Is Unlimited Detail real?

[Snufkin]

Unlimited Detail technology is a graphics rendering technology made by a company called Euclideon.
The technology blows away other technologies in terms of the amount of detail it can display (by over 100,000 times), and it doesn't even require a graphics card. A lot of people are very excited about it, but I'm very sceptical that it actually exists. I'm not a graphics programmer, but I am a developer and I have made a few small games.



My main concerns are:

1. There have been no realtime (interactive) demonstrations of the tech even though it was created over three years ago.
2. No other companies have been involved with the technology.
3. Bruce Dell didn't know what a CPU cache was after developing the technology:
   

   Could some one please explain to me what memory cache is and why I have never encountered it in C programming.

4. The original website's technical contact was Bruce Dells fathers caravan rental company.
5. Bruce Dell claims to have been CEO of Unlimited Detail since 1995 which would mean he was CEO of the company at around twelve years old.
6. Even three years after Unlimited Detail videos were released, no comparable technology has been developed. The closest thing is probably atomontage which is light years behind what Unlimited Detail claims.
   Industry experts feel the same way I do.

I wrote a blog post about it here, which explains some of my thoughts in more detail, and gives links to my sources.

Am I justified in thinking it's an investment trap?

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Fake!

 

[Prolescum]

[centre]

[/centre]

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Let me elaborate a bit:

Do you know any computer geeks? Have you ever heard of someone capable of designing anything gaming related who doesn't start rattling off stats at the drop of a hat? There aren't any numbers anywhere.

"Unlimited" doesn't count. It isn't doing infinite processes in real time. That doesn't even make any fucking sense.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

Pfft.
I have Unlimited Detail on my HUD 24/7 365.

Makes combat a lot more realistic, and the whole "Bomb Disposal" missions seem more life-threatening than they really are. But, oddly enough, I don't think that my pack came properly loaded with it's own background music. I have to either use my imagination, or mod some in the input.

The Porn is ASTOUNDING though.

:lol:

Anyhow, this is a load of bullshit. I'm going to both piggyback off of Joe's experience and say that any amount of geekery and breakthroughs on the small-person level will ALWAYS have stats rambled off. For example, I haven't heard him brag about how all of this was capable *SIMPLY ON* x speed Processer with x capabilities and how much poon I am going to get from this later because I could never get any on my own without the billions I am about to make.
:roll:

 

[Case]

Let me elaborate a bit:

Do you know any computer geeks? Have you ever heard of someone capable of designing anything gaming related who doesn't start rattling off stats at the drop of a hat? There aren't any numbers anywhere.

"Unlimited" doesn't count. It isn't doing infinite processes in real time. That doesn't even make any fucking sense.

Have you even watched the video? Of course there are numbers in there.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Fake!
The polygon system might be replaced, and it is replaced in some aplications, but for another type of drawing called parametric. The advantage of parametric drawing is that it allows you to have genuine virtual curves instead of a sequence of polygons at difrent angles, allowing you to have as much detail as your hardwear can take. But currently parametric is not something that you can run in real time.
There are other technics that can be used, like instead of the use of textures you use materials (which allows you to define the way the surface behaves to light instead off just having color and shadow). There is also nested construction, that allows you to have extra detail when you zoom while remaining efficient becuase he detail is only generate for the item being zoomed in.
All of this will see the light of day before anything of the sort described in the video is even given a serious consideration. Because:
1. It is not a smart and efficient way to do things
2. It would take way to much time to process, and you can't go arround this because you have millions of dependencies and each one of them would have to go trough the processor in more than 1 instance. Account for the fact that the program has to figureout what to draw and where to draw 20 times a second and that the processor has a limited frequency (a very good one probably 4GHz, lets had in a quad core, 16GHz), and this forgeting that to acess the memory is way slower then the actual processor. In the end you would be in a world of shit.

And ofcourse the video is a fakery, they have just done a scenario using the current methods with a bit more attention to detail and a litle tweaking for deception, plus added that the scenarios don't have to run in real time for the recording to look like real time, then you have a piece of work capable of fooling a couple of people.

 

[Snufkin]

Thank you for your input
Shortly after I made my post Notch, the maker of Minecraft made a similar one.

Hytegia )O(, that was hilarious.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

Notch pretty much explains it all. But, common sense will tell you it's bullshit. Unless you believe that someone has that much processing power and data storage.. :lol:

I hope no one gives a penny for this bullshit. The video script is cleverly designed so it uses vague terms that only make the uninformed watcher get confused and be in awe.

Of course, if they're still serious about this they'll show some animation, not to say, at least, some variation on those trees.

 

[Snufkin]

Update!

A new video (vimeo) has been released where a member of HardOCP.com interviews Euclideon. In the video the interviewer gets a hands-on and moves around the demonstration world - I can't think how that could be easily faked so it looks like it is real (however it may have the limitations that notch mentioned like all repeated structures, facing the same way etc).

