Here you can see 16,384 characters path finding here at 60 FPS here though -> http://download-developer.amd.com/GPU/videos/Froblins.H.264.HD.136MB.mov
So by your statement you now are satisfied.
He said dwarves and I assume in the df world, the path finding in that demo is trivial from what I can see. As a technical demo it's impressive as a display of performance it's not.
So... It uses pathfinding, jobfinding, fluid simulations, realtime obstacle avoidance, atmospheric modeling, the characters, eat, sleep, mine, react and have nearly every characteristic that dwarves can have except their propensity to run blindly into trouble and you say that it is not a display of performance...
Nearly every calculation that grinds the simulation to a halt in dwarf fortress is handled flawlessly in an admittedly specialized parallel environment. So it is highly relevant...
So... What other worthless theory can I kill today?
Lets see...
Cant be done... *Ooops can be!*
Will take too much memory *Ooops it doesnt!*
No one has done anything like it *Ooops they have!*
It only is for cluster computing or rendering *While it can be It is not ONLY for that*
Threads MUST be very limited in number *I conceded a little on this one but for the most part they don't have to be*
It will only increase speed by 2% *Nope, looks like it could increase speed by a factor based on the number of cores available if done right.*
We just have to wait for faster processors *Oops they haven't really gotten faster in the last 8 years!*
Alls I have seen is a tech demo that was not relevant *Oops it, really is because all the behaviors that dwarves have are mirrored in it. Its not a tech demo of an airplane simulator its one that uses the same basic mechanics as dwarf fortress just in a finer grained (and probably more static) world.
Anyone else want to try their luck with an ignorant statement?!