I still don't believe this 'they won't hit the limits of the PS3 for years' crap, though. The thing simply doesn't have enough RAM. It's sick to have that massive processing power and a tiny little bit of RAM. I can't imagine what they were thinking.
The PS3 has exactly the same amount of RAM as the 360. It has been partitioned so that CPU & GPU have optimized access to their own halves. But there is nothing to stop a game from storing data in graphics memory if it wants to. Conversely the 360 has unified memory for CPU and GPU. Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages.
The significant difference in memory is that the PS3 reserves more memory for the system in anticipation of features it might add to the firmware (e.g. Home). Initially it reserved 96Mb but it's already dropped by 24Mb. It's bound to drop further as they figure out exactly what they do and do not need.
I doubt memory has anything to do at all with problems in Dynasty Warriors. You'll have to ask the team why it runs at 1080p on a 360 and not on the PS3. Lots of reasons could be behind it.
Well you do get Team Fortress 2, Portal as well as episodes 1 & 2 of Half Life. The engine has been improved over the years (e.g. HDR) but I suspect it's still heavily dependent on DirectX and Win32 APIs. I expect the thought of porting the code so it ran under OpenGL and other APIs used by the PS3 was just too hideous to contemplate.
So they punted the work over to EA. I wouldn't be surprised if EA did the work pro bono or for a discount on the promise of any profits from the Orange Box on PS3 or other subsequent titles (Left for Dead etc.).
Gabe Newell is a pro-Microsoft business hat. His opinion of the PS3 is non-technical, biased and quite ill informed. And spectacularly bizarre considering (I assume) that he wants the Orange Box to sell well on that console.
Carmack gives a reasoned technical criticism but it wasn't particularly pro or anti the PS3. His opinion was that you had to work harder to get at the power, specifically - "They are both powerful systems that are going to make excellent game platforms, but I have a bit of a preference for the 360's symmetric CPU architecture and excellent development tools," he said. "The PS3 will have a bit more peak power, but it will be easier to exploit the available power on the 360. Our next major title is being focused towards simultaneous release on 360, PS3, and PC."
That doesn't sound like badmouthing to me but an informed observation.
There are plenty of decent games for the PS3. If the Orange Box sucks, the blame will lie squarely with the developers. And yes the blame lies with the LAIR developers too. The problems of that game had absolutely nothing to do with the PS3 at all (reviewers unanimously said it looked and sounded gorgeous) but the control scheme and targeting sucked.
His constant bitching about the PS3 must be severely dampening interest in the Orange Box on that platform. I expect most of his complaints stem from the PS3's outright impudence of not being a Microsoft platform and not using Microsoft APIs. Even so, when the head of Valve slags off a platform, what confidence does it instill in games they're making for it? Apparently they're so allergic to this strange and terrifying console that they've shoved the port onto some EA team. Perhaps the game will end up being great on the PS3 but at the moment I have no confidence at all that it will be. Mr Newell needs to shut up or say something positive. Worse is that I just know that if the port does turn out to be poor or sales are a flop that he'll blame the console rather than acknowledge his own hand in the outcome.
Directed by Uwe Boll. This cinematic turd has been sitting in the can for a couple of years now but apparently it's being sent out to die in January. The theatrical cut is 120 minutes. Real masochists with have to wait for the 165 minute extended edition on DVD.
There's also problems with Java apps not being compatible with certain runtimes,
There probably are some issues, probably more in the humps from upgrading from 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 & 1.3 where stability of environments was a little looser especially on the enterprise side. But apps do generally manage to run anywhere or with very minimal changes. Even a horrifically complex app like Eclipse manages to run on Linux under Sun's JVM, IBM's JVM and even gcj. Performance sucks under gcj but it runs.
Zoolib looks interesting for C++, but I would think it sheer madness to use C++ at all for a project of this complexity. Java is simply more stable, has a rich crypto API, rich network support, countless third party tools and does generally run anywhere. It can even offer one-click (well a few clicks) installations thanks to JNLP.
Java would make more sense as a cross-platform framework. Implement some kind of listings / bittorrent application in Java that allows the user to download files to any platform. Something akin to Azureus but with listings. Java can easily invoke native code for playback if it has to.
