Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Tech Demos
Just wanted to share a couple of tech demo videos from Lucasarts' Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. What's interesting about these demos is that they really begin to show off the potential of next-generation systems, both for physics and AI. It appears Lucas has early rights to the technology, but you can imagine this sort of thing will become commonplace in other games over the next few years.
First off is a demo of "Digital Molecular Matter," or DMM for short. As the video says, DMM is a technology that looks to simulate how matter reacts in a physical world. Instead of having to model an object's destruction by hand (as is shown by the board in the video), the board actually reacts appropriately to impacts upon it. What's more, it reacts differently every time. You can also change the type of matter to simulate different breaking points. Very cool stuff – be sure to enjoy R2D2's little squeals as well!
[YouTube:jKDui2HU0pU]
The second demo shows off "Euphoria", or a next-generation AI system. Euphoria basically simulates intelligence and instinctive reactions in characters. You'll see stormtroopers try to catch onto the beams to save themselves, or even try to catch each other. It's all done on the fly – none of their actions are pre-scripted.
[YouTube:fWpmQzYWI44]
Pretty cool stuff. Spin ahead a few years and imagine the sorts of experiences this sort of tech can enable… I'm imagining Crackdown with a destructible cityscape and smarter inhabitants, for one. 
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That was big omega of awesome.
I got a tear in my eye watching this.
This is great stuff!
Interesting that they try to pass off Euphoria as their own technology:
http://www.naturalmotion.com/euphoria.htm
Digital Molecular Matter isn’t their’s either, Psionyx. I saw the tech a year or three ago on a TV show. They had some other things like glass on display, but it’s pretty obviously the same thing.
I’d imagine ILM drove dump trucks full of money to the houses of both sets of creators, so I’m not going to get on their cases over it.
I think there will always be games that don’t need this kind of technology (obviously!).
But to bring it back to Crackdown – here’s game that has physics so objects behave convincingly to a degree but yet don’t need to realistic down to the finest detail. In my opinion this is the main reason why the graphics work so well.
I wonder what the practical memory requirements are going to be to facilitate this kind of technology? I don’t want to blow a house to bits and then see the game have to reset it because it ran out of system resources.
That technology can make games more realistic and exciting. Hopefully we’ll be seeing it put to use in many games to come!
I’m really interested in seeing games become a lot more alive
We’re just entering another age of video games and these upcoming technologies are looking FANTASTIC!
Man, I can’t wait until GDC!
GDC-virgin here but there will be tons to see.
Ozy: Are you going this year?
Yep – will be at GDC. I’m one of the few who love it when in SF – great city. Used to live there, and it’s nice to come back every now and then!
I could’ve sworn they showed the same technologies when they told the world they were working on an Indiana Jones game.
The "Euphoria" technology was shown by having Indy on one of those train things in San Fransisco (sp?) and having baddies try to jump on.
The DMM tech was shown by shooting at doors and whatnot in an alley-like environment.
IGN doesn’t seem to have those videos anymore, unless it’s part of the G4TV E3 2005 video.
Man I can’t wait for Indy, Lucasarts is going to have a tough time topping what the collective did a few years ago though..
Good stuff technology wise but as noted, ya, I know at least the DMM has been around a while just not in games yet. Well I remember seeing it on the screensavers/attack of the show (forget which one it was at the time)
But I’m glad to see inovations in games, look at the three things (in my opinion) to make the biggest difference so far, dynamic lighting sources, bumpmaps and physics, so it only makes sense to keep pushing games toward these new technologies.
"Next Gen" hasn’t really grown into itself yet, watching these videos makes me about as happy as I would get playing with the gravity gun in Half Life 2 or shooting lights out to murder splinter cell badies. Be great to finally get these things in games though.
who knew the empire spaceship was made of wood
lol…
The potential behind this kind of application is staggering. The ability to break thru areas could alter gameplay to amazing levels.
Shooting thru a floor ala Underworld to get to a new level, or blasting thru a wall to get out of a crossfire.
If this kind of tech can be applied with an open mind, we could have a very bright future in gaming.