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Not quite true useless info.

Companies like SGI and 3dlabs had been making dedicated graphics hardware with this particular feature for years, even for consumers ( N64 and Permedia predate the Voodoo Graphics ).

Even so, you forget that the Rendition Verite graphics chip ( with a similar feature set ) was released at the same time as the Voodoo Graphics, and even had the first 3D-accelerated version of Quake.

Hell, if Intel hadn't been stupid enough to reuse the floating-point registers to implement MMX, there's no telling what would have happened to the graphics accelerator market. Bilinear Filtering in software was one of the target applications of MMX, but the combined registers meant you couldn't render the 3D scene and use your integer MMX unit to filter it at the same time. Now THAT's useless info.

Anachronox was. 3d game glossary [http://www.bluesnews.com/guide/qe/games.htm]

Even if you assume that to really play the game you need twice the minimum specs which would be approximately:

2 Ghz CPU

512 MB RAM

GF2 or Radeon 8xxx series card

I would guess that's gonna be one outdated computer system by Jan-March 2004.

So much for Doom 3 forcing everyone to upgrade and sparking a business revivaling for PC parts manufacturers....

People are supposed to care when this is how people who "care" talk about them?

Though I fall somewhere in the middle of average Joe and Mensa member (though I would never know if I could join Mensa because I find such things to be too elitest for me), I find your tone to be distasteful and self-defeating. If you want people to agree with you, or even here your side out, you should be persuasive, not hateful. In fact, if I was searching for GNU I would probably be looking for their new line of snowboards, but sports are probably below you, correct? Try a little tolerance. My homepage is Blue's News for the record.

So not to be 100% off-topic. Even though I understand the signifcance here, I think it is delicious that it is news that someone was able to get a web browser to surf the web.

You can find the WMV download link here. The music video is quite long and amusing. :)

Worse than that, THG can't even get their facts straight. For example, when discussing fsutil.exe on page 4, the caption of the picture calls it a DOS app (it's not) and say it's from Sysinternals (perhaps they meant ntfsinfo, like the picture shows), yet the article text properly calls fsutil a "command line utility" (which it is) from Microsoft (which it is). While they do mention that it works on XP and not Windows 2000, they don't bother to mention that it's also available on Windows Server 2003, and that it's a system utility that's installed with the OS (c:\win[dows|nt]\system32\fsutil.exe). And just to add insult to injury, the "fsutil fsinfo" command they suggest you run is not quite correct. You need something more like "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:". "fsutil fsinfo" by itself just gives you another help screen, and not "scads of fascinating statistical information on the file system, volume and MFT."

All this article does is reinforce my dislike for Tom's Hardware Guide, and gives me ammunition I can use to convince others that THG is crap, too. If you want good hardware reviews, go somewhere good like AnandTech or Sharky Extreme. Hell, you could even go to Blue's News for the daily Hardware Reviews and still get better info. (I've not once seen Blue's link to THG from the Hardware Reviews ... I wonder why?)

NVidia immidiately put out a rebuttal to these claims, and I'm not sure why they weren't reported along with this article. But, I guess I really can't say that I'm not used to biased or ignorant reporting from slashdot.

From Bluesnews (from an unlinked CNet article):

"Recently, there have been questions and some confusion regarding 3DMark 03 results obtained with certain Nvidia" products, Futuremark said in the statement. "We have now established that Nvidia's Detonator FX drivers contain certain detection mechanisms that cause an artificially high score when using 3DMark 03."

A representative at Nvidia questioned the validity of Futuremark's conclusions. "Since Nvidia is not part of the Futuremark beta program (a program which costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars to participate in), we do not get a chance to work with Futuremark on writing the shaders like we would with a real applications developer," the representative said. "We don't know what they did, but it looks like they have intentionally tried to create a scenario that makes our products look bad."

I think this might be what you're referring to:

"The R200 path has a slight speed advantage over the ARB2 path on the R300, but only by a small margin, so it defaults to using the ARB2 path for the quality improvements. The NV30 runs the ARB2 path MUCH slower than the NV30 path. Half the speed at the moment. This is unfortunate, because when you do an exact, apples-to-apples comparison using exactly the same API, the R300 looks twice as fast, but when you use the vendor-specific paths, the NV30 wins.

The reason for this is that ATI does everything at high precision all the time, while Nvidia internally supports three different precisions with different performances. To make it even more complicated, the exact precision that ATI uses is in between the floating point precisions offered by Nvidia, so when Nvidia runs fragment programs, they are at a higher precision than ATI's, which is some justification for the slower speed."

