NVIDIA Endless City: GTX 580 DX11 Tech-demo

http://www.ozone3d.net/public/jegx/2...dless_city.jpg

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Endless City is a new tech-demo by NVIDIA for the launch of the new GeForce GTX 580. This is a Direct3D 11 demo with tessellation…
Let the machines take over!

Our Endless City demo starts with a few dozen building blocks and uses an L-System to assemble these into complex structures, buildings, whole city blocks, and finally a sprawling and boundless megalopolis.

• Tessellation enables a continuous ramp on the level of detail, more than doubling the total triangle count and providing up to a 500x increase in detail on the nearest objects.
• Three dimensional displacement maps allow greater detail than simple height maps.
• The demo positions and renders over 600 million triangles per second with a single GPU.
• The city is procedurally generated. The buildings are constructed from a small set of objects into a city of complex structures using a set of rules called an L-system.
• In the area surrounding the viewer, over a million meshes are arranged by the L-system, including roughly 500,000 light sources.

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Download

http://www.geeks3d.com/20101106/test...x11-tech-demo/

here, some screenshots i've taken;

http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/570.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/571.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/573.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/572.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/574.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/577.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/578.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/579.jpg

Reminds me of something....

A blade runner style cityscape light source demo featuring tesselation....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjtxy28FFN8

Oh yeah, that!

Demo rip off. BLATANT.

aww.. only runs on nvidia.. any hack to run on ati ? :)

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Originally Posted by Jowy Atreides

Reminds me of something....

A blade runner style cityscape light source demo featuring tesselation....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjtxy28FFN8

Oh yeah, that!

Demo rip off. BLATANT.

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I hope you're kidding... these things take 6 months to a year to put together. No way they did or could've known the themes would be similar. Besides, how they build the cities is very different. Amd uses static models while nvidias is procedurally generated from pieces with rules defining what can be paired with what.

If nvidia had done a day city scene you'd say they were ripping off the 5870 ruby/robot demo. So I guess AMD owns all things city-related for demos?

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Originally Posted by Svnth

I hope you're kidding... these things take 6 months to a year to put together. No way they did or could've known the themes would be similar. Besides, how they build the cities is very different. Amd uses static models while nvidias is procedurally generated from pieces with rules defining what can be paired with what.

If nvidia had done a day city scene you'd say they were ripping off the 5870 ruby/robot demo. So I guess AMD owns all things city-related for demos?

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Thank you for being the voice of reason, his outrage is total bull:banana::banana::banana::banana: and reactions like his are the reason why we have flamewars.

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Originally Posted by Jowy Atreides

Reminds me of something....

A blade runner style cityscape light source demo featuring tesselation....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjtxy28FFN8

Oh yeah, that!

Demo rip off. BLATANT.

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Any chance you like AMD products??:rofl:

wires frame is so dense it's white with out textures added yet. lol

That's a bright idea of NVIDIA! There are no games for GTX580, so let's roll out ahh tech demo.^__^
Anyway Im gonna give it a try right away.

The actual Youtube video embedded in the article (link here for reference) dates back to early October during GTC, so I'm not actually sure it has much to do with the GTX 580. Still, fairly cool demo.

Dang, how about they put their effort in making a real game for once. :D

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Originally Posted by Loque

aww.. only runs on nvidia.. any hack to run on ati ? :)

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I think someone mentioned it uses Cuda for something, so no.

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Originally Posted by clayton

Dang, how about they put their effort in making a real game for once. :D

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Exactly stupid useless demos :down:

EndlessCity demo 1920*1080 3xGTX480@700MHz

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/1417/capturecgh.jpg

1920*1080 3xGTX480@860MHz

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/9875/captureth.jpg

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Originally Posted by BobyTT

EndlessCity demo 1920*1080 3xGTX480@700MHz

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/1417/capturecgh.jpg

1920*1080 3xGTX480@860MHz

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/9875/captureth.jpg

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I don't think it benefits from SLI right now, at least in current drivers.

580 is also alluded to here, along with them showing another demo called Aliens vs. Triangles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCPMHIDpT88

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Originally Posted by Svnth

I don't think it benefits from SLI right now, at least in current drivers.

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All 3 cards were working at 90+% so may be they do?

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Originally Posted by clayton

Dang, how about they put their effort in making a real game for once. :D

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Apparently they are doing it with Crysis 2, but people are outraged over that as well. :rolleyes:

http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/578.jpg

Whoa, that's insane.

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Originally Posted by Tim

Apparently they are doing it with Crysis 2, but people are outraged over that as well. :rolleyes:

http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/578.jpg

Whoa, that's insane.

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it's already "one card - one game" generations for several years.:shakes:

Too bad it doesn't run on ATI. But that's usually the case for Tech-demos, isn't it?

