Announcing - the end of the polygon era in computer graphics.

Popsci is reporting a major graphic breakthrough by a company called Unlimited Detail. The nutshell is that Unlimited Detail has come up with a way of dispensing with polygons and the ever increasing need for more and more of them to render life like graphics. What Unlimited Detail has done instead is switch to a system of using points of color, much like paintings from the pointillist school of modern art. With points of color, instead of a plane of color, rendered objects look more naturally rounded then when using a high number of polygons. This idea has been around for a long time, but it never made any headway before because it took a prohibitive amount of processing power per frame to render objects as points instead of planes. The break through that Unlimited Detail has made is to render only the points that are actually in view in a given frame. That approach dramatically cut the amount of processing power per frame.

And here's the real kicker: the method uses software and not hardware.

At a stroke, Unlimited Detail (catchy name) has forever ended the polygon count "arms race" between the major graphics card companies.

And what computer graphics dreams may come now? The detail will be, er, unlimited?

Here are some youtubes by Unlimited Detail. Commence salivating.