INFINITE ZOOM IN MY C++ GAME ENGINE | Devlog #3

[@jackawaka]

"Hey man where did you build your base? I can't find it", "Yeah it's on the other side of the entire observable universe to you, shouldn't take too long to get there"

[@honestlyowain1121]

Just think though. Imagine someone writing their own script to make galaxies and planets and biomes on those planets and different elements that you could find on them but on this scale. I wont have to dream about going to mars at that point I'd just play that game and travel to the edge of the galaxy.

[@lucaszanardo38]

This is really incredible and hypnotising but the youtube compressing is killing it :c

[@voxelbee]

Thanks! Yeah I realized that after uploading it in my next video I will try uploading at 1440p hopefully that will have less compression.

[@slackstation]

Yeah, this is basically video compression kryptonite.

[@freddyfozzyfilms2688]

never have truer words been said

[@alphanimal]

@@voxelbee Maybe adding more contrast into the colors will help the compression too, and it would look better! edit: I'm an idiot. didn't notice this was an old video. The new one looks much better 😄

[@thetimelords911]

"Should be able to support scales of the entire obseravable universe" IM FUCKING INTERESTED.

[@Rankydoodle]

"don't expect it to be that good since I only just started" *creates something that even I can't make in a normal software*

[@goodboiadvsp3297]

You can't fool us, this is just 3rd person creative minecraft

[@voxelbee]

Haha someone finally noticed 😂🤣

[@kanikabhatia9865]

It is much better... In my opinion. If something is not lagging with billions of cubes, how can you say that it is just like Minecraft ? I support this engine alot and I want to try it out too.

[@CloudPhase]

@@kanikabhatia9865 Uhh... It was a joke?

[@kanikabhatia9865]

@@CloudPhase Yeah... I am still curious about the way he wrote the code to make the performance good even with billions of cubes.

[@bingdebong9265]

@@kanikabhatia9865 It's written in C++, Minecraft is written in Java, Java is interpreted meaning it's much slower

[@coceg87]

This is really cool! I believe this is similar to the Euclideon Unlimited Detail engine. It seems to me one big limitation is that any non-random voxel map would require some unrealistically high memory to store large world with small details.

[@2ARM2]

woah, if you stare directly in the middle at around 4:42 and wait until it finishes everything shifts that you look at afterwards

[@charetjc]

If you stare at it with your eyes crossed, you can see a sailboat.

[@honestlyowain1121]

I noticed that too

[@Tantandev]

My mind is blown away by this!

[@PenguinMaths]

I found one of your comments in the wild :)

[@MACIEJ454545]

This is amazing concept and mountain of work done towards it, I'm definitely sticking around to see where you will take it

[@marsclose7985]

The zooming looks fantastic. Really great work and looking forward to seeing the next step

[@PreetimanMisra]

I've been wanting to build my own game engine for a while now and finding your channel is like a godsend ! Best of luck on your KZbin and Coding journey !

[@voxelbee]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@Ranstone]

Mad respect. It's been a long time since I saw an indie dev make his own tools/GUI for the engine editor, not just the game.

[@ThibsWorkshop]

Wow really nice content you are making here! I'm also working on a voxel engine for my game but in Java, it's interesting to see your progress in C++. Keep it up! Edit: your engines' scale is insane

[@voxelbee]

Wow! Thanks so much! I've watched some of your videos like your content too man!

[@fietae]

"Don't expect this to be the best work you've ever seen" *turns music volume to 400%*

[@nextProgram]

Really cool stuff dude. I’m just curious, what kind of gameplay do you have where you’d need to zoom in that much? Or is this more of a programming experiment?

[@voxelbee]

Wow! Thanks so much! I really love your devlogs too! :) Well at the moment I'm trying to create the engine to support planet sized worlds with voxels and I guess it is a programing experiment to see if it is even doable because I'm learning as I go! haha

[@MDGeist-ws2rh]

@@voxelbee Also, doesn't harm to create a framework with enough freedom to create whatever game. First we need to remove limitations to be able to truly imagine what we can do without them. Awesome work.