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Originally Posted by E30M3

Any chance you like AMD products??:rofl:

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:rolleyes:

TBH i think that these screenshots look like crap...

but the tesselation work is impressive (however i don't think that it's more effective than the traditional method at this scale)

Actually demo does not look that good in normal flyby mode.
Its glitchy in the beginning and very choppy and does not look good. Its only when wireframe is enabled you see how much work is actually done. But all that work does not make this look that spectacular. AMD demos were more visually appealing.

With all due respect to the work being done, this looks like 90s Scifi.

Horrible shading, horrible colors, detailing that looks way too consistent (they might want to change how they populate their L-systems).
Sounds like a rushjob as a normal scene demo will take way more time to model/animate/detail. But that won't look like monster puke.

I don't like the way it looks either. I can see what they were going for, but the effect isn't that great. I'm not impressed. The Unigine Heaven Benchmark shows off Tessellation better than this demo. :down:

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Originally Posted by Designer

here, some screenshots i've taken;

http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/570.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/571.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/573.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/572.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/574.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/577.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/578.jpg
http://i1011.hizliresim.com/2010/11/7/579.jpg

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Looks good, thanks for the pics! :up:
Hope we will see a similar tessellation usage in games soon.

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Originally Posted by Mad Pistol

I don't like the way it looks either. I can see what they were going for, but the effect isn't that great. I'm not impressed. The Unigine Heaven Benchmark shows off Tessellation better than this demo. :down:

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Hm, yes, I think Unigine looks better. I wonder if someone licensed their engine to create a game or two...

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/62b...aec898fe99.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/92e...efb2abcafd.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/98f...d2af088603.jpg

Did you all miss it's procedurally generated? That's why it's called Endless City. It's generated on the fly. There's no comparison as far as I know.

sounds really nice!
i hate the artwork though, looks really lame... :/
so does it work as a benchmark? :D
this sounds like it could punish gpus way harder than heaven :D

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Originally Posted by Vardant

Did you all miss it's procedurally generated? That's why it's called Endless City. It's generated on the fly. There's no comparison as far as I know.

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Yeah, I don't think anything like this has been publicly available.

this is probably "programmer art"

doesnt look so bad when you consider that

Have yet to see how this is connected to GTX580. Did a little searching, couldn't find an official copy of the "read-me" posted by the geeks3d forum user. Could have made it up for all we know.

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Originally Posted by Vardant

Did you all miss it's procedurally generated? That's why it's called Endless City. It's generated on the fly. There's no comparison as far as I know.

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Placing premade objects procedurally has been done since before Diablo.

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Originally Posted by saaya

sounds really nice!
i hate the artwork though, looks really lame... :/
so does it work as a benchmark? :D
this sounds like it could punish gpus way harder than heaven :D

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idd. i don't like it either. however, wireframed it does look damn impressive. can't wait for games to actually take advantage of tessellation!
it won't work as a benchmark, though, as the city is generated procedurally which makes it hard/impossible to compare fps.

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Originally Posted by Solus Corvus

Placing premade objects procedurally has been done since before Diablo.

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a recent example for that is minecraft. awesome game :up:

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Originally Posted by ColonelCain

Have yet to see how this is connected to GTX580. Did a little searching, couldn't find an official copy of the "read-me" posted by the geeks3d forum user. Could have made it up for all we know.

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On the README file :

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Recommended System:
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 500 series GPU
2.6 GHz Quad core CPU
4 GB System memory
300 MB Hard drive space
Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7

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But it works with GTX 400 series too, don't know for the others though :shrug:

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Originally Posted by Svnth

580 is also alluded to here, along with them showing another demo called Aliens vs. Triangles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCPMHIDpT88

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I like Aliens tech demo, would fool around in it for some crazy morphs then lazer it :D

Only thing that seems impressive is the wire mesh modes as this demo honestly done look that pretty. NV really needs to stop making these weird tech demos with a different art style and go back to making good looking women demos(not medusa). Those demos consistently impressed me.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

Only thing that seems impressive is the wire mesh modes as this demo honestly done look that pretty. NV really needs to stop making these weird tech demos with a different art style and go back to making good looking women demos(not medusa). Those demos consistently impressed me.

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Adrian demo was terrible...

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Originally Posted by Solus Corvus

Placing premade objects procedurally has been done since before Diablo.

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Wow.. he's not saying that procedural generation is new but that you can't compare them run to run as a benchmark. Comprehension.

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Originally Posted by Svnth

Wow.. he's not saying that procedural generation is new but that you can't compare them run to run as a benchmark. Comprehension.

