Digital Molecular Matter - The Future of the Industry

Posted by Ramon Aranda on 11.14.2008

411mania gets an exclusive look at PixeLux Entertainment's newest technology - DMM. Find out why this tech is the wave of the future.



When Star War: The Force Unleashed shipped in mid-September, with it came plenty of hype and expectations. However, the latest Star Wars title also came with something that could prove to be an important part of this and next generation (and the industry in general) in the form of DMM (Digital Molecular Matter), from PixeLux Entertainment. Some of us had heard of it, some of us had not but SW: TFU became the first title to use the technology that has since, blown my mind. The company itself was first founded in 2003 with the goal of developing a new physics simulation which ultimately gave birth to the DMM tech. Someone from Lucas Arts heard about the tech in 2005 and in July, PixeLux were contacted by Lucas to show them what they had. A demo was shown off featuring Storm Troopers and destructible environments (which I’ll talk about later) and the publisher realized it had to have it. At E3 2006 Lucas and PixeLux showed off the tech using an Indiana Jones demo which garnered some rave reviews

Recently, I made the trip out to Lucas Arts in San Francisco to meet with Vik Sohal, COO of PixeLux Entertainment to get a first hand look into what DMM brings to the table and what it can do for our industry.

To first understand what it’s all about, Sohal slipped in a copy of Star Wars: TFU for the Xbox 360 and took me through a couple of levels that are heavy in DMM tech. The goal is to give objects a realistic sense of being, meaning that they move just as we’d expect them to move. That could be simply things like plants and leaves on a tree moving accordingly to more complex things such as glass breaking, metal bending and wood splinting depending on your actions. Every time you shatter glass for example, the results could, and likely will be different. It would be rare to see the same results occur twice. Another important aspect of the technology is the way it’s tied into the sound effects. Sound can be synthesized with DMM so that when you break or bend something, the stress information generates the sound to match it. I’ll give you an example. If you destroy a bridge, you’ll actually hear every piece of metal and wood breaking or deforming as it collapses, rather than having a predetermined sound effect. To better illustrate this point, take a look a the short video below.



We as gamers are usually focused on visual fidelity – how good and “realistic” something looks. Graphics are a corner stone of next-gen powers. However it’s the kinetic fidelity (the way things move) that will begin to truly immerse us into a gameplay experience. In our daily lives, we see how objects move and sound without thinking twice about it. When we play games however, most of us are quick to notice when something doesn’t seem right. Maybe that building that we just blew up doesn’t fall down just right or that brick wall collapses in a manner that we know isn’t realistic. Those are the moments when our minds hiccup to remind us that it’s fake, regardless of how detailed the image looked. Now take that same situation and turn it into something more believable. Let that same wall crumble randomly. Each brick making its own sound as it hits the ground or smacks against another brick. Imagine a glass case suddenly breaking, letting you see it fall into thousands of little pieces. That’s the kind of physics details that DMM will provide. As you can imagine, an objects material certainly comes into play. Whether it’s plastic, glass, rubber or wood, DMM will make small calculations to produce the proper animation and sound effects.



Before our time with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was over, I was demonstrated how DMM can institute persistent damage. In of the game’s missions, damage was caused to the metal panels along a wall. Now in most games, after you do damage to the environment, it will either slowly spawn back or disappear altogether. However, in this demonstration, the panels remained dented and deformed. If you were to have continued the mission and came back before it was over, you’d still see that same damage to the panels and of course each panel had its own deformation depending on how much damage and where the points of impact were.

I was then whisked away to a small office where Vik Sohal had the chance to show me the infamous demo that Lucas Arts fell in love with. The set up is straight forward but very intriguing. I was standing inside a building; one room had a glass ceiling with wooden poles up top, concrete pillars and a small brick wall near a corner. That room was blocked off by two wooden sliding doors, meaning you’d have to get rid of them to enter. I was handed the controls as I began in the main room. So the basics of the demo were that I had control over Storm Troopers, which I could spawn anywhere I wanted. Then with the click of a key, I could send them flying across the room in any direction. This of course was meant to show off not only how various objects could be destroyed, but also how each time I destroyed something, it would be completely different based on where they were hit and with how much force. It seemed like a pretty simplistic demo but as I played it for minutes upon minutes, I couldn’t stop from playing. It was funny to see two or three Storm Troopers flying up through the glass ceiling and seeing the glass come shattering down. There was something very satisfying to fling them through the brick wall too. It was a good stress reliever! I can’t emphasize enough that every time I started the demo over, the experience was different. It’s this sort of thing that can really add not only unique experiences to a game but also a vast amount of replayability since you’ll never do the same thing twice. After about 10 minutes of fooling around with the demo, I could understand why Lucas Arts had to have it! The best part? DMM technology is barely in its infancy meaning we haven’t even begun to see what it can truly accomplish.

Without giving me any specifics, Sohal did mention that other “big name” publishers have also been in contact with them about using DMM in future projects. I can only imagine how cool it would be to have DMM in something like Madden where you’d see unique and realistic tackles. Tackles that would not be predefined but would be simulated on the fly. After being shown a brief clip of a tank mowing through battlefield, I smiled at the prospect of seeing it on a Call of Duty or Battlefield title. There are just so many ways of using the technology that the possibilities are endless!


The tank demo

Unfortunately my time with DMM was over and I had to make my way back home, where I’d be stuck with the same old animations and the same old physics properties we’ve all become accustomed to. Hopefully soon enough, we’ll begin to see the tech used more and more in upcoming titles in what will surely show gamers that this is truly what next-gen is all about.

Now check out some additional videos of DMM at work below!

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