Re: Playing with everything
Posted by Ben on Mar 04, 2002 at 01:55
(68.2.70.22)Re: Playing with everything (dogrock)
Just talking about what the answer to your question would be in a "virtual" universe.
In such a universe, the computer processor which the universe is running on only bothers to simulate the parts which are percieved by the participants in the universe, and uses simpler general purpose algorithms to generate on the fly what is not seen.
In such a universe, there is no forest when no person is there. There is simply a rough approximation of general rates of trees falling stored inside the central processors database, which is only used to generate the scene of the forest when someone actually visits it.
A requirement for a virtual universe is that the participants minds be part of the simulation, and the simulation be capable of accessing the menories and thoughts of the participants minds to draw the world around them. This allows the simulation to always draw precisely what the person in the simulation expects to see. This also permits the simulation to be much smaller, only drawing what a participant sees, and not the various other minutia that the participant doesn't notice.
Funny thing is, it is possible to build a virtual universe with reasonable (though large) computing power in our universe, but it would be impossible to ever tell whether you were inside one or not. In fact, once built, it would be impossible to tell whether you were in the real universe or in the virtual one for sure.
Follow Ups:
- Re: Playing with everything Amaranth Rose 04/3 21:36 (0)
- Re: Playing with everything dogrock 04/3 19:31 (0)