About a year ago I heard about a game engine for a game called "Republic, the Revolution" or so. The engine was said to be able of rendering any amount of polys one can think of. Was it a fake or does anybody know something about it and the techniques behind that engine ?

In a word: Impostors

Convert polygon detail to textures when it gets past a certain distance... Not fake, not new or invented by Elixir. They might be the first to use the technique (or a modified version) in a game though.

some links:

http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~gs/research/egmmi/

http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~torsten/Teaching/Cmpt461/LectureNotes/PDF/10_ibr.pdf

--
Simon O''''Connor
Creative Asylum Ltd
www.creative-asylum.com

The actual game is not out yet (at least not to my knowledge =( ) but yes from what S1CA said it just sounds like detail levels. They are doing a similar thing with Team Fortress 2.

It''s not "sound like", i actually had a confirmation of this..

Y.