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Examination of Indrema Linux console
James Hills writes: "Linux gaming is a hot topic today. However, many problems still plague the infant platform, such as standards and a central company to enforce those standards. Indrema, a recently formed San Francisco Bay Area-based company plans to change this with the release of the Indrema Entertainment System (IES) by next spring." We mentioned the Indrema System last March, but its nice to know some progress is being made ... it looks at least less vaporous now.
This is so LinuxOne-esque, it's not even funny. If there could be a funny part, though, it would have to be watching just about everyone around here try so dang hard not to say a bad word about it.
This actually would make a classic social experiment. Go through the article and change all the Linux references to Microsoft ones (difficult, I know -- there are some parts which will probably just have to be deleted -- but a decent job could be done), then show it to your Slashdotter friends who haven't seen this article. Figure out the percentage of them that are a) rolling in the aisles with laughter, b) up in arms, screaming about monopolies, or any other choices you can come up with. If anyone goes through with this, keep us posted! :)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
On the x86 PC platform that may be true, but that is not what we're talking about here. Consoles (and set-top boxes, and networked `appliances' or whatever name they have tomorrow) are still OS-neutral, as long as it does the job it is OK. So now what counts is which OS does the job in a satisfying manner both for the user as well as for the designer, manufacturer and software developer. Look at Netpliance's i-Opener (QNX) for an example of a device which is totally `consumer space' oriented, yet lacks even a single bit of Win32 software. The hardware platform supports it, but it is not used, instead they chose QNX. Why? Probably for reasons of size (small), stability (good) and maybe licensing fees (no idea really). Linux can also be made small, it can be very stable in the right configuration, and licensing fees are a non-issue.
So i'd say there Win32 (or Winwhatever) is not the de-facto API for these applications...
--frank[at]unternet.org
I was responding to those who were saying that using Linux gives Inderama a leg up because Linux is standard-complient (ie. Apps can be ported to it.) One of the major advantages of using off-the-shelf OSs is that apps can be ported easily and quickly. In the market of consumer apps, using Windows as a base gives you a much more "standards complient" OS in this respect than using Linux.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What Loki does and thinks and says and produces for the Indrema is the only real thing I care about. The Indrema is a nice machine, it looks great on specs and it caters to a lot of my beliefs in the OSS ethos, but none of that matters a damn.
If Loki partners with these guys and says "yeah, we'll make games for it, and we'll give the SDK to make games for it a shot as well", then I'll be incredibly excited, and will be lining up outside Fry's or wherever the day these things go on sale.
If not, then it's gonna be a bumpy ride, for sure.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Linux console, sealed,
Wireless net game connection:
Quake 3 at the pool!
However, many problems still plague the infant platform such as standards and a central company to enforce those standards.
.sig missing due to ethanol consumption
I apologise. I have clearly spent the whole of my life misunderstanding standards. Apparently, you need a central company to enforce them. I am so sorry for having thought that open standards work, and closed ones don't. Where do I sign up for re-education?
Please, just look at which standards are used and which aren't. TCP/IP is used by quite a lot of systems. AppleTalk isn't. FTP is used a fair bit. ICQ's proprietary 'send file' doesn't seem to be very popular outside AOL. More people use Ethernet on LANs than use Myrinet (which is often faster). More VCRs use VHS than (the technologically superior) Betamax.
What do the successful standards have in common, I wonder? Are they managed by a single company? I think not.
A standard is only succesful if it is truly open. If it's not, why should I (or anyone else) invest time, effort and shedloads of money developing for it? What's the guarantee that the 'controller' of the standard won't change it tomorrow for competitive advantage? Ever looked at Microsoft Office file formats? They are almost always incompatible between versions.
Succesful standards are there because they get used by lots of people. They get used by lots of people because those users believe that the standard will be stable, and that they can (if neccesary) influence development of the standard.
If you want a gaming standard for Linux (by which I assume you really mean X), then propose one. Invite the interested parties to contribute. Encourage feedback. Keep the process open. I'll say that again: Keep the process open.
Who do you trust for Internet standards? IETF or Microsith?
Well, maybe they plan to target their console at those who wish to do a little more with it than 'just play games'. If so, using a standards compliant operating systems for which a whole body of good, free software already exists makes a lot of sense. So using Linux (or *BSD) might not be such a bad idea...
--frank[at]unternet.org
...Final Fantasy 2(4) for the SNES...
Sorry for the extremely off-topic post, but I have a question - a few days ago I started playing FF2 with snes9x (great game so far, BTW) I also have a ROM of FF4 which appears to be the exact same game, but badly (VERY badly) translated from Japanese. What's the deal with that? Were FF2 and FF4 the same game, one in the US, one in Japan?
