A 4D video game?

Viewing single post

Started by Legend, Feb 27, 2018, 04:58 AM

previous topic - next topic

Legend



I'm prototyping a different rendering engine based off tetrahedron rasterization. Still a ways to go before it can visually compare to the SDF renderer but it'll hopefully be a lot faster.

I'm targeting a 256*256*256 or higher pixel render image. Unlike the SDF renderer, the 4D image will be rendered into a static cube instead of a dynamic one oriented with the camera. Disadvantage is that depth resolution will be over sampled compared to x and y, but the advantage is that every pixel sampled is important, the framerate is not affected by zooming in or moving the camera, and the block grid can be viewed multiple times without needing to refresh it (ie in VR the 4D scene doesn't have to be rendered separately for each camera and camera refresh could happen at 120fps even if the game is 30fps).

The screenshot above is of a 32*32*32 grid. Once finished it should not look blocky. The colors are to distinguish separate tetrahedrons. One hypercube needs 40 tetrahedrons to fully cover its surface. This sample scene has 13 tetrahedrons for a total of 520 tetrahedrons, but backface culling alone can bring that down to 125.