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X-Box Limitations (Hemos Is Dumb) (Yes, I am)
Fervent writes: "Daily Radar has an interesting article with Michael Abrash, one of the lead XBox technological designers. What's fascinating about this article is not what the XBox can do, but what it can't do. Abrash talks about programming limitations, HDTV, and goes against the NVidia ratio quote (the one where Gates said the GPU would be 3 times as fast as current NVidia hardware). Get your fill of the talk here." Update: 10/03 03:54 PM by CT : hemos was out of town all weekend. He missed this story when we posted it the first time HAHA! Update: 10/03 07:33 PM by H : /me hangs head in shame.
Huzzah, folks. Flame threads over a game console. www.ridiculopathy.com
Actually... if you have a NVidia-card, you might as well run it under Linux now.
Look at this.
The miniscule performance difference is not really worth the reboot, if you have ok hardware that is.
It will get hacked as soon as it gets released. It'll be a piece of cake. Of course everybody with their hands on one now has been bought by MS and signed NDAs, so don't expect them to help.
I wouldn't mind using one as an mp3 player.
Ooops, I re-read your post. Herm. You didn't forgot about multipass.
:-)
> What, the Xbox can only do four?
No. The XBox will do 4 at each pass. So with two passes, you've got 8.
Strangely, carmack says 8 passes for Doom (he said that 30 would give renderman-like quality, and that it'll be possible in a near future.), while Abrash says "4 textures" * "shadows done on a second pass".
Fun is that both make 8. Sounds like Carmack and Abrash may have worked together
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Who wants to bet that someone will try to squeeze Linux on this thing?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Read my text again. I *PRAISE* the Mozilla project
You do? Let me see...
Their only saving grace was Mozilla, which amounts to them taking the generous work of a lot of other people and sticking their "Netscape" badge of dishonor on it
That really looks like you are claiming Netscape are just taking other peoples' code and sticking their name on it, which is rather far from the truth.
Next time, please re-read what was written before bashing... Especially over something that was never said to begin with.
Take a look at the quote, it was said.
Though you'd start to have a problem if half the stories actually were OT. It's just a simple solution for a hopefully simple problem.
--
The New Way(tm) to get the most out of your Nvidia hardware is to program the pipeline yourself. I know, because I've seen it. This is simpler? This is natural?
Now, there are definitely programmers for whom this will be a natural process. I'm not going to tell you there aren't, because one of them is sitting behind me. However, I don't think these people are the norm. I think that most graphics programmers are going to slave away to find a few processes they can re-use, but they won't optimize their pipeline beyond a certain point, and they won't get the most out of the hardware either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How many people do you think look at IE's about box? Let's do that now:
So just how much of IE did Microsoft write, anyway? Personally, I'm kind of worried if IE still contains any actual code from Mosaic. Maybe that explains why it chokes periodically trying to manage its sockets.
Hell, they couldn't even write their own SOCKS library. How pathetic.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
but that moderate percentage of pro-Linux anti-M$ people just ready to jump on the X-box and hack it _must_ have M$'s attention, at the very least.
You're right. Microsoft is smart enough to know how to court developers -- they will encourage the cottage-industry guys, not stop them. If you hack PSX, you get a cease-and-desist letter. If you want to hack X-Box, here's some free tools! For a few bucks, here's a whole development kit. Philosophical differences aside, you give a toy like X-Box with the tools to do whatever you want with it, and hackers/developers will go wild with it.
Does anyone know whether Lego uses child labor? Or maybe they ruthlessly ran the Bric Blocs people out of business. Who cares? They make cool inexpensive toys and let me do what I want with them. And if it's the same with X-Box, you'll see a lot of people say, "well, they're not all bad"...
-------------
-------------
The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
From the original post:
And then, from the actual interview:
<sarcasm>
Ooh. Now there's a juicy scoop for you. The Big Cheese at the company says their technology is three generations ahead, and the lead tech guy on the project says it's more like two. What next?
</sarcasm>
Yeah, a browser with decent CSS support... like Netsc ... oh wait, Netscape's CSS support has flat-out sucked. Their only saving grace was Mozilla, which amounts to them taking the generous work of a lot of other people and sticking their "Netscape" badge of dishonor on it. No, it's not always a bad thing that IE took over.
but that moderate percentage of pro-Linux anti-M$ people just ready to jump on the X-box and hack it _must_ have M$'s attention...
Yes, but only because they'll be the first ones to eat their hats. Sometimes I wish that Linux extremists actually read their facts before mindlessly bashing a product. I find it humorous that the same crowd is willing to give Indrema a chance without even seeing *any* proof of concept... and I thought Slashdotters were wary of "Set-top Entertainment Devices" ...
_Adam Poulos;
And maybe Nintendo *won't* launch the Game Cube.
And, considering that you've been moderated up, perhaps you could give a reason *why* Microsoft "wanted to cause problems for the PS2," a product currently not competing with any MS products.
