Unbelievable must-see!!!

Not true. I am single, totally unattached.

I actually knew that was coming, how scary!

Well, let's put it this way... I have a quad-core Mac pro tower with an ATI x1900 graphics card - pretty much top of the line. And yet, if I set up a scene in Poser or in DAZ|Studio with anywhere near the complexity, level of detail and lighting options that they showed in that video, and tried to render even a single static scene for that setup, it would likely take hours, at best, to calculate and render all those shadows and reflections. And that is for a dedicated application designed to do 3D rendering at that level of detail. So if they are doing it real-time, what are they using to host it? A Supercomputer? Even if the client is a streamlined "thin client" like Citrix Metaframe uses, with very little data that needs to be streamed to the end user, and all the calculating horsepower is at the server end, SOMETHING has to do all those rendering calculations.

If someone had made a breakthrough like that in 3D rendering, it would be on the cover of all the computing and business magazines. So I just can't believe it is real, yet. Some day, maybe. But computing hardware and software still has a long ways to go to get that good.

My initial thought in the first 30 seconds of the video was "No way. That can't possibly be something that is being rendered in real-time, in 3D." The later parts were a little more believable, but still looked more like it must have been pre-rendered, and not real-time.

And note that the few times they did show "avatars", their movement was incredibly jerky and stop-action, not at all in line with what you saw while the camera panned through that 3D city or suburbs.

I think both videos were very interesting. I have no doubt that both represent a glimpse into the future of what Second Life or some other virtual world will have to offer. For me the real question is wether this is a glimpse of the near future or distant future. Obviously, only time will tell. While it's looks very promising, until we can log in and try it on for size we aren't comparing apples to apples.

On a side note did anyone else find the camera (fish eye, telescope, whatever) view of the CitySpace video very annoying? Also, I think the extremely harsh lighting and shadows in that video detracted from the presentation.

One thing I noticed about it.. theres a couple of real fast sequences later in that video that seem to show (looks like they tried to hide it) the camera panning and the ray traced lighting not changing with the view. As anyone in 3D rendering would tell you, raytracing is a VERY costly operation, and even on a top end system it can sometimes take 30 minutes or more to render one complex frame. I HIGHLY suspect that the raytraced lighting was prerendered using a 3D x,y,z grid, and at each node (or every few feet in x,y,z coordinates) they collected light/shadow data from preset angles and light cycles. That way as you move your view angle, it can shift/blend from one preset light/shadow to the next, depending on what node of the 3d grid your view is from, or closest to. Sort of explains why camera movement of MORE than a few feet is jerky. Also explains why the shadows never move across a surface when the camera's doing that slow, fluid drift to a stop. The lighting that comes from the camera spotlight (or those temporary placed lights he seemed to be dropping) is obviously the standard fare of dynamic lighting, and you can see its light & shadows conflict with the light & shadows from the prerendered raytrace if you look close enough. It's a very neat and computationally efficient trick, but based on what I saw, I'm betting my left nipple there's no way it's truly live. More of a blend trick that fools the eye.

The view looks like you're looking through a telescope. If it really IS like that, then that would totally kill any immersion factor for me.

So based on the follow-ups, it seems they just took someone else's video from somewhere on the internet and pretended it was their virtual world. Do I understand correctly?

Whoa. That is teh shiznet.

Is it just me or does that world look like it would be incredibly boring?

I mean, it would be 100% awesome to cam around and explore just to see all the eye candy. But to actually hang out in, a-la SL? No way. The avatar looks brilliant, and sounds even better - but the actual images seem to suggest that you'll be stuck in the form of a early -30's yuppie-scum Ashton Kutcher clone (or a female equivalent). I saw lots of poses but no animations (perhaps I missed them). Also, the environment is just way too "reality". I like visiting floating castles and Sylvan meadows surrounded by tropical beaches. If I lived in downtown Boston, why on earth would I want to log into a photorealistic downtown Boston?

I agree - and I really do not want my virtual world to be photo-realistic. I want the fantasy world of my imagination and I want to make animations in it. I did like the writing on the board bit though - I thought that was neat.

I like the fantasyland that is SL. I still want it to be photoreal though.

The writing on the board - application sharing. That's one area that Linden Lab is really going to have to get on the stick about.

I would still visit there, mhmm!

Yeah that was cool.

I don't mind photo-realistic in and of itself; I could dig a photo-realistic floating castle or tropical beach. It's the reality-conforming context in general, which means there is no place for castles (floating or otherwise), or tropical beaches. Bear in mind this is all purely speculative; however, in my estimation a world this admittedly focused on making things "as real as possible" will -probably- not have nifty things like anywhere-teleporting. Certainly not flying. For all the neat camera gymnastics shown in the video (I also disliked those, too - the camera constantly moving, never pausing on anything long enough to afford a decent look, and continually cutting to new scenes...like some crappy 1980's UFO home video), I'm willing to bet that you can't stand on a street, cam up to the 12th floor, and click-sit your avatar into an office. Wanna visit that blues joint on the other side of town? I bet you have to drive there. In realtime. Which'll take awhile (even though you do get to see "nice" things like fully-modeled, pre-rendered street litter along the way).

