Working on gun tower equipped with guns rather then cannons...

[bigbadbogie]

i noticed in crysis how things would suddenly flicker to being more realistic the closer you got

bz2 is like one of the oldest games that is still played so i doubt that it needs LODs anymore - not with todays computers

[Zero Angel]

Haha, thats funny. New games are designed to take full advantage of the videocard by providing full graphics acceleration. BZ2 is too old, before fancy things like "hardware T&L" came out -- it requires the CPU to do most graphics calculations like drawing things on screen. This is horribly inefficient, like hiring a plumber to fix your computer. It ain't pretty. 

[Angstromicus]

On top of that, BZII can only run on a single CPU core, right? Well it seems that Intel and AMD are hitting physical barriers in CPU performance. So, they are relying on the increasing number of cores instead of increasing the computational power of each. So, it appears this is about as good as it gets until a new type of transistor technology emerges. Optical transistors and quantum computing are being worked on to be the successors of the current transistor technology.

[bigbadbogie]

Optical transistors and quantum computing are being worked on to be the successors of the current transistor technology.

i doubt that it will ever get much better than those!! 

[Nielk1]

Yes but how can we make a quantum computer at all? If we query it looses quantum cohesion. So, untill we solve that, all this talk about qubits and quantum transitors is a bit too far ahead.

[VSMIT]

And even a quantum computer wouldn't be able to hold a candle to a biological computer.  Only a matter of time until we find a way to do all of our computing with an animal instead of metal and plastic.

VSMIT.

[bigbadbogie]

now im scared - imagine a brain sitting where your computer box is!!

[Angstromicus]

Such a computer would probably be unethical. It's unlikely that such a computer would be acceptable in the united states and perhaps many other countries. Computers might start becoming conscious then... It'll make front page news when a kid throws a temper tantrum at a computer brain and splatters brains all over the place.

[bigbadbogie]

LOL!!! 

about conscious computers:::: cylons

[mrtwosheds]

And even a quantum computer wouldn't be able to hold a candle to a biological computer.

We already have plenty of highly evolved biological computers, they can be very slow and inaccurate at performing calculations and often the output from them is very difficult to make sense of. Indeed many of us consider them entirely worthless, throw them away and just eat the hardware....

i never worked out what the point was of having these LOD models

Just slap a bz2 mod together and try building a large number of high detail models, you will soon see why the LOd models are needed.
I was most distressed when my (first generation) Daleks started loosing their heads in a crowd, literally!

[Nielk1]

Biological computers are quantum computers.

A swarm of bees, a flock of birds, all exist in a state of quantum stability and could be used as the base for the computer. As I said though, as soon as you query, since it is impossable to observe without effecting it, it will loose quantum cohesion and become inaccurate.

(On a side note I just realized something about the anime NOEIN. The dimensional travelers must have been able to query and otherwise use quantum computers because they themselves existed in a quantum state, where to stablize existance they had to be observed, requiring an artifical observation computer in their dimension. You all should watch it...)

EDIT: Felt like adding. If you ahve a box, and you give it to someone, and they look and nothing is inside, they have cause it to be that nothing is inside. If they find something inside, that is their fault too. If you give them the box though, you know if it is empty or full, or atleast, someone does, and thus, it is already established in our reality and the peron who looks in the box will only see what something already knows is in said box. This something could even be a computer program that puts a compleatly random object in the box because a true computed number is impossable without a quantum computer.

[Angstromicus]

I've seen it. Was an awesome anime. Though, with infinite choice and all, couldn't a quantum computer recieve input from other parallel universes as well?

[Steeveeo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

Nothing to do with parallel universes.

[mrtwosheds]

I am of the opinion that all that stuff about shrodinger's cat is nonsense, the cat knows if it is alive, but will not know if it is dead...

All this stuff about quantum states...obviously "reality" will be in an indeterminate state until observed because "reality" is a perception only experienced by perceiver's through observation. We will never observe an indeterminate state. To assume that it must exists because you cannot perceive it is unscientific. The drawing board is that way. -> 

Nothing to do with parallel universes.

Except for the one the scientists/mathematicians theorising this stuff must be living in!

[Nielk1]

The idea is, it is observed and thus it exists.
So, if you observe a quantum computer it suddenly exists and looses its accuracy from when it was in a quantum state.

Waga who whats switcher what now?