_Adam Poulos;
Oh dear, another clueless idiot bashing the Mozilla project for no good reason. Oh well, someone has to dispell the myths...
Did you know that the vast majority of the code in Mozilla was written by somebody with an @netscape.com address? If you did, then you're just slagging off Netscape for no good reason. If you didn't, you are a clueless moron who should not be making such comments as you did.
Now, let's also not forget that Netscape have generously given us so much free code. Thanks to Mozilla now also being under the GPL (Or soon will be), a lot of open source projects will be able to benefit (Nautilus or Galeon anyone?).
Next time, please operate the strange device known as your brain before posting.
I have a TNT2 : every few months I try to get it to work but end up with a little box moving around my monitor saying "Horizontal Sync Out of Range."
:(
The refresh rates are all fine, I really don't understand what's going on.
:wq
yeah, Jesus Christ, for the amount of money the programmers got paid, and the amount of money the CONSUMERS paid for Office, you'd think they'd put a little more effort into fixing bugs. Or at least providing accurate and timely documentation on the file-format to ensure interoperability.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I could tell how ready you were to throw down when I read from your comment a couple up:
You're just as predjudiced as the poster you replied to. See, console games are still cool, just like Amigas are still cool, and [legacy] mainframes are still cool even when PCs have more power. What you're missing in all this is that a video game doesn't become less fun because something more technologically advanced comes along. Gran Turismo 2 is still immensely fun to me, in spite of the existence of Quake Umpteen Arena of Doom(tm).
The question is, what do you mean by Set-Top Box? In this modern day and age, a STB is generally considered to be something which combines internet access and cable or satellite push video. Video games have nothing to do with it except that they can be an additional feature.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
that's what it all is. Every X-box has a special chip embedded and the moment you install Linux on it, subliminal messages wil start to slowly brainwash you. It might take a little while, but slowly and steadily each of you geeks will start wearing suits and sunglasses while whispering from the corner of your mouth about how the last salary-change from Mr. Gates is really in the best interest of the company.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
In that case shouldn't we at least give M$ some credit for trying to market a product everybody else has given up on? If it's cheap and reliable, why the hell not? Just one thing, I will not do the helpdesk for them...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
For example, would such effort have been put into finding holes in DreamCast's ability if it were not spearheaded by Microsoft? While I dislike M$ as much as anyone else, I do like being my own devil's advocate... good for keeping from becoming narrow minded I believe.
Regards
It says 1.5 to 2 generations as opposed to 3 generations. That does not imply any particular speed ratio.
or what do you think?
it's in my head
Since when has any Microsoft product ever lived upto it's hype?
Since when has any product even remotely associated to something computer-like lived up to it's hype?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Posting a duplicate story a few weeks later I can understand, but posting one 3 days later is getting silly.
Almost every story submission contains at least one URI, correct? Why not modify the story processing queue to let Cmdr. Taco, Hemos, etc, see a by-title list of every story which has been posted in the past month that contained that URI? Or, as a story is being submitted to the page, have an automated system look for URIs in past stories and request verification? This could be done in a way that would not take a lot of time from the processing crew, but still cactch like 90% of the duplicates.
I meant if DreamCast WERE spearheaded by Microsoft, as in the motive behind this article was to band-wagon attack M$.
I pretty sure you should know this, but
slashdot!=linux community
It seems that in the PC gaming world, there are many "disjointed" efforts that haphazardly come together to make a game; programmers optimizing their code (or not) for the latest in OpenGL or Direct3D, then you've got the API handlers written by NVIDIA, ATI, 3dfx, et al translating them as best as possible to the graphic chipsets' native language.
And, of course, all of this works on top of Microsoft's OS. That's 3 pretty big things that are unable to be tuned properly. They must have generic interfaces due to the plug-n-play nature of the PC business. The solution has always been to say stuff like "Pentium II 300MHz, 64MB RAM, 3D Card w/16MB required". With the Xbox, it seems like the designers will have control of 2 of the 3 items listed above, and with a standard set of hardware, optimizing 3d engine/game code has got to become a lot easier. Suddenly the requirements can easily transform from a PII 300 to a Pentium 166, the 64MB RAM turns into 16 MB RAM, and the Video Memory gets to drop considerably as well considering the target is NTSC/PAL output.
Of course, like the Dreamcast, we'll be seeing VGA output boxes so we can play the newest games on our 21" monitors. And since NTSC resolution is hard on the eyes on a 21" monitor, the Xbox will need variable resolutions, forcing faster processors, bigger 3D cards, and more RAM, bringing us full circle to where we started. :P I think the Xbox will be wildly successful if users treat it as what it is: a closed-box console used for gaming, not general applications + games.
As long as I can get HALO :-)
Sounds like your monitor can't cope. Does it work under windoze?
