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Digital Blasphemy is but one. You get a few free images, can preview all images, but if you want to download certain image sizes, you pay. I'm a subscriber. I've been admiring Ryan's work since 1999.

I have my desktop set up to use Ryan Bliss' art as wallpaper, and a lot of people see the nature scenes and think they're photographs. And, frankly, some of them really are that good.

On the other hand, good as Bliss and others may be, I really do prefer the actual photographs that $HERSELF takes. It's hard to compete with Mother Nature.

This guy would also benefit greatly.

I agree with you on the effect of overdosing the population with CG. I still remember seeing Jurassic Park in the theater as a kid, and having to pick my jaw up off the floor every few minutes (coupled with having to wipe the drool off my shoes from seeing all those shiny SGI boxes). I don't get that feeling from CG film sequences anymore. I actually get more of a kick out of browsing still-image sites like Digital Blasphemy.

Yeah, it's kind of sad, but it was inevitable. Look at the bright side: we're getting closer and closer to realtime immersive photorealistic worlds. When I get to build my own universe, that will be cool.

P.S. John Arnold from JP is still one of my personal heroes :).

Yup, it sure is. The OP is talking about the header on the DR-DOS website, and the wallpaper Latticework at the bottom of this page on Digital Blasphemy, a commercial wallpaper site. Looks like they just ripped the pic straight from the sample size... didn't even buy the full thing. They did mess around with the colours, but it's clearly the same thing. Disgusting.

Their banner image was ripped from http://www.digitalblasphemy.com/; the picture is titled "Latticework".

Seriously, Konfabulator or DesktopX or Kapsules or Active Desktop or let's see if I can think of any more... Anyway, all of these I am certain have an audience. You have the skinning scene, the graphic artists, and basically Joe and Jane User who just like a "pretty" computer.

Cafepress is more broad, without all the buyer customization options. You can changes anything on a customizable piece on Zazzle.

Despite the article's assurance, Zazzle has been around for 5 years, in one form or another. The Copyright on their web page confirms this. Digital Blasphemy used them for posters while they were still in beta back in 2000. While the product selection isn't as broad as CafePress, the customizability of the products is great... Most interesting (IMHO) is the ability to customize a greeting card and add your own text or pictures inside (or outside). There is a good selection of [fairly] reasonably priced options for the posters, too.

Shameless Promotion

Unless you are into digital editing, or watching TV on your PC, this dual monitor bit is nothing more than a rich man's folly.

Of the games that I have enjoyed most lately, the following top the list:

Neverwinter Nights
Morrowind
Chromatron
Tales of Symphonia
E.V. Nova
Advance Wars 2

Of these, Neverwinter Nights is probably the most graphically advanced. None of them hold a candle to Doom 3, or Far Cry, or any of the other engines you mentioned.

I dunno about you, but for me gameplay comes first. If I really want eye candy, I'll go look at 3D Renderings. Yes, the masses can indeed enjoy games with weak graphics, and it does open your game to a wider audience. If you need any convincing of that, I implore you to check out the sales figures for any of the Sims games.

If EV Nova had been 3D rendered with dynamic lighting and reflections and all the other goodies, it would not have played on my laptop very well, and I never would've purchased it.

Im angry at how cheesy people do things a lot. This effect my work. So I come here to assault cheesy people being cheesy. Its simply cathartic to start flames with some of these people.

What do you think of www.digitalblasphemy.com

Its the only website I've ever subscribed to. Well, that and the Wall St. Jrnl.

There is a comment in the article that we buy video cards to play games. This i agree is true for most, but they should at least make a mention to those who do high end 3d rendering and programming. For these individuals use their card to put out some of the most amazing images in computer history. FOr these people frame rates are not iportatn, it is render times, which even on the best cards in the best system , for complex effects can take hours.

After looking at the article and TDRL's website, the more interesting side of the story seems to come from the USA Today article, specifically IBM's new goal to make computing power a utility such that on demand computing can be purchased just like the power/water/gas utilities of today. The animation stills from TDRL are ok, but nothing spectacular. I've seen more realistic stills come out of a skilled single artist with Maya (see here). The incredible results that Pixar has been able to achieve through their research into rendering technology (ie. RenderMan) combined with artistic prowess have brought them success, and I fail to see how the Terminator 2 producer merely acquiring processor power brings TDRL into a position to challenge the best in the field.

Upon looking at the screenshots, I found one good thing about Xpde: No nasty green, nausea-inducing start button. If they're going to go forward with this, I hope they keep that regular start button standard.

Personally, I'm fond of KDE-3's default look, with backgrounds from Digital Blasphemy.