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So everyone was talking about how it looks compared to other benchmarks/demos and you think he was talking about a run-to-run comparison? Comprehend yourself.

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Originally Posted by Svnth

Adrian demo was terrible...



Wow.. he's not saying that procedural generation is new but that you can't compare them run to run as a benchmark. Comprehension.

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Really, for gtx 8800 technology, I thought it was pretty good. What you have to think about for these demos too, is that they are downloaded and testable on real computers. Not just CG video presented at a press conference.

One thing about the Adrian demo is they should have picked a different model. Alessandra Ambrosio would have been much better.

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Originally Posted by RaZz!

idd. i don't like it either. however, wireframed it does look damn impressive. can't wait for games to actually take advantage of tessellation!
it won't work as a benchmark, though, as the city is generated procedurally which makes it hard/impossible to compare fps.

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idk... im not to sure about that... it might actually be pretty consistent fps wise and if you take the average of a few runs, im sure it can act like a very good benchmark...

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Originally Posted by Olivon

But it works with GTX 400 series too

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amazing! it works on a gtx400 even though its written for an entirely new architecture, the gtx500 series! :eek: :p:

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

Only thing that seems impressive is the wire mesh modes as this demo honestly done look that pretty. NV really needs to stop making these weird tech demos with a different art style and go back to making good looking women demos(not medusa). Those demos consistently impressed me.

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wow, who would have thought, i actually found something to agree on with you hehehe :D :toast:
i loved the butterfly elf demo that could be hacked to see her naked :slobber: :D

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Originally Posted by Solus Corvus

So everyone was talking about how it looks compared to other benchmarks/demos and you think he was talking about a run-to-run comparison? Comprehend yourself.

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I saw Saaya's post before that statement.. but at the same time you are equally wrong. I find it hard to believe that both people, one of whom is a well known hardware reviewer and has seen many demos in his day, are under the impression that procedural generation is new.

I felt like your statement was somewhat obvious.

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Originally Posted by Svnth

I saw Saaya's post before that statement.. but at the same time you are equally wrong. I find it hard to believe that both people, one of whom is a well known hardware reviewer and has seen many demos in his day, are under the impression that procedural generation is new.

I felt like your statement was somewhat obvious.

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Procedural generation isn't anything new. What IS new is doing it with extremely high levels of geometry.

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Originally Posted by saaya

idk... im not to sure about that... it might actually be pretty consistent fps wise and if you take the average of a few runs, im sure it can act like a very good benchmark...

amazing! it works on a gtx400 even though its written for an entirely new architecture, the gtx500 series! :eek: :p:


wow, who would have thought, i actually found something to agree on with you hehehe :D :toast:
i loved the butterfly elf demo that could be hacked to see her naked :slobber: :D

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I think we agreed on a few mores, this is just simply perhaps one of the more original ones.

Those hack were great and every single one of the NV models I think were prettier than Ruby, even the most recent nurien. I think Ruby needs to be shown the door and replaced with a hotter model. Same with rocket sled man, medusa and this demo.

It would be crazy if they can make a demo which simply procedurally generated hot women. At this point they probably could make them quite real. I think that would be the ultimate tech demo.

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Procedural generation isn't anything new. What IS new is doing it with extremely high levels of geometry.

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GPU accelerated procedural generation actually isnt that new, but technically the world-building part of it hasnt been offloaded to the GPU before.

I'm trying to remember one from a long time ago.. seems like it was called "Heaven7" maybe.. was on demoscene.org and came out about the time the Radeon 9800 hit.

dam this demo sucks!!

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

I think we agreed on a few mores, this is just simply perhaps one of the more original ones.

Those hack were great and every single one of the NV models I think were prettier than Ruby, even the most recent nurien. I think Ruby needs to be shown the door and replaced with a hotter model. Same with rocket sled man, medusa and this demo.

It would be crazy if they can make a demo which simply procedurally generated hot women. At this point they probably could make them quite real. I think that would be the ultimate tech demo.

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yeah i miss the old nvidia demos... i loved them...
the oger eating the little gremlins was awesome... but i have a feeling it was actually made by a movie studio like dreamworks or pixar :D

and yeah, nvidias 3d girls were hot, ruby has always been... weird... like a cartoon doll, not like a real woman... and she wasnt even a pretty cartoon doll...

i loved atis pixel shader water demos and their glass ball reflection demo... everything else was so lame... well the toyshop demo was pretty cool too...

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Originally Posted by saaya

yeah i miss the old nvidia demos... i loved them...
the oger eating the little gremlins was awesome... but i have a feeling it was actually made by a movie studio like dreamworks or pixar :D

and yeah, nvidias 3d girls were hot, ruby has always been... weird... like a cartoon doll, not like a real woman... and she wasnt even a pretty cartoon doll...

i loved atis pixel shader water demos and their glass ball reflection demo... everything else was so lame... well the toyshop demo was pretty cool too...

