As a scientist I am pretty sure 'unlimited detail' is impossible with current computer power. This is just advertisement speak and very probably something already well known. However it might be innovative - you never know until looking into the details.

That this Notch guy makes accusations and cannot clearly bring evidence so that everybody believes him is already a sign also he isn't that careful. It's probably just an opinion.

So I guess that neither of them is hitting the nail on the head and if Notch will retract his statements I don't know, but I would require him to back up his claims with more facts, otherwise not believing him and lowering his future standing.

I found this video :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl6PE_n6zTk

I thought Notch defended his position nicely - http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam ?

There is more evidence in there than what Euclidean have provided...

You could use fractal generators to give you indefinite zooming abilities, but that would only add generic information and will repeat itself also indefinitely. Maybe the company made something like this.

Ultimately the number of voxels, ... in one image is limited by the graphics card. Don't see a way to overcome it without a miracle.

Difficult, not impossible :)

the comments on the video seems to agree with me?


Edit- I found one of the animation reference, it was in Notch's blog:

"Another weakness is that voxels are horrible for doing animation, because there is no current fast algorithms for deforming a voxel cloud based on a skeletal mesh, and if you do keyframe animation, you end up with a LOT of data. It’s possible to rotate, scale and translate individual chunks of voxel data to do simple animation (imagine one chunk for the upper arm, one for the lower, one for the torso, and so on), but it’s not going to look as nice as polygon based animated characters do."

Of course it's not impossible, there's absolutely no reason why it should be. I do believe - and correct me if I'm wrong - that animating voxels just requires a lot more processing power than animating ... what we have now. Goddamn words, always eluding me.

edit: Your edit saved me, polygons! Yes.

That's it! I'll never buy another copy of Minecraft, until Notch eats his words and implements this new technology (that he denounced) to Minecraft!

He already did, kinda :-P

And how do you know that? Were you there when it was taken? Videos can be sped up, improved or even rendered frame by frame. So a PR video doesn't proove anything. Until they release some actual demo, we only have their word that they created something awesome, and that is not much.

lol

Do you think Notch is man enough to eat his shoes?