The PPU PipeDream: Deformable Terrain

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H-street

Supreme [H]ardness
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Feb 25, 2005
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I was thinking about this the other day when thinking of hte possibility of the PPU..

the physics and interaction of objects is a good thing, but for me the exciting part would be when the virtual world itself, is literally held together and handled by a PPU.

this is probably not even feasible in the near future but its still a nice goal to have..

specifically terrain and its deformability.

Right now terrain is handled fairly crudely, its like a thin piece of paper everything is glued to, its textured and molded to represent terrain. To deform this is a huge undertaking, you have to deform the paper realistically and then stitch it back together..

Now imagine instead of building terrain like a paper sheet, you literally have tiny grains of "Dirt" particles that are given a certain attaction that makes them stick together and behave similar to real terrain. They are then molded within the realm of the physical affinity for each other.. similar to how you mold clay.

The door is now opened for all sorts of possiblities, deforming the terrain is now a matter of deforming the particles instead of trying to deform the paper and keep it all together.

applying this to buildings where you build via Bricks and mortar and their physic attributes that make them stand and the ability for total terrain and building destruction would be an awesome thing if it happens (which the PPU is hopefully taking us there)..

ofcourse this means tracking hundreds of thousands to millions of objects and their physical calculations (probably something the current PPU can't even come close to).. but if the PPU takes off, maybe we'd see something that literally could do it..
 
I agree that it seems kind of unrealistic at this point. But what if the terrain was a mixture of movable and non-movable objects? I’m thinking of like a deathmatch scene on a rocky slope where if you miss and hit some the boulders they break off and start rolling down the hill. Or just stuff like sandbags placed in a half-circle to give cover around an AA gun or whatever. It would be nice to have it react more realistically (stops bullet, but not tank shells or grenades).
 
While this would be an orgasmic fantasy for some hardcore fps'/rpg'rs I dont see this happening just yet. The people in the business of PPU Cards / Software integration for these cards/ ect have just touched upon it and what we're seeing now is only the beginning (obviously).

Sure the trade off of 20-40 FPS is nice but, particles and really small details will probably kill some systems without high end parts. I understand eventually the norm will be destructable environments and we'll see a hell of alot more variants of PPU's, but now I wouldn't expect anything too drastic. -Would be nice though :D
 
The dream of this sort of thing is what keeps me hoping PPU's take off :). Sure, they're "cool" now, but imagine stuff like this and... :eek: !
 
If they do this to unreal the game will be simply unplayable in 5 minutes of deathmatch

:D

only holes and nothing left
 
Now imagine instead of building terrain like a paper sheet, you literally have tiny grains of "Dirt" particles that are given a certain attaction that makes them stick together and behave similar to real terrain. They are then molded within the realm of the physical affinity for each other.. similar to how you mold clay.

The door is now opened for all sorts of possiblities, deforming the terrain is now a matter of deforming the particles instead of trying to deform the paper and keep it all together.

applying this to buildings where you build via Bricks and mortar and their physic attributes that make them stand and the ability for total terrain and building destruction would be an awesome thing if it happens (which the PPU is hopefully taking us there)..

ofcourse this means tracking hundreds of thousands to millions of objects and their physical calculations (probably something the current PPU can't even come close to).. but if the PPU takes off, maybe we'd see something that literally could do it..
Click to expand...

You'd do well to look up 'voxels'. :D

Oh, and actually, terrain deformation is fairly trivial, depending on how the terrain is stored. The naive implementation is to simply use a heightmap, which both graphics and game logic are able to use rather easily and deforming the terrain becomes quite easy.
 
I've thought about this before; deformable terrain would be great for RTS games. Imagine starting a landslide or blowing up a dam and wiping out a whole bunch of enemy troops. :D
 
Cypher19 said:
You'd do well to look up 'voxels'. :D

Oh, and actually, terrain deformation is fairly trivial, depending on how the terrain is stored. The naive implementation is to simply use a heightmap, which both graphics and game logic are able to use rather easily and deforming the terrain becomes quite easy.
Click to expand...

ooh I'm having flashbacks to Bullfrog's Magic Carpet....
 
i have thought about this idea for a long time there are many things you could do with it one cool thing would be in a game like BF2 if you had an E-TOOL or some kinda of shovel you could dig your own fighting hole anywhere on the map or even a huge trench line for defense

but of course there would have to be many undestructable objects in the game, with traditional first person shooters where you have to defend certain areas how would you defend a room where for the past 10 years you have been defending a single entrance to a capture point but if everything could be destroyed you could just blow a hole anywhere and walk right in?. one idea of course would each material would have to have different strength like bases would have reinforced concrete that would take alot to take down then some other buildings would be made out of wood.
 
forget me blowing up the wall, i will just dig a hole under the wall and then shoot you in the back of the shoulder for my css headshot :D
 
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