New Software Allows Unlimited Detail In Games
Computer games have come a long way since the days of Pacman and Mario. In today’s day, all the cool 3D graphics that you see are made up of polygons. Polygons are nothing but flat images that are joined together to create an object in 3D. The higher the number of polygons, the greater the viewing detail.
Game developers have been trying very hard for a number of years to increase the polygon count in the games they make. However, computers face a problem when it comes to increased polygon counts. The higher the number of polygons, the greater processing power it takes to render all those polygons. Its because of this limitation that you will find games that have superb detail on one side of an object, while the other side is just a plain texturized image. Putting a cap on the number of polygons leads to a lot of compromises: You want a super detailed character? No problem, but then your world will look bland.
An Australian company called Euclideon has developed a game engine that does away with polygons and instead replaces them with point clouds that are made up of individual ‘atoms’. So doesn’t increasing the number of objects on screen slow down everything? Well you’d think so but the company says that it has made it work and your computer will make it work too. The company has developed a 1 sq km island using their game engine and each speck of dirt on that island is made up of millions of these ‘atoms’ per cubic inch.
The plus side to this is that the graphics are amazing. Simply put, polygons just cant cope with the kind of quality that the Euclideon ‘atoms’ can create. The curves that are generated with the ‘atoms’ are amazingly smooth and the level of detail is through the roof. You can quite literally see each individual grain of sand. In the next few years, computer games are going to make a huge leap forward in terms of graphics and we’re very exited about this technology and can’t wait for the company to deliver this game engine into the hands of game developers. Watch the video below for a demo of the engine in action:
