The real ps2 dev kits already run a linux kernel. Are these like 'lite' versions of the real thing? Are they really aimed at young people? If so, then they better come with some good debugging software, since the machine is only half the battle! The program I've used is made by a company called ProDG, and is prohibitively expensive. However, its an indispensable tool.
Incidently, PS2 dev kits are *very* cool to work with--much better than the NGC dev kits, and they lock up less than the XBOX dev kits (by this, I mean its harder to freeze them so that they can't be rebooted remotely). All in all a good experience to work with. However, they are also very expensive. By trying to make them more accessible, Sony will definitely lengthen the lifespan of the PS2.
AFAIK, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to emulate RISC processors on the x86 architecture.
I don't think this is true at all. If anything, its easier to emulate a RISC processor than CISC.
As for some examples to back this up, MIPS chips have been successfully emulated for years--SPIM and XSPIM come to mind. This is also true for the playstation (which runs a MIPS chip, more or less). Check out Bleem. A lot of Palm development is done via emulator (POSE, which kicks ass); I believe the dragonball is a RISC chip.
Not trying to be asinine or know-it-all, just adding to an otherwise good post.:)
FYI, the 'sub-company' EA has down in the Orlando area is EA Tiburon. They're responsible for Madden football, Nascar driving, NCAA football, etc. Its a console dev shop, and its a lot bigger than you think--around 200 employees and growing. Right now they're located in Maitland, Florida.
They're also expanding, although read some of my other posts if you're thinking of working there.
Not a troll, but *why* is Arwen in The Two Towers?? Are those supposed to be flashbacks for Aragorn? I hope so, because I shudder to think about how would they work in a quick trip back to Rivendell just to justify Tyler's presence in the movie!
I loved the production design and art direction of the first movie, but some of the character portrayals made me sad. And I still haven't figured out why Jackson is pushing Arwen so much. Is it really his interpretation of the story or did someone tell him to make the movies more romantic to appeal to a wider audience than those who have read the books?
The interesting thing about the transmeta procs is that they make heavy use of caching to speed up instruction translation. Once the cache 'warms up' around a given application, performance is generally much better.
I for one would like to know what they meant by 'better performance' than the intel. Did they compare application startup speeds? Had the machine been running the apps previously? Granted I don't know any of the details, but from personal experience (I'm typing this on a transmeta-based fujitsu lifebook, at 866mhz) the current transmeta chips start applications extremely slowly and then progressively get more reponsive.
I like my laptop and am rooting for the astro! I'm very interested in how they improved the efficiency of their approach.
I completely agree that the "House *" books were pretty much pure cheese. I've felt that about a lot of Mr. Anderson's books. I'm sure this is just a matter of taste, but most of his books just flat out fail to hold my interest for long, i.e. I'll be thinking about other things I should be doing while I read them. I might pick this one up in an airport sometime, but I pretty much stopped reading after they built one of the characters a robot body.
However, re: Robert Jordan, I thought his first few books sucked hard. The first one was just full of over-worded dialogue and false climaxes. (For a while, it seemed like they'd won at the end of each book--boy, I think I'd hang myself if I was forced to be a main character in one of his books. "Congrats, you win--oh wait, nevermind.")When I came back to the series later, I was impressed by how much he'd matured as a writer and how there was increasing plot complexity. Yeah, this drawn out series needs to end, but I still want to buy the next one.
What if this guy works for Sun? I didn't see any indication of his employer on the mirror I looked at. With the kind of money being tossed around here and the support costs if something gets broken, this could explain a lot!
Mod the parent up. This move would make a lot of sense.
In the sports market, EA Sports and EA Big is king. To use football (the biggest sports game market by far) as an example, Madden is outselling NFL 2K3 by an extremely wide margin. Microsofts offerings are not really a blip on the radar (or weren't last I was updated), and GameDay even less so. Likewise for nearly all the other EA sports titles.
However, Sega has a superior football product in a variety of ways, and perhaps overall. Do not think that the people at EA don't know this. They probably play as much 2k3 as Madden. (Yes, I used to work there.) Graphically, its far superior--to illustrate this, look at the crowds on both game side by side--and the gameplay is also better, although this is somewhat subjective. The product is very polished.
However, Madden has a huge advertising campaign going for it. Its being used to demo plays on ABC's Monday night football. Its commercials occupy key timeslots for football fans. There is also the MaddenBowl. Madden online is gathering force. etc, etc, etc.
