[HN Gopher] WorldGrow: Generating Infinite 3D World
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WorldGrow: Generating Infinite 3D World
Author : cdani
Score : 71 points
Date : 2025-10-27 09:31 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jackdoe wrote:
| cant wait for the new diablo :)
| speedgoose wrote:
| It looks more like the Stanley parable.
| pjmlp wrote:
| With a quarter the size of the development team, 'cause
| productivity!
| embedding-shape wrote:
| It is only a paper as of now:
|
| > The code is being prepared for public release; pretrained
| weights and full training/inference pipelines are planned.
|
| Any ideas of how it would different and better compared to
| "traditional" PCG? Seems like it'd give you more resource
| consumption, worse results and less control, neither of which
| seem like a benefit.
| glenneroo wrote:
| The description in the linked YouTube video for some reason has
| more info than the github repo:
|
| > We tackle the challenge of generating the infinitely
| extendable 3D world -- large, continuous environments with
| coherent geometry and realistic appearance. Existing methods
| face key challenges: 2D-lifting approaches suffer from
| geometric and appearance inconsistencies across views, 3D
| implicit representations are hard to scale up, and current 3D
| foundation models are mostly object-centric, limiting their
| applicability to scene-level generation. Our key insight is
| leveraging strong generation priors from pre-trained 3D models
| for structured scene block generation. To this end, we propose
| WorldGrow, a hierarchical framework for unbounded 3D scene
| synthesis. Our method features three core components: (1) a
| data curation pipeline that extracts high-quality scene blocks
| for training, making the 3D structured latent representations
| suitable for scene generation; (2) a 3D block inpainting
| mechanism that enables context-aware scene extension; and (3) a
| coarse-to-fine generation strategy that ensures both global
| layout plausibility and local geometric/textural fidelity.
| Evaluated on the large-scale 3D-FRONT dataset, WorldGrow
| achieves SOTA performance in geometry reconstruction, while
| uniquely supporting infinite scene generation with
| photorealistic and structurally consistent outputs. These
| results highlight its capability for constructing large-scale
| virtual environments and potential for building future world
| models.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| That seems to compare to other similar "generating infinite
| 3D worlds" approaches, but not to traditional PCG, which
| would give you all of that except higher quality, better
| performance and more/better control.
| tantalor wrote:
| An _unpublished_ paper.
| Garlef wrote:
| I don't think generating virtual space is the issue.
|
| It's about generating interesting virtual space!
| james-bcn wrote:
| Yep. People have been doing this kind of stuff for computer
| games for decades. It's actually not that difficult. It's not
| clear what novel problem is being solved here.
| jsheard wrote:
| Yeah but those traditional procgen techniques don't use AI,
| and this one does use AI. They solved the problem of them not
| being AI enough for the AI era. AI!
| agravier wrote:
| Do you have some particular piece of software or tech demo or
| game in mind with interesting very large generated 3D worlds?
| sirtaj wrote:
| Valheim and No Man's Sky are ones I've played recently.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| In Mario 64 there is a staircase you can run up forever,
| granted it looks the same no matter how long you have Mario
| run up the stairs, but that certainly fits "big but
| uninteresting 3d world."
| bogwog wrote:
| > big but uninteresting 3d world.
|
| I know 'interesting' is subjective, but your comment is
| demonstrably false. Just type "mario 64 staircase" into
| youtube, and look at the hundreds (thousands? millions?)
| of videos and many millions of views.
| f17428d27584 wrote:
| People are interested in it as a form of trivia. It is
| extremely uninteresting from the perspective of the
| player and more importantly how the word was actually
| used, which was in reference to the quality of world
| generation.
|
| Redefining "interesting" just so you can provide a
| completely irrelevant "correction" is bad faith trolling.
| bogwog wrote:
| Not sure why you're so defensive about this. I'm not
| trolling. Whether something is interesting or not is
| subjective, which is my point. You might think you know
| why that staircase is interesting to people (it's just
| trivia), but that's just your opinion. This is a tech
| community, so you're obviously unimpressed by the
| technology used to make it, but most people don't care
| about that at all.
|
| There's no secret formula to culture. Some programmers
| and AI people seem to think there is some magic AI model
| that will be able to produce cultural hits at the click
| of a button. If you're a boring person, you're not likely
| to "get" why something is interesting, or why that part
| can't just be automated away. No technology can help with
| that.
| antonvdi wrote:
| Minecraft surely fits those criteria.
| NBJack wrote:
| Age of Empires got me into tinkering with content
| generation. The flexible map rules were fantastic in making
| this possible.
|
| Minecraft is of course the poster child for very large
| worlds of interest these days.
|
| Dwarf Fortress crafts an entire continent complete with a
| multi-century history, the results of which you can explore
| freely in adventure mode.
|
| Most of the recent examples of 3D worlds like the post tend
| to do it through wave function collapse.
| omnibrain wrote:
| > Minecraft is of course the poster child for very large
| worlds of interest these days.
|
| Minecraft used to create very interesting worlds until
| they changed the algorithm and the landscapes became
| plain and boring. It took them about 10 year until the
| Caves and Cliffs Update to make the world generation
| interesting again.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| " The generated scenes are walkable and suitable for
| navigation/planning evaluation."
|
| Maybe the idea is to create environments for AI robotics traini
| ng.
| rootlocus wrote:
| Or at least coherent.
| analog8374 wrote:
| Consider the levels generated in any roguelike.
|
| Consider the patterns generated by cellular automata.
|
| Both tend to stay interesting in the small scale but lose it to
| boring chaos in the large.
|
| For this reason I think the better approach is to start with a
| simple level-scale form and then refine it into smaller parts,
| and then to refine those parts and so on.
