I had expected something better than the bulk of pictures from Hubble. It honestly just looks like a picture captured by Hubble.

Edit: clearly, I was wrong

The scale is much, much different. This is a fraction of the space Hubble photographed. This is a tiny bit of space shown with the clarity that Hubble had for areas far bigger

Thanks for the explanation. I was clearly wrong! Honestly, not sure what "better" I had expected.

I wouldn't say you're wrong. It does look very similar to a Hubble deep field image because there isn't much of a difference visually between the different scales.

That's kind of the definition of fractal. You look at 1/100 the area, but at 100 times the magnification, and it looks the same.

The universe isn't infinite, so this wouldn't scale forever, but we probably have a ways to go before we need to worry about that.

Just out of curiosity: does anyone know any real-time multiplayer game that runs the physics simulations on the server side? AFAIK, only Rocket League is doing this (and they have some good talks about it on GDC).

If it's anything serious/competitive and has to have integrity without having trust between enemy players, the server has to run the simulations. Otherwise it would be extremely easy to cheat just by modifying the client code and memory.

Though you can have client-side physics engine running as an interpolation between authoritative server states.

Physics on the server? Nearly every shooter game. Server-authoritative is the way. As per the article, the clients only predict some physics objects (requires simulation) and interpolates & extrapolates others (does not require simulation). The clients have no first authority over the server’s simulation, other than their own player inputs.

Here is the GDC talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueEmiDM94IE

Of particular note is the fact that they run their physics loop at 120hz to minimize error.

Minecraft does physics and lighting on the server, although the physics model is very simplistic.

Physics is also ran on the client, but the server is authoritative and can correct or override client decisions.

Pretty much every serious online games do it.

For my game, King of Kalimpong, I run physics on the client and the server. The server is the boss but the client feels good.

I suspect most games where movement is primarily physics-based are doing this, but who knows, netcode tends to be very game-specific.

Multiplay Crackdown 3 (I worked on it) runs a fairly meaty physics simulation on the server side.