What Microsoft would bring to Sega is superior advertising dollars. Sega would bring excellent technology and expertise to Microsoft which would greatly bolster their sports line, if not their entire line. This teamup would cause real panic in competitors, and would make a lot of sense for both parties.
However, will it actually happen? Probably not, for a variety of reasons. Still its an interesting thought!
Somehow, I doubt that the majority of current teenage students using typing shortcuts in their writing are doing so without thought. If every book they've read and teacher they've had has shown them differently, why the sudden switch to chat lingo now?
I haven't read the article yet, but I would suspect coolness and laziness play more of a role in this than ignorance. Teachers coming down hard (as they should) will stamp this out.
The article appears to have been slashdotted, but even so, given the state of AI research right now as I understand it (and I'm probably behind), there are some significant limitations on how good a system like this could be.
1. If this system truly learns from players, it will require a significant set of training examples in order to 'learn' what the best decision is at any point in the game. In this case, I would think 'best' does not mean 'most likely to win the game' but 'most like the player'. With the number of variables involved in playing a game, it would either take a lot of saved data or a long time to learn any sort of useful evaluation function.
2. How would a learning system like this decide on which variables to examine when making its decision? Games vary widely. Usually, the less specific the variables--specific meaning the more evenly the value of a variable seperates information into groups--the less accurate the result of the decision will be. This is called 'Information Gain'.
Even if the system takes the easier route of applying its own evaluation function instead of trying the learn from the player, there are still a lot of difficulties to overcome. For some games--like starcraft--evaluating the state of the player's game is somewhat easy. Using starcraft as an example, one could attatch values to all of the units and then try to move to the state with the highest unit value. However, for other games--like, say, MMORPGs--this would be a nightmare.
As an example, one of the research projects I've worked on involved training a decision tree algorithm to evaluate link texts to web pages based on user evaluation of those labels. The object was to create a system that would take a page, create an anchor text, and then use a user-data trained evaluation function to choose the best label to pass to the page generator. Even with good data (albiet not enough) and good differentiation between page evaluations, our system was right about half the time.
I don't know if I buy a realtime learning gameplaying system that's good enough on current hardware. Especially one that works out of the box on all games. There are tricks one can that help, but the real thing isn't quite here yet.
Since you're planning on using your player for running/strenous activity, be very sure that whatever you buy is well made and water-resistant!! Sounds obvious, but believe it or not this actually disqualifies at least half of the players out there.
Using myself as an example of why you might want to listen to my advice, I bought an mp3 player with more or less the same goals you did, with the addition of wanting it cheap. So, I ended up buying a jaMp3 from KBGear. One trip to the weight room was all it took. I'm a big guy and I work out hard; the sucker died the first time out from (I believe) getting sweaty.
Anyways, I'm currently looking at the Samsung YEPP-30sh. ..its VERY small and light, has 128 megs, relatively inexpensive, and I've heard good things about its durability. That might be one for you to consider.
I agree with most of your points: there's a lot of life left in the model making business. Sometimes models make more sense than 3d work, and since we don't have three dimensional screens, design reference models will be around for quite a while. Oh, and hell no theater won't replaced by CG (holograms?), no matter how good it becomes.
However, due to recent research papers, I do think that 3d-generated actors will be a reality, and without the need for references. There has been a lot of animation research into taking captured actions and changing them to fit the physical characteristics of generated models based on physics. As an example, I motion capture the skinny kid serving coffee on the set throwing a punch, and the motion is mapped to a 3d-generated (and non-aging) Ah-nold, with specialized algorithms adapting the motion to his bodytype, speed, size, etc. Its possible that eventually there will be whole libraries of motions that can be used with any 3d-generated 'actor' with the help of adaption alogorithms like these. For more information, you can check out the recent SIGGRAPH stuff, or perhaps look at this guy's work.
Speaking of cloth, yes there is also a lot more work to do here. Animating cloth by hand is a pain. Simulating cloth graphically is not hard, and can look quite good--until it collides with something. Fast cloth-on-cloth collision testing is still a ways away, but in a few years, I think animators will be able to specify the parameters of a model's clothes (for example) and then let the algorithms do the rest. For a good look at recent work in cloth simulation, check out this guy's work.
