Unlimited Detail's Atomic Graphics

[King Author]

How has nobody posted this yet? (This doesn't count; that topic is about the older tech demo. This new one was released two days ago.)

This Australian company called Euclideon is working on this graphical technology (software, not hardware) that apparently allows arbitrarily small detail in computer graphics. Well, at least down to 64 atoms per cubic millimeter. It apparently works by displaying graphical information for each individual pixel on your screen's monitor, rather than having "polygonal models" drawn in the traditional sense, in an independent three-dimensional environment. This supposedly allows unlimited polygon count (their tech demo claims to be displaying over 21 trillion "polygons" on a 1-by-1 km spit of land) and draw distance while using fewer resources than current technology. So you could theoretically run Skyrim flawlessly on a 2001 laptop. Well, its graphics, at least. You know what I mean.

This technology apparently isn't voxels; it's still using regular ol' polygons, it's just displaying them in a novel fashion. Indeed, this isn't a new graphic format, a new hardware technology or anything of the sort; it's purely a method of displaying graphics, not creating them.

Links:
Official Site (skip it)
One of the many articles about it online (read it)
Youtube Video (watch it)

Now, globviously, this could all be blown out of proportion, infeasible within the next fifty years for commercial applications or a flat-out hoax. I'm not a hardcore techie, I'm softcore (no money shots or penetration), so I won't speculate. Like absolutely everyone who's seen it, I want it to be true. But that's not what I want this topic to be about. Our arguing over the fact won't prove or disprove whether this is real, and unless some of us are top-level industry insiders, we'd all just be talking out of our anti-mouthes, anyway.

What's the topic about, then? The fun part of any new technology -- thinking up cool uses for it! Let's just assume the tech is real, or close enough, and dive headlong into the fun part ^_^ What would you do with this technology?

As for me? "Filled" models. If this technology displays graphics atom-by-atom (to as many as 64 per cubic millimeter) and specifically searches for and displays what you're looking at, rather than having a static three-dimensional environment, there's no reason you couldn't take an in-game model, rip it in half, and far from seeing the invisible side of a polygon, it would be filled in. Provided there's a skin for its inside available, of course. Imagine cracking one of those elephant statues in half, and instead of an empty void, it actually looks like a broken-in-half statue, not because someone programmed the statue to behave that way, but because the graphics are being rendered atom-by-atom in real time.

This would, of course, require extra coding effort beyond what Euclideon is providing; it won't do this out-of-the-box. But it'll be effortless to implement if their technology works like they say it does (which we're assuming).

What are some of your ideas?

[Menacing Spike]

As for me? "Filled" models. If this technology displays graphics atom-by-atom (to as many as 64 per cubic millimeter) and specifically searches for and displays what you're looking at, rather than having a static three-dimensional environment, there's no reason you couldn't take an in-game model, rip it in half, and far from seeing the invisible side of a polygon, it would be filled in.

Uh, that's already possible.

[psion]

Well, it is a hoax. There's also no real way to pretend it's not, as it's technically unfeasible at this point in time. There'd be no way that you could break an in-game model (don't think they'd even be called models anymore) in a way that you might imagine under the Havok engine without an absurd amount of calculations. So you'd never even notice that things would be "filled" unless they're designed to open/break in some way, in which case polygons work just as well. I won't even go into how someone would design a game under such an engine, or how many god damn petabytes such a game would take.

So, if we're dreaming, what would I like to see in gaming? Full blown virtual reality. There.

[letterX]

Everyone trusts Notch, right? Anyways, this is what he has to say.

[SecondTalon]

I will reopen this topic when I have sufficient reason as to why the existing topic was not good enough.

4. Search first to see if a thread on a topic you wish to discuss has already been created.

No forum needs five threads dedicated to the same thing. If you want to create a new thread, search first to see if a thread has already been created. There is a search function at the top right at the page, and search tips available in Guide to the forums for newbies. Chances are, if we have an existing thread, we're just going to lock or delete any new ones and post the link to the proper thread.