On 1/13/2021 at 4:46 AM, Ross Scott said:The scope of what I'm looking for is too large for me to be pushing it in any one direction beyond tool development. What you're talking about would be best if I wanted a specific game world converted, not hundreds / thousands. My video is intentionally more broad, to try and ignite interest in this, so that as advancements are made on this front in software, people who saw the video can keep this kind of application in mind in the future and get incentivized to make it happen for games they might be interested and hopefully leading to more worlds being explorable.
This is true, however there are real world limitations. Some reconstruction projects for real cities have taken tens, if not hundreds of hours, and this is due to real world limitations with gpu. We are still not in that level with hardware.
My point is that, if something like this wants to be pushed, we have to start somewhere don't we?
I say, pick and old game you really like. Old too to avoid legalities. Bring the community together to take screenshots of everything randomly, have 2-3 guys that know their shit stitch and clean, and make meshes public.
Then have people explore those worlds.
BAM
Public interest rises, many more projects advance trying to automate this.
Edit: i believe i am failing at making a point clear so here we go. Making software to extract 3d data from games using sfm (structure from motion), is NOT a commercially viable option, at least from a AAA perspective.
I don't want to look as if I am shilling my shit, but it is an example.
I made an online application for sfm, which is supposed to let agricultural sectors with less resources analyze crops with just their cellphone. Analize 3d reconstructions from plants, with a toolset for morphological analysis.
It was a bitch to get initial funds, and we barely were able to get a webapp going.
I then opened a go fund me here, with no real success: https://gogetfunding.com/plarepi-localization/
Sure, we are only looking to localize and at best, add AI algoritms, the product is already finished... but we are still from a small country and little budget. Getting users in our country has been hard.
Reality is, empowering people with tools is a risky venture for it requires as much effort educating people as it does selling said tools. It becomes niche as hell.
It may be because agriculture isn't innovative on its own, it may be our country, and also that we are huge nerds with no social pull... but it doesn't take from the fact that a AAA companies aren't gonna take this risk.
This is why i say that something like "the dream software" must be financed by the fans, for the fans. I don't see it happening otherwise.
Even things like testing, must start with people's help.
Sure, i can make a gofundme project, but, we aren't gonna achieve shit without LOTS of support.
Oh, and those wondering, it should be financed, but the final product MUST be open source.