As long as the computing price/performance ratio keeps improving, the accessibility of computer-generated effects will continue to grow. And with computer graphics being such a hot research topic, both visual and procedural improvements will be coming fast and thick.
After reading the article, this sounds like a really bad idea.
Support costs will go through the roof.
Likewise, most likely, with power costs.
If I was a petty thief reading slashdot, guess where I'd be enrolling right now? And you thought campus bicycle thefts were bad.
I must be old fashioned, but the idea of reading everything on a handheld instead of out of a book gives me a headache already. I've used an iPaq, and even though it has a great screen, I'm not sold on eBooks quite yet. In fact, as the article mentions, printing costs are anticipated to go up as people find this out. How exactly is this going to save paper?
I am very supportive of tech in education. However, I don't think we're there yet in terms of paperless college campuses. This almost sounds like a propoganda move prompted by a grant from a huge backer.
I couldn't agree with you more. Menace and Clones looked like toy shows because all of the CG looked so shiny new. Nothing felt weathered or USED, which is in my opinion a key component of realistic effects.
Also contributing to the CG atmosphere is how despite some amazing recent advances (particularly in hair and shadowing), CG texturing still has serious problems looking organic. Likewise with animation. Not to knock some excellent efforts, but some recent examples are Harry Potter and Final Fantasy.
CG still has a long way to go before it can completely replace models, IMHO. And even longer before it replaces actors with any sort of believability.
I grew up with these books and loved them. Same goes for Tolkien's work. Recently, I've enjoyed the Harry Potter books. Now, looking at the feature-film-adaptation craze, I'm worried about what could happen to Narnia.
No offense to anyone here, but I for one wasn't terribly impressed with the LOTR movie. I thought it looked and sounded amazing. ..but I came away dissapointed at some of the changes to the story. I.e. Liv Tyler's part, Frodo's portrayal, changing the council, the hour-long moving-stairs thing, Galadrial's portrayal, etc. I understand that this is one man's interpretation of an epic, but still. . .
After seeing Harry Potter, I thought that the movie did a MUCH better adaption of the book than LOTR did. The scenes that were removed made sense. The changes made the movie more accessible. They were not for the sake of adding hot actresses. After seeing the movie, I wanted to read the book, so I did--and enjoyed it. I don't think this is because I saw the movie before reading the book either.
Looking ahead to the Chronicles, I'm somewhat worried. I see a potential for a lot of bad CG (wasn't Harry Potter's strongpoint either). I just hope that whoever helms the project reads the whole series along with a biography of C.S. Lewis (a fascinating man who was a very close friend of Tolkien's. Spoke many languages and was extremely christian) before looking at any script treatments. Also, he/she might want to watch the cartoon version, which I remember as being pretty close to the story and quite enjoyable.
Python is a GREAT language, but. . .
on
Think Python
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Python is an excellent languange that I've been using for about 8 months now. Anyone who has ever programmed before can pick it up easily just by reading the [very thorough] documentation at python.org. It also has an rabid support base via newsgroup, who are excellent at answering questions.
That said, I don't know if I would teach a begining computer science course in python. At my University, our general intro to CSE involves a two class series teaching generic basic theory wrapped around a programming language. We used to teach them with C and C++ but just recently moved to Java. I have been a TA for these classes before. Based on my experiences, I think there are both pluses and minuses to the idea of teaching these classes in python.
Benefits:
Python is extremely easy to learn, as mentioned before. Much easier than C, C++, or Java.
Python works really well with Tk, which would make it easy to build out skeleton code (multiplatform skel code at that) for the students using windowing and graphics. Students are 100% happier if they can see what they're working on reflected graphically. Makes it more fun to show off. This is why our projects usually include basic games.
BASIC Python is truly, completely, multiplatform, working identically on Mac, Win*, and *nix. Some specialized functions in modules don't support all platforms, but nothing that would be important to a begining student. Support issues would be MUCH simpler than C or C++. God, we had huge headaches trying to support MSVC, CodeWarrior, CodeWright, Borland, etc. . .
There is a great installer script available that will build python modules into either standalone exe's or distributable directories. (Available here if you've never seen this before)
But, there are also some downsides that would have to be weighed. These are:
I have yet to find a solid dev environment that includes a great debugger. Yes, emacs can be set up to help a bit, and the default program included with the windows install is ok (albiet a bit flaky), but I would want a rock solid, easy to use complete dev studio for my students.
