Euclideon, a Brisbane, Australia-based tech company, claims it can stuff 100,000 times the amount of visual data into a 3D world with its Unlimited Detail rendering software. It's visually stunning stuff. But one prominent game developer calls it "a scam."
Minecraft creator Marcus "Notch" Persson accuses the Euclideon team of being "snake oil salesmen," writing on his personal web site, "They're hyping this as something new and revolutionary because they want funding."
"It's a very pretty and very impressive piece of technology," Persson writes, "but they're carefully avoiding to mention any of the drawbacks, and they're pretending like what they're doing is something new and impressive. In reality, it's been done several times before."
The man responsible for the chunky world-building game Minecraft goes on to pick apart aspects of the Euclideon technology, specifically how difficult those point clouds would be to animate, and cast doubt on the tech's authenticity. Notch points to similar and alternative efforts like the Atomontage Engine and Voxlap as more feasible implementations of the technology.
Several Kotaku commenters, some from within the games industry, weighed in with their own skepticism of the Euclideon technology.
"The response to most individuals in the industry that I've spoken to about these tech demos has been complete incredulity," writes commenter Illuminerdi. "Most people I've worked with have outright disbelieved the tech demos, stating that it has to be impossible, faked, vapor, edge case, etc. I say this because my point is that there is a LOT of resistance to the notion that this tech is feasible. I've had arguments for why this tech is awesome with some HARDCORE programmers who insist that this is a lie and can't possibly work in the real world."
"Nowhere in the video does he go into the slightest detail of how they're supposedly doing this," adds commenter WPennypacker. "They basically just say 'Previously this was impossible...here it is!.' Instead of saying anything remotely technical, he uses phrases like 'import the real world into the virtual world,' which sounds more like a Westwood College promotional ad."
At least one game developer, John Carmack, largely responsible for the graphics engines and technology that power the Doom and Quake games, sounds less pessimistic about Euclideon's promises... at some point in the future.
Carmack tweets that there's "no chance of a game on current gen systems, but maybe several years from now."
"Production issues will be challenging," he says.
It's a scam! [Notch]
You can contact Michael McWhertor, the author of this post, at mike@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.