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XBox Screenshot Flim-Flammery?
X_Bones points to discussion on ign.com, saying: "There's been some amount of talk recently about XBox screenshots being touched up using Photoshop. Apparently a game character was pasted on the scene background and a stock Photoshop lens flare was added (which looks like it centers on the eyewear frame, and not the lens itself). here(1)'s a comparison between the "original" and a lens flare, and here(2) and here(3) are two more detailed comparisons." While companies have long used visual and verbal exaggerations of their products (glass marbles hold up soup veggies, and fruit glistens with baby oil), implying extra graphics capabilities for what is essentially a graphics box seems a little worse than some advertisng slime-tactics, though this too surely isn't new. The screenshots on the XBox site have been updated, but gamers seem to have long, intense, pixel-specific memories.
I have ton of random thoughts.
Maybe its Fraud, yet Dreamcast games use Lens Flare in many of the premier titles.
Many of the outdoor 3d combat games use Lens Flare (such as Soul Calibur), and many outdoor race games such as Sega Extreme Sports, I seem to recall.
Live Lensflare added on top of a 3d scene is simple and is merely an overlay, and is not 3d intensive, It moves interestingly as the camera swivels past the action, but its still not a big deal.
Faking shadows would be far more serious of fraud for XBOX, or faking reflections, translucency, flowing robe animation, flowing hair, course woven cloth etc.
But faking a lens flare is not a big deal because its not a big deal to add in real life and not a massive computation.
Am I shoked that they would resort to fraud? No. Some game console companies in the late 1970s and early 1980s used to have a fake console box on a table but the wires to the demo screen came from special high end hardware hidden in rackmount device under the convention table!
Switching BOXES is the ultimate fraud. And that was done.
Gaming companies are all corrupt. They survive on draconian punishment clauses for publicly discussing terms of distriution.
3D0 (a 602 PPC console) and Apple Pippin (603 PPC) had 3% royalty extrortions of the GROSS, same as the Apple Newton. 3% of the GROSS not NET sales.
And if you did not like it, your media could not ever boot becuase the devices booted encrypted (scrambled technically), media only.
3D0,Pippin, and Newton are all dead. Maybe the 3% had something to do with it.
The TI/994A had a PATENT ON THE CONNECTOR to the game cartridge. A Patent! Just to keep out unlscenced content. Years later in Europe they agreed that you can ignore patents desinged to merely prohibit interoperability, like the TI-994A game connector patent.
The Europeans also allowed that Kodaks disgusting PATENT on a file format was invalid and that people not wanting to spend 100,000 dollars to obtain the PhotoCD fle format manual from Kodak could use the "bootleg" independently reverse engineered PhotoCD code.
Imagine a patent on ASCII files!
The disgusting american DMCA is headed back toward protecting such disgusting things.
Apple had no less than FIVE, count them FIVE fraudulent patents on the PEF container file format header.
Without a PEF header no code can load in Apples newer PowerPC architectures. Creating a PEF header required 5 thousnad dollar liscence from apple.
5 Thousand. Even if you wnat ed to write a shareware or freeware assembler or small c compiler.
5 Thousnad for PEF was so disgusting in turned my stomach the real goal was to make money off EVERY PROGRAM EVER WRITTEN FOR THE MAC. And porno and anti-women content would make you lose the "made for Mac" box art. They also had executive artistic content control over Pippin and Macintosh games.
Eventually After Tom Dowdy (i thinm it was jim) finally wrote a letter to Dr Dobbs, apple stopped charging people 5 thousnad to look at how to make object code loadable on a powermac.
Metrowerks (now Motorola) also had to pay 5 thousand. I asked them.
The XBox will be little different from all other protected content delivery platforms... Encryption, scrambling, violation of CD R-W channels and or 14 bit EFM moduilation, bogus session lead out information, and probably new stuff like track wobble detection to combat CDR at a hardware reading level.
But liscensing and patents will no doubt be a part of the the pay-per-play model.
I'm impressed!
