Euclideon's time is now to deliver on 2011's promises
What we're looking at here is the current incarnation of the mysterious Australian software company Euclideon. After their CEO Bruce Dell teased the world a few years ago with a couple of videos showing an amazing new way of rendering complex graphics, by using voxels that correspond with a screen's pixels. After commenting on how it would revolutionise the video game industry, they remained very quiet, before re-appearing with the promised, brand-new software...for surveying buildings. Their big-data expansion into the geospatial industry was a very smart one, if their priorities were as they said: to wait for the new generation of consoles to rear their heads. And they just have, but still not a peep from Bruce Dell and his team.
Taking a look at one of these older videos, there is an almost Peter Molyneux level of possibly-empty hyperbole that seem to generate more and more questions the longer Euclideon stays quiet. But we can pick up a few clues as to their trajectory; I suspect that at this early point they were not 100% clear on their strategy for making and releasing game development software.
"Months from now our software development kit will be complete, and it will be ready to hand over to the game developers"
Sigh. Aside from this, in the video Bruce Dell states two things. Firstly "We're really excited what will happen when we give our technology to real artists in the games industry" and secondly that this progression will occur "When there's more synchronisation with players in the industry". These statements seem slightly contradictory. If and when their Unlimited Detail tool is completed, selling it digitally (perhaps over Steam's software shop) would be a breeze. Trying to gain support of major studios would require a lot more effort - especially if this software is so controversially advanced as they say.
Come to think of it, Valve's open model and community would be perfect for Euclideon to raise their profile in the gaming world. A company like Valve is notoriously secretive about their work, but unlike the black box of Euclideon this attitude is only applied in a dramatic sense, hiding details about new stories to give them maximum impact upon release.
I'm sorry if this little piece extrapolates too much. Perhaps my optimism for the small Aussie company is stretching too far, and their fate lies in something other than video games. Moore's Law is taking no prisoners meanwhile; the realtime demo below of Unreal Engine 4 shows the uncanny valley slowly being crossed as hardware increases in power. Even with its amazing potential, Unlimited Detail upon release could be nothing but a nitrous injection to the already snowballing capability of computers.
Maybe this the awe-captured fanboy speaking again, but if Bruce Dell is as smart as he sounds, his delivered promises could improve, and certainly diversify the way people smarter than me create virtual worlds. Regardless, as Valve shows, maintaining public dialogue for the purpose of cultivating faith in one's ideas cannot hurt.