Slashdot Mirror

I don't agree at all. The game is frustratingly dark. The truth is your eyes adjust to darkness, and rather well. http://www.mailbag.com/users/ragreiner/eyepercepti on.html

Quote the page:

the sensitivity of the eye may increase after 30 minutes by as much as 250 times (6 magnitudes).

And
Brief exposure to bright lights wipe out this improvement almost immediately.

So why is it that you can hardly see where you are going ALL the time? I could see a gradual adjusting of the darkness lever as you settle into a dark area, only to have it wiped out by some bright flash of light. This would be really cool AND really accurate.

Also the flashlight is incredibly contrived. It's not a flashlight it more like a laser. It illuminates a small sharply defined circle and emits no ambient light. Darkness adaption aside, a normal flashlight pointed at the persons feat would emit enough ambient light to make the world at least navigable. I'm all for suspense, and danger, but really, if you have to paint the entire screen black to surprise someone, you're doing something wrong.

I suspect Hubble's CCD's can't really be compared to the ones in a digital camera.
From that same page: "They can see objects that are 1,000 million times fainter than the naked eye can see. "
For one thing, Hubble's cameras are cooled (can't find their temperature, but IIRC it's far below zero) to reduce noise. Also, the CCD design is bound to be different. This gives an idea of what's involved.

Note you said "professionals". People who want to start photography don't have the resources professionals do.

Yet another reason to use digital. Digital photography is at least an order of magnitude less expensive than film photography.

Yet I've taken pics with an SLR in much less light that came out dandy because I could set the f-stop to 1.7 and speed up the shutter by a factor of 4 or so. I could *never* have taken these pictures of the aurora with anything but an SLR.


Being able to adjust the f-stop, shutter speed, and exposure values has nothing to do with the camera being (or not being) a SLR.

Here is a shot comparable to yours taken with a Nikon Coolpix 995 and here is someone else I know with the same camera. He uses it with a spotting scope for some outstanding close-ups. And here is a place you can get them for under $400.

Here is a shot of mine that was taken at night with a Monolta DiMage 7i... a SLR-like camera, though not a true SLR.

Note you said "professionals". People who want to start photography don't have the resources professionals do.

Yet another reason to use digital. Digital photography is at least an order of magnitude less expensive than film photography.

Yet I've taken pics with an SLR in much less light that came out dandy because I could set the f-stop to 1.7 and speed up the shutter by a factor of 4 or so. I could *never* have taken these pictures of the aurora with anything but an SLR.


Being able to adjust the f-stop, shutter speed, and exposure values has nothing to do with the camera being (or not being) a SLR.

Here is a shot comparable to yours taken with a Nikon Coolpix 995 and here is someone else I know with the same camera. He uses it with a spotting scope for some outstanding close-ups. And here is a place you can get them for under $400.

Here is a shot of mine that was taken at night with a Monolta DiMage 7i... a SLR-like camera, though not a true SLR.

FWIW, I would just as soon see POV-Ray GPL'ed, though I'm not going to rant and rave about it. As I see it, there are two reasons that POV-Ray 3.1, which was officially released for a variety of other platforms several months ago, still doesn't have an official Unix version:

1. The POV-Ray team has historically hung out on CompuServe. When the previous Unix guru bowed out, it was difficult to find qualified Unix hackers hanging out on CompuServe.
2. POV-Ray has been following a rather closed development model, in which there are public beta tests for which the source is not publically available. The rationale is to reduce the burden of supporting users with outdated, buggy versions (the beta executables are timed to expire). In practice, it meant that the Unix users weren't able to start porting the POV-Ray 3.1 code to Unix until POV-Ray 3.1 was officially released for other platforms. This meant that Unix users didn't get to participate in the beta testing. It also meant that users were unable to find bugs in the source until after it was already released and the developers were on vacation. Based on my experience, this is a flawed model. Users have found bugs in my version, users have found fixes for bugs in my version, and the amount of work I have had to do is minimal as a result. Still, following the POV-Ray development model, POV-Ray 3.1 for Unix still isn't out, and I have no idea when it will be. I can only hope that the POV-Ray team takes a look at the code on my web site.

-Mark Gordon

http://www.mailbag.com/users/deanengmann/

One of the listeners did a MP3 translation for those who don't have MP4 players. Get it Here [disclaimer: my box has no sound, I haven't checked if this version is any good]