My favorite part of SL is that it just close enough to "real" to be immersive, yet you don't have to worry about things like laws of physics.

I also like a bit more choice as far as the avatar goes. I'm not just talking about the kid av thing...I mean in general. That photo-realistic, ultra-fine mesh avatar means you're stuck being a human anyway. Even if you can change clothes now and then.

Personally I don't see the appeal of a virtual world that's entirely based on an American city or any other RL city for that matter. Yeah, if they can pull off the graphics and features they mentioned then it will be worth a visit and maybe a few weeks of my time but where is the imagination? They have the ability to create any environment imaginable and have basically chosen to look window for inspiration. How...predictable. Yeah i'm sure it will look good, yeah it will attract massive interest if it lives up to the hype and the average gamer can run it. But I see no longevity for the serious MMO game player or serious SL players and they would be the ones that you would expect to invest the most time and money in these sorts of worlds.

Don't get me wrong though...I cant wait for this world to go public along with the other virtual worlds that are being launched in the next few years. SL has ruled for too long and have become too complacant without pushing the boundries of the technology available. We need to see the next generation of worlds getting underway asap, so they can have their time and hopefully be surpased and improved upon to create the the sort of worlds that we all dream of, hopefully within the next 10 - 20 years.

As for here and now, LL should look at Cityspace as a 'to do' list.

QFT

Frankly, I'm hearing more an more about how this is jes not possible as presented. Anyone have some more information? What's the story?

What utter rot.

I found Virtual Philadelphia fairly impressive, and unlike this LivePlace fake demo, it's real.

As real as a virtual place can be, that is.

Link please.

If it's real then it's truly groundbreaking technology. I'd put the odds of it being legit at about 2%, personally. Even if it is real, why is it that developers don't seem to grok that user generated content is the most important feature for non-game virtual worlds? Without that, and the economy that grew out of it, SL would never have been anything but a quickly forgotten curiosity.

Could it be that developers are rarely users of what they develop?

I agree, thing is though, is any serious developer going to open their lovely shiny new virtual environment to 100% user created content? They must take one look at the SL mainland and never give it a second thought. I suspect these sort of places will offer limited creation for Avatar in future. but mainly it will be limited customisation of proffesionally created Avatars and content. Got to be a pretty bold move nowadays to let the (content creating) lunatics run the content asylum.

Question is...will it be free like SL is (unless you get the premium version) or have to pay no matter what.


It looks fantastic though. The only things that dont look real are the avatars.

A program like this is a thing many have strived for. To have a super realistic world at your disposal.

Be great to explore. They will need very powerful servers and a good number of them to prevent lag.

I cant wait for it.
Wont be a SL killer, but be a great thing to go to away from SL.
But if the numbers start to drop on SL because of this, then LL will make updates to enhance the graphics and programing in SL.

Unbelievable is right. 50% of the exterior shots are RL locations. It looks like a test for some sort of remote controlled camera in real city locations. Somebody saw a test for a remote control camera and said, "Hey this looks like the way we control our cameras in virtual worlds" and the hoax idea was hatched.

It's very easy to see the difference between the real exteriors and the rendered ones. The opening shot for example is a real street with real cars. As are most of the urban shots with telephone poles. The Standard Hotel in Los Angeles at 2:2O is ACTUALLY the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles.

C'mon, people. The vignetted lens. The absence of a UI. The sun glints and focus shift in the opening shot. The focus shifts in the majority of exterior shots. The obvious shift of detail when it goes to the virtual clips.

Freeze-frame the Spanish style house at 6:16, then press play and compare that to the virtual builds that follow at 6:18. 8:15 is a virtual exterior. At 8:16 it cuts to RL footage again. Everything from 8:20 to 9:20 is a real location (Mexico?) and then it goes back to virtual footage.

If you were creating a virtual test, would you really create such ugly landscapes?

Wishful thinking can only cloud your judgment so much, I hope.

I found my cell phone. You think it would work on this?:

The opening scene was lifted from http://3dblasphemy.com/personal/CITY.html. It is an actual 3D render with some post effects added for good measure. I have no problem believing that the rest of the content was also rendered, however it is isn't at all likely that it's realtime.

Upon repeated viewings I realized that at the beginning of each scene, they show a RL photo that must have been part of their reference materials (like a shot of a real ballroom with chandeliers before going to a virtual one). Still trying to figure out why someone would take that much time and energy to create landscapes that are so ugly.