Corba And.NET are using TCP making them fairly useless for real time applications, Verse is using UDP that have lower latency. Second of all verse has a built in format that controls how data is transferred. Since no one has a standardized data format no one could use.NET or Corba for the same thing. (And even if they did agree on a format it would just be very slow and have lots of overhead)
For games and similar applications the requirements of low latency really change the hole way you are designing your system.
Verse is a network protocol that is designed to let any apps talk to each other in real-time over a IP network. So if one app changes the data all other apps gets the changes sent to them in real-time. This means that multiple apps, people and developers can collaborate. its all Free BSD and portable.
Verse support can be given both existing and new applications.
It has been around for quite some time. I and i friend was hired to write verse a few years back. (at II) it is one of few apps written from the ground up as open source and the people who wrote it got funded to do it.
Let us all hope this is not the start of a new war because it will be a war that no one will ever win.
I think this should be the end to violence. we do not need violence in our world, today has been yet an other proof of that, unfortionaly not the first such day.
This has lead to nothing but suffering, and any retaliation will lead to nothing but suffering and the prospect of further retaliation.
This is a tragedy no one can retaliate our way out of.
I don't know who did this, and frankly i don't care that much, I know what i need to know about the people who did this. I will never be like them.
Bush clearly showed why this was inevitable in some form.
He called the people who committed this crime cowards. People who commit suicide attacks are not cowards, they are
impossible to stop only because they are not cowards. When the US sits 10.000 miles away pushes a button and sends of a
cruse missile that hits poor countries they are the coward once. But most of all they are irresponsible because the tragedy
the American people has to endure this day is the product of 60 years of irresponsible foreign policy.
The US leaders should have learned form vietnam that you can not have a aggressive foreign policy whit out casualtys.
you can never build a army large enough to protect you, the only true protection is to have no enemy
my condolences go out to all the victims, their friends and families.
I fear non lethal weapons. Weapons should be dangerous, otherwise they are too easy to use. if the political cost of getting your way by
force is
zero then what kind of democracy do we get?
That's why I think police officers should be armed whit only a gun (if they absolutely need to be armed). The government should not use
force unless
they are ready to take the consequences of killing people.
any cop can push you around,hit you whit his/her bat and no one will care, they can claim you fell
or was already hurt when they got you and so on.
But if they fire a gun there is going to be questions asked.
think of all the anti world trade org demonstrators. if this would have been the 60s they would have to face bullets, just like the anti
vietnam protesters did. The anti vietnam protesters got what they wanted because the political cost of fighting a war at hone was to high.
people actual got pissed at the government for trying to silence the protesters. But now whit pepper spray, tear gas and riot police the
"demonstration problem" can easily be solved whit out any scandals.
Lethal weapons are killing people
Non lethal weapons are killing democracy
well yes, in one way, but it isnt compleatly true.
since the screen is larger then the actiual moving image some of the address space is waisted on
the borders. And since mgeg writes in tiles
it may have to split the tiles extra number of times to retain a sharp edge to the border.(mpeg
works better on gradiant areas then on edges)
Eskil
I visited NATPE and talked to some people about HDTV and it looks like its starting to
happen. Some channels are already broadcasting in japan.
But even though the HDTV consortium contains 19 formats it
looks like there is an emerging universal
mastering format 1080/24P 1980*1080 pixels
12 bits per channel (48 bits per pixel) 24 frames
per second. (you can most likely find this resolution in your display settings). The bandwidth needed for this format is about 220 megs
per second. we would need a fire wire cable capable of more then 1760 Mbit to be able to hare real-time transfer (the current fire wire
is capable of 400 Mbits). The point is that HDTV is not that far away. I mean this is uncompressed!
My computer is ready for it, and so is my display,
but so far there are no consumer cams out there and renting a sony HDTV cam will cost you about 1700$ a day! even though many
digital still
cams can take substantially higher resolution images (i guess its the bandwidth....) it is going to be interesting to see who will be first whit
a consumer HDTV cam... sony? canon?
