Some of you may recall the Unlimited Detail presentation I covered last year. Euclideon just released a new demo today, and it is a must see for anyone who plays games or is in the gaming industry as this technology could very well define the future of all gaming.
Unlimited Detail: One Year Later
Published: August 1, 2011Posted in: Business, Computers, Development, Gaming, Hardware, News
About the Author
Mr. Allen has an extensive background in technology spanning 20 years including software architecture, design and development, project management and leadership. He specializes in corporate planning, productivity and collaboration, and is the creator of the games Mordor, Demise, Horizons, and Alganon. 
Quite a bit of controversy has come up regarding the Euclideon video. Because of this, the company has released a follow-up video to “address the charges” people have made regarding the technology: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/08/10/euclideon_unlimited_detail_bruce_dell_interview
If I’m not mistaken, John Carmack had spoken about using similar tech a few years back as a possible direction for a future iteration of their game engine technology. It’s called Sparse Voxel Octrees or something to that effect. At the time, he indicated that he felt hardware wasn’t where it needed to be to make it feasible. Of course, we’ve come a long way since then.
I’ll be really interested to see how it all works in an actual gameplay environment, instead of a “static”, limited environment for a demo only.
It’s definitely going to change things. No question there. Normal mapping, tessellation, all of that could well become redundant.