Minecraft Chunk Loading

[bobverheul]

He guys, im just wondering why minecraft, wich doesn't seems to be a cpu/gpu intesive game do have to take time to load all the chunks around you, while GTA 4 or other games wich have much better graphics, doesn't need to load chunks or something like that. what is the reason for that?

 

[PanicMaster85]

well for one minecraft is very cpu and memory intensive not so much GPU intensive but still

1) it is made in java and is very badly coded so it is hard to run even though it should not be

2) it loads the whole map every single block other games like gta 4 only load textures so the thin layer above the oblivion below everything(hints why its so GPU intensive, it also has everything prewritten you just need to load it as for minecraft it is building one for you which is a lot more CPU intensive

3) the fact is that minecraft is just not a very stable game and needs very high processing and memory power to play at very high very constant fps

 

[Clonkex]

In Minecraft, the world is generated at run-time (while the game is running). The "chunks" are sections of world geometry that are generated (either by the server, in multiplayer, or by the game itself, in singleplayer). The reason the graphics are not very good is it's very difficult for a computer to render (draw onto the screen) lots and lots of cubes. If they were curved or otherwise higher quality graphics, the computer would simply struggle to get all those nice curved cubes onto the screen. All the calculations that are required (such as lighting) are completed at run-time.

In GTA4, the world is meticulously hand-crafted by many specialists over the course of several months or even years. It's all pre-calculated and nothing is modifiable by the user (you can't blow up bridges or punch a hole in a wall). Every calculation that is possible is pre-calculated.

However, the most important reason is that the world of Minecraft is made of thousands of separate cubes, whereas the world of GTA4 is made of (basically) a single object.

GPUs will render geometry much MUCH faster if it's all sent at once. Minecraft says, "Graphics card, take this cube and render it, now take this cube and render it, now take this cube and render it". GTA4 says, "Graphics card, take 62000 polygons and render them". GTA4 will run better because it's rendering everything at once, rather than one after the other.

Now, technically, this isn't how it works at all. You have to take into account batching, among other things, but it'll do to sort of explain why Minecraft has to load chunks.

 

[Dario martins]

In Minecraft, the world is generated at run-time (while the game is running). The "chunks" are sections of world geometry that are generated (either by the server, in multiplayer, or by the game itself, in singleplayer). The reason the graphics are not very good is it's very difficult for a computer to render (draw onto the screen) lots and lots of cubes. If they were curved or otherwise higher quality graphics, the computer would simply struggle to get all those nice curved cubes onto the screen. All the calculations that are required (such as lighting) are completed at run-time.

In GTA4, the world is meticulously hand-crafted by many specialists over the course of several months or even years. It's all pre-calculated and nothing is modifiable by the user (you can't blow up bridges or punch a hole in a wall). Every calculation that is possible is pre-calculated.

However, the most important reason is that the world of Minecraft is made of thousands of separate cubes, whereas the world of GTA4 is made of (basically) a single object.

GPUs will render geometry much MUCH faster if it's all sent at once. Minecraft says, "Graphics card, take this cube and render it, now take this cube and render it, now take this cube and render it". GTA4 says, "Graphics card, take 62000 polygons and render them". GTA4 will run better because it's rendering everything at once, rather than one after the other.

Now, technically, this isn't how it works at all. You have to take into account batching, among other things, but it'll do to sort of explain why Minecraft has to load chunks.

That's what i would say, good answer.
Games like GTA, Skyrim, Tony Hawks etc may have a bunch of awesome graphics pretty much because on the other side of the floor there is nothing. The floor you see in most games are just a thin Skin, whyle on Minecraft, the computer has to deal with Millions of cubes ("Skins") under the floor you see on the ground level. Each chunk is something like 16x16x255 Cubes, each cube having 6 Sides, that's a lot of information your computer is receiving. And this is why the game is so Tiny-Pixelated in the Default texture pack.
If Minecraft had to deal with Physichs (in every block), you'd have to have a really nice computer to run it...