[@TheAnswer_is_42]

A game where you play as a grey goo and start from a single nanite and consume the entire universe

[@aminp-wn5fw]

this was in my recommendation and i love it

[@LittleBigLucas51]

This feels like a drug trip, and I haven't even been high

[@OfflineOffie]

I'm *really* excited to see where this goes! it looks super interesting so far!

[@hectorragofi3640]

wow this is really cool. So lovely. This is going to be a very very good engine

[@voxelbee]

Thanks so much. Hopefully it will!

[@tacormme2485]

You are absolutely insane!! Good work and the best of luck!

[@SETHthegodofchaos]

Very cool! 3:40 I believe Star Citizen has done something similar I would love to figure out how these solutions compare to each other. Star Citizen has a 64bit coordinate system and then they added a 64bit to 32bit relative converter for the renderer. The player camera position is always at the center (0,0,0) with 32bit floating values and all other objects coordinates around the player are being positioned relative to that. They also have their zone system which further integrates into that. Each zone has its own 64bit coordinate system. essentially its own level. It allows them to have objects be part of other objects and move around with them without having to update all of the inner objects as well. This allows them to have massive objects like ships (which can be an entire level in and of itself) move around in the game world without much impact on performance. Thus a hierachy of zones emerges.

[@voxelbee]

Thanks! Hmm I need to look into what they have done a bit more. I heard about their 64bit coordinate system and that they are still rendering in 32bits like my solution. I hadn't heard about there zone system that might be similar to mine if you can travel seamlessly between zones? I feel like I will end up implementing a similar zone technique to them if that's the case. Very interesting!

[@SETHthegodofchaos]

@@voxelbee Yes, objects can travel (mostly) seamlessly between zones. I think their technique might be more advanced since their zones themselves are dynamic and thus can be anywhere in the level. From how I understood it your solution uses static "chunks". The zones in Star Citizen can move and rotate and can be deeply nested inside each other. For example an entire solar system is one zone, each planet has its own zone allowing planets and everything on it to rotate, then the interior of the ship that is flying in the atmosphere of that planet has its own zone as well. It is definitely very impressive work! If you are interested they have a short explanation on how it works in one of their older Around the Verse episodes from 2016. Not sure if I can link other yt videos here. Just search for "Star Citizen: Around the Verse 3.11 - DE" at 21:22 they start talking about it with some visuals as well.

[@voxelbee]

@@SETHthegodofchaos Thanks for telling me about that video just had a look through lots of interesting stuff there! I am planning a similar system to allow the planets and large objects to move too. However this is quite different to what I have at the moment which as you said is a chunk system. I need to come up with a solution similar to their solution that works with my octree. I'm planning to look into that soon once I have improved some performance and settled on the core systems. Will be a big task!

[@SETHthegodofchaos]

@@voxelbee Definitely looking forward to it :D PS: which sources did you use to get familiar with C++ and game development in general?

[@voxelbee]

I started learning C++ when using Unreal Engine writing little game scripts. It was quite confusing at the beginning though haha.

[@rafaelbenetton3674]

that's trippy as fuck, so impressive, i hope the physiscs of the engine will be impressive too

[@voxelbee]

Thanks! I've got big plans for the physics engine too so stay tuned

[@benrex7775]

@@voxelbee Will it include regional non-euclidean geometry?

[@seditt5146]

@@benrex7775 I have to ask... why is everyone so impressed by non-euclidean? It seems so relatively worthless to me in like 99.5% of things yet increases computational intensity dramatically. Is there any reason why you enjoy it? Not knocking it, just curious what the draw is because it seems like everyone is facinated by it when I have only ever seen one person on KZbin use it correctly where he renders scenes in various types of NE

[@benrex7775]

@@seditt5146 I just like the thought of walking through some biome and then suddenly space starts to behave weird. Like some corrupted place where you don't just get some status effect and some funny shader on top of your camera. I also haven't seen a person do it right. But perhaps if more people do it at some point one will get it right.

[@seditt5146]

@@benrex7775 There is a dude I have seen put it to good use, I will see if I can find his videos for you to look at. He does it to explain different hyperbolic geometries and things of that nature by projecting them onto the screen. Pretty cool and becomes a very useful tool in really understanding so tougher aspects of physics like Relativity and four dimensional space-time etc. I personally was just curious because I regularly see people wet their pants talking about NEG and I personally just don't really see much appeal in it is all.

