Update: Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft, has posted a statement on his blog disproving Euclideon's "unlimited detail" technology of nothing more than a scam. Furthermore, id Software founder John Carmack posted a tweet saying that the there is no chance the technology would result in a game on current generation systems and that production issues would be challenging. Thanks to our readers for bringing this to our attention.
Original: Small Australian developer Euclideon has released a video on YouTube that claims their new graphics processing technology will revolutionize how games are made forever.
This isn't the first we have heard of this technology or this company. In early 2010, Unlimited Detail's CEO Bruce Dell released a video demonstrating their current progress with this new approach to computer graphics. After the video went viral, the company disappeared which led many to conclude that the video was either fake or the company dissolved.
The team reemerged this week with a new video under a new company name. Unlimited Detail is now known as Euclideon and this video installment looks even more promising than the last, at least on the surface.
Without delving into too much technical detail, the Unlimited Detail method works by eliminating traditional polygon limits and instead uses "unlimited detail point cloud data". Point cloud data is comprised of tiny atoms, the same technology that is used in medicine and science. This method allows for much higher detail but uses a lot of processing power and as such, a full game level couldn't be created using this method, until now.
Euclideon claims their technology will render polygons useless by instead using these tiny atoms to create objects and worlds, just like how things are created in the real world. The theory and video are certainly impressive, but many still have their doubts about how it would actually work in a real game.
The video demo is just that, a rendered video. There are no animations being shown and things like collision detection could be a challenge. Others with knowledge of the subject suggest this is just a rehash of voxel technology which is very memory-intensive.
To their credit, Euclideon makes it clear that they are not graphic artists or game developers. Once their SDK is finished "in several months", they hope to pass it along to true game developers.