Wanna see what 24.5 million pixels looks like?

matrix2003 · September 12, 2009, 11:27:52 AM

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3635

Henry Blewer · September 12, 2009, 03:31:19 PM

Isn't using a projector easier?
Now if they could get rid of the monitor case bevel, that would be cool. There's a company/research lab here in Binghamton which has done this. They built a display a couple years ago where the distance between the LCD screens was 0.06". The problem I have is I can't remember what they were called. Also I think they were bought by Samsung?

matrix2003 · September 12, 2009, 03:49:21 PM

When they perfect the flexible film stuff everything will be crazy. You roll out a Mylar type roll and the film itself is the monitor. Minority report kinda stuff. I would imagine the size (like everything else) would be determined by your budget!

PG · September 12, 2009, 04:10:54 PM

All sorts of hologram technologies are being explored as well. Not the crappy grid like thing you see in the old Star Treks. Just like a projection on the wall, except without the projector.

Seth · September 12, 2009, 09:05:59 PM

what a pity to play WOW on this screen !

Henry Blewer · September 12, 2009, 09:52:38 PM

Yes, Oblivion or Civilization IV would be much better

Someday, when computers are many times faster, realtime Terragen ? fly throughs would be cool. By then though, the complexity of calculation/shaders would still have long render times.

Cyber-Angel · September 13, 2009, 11:25:09 PM

Quote from: njeneb on September 12, 2009, 09:52:38 PM
Yes, Oblivion or Civilization IV would be much better
Someday, when computers are many times faster, realtime Terragen ? fly throughs would be cool. By then though, the complexity of calculation/shaders would still have long render times.

I don't know, maybe when we start to see desktop Quantum based computers or even the first generation of optical computers I think that these technologies will have great benefits to applications such as Terragen.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

Henry Blewer · September 13, 2009, 11:31:48 PM

It definitely will benefit. The trend I have noticed though is that the more a computer can do in a second, the more people ask it to do. So any app you like now will have more stuff to compute. Look how much faster Terragen 0.9xx renders now. When I first played with it in 2001, the computer I used was 900mHz. The renders were much slower. Now think what Matt might introduce in Terragen 7. By the time that comes out, Terragen 2 renders may be almost realtime.

Cyber-Angel · September 14, 2009, 12:18:06 AM

Quote from: njeneb on September 13, 2009, 11:31:48 PM
It definitely will benefit. The trend I have noticed though is that the more a computer can do in a second, the more people ask it to do. So any app you like now will have more stuff to compute. Look how much faster Terragen 0.9xx renders now. When I first played with it in 2001, the computer I used was 900mHz. The renders were much slower. Now think what Matt might introduce in Terragen 7. By the time that comes out, Terragen 2 renders may be almost realtime.

Terragen 7: at the current rate of development many of us would be in our seventies at least I would think; At any rate technology will if current trends continue to develop at an exponential rate until the rate of development renders Moors Law obsolete; and continue to develop until the Singularity is reached.

At that stage then, machines may well have developed self awareness, this in its self posses ethical questions that society has not beguine too reason let alone answer: a section of society that has beguine too, is the Science Fiction community, but as a collective whole the mainstream has not beguine to answer these questions.

Real-time computing is an active area of study in the CGI community and much has been published on research connected with this; form what I have seen it is a question of economies of scale and time of implementation: as in all things there must come a point where real-time computing in CGI hits the Law of Diminishing Returns.

CGI will always face the catch 22 of always been capable of much more than the current state of the art in technology will allow; this maybe mitigated once desktop quantum computing becomes available, and more over such computers are programmable enough to allow for such applications as Terragen to run on them.

With such a radical new technology such as quantum and optical computing it is certain that new programming languages would have to be developed and the training and other documentation for then made available: more over it would be some time before these technologies would become both widespread and affordable for every day use in the consumer market, also you need to factor the time needed for programmers to learn these new languages.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

Henry Blewer · September 14, 2009, 07:56:53 AM

So long as machine language is still used.

It will be interesting. I have to live to be at least 96 now to stay middle aged.

N810 · September 16, 2009, 04:36:31 PM

From what I read in Popular Science years ago...
they where trying to make crystal data storage,
the media was reasonably cheep and is a read/wirite by
a 3 axis and 2 directions lazer drive, so you could
use a base 6 programing language instead of base 2.

Unfortunately the drive it self was the size of a refrigator and cost a fortune.

PG · September 16, 2009, 04:58:30 PM

Do you mean a molecular drive? IBM invented it about 2 years ago.
http://pda.physorg.com/_news107703707.html

For me I reckon everything needs to go either holographic or quantum in the future. Or maybe holographic, then quantum. We already have holographic drives and as I said before, holographic displays are being looked into as well.

God I love technology

Cyber-Angel · September 16, 2009, 11:51:46 PM

I think that for the time been that holographic displays are the way forward and one should imagine that it would be a little disconcerting the first time you switch one on and have an image right there in the room with you. It would be necessary to have darkened rooms or the projection would be swamped by light the other technological barrier foreseen is that of transparency of the holographic image: this effect can be seen in Star Wars: A New Hope when R2-D2 projects the holographic message form Princes Leia for Ben Kenobi.

This would be fine for some applications such as medical holograms but not for holographic TV or holographic cinema where that transparency would become annoying.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

Henry Blewer · September 17, 2009, 05:26:39 AM

I was somewhere in NYC back in the 1990's. I saw a hologram image projected onto a spinning clear disk, in a brightly lit room. It used many lasers fired against tiny mirrors in sequence with the disks rotation. It was a line drawing in one color. The disk spun so fast it could not be seen.

PG · September 17, 2009, 09:23:13 AM

Yes, for holographic displays (not to be confused with holography), lasers are generally used in combination with mirrors to essentially produce free floating 3d pixels or voxels as they're known. It's still primitive technology but it theoretically can produce a much sharper image than LCD, Plasma or CRT TVs. For now the most we have are multiview tvs. Basically just crappy little hologram like displays. You can see the same image from any angle in front of the tv, but it's still in a panel so it's only a minute percentage better than normal tvs. Of course you have stereoscopic TVs but you have to wear special glasses.