[@MultiNeedforspeed]

Very interesting use of vulkan! As I've been using it in a project of mine, I know it can be a pain to work with :) Good job this far and keep it up! I'd love to see where this is going

[@voxelbee]

Thanks!

[@SpaceDave1337]

This engine could be used for so many cool games man...

[@TheLiverX]

Actually, universe-sized seamless scaling was already implemented, the program is called Space Engine. It was meant to be a space sim (or as an engine for large scale space exploration games) but left in the current state of being a tourist simulator. It even has spaceships and fancy space drives for that purpose. The main problem with that was the added difficulty of positioning, since objects had to be managed and teleported between large sectors correctly. No one really needed such complexity in the context of the game, since it would immensely increase code difficulty and lead towards often frustrating game mechanics. Best case of large scale is Elite:Dangerous, and yet it is done by small "local" zones of where players bump into each other, fly around a space station etc. Many games aiming towards such spacial freedom either never finished (Star Citizen) or simplified to something manageable. Be aware of that. I'm not trying to mock or dissuade, what you've done requires tons of skill and patience, but do always consider some scope of what could realistically be done.

[@voxelbee]

Thanks so much for the feedback! I do love Space Engine!

[@volchonokilliR]

I think that with latest generations of hardware, possibility of reaching large scales is closer than ever, with very well researched, thought out and optimized, fully custom engine

[@lntegrate]

ah yes, the algorythm has brought us together again. however this time they've brought me to someone i might like to watch more often.

[@alechart462]

I've become very interested in your work here, man. Thank you for sharing. Hopefully it can spur myself back into work as well! Heh.

[@robbiekavanagh2802]

Scale and complexity is really interesting to me, love the video good work. In a digital space with no relatable landmarks the idea of scale and detail are completely interchangeable, universe scale and micrometers are completely arbitrary here except in describing the relationship between the minimum and maximum scales. It could be Planck's length, and earth for example (or whatever it works out to be, maybe it's planck's length and our galaxy, maybe even planck's length and a micrometer (Planck's length is very, very small.)

[@mrgps4393]

mY EYES Are bleeding; by the zoom effect Your work here its beyond the future!

[@industrialdonut7681]

what a madlad, this is the quality shit I subscribe for!

[@dhritishmansarmah2496]

this is cool, you have successfully persuaded me to try something like this on my own

[@Netanya-q4b]

I've followed a number of voxel developers over the years, this could be the ONE - keep at it please, I will buy a license to use the engine in a heartbeat so I can just make games :)

[@JonaCorrea]

Really amazing work. This feels just like magic.

[@terryblack2990]

Ant-man game anyone? This is legitimately the coolest thing! Keep up the hard work! Love to see your Dev Logs!

[@swyveu]

Genius. I'm wondering how the Mandelbrot set, or rather Mandelbulb, would look like with this engine.

[@BrahimBessrour]

that's got recommended to me suddenly ! you are making good job , keep it up

[@wolfiedgr8t]

This is amazing, keep up the great work ❤️

[@lephobix]

Dude I see so much potential in your work ! Incredible 🤗

[@sourestcake]

I'm working on a voxel game engine, too, but in C. Each chunk is just a 16x16x16 cube in my case (but i might increase that). Each chunk has a 32-bit position on the chunk scale, and the coordinates of objects within them are 32-bit floating-point values. So my engine would be able to handle worlds around 3.25e+32 m^3 in volume (Earth has a volume of 1.08e+12 m^3). I thought about using 64-bit chunk positions, but i decided to drop that idea. I've thought about how to compress the entire game world into just a fraction of what it would actually take. I'd simply keep the seed around and store changes to any chunks, so i can just generate a chunk as usual and apply those changes to recover the current state. I'd guess you're doing something like that in your engine already, though. Anyways, sorry for my ramblings. Your project looks great, i love it. (Edit: The volume of my game world would be 3.25e+32, not just 3.25e+10 as it previously said.) (Edit 2: Apparently editing comments remove's the uploader's heart. Now i feel like i shouldn't have fixed this.)