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Man, I have been a reader for the longest of times, and this just depresses me. They should change their logo to read "Rage against Microsoft. Any chance we get." Here we get game related news like this, when no one posted the fact that the president of Sega, one of THE gaming companies of the 80's and 90's, passed away last week, something that made every other EMU, game site, and some news organizations. This is dumb. Advertising has been doing this for the longest time! How many magazines have we seen that have had someone air brushed in some way?! Hell, that Microsoft/Borg icon Slashdot uses was probably touched up in some way, how about a four image document on how that was done! Plus, it is just retarded. Do you really believe that a lens flare is a huge deal, something that my original Voodoo would do with Wing Commander?! Get a life.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Is this really M$ fault?? I mean, every _other_ X-* site has some touched-up ;-)
pictures for download, and nobody seems to complain about them.
Yes, and it was held to be illegal. FTC vs. Campbell Soup Co., 77 FTC 664 (1970).
But no. We focus on the same "Slashdot M$" bullshit as always. The enhance a couple of pics. Key word: a couple. They throw a crappy lens flare up and change the background. Personally I thought the pictures looked worse.
But does anyone at Slashdot look at some of the other, non-modified screenshots like Abe's Oddysey (which look awesome?) Or say anything other than "Well it's M$. We know they'se are the eE. Where are my Warez? I'm so l33t!" Noooooooo.
This is such absolute biased bullshit. We've got a great machine here people. Why shoot it down. Why not hack the damn thing. Noone seems to know about this on Slashdot because, quite frankly, most of the people who are anti-MS here act like complete children.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit...
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
George Broussard of 3D Realms stated earlier this year that he opposed people taking their own screenshots and posting them on the web or using those shots in magazines. His interest, of course, is to prevent crappy screenshots from making his games look like crap.
But of course, the problem with his position is that unethical game developers might try to start passing off touched-up photos as the real deal. I guess we should thank Microsoft (king of the unethical) for proving this point. Good, uncensored reviews are important for the consumer; then it doesn't matter if the screenshots coming out of MS are fake. Informed consumers will be able to seek out and find the truth out for themselves.
Uninformed consumers, of course, will still be duped, but they already get duped by crappy games in great looking boxes covered with screenshots of pre-rendered cut scenes.
Whatever Microsoft has managed to lodge up timothy's arse, he should have it removed :)
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t pc &s=610091063&f=742091063&m=1620961441
Anyhow, here are the specifics of the situation:
1) Microsoft released some screenshots
2) Some gamers noticed that they looked faked, and an uproar was started
3) Microsoft re-checked the images, and had this to say:
"Some of the images for Amped released during Gamestock were enhanced to illustrate some features that will be in the final product. While this is a common practice for games so early in development, we apologize for the confusion. No one intended to be deceptive. Everyone was so busy prepping for Gamestock, that we just missed the fact that these were labeled "concept art". Frankly, we're impressed with the skillz of those digital sleuths! Nice work!"
4) The game dev team issued new screenshots, which they insist are in-game, and haven't been doctored in any way, and hte old shots were removed.
You can read threads about this entire debacle over at Ars:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?q
and at Dailyradar:
http://forums.dailyradar.com/2/OpenTopic?q=Y&a=
The long and the short of it is no, there isn't some sort of conspiracy, and Microsoft isn't pulling a sham on anyone. If you really think that all of the media and so forth up to this point is fake, then you have two options:
a) go see the thing demoed somewhere when it comes out
b) don't buy it.
Simple, ne?
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-- russ
"You want people to think logically? ACK! Turn in your UID, you traitor!"
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
There needs to be a seperation (if not here on slashdot) between microsofts hardware and software. Their software (especially the upcoming versions with all the content protection crap, back door holes, call in for install permission) deserves to be loathed.
Microsofts hardware though is glorious. It's all beautifully engineered, and works as advertised. It's like they are two different companies.
It's a Dr, Jekyll - Mr. Hyde relationship. So perhaps the don't deserve some of the flames on the hardware side (and do you ever hear any??). But doctoring the photos "because everybody does it" doesn't make it right.
That being said, if you have read slashdot for any length of time, the kind of journalism here is off the cuff and raw, bias built in. Its not meant for the average CNN crowd.
In fact, your post is as flamy as some of the bias you set out to condemn. Your points would carry more weight if they didn't have the flames.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I am sure most of the slashdot readers would know not to buy the bok based on it's cover (unless it has an animal on it =))
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Jon - TheSpork