Computer Scientists Grow a Better Virtual Tree

Reservoir Hill points us to a story about a group of computer scientists who are taking steps to bring the creation of 3-D worlds to the casual user. As a proof-of-concept, Vladlen Koltun and the Stanford Virtual Worlds Group, using data collected by botanists, have developed software to create virtual 3-D trees with roughly 100 different tree attributes, all of which are highly variable. Quoting: "The inability of casual computer users to build 3-D objects - you practically have to be a sculptor, Koltun says - is an anchor holding back the promise of virtual worlds. Koltun's software, Dryad (a tree nymph in Greek mythology,) lets users move through the 100-attribute tree space in a fashion similar to navigating city streets on Google Maps. As in real life, not all trees are equally desirable. Since no single user is capable of mapping out the best parts of the enormous tree space, this mapping of desirability is done collaboratively, leading to continuous refinement of the software."

Comments

Re:Computer scientists don't understand "infinity"

[91degrees]

Such an implementation has already been created, we computer scientists call it "the computer".

Okay... Get your "computer" to print out every single number between 0 and a googleplex. A UTM can do that. No computer can.

Now, no matter how powerful we make our "computer", no matter how (or if) we implement floating point it makes no difference to the number of possible trees a computer can generate.

100 floating point parameters. A float can handle approximately 4 000 000 000 values. 100 of these gives you something like 16 followed by 959 zeroes.

Not sure if the post was a troll or an attempt at humour - but the insighful mod makes me sad.

A troll is a lame attempt at humour.