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I liked the Assassin Demo too.

is this demo trying to prove the point that you can make a scene look like crap even with a gigazillion triangles?

The Alien with Triangles video that shows the new NVidia technology of adding area specific tessellation "layers" that "grow in" without artist input I was much more impressed by, and it seemed the crowd was too, since they started cheering without being coaxed.

Check out that Alien and Triangles video - and the NVidia rep describes the idea that you cast a spell - then he shows the Alien and the tessellation layer added slowly "morphing" the Alien into a "spell diseased" sideways hunchbacked limper... as the "spell slowly takes effect"

It's AWESOME!

( not meant to detract from the city tessellation - as I recall the city tess wireframe when exposed got a group gasp from the crowd, but someone should post news on that new tessellation tech Alien video please)

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Procedural generation isn't anything new. What IS new is doing it with extremely high levels of geometry.

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Agreed, I remember seeing this when HLSL appeared and the first I heard this being used really was way back for doom 3. For lighting and some geometry (simple low poly)

*mostly texturing though* the light could be argued to procedural, could be wrong about the geometry, I have been out of the dev loop for a long time now.

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/892...b1073f9722.jpg

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cool_st...ml#/demos/2508

Thanks Olivon as always :up:

demo looking great

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Originally Posted by kaktus1907

Thanks Olivon as always :up:

demo looking great

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You're welcome kaktus,
A quite good looking demo but Endless City is more impresive IMHO

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/a91...bf6dc6a111.jpg

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/5e8...5abd2b4645.jpg

Hair Demo

So many polygons, yet it hardly looks impressive?

I like the Island demo w/ the pretty waves the best. :D

But what I'd really like? I'd really like my $30 badaboom license to be useful damnit!

now it can run on any directx11 gpu including AMD gpus..

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2010/11...mo-on-radeons/

I would love to see how 5870's or 6870's fair in that DEMO.

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Originally Posted by kaktus1907

now it can run on any directx11 gpu including AMD gpus..

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2010/11...mo-on-radeons/

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Thanks! Lets see how the Radeons do in this demo.

cmon still noone tested yet?

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Originally Posted by kaktus1907

cmon still noone tested yet?

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Yes, it's a slideshow at 2560x1600 with a 5870 and full effects... Not worth trying.
You have to manually launch the 32bits version after patching from the ../bin directory.

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Originally Posted by LostHawk

Yes, it's a slideshow at 2560x1600 with a 5870 and full effects... Not worth trying.
You have to manually launch the 32bits version after patching from the ../bin directory.

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At that resolution even likes of 460 / 470 struggle to run this smoothly (its not butter smooth at 1200P on Zotac 470Amp, averages at about 23-25FPS on 470, so i am sure it will be slideshow at 25x16 even on this setup.

See how it runs at 1920x1200 (just to check performance).

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Originally Posted by Funky

At that resolution even likes of 460 / 470 struggle to run this smoothly (its not butter smooth at 1200P on Zotac 470Amp, averages at about 23-25FPS on 470, so i am sure it will be slideshow at 25x16 even on this setup.

See how it runs at 1920x1200 (just to check performance).

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With my i7-920 at 4,2GHz and a single 5870 at 1GHz, 1920x1200 I get between 10 and 15FPS with 13FPS the majority of the time (Using Fraps. Sometimes it gets to 25FPS for 1 second but that's not interesting for the test).
It is with Tessellation on and Auto-Pilot mode.

That's by manually editing the config file displayArgs.txt for the resolution as the configuration is done by EndlessCityLauncher.exe which doesn't work (not patched).

The triangles vs aliens demo is quite neat. The effect with the laser reminds me of Terminator 2/3.

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/9...esnv580.th.jpg

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Originally Posted by LostHawk

With my i7-920 at 4,2GHz and a single 5870 at 1GHz, 1920x1200...13...

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i5-760 @ 4Ghz, 460 1GB @ 800Mhz, high quality driver settings/no optimizations, 1680x1050...20...

That seems pretty close IMO.

I heard there is huge improvement compared to 5800's in Endless City.. 6900's are almost twice as fast as 5800's..

Any 69XX owners?

I tried it, and i get about 20 fps, dipping to 18, going up to 25 sometimes.

Good looking demo, fun :D

tried to run but cant patch and follow the instructions.
so no go.

Why, what happens?

error patching, likely register issue somehow.

Something about msvcr100.dll error?

If so, go to C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and rename msvcr100_clr0400.dll to just msvcr100.dll, then run patch as adminstrator, worked for me :)