|
| (Vs plugging away at tunnel-building like a mole)
| anthk wrote:
| Nethack/Slashem and DCSS, maybe.
|
| The levels are made to fit under 80x24 terminal with maybe a
| max of 7/8? -can't remember- rooms per level.
|
| The worlds from Cataclysm DDA:Bright Nights are pretty
| regular, and you have an overworld, labs, subways...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >Both tend to stay interesting in the small scale but lose it
| to boring chaos in the large.
|
| I think that's a good way to put it. I started writing a
| reply before reading your comment entirely and arrived at
| basically the same conclusion as this but more verbosely:
|
| > For this reason I think the better approach is to start
| with a simple level-scale form and then refine it into
| smaller parts, and then to refine those parts and so on.
|
| It seems hard to get away from having some sort of
| overarching goal, and then constantly looking back at it. At
| progressively smaller levels. Like what is the universe of
| the thing you are generating randomly. Is it a dungeon in a
| roguelike? It it meant to be one of many floors? Or is it a
| space inside a building? Is it a house? Is it an office? Is
| the office a stand alone building or a sky scraper?
|
| Perhaps a good algorithm would start big and go small.
| - assume the universe to generate is a world -
| pick a location and assign stuff to generate. lets say its a
| city - pick a type of city thing to generate.
| lets say its an sky scraper - etc. going,
| smaller and smaller - look at the city so
| far. pick another type of city thing to generate based on
| what has been generated so far - look at the
| world so far. pick another type of thing to generate
|
| Or maybe instead of looking back you could pre-divide into
| zones.
|
| But then, if you want to make an entire universe (as in
| multiple worlds), you need to just make random worlds which
| leads to your original problem (boring chaos at large scale)
| like this or go up another level to more intelligently
| generate.
|
| Point being, you need some sort of top down perspective on
| it.
| analog8374 wrote:
| Here are 2 graphical examples of that strategy
|
| http://fleen.org
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathanmccabe/albums/7215762
| 2...
| keyle wrote:
| You reminded me of this
| https://book.leveldesignbook.com/process/layout
|
| And Valve I think used to have a series on level design,
| involving from big to small and "anchor points", but I seem to
| have misplaced the link.
| otikik wrote:
| Indeed, this has been described in the past as "The Oatmeal
| Problem" [1]
|
| [1] https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-
| and-10000-bowl...
| zparky wrote:
| Important to note that article was written 9 years ago and
| NMS has received numerous content updates since. There's a
| lot more to the game now.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| There is, but the procedural generation part is not what
| makes it fun to me. It's what you create and how you choose
| to "live" in the game. It really is like the real universe
| - isotropic, the same in all directions - it only takes a
| few hours to be overwhelmed by how pointless it all seems,
| knowing there's an infinity of anything you discover
| elsewhere.
|
| Once you build a base or create some goal for yourself, it
| becomes interesting.
| xwiz wrote:
| Kate Compton's GDC talk:
| https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024213/Practical-
| Procedural-G...
| gcr wrote:
| This could be a great way to make backrooms horror environments!
|
| I've dreamed of a NeRF-powered backrooms walking simulator for
| quite a while now. This approach is "worse" because the mesh
| seems explicit rather than just the world becoming what you look
| at, but that's arguably better for real-world use cases of
| course.
| grumbelbart2 wrote:
| > backrooms horror environments
|
| True, it sounds (and looks) a lot like https://scp-
| wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3008
| endymion-light wrote:
| i'm thinking a new version of LSD dream emulator could be
| really interesting.
| fjfaase wrote:
| I wonder if they also have a strategy for deleting generate
| tiles, otherwise the infinite is limited to the size of available
| memory. I also wonder if with their method can exactly recreate
| tiles that have been deleted. Or in other words, that they have a
| method for generating unique seeds for all tiles. The paper does
| not give much technical details. If the seed has a limited size
| and there is a method for generating seeds for each 2D
| coordinate, I wonder if it is possible to make a non-repeating
| infinite world. I think it is not possible with a limited size
| seed.
| keyle wrote:
| This is cool. And could be fun in games. Not sure I get the point
| otherwise... The thought that came to mind was "Architectural
| slop".
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Games have used procedural world generation since at least the
| 1980s, and on 8-bit home computers. Glancing through the video
| and webpage, the results don't look much different from what's
| possible with traditional Wave Function Collapse tbh.
| splintercell wrote:
| Is it just me, or some of the places it generates are just not
| realistic? Like a small area of some kind which is a dead space,
| and there is a giant window into it.
| oniony wrote:
| Not only not realistic but also not explicit: not so much as a
| peachy bottom in sight.
| icoder wrote:
| It's not just you. The generated stuff - in my opinion -
| doesn't make any sense at all, with regard to structure or
| meaning. Unless, perhaps, the aim was to generate some kind of
| badly designed Ikea store.
| hobofan wrote:
| Yeah, I think either the method doesn't work well, or there is
| something off with their tuning.
|
| Their block-by-block generation method seems to be too local in
| its considerations, where each 3x3 section (= the ones
| generated based on the immediate neighbors) looks a lot more
| coherent than the 4x4 sections and above. I think it might need
| to be extended to be less local and might also in general need
| to be paired with some sort of guidance systems (e.g. in the
| office example would generate the overall floor layout).
| theknarf wrote:
| Did they reinvent "wave function collapse"
| (https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse)?
| fallat wrote:
| No. WFC is fundamentally different from this.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| WFC?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Indeed, but it does serve more or less the same purpose in
| procgen pipelines (and folks have tweaked WFC for infinite
| worlds before[1]).
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ffT_8wViBA
| kittikitti wrote:
| This is great and really cool! Thank you for sharing.
| tantalor wrote:
| Oh great, it's the Severance simulator.
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