<story><title>Gaussian splatting is pretty cool</title><url>https://aras-p.info/blog/2023/09/05/Gaussian-Splatting-is-pretty-cool/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Macuyiko</author><text>Very cool work.&lt;p&gt;As a bit of tangent (but wondering whether someone can answer) - the article also makes mention of point based rendering and indeed the fact is has been a staple of particle systems for a long time. However, especially with recent games, I have noticed (purely subjectively) a very subtle shift to a new style of particle systems which are on the one hand fully point oriented (compared to (textured) fragments) but on the other behave more like a physics systems.&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;p&gt;- Hogwarts (heavily): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamespot.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;original&amp;#x2F;1816&amp;#x2F;18167535&amp;#x2F;4097726-hogwartslegacybestspellsallspellsguideunforgivablecurses-1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamespot.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;original&amp;#x2F;1816&amp;#x2F;18167535&amp;#x2F;40...&lt;/a&gt;
- Forspoken (heavily): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;oyster.ignimgs.com&amp;#x2F;mediawiki&amp;#x2F;apis.ign.com&amp;#x2F;project-athia&amp;#x2F;0&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;FdlsymrXwAgCXE4.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;oyster.ignimgs.com&amp;#x2F;mediawiki&amp;#x2F;apis.ign.com&amp;#x2F;project-at...&lt;/a&gt;
- Starfield (though more rarely): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dotesports.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;temple-location-Starfield.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dotesports.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;temple-loc...&lt;/a&gt;
- AC6
- FF16 (heavily)&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s more obvious when you see it &amp;#x27;in motion&amp;#x27;. The common denominator seems to be particles as colored transparent points with physics. Especially on console systems it seems that developers are using this for very cheap (CPU-wise, all on GPU) effects.&lt;p&gt;Anyone in gamedev who has some insight in this?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munificent</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not in gamedev anymore (and didn&amp;#x27;t do graphics when I was), but my vague impression is that real-time fluid simulation has become more common over the past decade, and I think that&amp;#x27;s what you&amp;#x27;re describing as &amp;quot;physics&amp;quot; here and is what makes point-based VFX actually look cool.&lt;p&gt;Without a fluid sim, point-based particle systems just look like fireworks. It was a cool effect in, like, the early 90s, but is is passe today.&lt;p&gt;The next step up from that is having each particle move independently with its own physics (some momentum, maybe a little wandering around from &amp;quot;wind&amp;quot;, etc.) but then rendering them using little texture billboards. That&amp;#x27;s what games did up until relatively recently and looks pretty good for explosions, smoke, etc.&lt;p&gt;But now machines are powerful enough and physics algorithms clever enough to actually do fluid simulation in real-time where the particles all interact with each other. I think that&amp;#x27;s what you&amp;#x27;re seeing now.</text></comment>
<story><title>Gaussian splatting is pretty cool</title><url>https://aras-p.info/blog/2023/09/05/Gaussian-Splatting-is-pretty-cool/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Macuyiko</author><text>Very cool work.&lt;p&gt;As a bit of tangent (but wondering whether someone can answer) - the article also makes mention of point based rendering and indeed the fact is has been a staple of particle systems for a long time. However, especially with recent games, I have noticed (purely subjectively) a very subtle shift to a new style of particle systems which are on the one hand fully point oriented (compared to (textured) fragments) but on the other behave more like a physics systems.&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;p&gt;- Hogwarts (heavily): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamespot.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;original&amp;#x2F;1816&amp;#x2F;18167535&amp;#x2F;4097726-hogwartslegacybestspellsallspellsguideunforgivablecurses-1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gamespot.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;original&amp;#x2F;1816&amp;#x2F;18167535&amp;#x2F;40...&lt;/a&gt;
- Forspoken (heavily): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;oyster.ignimgs.com&amp;#x2F;mediawiki&amp;#x2F;apis.ign.com&amp;#x2F;project-athia&amp;#x2F;0&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;FdlsymrXwAgCXE4.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;oyster.ignimgs.com&amp;#x2F;mediawiki&amp;#x2F;apis.ign.com&amp;#x2F;project-at...&lt;/a&gt;
- Starfield (though more rarely): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dotesports.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;temple-location-Starfield.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dotesports.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;temple-loc...&lt;/a&gt;
- AC6
- FF16 (heavily)&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s more obvious when you see it &amp;#x27;in motion&amp;#x27;. The common denominator seems to be particles as colored transparent points with physics. Especially on console systems it seems that developers are using this for very cheap (CPU-wise, all on GPU) effects.&lt;p&gt;Anyone in gamedev who has some insight in this?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tbalsam</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve certainly seen game engines trying to advertise much more-involved particle systems over the last few years, that is for sure. ;PPPP&lt;p&gt;Which in some ways I guess makes sense, as the shift towards AI has heavily pushed GPUs almost towards a &amp;quot;sizeable-reduced-instruction-set-GPU-in-GPU&amp;quot; approach with RT cores&amp;#x2F;tensor cores, etc.... ;P&lt;p&gt;Side note as well, in&amp;#x2F;from my experience at least, I think these systems may not be as hard to render as it is for the author. A few years ago, someone (at NVIDIA I think?) wrote kernels to move the SE(3) kernels to tensor cores, so I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be shocked if some of that could be ported to the spherical harmonics portion of the Gaussian splatting during both compression and runtime: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developer.nvidia.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;accelerating-se3-transformers-training-using-an-nvidia-open-source-model-implementation&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developer.nvidia.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;accelerating-se3-transform...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, side side note, gaussian splatting should be quite efficient...I think? Due to technically always having support in 3D space (and hopefully not too much of a problem with having good support in 3D space). This should mean that even &amp;#x27;sloppy&amp;#x27;, quick-conversion calculations should work pretty decently in the end.&lt;p&gt;I say all of this knowing very little about most optimizations like billboarding, how things like nanite work, etc, etc. I do like it tho! ;PPPP</text></comment>