But the thing that i am waiting the most for is
12bits per pixel, its not
HDRI (High Dynamic Range Images) but its a lot better then 8 bits.
Now let me rant a bit about resolution:
It has taken about 15 years to get to this point (this tells you a bit about how serious tv people are about formats). And the really silly
part is that a mpeg image does not have a set resolution. the resolution is just a part of the header as a "please un compress this data to
this resolution" statement. So since all DTV(digital tv)
will be mpeg there is no need for a fix resolution. you could in fact just broadcast the data an let the receiving tv set, unpack in in any
resolution! This would also make it possible for different programs to be broadcaster in different aspects. every one seams happy whit
the fact that
"wide screen" is 16:9, but nothing is filmed in 16:9, most films are made in 1.85:1, 2:1, 2.1:1 or even 2.34:1 so we will still get borders on
our tv sets, borders that will be broadcasted and take up bandwidth! why cant i buy a TV set whit the aspect and resolution i want and
then just de-code the tv signal the way I want?
JC: I am on record as saying that curved surfaces aren't as wonderful as the first seem, though.
I know, you didn't turn up at GTS....
The bad thing is that Hardware vendors are trying to come up whit hardware that can do nurbs and
other patch surfaces that basically suck instead of creating some thing general.
All points on a NURBS/Loop/Butterfly/catmull-clark
surface are basically just weighted of a number of
CVs in the control mesh. This means that you can for each vertex create a list on CVs that it depends on and quickly re-shape the
curved mesh
if the control CVs are moved. This could be done in hardware, and would really be a easy way to accelerate all types of tessellated
surfaces (even
polygon reduced meshes).
I have implemented this in my experimental api:
www.obsession.se/ngl
I agree that nurbs, and most other patches suck,
But that is why Subdivision is so greate, you
have the arbitrary topology, yett it is curved.
Some argue that subdivisions do not have a natural
uv space and is therfor "broken". To me this is allso a great becouse it gives us the same level och control as whit polygons to define our own texture space. A creased subdivision implementation can do everything a polygon implementation can and more.
Dont bash curved surfases just becouse patches doesnt do what you want them to. Sub division really is the future, maybe it is too early to implement in a game today. But it is defenetly possible to implement a engine based on subdivision surfaces and get goor results. I have done it.
Unfourtionaly it is not that linux is a bad OS
its more of a openGL problem. OpenGL is simply not
developing as fast as Direct 3D. It doesnt matter how good the people behind OpenGL are if no new
versions are released, it will die.
Open GL is currently having a Extension explosion where a lot of new extensions compleatly changes the way open GL is used. This makes it very dificult to use.
What is even more alarming is that there are
people out ther working on new API designs like
SMASH for OpenGL but they are ignored by the Open GL ARB.
Soon we will need a alternative open API
usually every body expects kids that grow up
in rich families to run the risk of becoming spoiled and start thinking that they are better then every body else and loose respect and understanding of people living under
different circumstances.
Some times i tend to think that growing up in the last remaining super power can have the same effect. in large parts of the world, being patriotic is not that great, it borders
on being nationalistic (in turn borders on being a natzi).
in the us some one said that it was great that you could come so close to the white house, it was a sign of how great the democracy in the US was.
here in sweden antigovernment punk bands have been aloud to have concerts on the stairs to the national assembly hall.
in sweden any one has the right to read any politicians paper work including mail and messages. in sweden we don't have software patents
im not saying that sweden is the greatest country on earth, im just saying that you should not say that your country is the best until you have been in, and properly evaluated all
other countries
I am a geek and I find some things to
very interesting, things that people
in general may think area boring,
tedious, complicated or even nerdy.
I also tend to spend so much tim on the things that I am interested in, so that i forget to
eat occasionally, I don't have a huge social life,
and i can also at times be considered as a traffic hazard.
