this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
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They'll get round to it. They're doing the graphics first. They're currently making individual 3D models of "all the stars".
I'm not a computer graphics guy, but I wanna math. Theoretically, if I wanted to make the smallest possible 3d model, I would define it as four interconnected points. Each point has x, y, and z coordinates, so each model takes a theoretical minimum of 12 bytes of storage. Someone who knows computers can correct me if I'm off by a bunch.
The lower estimate is around 100,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way. That's only 1.2 terabytes worth of my theoretical minimum 3d model. Doable! But you said all stars. The lower estimate is around 10^22 stars in the universe. That would be 120 zettabytes. That's only a few orders of magnitude off from the total available worldwide datadata storage!
Edit: I might have thought of a way to define a 3D model in just 2 bytes. You need four points that each have values for x, y, and z. They don't need 256 possible values for those, they can get by with two each. One bit can store two possible positions, so we can use as little as two bytes to define every point's position with 4 bits to spare. Behold, a tetrahedron:
0000 0100 1010 1110Each set of four digits defines the x, y, and z coordinates for each point, as well as one extra dimension. You could use those extra four bits however you want. An extra spatial dimension, defining a color, etc. The theoretically smallest possible 3D model. Take the numbers I said up there and divide them by 6. A model for every star in the universe, and it would only take 20 zettabytes.
‘Elite Dangerous’ is from 2014.
Remarkable that you can copypaste all that and still can't comprehend what was done in 1984 and what was done in 2014.
If you find a way to represent our existing Milky Way galaxy with a procedural algorithm and a seed that can be run in a reasonable time on any current computer or even a cluster (say, running for a few dozen years), you're welcome to claim the Nobel prize.
How about you reread the thread instead, see that it's about accurately reproducing existing stars, and realize that you indeed have a comprehension problem.
Wow, it's really a damn mess in your head.