Irrlicht Engine

Anyone knows where I can find out if Simplex Noise is copyrighted?

r,

You cannot copyright or patent an algorithm, they're math.

A specific implementation would be copyrighted, though.

hendu wrote:You cannot copyright or patent an algorithm, they're math.

Wrong, you can - and it's done often; that's like saying "you can't copyright or patent language or sentences" in regards to "is book x copyrighted"


As for who: Mr. Kenneth Perlin owns it - the (confusingly named[1], since simplex is improved perlin) patent that applies is US6867776 B2 and you can read it here: https://www.google.com/patents/US6867776

Simplex noise is patented but it's very specifically patented to prevent unlicensed use for generation of 3D textures (you have to pay for that), if you only use simplex to generate meshes, point clouds, and 2D textures then it's perfectly fine.

Worth noting however, since the only thing the patent forbids is N-dimensional image synthesis where N is equal to or greater than 3 (3,4,5,6..., N-dimensions) this probably doesn't affect games unless you were going to use it for texture generation... probably, I'm not a lawyer - maybe Mr. Perlin could so you for it?


Noise algorithms that may interest you:
Perlin noise
Opensimplex noise - this is a noise designed to be very similar to simplex but technically a different algorithm, it's slower than simplex but still faster than perlin
https://github.com/lmas/opensimplex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSimplex_noise



[1] the very simplified version is: simplex was originally 'improved perlin noise' and at some point or another acquired a different name, Mr. Perlin in fact regrets he didn't originally patent perlin noise as well (I can dig up the citation for that if you really want me to but I'd rather not)

That patent should never have been granted.

But it has, because patent law is broken - this is why patent trolls are a thing.

What does matter is, the patent exists and it restricts you from n-dimensional image synthesis and a few other things, none of the clauses apply to 2 dimensional noise however and using it for 3-dimensional mesh generation does not /seem/ to violate the patent clauses.

Sigh... That's why aliens still don't visit us... openly... (j/k)

If i am not mistaken, there is a patent that expires the current year, the S3TC

Ah yes, S3TC expires soon - which means it might finally become core profile instead of an extension (assuming more OGL revisions, khronos probably won't but w/e vulcan would have the same problem)

Vk supports many texture compression schemes, DXT*, seemingly, for them to work you only have to adhere to the block compression spec, S3 only patented their compression algorithm, existing, for instance, an open source compression scheme that is able to output DXT compatible data, but that doesn't use their system, the "S2TC"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2TC
https://github.com/divVerent/s2tc
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... _fix&num=1