There are a zillion little things that normal people care about that i neglect, i forget stuff, i
say confusing things, and while girls get annoyed when other guys wonder what they look like naked, I annoy them by wondering if 3Dfx will ever return to beat nVidia.
So Im different.
Sometimes people tell me to get a life. but why would i do a thing like that? Why should I like zillions of others worry about a stain on my shirt.
or about looking good, or being good at sports, or be the "hip guy" at my office or in my school?.
Im not hip, im not good at sports, and I don't care about the stains.
In order to become the person I want to be I need to spend A lot of time on it, and maybe just maybe
I will one day do some thing great. not because
im smarter, just because i didnt spend my time trying to be an ordinary person.
"But industry experts said that [a E-mail Trojan] is a relatively unsophisticated hacker's
tool, which isn't likely to have duped Microsoft's systems on its own."
duh.
I find it hilarious.
Eskil
Lots of people want to create virtual worlds, but currently it is way too dificult.
I come from a computer game development background and the problem facing the industry is that
every one is inventing the wheel over and over again. Almost all game companies devote large
resources to technology development and it costs a lot. In almost every other medium (tv, radio,
film, press and so on) the tout that the providers of the content would provide the technology is
absurd, but not in games.
So why is it like this? well first technology is moving fast, but that is not the main problem.
The most important thing for a game developer is control: if I wrote it I can fix it. Currently
a lot of new technologies are becoming so advanced (AI, graphics, physics)that very few
developers can keep up, so games become very tech driven.
In order to progress we need a standard, for 3D real-time content. The infra structure is missing
from the medium. Take a look at what director did to CD-ROM production, or http/html for the
net. VRML is dead and it is one of the few technologies that you can openly hate, whit out offending
anyone, what we need is a open system. we need some thing that every one can agree to, and we need it
before microsoft realizes the potential of the medium.
Eskil Steenberg part of the verse development team. (hopefully bringing answers)
3dfx has been a member for some time, but only now has it become a voting member. It may seam like a big step, but it doesn't have to
be.
The openGL ARB used to be runed by SGI but since they doesn't do it any more (actually they do but they are not as active as before), some
one else should step up and take the lead. But this hasn't happened yet, A lot of people think that nVidia runs the ARB as the currently most
power full member, but infect they dont.
OpenGL is actually runed by A few individuals from all the members that in a most
co-operative manner carries out the work. What may be surprising is that some of the most power full voices come from people who does not
work for any of the hardware company's, Im thinking of people like Chris Hecker and Brian Sharp, who carries out some excellent work for the
ARB. The voting is mostly just a formality.
BTW 3Dfx has actually told game developers that they do not see Glide as a future platform.
It does seam strange that now that we have finally built a massive on-line database of information, and services on the net in the form of html
pages, we are going to build another one in a format, especially made for mobile comunication?
Do we really want fundamentally different information just because we are mobile? personally a mobile way to read slashdot and imdb would be
a killer-app, so why not make a mobile phone with a browser?
some people argue that whit the resolution and color depth available on a mobile phone the web wont be pretty, but do I really read slashdot for
the visual experience? and the graphics of the phones are rapidly approaching what the computers had back when the web was created.
I don't know who will win this battle, but i can tell you it wont be a lasting victory
At siggraph Michael D. McCool presented he's work on Smash. a new
graphics api. he had some opinions on the programmability of 3D
hardware.
you can find he's home page at: http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~mmccool/
you can find he's work at:
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/Projects/rendering/Pap ers/
do you apply the i-dont-own-it-so-i-cant-complain-about-it-philosop hy to everything in life?
Slashdot is not your average geek site that someone updates now and then on her/his spare time. it is a commercial site whit a staff of full time
employees. that makes it their job the get good storys on to the site, and it is their job to know what they are talking about.
And really Im not complaining about the site, the site is great, I just think they should do some more home work before posting things like this.