-John Carmack, Jan 29 2003

Every graphics engine since Quake 1, that John Carmack has made, has used OpenGL. In his latest .plan update he makes many comments about using OpenGL, though the most obvious is this: "Trying to keep boneheaded-ideas-that-will-haunt-us-for-years out of Direct-X is the primary reason I have been attending the Windows Graphics Summit for the past three years, even though I still code for OpenGL." Anyway, if an interesting read is his .plan update when he was first experimenting with OpenGL in quake. Basically, there are not as many problems with DirectX anymore, but he still uses OpenGL. Personally I like OpenGL better because of its design philosophy and because it's cross platform. Anyway, some links are below for those interested.

http://www.bluesnews.com/plans/1/

http://www.exaflop.org/docs/d3dogl/d3dogl_jc_plan. html

Exactly. In fact, a good PD system will nearly eliminate PKillers and that sort of people, and strengthen the community and interaction between players, much more than a conventional game could.

Like I said before, the idea is to solve the problems of PD(death by lags and glitches for example) and not just whine about them, but actually try to solve them. It's easy to say PD won't work because of X or Y, but it's harder and more rewarding, I think, to try to actually solve those problems. These new ideas might revitalize the MMORPG market, EVEN if the game fails, the ideas and new features because of PD might be really useful even for other games.

Check a discussion I'm having on BluesNews about PD, posts #11 and up.

MEO Discussion on BluesNews

Here's the first screenshot. The game's developed by Firefly, who are made of ex-Impressions developers - the Impressions people's resume includes Zeus, Pharoah, Caesar, and Great Cthulhu. OK, all except that last one.

Though Blues have been mentioned here in other posts, I'd also like to mention ve3d.com, another great site that summarises a lot of other news sites.

Heh, I hope this doesn't dent your respect for Blue.. because it's well placed.. but it's actually a team effort. Frans also posts, and I'm pretty sure a few others guys do as well.

You can read all about it here. All of these guys deserve a round of applause as far as I'm concerned.

I don't know about you guys, but BluesNews.com does as good a job of covering all the major news as I can imagine. They do a daily roundup of all interviews, reviews, hardware news, etc., etc. They manage to hit just about everything that'ss worth reading..

a few other good sites include: games.ars, gamegirl advance, games.design.art.culture, got game?, how they got game, ludology, or for regular gaming news, the friendlier ones are bluesnews, gamespy, games are fun and shacknews. where do you go?

Damnit, I hate it when I forget to log in (yes, that AC comment is mine). JC made this comment back at the NV20 launch. The game was designed to maximize the featureset of the NV20 and early in the development was being tested on a GF3. He says: " GF4-MX will still run Doom properly, but it will be using the NV10 codepath with only two texture units and no vertex shaders. A GF3 or 8500 will be much better performers." No mention of the GF4's performance, as this was at the time of the GF4 launch (if memory serves again). But seriously, if you needed a GF4 to really run Doom 3 with every possible detail, why would ATI be switching to a 2 year cycle between major chipset revisions? You do not need all the speed that you can get right now EXCEPT if you are using significant amounts of antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. JC is smart enough not to design a game engine that will run well and look better than the previous generation of engines on only less than 5% of computers out there.

Trolling /. is dead! Maybe you morons should try the morons at some easy places like here, here, here, or here

ant (go through his website, i easily get lost there often) is a regular link submitter to bluesnews, where this was posted yesterday.

it was submitted by frag.machine back then.

Agreed on the drop-in multiplayer, every game released since has built on it.

I have never liked RTS online because of all the logistics involved. Unless you and all the players know what you're doing, it can take 20 minutes to get a game started. Then, if anyone drops, it feels like you just wasted your time.

Also, a note on hardware acceleration:

VQuake was the world's first 3D-accelerated version of Quake. Carmack decided to work with Rendition because, at the time, their hardware was much more affordable than 3DFX and better performing than PowerVR.

VQuake had all the features of GLQuake, plus hardware edge anti-aliasing. The port was a pain in the ass, and soured Carmack to hardware-specific game ports. So, when he wrote an OpenGL implementation for his Intergraph workstation, the light bulb clicked on.

I just wish the industry could have all agreed on a way to implement hardware edge anti-aliasing ( aside from Matrox's Stencil Buffer hack ), FSAA looks so blurry. It's sad that cards today can't even do a technique my crappy Rendition card could do with ease in native ports.

FOXNews
Drudge
Rush
InstaPundit
The Bleat
Dilbert
Blue's
jwz
Davezilla

http://www.bluesnews.com/
http://www.shacknews.com/
http://www.slashdot.org/
http://www.linuxgames.com/
http://www.icculus.org/
http://www.flipcode.com/
http://www.google.com/
http://www.gouranga.com/
http://curmudgeon.linuxgames.com/
http://icculus.org/fingerdigest.html
http://kerneltrap.org/

No doubt this will be buried into the mass of similar posts before long, but it is a decent format for listing where people generally go...

