Unlimited Detail: Improves visuals in games by 10,000%

[thesapien]

Hehe' date=' probably the wisest course of action, all things considered. In general use, atleast in swedish "capitalism" has basically come to simply denote greed, i.e. "He is so greedy" can be replaced with "He is such a capitalist". I have a feeling this is fairly true in english as well.

The definition I proposed would probably be the marxist definition.

[/quote']

 

Same in the US. Seems like most people associate greed to capitalism. Personally, I think greed is much older than that.

[Kashked]

Still had property laws though... While it was hard to hoard wealth (seeing as they had no currency) one could still hoard wealth in other forms of possesions' date=' jewelery, clothing, etc.

[/quote']

 

I would say that hoarding a currency isn't hoarding wealth, at least, not directly unless that currency is made of something very useful. Today's digital currencies aren't wealth. They are claims to wealth.

 

Yes, hoarding is bad. The wealth just sits there doing nothing. But saving wealth can be good as it directs us to consider the future and not just everything now. Saving takes discipline. Hoarding, not so much.

 

Claims to wealth that are as real as wealth in gold, really. The illusion that a currency has a value is just as valid as the illusion that gold has value. Value is based on the subjective value that a presumptive "buyer" gives it. This is just as true for gold as for currency, which is why collectors items, like art, stamps, old coins or whatever can soar in value, while far more useful items are very cheap. Assuming that a system based in "user value" is more stable is to fool oneself, a metal might have a value, but not to everyone, and that value is in no way more "real" that the value of currency. Currency is simply a way to make life a little easier for everyone.

 

Agreeing with your point on saving though.

 

Technically, personal possessions in Ancient Egypt were rather limited, as almost everything was technically owned either by the Temples or the King and you were assigned use of it.

 

Large assets like land, certanly, but there were still personal property, and this property I would assume, withouth researching it, had laws protecting it.

[thesapien]

Technically' date=' personal possessions in Ancient Egypt were rather limited, as almost everything was technically owned either by the Temples or the King and you were assigned use of it.

 

(Peraya=King used exclusively prior to about 1500BC and still common afterwards) (Pero=Great House, usually rendered in English as 'Pharaoh' ('The Pharaoh' is technically incorrect usage btw) but this term only came into use after 1500BC and 'King' remained common).

 

One of the few things someone could own outright was their own tomb! Go figure.

[/quote']

 

Like what sort of things were considered to be the King's (or the god's) and what was deemed as separate? Land was probably not something to claim, I'm guessing. But what about pottery, metals, seeds, livestock, clothing?

[thesapien]

Claims to wealth that are as real as wealth in gold' date=' really. The illusion that a currency has a value is just as valid as the illusion that gold has value. Value is based on the subjective value that a presumptive "buyer" gives it. This is just as true for gold as for currency, which is why collectors items, like art, stamps, old coins or whatever can soar in value, while far more useful items are very cheap. Assuming that a system based in "user value" is more stable is to fool oneself, a metal might have a value, but not to everyone, and that value is in no way more "real" that the value of currency. Currency is simply a way to make life a little easier for everyone.

[/quote']

Not so. Some things, like food, water, and shelter, have real world value. Real things have intrinsic properties. We often "discover" the value in these properties.

 

If your people are barely surviving, things like seeds will have the most value. This is not merely subjective.

If your people are doing better, things used in crafting, tooling, construction, and such then gain in value. Again, not subjective.

If your people are doing really great, then things start to derail as the people do disassociate, like say people who never leave a casino. They then see it all as subjective, yes.

 

Gold is an element on the periodic table, like oxygen. It has intrinsic properties that makes it one of the best all around crafting/building materials known to date. It was used thousands of years ago for such and has ever since only grown in its known utility. Today, it's still the best for things like electric contacts (thus found in tiny amount in common devices, like your computer and phone) and shielding astronauts from radiation (NASA).

 

If you think of humans as animals and not supernatural, we're like a very crafty ant colony. Seeing everything as subjective will end poorly.