I don't know but in the future it might be a good idea to set up reference gropes, to ask for advice
since Slashdot storys some times in all fairness tend to be difficult to get right.
Why do Slashdot keep posting stuff like this on computer graphics? Any one how reads openGL.org knows that there are about a zillion particle demos
out there.
Some time ago there was a story about AGP 8X and who ever wrote the story asked why we would need it since we already got firewire.... Don't even
know were to start complaining about that one.
And its not like there hasn't been any graphics storys to cover. The advancements in hardware accelerated programmable shades has fundamentally
changed the way people think of graphics hardware, softimageXSI for Linux, Linux on onyx3,
the alternative to openGL SMASH, rendering whit natural light, new 3D displays....the list goes on and on.
I think that slashdot is one of the greatest sites on the net but every time i read some thing regarding my area of expertise that is wrong I start to question
the credibility of slashdot on areas i don't know much about.
Please, if you what to cover graphics please do so,
but get some one who works whit graphics to do it.
A "ask slashdot" on how to improve the site may also be a good idea.
Sorry about the rant, i just could not get my fingers of the keyboard.
agree.
but you know supply and demand(yadi yadi yadi..)
i guess some people will pay for it.
but i do think you have an interesting idea for a biz there: a company
that get people to pay for them to fix bugs and extending free
software.
I think a lot of people/companys would like to just cash up to get
something fixed and know that it will be implemented. of course the
OS community would probably, fix it too, but companies need to
know that some one is on it and that it will be fixed, and they don't
mind paying for it.
For some one who knows what the OS community is capable of it
may seam silly, but a lot of companies want a company to call if some
things go wrong, companies rarely have the know-how about the
proper cannel's to get it fixed by the community.
But still I just cant believe how un smooth they are (no, in fact i cant believe how un smooth companies in general
are) If i was apple, i would
simply tap on the employees shoulder and say:
"we know what you did, we give you the option of
resigning, if you don't we will have to fire you
and file a suit. If you tell anybody about this conversation, we will tell the judge about the cube incident"
The rumour might make it out, and keep other apple
employees to do the same but it cant be proved that he/she was forced to quit since apple has
got the resignation.
Im not a fan of lawsiuts, but i guess if the
persom signed a NDA, well then he/she did. and
he/she must have been aware of the consequenses.
This is some thig that I really miss in the open source comunity, you never get that antisipation. I just love when people speculate about new stuff that is comming out. Appel knows this, and the have big shows becouse then then know they will end up on the news.
Its not realy the same as when new featiures makes it in to linux, ewen if it is news the only reson it is news i becouse i dont hang around in the right mailing lists. If Im exited about some thing some one else can allways tell me how that is "so old news" and that i am a lamer who doesnt hang
whit the inner circle.
Its a great PR trick that really works.
And by the way Appel is loosing money, if you know
what is around the corner you are less likely to invest now. most companys work like this.
it seams like every one is falling for the hype.
the chip (nv25) that will be in the X-box will be out next spring for the pc, and
the X-box will come out 6 months later right about the same times as Nvidia
releases nv30 for the PC.
Every now and then consoles jump ahead, but in the long run, the pc always
catch up. I remember when
playstation came out, back then every body stated it was the death of the pc
as a gaming platform.
It didn't happen and it wont for a long time a head.
the pc people newer show any thing a year and a half, before they release it.
So when the console people do, everybody thing they are ahead of the pc. the
ps2 is currently more power full then the
current pc (for graphics) but it wont stay ahead
that long. the X-box wont even be better then
the hi end pc at launch day.
The biggest news at siggraph that was linux related was that Softimage will release softimage|XSI on Linux later this year. They actually had it up and running on their user group meeting. That's more then Alias has been abel to do whit maya even tough Bill Buxton(Chief Scientist at A|w) told me it shuld be out in jan/feb.
