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> But curiously, none of the pieces use fancy mathematics. > “This thing might as well have been discovered 50 years ago, but it wasn’t,” Thorup said. “That ma

> But curiously, none of the pieces use fancy mathematics. > “This thing might as well have been discovered 50 years ago, but it wasn’t,” Thorup said. “That makes it that much more impressive.” this is so cool to me, it feel like a solution you could* have stumbled upon while doing game development or something *probably wouldn't but still

hinkley 1y ago
Maybe someone did and just didn’t see it as novel?
- kevingadd 1y ago
  Depending on where you work they might not let you publish a paper about it. Certainly was the case at one game studio I worked for, very secretive.
RobRivera 1y ago
Gamedevs -I find at least- are so obsessively deep at SOLVING their problem at hand that their headspace is indexed on shipping the game, the project, deadlines, and what to eat for the next meal (probably pizza). Rather than the academia. Just a hunch tho
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 1y ago
  Isn't that just it though? The problem very well could be that some part of the game is running too slow so they just start solving it. No time to read and write academic papers.
  - RobRivera 1y ago
    That's what I have found to be the case: time is in short supply
  - colonCapitalDee 1y ago
    This algorithm is asymptotically faster than the state of the art, but it isn't faster in practice. At least not yet!
  - thfuran 1y ago
    Somebody somewhere might be Ramanujan, but the average person is going to be a whole lot better served by reading literature than trying to reinvent the field.
    - 8n4vidtmkvmk 1y ago
      I'd certainly Google for some algos before writing one myself. Years ago, however, I came across a paper for optimal convex polygon decomposition that had zero implementations and the paper was so complicated.. couldn't figure out how to implement it myself. I came up with something new and published it which was apparently enticing enough to be picked up by at least one game library. So that was neat.

hinkley 1y ago

Maybe someone did and just didn’t see it as novel?

kevingadd 1y ago
Depending on where you work they might not let you publish a paper about it. Certainly was the case at one game studio I worked for, very secretive.

RobRivera 1y ago

Gamedevs -I find at least- are so obsessively deep at SOLVING their problem at hand that their headspace is indexed on shipping the game, the project, deadlines, and what to eat for the next meal (probably pizza). Rather than the academia. Just a hunch tho

8n4vidtmkvmk 1y ago
Isn't that just it though? The problem very well could be that some part of the game is running too slow so they just start solving it. No time to read and write academic papers.
- RobRivera 1y ago
  That's what I have found to be the case: time is in short supply
- colonCapitalDee 1y ago
  This algorithm is asymptotically faster than the state of the art, but it isn't faster in practice. At least not yet!
- thfuran 1y ago
  Somebody somewhere might be Ramanujan, but the average person is going to be a whole lot better served by reading literature than trying to reinvent the field.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 1y ago
    I'd certainly Google for some algos before writing one myself. Years ago, however, I came across a paper for optimal convex polygon decomposition that had zero implementations and the paper was so complicated.. couldn't figure out how to implement it myself. I came up with something new and published it which was apparently enticing enough to be picked up by at least one game library. So that was neat.