 

 

Edit/PS:

 

It's NOT currency vs gold unless you deny that gold can be a currency. I usually avoid the term "currency", but generally speaking it can be anything that is the most common form of barter/trade. If everyone is using seeds, then that's the currency. The problem with seeds is that it takes butt loads for big trades and seeds don't last forever. Gold, you can drop in the mud for a few thousand years. Gold will also always be consistent in mass per volume, so makes for good standards. For more ease of use, I totally support trading ownership of gold without actually having to carry it around or always have your gold on you. So long as the accounts are allocated 1:1 as opposed to unallocated accounting and especially opposed to fractional accounting. See James Turk's GoldMoney as an example of this already available "real banking", as I call it.

 

Btw, as you might now guess, I'm not one of them guns and gold and hide in a shelter as we go back to the dark ages kind of people. I see gold and silver as more like amazing materials for future tech and often get excited thinking about them.

[thesapien]

[video=youtube]

[Kashked]

Not so. Some things, like food, water, and shelter, have real world value.

 

Not really. In my country water has a very low value, since it is so common. For a society that exists in a desert water has a very high value. I.e. the value of water is subjective to context.

 

If your people are barely surviving, things like seeds will have the most value. This is not merely subjective.

If your people are doing better, things used in crafting, tooling, construction, and such then gain in value. Again, not subjective.

If your people are doing really great, then things start to derail as the people do disassociate, like say people who never leave a casino. They then see it all as subjective, yes.

 

I think we disagree over the meaning of "subjective", because to me, that reasoning proves the subjectivity of value. Objective value would mean something that always, no matter the circumstances, had a constant value.

 

Gold is an element on the periodic table, like oxygen. It has intrinsic properties that makes it one of the best all around crafting/building materials known to date. It was used thousands of years ago for such and has ever since only grown in its known utility. Today, it's still the best for things like electric contacts (thus found in tiny amount in common devices, like your computer and phone) and shielding astronauts from radiation (NASA).

 

That is true, but I am neither an astronaut or an engineer building computers. Gold still has a value to me, but only because I know that I could sell it. If you remove the possibility for me to sell it, gold is useless to me, except possibly as decoration. So it's only the value that others place into gold that makes it interesting for me, this value fluctuates over time, for various reasons, so it's not objective.

[thesapien]

You're abusing the term "subjective" here, using it to mean relative and variable. Roughly speaking, subjective is associated to being all in your head, contrasted with objective study which attempts to falsify incorrect ideas, theories, or stuff that may be mostly subjective. What's your velocity? It is not absolute and unchanging. Yet, it's not subjective either. It's relative to frames of reference and thus objective.

 

Your example of water being scarce in a desert is not subjective because it's based on the objective observation of being in a desert. The supply of water varies over time and region and know-how (tech with wells, reserves, irrigation). Thus, supply curves will vary. Ever use supply/demand curves in economics?

 

Can't emphasize this enough. It is incorrect to say something must be absolute and unchanging in order to be objective. Einstein anybody?

 

Yes, you can still respond by saying you don't particularly care for gold. That personal like/dislike does indeed have much to do with subjectivity. Though I'm not sure you even know yourself what you mean by all that. Are you saying you don't like using the many thing made with gold parts, like your cell phone and satellites? More likely you're saying you don't like having pure gold just being stored sitting in a vault, unless you can trade it. Well, duh. If you don't how to make cool stuff with it yourself and don't like starring at it, of course you wouldn't want to hold it if no one else did either.

 

Consider all the metals and their alloys together for a moment. Would you say steel is merely subjective in value? Swords offer no objective advantage? The industrial revolution was merely a subjective progression?

[Kashked]

You're abusing the term "subjective" here, using it to mean relative and variable.

 

That is my understanding of the term. I might be wrong, english isn't my first language, but atleast Wikipedia agrees.

 

"Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivity

 

And about subjective value...

 

"The subjective theory of value, also known as the theory of subjective value, is an economic theory of value that identifies worth as being based on the wants and needs of the members of a society, as opposed to value being inherent to an object." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value

 

Your example of water being scarce in a desert is not subjective because it's based on the objective observation of being in a desert. The supply of water varies over time and region and know-how (tech with wells, reserves, irrigation). Thus, supply curves will vary. Ever use supply/demand curves in economics?

 

That still means the value is subjective, it varies depending on the subject who is willing to obtain it. Water has an objective survival value, but what you are willing to "pay" for it (not neccesarily buying, "pay" could also mean what effort of work you are willing to perform to obtain it), varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.