[@heidolf6002]

you had me at alright guys

[@sjoerdev]

I personally really like the workflow of the unity game engine just because i find it difficult to set up a graphics library combined with a compiler, and i always get confused when the game files and the engine files are in the same folder. I really hope that your engine will very clearly separate the game from itself just like unity does. I also really hope your engine will include scripting in c#. But i love what you are doing so far with IMGUI, i like your editor layout! Also merry Christmas 🎄⛄!

[@voxelbee]

Thanks so much for the kind words and merry Christmas to you too! 🎄 I am splitting the engine into multiple libraries so the game will be separated from the editor that does need a little clean up though lol. I also really want to add scripting in C# too but that's far away for now.

[@sjoerdev]

@@voxelbee please take your time though, you shouldn't rush things. C# scripting would make the engine more accessible for people that come from the unity game engine. But anyway, marry Xmas!!!!

[@alystair]

The real gotcha in all this will be figuring out how to create (and later blend?) character/doodad animations and tooling - do you already have any theories? Such as translating standard poly models to voxel? So much to do!

[@voxelbee]

That's definitely something I'm thinking about I think it will be a challenge! haha

[@staplepin8099]

Will be nice to see your workflow and the code some IDE footage

[@voxelbee]

I'll try to add some more next episode. Thanks for the feedback!

[@staplepin8099]

@@voxelbee A discord server would be amazing

[@voxelbee]

@@staplepin8099 For sure I need to get on that :)

[@ablaabla-lz1xp]

I wonder if you could 'smooth render' voxels like how smooth shading works on polygons. It could be used to make realistic models (with many small voxels) almost as good as using polygons, maybe?

[@voxelbee]

Yeah that's interesting I might have to explore that!

[@vlandemart]

Damn dude, I've had the same idea roughly two month ago but forgot about it due to lack of time I wish you all the best, as that thing might be the future

[@Sploky]

Compression really did you like that.

[@fleurbird]

This is mindboggling

[@widrolo]

2 questions: 1. How will you make the whole universe where you can zoom to a micron? 2. Will the engine be downloadable when its done?

[@voxelbee]

Well I'm going to have to create a procedural generation system to generate planets and objects to populate the universe but it only has to generate what you see. I'm not sure about offering downloads at the moment I'll have to see when I get there!

[@doragonmeido]

@@voxelbee waiting to see the procedural generation

[@muzolbyte312]

yo, that's really impressive, it kinda reminds me of mandelbrot, but in a coolest way.

[@voxelbee]

Yeahh it does. I'm gonna try to implement some fractals soon too!

[@TomtheMagician21]

Nice, in blender I think there is an add on where you can voxelise at the end I think but if you want to use voxels the whole time then I think what you’re doing is better

[@OrangeC7]

Um excuse me you WHAT this is awesome

[@cyp_]

Awesome video ! in newer CPU you can use AVX512 to get 512bit number (and float number I think) but I'm not certain that GPU can use 512bit number...

[@voxelbee]

Thanks :) I need to look into that I know the GPU can only use 32bit efficiently. But that sounds useful on the CPU.

[@cyp_]

@@voxelbee only rare processor support AVX512, but you can still use AVX with 256bit number (32byte) and 128bit.

[@TheMafiaReal]

Great so when’s build the earth in Magicavoxel happening 😎

[@voxelbee]

Haha well have to see...

[@Heknon]

What would you think about maybe later on making more in depth tutorials about the concepts that you apply here? I find them really fascinating it's just that I have not utter clue as to how to approach them. Stuff like the infinite caching system or this zooming system

[@duckner]

I've dreamed about something like this

[@GLITCH_-.-]

Very cool. I'm so up for a simulation where you zoom into atom level from outer space. It would barren, I guess, but still awesome. How do you keep the speed relatively constant? Is there a current_scale float or something like that that's used as a factor? And how would you even implement something like that, given you could just turn around from a feature on a speck of dust and see the other side of the universe...

[@voxelbee]

Well I'm using the scroll wheel on the mouse to increase or decrease the speed as I fly around but in a game that could be like if your walking running or in a spaceship or something...

[@GLITCH_-.-]

@@voxelbee Ah oh haha it looked so fluid and perfect. Very nice xD

[@byron.jennings]

Can't wait until we can have a working game with this engine! Imagine Katamari starting from the plank scale up to the universe scale... 400hrs per playthropugh hahahahaha jk.