Go to Digital Blasphemy. There are great rendered background pictures on that page (some for free, more for the paying user) and it usually says which program has been used to create the picture.
From reading these comments it seems that each software has its advantages over the other...

Bye, Squisher

I liked the words of Ryan Bliss, creator of Digital Blasphemy.

Quite a few people have written asking if I was going to post a wallpaper commerating September 11, 2001. The answer is yes, and no. Those of you who have been visiting my gallery for a while might remember that September 11 is my birthday (I won't blame you if you've forgotten), and that I've always posted a new wallpaper on my birthday.

I'm going to try to have something new this year as well (I'll be 31), but I'm pretty sure it won't be related to last year's terrorist attacks. Those who desire such commemorative materials will not have far to look, I'm sure. Personally, I think it is time we move forward and I would rather work to that end.

not sure if you are kidding or not, but IMHO the best CG desktops are here.
Not a shameless plug.. I'm just a big fan :)

Still, it's a stupid idea. Yes, micropayments in general is a good concept -- but charging for every single page hit is insane. I'm going to be reluctant to check out a new site if it's going to cost me money to find out if it's worth using or not.

What micropayments are good for is specialized premium content. There are a lot of products that are only worth a few cents at most to download -- but it's very hard to sell them online because the cost of a credit card transaction is several times higher than the value of the product. Look at a site like Digital Blasphemy. Instead of having to charge a subscription fee for access to the member's gallery or sell CDs, a micropayment system would allow users to buy only those images that they wanted.

and tell me it's not art.

And incidentally, once you're inside the pay site, the navigation is the same as always. There are a few ads at the sides, but that's the only difference.

--

Check out digital blasphemy. It has some really nice pictures made with various 3-d animation/rendering programs. I do believe there are some movies on there too. Very nice quality work.

j0sh -- j0shdot.net

what do u mean thats not an original name?!

Check it out at my crappy page.

--

We'll probably see a change from todays ads-based services - the ads are kinda boring and as mentioned, they have a quite low click-rate. What I think we'll see, is that the sites will evolve into more user-based services, where the user can define their own needs - and that they'll pay a minor fee for the use of the material provided therein.

Take Slashdot for an example, i'd gladly be paying a buck a month for getting access to those slashdot-news, but that's probably not i the correct slashdot-spirit. However, there's already a few sites doing this, take a look at http://www.digitalblasphemy.com/ for example, providing high quality 3d-wallpapers (some of the featured in Eterm). There's a quite a large number of free images provided by the site, but for a small fee ($25) you can sign up for the full gallery - and you'll get permission to use the pictures on your own webside and alike. This is a great example of how one could make money of a perfectly "on-your-sparetime" website.

DigitalBlasphemy is an awesome site, and well worth the money that he asks. I purchased a membership several months ago and have not been disappointed. :)

-- Lightstorm.

This might be a little offtopic, but...

I remember seeing somewhere on the internet that IE5 (dunno about other versions) has an interesting bug.

Basically what happens is that IE5 allows you to create a custom icon for your website when a user bookmarks it. *but*, it doesn't actually check to see whether the file (which has a specific name, something like bookmark.ico or something) is actually a windows icon file. Theoretically (according to the site) it would be possible to put some executable code (backorifice anyone?) in the file and IE would execute it.

with a flaw like this, it surprises me that no one I know has ever heard of it, but then again, it could just be a minor problem.

(I did know where I saw this article, here, but it appears to have disappeared.) If anyone knows more about this, then I'd be much obliged.

You can disable permanent *and* session cookies in WinIE5 without a lot of difficulty. I don't think that there's as much flexibility built into IE4, but you could get close to it.

It also helps if you download IE PowerTweaks for IE5, plus the MS and AltaVista powertoys for IE4+. Digital Blasphemy also has some handy hooks into the Merriam-Webster online Dictionary and Thesaurus (US Eng.). You don't need them to do this, but it's much faster and more pleasant to browse if you do.

1. Tools > Internet Options > Security Tab
2. Set Custom Level for the Internet Zone
3. Go to the Cookies section of the tree and disable the "Allow cookies that are stored on your computer" option, then press OK.
4. Select the "Trusted Sites" zone.
5. Add "slashdot.org" to the Trusted Sites Zone, then press OK.
6. Set a custom level of security for Trusted Sites, reset to Medium Security (or a custom level), but enable permanent cookies.

You can spend about fifteen minutes tweaking it -- pretty simple stuff. Use Windows IE for a while sometime, as horrible as it might sound to some of you, and try to say that IE isn't better than Navigator 4.x at anything. No, it's not perfect, but better. We'll see how Mozilla does, but it's just been taking a year and a half now...