Slashdot Mirror
Corba And .NET are using TCP making them fairly useless for real time applications, Verse is using UDP that have lower latency. Second of all verse has a built in format that controls how data is transferred. Since no one has a standardized data format no one could use .NET or Corba for the same thing. (And even if they did agree on a format it would just be very slow and have lots of overhead)
For games and similar applications the requirements of low latency really change the hole way you are designing your system.
E
The link is to a 2 year old verse site. The new releases can be found at: http://www.blender.org/modules/verse/
Wow verse finally hit slashdot...
So what is verse?
Verse is a network protocol that is designed to let any apps talk to each other in real-time over a IP network. So if one app changes the data all other apps gets the changes sent to them in real-time. This means that multiple apps, people and developers can collaborate. its all Free BSD and portable.
Verse support can be given both existing and new applications.
It has been around for quite some time. I and i friend was hired to write verse a few years back. (at II) it is one of few apps written from the ground up as open source and the people who wrote it got funded to do it.
Verse used to be on source forge but is now living on at blender.org
Loq Airou, Nil salentinn, and connector are very recently added apps and you can find some screen shots here and here
Ton (head of the blender foundation) wants to base Blender 3 on verse technology.
E
Let us all hope this is not the start of a new war because it will be a war that no one will ever win.
I think this should be the end to violence. we do not need violence in our world, today has been yet an other proof of that, unfortionaly not the first such day.
This has lead to nothing but suffering, and any retaliation will lead to nothing but suffering and the prospect of further retaliation.
This is a tragedy no one can retaliate our way out of.
I don't know who did this, and frankly i don't care that much, I know what i need to know about the people who did this. I will never be like them.
E
Bush clearly showed why this was inevitable in some form.
He called the people who committed this crime cowards. People who commit suicide attacks are not cowards, they are
impossible to stop only because they are not cowards. When the US sits 10.000 miles away pushes a button and sends of a
cruse missile that hits poor countries they are the coward once. But most of all they are irresponsible because the tragedy
the American people has to endure this day is the product of 60 years of irresponsible foreign policy.
The US leaders should have learned form vietnam that you can not have a aggressive foreign policy whit out casualtys.
you can never build a army large enough to protect you, the only true protection is to have no enemy
my condolences go out to all the victims, their friends and families.
I fear non lethal weapons. Weapons should be dangerous, otherwise they are too easy to use. if the political cost of getting your way by force is zero then what kind of democracy do we get?
,hit you whit his/her bat and no one will care, they can claim you fell
or was already hurt when they got you and so on.
But if they fire a gun there is going to be questions asked.
That's why I think police officers should be armed whit only a gun (if they absolutely need to be armed). The government should not use force unless they are ready to take the consequences of killing people.
any cop can push you around
think of all the anti world trade org demonstrators. if this would have been the 60s they would have to face bullets, just like the anti vietnam protesters did. The anti vietnam protesters got what they wanted because the political cost of fighting a war at hone was to high. people actual got pissed at the government for trying to silence the protesters. But now whit pepper spray, tear gas and riot police the "demonstration problem" can easily be solved whit out any scandals.
Lethal weapons are killing people
Non lethal weapons are killing democracy
well yes, in one way, but it isnt compleatly true. since the screen is larger then the actiual moving image some of the address space is waisted on the borders. And since mgeg writes in tiles it may have to split the tiles extra number of times to retain a sharp edge to the border.(mpeg works better on gradiant areas then on edges) Eskil
I visited NATPE and talked to some people about HDTV and it looks like its starting to happen. Some channels are already broadcasting in japan.
:
But even though the HDTV consortium contains 19 formats it looks like there is an emerging universal mastering format 1080/24P 1980*1080 pixels 12 bits per channel (48 bits per pixel) 24 frames per second. (you can most likely find this resolution in your display settings). The bandwidth needed for this format is about 220 megs per second. we would need a fire wire cable capable of more then 1760 Mbit to be able to hare real-time transfer (the current fire wire is capable of 400 Mbits). The point is that HDTV is not that far away. I mean this is uncompressed!