No-one can buy one. Stop fussing about something that won't arrive until at least Christmas next year (and that's just in the US), if it arrives at all.
I fucking hate when some fucking moron complains about a video game crashing and then harkening back to the good old days of the NES. When you run a game on a Windows PC you've running a software application on top of a bunch of other software applications. When you run a game on a Nintendo you're running software that is basically running directly on the hardware with little or no abstraction. There is an anormous difference in the way you program for a console and a PC. Your "pretty plain PC" is just as indescrepent as any other PC, your hardware and drivers for said hardware conform to generalities and guidelines, not specific criteria.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
DirectX limits the programmers? Limits them compared to what? OpenGL? Yeah, OpenGL sure does open doors in the programming world. Where the fuck do you get this shit? DirectX is not only a set of graphic libraries like OpenGL is. DirectX does 3D, 2D, sound, and periphrial interface. By programming directly to DirectX X-Box programmers will be able to pump out games without memorizing the console's internal circuitry. You have to realize that programmers aren't limited to using functions contained in the kernel and media libraries, they'll be able to program directly to the hardware bypassing any abstraction which in the case of the PlayStation has really extended the system's lifespan.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You're pretty ignorant of several points which is something you ought to be ashamed of. First of all Apple has little if anything to do with the ownership of the PPC chipset, it is owned, produced, and developed by Motorola and IBM. Apple had an exclusive rights deal with Motorola on certain product lines (the PPC 7400 specifically). Being 12 you might not remember that there used to be PPC workstations floating around years ago, you could even get Windows NT for them. M$ and PCs suceeded over Macs in general because Apple's management was a bunch of dickwads who decided to throw the company into niche markets that didn't pan out besides the fact that they exclusively produce their hardware and software whereas M$ merely produces software and lets everyone else fight over hardware to run it on (this is collectively known as market economy).
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Of course he won't fix it, that would be admitting he was wrong in the first place. If you haven't noticed yet, people don't like admitting that they were wrong. Christ, Rob, et.al., can't even be bothered to check for spelling errors and redundant postings, let alone be bothered with actually correcting the inherent flaws in the system *that they placed here*!
The whole system is fucked. Karma?? WTF? People trying to get karma?? What's up with that? Who cares? People selling accounts with high karma on ebay? Fuck man, my kid sister's Garbage Pail Kids cards from the 80's are more valuable. Meta-Moderation?? Fuck me gently with a chainsaw Veronica. Secret sid forums?? Please, how *look at my l33t secret club*'ish can you get? You know, maybe Slashdot wouldn't be inaccessable for large portions of time if the code wasn't this overgrown, bloated fat spagetti mess of half-assed hacks and pure bullshit. Can you say "overkill"?
I used to enjoy coming to this site, I really did. But ever since the Andover takeover, this place has really taken a nose dive in the proverbial dumper. Absolutely no journalistic integrity, not even the slightest bit of factual checking on stories, blatant pandering to the mob's worst emotional buttons. It's not "Slashdot, News for Nerds". It's "Slashdot, because National Enquirer was taken. (Not that we respect trademarks though)". Face it kids, this isn't Rob's personal site anymore, that went out the door when he took the money. Now, not that I give a flying fuck about Malda and crew, but this site is ultimately owned/controlled by VALinux, which purports to be a respectable company. How long is VALinux going to keep this cesspool on the books? Don't they care that through continual backing of this site they align themselves with the same bunch of degenerates that back shows like Jerry Springer? Is that the image that VALinux wants to project?
And the biggest joke of them all? Losers complaining about a) their own karma (yes you Signal 11) and b) even worse, losers complaining about *other* people's karma. These are the biggest losers of them all. Do you mean to tell me that some arbitrary fucking score on this troll ridden, universally laughed at and mocked website that we call Slashdot really matters? Jesus H. Christ, move out of your parents basement and get a life.
All of you.
So what is one to do? Quit? Leave? Fuck no! I for one am going to watch this bloated pig die and rot away from the inside. I'm going to enjoy wallowing in the putrid stench that is Slashdot, gorging myself on its bloated teat. My screeds will be long, they will be nasty. You will know I'm here.
Fuck you very much.
I think your brain got waterlogged in the shower. Do you know how companies like Sony and Sega make money off their consoles? It sure as hell isn't the sale of the hardware (you'll notice prices drop all the time). So that leaves one avenue for revenue. Yes, thats right: LICENSING! Gold star for you. Part of the price of all those games you buy for your PlayStation or Dreamcast goes back to Sony and Sega. This fee is merely for the privilege to produce video games for said console. This practice makes these console companies, yes another star for you: millions of dollars! Wow this isn't too hard now is it. A video game console is not about the hardware it is all about the games that are exclusively available for it. Legend of Zelda has sold oodles of copies, yet it is only available for N64. Its games like that that make console makers cream their jeans. Consoles have a distinct advantage over PCs technologically that you're not recognizing. They have documented and stardard hardware, there's no fucked up drivers running some odd network card. This allows programmers to easily program right onto the hardware with no abstraction of media libraries or kernels. You're also forgetting that TV screens are quite large and their lack of crispness lends to a natrual anti-aliased blur look to things displayed on them. My TV is 25" and I have a several hundred watts of surround sound speakers hooked up to it. Until computer monitors regularly exceed 21" and speakers for them top 100 watts gaming consoles will still hold a place in people's living rooms.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I can just go back to the older story, cut and paste all the high-scoring comments, sit back and watch the karma just roll in. Thanks Hemos!
