Larger VR environments, covering a greater internal volume in greater detail, are cost-prohibitive even though VR worlds are computed selectively for inhabitants, reducing redundancy and extraneous objects and places to the minimal details required to provide a convincing experience to those inhabitants for example, a mirror not being looked at would be reduced to a reflection value, with details being 'filled in' as necessary if its owner were to turn their model-of-a-head towards it.

Related explorations go on in virtual realities (VR), which make extensive use of patchwork heuristics to crudely simulate immersive and convincing physical environments, albeit at a maximal speed of seventeen times slower than 'real' time, limited by the optical crystal computing technology used at the time of the story.

lamberti to evolve, something the Autoverse chemistry seems to make extremely difficult. Tiny environments, simulated in the Autoverse and filled with populations of a simple, designed lifeform, Autobacterium lamberti, are maintained by a community of enthusiasts obsessed with getting A. It is deterministic, internally consistent and vaguely resembles real chemistry. The Autoverse is an artificial life simulator based on a cellular automaton complex enough to represent the substratum of an artificial chemistry. In this way, Egan attempts to deconstruct notions of self, memory, and mortality, and of physical reality. The book deals with consequences of human consciousness being amenable to mathematical manipulation, as well as some consequences of simulated realities. It uses the assumption that human consciousness is Turing-computable: that consciousness can be produced by a computer program. It focuses on a model of consciousness and reality, the Dust Theory, similar to the Ultimate Ensemble Mathematical Universe hypothesis proposed by Max Tegmark.

Permutation City asks whether there is a difference between a computer simulation of a person and a 'real' person. The novel was also cited in a 2003 Scientific American article on multiverses by Max Tegmark. Campbell Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year in 1995 and was nominated for the Philip K. Sections of the story were adapted from Egan's 1992 short story 'Dust', which dealt with many of the same philosophical themes.

Permutation City is a 1994 science-fiction novel by Greg Egan that explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, through various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality.

Greg egan's permutation city