This new hyperrealistic graphics engine will change the world … if it’s real

Think for a second about what it was like to play Wolfenstein or Doom back in the day. Now think about playing Grand Theft Auto V. 

Things have changed. And an Australian tech company called Euclideon is promising to take it to the next level with a fancy new graphics engine. If it's the real deal, it'll change more than video games. It will change how we interact with the world. 

Computer-generated images get more realistic every year. In movies, it's now all but impossible to tell what's computer-generated and what isn't. Video games have come a long way, too, but they have one problem to overcome that movies don't: real-time graphics rendering. As you make choices about what to do and where to go in the virtual world, the world — ever single part of it — needs to be created in response to those choices. 

Brisbane-based Euclideon came on the scene in 2010, promising a graphics engine that could produce "unlimited detail" in real-time 3D renderings. The would mean hyperrealistic imaginary worlds for video games and perfect digital copies of real world places. Pretty exciting.

Stop picturing the best video game you've ever played. Start picturing what it's like to walk down the street, be in your home, visit a museum, travel somewhere. 

You can take an online tour of the Louvre right now if you feel like it. If Euclideon's technology pans out, you'll be able to walk through a 'digital copy' of the Louvre and it'll look like real life, no matter where you turn and what you do. And you'll be able to play outrageously awesome video games. Strap on your Oculus Rift, and things just got real. Really real.

Now the Aussie company is back with two new videos that show off their renderings and explain how they make them.

The meat of the info is here, including some real-time demonstrations:

And their slicky-produced trailer, which, you'll note, doesn't actually include demonstrations of real-time rendering, is here:

Basically, Euclideon's tech works like this. "Computer graphics are made of little flat polygons, whereas the real world is made of atoms," Bruce Dell, the CEO of Euclideon, explains. Creating a world out of polygons that looks realistic takes a long time, a lot of talented graphic designers (ever watch the full credits for Avatar?), and a ton of computer power. So Euclideon found a new way to do it — by creating point clouds using laser scanners.

The geospatial industry uses laser scanners for mapping and visualizations. As Dell says, "it sees the world in little points." So if you drop a laser scanner in the middle of Stonehenge and turn on the scanner, it transforms Stonehenge into a highly accurate, digital point cloud. But there's still plenty to do before that point cloud looks like a realistic digital copy of Stonehenge.

Dell sums it up this way: "We've built a technology that takes laser scanned data, upgrades it, enriches it, remodulates its color by compounding different values from different angles, compresses it down to make it use little memory and then we stream from the hard-drive or over the Internet."

The results looks pretty great so far. But there are plenty of doubters out there. The inventor of Minecraft calls it a "scam" and Kotaku thinks it "looks too good to be true."

If Euclideon is for real, the applications are endless and world changing. Euclideon is offering to scan historical sites for free, for example. So people who might otherwise never be able to visit a place like Stonehenge, or Mecca, or the Louvre might able to do so virtually and realistically from their computers. 

It's an amazing prospect for gaming and virtual tourism, but it could also transform the way people imagine themselves as part of a global commnunity.

Imagine how you might have experienced this summer's war between Israel and Hamas, for example, if you could have booted up an Oculus Rift and walked through a digital copy of Gaza. Imagine walking through a perfectly rendered copy of an Ebola clinic in Liberia. Or even just visit somewhere you'll never otherwise go. Crazy.  

Journalists and designers are already looking at ways to use virtual reality and graphics technology like Euclideon's to change the way we experience the world. The Des Moines Register, for example, recently teamed up with Gannett Digital on a reporting series about modern farming that includes an interactive virtual experience on an Iowa farm.

Then again, maybe this is all too rosy an understanding of technology and globalization, and maybe Euclideon's graphics engine will mainly end up benefiting the US military industrial complex.