The tough part is the DRM and frankly I think they should forget about it, or at least loosen it up so it's not so evil. Let's face it, the majority of people just want to watch the shows on the computer or their other devices, not trade them on P2P networks. I doubt the trading scene for domestic non-commissioned shows isn't massive anyway. So make the app great and make people trust the app - it should allow me to choose how many files to cache and how long to keep them for. I should even be able to "keep" a file forever in the app's cache.
Furthermore I should be able to export files to H264, MPEG-SP or similar. The app could apply a watermark during export in case the file shows up in the wild but otherwise you have a genuine unencumbered file. Watermarking would require users to register their TV licence to use the app but that should be a pre-requisite anyway.
The net result would hopefully be a damned site better than the bloody mess that the BBC have inflicted on people with the iPlayer at moment. It's extremely badly written, requiring not only Windows XP (not Vista) but also IE6 and WMP. The developers would be far better off to cut the strings with Windows for their own sanity if for no other reason.
Sad but true - you can watch movies in Videolan as rendered into ASCII. You'll find the option by opening the Preferences dialog, checking the "Advanced Options" checkbox, clicking on Output Modules, and selecting "Color ASCII art video output".
Cool but rather useless.
BTW for me at least, the OpenGL driver delivers a far better image under Vista than DirectX. Don't know if this is DRM related or not but the quality is far better.
A China Airlines jet blows up, and company officials paint the logo off of the wreckage.
Just a point of clarification - China Airlines is Taiwan's national carrier. Taiwan should have a clue about quality control even if its airline does not.
.NET is vastly superior and is mopping the floor with Java
You have a point on the client side, specifically the MS Windows client side..NET is far easier to write client applications especially in DevStudio. However on the server side Java beats seven shades of shit out of.NET and probably always will.
You're right Black & White did get a lot of awards and in some ways it was an amazing game. Gestures was not one of those ways. It sure as hell wouldn't have hurt the game to provide a keyboard or menu alternative to gestures either.
I'd also point out that LAIR is not an amazing game. It has amazing graphics and the potential to be amazing but clearly the game play mechanics are not up to snuff. It doesn't help when the control scheme alienates reviewers and players with no alternative scheme to use. A small amount of work would have left the game with some dignity. I doubt it would have gotten 9s but it might have fallen into the 6-8 range.
The control scheme for flying is intuitive, easy-to-use, and makes for amazing gameplay.
No it isn't, or it wouldn't have been repeatedly panned by critics. Some people do not like twisting their wrists or making spastic abstract gestures to make their dragon / plane / duck react. The duck is reference to Super Rub A Dub - a simple tilt puzzle game where the single jump gesture managed to be screwed up. Especially when there is a stick and a surfeit of buttons to provide an alternative scheme with little developmental effort.
Warhawk managed to support both tilt and stick which is perhaps why reviews have been very complementary of the controls for offering choice. Adding an alternate control scheme is not hard and the payoff is clear to see in the reviews and in the final game.
If Factor 5 have any sense, their first patch will provide the alternate scheme. If they do it fast enough they might even get reviewers to reappraise their scores.
A superlight and cheap laptop is a fantastic idea. Give a device a keyboard, a usable screen, word processor, spreadsheet, email, browser etc. and it's more than adequate for short breaks, camping, coffee shops, lectures etc. A commercialized version of the OLPC will sell by the shitload which is why Quanta / ASUS & VIA all have plans to make them.
This is the Foleo's problem. It's too expensive to compete with the impending supercheap portables and it's encroaching into the price territory of more able laptops. It's just too expensive.
It doesn't even hold up well in a feature comparison. The supercheap laptops will likely be bundled with Linux and software like OpenOffice which is pretty damned impressive. What's the Foleo going to have? Probably some proprietary software which feels primitive and feature light.
It's also being marketed all wrong. It's being sold as a "mobile companion" for your smartphone. Phrases like that do not inspire confidence in the device. The Foleo had flop written all over it, so hopefully Palm are going to take stock and produce something more useful.
The problem with LAIR is mostly down the control scheme. Forcing people to use tilt and gestures for flying with no alternate conventional control scheme was a TERRIBLE IDEA. They should have supplied a normal stick control scheme for people who don't like gesture based gaming. Tilt might just about work but abstract gestures that bear little relation between the physical action and what happens in the game suck big time. They've always sucked and they'll continue to suck. I remember the frustration after encountering the gesture based spells in Black & White on the PC. Nothing has changed. Abstract gestures suck as much now as they did then.
