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So I stumbled upon this "new" graphics engine/technology called Unlimited Detail.
This seems to be pretty interesting granted it's real and not a fake.
They have some videos explaining the technology but they only scratch the surface.
What do you think about it? Is it programmatically possible?
Or is it just a scam for investors?
Update:
Since the only answer was based on voxels I have to copy this from their site:
Unlimited Details method is very different to any 3D method that has been invented so far. The three current systems used in 3D graphics are Ray tracing polygons and point cloud/voxels, they all have strengths and weaknesses. Polygons runs fast but has poor geometry, Ray-trace and voxels have perfect geometry but run very slowly.
Unlimited Detail is a fourth system, which is more like a search algorithm than a 3D engine
The underlying technology is related to something called sparse voxel octrees (see, e.g., this paper), which aren't anything incredibly amazing. What the video doesn't tell you is that these are not at all suited for things that need to be animated, so they're of limited use for anything that uses procedural animation (e.g., all ragdoll physics, etc.). So they're very inflexible. You can get great detail, but you get it in a completely static world.
A rough summary of where things stand with this technology in mainstream games is here. You will also want to check out Samuli Laine's work; he's a Finnish researcher who is focusing a great deal of his attention on this subject and is unlocking some of the secrets to implementing it well.
Update: Yes, the website says it's not "voxel-based". I suspect this is merely an issue of semantics, however, in that what they're using are essentially voxels, but because it's not exactly a voxel they feel safe in being able to claim that it's not voxel-based. In any case, the magic isn't in how similar to a voxel it is -- it's how they select which voxels to actually show. This is the primary determinant of speed.
Right now, there is no incredibly fast way to show voxels (or something approximating a voxel). So either they have developed a completely new, non-peer-reviewed method for filtering voxels (or something like them), or they're lying.
You might find more detail in the following patents:
"A Computer Graphics Method For Rendering Three Dimensional Scenes"
"A Method For Efficent Streaming Of Octree Data For Access"
- Each voxel (they call it a "node") is represented as a single bit, along with information voxels at a finer level of detail.
The full-text can be viewed online here:
https://www.lens.org/lens/search?q=Euclideon+Pty+Ltd&l=en
or
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/searchResults?submitted=true&query=EUCLIDEON
Let me explain what I mean by "two-dimensional code editor": imagine of using Inkscape or Gimp in a big canvas (say infinite). The "T - add text" tool is used to write the code. Additionally, all function definitions will be framed and links will connect the called functions.
In other words: you have a very large sheet of (virtual) paper where you can write.
It would be really useful. I don't want to write code as a long list of lines, especially now that big monitors are cheaper.
Is such a code editor out there?
What's your opinion? Would you use a 2d code editor?
I've written 3 or 4 visual editors and my second one worked like this, that was for java and c++ (never published, though I did use it for some published research work)
I still don't like much to write my code 'as a long list of lines'. My point is, after trying a system like this, I tried a windowed system (class outlines in windows, right click to open code editors), then a tree based system...
in the long run (I wrote several apps using all of those), the tree based system with non overlapping windows felt at once most scalable (to different monitor sizes) and foremost, most productive, because dragging the text boxes and links and/or windows in the first version was necessary, without adding much to the programming experience, so it felt wasteful.
If you want to try some of this stuff out, you can google antegram for java (java only) antegram for web (javascript/php/actionscript) and ee-ide (on oogtech.org). I'm not sure if I could dig up the original c++/java textbox + links editor (which could collapse graphs as well, and had an infinite canvas, so pretty close to what you describe).
I'm not working on this as much as I used to as few programmers ever seemed to like it except me, but if you like working the tree way, or feel like adding stuff for your own purposes, ee-ide would be the way to go, as it's nicely modular and easy to extend compared to the rest.
On the commercial side, you can configure visual studio to work with UML-like diagrams. I have a feel it might be a little too heavy (although it's definitely more coding than UML oriented), but I'm not sure, I haven't really tried yet.
This probably doesn't answer your question exactly, but anyway.
Have a look at the NodeBox beta . It is a visual programming environment mostly for creating generative graphics. You can program and edit the nodes with python code, connect and reuse them in multiple ways. (Windows and Mac OS)
Also worth mentioning (in terms of concept) is Field . It is for programming performances and arranges bits of code on a stage/timeline. Very interesting but also very confusing. (Mac OS only)
Third one is vvvv. It is used a lot by graphical artists to create realtime 3d visuals. Node based. (Windows only)
NodeBox and Field are open-source, so if you are looking to create something yourself you can see how it's done there.