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Might I sugest that some kind of story warning system be implemented wherein the story would be showen to say 100 randomly selected readers, who loaded the main slashdot page at the right time, before it is actually posted.
Unfortunately that would delay the stories significantly. (This IS a NEWS medium, after all.)
A simpler, faster, and more automated method would be to have the posting software check any hyperlinks in the story against those in the other stories posted in the last week or so, and bring them to the editor's attention.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And that's why Bill Gates will personally install booby traps in EVERY X-Box that will go off if anybody tries to open it. That'll be his revenge against those Linux haxors.
It was hardly a slight simulator. It was more like "asteroids" in the first person. There was no physics modeling or anything like tht - VERY code light. Calling it a flight simulator is like calling Wolfenstein-3D Quake3.
Carmack stated that he's designing for hardware that doesn't exist yet. The XBox hardware *does* exist.
I would like to point out that NTSC has a total of 640*480*30fps=9,216,000 pixels per second,.... [snip] ... With that in mind, and neglecting overdraw, you don't need more than 12,000,000 polygons/sec anyway. If your rate is steady, that is.
I don't think Microsoft is stupid enough to limit the Xbox only to TV resolutions. If I get one (which is doubtful, but let's assume so for the sake of argument) there is no way I am going to plug it into a TV. A consumer TV is an outdated, horrible, blurry, flickering display platform. It sucks bowling balls through a garden hose. The only reason it is used as a computer display is because it allows people NOT to buy an expensive computer monitor with a smaller screen.
In any case, if I get an Xbox, it's going to get plugged into a decent computer monitor. And, of course, if the highest resolution it'll support will be 640x480 with 60Hz refresh rate...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Update: 10/03 07:33 PM by H: /me hangs head in
shame.
my clock only says 4:11pm right now and i think i am in the same timezone as him?(eastern)
Xenex, check to make sure those HREF tags are closed before you hit the sumbit button, man!
Putz.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
You are so naive... I am fully aware that there have been (and still are) a good deal of PPC variations out there, including my personal RS/6000 250s. Don't start a flame war (or a contest of intelligence) with me because you'll end up looking like a moron. Apple's execs didn't throw their product into a niche market any more than Microsoft did. Apple may exclusively produce thier own hardware since they disallowed clones from companies like PowerCurve and (my very own) Umax. Software on the other hand... Have you ever heard of Linux? or NetBsd? and you yourself said M$ NT runs on PPC chips... Besides, I never said that Apple owns any part of the PPC chipset, I was using the parallel of PC CISC clones vs. PowerPC RISC processors, so perhaps you should learn to pay attention and not be so anxious to insult your elders, kid. Get a real job and stop trying to sound educated.
Does anyone know whether Lego uses child labor? Or maybe they ruthlessly ran the Bric Blocs people out of business. Who cares?
Well you should care. It certainly turns my stomach to know that kids not much older than my little nephew are making clothes and shoes in the name of the almighty corporate share price.
http://slashdot.org /commen ts.pl?sid=00/10/03/1240228&cid=5
/.? No, a problem with people like you.
http://slashdot.or g/comme nts.pl?sid=00/10/03/1240228&cid=17
And I saw this comment twice already, there are probably many more. In fact, this comment has been posted in just about everything I can think of. A problem with
_______________
you may quote me
- The memory devices and other componenets used on consoles are patented; only the console maker can authorize production of console software. For example, there wasn't an NES demoscene until the NES patents expired.
- Console makers are suing manufacturers of cartridge and disc dumping hardware (such as Bung) out of existence.
The Xbox seems more open-spec than traditional consoles (it's quite like a PC) but it can only be truly open if it becomes the X11box (as has happened to some i-opener models).<O
( \
XPlay Tetris On Drugs!
Will I retire or break 10K?
This really is getting kind of pitiful, Hemos. Many posts on Slashdot get moderated down because they are inflammatory comments often from trolls. After reading the article you posted here, I have a hard time believing that what you posted was anything other than a troll.
Before this gets moderated down, let me clarfy that. As one of the senior posters on Slashdot, you owe it to your fellow posters to post quality material. I don't think you've done that. While the link you posted is a good article, all you did was bitch and moan for your couple sentences about Microsoft. Is the idea that MS is a bad or evil or monopolistic company a new idea? Nope.
