A3 (Amazon's search engine) has had street level photographs for a couple of years now. It is possible to enter an address by zip code and then see the picture of that address as it looks from the side of moving vehicle. It's interesting and useful that MS might also do it, but it isn't new or original.
Seems I wasn't too far off - this thread has a lot of technical insider info about the audio / video in PS3 and mentions that 1080p/24 is coming. So it can do it in firmware, and will at some stage. http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=361 88
If you're a videophile, the lack of native 1080p24 is a cardinal sin, but for everyone else it's doubtful you'd notice. The player alternates between showing one frame for 2 cycles and the next for 3. VHS / DVD movies have always used this method for transferring movies to 30fps NTSC. This is the "3:2 pulldown" and if you never noticed it before then the chances you wouldn't notice it now. PAL runs at 25fps so the conversion is easier - they just run the movie 4% faster.
Still, it would be nice if Sony did support it. I suppose it depends if they can tweak the output to run at 24fps or if its a hardware restriction.
I didn't buy a PS2 for the DVD player but I sure as hell played a lot of DVD movies on it. I was doing a six month contract and took a portable TV and a PS2 with me. I appreciated a single device that was capable of playing games and playing DVDs since it meant less to haul around. Picture and sound quality was perfectly acceptable too. I expect the PS3 will make a pretty good as an all round entertainment system. On principle I dislike having lots of devices plugged into a TV when one can do the job and as well as the others. I'm somewhat disapppointed that neither the 360 or PS3 elected to put a TV-in since the things could even have been a PVR with $15 extra worth of components. Hopefully Sony, MS or a 3rd party will release a USB dongle which does it.
What makes me laugh is when people make excuses that the Wii doesn't play DVDs. It quite obviously could. And it's quite obvious that a lot of people would love it if it did. So what's their excuse for not playing DVDs? The cynical part of me thinks Nintendo will suddenly remember that it does play discs and you can enable this functionality for $25 or whatever that translates to in points. Which wouldn't be so bad if the console weren't almost costing as much as the DVD capable and vastly more powerful 360 to begin with.
The article says quite clearly that the PS3 has 1080p output. What you mean is that it doesn't do 1080p24. And it seems likely and reasonable that a firmware update could address that and other issues.
A Mac Mini is somewhere between lacklustre and awful for playing games. Even titles such as WOW which wouldnt tax any PC are lucky to clock 15fps out of a mini.
Its too early to say what the PS3 is like playing games through Linux since it's framebuffer and may remain so, but it kicks seven shades of shit out of the mini when it plays games natively.
The mini certainly has more RAM than the PS3 (512 vs 256Mb) which might be noticeable, but I think I'd prefer a PS3 any day. It's worth noting that Apple want their place under the TV too - look at their iTV offering. The problem as I see it is that people don't want the complexity of running two devices to play video when one would do. On that basis the PS3 is much superior. Having said that, who knows what the future holds? Sony may spend so long trying to produce a VOD solution that Apple or somebody else wins by default. The same for the gaming aspect.
Apparently it as bad as the number 13 for some western countries. Buildings miss floors 4, (13), and 14 etc.. Personally I laugh at the superstitious bullshit that emanates from supposedly enlightened countries. But some people believe it as they do fung shui and other nonsense. Sad but true.
I think prices will fall eventually but I don't ever see the PS3 falling below $250 in price. Ever. It's not a question of the components that it contents, but simply the complexity of the system. That said, I don't have a problem with $600 (or $500) either. A Mac Mini costs $600, so a PS3 isn't exactly THAT expensive and offers far more gaming and multimedia potential than a Mac Mini. It even runs Linux which is one of the main draws for me.
That said, I'm in no hurry to buy one. I'm quick defend it when necessary but I'm still quite happy to hang on until next year before buying one. Much as I love the concept of a PS3 (games + music + video + Linux + random functionality) I can wait.
There are currently something like 110 million PS2 consoles in the world. It is reasonable to believe of those that there is an enormous number that are very or somewhat likely to move to the PS3. So there is demand, at least for a while. It's just a matter of how quickly Sony can push those consoles out to people who want them before consumers and games makers give up.
The problem with relying on Slashdot for your PS3 news is that Zonk ensures to pick the most negative things to say about the PS3. Why anyone would be that juvenile is not known but it's true.
As to how many consoles they actually sold, you'd have to wait for their stock holders report or when Sony itself chooses to break the silence. They continue to say they'll ship 1 million consoles by end of calendar year so perhaps things aren't as bad as people make out. Personally that sounds rather optimistic, but who knows until they say?
What appears definite is that they sold some 85000 in Japan and probably 200-250000 in the US on launch and must have added to that tally since. EA claimed 200,000 units were sold at launch but do they judge that on how many people bought their games or are they privy to Sony sales figures?
Why would anyone buy an XBox when the 360 has been in stores for a year?
The XBox was killed stone dead virtually the second the 360 came out. From the looks of it Sony intend to have some overlap between their PS3 & PS2 just like they did with the PS1. IIRC The PS1 lived for something like 3 years after the PS2 came out.
Not true. Watch this guy using Fedora from a PS3. He spends about 30 minutes walking through everything including using the PS3 to play music, fullscreen video and games - http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/7770. It's plenty fast enough to use a media center even when running a version of Linux which hasn't even been optimized for the PS3 and is running everything from the PPC CPU. Future versions would likely shift a lot of work onto SPUs and might even feature accelerated graphics either because Sony or NVidia release a driver or again by somebody writing a SPU assisted backend to Mesa and other libraries.