My computer is ready for it, and so is my display, but so far there are no consumer cams out there and renting a sony HDTV cam will cost you about 1700$ a day! even though many digital still cams can take substantially higher resolution images (i guess its the bandwidth....) it is going to be interesting to see who will be first whit a consumer HDTV cam... sony? canon?
But the thing that i am waiting the most for is 12bits per pixel, its not HDRI (High Dynamic Range Images) but its a lot better then 8 bits.
Now let me rant a bit about resolution
It has taken about 15 years to get to this point (this tells you a bit about how serious tv people are about formats). And the really silly part is that a mpeg image does not have a set resolution. the resolution is just a part of the header as a "please un compress this data to this resolution" statement. So since all DTV(digital tv) will be mpeg there is no need for a fix resolution. you could in fact just broadcast the data an let the receiving tv set, unpack in in any resolution! This would also make it possible for different programs to be broadcaster in different aspects. every one seams happy whit the fact that "wide screen" is 16:9, but nothing is filmed in 16:9, most films are made in 1.85:1, 2:1, 2.1:1 or even 2.34:1 so we will still get borders on our tv sets, borders that will be broadcasted and take up bandwidth! why cant i buy a TV set whit the aspect and resolution i want and then just de-code the tv signal the way I want?
Eskil
JC: I am on record as saying that curved surfaces aren't as wonderful as the first seem, though.
I know, you didn't turn up at GTS....
The bad thing is that Hardware vendors are trying to come up whit hardware that can do nurbs and other patch surfaces that basically suck instead of creating some thing general.
All points on a NURBS/Loop/Butterfly/catmull-clark surface are basically just weighted of a number of CVs in the control mesh. This means that you can for each vertex create a list on CVs that it depends on and quickly re-shape the curved mesh if the control CVs are moved. This could be done in hardware, and would really be a easy way to accelerate all types of tessellated surfaces (even polygon reduced meshes).
I have implemented this in my experimental api: www.obsession.se/ngl
I agree that nurbs, and most other patches suck, But that is why Subdivision is so greate, you have the arbitrary topology, yett it is curved. Some argue that subdivisions do not have a natural uv space and is therfor "broken". To me this is allso a great becouse it gives us the same level och control as whit polygons to define our own texture space. A creased subdivision implementation can do everything a polygon implementation can and more.
Dont bash curved surfases just becouse patches doesnt do what you want them to.
Sub division really is the future, maybe it is too early to implement in a game today. But it is defenetly possible to implement a engine based on subdivision surfaces and get goor results. I have done it.
http://verse.sourceforge.net/
Unfourtionaly it is not that linux is a bad OS its more of a openGL problem. OpenGL is simply not developing as fast as Direct 3D. It doesnt matter how good the people behind OpenGL are if no new versions are released, it will die.
Open GL is currently having a Extension explosion where a lot of new extensions compleatly changes the way open GL is used. This makes it very dificult to use.
What is even more alarming is that there are people out ther working on new API designs like SMASH for OpenGL but they are ignored by the Open GL ARB. Soon we will need a alternative open API
usually every body expects kids that grow up in rich families to run the risk of becoming spoiled and start thinking that they are better then every body else and loose respect and understanding of people living under different circumstances .
Some times i tend to think that growing up in the last remaining super power can have the same effect. in large parts of the world, being patriotic is not that great, it borders on being nationalistic (in turn borders on being a natzi).
in the us some one said that it was great that you could come so close to the white house, it was a sign of how great the democracy in the US was. here in sweden antigovernment punk bands have been aloud to have concerts on the stairs to the national assembly hall. in sweden any one has the right to read any politicians paper work including mail and messages. in sweden we don't have software patents
im not saying that sweden is the greatest country on earth, im just saying that you should not say that your country is the best until you have been in, and properly evaluated all other countries
I am a geek and I find some things to very interesting, things that people in general may think area boring, tedious, complicated or even nerdy. I also tend to spend so much tim on the things that I am interested in, so that i forget to eat occasionally, I don't have a huge social life, and i can also at times be considered as a traffic hazard.