I REALLY dislike any language that depends on white space. Miranda and Haskell are two other examples of this. Its a pain to move blocks around and anyone who doesn't use an editor with auto-indent is screwed. Also, unless tabs are set to spaces, computers with differnt tab stops will see your code differently, which can be a problem if code is emailed, etc.
As has already been mentioning, not too much one can teach about memory management and pointers with python. . .
Sounds kinda strange as a complaint, but too much is built in. I have this complaint about java too. As an example, I would much rather have an early homework be a sorting algorithm and then have them reuse this algorithm in other homeworks than let them just type "xxx.sort()". Not that this isn't a great feature for experienced programmers, its just that begining students should have to do sorting, reversing, duplicating, etc themselves at first.
Looking away from basic intro classes, python is great to know. I did a lot of AI code sketches in python, and have used it to slap together simple programs at work. However, I would consider it a tool to be learned after the basics have been beat in. If I had learned python first, it would be a lot harder to force me to do everything in C later.:o)
Sounds [from an outsiders point of view] like its similar to wildtangent. Wildtangent has a pretty nice engine, very well documented. Of course, I don't think its GPLd, but just to point out that there are other 'internet engines' out there.
On an aside, try some of the games if you can. They're good-looking, and some of them are real fun.
You know, the phrase "ready for the desktop" is really wide-open to interpretation.
If you take "ready for the desktop" to mean "the average user can install, use, maintain, and upgrade linux easily," then I would say that it is defininitely NOT ready for the desktop.
However, if you mean the "average user can use" a linux box easily when its set up for them by someone else, as in a business environment, then I think that linux has a great case.
The author of the article chose the former definition when he said linux wasn't ready, and from his points (most or all of which I've encountered myself in 3+ years of messing with linux and AIX), I'm inclined to agree with him.
Anyone else notice this? A couple pics of the chair, some detailed closeups, and then a pic of the chair on the bridge with everyone lying around dead?
Mod the parent up! He's right--just adding more polygons is really a no-brainer brute force solution. Its the increasing number of effects supported in hardware that is REALLY coming into play with new games coming out today.
There are lots of neat things one can do that look great and cost less to render than extra geometry. I obviously don't know the details of the engine, but as a lowly undergrad interested in graphics I know that just adding bump mapping alone can make tremendous difference in how 'real' a scene looks--and all it does is mess with how surface normals are used in shading. Very low cost! And thats just one effect alone--add surface geometry manipulations based on height maps and you get low-cost facial features. Gauraud (and hopefully soon, Phong) interpretation gets rid of polygon edges in hardware quickly. Finally, add lightmaps and (limited) dynamic shadows and all of a sudden you have an engine that can really express atmosphere.
Yeah, being able to render more polys is great, but when you finally get to boot up Doom 3 you'll really get to see some of the payoff you were promised when you bought that geForce 3.:o)
While its really too easy to make jokes about these kind of articles, has anyone actually sat down and wondered where we're going in terms of user interfaces for the internet? Honestly, folks, it can't and won't stay just html text and pictures forever. One of the reasons I thought Lain was interesting was that it left most of its technology undefined. Some people apparently got to go fully online in an apparently VR-like experience, while others still used monitors.
With the level of activity in VR research, bandwidth across the globe on the increase, and items on the market like 3d monitors, 3d operating systems, etc, I would be willing to bet that in 20 years or so we WILL have some kind of immersive interface for accessing information. Just think of how cool it would be to represent sql tables, etc in true 3d. Or to be able to walk around your 3d model like a sculptor instead of dragging it with a mouse?
Another description of a possible future for the internet is Tad William's Otherland series. For those who haven't read it, think Lain with the idea of the Net expanded and examined. Its a great series, I highly recommend it.
It just seems to me that water cooling is so. ..clunky. It takes a lot of energy to circulate water which has to come from somewhere. Water is HEAVY. And there's always the obvious problem of water around sensitive electronics, as anyone who's "water-cooled" a gameboy in the bathtub will tell you.
One of my roomies has a water-cooled case, and the sucker is heavy, expensive, takes a lot of water, and sucks a ton of power. Keeps his athlon cool without a huge roaring fan, but if the thing ever tips over I would think he's out a lot of money. Not to mention the huge stain on the carpet.
