In some sense, "gameplay", whatever that means, must always win. But it becomes a blurry concept with realism when you think of different moods you could be going for, and we vaguely slant realistic most of the time.
Well I was wrong, which is not that surprising really, but I know that if personal quantum computers where available I'd want the individual grains of sand to be simulated, that would be detailed and awesome.
@JesterHell696: I think you've got the wrong impression of what quantum computers are. They're not insanely powerful versions of the current von Neumann computers, but more akin to array processors or graphics processors, i.e. devices very good at a limited set of tasks (such as rendering the current financial network's encryption almost totally useless as protection against an attack against any selected individual transactions, but not all at once, for instance, assuming the attacker has access to such computers, of course). The analogy isn't quite accurate, as the domain in which quantum computers shine is one where current computers curl up in a ball and cry, rather than just one or two orders of magnitude faster (NP complete problems, in math terminology). A quantum co-processor would e.g. be handy for path finding (but you'd still have to write a special program for the co-processor), as it should be possible to compute the actual cheapest path for dorfs according to the penalties applied in little time. Alas, quantum co-processors for private use are probably a very long way off.
Just my two cents:
Current "binary logical based" computing relies on strong associations between a state either being on or off. We have done analog computing in the past, but run into the same problems that analog transmission creates. Analog transmission, for those of you too young to know what rabbit ears are, is a form of transmitting analog data over a medium. A medium may be air, or it may be copper wire, in either case noise is mixed into the signal which results in white gaussian noise, or static. Discrete Binary transmissions means that the addition of noise to your system has a significantly decreased impact on the output because the signal for a 1 is a stronger signal than the signal for a 0... pretending we're adding noise a 1 with negative noise of 0.2 is STILL 0.8 which is closer to 1, a 0 with positive noise of 0.2 is 0.2 which is still closer to 0.
Basic computer operations now explained, we can look at what quantum field equations are actually all about. They're highly probabilistic and deal with more states than just the voltage. We have similar paradigms currently with Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) where we are transmitting in a pseudo-analog mechanism while retaining the benefits of well defined states. It is still digital as there are discrete states, but there are more than just two which means that for each second of signal you are able to transmit more data while retaining a low bit error rate and otherwise keeping the data producing a usable end product, all of this on the same channel. Though the current paradigm is to process the data received by the QAM channel individually, this is because of how current computing works in that it is not yet prepared to handle processing all the data in the same form it arrived in.
What you should be picturing is NOT an array of processors, but instead a SINGLE processor that is capable of managing the flow of data into the computer at the same time. This is a paradigm shift, you don't change from "Quantum Field Equations" to "Binary" which gets fed into some "Array of processors" but instead STAY in the same form of QAM, the data is processed while in that form, it isn't split up but instead the interactions (again, probablistic which means you may get a different answer each time you perform the same equation, think of probabilistic in much the same way as a level of noise which places quantum computing in a state of analog computing with additional benefits of having more states than just voltage to vary).
SSE is a similar paradigm shift. SSE isn't the same as having multiple processors as much as it provides instructions that operate in parallel instead of serial (as most instructions are performed) and does not consume more "cores" performing the instruction but is only related to the core that it is performed on. The underlying idea is not arrays of processors, but that you're now able to work on more data at any given moment without consuming more resources for working on more data. Unlike SSE which only appears like quantum computing in the high level perspective, a quantum computer would not need highly specialized ALUs to process additional data, it would process it all at the same time because that is what quantum computing is all about... processing every bit of data you can push into the system across numerous states at the same exact time without the use of additional hardware and doing so for every instruction.
Sure, you could use classical binary approaches with Quantum Computing... but at that point you're not actually getting any benefits over traditional computing.
Of course, too many kids don't recognize that the reason we're using silicon and binary logic based computing isn't because it's the best the world has to offer. Silicon is crap compared to things like Exotic Metals like Indium Gallium Arsenide, but silicon is CHEAP. It's all about what is the cheapest thing you can place on the market, even lithography is all about making the processor cheaper, not actually BETTER! Why would we ever see Quantum Computing in homes when VR Goggles market better than the plethora of Mind Machine interfaces that research has been working on, that actually WORK... and that are superior in every way except the user needs to train the system and it isn't as easy as the universal Matrix Jack "plug in and go". Consumers don't care about what is best, they care about what has more Hype behind it, and how cheap it is... that's why people buy cheap gaming laptops with horrible thermals... let alone those who buy a gaming desktop instead of building it themselves :S
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 1444433 times)