Check this out. I came across it today and remembered this question.
Code Bubbles
Developers spend significant time
reading and navigating code fragments
spread across multiple locations. The
file-based nature of contemporary IDEs
makes it prohibitively difficult to
create and maintain a simultaneous
view of such fragments. We propose a
novel user interface metaphor for code
understanding and maintanence based on
collections of lightweight, editable
fragments called bubbles, which form
concurrently visible working sets.
The essential goal of this project is
to make it easier for developers to
see many fragments of code (or other
information) at once without having to
navigate back and forth. Each of these
fragments is shown in a bubble.
A bubble is a fully editable and
interactive view of a fragment such as
a method or collection of member
variables. Bubbles, in contrast to
windows, have minimal border
decoration, avoid clipping their
contents by using automatic code
reflow and elision, and do not overlap
but instead push each other out of the
way. Bubbles exist in a large,
pannable 2-D virtual space where a
cluster of bubbles comprises a
concurrently visible working set.
Bubbles support a lightweight grouping
mechanism, and further support
connections between them.
A quantiative user study indicates
that Code Bubbles increased
performance significantly for two
controlled code understanding tasks. A
qualitative user study with 23
professional developers indicates
substantial interest and enthusiasm
for the approach, despite the radical
departure from what developers are
used to.
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm
At one point, LabView had a programming mode like this. You connected program blocks together in a graphical way.
It's been so long since I've used LabView that I don't know if it is still the same.
For me, the MVVM pattern means that there's no code behind the UI controls anyway. The logic is all in a class with properties.
The properties use WPF databinding to update the UI controls. For example, on the form or window, page, whatever, MySearchButton.IsEnabled is bound to ViewModel.MySearchButtonIsEnabled property. So the app logic runs in the ViewModel class and just sets its own properties and the UI updates automatically.
Although this is specific to MS WPF the pattern actually stems from SmallTalk and is found across the development field as MVP. Without WPF one would need to write the databinding or 'presenter' logic, which is common.
This means the UI can be torn off and a new one pasted-in really quickly and with little code knowledge from the UI guy - who, in an ideal world, is a crack creative guy that drives a 70s Citroen.
So my point is that, although it sounds like a neat innovation, a 2D editor like this would be assisting a coding style that is no longer considered optimal.
Hey guys, I would like to develop a light/laser show editor and simulator, and for this of course I am going to learn some graphics programming. I am thinking about using C# and XNA.
I was just wondering what aspects of graphics programming I should research or focus on given the project I am working on. I am new to graphics programming so I don't know much about it, but for example I imagine something that I might look into would (possibly?) be volumetric lighting.
For example, what would be a practical way to go about rendering a 'laser' of varied width/color? I read somewhere to just draw a cylinder and apply a shader to it, I would like to confirm that this is the way.
Given that this seems like a big project, I was thinking about starting off by creating light sources and giving them properties so that I can easily manipulate them. I have (mis)read that only a certain amount of lights can be rendered at any given time, I believe eight. Does this only apply to ambient lights? Given this possible limitation, and the fact that most of the lights I will use will be directional, such as head-lights or lasers, what would be a different way to render these? Is that what volumetric lighting would be?
I'd just like to get some things clear before I dive into it. Since I'm new to this I probably didn't make the best use of words, so if something doesn't make sense please let me know. Thanks and sorry for my ignorance.
The answer to this depends on the level of sophistication that you need in your display simulation. Computer graphics is ultimately a simulation of the transport of light; that simulation can be as sophisticated as calculating the fraction of laser light deflected by particles in the atmosphere to the viewer's eyepoint, or as simple as drawing a line. Try out the cylinder effect and see if it works for your project. If you need something more sophisticated, look into shader programming (using Nvidia Cg, for example), and volumetric shading as you mentioned; also post-processing glow effects may be useful. For OpenGL, I believe there is a limit of 8? light sources in a scene, but you could conceivably work around this limit by doing your own shading logic.
Well if it's just for light show simulations I'd imagine your going to need a lot of custom lighting effects - so regardless if you decide to use XNA or straight DirectX your best bet would be to start by learning shader languages and how to program various lighting effects using them. Once you can reproduce the type of laser lighting you want, then you can experiment with the polygons you want to use to represent the lasers. (I've used the cylinder method in some of my work for personal purposes, but I'm not sure how well straight cylinders will fit your purpose).