Bruce Dell gave some pretty bad explanations in the video, his explanation of LOD and tesselation were completely wrong.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

I will eat my words if it turns out to be real.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

I will eat my words if it turns out to be real.

Eat your words? Why that?

If it turns out to be real, I will invest my saved $25,000 dollars into his business as Capital.
Then, when I am a multi-quadrillionare, I will buy out America and name it Klineon. And, in the capitol of Klineon, there will be the Statue of Triumph of Reason there will be a portrayal in gold of NephilimFree being crushed under the weight of AndromedasWake's massive dick with a flashing holographic sign saying "TRIUMPH"

Of course, we can fantasize all we like about the likeliness of absurdities, it doesn't make it any more plausible anyhow.

 

[Ad Initium]

I will eat my words if it turns out to be real.

Eat your words? Why that?

If it turns out to be real, I will invest my saved $25,000 dollars into his business as Capital.
Then, when I am a multi-quadrillionare, I will buy out America and name it Klineon. And, in the capitol of Klineon, there will be the Statue of Triumph of Reason there will be a portrayal in gold of NephilimFree being crushed under the weight of AndromedasWake's massive dick with a flashing holographic sign saying "TRIUMPH"

Of course, we can fantasize all we like about the likeliness of absurdities, it doesn't make it any more plausible anyhow.

... right /... that destroys your believability, ... since you seem to follow this.


If it turns out real ... rofl ... you want to discuss your proplems here?

geez .. man ... I thought this was a forum of science ... not magic.

 

[Prolescum]

... right /... that destroys your believability, ... since you seem to follow this.


If it turns out real ... rofl ... you want to discuss your proplems here?

geez .. man ... I thought this was a forum of science ... not magic.

Are you having some kind of mental breakdown?

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

... right /... that destroys your believability, ... since you seem to follow this.


If it turns out real ... rofl ... you want to discuss your proplems here?

geez .. man ... I thought this was a forum of science ... not magic.

I'm being serious!
Oh, and atop it all I will eat my socks on Fox News - the station I will have bought out as a multi-quadrillionare.

The processing power required for "infinite detail" would be LITERALLY taking every molecule that makes up the object's exterior and generating it. I don't know if you're acquainted with Chemistry - but that is a lot of things to render. And now make them link and move in a world rendered with infinite detail itself.
I could probably generate a city block in such a fashion if I was to sell my car and buy 62 cards of RAM and two of the world's fastest processors.

And that's not even DISPLAYING it, dear GODS.

 

[DukeTwicep]

"There is a better way to do graphics which is used in medicine and the sciences..." What? I think that sentence says it all, fake. What, suddenly medicine and the sciences have had better ways of displaying graphics for some time? Like we wouldn't know about it? And what makes it sound even more fake is that he calls them "atoms".
If this system were working though, it would probably make use of a Very Very powerful and advanced physics engine. The physics engine would then have to calculate the movements of these static dots (I assume that's what he's aiming for. The rough equivalent of 0-dimensional shapes.). The question is just, why is he talking about atoms per cubic-millimetre? There is no such thing as millimetres in the world of graphics, there are only pixels, triangles, etc. You can't measure it in millimetres because it's all relative to how close you are to the object, what the resolution of your display is and the dpi of it. And the way he talks, it's like he's at the brink of laughing out loud all the time.
But I guess it could be done with very simple models. You put 100 "atoms" together to shape small balls and then put many, many balls beside each other to form shapes. Then you have a framework for these balls to move in. You then have to create groups out of these balls that are supposed to react in a certain way. It would be a major project to create one movable arm alone. And the physics processing unit would have to be Pretty powerful. Create a game of that? Yeah right, we would have to move back to arcades where every arcade unit is a super computer and the games are really simple. I think I'll pass. This simulation is pushing it.

 

[Demojen]

Unlimited detail is a violation of the laws of thermodynamics!!!111one!!

 

[scalyblue]

I'd have to side with Notch of Minecraft fame on this

"They made a voxel renderer, probably based on sparse voxel octrees. That's cool and all, but.. To quote the video, the island in the video is one km^2. Let's assume a modest island height of just eight meters, and we end up with 0.008 km^3. At 64 atoms per cubic millimeter (four per millimeter), that is a total of 512 000 000 000 000 000 atoms. If each voxel is made up of one byte of data, that is a total of 512 petabytes of information, or about 170 000 three-terrabyte harddrives full of information. In reality, you will need way more than just one byte of data per voxel to do colors and lighting, and the island is probably way taller than just eight meters, so that estimate is very optimistic."

 

[Laurens]

I know exactly how they did it. These guys came from the future and are using quantum computers.

 

[Welshidiot]

I know exactly how they did it. These guys came from the future and are using quantum computers.

Are ye sure they're not Leprechauns, and are just usin' a leetle of de ole Blarney....?