 

Yes, you can still respond by saying you don't particularly care for gold. That personal like/dislike does indeed have much to do with subjectivity. Though I'm not sure you even know yourself what you mean by all that. Are you saying you don't like using the many thing made with gold parts, like your cell phone and satellites? More likely you're saying you don't like having pure gold just being stored sitting in a vault, unless you can trade it. Well, duh. If you don't how to make cool stuff with it yourself and don't like starring at it, of course you wouldn't want to hold it if no one else did either.

 

I personally cant build any phones or sattelites, so in a world where no one was willing to give me something I valued for my gold, it would be worthless to me. If we imagine we had no technology that used gold and didn't like it for it's esthetic value, it would be worthless to everyone. It's value is subject to us having a use for it. There are many things in the universe that is objective, but value is not.

 

Would you say steel is merely subjective in value?

 

If I don't have any use for it, or no skill to turn it into something useful, and no possibility to trade it for something that I do have use for, then it is worthless to me.

 

Swords offer no objective advantage?

 

Assuming I have any use for a sword, of course it offers me an advantage, if there is a situation where I need it. However it's value is entierly subjective to how society is organized. In a modern society a sword might very well increase in value (due to being a collectors item and something unusual and unique) as it's practical usefulness decreases.

[Symon]

Just to add a data point, and to get back to Ancient Egypt, during the Old Kingdom, silver was worth twice as much as gold, which was rather common and not as highly regarded as the beautiful silver.

 

It was only increased trade with trading partners who lacked such vast quantities of gold that the exchange rate between the two metals changed.

[thesapien]

You're abusing the term "subjective" here' date=' using it to mean relative and variable.[/quote']

 

That is my understanding of the term. I might be wrong, english isn't my first language, but atleast Wikipedia agrees.

 

"Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivity

 

Those don't match! Wiki disagrees with you.

Subjective does not mean relative or variable. It often includes such things, but so do objective studies. Some objective theories actually imply that everything is relative and nothing is absolute. I might even agree with these.

 

And about subjective value...

"The subjective theory of value' date=' also known as the theory of subjective value, is an economic theory of value that identifies worth as being based on the wants and needs of the members of a society, as opposed to value being inherent to an object." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value

[/quote']

 

Where it is right, it adds nothing new to what we already know. Based on wants and needs? Of course. Who would say otherwise? It's half of my own point. Where it is wrong, it ignores the objective reasons behind why water may be wanted or needed and is necessary for things like organic life and people.

 

Your example of water being scarce in a desert is not subjective because it's based on the objective observation of being in a desert. The supply of water varies over time and region and know-how (tech with wells' date=' reserves, irrigation). Thus, supply curves will vary. Ever use supply/demand curves in economics?[/quote']

 

That still means the value is subjective, it varies depending on the subject who is willing to obtain it. Water has an objective survival value, but what you are willing to "pay" for it (not neccesarily buying, "pay" could also mean what effort of work you are willing to perform to obtain it), varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.

What do you mean by "Water has an objective survival value"? Sounds suspiciously like you're getting my point.

In your first post on this topic, you used the term "illusion" a couple of times. That is mostly what I was responding to. I wanted to emphasize that value based on illusions is dissociated from reality. There ought to be objective components to your theory. I'm arguing here against your idea that the differences in value between a federal reserve note and a bar of gold is merely an illusion and purely subjective. Perhaps you were overstating your case and actually do see that there are other things to consider having to do with what we might call objective reality?

 

The rest of your response was mostly agreeable to me. Not sure of all your terms and such but okay. I'll leave it be.

[thesapien]

Just to add a data point' date=' and to get back to Ancient Egypt, during the Old Kingdom, silver was worth twice as much as gold, which was rather common and not as highly regarded as the beautiful silver.

 

It was only increased trade with trading partners who lacked such vast quantities of gold that the exchange rate between the two metals changed.

[/quote']

 

Like me some silver. As I said, I'm more of a silver guy as they were yet I'm in a different situation where silver is currently way under priced compared to gold.

[thesapien]

Kashked, since English is your second language, I thought it might help to use a common theory as an example of terms. Consider Einstein's general theory of relativity as we call it in English. It is described in English as also aiming to be what we call an objective theory with parts that are both variable and constant. Solutions to the theory are relative, depending on the variables. Thus, we don't equate "relative" and "variable" to "subjective" since we see Einstein's theory as being more objective while also being relative and variable.