The reality is that this typifies much of the Linux community at this point. Rather than create a gaming console that runs linux or bsd or whatnot, it is far easier to sit on the sidelines and complain about this-or-that. It seems like the Linux community has really suffered in the last year... Rather than develop new technologies, the community has reverse-engineered other technologies. Rather than reverse-engineer new technologies, the community has been inclined to bitch.
It comes down to the simple fact of put-up or shut-up. Rather than continue to post 'oh Microsoft Sucks' articles, come up with some constructive ideas, help move things forward.
they will take a loss with the hardware and make their $$$ with the software.
Hence, the inevitable linux hacks are a very serious threat. Imagine a kickass web server/firewall for $300 running only open source software subsidized by Mr. Gates and company.
They are in the identical situation to CueCat. We can expect them to behave just like CueCat, if not worse. There will definitely be great entertainment when they attempt to clamp down on us hax0rs.
I hate to submit a "me too" post, and have resisted thus far, but this issue of repeating stories really is getting out of hand. I don't know which is worse, repeating a story from a month ago (a la the Gamecube story) or from a few days ago (a la the Xbox story). Either way it appears sloppy to the reader.
I don't like to complain about a website that provides this much content for nothing, but there really should be a system in place to prevent this from happening.
----
rip20c
Ahh, the delicious irony. Microsoft's vapourware campaign is doing unto the PS2 what Sony has done unto the Dreamcast.
That is a point. But you are reading /., so you are probably a PC gamer anyway. Average console buyers --the kind that dont have PCs, or use their PCs just for (home)work-- use TVs for their gaming, and they even like that blurry merge-in of the pixels. So you are in a minority there.
I remember another interview with Carmack (won't bother to look up the URL, you will have to trust me on this) where he said that rather than increase resolution, he would up the frame rate and keep the eye candy. But hey, he's only the programmer. I am gilty of going for the 1240x1024 too, sometimes.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
An outdoor scene can have a scene complexity of 3.5 - 5 (or average). So at complexity 5, each pixel is overwritten, on average, 5 times
Not to be snotty, but... Where do you get these figures from? I thought VIS (the visibility table compiler for Quake games) took care of those invisble poligons and reduced overdraw.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
Yes, you are right. I got passes mixed up. Yet I am sure that by the time Xbox hits the streets there will be a NVidia chipset for PCs that does eight textures per pass. Or sixteen, whatever. It seems hardcore gamers will pay anything, so the race isn't gonna slow down any soon.
;).
30 texture passes would give renderman-like quality? hmm... Time to go hit Google.
Mark Peercy of SGI has shown, quite surprisingly, that all Renderman surface
shaders can be decomposed into multi-pass graphics operations if two
extensions are provided over basic OpenGL [...] It may take hundreds or thousands of passes, but it clearly defines an approach with no fundamental limits.
I would appreciate it if you could provide the URL where Carmack says 30 will do. That is only 1.5 generatios away from 4! (well, 3 really
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
In my experience with buying game systems the really good games don't come out until the second or third generation. (about a year to two after the system is released) It seems that is when designers have a good handle on the ins and outs of programming. None the less I am gonna wait for the Nintendo cube, but then I am a Zelda addict!
Taco could do with hacking a script together that scans each story post for 'furby autopsy' and 'textmode quake'. That would probably cut redundant stories at a stroke.
---
Well you should care. It certainly turns my stomach to know that kids not much older than my little nephew are making clothes and shoes in the name of the almighty corporate share price.
Hmmmmmm.
So you would feel much better if kids not much older than your little nephew were starving to death, working as prostitutes, or stealing to survive instead of having a comparatively safe, comfortable, and highly paid job in the garment industry?
Fuck, some people like this guy are such idiots it makes me want to puke. Wake up and smell the coffee (or cliché of your choice). The real world is a harsh place, you know. Who do you think would feed these children if they DIDN'T have a job? People who actually care about the welfare of children should be BLESSING the garment industry for taking them off the streets, not trying to put them back on.
Or maybe people like cyber-vandal aren't REALLY the complete fucking idiots they appear to be. Maybe they just don't like it that the under-6 prostitute supply is drying up in Bangkok as the former prostitutes move into the garment industry and other "expolitative" industries, and they're trying to get the kids out of a job so that there's a bigger labor pool for their sick pedophiliac urges. But maybe not.
If you don't have VIS, you'll have to scale up his figures by an order of magnitude, perhaps more.
Poll Mastah
makes me wonder if slashdot editors read their own site ^^;;
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
wash away all the hype and what do we have? we have logic.
it is however many 'generations' away that nvidia wants it to be. if they want to release 3 new 'generations' of cards between now and then, they can.
but in reality, it exists now, it has been thought of now, it is of the current generation. they are just choosing to hold it back, or maybe it's still super buggy. my guess is the hardware is pretty much ready and they're giving software developers more time.
in any case, we've gone over before how stupid the x-box is. anyone who buys it is a moron. use your money for a PC which you can upgrade, not a small crappy PC which you cannot (which is what the x-box is.)