Water cooling can't be the answer for laptops; too inefficient, too heavy, and its a dated idea. I would think that chips that ran cooler would be a more long-term solution.
Sides, if your laptop sprung a leak, I think a wet lap on a plane for 8 hours would be damn unpleasant.
Slashdot Mirror
The real ps2 dev kits already run a linux kernel. Are these like 'lite' versions of the real thing? Are they really aimed at young people? If so, then they better come with some good debugging software, since the machine is only half the battle! The program I've used is made by a company called ProDG, and is prohibitively expensive. However, its an indispensable tool.
Incidently, PS2 dev kits are *very* cool to work with--much better than the NGC dev kits, and they lock up less than the XBOX dev kits (by this, I mean its harder to freeze them so that they can't be rebooted remotely). All in all a good experience to work with. However, they are also very expensive. By trying to make them more accessible, Sony will definitely lengthen the lifespan of the PS2.
AFAIK, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to emulate RISC processors on the x86 architecture.
:)
I don't think this is true at all. If anything, its easier to emulate a RISC processor than CISC.
As for some examples to back this up, MIPS chips have been successfully emulated for years--SPIM and XSPIM come to mind. This is also true for the playstation (which runs a MIPS chip, more or less). Check out Bleem. A lot of Palm development is done via emulator (POSE, which kicks ass); I believe the dragonball is a RISC chip.
Not trying to be asinine or know-it-all, just adding to an otherwise good post.
FYI, the 'sub-company' EA has down in the Orlando area is EA Tiburon. They're responsible for Madden football, Nascar driving, NCAA football, etc. Its a console dev shop, and its a lot bigger than you think--around 200 employees and growing. Right now they're located in Maitland, Florida.
They're also expanding, although read some of my other posts if you're thinking of working there.
Not a troll, but *why* is Arwen in The Two Towers?? Are those supposed to be flashbacks for Aragorn? I hope so, because I shudder to think about how would they work in a quick trip back to Rivendell just to justify Tyler's presence in the movie!
I loved the production design and art direction of the first movie, but some of the character portrayals made me sad. And I still haven't figured out why Jackson is pushing Arwen so much. Is it really his interpretation of the story or did someone tell him to make the movies more romantic to appeal to a wider audience than those who have read the books?
The interesting thing about the transmeta procs is that they make heavy use of caching to speed up instruction translation. Once the cache 'warms up' around a given application, performance is generally much better.
I for one would like to know what they meant by 'better performance' than the intel. Did they compare application startup speeds? Had the machine been running the apps previously? Granted I don't know any of the details, but from personal experience (I'm typing this on a transmeta-based fujitsu lifebook, at 866mhz) the current transmeta chips start applications extremely slowly and then progressively get more reponsive.
I like my laptop and am rooting for the astro! I'm very interested in how they improved the efficiency of their approach.
I completely agree that the "House *" books were pretty much pure cheese. I've felt that about a lot of Mr. Anderson's books. I'm sure this is just a matter of taste, but most of his books just flat out fail to hold my interest for long, i.e. I'll be thinking about other things I should be doing while I read them. I might pick this one up in an airport sometime, but I pretty much stopped reading after they built one of the characters a robot body.
:)
However, re: Robert Jordan, I thought his first few books sucked hard. The first one was just full of over-worded dialogue and false climaxes. (For a while, it seemed like they'd won at the end of each book--boy, I think I'd hang myself if I was forced to be a main character in one of his books. "Congrats, you win--oh wait, nevermind.")When I came back to the series later, I was impressed by how much he'd matured as a writer and how there was increasing plot complexity. Yeah, this drawn out series needs to end, but I still want to buy the next one.
Just some thoughts!
Excellent! I hope they add a cantina. Also can't forget to renovate docking bay 94.
In addition, I hope they can keep those pesky jawas out. They shouldn't serve their kind there.
What if this guy works for Sun? I didn't see any indication of his employer on the mirror I looked at. With the kind of money being tossed around here and the support costs if something gets broken, this could explain a lot!
:)
So, perhaps someone at Sun thinks like you do.
Unlike ILovYou-type viri. . .
Sounds suspiciously like we're talking about STDs. Just where has your computer been?
Mod the parent up. This move would make a lot of sense.