Although its faster, I think its best not to use vanilla hardware lighting because of its limitations. Pixel shaders can help with you task. Also you may want to chose OpenGL because of portability and its clarity in rendering methods. I worked on Direct3D for several years before switching to OpenGL. OpenGL functions and states are easier to learn and rendering methods (like multi-pass rendering) is a lot clear. If you like to code on C# (which I dont recommend for these tasks), you can use CsGL library to access OpenGL functions.
I'm interesting in learning about the different layers of abstraction available for making graphical applications.
I see a lot of terms thrown around: At the highest level of abstraction, I hear about things like C#, .NET, pyglet and pygame. Further down, I hear about DirectX and OpenGL. Then there's DirectDraw, SDL, the Win32 API, and still other multi-platform libraries like WxWidgets.
How can I get a good sense of where one of these layers ends and where the next one begins? What is the "lowest possible level" way of creating a window in Windows, in C? What about C++? (A code sample would be divine.) What about in X11? Are the Windows implementations of OpenGL and DirectX built on top of the Win32 API? Where can I begin to learn about these things?
There's another question on SO where Programming Windows is suggested. What about for Linux? Is there an equivalent such book?
I'm aware that this is very low-level, and that there are many friendlier tools available, but I would like to at least learn the basics of what's going on beneath the surface. As much as I'd like to begin slinging windows and vectors right off the bat, starting with something like pygame is too high-level for me; I really need to make the full conceptual circuit of how you draw stuff on a computer.
I will certainly appreciate suggestions for books and resources, but I think it would be stupendously cool if the answers to this question filled up with lots of different ways to get to "Hello world" with different approaches to graphics programming. C? C++? Using OpenGL? Using DirectX? On Windows XP? On Ubuntu? Maybe I ask for too much.
The lowest level would be the graphics card's video RAM. When the computer first starts, the graphics card is typically set to the 80x25 character legacy mode.
You can write text with a BIOS provided interrupt at this point. You can also change the foreground and background color from a palette of 16 distinctive colors. You can use access ports/registers to change the display mode. At this point you could say, load a different font into the display memory and still use the 80x25 mode (OS installations usually do this) or you can go ahead and enable VGA/SVGA. It's quite complicated, that's what drivers are for.
Once the card's in the 'higher' mode you'd change what's on screen by accessing the memory mapped to the video card. It's stored horizontally pixel by pixel with some 'dirty regions' of pixels that aren't mapped to screen at the end of each line which you have to compensate for. But yeah, you could copy the pixels of an image in memory directly to the screen.
For things like DirectX, OpenGL. rather than write directly to the screen, commands are sent to the graphics card and it updates its screen automatically. Commands like "Hey you, draw this image I've loaded into the VRAM here, here and here" or "Draw these triangles with this transformation matrix..." take a fraction of the time compared to pixel by pixel . The CPU will thank you.
DirectX/OpenGL is a programmer friendly library for sending those commands to the card with all the supporting functions to help you get it done smoothly. A more direct approach would only be unproductive.
SDL is an abstraction layer so without bothering to read up on it I'd guess it would have different ways of working on each system. On one it might use semi-direct screen writing, another Direct3D, etc. Whatever's fastest as long as the code stays cross-platform..able.
The GDI/GDI+ and XWindow system. They're designed specifically to draw windows. Originally they drew using the pixel-by-pixel method (which was good enough because they'd only have to redraw when a button was pressed or a window moved, etc.) but now they use Direct3D/OpenGL for accelerated drawing (and special effects). Optimizations depend on the versions and implementations of these libraries.
So if you want the most power and speed, DirectX/openGL is the way to go. SDL is certainly useful for getting the most from a cross-platform environment and integrates with OpenGL anyway. The windowing system comes last but don't underestimate it. Especially with the stuff Microsoft's coming up with lately.
Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming 'Black Book' is a great place to start. Plus you can download it for free!
If you really want to start at the bottom then drawing a line is the most basic operation. Computer graphics is simply about filling in pixels on a grid (screen), so you need to work out which pixels to fill in to get a line that goes from (x0,y0) to (x1,y1).
Check out Bresenham's algorithm to get a feel for what is involved.
To be a good graphics and image processing programmer doesn't require this low level knowledge, but i do hate to be clueless about the insides of what i'm using. I see two ways to chase this - high-level down, or bottom-level up.
