Unlimited Detail Technology

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Hamst3r

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#1  Edited By Hamst3r

Not the greatest presentation about the idea, but a cool idea nonetheless:   
 

  
 Here's a bit more about it from the official site:

Unlimited Detail is a fourth system, which is more like a search algorithm than a 3D engine. It is best explained like this: if you had a word document and you went to the “SEARCH” tool and typed in a word like “MONEY” the search tool quickly searches for every place that word appeared in the document. Google and Yahoo are also search engines that go looking for things very quickly. Unlimited Detail is basically a point cloud search algorithm. We can build enormous worlds with huge numbers of points, then compress them down to be very small. The Unlimited Detail engine works out which direction the camera is facing and then searches the data to find only the points it needs to put on the screen it doesn’t touch any unneeded points, all it wants is 1024*768 (if that is our resolution) points, one for each pixel of the screen. It has a few tricky things to work out, like: what objects are closest to the camera, what objects cover each other, how big should an object be as it gets further back. But all of this is done by a new sort of method that we call MASS CONNECTED PROCESSING. Mass connected processing is where  we have a way of processing masses of data at the same time and then applying the small changes to each part at the end.

The result is a perfect pure bug free 3D engine that gives Unlimited Geometry running super fast, and it's all done in software.

Sounds neat, assuming that it really works and it's not just bullshit.
 
Hopefully we'll see a playable tech demo using this tech in the next year or two.
 
Thoughts?
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MysteriousBob

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#2  Edited By MysteriousBob

Whenever they put out new Nintendos, new Sonies or new XBoxes." 
'sigh' 
 
Ah, sorry. Not the point. Despite being such a patronising presentation, its nice to see this idea of 'no polygons' taken seriously.

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Synchronatic

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#3  Edited By Synchronatic

I've got to agree with @MysteriousBob:  here. It was painful getting through that presentation, but worth it.
 
It seems pretty sweet. If they can pull it off I'll be fucking stoked.

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Philantrophy

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#4  Edited By Philantrophy

Believe it when I see it, in a game that is. Looks cool, but many tech demos do.

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Jeust

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#5  Edited By Jeust
@Philantrophy said:
" Believe it when I see it, in a game that is. Looks cool, but many tech demos do. "
Yep. Sounds easy to implement.