Bruce Dell of Euclideon & Holoverse Interview @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Bruce Dell of Euclideon & Holoverse Interview - It's been five years since we last heard from Bruce Dell of Euclideon about its Unlimited Detail Technology and how he saw it changing the gaming world. Since then Bruce has not been sitting on his hands, and are now delivering the Holoverse VR / AR experience to the folks Down Under. And a new video showing this off!
 
I read the whole interview, watched both videos, and I still don't know what to think. Obviously the Hologram rooms are working, but what they are working on I don't know (I saw that was a follow up question). I want to believe.
 
Sounds like this tech likes lots of CPU power. He even says something about finding a use for the GPU. I wonder if it likes 16 core Xeons or 64 core ARM type CPU's.

Lots of potential here.
 
They had this working back in 2011...
If you think that CPU or GPU is the bottleneck here you are confused.
 
I absolutely won't believe this is real until it's running on my PC at home. I use FEM software at work that effectively uses point clouds (nodes) and computes forces and reactions in each node. Granted, it's doing a lot more than just making a pretty picture, but even a slight increase in the total number of nodes causes significant slowdown. It also takes a good long while to open a model with just a few hundred thousand nodes - and they're talking billions and trillions of points.

What bothers me more than anything about Euclidean, though, is that they literally never answer questions about their technology. Journalists asking pointed questions are met with answers like "of course it's real, just watch our totally-not-fake videos!" They come off like a sketchy dude in an alleyway trying to sell you a Rolex for a fraction of the cost, only they refuse to give it to you and instead say "look how pretty it is!" every time you ask to see if it's real.
 
ChefJeff789 said:
I absolutely won't believe this is real until it's running on my PC at home. I use FEM software at work that effectively uses point clouds (nodes) and computes forces and reactions in each node. Granted, it's doing a lot more than just making a pretty picture, but even a slight increase in the total number of nodes causes significant slowdown. It also takes a good long while to open a model with just a few hundred thousand nodes - and they're talking billions and trillions of points.

What bothers me more than anything about Euclidean, though, is that they literally never answer questions about their technology. Journalists asking pointed questions are met with answers like "of course it's real, just watch our totally-not-fake videos!" They come off like a sketchy dude in an alleyway trying to sell you a Rolex for a fraction of the cost, only they refuse to give it to you and instead say "look how pretty it is!" every time you ask to see if it's real.
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So I have been talking to these guys an am looking to get a question answered about what hardware is running their Holoverse rooms.

Also, I am feeling that with Unity and UE4 out with the business models they have, Euclideon will have to give it away and support free use with the same licensing strategy that the others are using.
 
Please, dont add gameworks to it!!

For real though, this is so impressive. I would love to see the take the side off the box that is running this and say "that's what it's running on". But the thought of unlimited power, mmmmmm!
 
Interesting stuff. I have always thought this was a bit of a smokeshow since I read your original article back in 2011, but if they have a legitimate hologram room business in Australia, I have to think it works on some level. I wonder if I could convince any of my Aussie friends to go check it out.
 
Can you find out where their physical location is in Australia? I hope I didn't miss that in the article.
 
Rizen said:
Can you find out where their physical location is in Australia? I hope I didn't miss that in the article.
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Well, with a little google maps search and some info from the article I found this:

59 Nerang St, Southport QLD 4215, Australia

holoverse.com.au

+61 7 5661 3010

Open now: 10AM–5PM

It only has 5 reviews but people seem to like it.
 
Spacy9 said:
I read the whole interview, watched both videos, and I still don't know what to think. Obviously the Hologram rooms are working, but what they are working on I don't know (I saw that was a follow up question). I want to believe.
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I have sent all the Info over to Kyle he will post it soon. :)
 
Rizen said:
Interesting stuff. I have always thought this was a bit of a smokeshow since I read your original article back in 2011, but if they have a legitimate hologram room business in Australia, I have to think it works on some level. I wonder if I could convince any of my Aussie friends to go check it out.
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We have hundreds in every day I went up and checked it out the week before I started working for them and I have seen it all I have been in the back rooms and it still blows my mind as to how it works! We let people in with cameras so nothing to hide (well we don't let people into the workshop as we have some hidden projects :p ) people see it and they come out saying it witchcraft and I get why.
 