--
Because it won't neccessarily draw the general public's attention to Linux, but will serve as a step in helping to make Linux a more apparently viable platform for console gaming, and anything else for that matter. It's almost like promoting Linux in order to promote Linux if that makes sense. Get a game machine, a _good_ game machine, out into the market using Linux, let us geeks see how good it is, and let the snowball effect kick-in. Who knows. Maybe a few years from now, all the console boxes will be running Linux...
:)
I worked for a company for a very long time that is responsibility for a very well known and uqiquitous browser plug-in that actually used the browser plug-in to accomplish kind of the same thing. Before the plug-in, lot's of people used titles developed with thier authoring app but never actually new about them. Now, since the plug-in, almost everyone has heard of them. They give the plug-in away for free, and use the built-in advertising (conceptually, they don't actually display ads!) to leverage thier authoring tools. The end-result being very good, at least from a finacial standpoint.
cvoid - satellites are cool
Perhaps you can ask for your money back?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
The fact remains that playstation, nintendo, and I suppose sega (yeah right) dominate the scene. Microsoft will make a big entry too, RSN, due to their marketing budget being able to push the X-box pretty well - and let's admit it, the X-box could actually be rather good.
:-)
Consoles, particularly Nintendo, are targeted at people who do not want to piddle around with the petty details - tell them they need to upgrade their GPU and they will look at you with a blank moronic stare before resuming their game of frogger (or whatever, so I can't think of any cool console games
Maybe it'll go somewhere. But I doubt it.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
Of course, quality control may be a problem. One reason Nintendo is so successful is that it earns its reputation for quality by testing, testing, and retesting all titles (even those by third parties) before allowing their release.
It would definitely be harder to do that for a more open system.
On the other hand, nothing beats putting in the cartridge, turning on the console, and seeing a stylized splash screen boldly proclaiming, "This game is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Press 'B, A, B, A, Up, Down, B, A, Left, Right, B, A, Start' for details."
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
The article actually mentioned more than just games, if you didn't notice. They talked about MP3s, 50 Gigs of storage, and, what I was interested in, "video recording" :) TiVO, anyone? :) Now, all that OS cruft you mentioned(multitasking, virtual memory, etc.) are there because it makes for a more robust and versatile system. For just a second, imagine Sony goes bust. Look at all those games out there. Boy, if you could get them to play on your just-developed console, you'd have a great market available. All those people who still want to play Playstation games, but some new ones too. But, damn, you built the box too specifically - you'll have to redesign, but you're low on funds, so you don't. Just after you box's release, a competitor comes out with a console that can run their own games, as well as all those Play Station games. They whoop your ass. Had you, instead of building extremely specialized hardware and software, built a robust, extensible, and versatile system, you would have had the upper hand(or at least been on even ground).
;). You send up an update to all your consoles(transparently, using its build-in modem to dial-up a 1-800 number), and voila, a whole heck of a lot of happy customers. Happy customers mean generous, loyal customers. :)
:)
Get the point? There are so many different things that could happen, too. TV Cable companies now start bundling free cable-internet access with your regular TV. Free of charge(at least for now
All right?
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
I find it interesting that these Inderama people think that they can jump into the console market, and triumph over Nintendo and Sony who have been doing it for years and frankly can do it a lot beter. Without further ado, the reasons why you probably will not succeed as a gaming machine. (Though it has potential as a set-top.)
1) The hardware of the Inderama is not well suited for gaming. The problem is that there is the wrong balance within the system. Instead of Sony, which took gaming and added computing features, the Inderama people are taking computing and adding gaming features. The harware seems to be a fair bit more powerful than PSX2, but not well suited for gaming. As a whole I don't think the system will work well. First of all, there is the problem of Linux. While it makes it very convinient from a general set-box view, it is stifling for gaming. Frankly, a UNIX is just too much overhead for a set-top. Every thing from a virtual file system, to memory management, to memory protection, multiple users, and a robust networking system, all take there toll on system performance, and frankly, are useless on a console. Problematically, these are ingrained features of Linux and cannot be removed without a total overhaul. Also troubling is their use of Mesa. Mesa is not known for being the fastest GL implementation around, and it is dumb to use it on a console. Then there is the question of abstraction. There need not be any on a console. (Except maybe some for the removable drives and maybe networking.) While PSX2 starts with totally writing to the metal, then adds ease of use things such as OpenGL and other libraries, Linux starts out with a very abstracted system. It may make the system easier to learn, but we've seen where this abstraction goes in real games. Some of the original dreamcast games used the DirectX APIs of the Microsoft OS (which are much higher performance than anything on Linux) but most people eventually developed their own "to the metal" engines, and neglected to OS. Game developers like being able to write close to the hardware. It allows quite a lot of innovation, like that seen the the Crash games. That's also why games continue to get better on the same hardware for 5 or 7 years. In all, these things will outweigh the massive hardware, and in the end, I doubt performance on Inderama will be more than 30% or so better. To the console market that is nothing, because N64 still lost to Playstation even though it was more than 3 or 4 times as fast. The reason is the quality of the PSX software, which brings me to my next point.
