I have a suspicion that developing an open-world game not based on voxels is a very challenging thing, but then I don't work in game dev.

edit: should've read the full description.

Are the interpolated lines also used for collision/physics?

I've developed with voxels for over 10 years...Marching cubes is nothing new (in fact, I "invented" it on my own without knowing that the algorithm existed) - and how they model the world is the least of their concerns. Making an open world game of any sort is very challenging, and no one has done it that successfully to date (even Minecraft is still more of just a sandbox than a game, although I respect it nonetheless). Not that I would recommend against developing this type of game, it just probably not the first type of thing you want to tackle without sufficient experience (I should know, I've scrapped over 8 engines working on open world games).

Again, I have nothing against the YogCast people, but if they fail miserably it makes raising money for other Kickstarter projects more difficult.

Totally agree. There are many examples of developers who seriously underestimated the costs for a full game. With the influx of projects, I believe some kind of vetoing will have to be implemented for projects >50k.

$50k is actually a good amount for an independent project...if the team could demonstrate that they can make sufficient progress with that type of funding, it could open the doors to more. Although, since Kickstarter takes 5 percent it wants as much funding to come in as possible.

The technique used to achieve a smooth voxel world is called Marching Cubes. Although the voxels are cube in nature, the marching cubes algorithm smooths out the appearance of these cubes depending on their proximity to other cubes. This allows for a smooth world, while allowing for dynamic manipulation of the environment.