You can do a lot of stuff in Dreams, the PS4’s game-making game. You can make a disgusting breakfast cereal that should never be viewed by anyone, ever. You can remake different games from other platforms, hopefully without getting sued. Or you can make perhaps the most realistic-looking carpet that the gaming world has ever seen.
This future carpet was made by John Beech Senior Principal Designer at Media Molecule, who posted a screenshot to Twitter yesterday. "Who needs polygons when you can make carpet tiles like these,” Beech asked rhetorically while showcasing his latest work.
Okay, so yes, this is just a picture of some toys on a virtual carpet, but this is an entirely new and amazing breakthrough in gaming. This carpet doesn't use polygons at all and is in fact a shader with some blurring effects and something that Beech calls "flecks." Those flecks are like little paint splats that have random elements to give the carpet that fuzzy look.
Since all of this is basically a shader with some effects, it uses very little system resources while simultaneously appearing like the real deal. Rendering all those fibers individually would be hell on something like the PS4, but Dreams accomplishes carpet quite artfully.
One Twitter user accused Beech of simply taking a photograph, so he proved his work by responding with an image of just the toys.
Dreams is still making impressive images like this on the regular, but it seems like the dream might be over. A recent Kotaku article reported that Dreams' player count is way down compared to what it was when the game/creation engine launched back in February of last year. People are still using Dreams in other fields, but the overall user count is stifling its potential.
Some users are petitioning Media Molecule to shore up interest in Reddit threads and YouTube videos. Hopefully the developer gets some traction to keep Dreams alive.