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
I am not confusing megapixels per second with megatris per second. I am comparing both figures, and saying that with decent culling algorithms that minimize overdraw, you dont need more polygons than you have pixels, not really.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
Look, I'm not saying that Microsoft isn't trying to position this thing as a STB. It's just not being that overt about it, to the point where even the XBOX team is sure this isn't going to happen.
Microsoft may think it can pull it off, and may very well be trying to make a play for it. But it hasn't forgotten what a collosal failure WebTV is/was. It's contingency plan is in place ... XBOX is primarily a game machine, unlike PS2 which can't decide WHAT it is. This way, if they can leverage the box, great. If not, they're still making money in the traditional console way ... royalties on software.
If it's any indication, this is exactly Nintendo's strategy too ... but they're even forgoing DVD playback for the cheaper and easier to control Mini-DVD.
But yeah... I think readers should be able to vote a story as "old". To avoid trolls from taking over, perhaps preference could be given to people whose ratio of offtopic-votes to comment-posts is lower.
--
They tried that. it was called the 3D0. Needless to say, it failed. miserably.
D
Mad Scientists with too much time on thier hands
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
Hey hey, another idea stolen from Kuro5hin! Well, not exactly, but close enough. Kuro5hin has Mojo now. Way cooler than /. . Go there. You know you want to :)
Linux is only Free if your time is worth Nothing
Linux is only free if your time is of no value
Be in Your Senses
I'm not much of a gamer, so my comment may be totally off-base...
Doesn't it seem like the X-box is going to be marketed directly toward a crowd with a large population of anti-MICROS~1 people? Sure, there's lots of people that have never heard of Linux, and think that Bill Gates is a visionary, but that moderate percentage of pro-Linux anti-M$ people just ready to jump on the X-box and hack it _must_ have M$'s attention, at the very least.
The thing that worries me, I remember when M$ release the first version of IE, and thinking "there is NO WAY this thing can be a threat to Netscape". I certainly don't want M$ to become the dominant set-top box company...
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Why don't people universalize platforms and have all tools and toys in one box that anyone can have and use- it should have universal wireless access- oh well we all have dreams
Dreamcast is alive and well, thank you very much!!!
Mind you, probably wont stop me from buying a PS2 when it comes to the UK, but, I'm not in any rush really....
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
So it looks like europe (linux) is doing quite well taking over the good old US of A!! ;-)
Hint: Linus is from Finland...
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
read the slashdot discussion on this here
can entire news posts be set to -1, redundant?
fear is the mind killer
I saw the same article two days ago on slashdot please this stuff needs to stop.
The advancement of 1.5 generations could easily work out to be 3x ahead of what's out there now. Maybe the marketriod was misquoted, or maybe it was stated incorrectly -- whether the statement was incorrect on purpose or not is another issue. If you've been reading Hard|OCP, you'll find some pretty negative views of Derek Perez, NVIDIA's PR guy.
--
"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire
Two words: scene complexity. Scene complexity refers to the fact that polygons in a scene overlap each other (from the camera's viewpoint) - ie in an indoor scene there are polygons for the wall in front of you but if there's a room beyond that then there're more polygons that get calculated and put into the frame buffer but are ultimately get overwritten by nearer polygons. An outdoor scene can have a scene complexity of 3.5 - 5 (or average). So at complexity 5, each pixel is overwritten, on average, 5 times. At PAL resolution you need 50m polys/pixels a sec, *on average*. But there will be times you are suddenly in a position where the complexiy is far higher. For example when standing in a town and looking down a street of buildings. The complexity may be 10 or more (before other culling algorithms reduce the workload). So at reasonable PC screen resolution, of say 1024x768 at 60 Hz (~50m pixels) you'd need 250-500m polys/sec to ensure you have enough headroom. This is why flight simulators etc still don't use PCs! nVidia is doing really well though, in perhaps 4-5 generations (2-4yrs?) they'll have this performance. But then we're talking about 48bit colour (if they listen to John Carmack and others) so we're talking up to 6Gbytes per sec. Of course then we're talking about loading in textures *fast*. In an outdoor scene you might easily have a few hundred megs of textures, turn around quickly (say it takes 6 frames) and the system may have to load maybe 100 meg of textures in 1/10th a second ie 1GB/s of textures. This is a lot of bandwidth PCs and consoles (now and near future) just don't have. Of course the alternative is to have your game companies spend 2 years fine tuning the geometry of everything you look at so it doesn't run too slow. Which is exactly what *does* happen for now. But how long before we grow tired of viewing painstakingly handcrafted 3D scenes and textures that takes years to tune, rather than more natural and dynamic scenes? And will we be happy with 1024x768 by then?? My guess is there's still a long way to go.
pithy comment
They are NOT trying to make this a PC in your living room. At least, not yet. They know that won't work. Sony's trying it with PS2, and in Japan, it's getting used to watch movies, not play games. Whoops.