[@MidnightSt]

oh btw i've been thinking about similar stuff for my game, except about scale of 1m to 1 universe, and... with relativistic physics, if possible, and... ...until now i never realized that i can basically represent arbitrary reference frame hierarchies as quadtree-aligned node/refrerence frame aligned hierarchies. thanks.

[@andrewevenson2657]

So when you zoom in is it going to unload everything behind you? For example if you created a solar system, if you zoom into a planet would it unload the sun?

[@voxelbee]

Depends if it's visible and on the size of the cache!

[@kongolandwalker]

Sounds like Ant-man superpowers

[@aronseptianto8142]

i can't wait until i can get a hand of a demo of this and enjoy everything without youtube compression

[@jo_kil9753]

Its really great that your engine can support that, but how are you planning to fill all that space you have?

[@voxelbee]

Thanks! I'm going to be working on procedural generation soon! Hopefully that will fill it :)

[@tomi5143]

You could make a entire universe simulation with this

[@ipablol]

At first I thought you were saying "gooey"

[@Lokdora]

infinity render distance in minecraft when

[@voxelbee]

Haha stay tuned ;)

[@sonnenshiro6045]

I've already expressed my excitement for your game engine, but I must say that this is incredible. I have no programming experience and I really want to start working on something similar to what you're doing. Any tips for a beginner? What software do you use and whatnot? I'm sure I will be humbled by how hard this is, but I wish to try.

[@voxelbee]

Thanks so much! For a beginner I would try and find a tutorial on making a game engine on KZbin and follow along with that if you want to make game engines. Other thing could be trying out Unreal Engine because you can learn to program C++ in there but it is a steep learning curve. Join the discord if you have any other questions! discord.gg/uV6KwfYmwn

[@sonnenshiro6045]

@@voxelbee Thank you.

[@cvabds]

Have you seen john lin's sandbox? It uses novel voxel algorithm that is high-performaning that you could study and maybe implement in yours!!!!

[@voxelbee]

Yeah I saw his videos looks very interesting. Would have to contact him to see what kind of techniques he's using in his voxel renderer. Might give me some ideas on how to improve mine...

[@nonchip]

that looks more like movement than zoom to me tho ("really small" vs "really far away", see also what hollywood calls "Dolly Shots"), how do you handle the float inaccuracies from those kinda distances in the rasterizer?

[@voxelbee]

It does kinda look like that I think because of the scene. The origin of the rasterizer is the origin of the camera so we don't lose precision near the camera only far away!

[@jbaidley]

"I am using a 32-bit float for 8km areas". Have you considered how floating point precision will impact things? The precision that a floating point number of value 1 and value 1e30 can represent are very different, and in many large scale (especially space) games dealing with this inaccuracy is really important or it messes up physics and motion.

[@voxelbee]

Yeah that's true that why I have split the world into these chunks of 8km that mean the precision is not lost in theses areas. I might have to revisit this though as I add physics later!

[@sharkinsprime769]

question. are you still defining a min/max voxel size for your world or world grid. Im trying to wrap my head around this as i mostly do polygon rendering, and im struggling to understand how 1 voxel is being defined. my understanding is that it is a point in 3d space so like (1,1,1) but if your able to scale infinitely will the renderer know ok this voxel should be 1 pixel or 10 pixels in size.

[@bppdc]

How do you plan to generate/create models that can support this scale?

[@voxelbee]

This is one of the big parts of the project that I have to work on. Hopefully using some iterative generations systems such as fractals mixed with models made by people.

[@PaladinHD]

When/Will this be open to the public to use? This seems insanely fun to use

[@voxelbee]

At the moment I don't have any plans to release it but maybe as things progress I might do some beta testing or something

[@afailable]

Feels like a fractal

[@deflesz6053]

Do you recommend anything helpful to begin learning vulkan?

[@voxelbee]

This website: vulkan-tutorial.com/ Is very useful it does throw you right in the deep though but this is where I learnt most about Vulkan!