More at bluesnews.

Why would anyone go to an AIC when there are hundreds of better sites ?

Well, if this isn't late breaking news, I don't know what is!

Isn't online news supposed to be really fresh? This is a week old.

First, you can't get a decent Geforce4 Ti for ~$100. Maybe a Geforce4MX, but that is a severly crippled GF4, so much so that even John Carmack said not to get one. A Geforce4 4200 (which is the lowest Geforce 4 is about $150.

So you don't "need" a 9700 that costs $300. How about the ATI 9500, which is the slow brother of the 9700? Much cheaper, a bit crippled, but performs on par or even better than the GF 4600, let alone the 4200. And only about $180. WITH DirectX 9 support, anti-alias glory with anisotropic filtering, all at a playable rate.

This isn't just how that the 9700 is faster (duh!) than the 4x00 series from Nvidia, but also how the whole 9x00 family is faster than Nvidia, budget and highend (I don't count the bastardized 9000). This family is all derived from the tech of the 9700.

but don't take my opinion for it, check it out for yourself.

Tech Report on 9500

Anandtech on 9500

Tom's Hardware on 9500

Blues News is a good game news site.

If you're looking for general interest sites, a few to check out would be: Shacknews -- www.shacknews.com and Blue's News -- www.bluesnews.com and maybe even the Adrenaline Vault -- www.avault.com and Thresh's FiringSquad -- www.firingsquad.com. While these sites aren't perfect, they aren't nearly as bad as Gamespy and Gamespot.

Better yet are actual fan sites for games you're interested in. A good way to find some is to check the game's official page for a list of fan sites or simply talk to other players. To show you what happens when real gamers put together web sites...

Warcraft III: (Excellent replays)
www.theinclan.com

Counter-Strike: (Replays and configs)
www.sogamed.com

Quake: (News)
www.quake3stuff.com

This telemarketing Counter-Script was linked to back in October over at Blue's News. It seemed to be relevant to this discussion. I keep a copy next to my phone, but alas, I haven't had a telemarketer get through to me yet.

Also, the cops have busted my chops during their yearly grab for cash, as a poster mentioned earlier (pre-emptive hang-ups and general McGruff-ness). I just write it off to them having to do a shitty and thankless job.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Spearhead demo was also released recently. Spearhead is an add-on to MOH:AA and the demo includes two multiplayer maps - Malta (which is exclusive to this demo) and Druckkammern.

(It's Windows only.)

Oh, and BTW, could you please stop posting stories about the leaked Doom III alpha? One story about it being leaked was fine but posting about patches? WTF is wrong with you?

-jfedor

Blue's News

It's not quite as popular as /., but it's a pretty widely respected gaming news site.

As Blue's tagline says: "Established 1995. Over an eighth of a billion visitors since 1997."

AnandTech and Tom's Hardware are also up there.

Frankly, a lot of sites have been around since 1997. Find some non-university/corporate sites that have been around for 10 years with (relatively) high hit counts and it's more meaningful.

http://www.betanews.com/
http://www.gamespot.com/betacenter/

Also useful: go to Blue's News and search for "beta".

FileFront
Nvidia
3D Gamers
Beyond Unreal
The Shack
HomeLan Fed
Aus Gamers
File Planet
Faster Files
Blue's News
Gigex
FragLand
GameSpot.

And the fastest mirror that I've tried yet was Nvidia's, though you have to download six split files and run a script to recombine them.

If you made Halo for computers, no one would by Xbox's, and much fewer people would be buying the game (for the computer). Consoles simply are not computers, and I don't think we should treat them as such. PDA's are much closer to computers then game consoles.

Check out this... Halo is going to be released for PC.. this argument is moot then.

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl show=386


And for the xbox being meant as only a console.. well.. the line has really really blurred since you can check out the very computer-like specifications here... geez

http://www.xboxgamers.com/hardware/console/index.s html

It's too bad Zerstorer doesn't work with Tenebrae. Maybe if someone could hack it to work, then you'd have a good reason to try it.

From the Tenebrae FAQ (which is probably slashdotted by now, but luckily I have it sitting in my squid cache from visiting this earlier today thanks to Blue's News):

Q: I play with my favourite mod and now I get "progs.dat system vars have been modified, progdefs.h is out of date"

A: To make colored lights, etc. possible I had to change the system vars and this means that tenebrae is not compatible with old progs.dat. It should be easy however to "port" old mods to tenebrae (essentially a copy paste job).