There are a zillion little things that normal people care about that i neglect, i forget stuff, i say confusing things, and while girls get annoyed when other guys wonder what they look like naked, I annoy them by wondering if 3Dfx will ever return to beat nVidia.
So Im different.
Sometimes people tell me to get a life. but why would i do a thing like that? Why should I like zillions of others worry about a stain on my shirt. or about looking good, or being good at sports, or be the "hip guy" at my office or in my school?. Im not hip, im not good at sports, and I don't care about the stains.
In order to become the person I want to be I need to spend A lot of time on it, and maybe just maybe I will one day do some thing great. not because im smarter, just because i didnt spend my time trying to be an ordinary person.
E
"But industry experts said that [a E-mail Trojan] is a relatively unsophisticated hacker's tool, which isn't likely to have duped Microsoft's systems on its own." duh. I find it hilarious. Eskil
Lots of people want to create virtual worlds, but currently it is way too dificult.
I come from a computer game development background and the problem facing the industry is that every one is inventing the wheel over and over again. Almost all game companies devote large resources to technology development and it costs a lot. In almost every other medium (tv, radio, film, press and so on) the tout that the providers of the content would provide the technology is absurd, but not in games.
So why is it like this? well first technology is moving fast, but that is not the main problem. The most important thing for a game developer is control: if I wrote it I can fix it. Currently a lot of new technologies are becoming so advanced (AI, graphics, physics)that very few developers can keep up, so games become very tech driven.
In order to progress we need a standard, for 3D real-time content. The infra structure is missing from the medium. Take a look at what director did to CD-ROM production, or http/html for the net. VRML is dead and it is one of the few technologies that you can openly hate, whit out offending anyone, what we need is a open system. we need some thing that every one can agree to, and we need it before microsoft realizes the potential of the medium.
Eskil Steenberg part of the verse development team. (hopefully bringing answers)
3dfx has been a member for some time, but only now has it become a voting member. It may seam like a big step, but it doesn't have to be.
The openGL ARB used to be runed by SGI but since they doesn't do it any more (actually they do but they are not as active as before), some one else should step up and take the lead. But this hasn't happened yet, A lot of people think that nVidia runs the ARB as the currently most power full member, but infect they dont.
OpenGL is actually runed by A few individuals from all the members that in a most co-operative manner carries out the work. What may be surprising is that some of the most power full voices come from people who does not work for any of the hardware company's, Im thinking of people like Chris Hecker and Brian Sharp, who carries out some excellent work for the ARB. The voting is mostly just a formality.
BTW 3Dfx has actually told game developers that they do not see Glide as a future platform.
It does seam strange that now that we have finally built a massive on-line database of information, and services on the net in the form of html pages, we are going to build another one in a format, especially made for mobile comunication?
Do we really want fundamentally different information just because we are mobile? personally a mobile way to read slashdot and imdb would be a killer-app, so why not make a mobile phone with a browser? some people argue that whit the resolution and color depth available on a mobile phone the web wont be pretty, but do I really read slashdot for the visual experience? and the graphics of the phones are rapidly approaching what the computers had back when the web was created.
I don't know who will win this battle, but i can tell you it wont be a lasting victory
At siggraph Michael D. McCool presented he's work on Smash. a new graphics api. he had some opinions on the programmability of 3D hardware.
p ers/
you can find he's home page at: http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~mmccool/
you can find he's work at: http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/Projects/rendering/Pa
Eskil
nice.
p hy to everything in life?
do you apply the i-dont-own-it-so-i-cant-complain-about-it-philoso
Slashdot is not your average geek site that someone updates now and then on her/his spare time. it is a commercial site whit a staff of full time employees. that makes it their job the get good storys on to the site, and it is their job to know what they are talking about.