I seriously think if LAIR did have an alternate control scheme that it would be scoring anywhere from 7 upwards in most reviews. Considering the minimal amount of money and time it would have required too, it would have been money well spent. If they have any sense they'll patch the game as soon as they can. It might repair some of the damage and cause some reviewers to revise their scores.
The article says "The Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology, which is seeking to expand in Europe and be recognized as a legitimate religion, teaches that technology can expand the mind and help solve problems. The church, founded in 1954, counts actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its 10 million members.". That is what I am commenting about.
The CoS wikipedia article says the cult has claimed anywhere from 8-15 million members worldwide. As I said, I wouldn't be surprised if the claim did originate from them even though they are pathological liars just like their dead leader and therefore prone to making outrageous falsehoods if it furthers their cause.
The biggest complaint so far in the reviews is the awful control scheme. Maybe playing it through the PSP's interface will fix that. Certainly worth watching, in any case.
My understanding is that no, it doesn't. The PSP is missing the second shoulder buttons that you need for fast turns and other buttons. Why it was left on is anybody's guess. Perhaps it was as a proof of concept for future games.
Remote play is a cool feature but it introduces a small but very noticeable latency. This is not surprising considering the PS3 has to stream data to the PSP where it is reconstituted. But it means remote play has a lag of 200-300ms. So it might be great for RPGs and other turn based or slow games, but not so good for racing games, shooters etc.
Remote play also has limited application since the PS3 must be fully powered to make it work. I don't know if Sony intend or can implement a low power state or something similar to wake on LAN. It's something that would make the feature a lot more useful.
I doubt scientology could legitimately claim 1 million followers EVER let alone ten times that amount. And even that figure would probably have to include all the people who recovered their senses and left the cult.
I don't know where the 10 million claim came from, but I would not be surprised if scientology themselves make the claim. After all they lie about everything else, so why not the number of members?
Someone please mod this flamebait down and then fire the moderator who called it "insightful."
Why? Do you think iPods don't have built-in obsolescence?
I'm certain that Apple deliberately do stuff like sealing batteries in precisely because they want people to upgrade every few years. People who can replace batteries for themselves might be more inclined to buy a new battery than a new iPod when it starts to fail. And it will fail after a couple of years. So use Apple's service you might say, except it is deliberately designed to put people off from using it, being expensive, requiring you to send your iPod off, and to accept some other iPod (new, refurbished or used) in its place.
There would be absolutely nothing at all preventing Apple from producing an iPod with a removable battery. Virtually every phone in existence (except Apple's of course) manages this feat. Many rival MP3 players have removable batteries. It's strange how Apple's iPhone also seals in the battery isn't it? Almost as if they expect people to buy a new iPhone after the battery dies in the present one.
It's not flamebait to call out a company for what it is clearly doing. It's just too bad that someone such as the EU can't haul them over the coals for it.
Unencrypted AAC isn't as ubiquitous as MP3 but a number of popular non-Apple devices can play unencrypted tracks. e.g. the Zune, PSP, Zen and more besides. AAC adoption also appears to be gaining traction, partly because music / video devices are converging so AAC support falls out of implementing MPEG-4 for video playback. So you can rip CDs from iTunes and they work on other devices. The problem is the iTunes Music Store. Tracks bought online are still AAC but the content is held in an encrypted container that renders them unreadable on other devices. So as long as you don't use iTMS you should be safe.
In theory at least Sony could expose some of that 256Mb video memory as a super fast RAM disk, swap or something. It probably wouldn't be as good as real memory accessible from the address space but it would still be a hell of a lot faster than using disk swap.
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LAIR sucked for the controls, not any technical issue with the PS3. Quit trying to insinuate that a bad port mean there are problems with the console.
The PS3 has exactly the same amount of RAM as the 360. It has been partitioned so that CPU & GPU have optimized access to their own halves. But there is nothing to stop a game from storing data in graphics memory if it wants to. Conversely the 360 has unified memory for CPU and GPU. Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages.
The significant difference in memory is that the PS3 reserves more memory for the system in anticipation of features it might add to the firmware (e.g. Home). Initially it reserved 96Mb but it's already dropped by 24Mb. It's bound to drop further as they figure out exactly what they do and do not need.
I doubt memory has anything to do at all with problems in Dynasty Warriors. You'll have to ask the team why it runs at 1080p on a 360 and not on the PS3. Lots of reasons could be behind it.
