Current Events > One day, FEM-powered video games will be a reality

(+) Yeah! (+)

The next step in video game technical progression would be the ability to represent every object using tiny discrete elements (i.e. deformable voxels). This would allow endless potential in simulating destructible environments. Trees would be able to properly break into pieces; liquids being able to persist and flow when splashed or dropped; and arbitrary materials being able to deform and collapse in response to forces.

Currently, the technology is super fucking slow and limited to workstations for pre-rendered scientific simulations. If you thought ray tracing was slow (one ray per pixel), then imagine computing the force and stiffness between every possible pair of finite elements per frame
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