A 9-person Australian company called Euclidean has a new software technology that blows all the previously-believed limitations of real-time rendering right out the window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVB1ayT6Fdc

It really makes you appreciate the phrase "efficient use of resources." Their tech demo is mind-bogglingly impressive all by itself, but the further implications of what is actually possible with current computer hardware are reality shaking.

It really makes me wonder where else (besides AI) current technology is vastly undershooting its potential in a similar way, using brute force (successfully or unsuccessfully) to accomplish something when there's a vastly more efficient way to do it that nobody's thought of yet.