memory space is now an affordable 1 terrabite for at home computers......WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY!!!
RAM? meh...., needs more dev time to catch up
I forsee this being used a lot in high-end games in the next, oh 8 or so years.
A 1TB hard disk goes for $50-100, and that's just the memory device, itself.
You can pack as much RAM as you like, but current operating software cap out at 128GB of RAM, due to some integer rule I don't recall. Of course, sifting through that much RAM, in itself, becomes a chore, and you might as well skip it at that point, in favor of SSD.
I don't get wy everybody compares this with atoms. Point cloud data is still polygonal data...
I was under the impression that point cloud data didn't store polygon data, but let a sophisticated vector rendering algorithm generate polygons from the point cloud. Like a bitmap holds pixels, but a vector holds lines.
sure a disc could hold it, but its not the disc doing the calculations, rendering, temporary memory storage, ect.
I can almost guarantee (sp?) the computer that was rendered on has a dedicated graphics card worth at least $1000.
No form of Compact Disc, be it Digital Versatile or Dual-Layer Blu Ray can currently hold enough data to support this. Not according to my math. You'd have to pack it on magnetic disk or solid state memory, both of which are larger than CD memory and much much more expensive.
The whole point of the Infinite Detail point cloud system is to do away with bulky graphics cards, and it can get away with that. By shunting the processing from the GPU, where it is, to overbear the CPU and RAM. Given that the CPU must also handle physics and netcode, this is an even worse idea for gaming. High-end graphics cards cost $200-300. High-end CPUs cost $300-700 (-blam!- Intel, man. -blam!- them hard). And even those CPUs would be blown by this.
This is either ahead of its time or just a bad decision. Either way, it's not going to see any serious software development for the time being.