[@minecraftermad]

will this be opensource? i'd like to fiddle around with it :) and maybe help you in the progress

[@voxelbee]

For now I'm gonna work on it closed... But I'm undecided I might open it down the line!

[@minecraftermad]

@@voxelbee looking forward to it being available.

[@staplepin8099]

Damm glad I discovered your channel

[@MidnightSt]

3:58 oh dude you stealin' my idea except i'm gonna do it in c#... so, naturally, deep respect, you're already much further along in a much more obnoxious language than i am... :)

[@ThankYouESM]

I love this! For much better memory handling, have you considered implementing RGB cellular automaton which like Conway's Game Of Life... but, relies on what the color of each neighbor? Basically a 2-in-1 solution.

[@voxelbee]

Thanks! I'm interested to do something like that in the future for sure but just haven't done that yet.

[@numero7mojeangering]

Really inspiring stuff here 😲

[@atlasua2021]

How is it all stored in memory? Or are the rules of the world generated in real time?

[@voxelbee]

It's all generated in real time then cached in memory on the CPU and GPU.

[@Thejasonlessard]

How you are doing to tackle updating the voxels or moving them?

[@voxelbee]

At the moment they just get moved in memory but this is something im going to work on down the line...

[@dr_nyt]

Super underrated, I can't wait to see how this progresses. Best of luck! On a side note, any plans to add a member subscription on youtube? Would love to support this project, and if you ever considering making Vulkan tutorials +1

[@voxelbee]

Thank you so much! Really glad you like it. I'm thinking of expanding the channel and Vulkan tutorials would be a great idea. I want to look into creating member subscriptions or patron because it's something I'm interested in maybe the next couple months!

[@dr_nyt]

@@voxelbee I'll be looking forward to it, best of luck!

[@rlopez6636]

This is insane😲

[@googoocat7590]

Holly guaka molly!

[@michaelscofield1970]

How does saving the world state work with infinite voxels like this?

[@voxelbee]

At the moment the state is not being saved but that is too be added

[@neenaw]

ant man the game lets gooooooooo

[@gwentarinokripperinolkjdsf683]

And this is going to be publicly available? I have always wanted to build something like this!

[@agentjeb4103]

the hard part is making assets forthis. see: space engine. I suppose you probably have though. Voxels for this are a cool idea

[@voxelbee]

Yeah assets can be a pretty big issue. Space engine is really cool!

[@Nugget11578]

How would you even attempt to store the observable universe in memory? That isnt possible unless the smallest voxel is a lot larger than a micron.

[@voxelbee]

Most of it will procedurally generated and not stored

[@Nugget11578]

@@voxelbee oh that make sense.

[@timo9981]

How much time do you spend working on this engine? Keep up the good work!!

[@voxelbee]

Thanks! I spend as much time as I can between university work.

[@toastbrot97]

KZbin compression really dosn't seem to like your structures.

[@voxelbee]

Yeah haha. Planning to change them for the next video!

[@toastbrot97]

@@voxelbee I have my doubts that any look is gonna solve it tbh. With objects this small, a ton of moiré and aliasing is pretty much unavoidable, which is inevitably gonna make compression suffer :D

[@Meewee466]

could you simulate the entire madelbrot set using this engine?

[@voxelbee]

I'll have to see! Hopefully!

[@cvabds]

are u pllaning adding some kind of fluid dynamics or softbody?

[@voxelbee]

Yeah I am planning to add a physics system that includes liquids and soft bodies! Should have a little information about that in my next video...

[@jeembojones4194]

Ok how debug windows here look exactly like debug windows in microsoft flight simulator 2020?

[@voxelbee]

They must be using the same API haha

[@SinanAkkoyun]

So, how do you want to store not only noise?

[@MaximQuantum]

Why does it look like you are walking backwards instead of zooming out?

[@voxelbee]

Yeah I noticed it looks like that because the camera speed is increasing so quickly. I need to have another scene that can show it better!

[@MaximQuantum]

@@voxelbee Ahh, I'm curious how it would look differently.

[@Kibiragalvis]

thats just amazing !

[@TimeWisely]

bruh imagine making a minecraft clone in this 👀

[@bob80808]

As a programmer... Wow 0_o this is unbelievable

[@ShaneCurtis1705]

youtubes compression said "nah fam"