Top-down is a matter of following how the action traces from a high-level graphics operation such as to draw a circle, to the hardware. Get to know OpenGL well. Then the source to Mesa (free!) provides a peek at how OpenGL can be implemented in software. The source to Xorg would be next, first to see how the action goes from API calls through the client side to the X server. Finally you dive into a device driver that interfaces with hardware.
Bottom up: build your own graphics hardware. Think of ways it could connect to a computer - how to handle massive numbers of pixels through a few byte-size registers, how DMA would work. Write a device driver, and try designing a graphics library that might be useful for app programmers.
The bottom-up way is how i learned, years ago when it was a possibility with the slow 8-bit microprocessors. The direct experience with circuitry and hardware-software interfacing gave me a good appreciation of the difficult design decisions - e.g. to paint rectangles using clever hardware, in the device driver, or higher level. None of this is of practical everyday value, but provided a foundation of knowledge to understand newer technology.
see Open GPU Documentation section:
http://developer.amd.com/documentation/guides/Pages/default.aspx
HTH
On MSWindows it is easy: you use what the API provides, whether it is the standard windows programming API or the DirectX-family API's: that's what you use, and they are well documented.
In an X windows environment you use whatever X11-libraries that are provided. If you want to understand the principles behind windowing on X, I suggest that you do this, nevermind that many others tell you not to, it will really help you to understand graphics and windowing under X. You can read the documentation on X-programming (google for it). (After this exercise you would appreciate the higher level libraries!)
Apart from the above, at the absolutely lowest level (excluding chip-level) that you can go is to call the interrupts that switch to the various graphics modes available - there are several - and then write to the screen buffers, but for this you would have to use assembler, anything else would be too slow. Going this way will not be portable at all.
Another post mentions Abrash's Black Book - an excellent resource.
Edit: As for books on programming Linux: it is a community thing, there are many howto's around; also find a forum, join it, and as long as you act civilized you will get all the help you can ever need.
Right off the bat, I'd say "you're asking too much." From what little experience I've had, I would recommend reading some tutorials or getting a book on either directX or OpenGL to start out. To go any lower than that would be pretty complex. Most of the books I've seen in OGL or DX have pretty good introductions that explain what the functions/classes do.
Once you get the hang of one of these, you could always dig in to the libraries to see what exactly they're doing to go lower.
Or, if you really, absolutely MUST learn the LOWEST level... read the book in the above post.
libX11 is the lowest level library for X11. I believe the opengl/directx talk to the driver/hardware directly (or emulate unsupported ops), so they would be the lowest level library.
If you want to start with very low level programming, look for x86 assembly code for VGA and fire up a copy of dosbox or similar.
Vulkan api is an api which gives you very low level access to most if not all features of the gpu, computational and graphical, it works on amd and Nvidia gpus (not all)
you can also use CUDA, but it only works on Nvidia gpus and has access to computational features only, no video output.
With the popularity of the Apple iPhone, the potential of the Microsoft Surface, and the sheer fluidity and innovation of the interfaces pioneered by Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel ...
What are good examples of Graphical User Interfaces which have evolved beyond the
Windows, Icons, ( Mouse / Menu ), and Pointer paradigm ?
Are you only interested in GUIs? A lot of research has been done and continues to be done on tangible interfaces for example, which fall outside of that category (although they can include computer graphics). The User Interface Wikipedia page might be a good place to start. You might also want to explore the ACM CHI Conference. I used to know some of the people who worked on zooming interfaces; the Human Computer Interaction Lab an the University of Maryland also has a bunch of links which you may find interesting.
Lastly I will point out that a lot of innovative user interface ideas work better in demos than they do in real use. I bring that up because your example, as a couple of commenters have pointed out, might, if applied inappropriately, be tiring to use for any extended period of time. Note that light pens were, for the most part, replaced by mice. Good design sometimes goes against naive intuition (mine anyway). There is a nice rant on this topic with regard to 3d graphics on useit.com.
Technically, the interface you are looking for may be called Post-WIMP user interfaces, according to a paper of the same name by Andries van Dam. The reasons why we need other paradigms is that WIMP is not good enough, especially for some specific applications such as 3D model manipulation.
To those who think that UI research builds only cool-looking but non-practical demos, the first mouse was bulky and it took decades to be prevalent. Also Douglas Engelbart, the inventor, thought people would use both mouse and (a short form of) keyboard at the same time. This shows that even a pioneer of the field had a wrong vision about the future.