[Kashked]

Well, we MIGHT have ended up in a simple question of semantics after all... I assumed "subjective" was entierly comparabale to the Swedish "subjektiv", but there might be some subtle differences of meaning. Either that or we are arguing from differing philosophical foundations.

 

What do you mean by "Water has an objective survival value"? Sounds suspiciously like you're getting my point.

 

I have never doubted that some things, such as water, has an objective use. Of course I realise that we'd all die withouth it. But it's "value", in terms of the amount of money, goods or work I would be willing to "pay" for it is relative to my position.

 

 

Let's put it like this. If you would read everything you have disagreed on with me in this thread, and replace the word "subjective", with "relative", do you then agree?

 

In your first post on this topic, you used the term "illusion" a couple of times. That is mostly what I was responding to. I wanted to emphasize that value based on illusions is dissociated from reality. There ought to be objective components to your theory. I'm arguing here against your idea that the differences in value between a federal reserve note and a bar of gold is merely an illusion and purely subjective. Perhaps you were overstating your case and actually do see that there are other things to consider having to do with what we might call objective reality?

 

I don't doubt objective reality on any kind of philosophical level, I'm a materialist, not an idealist. However I consider some ideas socially constructed, for example the idea of money. The fact that money is worth something is essentially an illusion, since the money in itself has no more value than the value that we, as individuals and/or societies place into them. My money only has value since other people value them.

[Symon]

Guys, I think you are both contemplating the wrong things. You ought to be discussing the difference between value and utility.

 

To give an example, let take a small pot of caviar and a large loaf of bread.

 

Which has the higher value? The tiny pot of Caviar. Been highly prized by the rich for quite a while.

Which has the higher utility? The loaf of bread, it will keep you alive far longer than the pot of caviar.

 

Now gold has utility (electronics and a noble metal) but this utility in no way explains the value assigned it.

 

Another good experiment is to think of a valuable painting. In can exchange hands many times for ever increasing sums. Then the value can crash to zero when it's revealed as a forgery. (It's utility was always close to zero).

[thesapien]

Well' date=' we MIGHT have ended up in a simple question of semantics after all... I assumed "subjective" was entierly comparabale to the Swedish "subjektiv", but there might be some subtle differences of meaning. Either that or we are arguing from differing philosophical foundations.

[/quote']

Perhaps the English and Swedish languages/cultures aren't any different on this topic. It's all too common in English speech to use "subjective" interchangeably with "relative". Mathematicians and Physicists don't. Philosophers are a wash on this. Folk studies are a mess on this. It is not uncommon for folks to say, "It's all just relative," as if giving up on answers. Often people actually mean the opposite, that is; it's all equally good or bad, not relatively so. They get that something like height is relative in regards to being tall or short but wouldn't then call it subjective. However, they quickly forget this distinction when the topic gets more complicated.

 

I have never doubted that some things' date=' such as water, has an objective use. Of course I realise that we'd all die withouth it. But it's "value", in terms of the amount of money, goods or work I would be willing to "pay" for it is relative to my position.

[/quote']

I won't argue with that.

 

Let's put it like this. If you would read everything you have disagreed on with me in this thread' date=' and replace the word "subjective", with "relative", do you then agree?

[/quote']

I tend to see every thing as relative, one way or another. It kind of goes without saying, for me, in most contexts.

 

I don't doubt objective reality on any kind of philosophical level' date=' I'm a materialist, not an idealist. However I consider some ideas socially constructed, for example the idea of money. The fact that money is worth something is essentially an illusion, since the money in itself has no more value than the value that we, as individuals and/or societies place into them. My money only has value since other people value them.

[/quote']

Since "money" doesn't have a precise definition of which everyone will agree upon, I'll go along with your working definition here to make my point. Economies running on money are, uhm, problematic. It introduces the novel (and brilliant, I dare say) ability to make money and then trade it for goods and services. How is money made? Not by most of the population. They merely trade into it or obtain some via wages, profits, loans, etc. They don't actually make it. The money makers are those who control the supply of this abstract social construct. They "produce" it. For example, Dollars are fabricated into virtual existence in the act of borrowing or IOU's. Such economies become focused (obsessed?) with money instead of actual goods and services. They are based on something not associated to real production. Major distortions arise. Everyone thinks more money is the answer; that just throwing more money at a problem can fix it. Tradedy/comedy of errors ensues.

