posted on Jul, 18 2011 @ 11:25 AM
Originally posted by QueenofWeird
reply to post by CAELENIUM
Wheeee I love that book though I think the late Michael Talbot was a little to gulible sometimes. Think Sai Babba.
Fred Alan Wolf has the nice idea that the probability waves are real ones and that one comes from the past and the other from the future. Only
when they match they become one creating the now.
Reminds me of interpolation. Interpolation is used to make random landscapes, for example. It allows you to have results that are persistent, as
opposed to blatantly random and noisy.
Another example:
1 Size
2 Shape
3 Growth
4 Density
Assume each has a value. Now interpolate between all of them and arrive at their synthesis. Each would have a variable and likely different weight in
the final outcome. The more there're, the more complex it's to understand cause-effect. This is useful in real-time procedural games.
I'm looking at this from the perspective of a programmer. It's a topic I need to learn more about.
Eventually most games will use these techniques to produce fine textures and details and to satiate the consumers desire for rich and ample content
that continually improves with time. Otherwise, games will hit a wall and mounting development costs will make them unaffordable. We're already seeing
this happen with textures and landscapes and even plants (there're programs to generate random plants). But unless disk space increases markedly or
goes down in cost in equal measures then we will hit a limit for other things. For example, to store a single 32-bit value for each half foot or so
space on earth we would need many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of 1 terabyte drives. Consumers will eventually want these large
landscapes for play. There's no way you can fit that in memory so you'd need a cache for it. You can forget roaming algorithms for something that size
too. There're many challenges up ahead.
That's why google earth amazes me so much. In my mind it's the only computerized landscape in existence that follows the laws of physics at the scale
of an earth-sized planet. You see can rivers, ecological indicators, biological indicators, so much! If you want a realistic landscape in your game,
google earth is a good start! Don't have to woryr about roaming algorithms - huge!
edit on 18-7-2011 by jonnywhite because: (no reason
given)