They are trying to take the Nintendo route and say, "Look at all our cool games." Once they're in households, that's when the other features will start to become apparent.
Everyone on the XBOX team will testify to the same thing. Gaming is the only thing on the immediate horizon for XBOX. Linux enthusiasts, like most of the /.ers are the LAST people on Microsoft's radar.
It's a glitch in the matrix, it usualy happen when they change something...
Be afraid, be very afraid....
Just another coder...
Can't wait till they sell these at a loss, gonna hack me up some M$ console. Hope they open at $99, MUhahahahahahahahahahaha
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
Actually, most normal people either:
(a) Don't care about console favoritism... or (b) Don't even know what the XBox is.
To make a real valid point, search for a list of *developers* who think the XBox isn't worth it. Then, search for a list of developers who praise it... I think you'll find that a lot of the people praising the XBox right now are also the same people making the games ...
Don't buy into the general Slashdot ignorance. No one knows if the XBox will ship on time or late.
IMHO, if anything, the only console company not worth trusting on release dates is *Nintendo*. Literally every console has had horrific delays ...
And as for "Supporting 3/4 of its stated features", the specs are out. Read up on them. It's very reasonable.
_Adam Poulos;
BG said that the new nVidia chip would be three *generations* ahead of current chips, not that it would be 3x as fast. There's a VERY big difference.
Abrash said it would be 1.5-2 *generations* ahead of current chips.
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
I have to say that I admire the M$ attempt in this leap into the next generation of entertainment. They are finally seeing what many of us saw long ago... that interactive entertainment will become the de facto for entertainment experience, and movies will be relegated to a niche roll. Don't think it's coincidental that movies will bring in (a good deal) less revenue this year than video games (a first), and that M$ has decided to release a gaming console. What many hardware vendors are failing to realize is that it's not the hardware, it's the games that matter. What offers the best experience... look at gameboy!!! PS2 will capsize due to the fact that games are hard to develop for it (remember Saturn, same thing), Indrema will die quickly because of its less-than-stellar market penetration, and Dreamcast will shortly be outdated because of a lack of Soul Calibur 2 and decent games in general. That leaves X-box and Nintendo (PPC) Cube (M$ vs. Apple anyone?) to fight over who has the best games... And if we remember, M$ and PCs in general succeeded over Macs NOT out of superior hardware, but because PCs had better games... (well, that's not the ONLY reason, but it's a bigger one than most people think.)
Abrash has nothing but good things to say about the new hardware. Granted, he works for the company, but he has more than enough credibility outside of the Microsoft arena for me to listen when he speaks.
He talks about the constraints that ALL hardware-level developers have to deal with, but he says nothing that indicates the X-Box hardware is especially limited.
To wit: "the bottom line is that this is the most powerful chip I could imagine anyone getting into a console in 2001"
"Ratios" in processing power are not mentioned anywhere in the article. Apparently some overenthusaistic PR guy (probably not Gates) said it was 3 generations ahead of current parts, and Abrash says that's a bit of an overstatement. It's merely 1.5 or 2 generations ahead. Wow, that really sucks. :)
So far, the PSX 2 has yet to prove itself. The X Box is already there. I can't wait. :)
It would seem that you are caught in MICROS~1's hypnotic rays. If you'll take a journey down to the local toy store, you will find that the X Box is not "already there". It's no where, it's nt sold yet, and it very well could be a HUGE, elaborate hoax by M$. Maybe there IS no X Box, maybe M$ just wanted to cause problems for the PS2.
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Posted by CmdrTaco on
01:22 PM October 1st, 2000
from the what's-he-got-to-say dept.
Jacek Fedorynski writes: "There's an interview with Michael Abrash on Daily Radar. Michael is an ex-id Software programmer now at Microsoft working on the Xbox, which is the subject of the interview." Covers a lot of stuff including NVidia, HDTV, Lens Flares, and how the X-Box might run quake.
Hemos, check before you post man! You did this with the Gamecube article from the other day too...
Is married like THAT bad? ;)
In case you're not aware, the whole point of DirectX is to enable Windows-based games to access high-performance video, sound, and input devices without having to program specifically for each device. You're obviously referring to Direct3D as a comparison API to OpenGL. The fact that X-Box is going to use DirectX simply means that they're going to write nearly tranparent layers of the DX API that are compatible with the standard PC API. This simply translates into a lesser learning curve for those of us to know the DX API inside and out (warts and all). The fact of the matter is that, although DX did and does have problems, the majority of developers welcomed a standard API and have had great success using it. In addition, MS actually listens to the developers (I've had a modest part in helping to shape portions of DirectMusic and DirectInput).