Good to see you here, Gatt. I have a couple questions...

First off let me just throw it right out there, will Euclideon release games to PC? Or even the most used gaming consoles such as PS4 or XBOX ONE? Even if they don't, will they release their game engine that will allow game developers out there to do so?

Whatever became of the "2 solidscan games" that were announced back in 2014? They even went into detail saying one would be in a forest with alien like creatures, and the other would be a clay style game were you ride a giraffe. Were those games scrapped or what?
 
I would like to see Euclideon hand off their software for an academic research paper running the engine through its paces as D-Wave, in order to prove that their computer was truly using quantum mechanics to perform its calculations, did with their quantum computer. Would they consider doing this? Could you ask?
 
Euclideon smells like a company that has managed to get its investors/backers to give them anything they want. They seem to show very little progress since 2010. The graphics in that new video use graphics that were shown to us back in 2011, with no improvements whatsoever. This still looks like 15 year old software, colours are totally what games were like 15 years ago, and frame rate is looking like it's struggling to keep up to 15fps. The "latest" "holodeck" graphics are a small step up, and frame rate looks like it hits 30 in places, but it still looks like old graphics, with terrible physics, just with detail when you zoom in to them. From a distance, they look like the first Pixar animations, just not as well thought out or designed.
 
The desperate "hey, look at me!" vibe that the videos promulgate only serves to reinforce my suspicion that the emperor has no clothes and that the man standing behind the curtain is orchestrating some kind of farcical play to the unwashed masses in hopes of securing yet more patrons from the pool of those gullible enough to be sucked in...

In other words, they need to actually produce something and show it off outside of their labs/company/"holo store"... They've had plenty of time to do so, yet have managed to do very little in this regard in the past 5 years.

Maybe they should create a website where folks can buy promises of a released product in the form of starship models based on this tech... and then melt and upgrade them to ever more fantastic and ever more expensive starships models, and then... errr nevermind.

It sounds great, looks promising, but until they actually produce something, I remain skeptical.
 
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I was on holidays back in May staying about 5kms away from where these guys are located. They were in all of the touristy brochures where we were staying but at the time I did not relate them to this company and thought it was all just a dodgy attraction for the tourists. They are only about and hour of so away from where I live. I will give them a call tomorrow, see what it costs for a session etc.
 
Do they have any games that aren't rail shooters with entirely static environments?

That's my one and only question.

Thanks for getting this interview btw, Kyle. Was wondering some time ago what ever happened to this technology.
 
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euclideonfan said:
Good to see you here, Gatt. I have a couple questions...

First off let me just throw it right out there, will Euclideon release games to PC? Or even the most used gaming consoles such as PS4 or XBOX ONE? Even if they don't, will they release their game engine that will allow game developers out there to do so?

Whatever became of the "2 solidscan games" that were announced back in 2014? They even went into detail saying one would be in a forest with alien like creatures, and the other would be a clay style game were you ride a giraffe. Were those games scrapped or what?
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With any SDK you need to support it and to do it with a new tech like this takes lots of man hours. We have looked at working with devs but the price people want to pay will not cover the man hours needed to make it happen. We are looking into what Unity and Unreal Engine and others are doing now and are close to finishing an SDK but in this industry you can be 95% complete then hit a snag that sets you back a year so we don't want to give dates because if you say 6 months and it take 9 people start screaming. We still have to pay the bills and to do this we have Holoverse we have our own place in Australia and are close to opening up in other countries. We are working on 6 room pods that go into arcades and we will be making games for them in house this is covering the bills as we finish the SDK. The 2 games we talked about are the ones we have in Holoverse now Bruce did say back then this was his idea but even I didn't give it a second thought as I thought he was kidding about making a holodeck and flying dragons and had no idea about the VR trend that was coming. Remember this was 5 years ago when he told me under NDA about VR and holodecks.
 