 

In this context, I would say money is bad for any economy (though can be good for those who understand and play the system (good game!)). Thinking in terms of money is what I've referred to in the past as The Money Trap, actually.

 

A better way is to focus on actual production and things like real assets. This will help ground us more in reality. Money should have no part. Large groups of people will naturally find certain things to be most traded, and these which are found to be stable over time make for good standards and quick negotiations. Metals tend to fill this role for many reasons. Metals are not made, for one. No one makes metals like making money. They have to work hard to find metals, mine them, refine them, etc. Thus, the supply is linked to real production. We can't just imagine more. We definitely can't borrow them into existence. Metals are also consistent in volume and mass; good for standards. Gold is particularly well suited because it won't rust or dissolve in most circumstances. It won't spoil, like food does. Being dense helps because then you don't need a wagon of gold to trade for a wagon of food. It's easily recognized and tested, as well. Lots of reasons, all having to do with objective reality.

 

Keeping with your usage of "money", I would never describe gold as being money, even if everyone had some and was trading with it. It would still simply be gold.

[thesapien]

Guys' date=' I think you are both contemplating the wrong things. You ought to be discussing the difference between value and utility.

 

To give an example, let take a small pot of caviar and a large loaf of bread.

 

Which has the higher value? The tiny pot of Caviar. Been highly prized by the rich for quite a while.

Which has the higher utility? The loaf of bread, it will keep you alive far longer than the pot of caviar.

 

Now gold has utility (electronics and a noble metal) but this utility in no way explains the value assigned it.

 

Another good experiment is to think of a valuable painting. In can exchange hands many times for ever increasing sums. Then the value can crash to zero when it's revealed as a forgery. (It's utility was always close to zero).

[/quote']

 

If you see value and utility as entirely distinct and independent, you are either headed into trouble or very fortunate, living in luxury for the time being. The high value of high art is a luxury.

 

Notes about caviar and bread: (Caviar might actually have more nutrients.) Caviar is much harder to bring to market in equal amounts to that of bread. If it were trading at the same exchange rate as bread, supplies should vanish and the rate ought to go up to bring things back to a more "natural" market balance, unless there are speculators trading paper versions in the futures market and no one cares much for taking delivery when contracts expire, rolling over contracts instead or cashing out so as not to squeeze the physical market supply, unless squeezing the market is part of the plan to force prices up!

 

About paintings and art, collectors do add an interesting dynamic. I wouldn't say art has no utility but certainly less so. I do not personally play with numismatic coins since their exchange rates are only higher than non-numismatic coins when times are good and will necessarily fluctuate more than the metal itself.

[thesapien]

Btw, the above mention of the futures market is a nice example of how distortions of price occur with wild fluctations having nothing to do with a bad crop season or anything really, uhm, real. When a market allows for paper contracts to trade in place of the real thing, expect lots of volatility! In the case of silver, for instance, it is often estimated that over 100 times the actual amount of physical silver held by those exchanges is trading via paper versions. Thus, 100x the physical is trading in paper on a daily basis. Even crazier, most of it is conducted by just a small handful of large traders. That's like you and me and maybe a couple of other people just getting together to negotiate contracts and then determining the spot rate for the rest of the world. Oh, even more crazy, most of this trading is done using "leverage", meaning they borrow most of the required amount in cash, make the bet, take the profit or loss, then repeat. I'm so jealous.

[thesapien]

Oh, and if a certain somebody pops in from another thread, I'll add this:

 

China started their own new futures exchange for gold and silver. The difference? Theirs is allocated 1:1, meaning paper contracts match physical holdings. No cheating.

 

China has also recently reversed their laws on allowing citizens to own gold. Their government actually encourages it. Their banks actually supply it.

 

In the US, you can definitely see the opposite pattern (and I'm not talking just in the futures market (referring to the dollar here instead)). We've gone from trading with gold to trading with paper backed by gold to trading with paper not backed by anything. Paper is simply created when wanted with the limit being the self discipline of the money makers. Lack of discipline is what pushed us away from gold since gold itself couldn't be imagined into existence. Nixon closed the gold window because it had gotten too out of hand with way too much paper to link to gold.

