demo is. Its basically three blocks and a plane. Compare that to the thousands of blocks on-screen in Minecraft.
NVIDIA has a demo showing ray-tracing performed on their video hardware available at their site (linked below). At a resolution of 1680 by 1050, their "Cook" demo (aka the balls one) gets a FPS of 6 on my GeForce 9800GT. Not a very new card anymore, but still selling for about $100. I would assume you could hit almost playable speeds with their new GTX 580 cards that are selling for a little under $600. But once again, this scene isn't complex.
Spheres under current rendering methods (called scan-line rendering) are typically slower than cubes because you have a lot more triangles. Spheres under ray-tracing however are actually one of the simplest primitives and actually one of the fastest. Compare 15 balls to thousands of cubes. Simply not going to happen for at least another decade. Certainly not on Intel on-board (which lacks the features for rendering the demos linked below).
I suppose it depends on your definition. Most games these days use the term physics to refer to particle and fluid simulation. Generally it doesn't include graphical techniques. I suppose I'm just used to that and use it without thinking.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from Rotten194 »
Playing games with integrated graphics is like going on the Autobahn in a tricycle.
I suppose it depends on your definition. Most games these days use the term physics to refer to particle and fluid simulation. Generally it doesn't include graphical techniques. I suppose I'm just used to that and use it without thinking.
I feel stupid for continuing this arguement, but I'd say physics is any calculation which changes the game world physically.
Regardless, the water droplet sim, if simplified well enough, could run well. I'd imagine that each "water spring" would be exactly the way it is now, but when there is lower ground to flow to on either side, instead of doing what it does now, it could break into droplets and flow.
Everyone knows that fancy water physics only look good when the light bounces off the water properly. I simply can't see that happening for minecraft.
I suppose the brightness of a facet of a water droplet could be based off of how close a line perpendicular to the face is to a ray extending to the center of the droplet...
Game 1: Ray Trace Fighters
http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/raytracing/
This game uses a dynamic lighting system called ray tracing, imagine this in minecraft with dark shadows cast around your cave instead of block with different lighting values.
Game 2: Liquid Webtoy
http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/mc/
This game seems to use a method of water simulation consisting of dyamically shaped triangles with a fixed volume. These triangles would obviously have an extra point added to make them 3D pyramids if they were implemented, but imagine the way that water would trickle down a waterfall in a cave, or how it would ripple in an ocean. The coloring system is interesting too, in minecraft, you could drop a flower in a basin of water and it would change color, and then cloth blocks could be dropped in to dye to make all these:
What do you think? Some of the water physics might get too complicated if you were dumping lots of blocks in water, so it would probably be optional upon creating a map, but I think these would be great.
Ray-tracing works a bit like light in real life. It essentially starts by shooting a ray from a light source to an object. When it hits the object that ray subdivides into multiple rays that then hit other objects and repeat the cycle. What starts off as one ray can potentially become hundreds of rays having to be processed. Typically the ray-tracer will produce one ray for every pixel on screen.
For that demo, the viewport it has is about 200 by 150. That's 30,000 pixels or 30,000 rays. For a modern resolution, like say 720p which most TVs have, that's 1280 by 720 or 921,600 rays. Now look at how overly simple that demo is. Its basically three blocks and a plane. Compare that to the thousands of blocks on-screen in Minecraft.
NVIDIA has a demo showing ray-tracing performed on their video hardware available at their site (linked below). At a resolution of 1680 by 1050, their "Cook" demo (aka the balls one) gets a FPS of 6 on my GeForce 9800GT. Not a very new card anymore, but still selling for about $100. I would assume you could hit almost playable speeds with their new GTX 580 cards that are selling for a little under $600. But once again, this scene isn't complex.
Spheres under current rendering methods (called scan-line rendering) are typically slower than cubes because you have a lot more triangles. Spheres under ray-tracing however are actually one of the simplest primitives and actually one of the fastest. Compare 15 balls to thousands of cubes. Simply not going to happen for at least another decade. Certainly not on Intel on-board (which lacks the features for rendering the demos linked below).
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/optix-examples.html
I suppose it depends on your definition. Most games these days use the term physics to refer to particle and fluid simulation. Generally it doesn't include graphical techniques. I suppose I'm just used to that and use it without thinking.
I feel stupid for continuing this arguement, but I'd say physics is any calculation which changes the game world physically.
Regardless, the water droplet sim, if simplified well enough, could run well. I'd imagine that each "water spring" would be exactly the way it is now, but when there is lower ground to flow to on either side, instead of doing what it does now, it could break into droplets and flow.
Gimme
I suppose the brightness of a facet of a water droplet could be based off of how close a line perpendicular to the face is to a ray extending to the center of the droplet...