Regarding the comment about wanting to see a blue-screen... Have you ever actually worked with NT or Win2000? (oh boy, I'm asking for it now...) I can go for weeks without rebooting my 2000 machine, and that's doing D3D development work. Although I have the typical beefs with NT that many other here would share, stability is not one of them.
Microsoft recently did a recruiting meeting at my school (I was only there for free pizza), The University of Colorado at Boulder, where the project leader for the X-Box spoke to us and let us ask questions. I can't remember his name for the life of me. Anyhow, he hyped the X-Box, whereas Michael Abrash actually talks about the flaws in the box.
;) ) I suppose it depends on how you look at it.
The first obvious flaw in the X-Box is that it is using DirectX. That alone limits a programmer. I could see that it would be hard to port from, say, OpenGL to the X-Box, but would be easy to port from X-Box to the Desktop because of DirectX compatibility. (If there is such a thing
Another flaw that might be considered, could be that the X-Box is running on a stripped down NT kernel. It supposedly is not a resource hog and is nearly bug free. (I can't wait to see it blue screen...) The speaker at my school said, "The team considered every possible OS that you can possibly think of... I think you know what that means..." So they apparently did some research on which OS to use...
It is nice to see a contrast to the hype that I heard last week.
Console gamers aren't accustomed to and will not tolerate their games crashing every 15 minutes. In fact, I can't remember any of my old NES and Sega Genesis games locking up or coming away feeling that a console game was buggy. I also never had to apply 5 service packs (i.e. NT4) to a console game system to get it to run smoothly.
I've been trying to play Microsoft's Crimson Skies game today, but the game crashes/locks up/needs Windows to be restarted constantly. This is on a fresh install of Windows ME on a pretty ordinary system -- it is literally the only application other than the junk Windows Setup installed. The argument that the XBoxes will all be the identical hardware configuration ergo will it will be reliable thing doesn't work when the games don't work on that one configuration.
The Quake-engine games seem to be more reliable (but far from console stability) than DirectX games, and DirectX will be used for the XBox. Since nVidia's drivers, DirectX, and the Windows OS are all far from rock-solid, I hope Microsoft at least places the Reset button in a convenient position on the box.
There will be games like Crimson Skies (perhaps Halo) which will be fun to play in between reboots, but I'm sure there will be plenty of good games for the PS2 and Dolphin which are both fun to play and Just Plain Work.
Um. I don't think it's too early for any developer to incorporate compatibility with the HDTV system. Remember the FCC wants us all to go out and buy new TVs by 2006(2008 or whatever the year is). But who knows what could happen in 6 years (maybe i'll even finish college by then).
You totally forgot multipass. Carmack said once in his .plan that he envision doing 20 to 30 passes over all the geometry in a near future.
:-) )
3D is not only pushing textured lighted triangle. It is often about pushing many of them.
Btw, the second option may or may not be nicer to programmer. It depend on the used algorithm. It will rock if developers uses all the power of the graphic pipeline, but it may suck badly if the configuration of it forces the developer to make an extra pass. The raw-power-make-many-pass option, would probably do better in that case.
The MS bet, is that, as the hardware will be fixed, programmers will develop algorithm very well adapted to it. But they'd better not miss anything important. Strangely, I can take a bet that there will be a flaw somewhere, and that every X-Box game will suffer from it (ie: just at looking at the screenshot, you'll be able to say: oh-oh, an Xbox. Look: the whatever mode is missing, so they are forced to do an extra pass and the pixels are washed out cause the precision of is too low. Or maybe you won't
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
It seem like there is a redudant story post every day or two these days.
Might I sugest that some kind of story warning system be implemented wherein the story would be showen to say 100 randomly selected readers, who loaded the main slashdot page at the right time, before it is actually posted. I would suggest a system where the main page is randomly replaced with just the prospective new story. Comment posting would be disabled. There would also be several options for moderating the story. I would suggest:
Redudant
Ancient
OT (Not relevent to slashdot)
Great story
It would also have a box for explantion (forinstance to link to the older story)
The results of the moderation would be fed to a real time display shown to the poster of the story. This would allow them to cancel or delay unneeded redudant/otherwise bad postings.
This is why I think Abrash's words are very revealing:
I am not a graphics überhacker, and don't have the answer on that comparison, but the second option (the way the Xbox design team have taken) sure sounds nicer to programmers. And you don't really need any more triangles anyway. Hmm. It will take Playstation II hackers many headaches to do what will come naturally to the programmers of this simpler-yet-more-complex approach.On a related note: In a recent interview, John Carmack revealed that the Doom 2000 engine will have eight texture passes per polygon. (I am adding the emphasis). What, the Xbox can only do four? It is clear that id wants us PC gamers to keep our leer on when talking to those lowly conlosers. Hah!
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