According to the horse's mouth (Carmack) current cards will play Doom3 "fine". Naturally this means that you can't do 1600x1400 maximum graphics but with reasonable settings it will play.

He warns of the GF4MX though, but I think everyone knows that that is not a good card for a gamer anyways.

To quote John Carmack's plan:

On the topic of current Nvidia cards:
Do not buy a GeForce4-MX for Doom.

Nvidia has really made a mess of the naming conventions here. I always thought it was bad enough that GF2 was just a speed bumped GF1, while GF3 had significant architectural improvements over GF2. I expected GF4 to be the speed bumped GF3, but calling the NV17 GF4-MX really sucks.
GF4-MX will still run Doom properly, but it will be using the NV10 codepath with only two texture units and no vertex shaders. A GF3 or 8500 will be much better performers.

You can find other reviews out on the net, but tech wise, a GF4MX is just a faster GF2.

now they come up with some alleged interview with carmack

Uh, that's the finger.planetquake.com .plan archive. The same text's also here and here and here and ... well, you get the idea.

I think Carmack's working from an OpenGL 2.0 draft and providing input to help define it.

I'm not sure if this is an attempt at humour or what, but just in case people take it seriously:

John Carmack has never suggested changing to using DirectX, and has always supported ports to other systems.
(According to his .plans going back to last year sometime, Opengl is still used entirely and will be in future)

There will probably not be a retail box version of linux Doom3, but a binary port will be releasd as usual, as for the Mac.

Look at the average message boards that gamers post to (like the comments at say blue's news. The best example are any sites that have a lot of fanboys.

The site was actually listed on Blue's News on Saturday (scroll down, it's the image of the day). The site choked from the Blue's News traffic, and they had already made plans to upgrade. I don't think they were expecting the slashdot link.

• Get a nerd to write you a killer engine.
• Get other nerds to draw nice graphics and find neat sounds.
• Dribble on about concepts and visions while yet more nerds put all the content together.
• Get very rich.
• Blow it all on a customised Ferrari.
• Live the rest of your life in a desparate spiral of "nerds are the new rock starts" publicity, hyperbole, overselling, underperforming, and parasiting off of the occasional successes of people in your general vicinity.

Honestly, what has Romero got to teach anybody? How to be a success in the early 1990's and then live off of it for the rest of your life? What does he know about creating games in 2002, other than how not to do it?

He deserves a little respect for Doom, but that doesn't mean that it's sensible to listen to anything that he has to say now.

John Carmack has decided to go with OpenGL 2.0 over Cg for the backend of Doom 3.0, citing vendor neutrality.

You can read about it at The Reg or straight from John

"I'm sure D3D will suck less with each forthcoming version, but this is an oportunity to just bypass dragging the entire development community through the messy evolution of an ill-birthed API." - John Carmack, 1996

Time for one of my favorite images from 1998... There's a new kind of hero on the streets!

While on the topic of graphics, one should check out John Carmack's latest
plan.

A interesting read about the ATI8500 vs. GF4.
He also says:"Do not buy a GeForce4-MX for Doom."

I thought the ATI command method looked cleaner, but Carmack says it was "massively more painful", and prefers nVidia's string-based approach.

It's true that nVidia did want a licence (protecting their IP, yadda yadda) which may have slowed adoption, but come to think of it, there isn't even ONE NV_* extension supported by ATI anyway, even the useful ones like NV_texture_rectangle (and yes, the ATI hardware does support it, they just refuse to expose it under Windows until it becomes "officially" supported), so I kinda doubt it really slowed down anything except ARB adoption (which is happening now in OpenGL 2.0, the way it should be).

Yes, sounds feasible. I was also trying to remember if the original Quake supported 3dfx, but I don't think Carmack ever did Glide (hazy memory alert).

Nope, they never did one for GLide. At one point Carmack later said he regretted spending the time on VQuake and that they'd never do another custom port again. The full email is here.

Here you will find this lovely quote:

If I can convince apple to do a good hardware accelerated OpenGL in rhapsody, I would be very likely to give my win NT machine the cold shoulder and do future development on rhapsody.

More Carmack-style old pro-OS X ranting can be found here. There's a lot more around, but I gotta run. Google reveals all.

http://www.bluesnews.com/archives/carmack122396.ht ml

Now, I know D3D has undergone many changes since then, but without a 100% about-face, I doubt they could fix the major coding issues.

It is also a mistake to think that Id's games ride on technology alone. DOOM and Quake aren't just the minimum work required to make a 3d and networking engine a game -- they are the right game elements as well.
- JohnC in an interview