This really looks fantastic! Love the glasses compared to current VR HMD's. Detail is what makes reality real and looks like Atoms is a great answer for VR. Lighting makes that detail stand out which is probably as complicated as Atoms and is the secret sauce for photography which looks like is what is missing from somewhat from the video's. Still looks fantastic for VR by far.

Oh my, what will Nvidia or even that matter AMD do if their graphics hardware becomes obsolete? :ROFLMAO:
 
JohnnyGatt said:
With any SDK you need to support it and to do it with a new tech like this takes lots of man hours. We have looked at working with devs but the price people want to pay will not cover the man hours needed to make it happen. We are looking into what Unity and Unreal Engine and others are doing now and are close to finishing an SDK but in this industry you can be 95% complete then hit a snag that sets you back a year so we don't want to give dates because if you say 6 months and it take 9 people start screaming. We still have to pay the bills and to do this we have Holoverse we have our own place in Australia and are close to opening up in other countries. We are working on 6 room pods that go into arcades and we will be making games for them in house this is covering the bills as we finish the SDK. The 2 games we talked about are the ones we have in Holoverse now Bruce did say back then this was his idea but even I didn't give it a second thought as I thought he was kidding about making a holodeck and flying dragons and had no idea about the VR trend that was coming. Remember this was 5 years ago when he told me under NDA about VR and holodecks.
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Awesome! Look very much forward to this experience.

Looks like it would make a rather awesome tactical trainer for the police, military and could be used prior to an actual deployment. I would expect you guys/gals would be getting some questions and request from different governments.

Medical use of walking inside of a patient prior to an operation from use of full body CAT scans.

Bottom line congratulations for achieving this state as it is, hope this continues to advance as well.
 
Stimpy88 said:
Euclideon smells like a company that has managed to get its investors/backers to give them anything they want. They seem to show very little progress since 2010. The graphics in that new video use graphics that were shown to us back in 2011, with no improvements whatsoever. This still looks like 15 year old software, colours are totally what games were like 15 years ago, and frame rate is looking like it's struggling to keep up to 15fps. The "latest" "holodeck" graphics are a small step up, and frame rate looks like it hits 30 in places, but it still looks like old graphics, with terrible physics, just with detail when you zoom in to them. From a distance, they look like the first Pixar animations, just not as well thought out or designed.
Click to expand...

Have you ever downloaded a screener of a movie? Try doing it with a 3D game. We are filming projected game footage and you want it to look amazing? Do you have a VIVE or Rift? if you do you will also how hard 2 screens can be on your video card but we are doing it with 4 and we have a map the size of all of World of Warcraft put together. After you get to have your first trip into a Holoverse center feel free to come back and comment about what we have or have not done :)
 
John 13 said:
I was on holidays back in May staying about 5kms away from where these guys are located. They were in all of the touristy brochures where we were staying but at the time I did not relate them to this company and thought it was all just a dodgy attraction for the tourists. They are only about and hour of so away from where I live. I will give them a call tomorrow, see what it costs for a session etc.
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it's One session $34 do the Experiences if you are only doing the one and it is cheaper to book online. Pop back tell us what you think :)
 
John Gatt, I had another question...

Seeing many people don't have 3D laser scanners in their homes, will the engine support photogrammetry and/or normal polygonal models converted into UD format?
 
I was really intrigued by this bit..

"In year four we did a worldwide public test of our technology that streams unlimited point cloud data over the web. This is a very important part of giving the internet a 3D future. Then this year we released the hologram room. We have 4 more major projects under development at the moment which are just as interesting as what has come forth so far."


Are these guys actively pursuing an AR-type web? An immersive "holographic" online world? Because I'd be very very interested in something like that.
 
This tech has the potential to shake up everything..

With this potential SDK. How would that look in the PC space anyways? Are we talking running off DX12 / Vulkan, or completely new API?

Any chance one of these Holoverse coming to Canada? I would love to check it out.

After watching that video, I have to agree. The deal of the polygon is inevitable..
 