In the sports market, EA Sports and EA Big is king. To use football (the biggest sports game market by far) as an example, Madden is outselling NFL 2K3 by an extremely wide margin. Microsofts offerings are not really a blip on the radar (or weren't last I was updated), and GameDay even less so. Likewise for nearly all the other EA sports titles.
However, Sega has a superior football product in a variety of ways, and perhaps overall. Do not think that the people at EA don't know this. They probably play as much 2k3 as Madden. (Yes, I used to work there.) Graphically, its far superior--to illustrate this, look at the crowds on both game side by side--and the gameplay is also better, although this is somewhat subjective. The product is very polished.
However, Madden has a huge advertising campaign going for it. Its being used to demo plays on ABC's Monday night football. Its commercials occupy key timeslots for football fans. There is also the MaddenBowl. Madden online is gathering force. etc, etc, etc.
What Microsoft would bring to Sega is superior advertising dollars. Sega would bring excellent technology and expertise to Microsoft which would greatly bolster their sports line, if not their entire line. This teamup would cause real panic in competitors, and would make a lot of sense for both parties.
However, will it actually happen? Probably not, for a variety of reasons. Still its an interesting thought!
Somehow, I doubt that the majority of current teenage students using typing shortcuts in their writing are doing so without thought. If every book they've read and teacher they've had has shown them differently, why the sudden switch to chat lingo now?
I haven't read the article yet, but I would suspect coolness and laziness play more of a role in this than ignorance. Teachers coming down hard (as they should) will stamp this out.
-s
The article appears to have been slashdotted, but even so, given the state of AI research right now as I understand it (and I'm probably behind), there are some significant limitations on how good a system like this could be.
1. If this system truly learns from players, it will require a significant set of training examples in order to 'learn' what the best decision is at any point in the game. In this case, I would think 'best' does not mean 'most likely to win the game' but 'most like the player'. With the number of variables involved in playing a game, it would either take a lot of saved data or a long time to learn any sort of useful evaluation function.
2. How would a learning system like this decide on which variables to examine when making its decision? Games vary widely. Usually, the less specific the variables--specific meaning the more evenly the value of a variable seperates information into groups--the less accurate the result of the decision will be. This is called 'Information Gain'.
Even if the system takes the easier route of applying its own evaluation function instead of trying the learn from the player, there are still a lot of difficulties to overcome. For some games--like starcraft--evaluating the state of the player's game is somewhat easy. Using starcraft as an example, one could attatch values to all of the units and then try to move to the state with the highest unit value. However, for other games--like, say, MMORPGs--this would be a nightmare.
As an example, one of the research projects I've worked on involved training a decision tree algorithm to evaluate link texts to web pages based on user evaluation of those labels. The object was to create a system that would take a page, create an anchor text, and then use a user-data trained evaluation function to choose the best label to pass to the page generator. Even with good data (albiet not enough) and good differentiation between page evaluations, our system was right about half the time.
I don't know if I buy a realtime learning gameplaying system that's good enough on current hardware. Especially one that works out of the box on all games. There are tricks one can that help, but the real thing isn't quite here yet.
Since you're planning on using your player for running/strenous activity, be very sure that whatever you buy is well made and water-resistant!! Sounds obvious, but believe it or not this actually disqualifies at least half of the players out there.
.its VERY small and light, has 128 megs, relatively inexpensive, and I've heard good things about its durability. That might be one for you to consider.
Using myself as an example of why you might want to listen to my advice, I bought an mp3 player with more or less the same goals you did, with the addition of wanting it cheap. So, I ended up buying a jaMp3 from KBGear. One trip to the weight room was all it took. I'm a big guy and I work out hard; the sucker died the first time out from (I believe) getting sweaty.
Anyways, I'm currently looking at the Samsung YEPP-30sh. .
I agree with most of your points: there's a lot of life left in the model making business. Sometimes models make more sense than 3d work, and since we don't have three dimensional screens, design reference models will be around for quite a while. Oh, and hell no theater won't replaced by CG (holograms?), no matter how good it becomes.
However, due to recent research papers, I do think that 3d-generated actors will be a reality, and without the need for references. There has been a lot of animation research into taking captured actions and changing them to fit the physical characteristics of generated models based on physics. As an example, I motion capture the skinny kid serving coffee on the set throwing a punch, and the motion is mapped to a 3d-generated (and non-aging) Ah-nold, with specialized algorithms adapting the motion to his bodytype, speed, size, etc. Its possible that eventually there will be whole libraries of motions that can be used with any 3d-generated 'actor' with the help of adaption alogorithms like these. For more information, you can check out the recent SIGGRAPH stuff, or perhaps look at this guy's work.
