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Using Excel As a 3D Graphics Engine
simoniker writes "Obviously whimsical but slightly mind-blowing — an Eastern European coder has published video and the Excel tables to get full 3D wireframe running in Microsoft Excel. He even has solid polygonal graphics running. This isn't an Easter Egg by the Excel creators. Rather, he's using formulas to output the graphics, using two different methods, and showing all the variables on-screen in real time as the 3D is created."
Somebody has to.
-RetroMud Grandpa
..because it's there?
You sir are not a true geek ;-)
He did it because he could, all other reasons would be redundant.
The DNF team has been waiting for the excel rounding errors to be fixed before release.
You people that ask why on posts like this need to turn in your geek card. Geeks do this kind of stuff because we can. We like a challenge. We like to explore technology to its fullest to find out just how much it can do -- despite the fact that there aren't any practical applications for whatever we come up with. It's all about exploration and learning (and a little bit about showing off what we can do).
Apparently he's using Excel as his web server too...
So that's it, Excel is actually a 3d programming environment. The Excel 97 flight simulator then was a demo. http://www.eeggs.com/items/718.html
Back when I took graphics in college, it was made abundantly clear that all modern graphics are just large math problems solved in realtime. We did all sorts of work messing with transformation matrices and doing the math (sadly, since this was done by the CS department we did a lot less of the useful stuff and a lot more of the theoretical underpinnings that you don't technically need to know when actually programming something).
Anyway, the point is that Excel is reasonably well set up for doing the kind of math you need to do when making computer graphics and has vector output capabilities. It's a neat trick and something that would likely be useful in teaching the underpinnings (watching what happens as you tweak variables in a transformation matrix in realtime would have been very nice when I was taking my class).
I read the internet for the articles.
I've long forgotten how I did it, but I used the database application in MS-Works for Windows 3.0 as Turing Machine.
Why? If you have to ask, get off Slashdot.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...why? Same reason others climb mountains.You can't take the sky from me...
I'm sure someone has either already done this in emacs, or soon will.
:-P
Those guys have a mode for everything.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV6uiZj0FHM
and
http://www.youtube.com/user/GamasutraOfficial
I won't be impressed until Excel can pull of something as simple as a flight simulator.
Nice, but could it display a 2D rectangle whose dimensions are 850 & 77.1?
pfft... speak for yourself. I do it to get laid.
Hopefully, no formula outputs that value. Who knows what 3d image you'd get?!
What's the Excel formula for getting laid?
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Strange how much human accomplishment and progress comes from contemplation of the irrelevant. - Scott Kim.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Not sure, but it probably has something to do with miscalculation.
This was possible on a 7 MHz 68000 back in the day of the original mac. At 3 GHz he should be able to raytrace in Excel.
Hey, I'm a republican and a creationist. No one is going to convience me that this story was not worth of being posted or that I should turn in my card. Heck with an ID as low as mine, I doubt too many people would ask me to :)
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I might be missing the joke and taking this way to seriously, but I really cannot stand that attitude. I guess it's easy to push my buttons.
In wich deranged moral system is there some sort of duty that forces smart guys to spend all their available time on things useful for society?
(And who decides what is beneficial for society anyway?)
If his hoby was playing chess or collecting stamps or climbing mountains, would you say that he should spend his time on more useful things? If he could afford to spend a lot of time on those hobbies, why shouldn't he?
So why is it that every time someone does something cool and strange and for all purposes harmless, someone else always has to say "THIS GUY HAS WAY TOO MUCH FREE TIME"? Someone who, I might add, spends his time on slashdot?
Envy?
(I know I am envious, I wish I had the time and the determination to do a lot of these things. Considering that I am wasting time on slasdot, determination is what I am lacking more of)
Relatively easy. Just create a vba and load some com components...
Its kinda fun to create a button in word which executes a vba app that creates an excel chart based on data in an access database and embeds it in a cad drawing then prints that to pdf and sends an email through outlook. Makes peoples heads explode even though it is very basic programming.
alt-f4
"What's the Excel formula for getting laid?"