2) MS and Inderama are starting out late. As such, they will not have the software base PSX-2 will. Even though it will take time for developers to learn PSX-2, they will be up to speed by the time MS and Inderama are 6 months from shipping. A smaller software library can, and has, killed consoles in the past.
3) MS and Inderama have no clue from a user standpoint. Neither Embedded NT nor Linux are nearly stable enough to meet the expectations of console users. You think people are going to put up with patches and upgrades all the time? In the console world, it is do it perfect or don't do it at all. That brings to issue the problematic hard drives. While great for a set top box, they are relativly useless for a console, and will only encourage lazy developers to ship unfinished products with expectations to patch them later. Secondly, I almost had a heart attack when I learned that the GPU would be upgradable. Not only does this degrade performance, (developers can take advantage of every nuance of the hardware without writing general, slower code), but it will introduce headaches to console gamers. Console users expect their $200 investment to last 5 or 6 years unchanged. They will not put up with upgrading every few months.
The whole problem with the whole "PCs pretending to be consoles" is that their developers just don't get it. People don't want to put up with patches, upgrading, or the difficulties of managing a PC, even a simplified one. We're talking about people who can't program their VCRs. You expect them to be able to manage this? I'd like to see the 10,000 complaints from users who manage to fry the GPU while upgrading it, or bend one of the pins. "What do you MEAN I have to shock myself first." or "I was installing this in winter while wearing socks and walking on shag carpet. Why doesn't it work." or "I broke off one of the pins, where can I get extra?"
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
No, that's not it. They make money by charging people to make games. If you make a program that runs on Playstation, you have to pay Sony $7 for each copy sold.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The Indrema console has the same COTS-design related problems that also affect the X-Box (you can see this for my mildly paranoid discussion and speculation on the X-Box for more details on the X-Box's design problems).
The basic problem is the COTS (commercial, off the shelf) design ends up costing an extra $50-100 (in the extra memory, the hard drive, and the slightly higher cost for the CPU) more to produce then the Playstation 2 or whatever Nintendo is going to come out with, without providing significantly more capability as a game console. This is a huge handicap in the console market, where things are already sold at a loss to begin with.
Additionally, the proposal to make the GPU upgradeable defeats much of the purpose of a console: To provide a standard platform. The beauty of developing for a console is that all instances are identical, you don't need to worry about somebody having a less or more powerful machine.
However, unlike the X-Box, Indrema can't take the major economic losses Microsoft can on selling the console, in an attempt to get the platform established (and then gain revenue from the games and applications). Although annoying, Microsoft could tolerate an initial $100 loss on each console, if it allows the X-Box to become a viable platform. Indrema can not.
I suspect one of two scenarios: a) This is a company trying to get as much mileage out of the current Linux hype as possible, to get money from investors and (hopefully) an IPO, or b) these people actually believe in the snake oil they are selling, in which case someone should go to their headquarters, sit down with a calculator, and shoot down their financial projections before they cost their investors a lot of money.
Nicholas C Weaver
nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu
Test your net with Netalyzr
If these guys start looking like comtenders isn't M$ going to flex its $200M nVidia XBox contract muscle and lean on them hard?
It runs embedded NT.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Linux is not standards complient. In the real world, anything in consumer space is only standards complient if it uses the Win32 API. Not a troll, just the sad truth.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It runs several other Microsoft-brand games anyway (Total Annihilation, anyone? :)
The problem is that you're wrong. Inderama doesn't make games for it just as Sony doesn't make games. Developers make games for it. Developers port apps to it. They port existing Win32 apps to it. Thus, MS has an advantage because they have an army of developers using the Windows platform.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I don't understand the point of designing a game console with Linux in it. First, we're really just talking about the Linux kernel and a few custom drivers. Don't misinterpret "Linux" to mean "flip a switch and there I am in an xterm."
That said, consoles tend to be very light on the OS needs. They don't need to multitask applications. They don't need pipes. They make very little use of a filesystem other than to slurp in entire files. There's no need for a generic device driver system. They don't need virtual memory. And so on. So overall, putting Linux (or BSD or Hurd or whatever) in a console doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And even if the engineers decided "you know, if we use Linux then we could save ourselves the trouble of writing some low level stuff" then that's *not* any kind of reason to think of this as a "Linux-based console." The PlayStation 2 has a Sony-written OS kernel inside of it, but does anyone care? No, because it is irrelevant to consumers.