Since we are still in WIMP era, there are diverse comments on how the future will be (and most of them must be wrong.) Please search for these keywords in Google for more details.
Programming by example/demonstration
In short, in this paradigm, users show what they want to do and computer will learn new behaviors.
3D User Interfaces
I guess everybody knows and has seen many examples of this interface before. Despite a lot of hot debates on its usefulness, a part of 3D interface ongoing research has been implemented into many leading operating systems. The state of the art could be BumpTop. See also: Zooming User Interfaces
Pen-based/Sketch-based/Gesture-based Computing
Though this interface may use the same hardware setup like WIMP but, instead of point-and-click, users command through strokes which are information-richer.
Direct-touch User Interface
This is ike Microsoft's Surface or Apple's iPhone, but it doesn't have to be on tabletop. The interactive surface can be vertical, say wall, or not flat.
Tangible User Interface
This has already been mentioned in another answer. This can work well with touch surface, a set of computer vision system, or augmented reality.
Voice User Interface, Mobile computing, Wearable Computers, Ubiquitous/Pervasive Computing, Human-Robot Interaction, etc.
Further information:
Noncommand User Interface by Jakob Nielsen (1993) is another seminal paper on the topic.
If you want some theoretical concepts on GUIs, consider looking at vis, by Tuomo Valkonen. Tuomo has been extremely critical of WIMP concept for a long, he has developed ion window manager, which is one of many tiling window managers around. Tiling WMs are actually a performance win for the user when used right.
Vis is the idea of an UI which actually adapts to the needs of the particular user or his environment, including vision impairment, tactile preferences (mouse or keyboard), preferred language (to better suit right-to-left languages), preferred visual presentation (button order, mac-style or windows-style), better use of available space, corporate identity etc. The UI definition is presentation-free, the only things allowed are input/output parameters and their relationships. The layout algorithms and ergonomical constraints of the GUI itself are defined exactly once, at system level and in user's preferences. Essentially, this allows for any kind of GUI as long as the data to be shown is clearly defined. A GUI for a mobile device is equally possible as is a text terminal UI and voice interface.
How about mouse gestures?
A somewhat unknown, relatively new and highly underestimated UI feature.
They tend to have a somewhat steeper learning curve then icons because of the invisibility (if nobody tells you they exist, they stay invisible), but can be a real time saver for the more experienced user (I get real aggrevated when I have to browse without mouse gestures).
It's kind of like the hotkey for the mouse.
Sticking to GUIs puts limits on the physical properties of the hardware. Users have to be able to read a screen and respond in some way. The iPhone, for example: It's interface is the whole top surface, so physical size and the IxD are opposing factors.
Around Christmas I wrote a paper exploring the potential for a wearable BCI-controlled device. Now, I'm not suggesting we're ready to start building such devices, but the lessons learnt are valid. I found that most users liked the idea of using language as the primary interaction medium. Crucially though, all expressed concerns about ambiguity and confirmation.
The WIMP paradigm is one that relies on very precise, definite actions - usually button pressing. Additionally, as Nielsen reminds us, good feedback is essential. WIMP systems are usually pretty good at (or at least have the potential to) immediately announcing the receipt and outcome of a users actions.
To escape these paired requirements, it seems we really need to write software that users can trust. This might mean being context aware, or it might mean having some sort of structured query language based on a subset of English, or it might mean something entirely different. What it certainly means though, is that we'd be free of the desktop and finally be able to deploy a seamlessly integrated computing experience.
NUI Group people work primarily on multi-touch interfaces and you can see some nice examples of modern, more human-friendly designs (not counting the endless photo-organizing-app demos ;) ).
People are used to WIMP, the other main issue is that most of the other "Cool" interfaces require specialized hardware.
I'm not in journalism; I write software for a living.
vim!
It's definitely outside the realm of WIMP, but whether it's beyond it or way behind it is up to judgment!
I would recommend the following paper:
Jacob, R. J., Girouard, A., Hirshfield, L. M., Horn, M. S., Shaer, O., Solovey, E. T., and Zigelbaum, J. 2008. Reality-based interaction: a framework for post-WIMP interfaces. In Proceeding of the Twenty-Sixth Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Florence, Italy, April 05 - 10, 2008). CHI '08. ACM, New York, NY, 201-210. see DOI