Speaking of cloth, yes there is also a lot more work to do here. Animating cloth by hand is a pain. Simulating cloth graphically is not hard, and can look quite good--until it collides with something. Fast cloth-on-cloth collision testing is still a ways away, but in a few years, I think animators will be able to specify the parameters of a model's clothes (for example) and then let the algorithms do the rest. For a good look at recent work in cloth simulation, check out this guy's work.
As long as the computing price/performance ratio keeps improving, the accessibility of computer-generated effects will continue to grow. And with computer graphics being such a hot research topic, both visual and procedural improvements will be coming fast and thick.
-s
- Support costs will go through the roof.
- Likewise, most likely, with power costs.
- If I was a petty thief reading slashdot, guess where I'd be enrolling right now? And you thought campus bicycle thefts were bad.
- I must be old fashioned, but the idea of reading everything on a handheld instead of out of a book gives me a headache already. I've used an iPaq, and even though it has a great screen, I'm not sold on eBooks quite yet. In fact, as the article mentions, printing costs are anticipated to go up as people find this out. How exactly is this going to save paper?
I am very supportive of tech in education. However, I don't think we're there yet in terms of paperless college campuses. This almost sounds like a propoganda move prompted by a grant from a huge backer.As soon as I read this story, I jumped up and combed our office for sinister-looking dreamcasts creeping about the floor plugged into network ports.
Luckily, we were safe--THIS time. Those security-sapping plastic mosquitos could hide anywhere though, so maintain constant vigilance!
I couldn't agree with you more. Menace and Clones looked like toy shows because all of the CG looked so shiny new. Nothing felt weathered or USED, which is in my opinion a key component of realistic effects.
Also contributing to the CG atmosphere is how despite some amazing recent advances (particularly in hair and shadowing), CG texturing still has serious problems looking organic. Likewise with animation. Not to knock some excellent efforts, but some recent examples are Harry Potter and Final Fantasy.
CG still has a long way to go before it can completely replace models, IMHO. And even longer before it replaces actors with any sort of believability.
I grew up with these books and loved them. Same goes for Tolkien's work. Recently, I've enjoyed the Harry Potter books. Now, looking at the feature-film-adaptation craze, I'm worried about what could happen to Narnia.
.but I came away dissapointed at some of the changes to the story. I.e. Liv Tyler's part, Frodo's portrayal, changing the council, the hour-long moving-stairs thing, Galadrial's portrayal, etc. I understand that this is one man's interpretation of an epic, but still. . .
No offense to anyone here, but I for one wasn't terribly impressed with the LOTR movie. I thought it looked and sounded amazing. .
After seeing Harry Potter, I thought that the movie did a MUCH better adaption of the book than LOTR did. The scenes that were removed made sense. The changes made the movie more accessible. They were not for the sake of adding hot actresses. After seeing the movie, I wanted to read the book, so I did--and enjoyed it. I don't think this is because I saw the movie before reading the book either.
Looking ahead to the Chronicles, I'm somewhat worried. I see a potential for a lot of bad CG (wasn't Harry Potter's strongpoint either). I just hope that whoever helms the project reads the whole series along with a biography of C.S. Lewis (a fascinating man who was a very close friend of Tolkien's. Spoke many languages and was extremely christian) before looking at any script treatments. Also, he/she might want to watch the cartoon version, which I remember as being pretty close to the story and quite enjoyable.
That said, I don't know if I would teach a begining computer science course in python. At my University, our general intro to CSE involves a two class series teaching generic basic theory wrapped around a programming language. We used to teach them with C and C++ but just recently moved to Java. I have been a TA for these classes before. Based on my experiences, I think there are both pluses and minuses to the idea of teaching these classes in python.
Benefits:
- Python is extremely easy to learn, as mentioned before. Much easier than C, C++, or Java.
- Python works really well with Tk, which would make it easy to build out skeleton code (multiplatform skel code at that) for the students using windowing and graphics. Students are 100% happier if they can see what they're working on reflected graphically. Makes it more fun to show off. This is why our projects usually include basic games.