And really Im not complaining about the site, the site is great, I just think they should do some more home work before posting things like this.
I don't know but in the future it might be a good idea to set up reference gropes, to ask for advice since Slashdot storys some times in all fairness tend to be difficult to get right.
Why do Slashdot keep posting stuff like this on computer graphics? Any one how reads openGL.org knows that there are about a zillion particle demos out there.
Some time ago there was a story about AGP 8X and who ever wrote the story asked why we would need it since we already got firewire.... Don't even know were to start complaining about that one.
And its not like there hasn't been any graphics storys to cover. The advancements in hardware accelerated programmable shades has fundamentally changed the way people think of graphics hardware, softimageXSI for Linux, Linux on onyx3, the alternative to openGL SMASH, rendering whit natural light, new 3D displays....the list goes on and on.
I think that slashdot is one of the greatest sites on the net but every time i read some thing regarding my area of expertise that is wrong I start to question the credibility of slashdot on areas i don't know much about.
Please, if you what to cover graphics please do so, but get some one who works whit graphics to do it. A "ask slashdot" on how to improve the site may also be a good idea.
Sorry about the rant, i just could not get my fingers of the keyboard.
agree.
but you know supply and demand(yadi yadi yadi..) i guess some people will pay for it.
but i do think you have an interesting idea for a biz there: a company that get people to pay for them to fix bugs and extending free software.
I think a lot of people/companys would like to just cash up to get something fixed and know that it will be implemented. of course the OS community would probably, fix it too, but companies need to know that some one is on it and that it will be fixed, and they don't mind paying for it.
For some one who knows what the OS community is capable of it may seam silly, but a lot of companies want a company to call if some things go wrong, companies rarely have the know-how about the proper cannel's to get it fixed by the community.
True, they need to enforce the NDA.
But still I just cant believe how un smooth they are (no, in fact i cant believe how un smooth companies in general are) If i was apple, i would simply tap on the employees shoulder and say:
"we know what you did, we give you the option of resigning, if you don't we will have to fire you and file a suit. If you tell anybody about this conversation, we will tell the judge about the cube incident"
The rumour might make it out, and keep other apple employees to do the same but it cant be proved that he/she was forced to quit since apple has got the resignation.
What the point in getting bad PR on slashdot?
Im not a fan of lawsiuts, but i guess if the persom signed a NDA, well then he/she did. and he/she must have been aware of the consequenses.
This is some thig that I really miss in the open source comunity, you never get that antisipation. I just love when people speculate about new stuff that is comming out. Appel knows this, and the have big shows becouse then then know they will end up on the news.
Its not realy the same as when new featiures makes it in to linux, ewen if it is news the only reson it is news i becouse i dont hang around in the right mailing lists. If Im exited about some thing some one else can allways tell me how that is "so old news" and that i am a lamer who doesnt hang whit the inner circle.
Its a great PR trick that really works.
And by the way Appel is loosing money, if you know what is around the corner you are less likely to invest now. most companys work like this.
Eskil
it seams like every one is falling for the hype. the chip (nv25) that will be in the X-box will be out next spring for the pc, and the X-box will come out 6 months later right about the same times as Nvidia releases nv30 for the PC.
Every now and then consoles jump ahead, but in the long run, the pc always catch up. I remember when playstation came out, back then every body stated it was the death of the pc as a gaming platform.
It didn't happen and it wont for a long time a head.
the pc people newer show any thing a year and a half, before they release it. So when the console people do, everybody thing they are ahead of the pc. the ps2 is currently more power full then the current pc (for graphics) but it wont stay ahead that long. the X-box wont even be better then the hi end pc at launch day.
The biggest news at siggraph that was linux related was that Softimage will release softimage|XSI on Linux later this year. They actually had it up and running on their user group meeting. That's more then Alias has been abel to do whit maya even tough Bill Buxton(Chief Scientist at A|w) told me it shuld be out in jan/feb.
Coolest in show was Square.
By far.