So they punted the work over to EA. I wouldn't be surprised if EA did the work pro bono or for a discount on the promise of any profits from the Orange Box on PS3 or other subsequent titles (Left for Dead etc.).
Carmack gives a reasoned technical criticism but it wasn't particularly pro or anti the PS3. His opinion was that you had to work harder to get at the power, specifically - "They are both powerful systems that are going to make excellent game platforms, but I have a bit of a preference for the 360's symmetric CPU architecture and excellent development tools," he said. "The PS3 will have a bit more peak power, but it will be easier to exploit the available power on the 360. Our next major title is being focused towards simultaneous release on 360, PS3, and PC."
That doesn't sound like badmouthing to me but an informed observation.
There are plenty of decent games for the PS3. If the Orange Box sucks, the blame will lie squarely with the developers. And yes the blame lies with the LAIR developers too. The problems of that game had absolutely nothing to do with the PS3 at all (reviewers unanimously said it looked and sounded gorgeous) but the control scheme and targeting sucked.
His constant bitching about the PS3 must be severely dampening interest in the Orange Box on that platform. I expect most of his complaints stem from the PS3's outright impudence of not being a Microsoft platform and not using Microsoft APIs. Even so, when the head of Valve slags off a platform, what confidence does it instill in games they're making for it? Apparently they're so allergic to this strange and terrifying console that they've shoved the port onto some EA team. Perhaps the game will end up being great on the PS3 but at the moment I have no confidence at all that it will be. Mr Newell needs to shut up or say something positive. Worse is that I just know that if the port does turn out to be poor or sales are a flop that he'll blame the console rather than acknowledge his own hand in the outcome.
Directed by Uwe Boll. This cinematic turd has been sitting in the can for a couple of years now but apparently it's being sent out to die in January. The theatrical cut is 120 minutes. Real masochists with have to wait for the 165 minute extended edition on DVD.
There probably are some issues, probably more in the humps from upgrading from 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 & 1.3 where stability of environments was a little looser especially on the enterprise side. But apps do generally manage to run anywhere or with very minimal changes. Even a horrifically complex app like Eclipse manages to run on Linux under Sun's JVM, IBM's JVM and even gcj. Performance sucks under gcj but it runs.
Zoolib looks interesting for C++, but I would think it sheer madness to use C++ at all for a project of this complexity. Java is simply more stable, has a rich crypto API, rich network support, countless third party tools and does generally run anywhere. It can even offer one-click (well a few clicks) installations thanks to JNLP.
The tough part is the DRM and frankly I think they should forget about it, or at least loosen it up so it's not so evil. Let's face it, the majority of people just want to watch the shows on the computer or their other devices, not trade them on P2P networks. I doubt the trading scene for domestic non-commissioned shows isn't massive anyway. So make the app great and make people trust the app - it should allow me to choose how many files to cache and how long to keep them for. I should even be able to "keep" a file forever in the app's cache.
Furthermore I should be able to export files to H264, MPEG-SP or similar. The app could apply a watermark during export in case the file shows up in the wild but otherwise you have a genuine unencumbered file. Watermarking would require users to register their TV licence to use the app but that should be a pre-requisite anyway.
The net result would hopefully be a damned site better than the bloody mess that the BBC have inflicted on people with the iPlayer at moment. It's extremely badly written, requiring not only Windows XP (not Vista) but also IE6 and WMP. The developers would be far better off to cut the strings with Windows for their own sanity if for no other reason.
Cool but rather useless.
BTW for me at least, the OpenGL driver delivers a far better image under Vista than DirectX. Don't know if this is DRM related or not but the quality is far better.
Just a point of clarification - China Airlines is Taiwan's national carrier. Taiwan should have a clue about quality control even if its airline does not.
Now if it were hackable or allowed 3rd party apps such as Skype we might be talking. As is, I don't see what's to get too excited about.
You have a point on the client side, specifically the MS Windows client side. .NET is far easier to write client applications especially in DevStudio. However on the server side Java beats seven shades of shit out of .NET and probably always will.
I'd also point out that LAIR is not an amazing game. It has amazing graphics and the potential to be amazing but clearly the game play mechanics are not up to snuff. It doesn't help when the control scheme alienates reviewers and players with no alternative scheme to use. A small amount of work would have left the game with some dignity. I doubt it would have gotten 9s but it might have fallen into the 6-8 range.