- BASIC Python is truly, completely, multiplatform, working identically on Mac, Win*, and *nix. Some specialized functions in modules don't support all platforms, but nothing that would be important to a begining student. Support issues would be MUCH simpler than C or C++. God, we had huge headaches trying to support MSVC, CodeWarrior, CodeWright, Borland, etc. . .
- There is a great installer script available that will build python modules into either standalone exe's or distributable directories. (Available here if you've never seen this before)
But, there are also some downsides that would have to be weighed. These are:Looking away from basic intro classes, python is great to know. I did a lot of AI code sketches in python, and have used it to slap together simple programs at work. However, I would consider it a tool to be learned after the basics have been beat in. If I had learned python first, it would be a lot harder to force me to do everything in C later.
-s
Sounds [from an outsiders point of view] like its similar to wildtangent. Wildtangent has a pretty nice engine, very well documented. Of course, I don't think its GPLd, but just to point out that there are other 'internet engines' out there.
On an aside, try some of the games if you can. They're good-looking, and some of them are real fun.
You know, the phrase "ready for the desktop" is really wide-open to interpretation.
If you take "ready for the desktop" to mean "the average user can install, use, maintain, and upgrade linux easily," then I would say that it is defininitely NOT ready for the desktop.
However, if you mean the "average user can use" a linux box easily when its set up for them by someone else, as in a business environment, then I think that linux has a great case.
The author of the article chose the former definition when he said linux wasn't ready, and from his points (most or all of which I've encountered myself in 3+ years of messing with linux and AIX), I'm inclined to agree with him.
Anyone else notice this? A couple pics of the chair, some detailed closeups, and then a pic of the chair on the bridge with everyone lying around dead?
Interesting advertising. . .
Mod the parent up! He's right--just adding more polygons is really a no-brainer brute force solution. Its the increasing number of effects supported in hardware that is REALLY coming into play with new games coming out today.
:o)
There are lots of neat things one can do that look great and cost less to render than extra geometry. I obviously don't know the details of the engine, but as a lowly undergrad interested in graphics I know that just adding bump mapping alone can make tremendous difference in how 'real' a scene looks--and all it does is mess with how surface normals are used in shading. Very low cost! And thats just one effect alone--add surface geometry manipulations based on height maps and you get low-cost facial features. Gauraud (and hopefully soon, Phong) interpretation gets rid of polygon edges in hardware quickly. Finally, add lightmaps and (limited) dynamic shadows and all of a sudden you have an engine that can really express atmosphere.
Yeah, being able to render more polys is great, but when you finally get to boot up Doom 3 you'll really get to see some of the payoff you were promised when you bought that geForce 3.
While its really too easy to make jokes about these kind of articles, has anyone actually sat down and wondered where we're going in terms of user interfaces for the internet? Honestly, folks, it can't and won't stay just html text and pictures forever. One of the reasons I thought Lain was interesting was that it left most of its technology undefined. Some people apparently got to go fully online in an apparently VR-like experience, while others still used monitors.
With the level of activity in VR research, bandwidth across the globe on the increase, and items on the market like 3d monitors, 3d operating systems, etc, I would be willing to bet that in 20 years or so we WILL have some kind of immersive interface for accessing information. Just think of how cool it would be to represent sql tables, etc in true 3d. Or to be able to walk around your 3d model like a sculptor instead of dragging it with a mouse?
Another description of a possible future for the internet is Tad William's Otherland series. For those who haven't read it, think Lain with the idea of the Net expanded and examined. Its a great series, I highly recommend it.
It just seems to me that water cooling is so. . .clunky. It takes a lot of energy to circulate water which has to come from somewhere. Water is HEAVY. And there's always the obvious problem of water around sensitive electronics, as anyone who's "water-cooled" a gameboy in the bathtub will tell you.
One of my roomies has a water-cooled case, and the sucker is heavy, expensive, takes a lot of water, and sucks a ton of power. Keeps his athlon cool without a huge roaring fan, but if the thing ever tips over I would think he's out a lot of money. Not to mention the huge stain on the carpet.
Water cooling can't be the answer for laptops; too inefficient, too heavy, and its a dated idea. I would think that chips that ran cooler would be a more long-term solution.
Sides, if your laptop sprung a leak, I think a wet lap on a plane for 8 hours would be damn unpleasant.