Voxel Doom

It seems like despite a few standout voxel engines, that the tech is following a similar timeline to the 2D/3D into 3D engines of the previous couple of decades. Maybe in ten years we'll have full resolution voxel engines that are indistinguishable from current ones like Tech 6+ to where every pixel/voxel can be deformed. I've always loved voxels though from early Amiga and PC demos, to Commanche, to modern things like Nex Machina etc.
 
This looks pretty cool when the enemies are at a distance. When up close I almost perfer the 2D rotated models or however it worked.
 
deaedius said:
This looks pretty cool when the enemies are at a distance. When up close I almost perfer the 2D rotated models or however it worked.
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I think it's because how the engine projects the 2D elements in 3D space that causes these models to look like viewing through a wide angle lens when up close. I'm not sure there is much you can do about that. If the models were modified to look better up close then they wouldn't look right further away.
 
Armenius said:
I think it's because how the engine projects the 2D elements in 3D space that causes these models to look like viewing through a wide angle lens when up close. I'm not sure there is much you can do about that. If the models were modified to look better up close then they wouldn't look right further away.
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That make sense and how I gathered it as well. I am a big fan of Voxels and it does look kinda cool.
 
J3RK said:
It seems like despite a few standout voxel engines, that the tech is following a similar timeline to the 2D/3D into 3D engines of the previous couple of decades. Maybe in ten years we'll have full resolution voxel engines that are indistinguishable from current ones like Tech 6+ to where every pixel/voxel can be deformed. I've always loved voxels though from early Amiga and PC demos, to Commanche, to modern things like Nex Machina etc.
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I mean it is likely to always be behind. Our graphics technology doesn't accelerate them, and that isn't likely to change. For a variety of reasons, it makes more sense to express geometry as abstract shapes and only rasterize it to a grid in the final output step. So if you do voxels you either need to do them on the CPU, which isn't going to be able to push a ton of them, or covert them to polygons for a GPU, which begs the question of why not use polygons in the first place.

For something like this, where' there's a specific chunky aesthetic they are going for it makes sense. I don't think you are going to see it pick up in wider spread game engines. Generally speaking when a technology has been actually tried and implemented, and then gets left behind, there's a reason. The alternatives just ended up working better.

People do try to bring it back, but it doesn't tend to go anywhere. Remember Euclidion and their "unlimited detail" crap? Ya that was sparse voxel octrees. Notice how, years later, despite their hype there's no games using it? There's a reason.
 
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