I can give you the CSV version:
Income, Car, Looks, Star Wars Fan, Flosses, Dress Quality, Glasses, Muscles, Fat
$250k, Porsche, Good, 0, 1, >0.8, 0, 1, 0
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how you spell 'IQ'.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
The central thesis appears towards the end of the article. The idea is that something like Excel represents a different coding paradigm that hasn't been seriously considered, where you basically lay out what your stuff is supposed to do, i.e. declare it instead of coding it sequentially. By doing this, you increase comprehension of what's going on, b/c it's easier to visualize the algorithm (at least for 3d manipulations) by viewing the tables, instead of trying to decipher a sequential piece of code. It's basically advocating using a declarative programming paradigm (like Prolog) for games, except using a comical venue to show it.
Tim Sweeney's POPL talk had some similar ideas too.
You people that ask why on posts like this need to turn in your geek card. Geeks do this kind of stuff because we can.
No, more like "because we HAVE TO. We can't help ourselves.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I don't think that's it.....I make six figures (that's six figures to the left of the decimal, thank you very much) and still rarely get laid......but then, I'm married, so I guess that's probably why.
nah, man - I think you missed something. I'm no programmer, but he makes the point that what he's doing here is a different type of programming. It allows him to lay out his program structure in two dimensions. Most (all?) code is laid out as a vertical thread of logical progressive statements, so this does seem different: Excel allows you to visually lay out the relationships between variable in a spatial way.
It not like he's claiming to have discovered this: this is the fundamental reason why spreadsheets have been used for well over a decade - they give you a logical map. You could lay out a spreadsheet as a single list of mathematical operations, but it would obviously suck in comparison to a a spreadsheet. He's just pointing out this is interesting to think of in terms of a programming paradigm.
(YAY! I used 'paradigm' and didn't sprout horns or anything!)
Cheers!
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
This has to have been accidentally published in the wrong month. It's clearly intended for April. What kind of Fools are running that magazine?
FAIL.
you can't have extra spaces in a CSV, unless you drive a " Porsche".
Alright Mister Smartguy, how exactly do you spell IQ?
This guy's the limit!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"FAIL. you can't have extra spaces in a CSV, unless you drive a " Porsche"."
Sorry. I'll append my CSV:
Pedantic, Feelings of Superiority by Mastering of Mundane Technical Details, Nitpick a Comment About Why Geeks Don't Score
0, 0, 0
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it's a little short to be a Stormtrooper.
Aperture Science: We do what we can because we must.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
You sir are not a true geek ;-)
I doubt he would apprecaite ASCII Quake either.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Heck with an ID as low as mine...
Old != Smart
"Eastern Europe" is not some nebulous region with fuzzy borders on a map, with "Here there be coders" written in illuminated calligraphy in the very middle of a vast, blank area.
This guy's email address is in Hungary which means he's probably Hungarian. That's a country directly between Austria and Bulgaria, south of Poland and north of Greece (indirectly) which, depending on where you draw the Eastern boundary of Europe, may or may not be in "Eastern" Europe. It lies almost precisely between the western border of France and the Eastern border of Ukraine, the northern border of Poland and the southern border of Greece (excluding Cyprus), making this guy more of a Central European.
French coders are French, German coders are German. What makes a Hungarian coder "Eastern European"?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
That's ok; that's not a pencil sharpener, either.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
And it always shoots first :(((
Please turn in your card.
3D graphics in Excel: http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/excel/convex3d.html
Fractal Generated Landscpare Excel: http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/excel/terrain.html
I'd have just amended my doctype to "CSSV", the popular "Comma Space Separated Values" format. ;)
"Not sure, but it probably has something to do with miscalculation."
I dated her once, and I've never been quite right ever since.
I'm shouting into the storm here, I know, but this is NOT true. Both of my female housemates and several of my female friends ONLY date/shag geeks. This whole "geeks can't get laid" is entirely "geeks (don't want/are too scared to try) to get laid."
As to WHY these girls like geeks, it's generally a combination of the following:
a) They have a mother complex that makes them want to care for and nurture the most socially inept/awkward partner they can find.
b) They're geeks themselves, and stick to their own kind.
c) They have a fetish for crying boys sobbing "thank you, thank you, thank you!" over and over.
Aperture Science: We do what we must, because we can.
For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
he didnt mention he posts anon because the wife has a lower UID
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Some of you guys are kind of missing the point here. What he hasn't done is writing a cheezy little vba app that does wireframe graphics, he's used the non-imperative logic in the actual spreadsheet to demonstrate that whats normally a linear 'pipeline' can be done perfectly well non-imperatively.
Functional coding guys would 'get' the wow factor of it all, I guess.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.