 

Replacing a real asset (gold) with a purely financial instrument (paper/digital), led to free flowing liquidity and thus credit induced bubbles. Dollars have been inflating along the way as the supply ever increased. Thanks to crazy amounts of credit creation and insane borrowing, we had the roaring '20's. Party! Oh, but then the horrible hangover (The Great Depression). To prevent crashing any more parties, Mr Prez ordered his people to hand over their gold to the Fed. Yeah, that worked great. Well, it did for some people, those who now had all the gold AND controlled the supply of dollars. WWII, checkmate! Welcome the petro-dollar as the new world reserve currency.

 

Since 2008, the Fed has had a near 0% interest rate. With inflation, that is effectively a negative interest rate. So if you're a primary dealer able to borrow from the Fed (create money), you're basically getting paid to borrow. Yep, you heard that right. Party like it's 2012.

[Mephisto_VI]

I have questions:

 

1) How exactly is this different than creating a scene with particles? Maya' date=' 3dsMax, XSI, etc allow you to populate scenes as shown in this video using particle systems. The particles can be just about anything your shader heart desires including complex 3d objects or 2d camera facing shaders or whatever.

 

2) Infinite and unlimited detail is also nothing new, so how is this different? Using fractal generated geometry or other algorithms in scripting do this already.

 

3) Building objects out of smaller objects doesn't solve the problem of object detail; it simply forces the problem on smaller objects, increasing the number while decreasing the size. "Progressing" along this route has always been a brute force hardware and driver optimization problem. So what's new? And, again, merely replacing the building blocks with non-3d "atoms" or particles is nothing new.

 

4) What exactly do they mean by "atoms"? In the video, it sometimes seemed obvious they were actually using 3d objects or models made of polygons as their atoms. And, btw, even simple polygons can have perfect detail just using curves and a little calculus with the amount of detail being left up to the renderer.

 

It just seems to me like the video was made for gamers who are used to viewing CG that is rendered in real time and not for those who have worked or dabbled in the pre-rendering world of CG. The latter already knows all about many really cool things that are possible but limited by current tech unless you're willing to wait an hour or more for rendering a single frame. And even this latter group uses all kinds of shortcuts and cheats to get the job done, all the while being fully aware that if they just had more processing power so much more could be done.

 

So, I'm just left scratching my head, what was revolutionary or new about this video?

[/quote']

 

1) No idea, as I have not got a copy of any of those programs yet.

 

2) As the full details (probably) haven't been released yet, we don't know for sure.

 

3)Oh, but it can. By providing more anchor points/sections similar to the way using more polygons does, or using more pixels would for a digital image, the detail covering them would have a MUCH greater sense of how it is supposed to fit onto its framework/body. Imagine it as instead of the polygon itself, each atom is the vertice of a polygon. So now instead of using a pre-defined polygon, you place the points where they would be and let the program handle creating it. Potentially smaller polygons handled on the fly allowing for much more realistic movement and movement-induced effects like wrinkles instead of clipping. At least, that is my guess as to how it could be.

 

4) See #3. Atom, by definition, is a small particle that builds a larger item. Expanding on that, though thinking about it with how things currently are I do not yet see the point of it, instead of a hollow shell covered by a "skin", you could now have a solid object. While that could be useful, not much currently exists that could even use it. However, as with all things that have ever been invented, once it exists more and more will come into being that will use it. After all, humanity did not go from no electricity, cars, computers, etc... to having everything we do today in the blink of an eye. So while it is not well understood how it works and what uses it can have, it will be eventually.

[thesapien]

1) You also have no idea because you haven't used a particle system, I'm guessing, have you? Try it and you'll understand my questions better. Many common 3d production apps come with ready to use particle systems. XSI's ICE was my personal favorite. But 3dsMax and Maya have particle systems, too.

 

2) It's obvious just self advertising and over-promotion.

 

3) I don't think you understood this question or read the last sentence of it. Nor am I sure I understand what you're saying.

 

4) Dude, I totally know what atoms are already. In physics, they are a term borrowed from Ancient Greek back when 19th century physicists mistakenly thought they'd discovered irreducible building blocks. But they were wrong. Atoms are mostly hollow and made of smaller stuff (protons, neutrons, electrons) which are possibly made of smaller stuff (multidimensional vibrating strings) and so on. This is not what the designer of this silly software is talking about anyway. So I asked what did he mean by it, technically. Are his building blocks nothing more than simply smaller polygons? Or are they versatile like current particle systems already used in production pipelines, and if so, then how are they different and why would anyone want to switch to his versions?