If dual shock works then that says to me the effort of providing a proper patch is minimal.
No it isn't, or it wouldn't have been repeatedly panned by critics. Some people do not like twisting their wrists or making spastic abstract gestures to make their dragon / plane / duck react. The duck is reference to Super Rub A Dub - a simple tilt puzzle game where the single jump gesture managed to be screwed up. Especially when there is a stick and a surfeit of buttons to provide an alternative scheme with little developmental effort.
Warhawk managed to support both tilt and stick which is perhaps why reviews have been very complementary of the controls for offering choice. Adding an alternate control scheme is not hard and the payoff is clear to see in the reviews and in the final game.
If Factor 5 have any sense, their first patch will provide the alternate scheme. If they do it fast enough they might even get reviewers to reappraise their scores.
This is the Foleo's problem. It's too expensive to compete with the impending supercheap portables and it's encroaching into the price territory of more able laptops. It's just too expensive.
It doesn't even hold up well in a feature comparison. The supercheap laptops will likely be bundled with Linux and software like OpenOffice which is pretty damned impressive. What's the Foleo going to have? Probably some proprietary software which feels primitive and feature light.
It's also being marketed all wrong. It's being sold as a "mobile companion" for your smartphone. Phrases like that do not inspire confidence in the device. The Foleo had flop written all over it, so hopefully Palm are going to take stock and produce something more useful.
I seriously think if LAIR did have an alternate control scheme that it would be scoring anywhere from 7 upwards in most reviews. Considering the minimal amount of money and time it would have required too, it would have been money well spent. If they have any sense they'll patch the game as soon as they can. It might repair some of the damage and cause some reviewers to revise their scores.
The CoS wikipedia article says the cult has claimed anywhere from 8-15 million members worldwide. As I said, I wouldn't be surprised if the claim did originate from them even though they are pathological liars just like their dead leader and therefore prone to making outrageous falsehoods if it furthers their cause.
My understanding is that no, it doesn't. The PSP is missing the second shoulder buttons that you need for fast turns and other buttons. Why it was left on is anybody's guess. Perhaps it was as a proof of concept for future games.
Remote play is a cool feature but it introduces a small but very noticeable latency. This is not surprising considering the PS3 has to stream data to the PSP where it is reconstituted. But it means remote play has a lag of 200-300ms. So it might be great for RPGs and other turn based or slow games, but not so good for racing games, shooters etc.
Remote play also has limited application since the PS3 must be fully powered to make it work. I don't know if Sony intend or can implement a low power state or something similar to wake on LAN. It's something that would make the feature a lot more useful.
I don't know where the 10 million claim came from, but I would not be surprised if scientology themselves make the claim. After all they lie about everything else, so why not the number of members?
Why? Do you think iPods don't have built-in obsolescence?
I'm certain that Apple deliberately do stuff like sealing batteries in precisely because they want people to upgrade every few years. People who can replace batteries for themselves might be more inclined to buy a new battery than a new iPod when it starts to fail. And it will fail after a couple of years. So use Apple's service you might say, except it is deliberately designed to put people off from using it, being expensive, requiring you to send your iPod off, and to accept some other iPod (new, refurbished or used) in its place.
There would be absolutely nothing at all preventing Apple from producing an iPod with a removable battery. Virtually every phone in existence (except Apple's of course) manages this feat. Many rival MP3 players have removable batteries. It's strange how Apple's iPhone also seals in the battery isn't it? Almost as if they expect people to buy a new iPhone after the battery dies in the present one.
It's not flamebait to call out a company for what it is clearly doing. It's just too bad that someone such as the EU can't haul them over the coals for it.
Unencrypted AAC isn't as ubiquitous as MP3 but a number of popular non-Apple devices can play unencrypted tracks. e.g. the Zune, PSP, Zen and more besides. AAC adoption also appears to be gaining traction, partly because music / video devices are converging so AAC support falls out of implementing MPEG-4 for video playback. So you can rip CDs from iTunes and they work on other devices. The problem is the iTunes Music Store. Tracks bought online are still AAC but the content is held in an encrypted container that renders them unreadable on other devices. So as long as you don't use iTMS you should be safe.
In theory at least Sony could expose some of that 256Mb video memory as a super fast RAM disk, swap or something. It probably wouldn't be as good as real memory accessible from the address space but it would still be a hell of a lot faster than using disk swap.
Or "I wish my wife was as dirty as this rover".