Other than the "Unlimited Detail" I really don't see anything that stands out (pun intended) on the "hologram room". I know I'm over simplificating but its just a room with images projected on the walls, ceiling and floor with proper perpective correction. I think I saw something similar based on trials on tatooine when it was first announced.
 
sboucher said:
This tech has the potential to shake up everything..

With this potential SDK. How would that look in the PC space anyways? Are we talking running off DX12 / Vulkan, or completely new API?

Any chance one of these Holoverse coming to Canada? I would love to check it out.

After watching that video, I have to agree. The deal of the polygon is inevitable..
Click to expand...

Even if their idea fails...it is a big step in the right direction. Everyone, who does 3d graphics, knows that polygons are a result of "we just don't have the GPU/CPU power we want" yet. It was a tool that allowed us to begin our path forward to where we are today. Euclidean decided, for better or worse, to make a "leap". The thing is, they still haven't landed yet. Right now are seeing them in the air and don't know where they will land. Moving away from polygons "is" a good idea. It might take a long time to do so..but it won't happen unless ventures like Euclidean happen again and again and again we do not make progress.
 
Looks interesting, but I'm not convinced that projectors can really achieve a hologram effect. I guess that happens with the glasses kind of like Hololens? But if that's the case, why even have the projectors?
 
Just 1 Xeon based PC? I figured AT LEAST 4 of them with probably duel procs. That is pretty efficient and leaves the door open for more power down the road when they can get the rest of the supporting hardware more refined.
 
MavericK said:
Looks interesting, but I'm not convinced that projectors can really achieve a hologram effect. I guess that happens with the glasses kind of like Hololens? But if that's the case, why even have the projectors?
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To facilitate proper placement of the background scenes.
 
Actually it sounds like it would be perfect for consumers. Forget about the VR part. Just focus on how sane the system requirements are and then think about your personal PC running games with this tech.

I think I grasp a little why drawing tons of pixels makes more sense than polygons. Just a simple triangle requires a ton of calculations especially if it is to be stretched or whatever else needs to be done to it. Then you add in thousands of them for a scene and you start needing "To the Metal" API's like DX12. Just spraying dots onto the screen where they are absolutely needed makes more sense. You can stack them to create depth perception. Think of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. Just stack another tier of dots to create more height. With polygons you'd be worried if this triangle pokes out over here or whatever. Dots / atoms can be infinitely small. There shouldn't be jagged edges to process because you're starting out with round atoms.

Think about those desk magnet sets where it's a bunch of metal balls that you manipulate into shapes. Then imagine trying to arrange a set of magnetic triangles and other shapes into the same shape. It would be a lot more time consuming to get the image looking right if starting with triangles.
 
I imagine for the projectors you have to have a very specific room size with a specific wall covering, though. Even now with VR it's sometimes hard to find the empty room space, I would think this would be even harder.
 
Wow that older interview popped into my head a few days ago and I wondered what had happened since.

5 years ago!!! That's the scary thing.

Will all the noobie posters from back then come back?
 
MavericK said:
Looks interesting, but I'm not convinced that projectors can really achieve a hologram effect. I guess that happens with the glasses kind of like Hololens? But if that's the case, why even have the projectors?
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What they've build has been around for a long time and is called a "CAVE" (Wikipedia) This type of setup was the state of the art in VR for quite a while because you don't need to miniaturize things and fit them into a headset.

The projectors are all 3D projectors, and the glasses are either passive (like in a movie theater) or active (like some 3D TVs use).
 
Yeah I had forgotten about these guys as well. Honestly I think it's pretty neat what they are doing, but the video also shows some of the failings. The sword/pickaxe tracking was noticeably laggy. The lighting is poor, the environments are sometimes crazy detailed but seem haphazard. It's just hard to say if they are onto something but need a better artists and stuff to lay things out better and handle the overall scene - or if the tech just isn't capable of those things. Some of the animations looked terrible. Is that because they are skeletal (they mentioned a new animation system)? Other video games have good looking animations though so I'm not sure that being skeletal is the problem, it's more likely their implementation of it or their animators.
 
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