This just seems like an engineered pipeline of existing GenAI to get a 3d procedurally generated world that doesn't even look SOTA. I'm really sorry to dunk on this for those that worked on it, but this doesn't look like progress to me. The current approach looks like a dead end.
An end-to-end _trained_ model that spits out a textured mesh of the same result would have been an innovation. The fact that they didn't do that suggests they're missing something fundamental for world model training.
The best thing I can say is that maybe they can use this to bootstrap a dataset for a future model.
The people who worked on it did what they could to satisfy the demands of their higher-up’s, who frequently are out of touch with the technical landscape.
Being kind to them and understanding the environment they work in won’t improve their lives, but it will expand our understanding of the capability of particular large companies to innovate.
An end-to-end _trained_ model that spits out a textured mesh of the same result would have been an innovation. The fact that they didn't do that suggests they're missing something fundamental for world model training.
The best thing I can say is that maybe they can use this to bootstrap a dataset for a future model.