It might also be a sign of things to come. All those people who are denied a PS3 (because of shortages) buy a PS2 and games for that because they know they can move up to a PS3 when they become more available. In the meantime Sony makes money and denies a potential convert to another platform.
Anyway concerning the PS2, it is interesting to note that there are new games coming out for it and it is still selling by the shitload. Contrast with the XBox which Microsoft have virtually killed stone dead barely 4 years after it was launched. The moral here is that if you want a console with a shelf life of more than 4 years you're probably better off not buying an XBox.
Even Nintendo have shown a disturbing trend with their handhelds of putting out one revision after another, each promising to fix the flaws in the last version. If they carry that over to the Wii, I fully expect Wii MkII will trumpet all the bustage from the first model that the second claims to fix - HD output, DVD playback, a strap that doesn't break, a more precise remote etc.
I can most certainly build a better set top box/PVR for less money than the PS3 will provide.
I doubt it would be significantly cheaper and it sure as hell would be no good for gaming. Besides, are you suggesting that everyone should build their own STBs just to save a few dollars on what the PS3 offers already in addition to its main functionality.
What the hell does "graphics performance" matter for a PVR?
Who said it did? The graphics performance is for playing games.
Perhaps you prefer having umpteen devices attached to your TV to offer the functionality you can get out of one. Perhaps you prefer to build your own kit. I don't.
Wrong, the kids in Ballamory are not actors - they're regular pre-school kids. As I said, I know there were a couple of child actors in Sesame Street but there were also many who weren't.
The question I would have for this is how much time did you try it for, what games did you play and did you keep an open mind?
The wii remote is fine for actions that result in the same actions being performed in-game. e.g. you swing this way and the in-game player swings the same. It won't be fine for complex games where there is no natural mapping and the game expects you to remember gestures to perform some action. Gestures suck big time. Gestures make poor substitutes for simple button presses. Numerous Wii games (Madden, COD3, Marvel Ultimate Alliance & more) have already been criticised for terrible control schemes - something that barely warrants a mention on other consoles.
I have a PC, why do I need another one that doesn't have the functionality and expandability of my existing PC?
No doubt you rationalise the lack of DVD playback on the Wii too right?
Anyway back to PC. The PS3 is a games console, HD movie player, media entertainment systems and PC (where PC = supporting random other PPC OS) that sits under your TV. One cable, one power supply, one machine. You claim you don't need another PC which is fair enough but do you question there no worth at all for in a single box that sits under your TV that does all those things and runs just about any program that is available for Linux? That would include Firefox, Openoffice, VLC, GAIM, MythTV, XMAME, UAE, DosBox, Qemu, countless other emulation apps for SNES / NES / PS / GB / GBA / Atari / Sega etc.
Right from day 1 the PS3 supported Fedora Core 5 (a pretty impressive feat). 10 days on and Yellow Dog Linux has appeared. It is likely that someone will produce a MythTV-centric Linux which turns your humble PS3 into a PVR and numerous other things. Right under your TV. Naturally it would be possible to cobble together the parts to make your own PC, but I doubt the graphics performance (or even the HD outputs) would be there for the same price.
And compared to other STB style PCs such as Intel's Viiv vision, or even the Mac Mini, the price is an absolute steal.
That's funny - the EU countries had no problem changing their vending machines around once the Euro came. They didn't even change the machines, the money accepting mechanism is modular (woah!).
Not even modular - programmable. Most vending machines here in Ireland switched from accepting Irish coins to euro coins practically overnight. Some even accepted both coinage with the appropriate exchange rate for a few weeks. After a trip abroad I was almost stuck in a long term airport car park at 1am on 1st January 2002 because the machine only took euro notes. Fortunately Mr Credit Card came to the rescue.
If something like 300 million Europeans can totally dump one currency for another in the space of a few months, I'm sure the US economy can cope with some new coins and redesigned banknotes. Even if the old notes are in circulation for a while, the banks / casinos will gather 99% of them up, in the space of a year just through the course of normal business.
Blind people already have a conveniently sized reader called their hands (and some eyesight). It just requires notes and currency to be distinguishable by touch or partial vision.
Using RFID would be rather annoying for blind people (who must keep a reader) and a massive intrusion of privacy for everyone else. Though I'm sure muggers and pickpockets would be very grateful for a device which lets them see how much money you have in your pocket.
Don't do what China does and start offering money in different sizes. It's really annoying to use, and hard to stack.
By China you mean virtually every other country in the world. Besides, if US used coins for 1 & 2 dollars (and got rid of dollar bills) you wouldn't have as many bills to stack. Nor is stacking a necessity. My euros are usually crumpled up and stuffed in my pocket. I don't even need to unfold them to know what I have - a grey one is a five, a red one is a ten, a blue is a twenty and so on. By contrast the similarity between US bills makes sorting and folding a virtual necessity.
One thing I note from watching Barney is that it relies on child actors to play and sing along with Barney. It's so cynical. The kids aren't in awe of Barney, they're not meeting their hero, they're acting the part. It is a total cynical fraud. Those little brats queued up with dozens of brats and got the gig through a talent agency.
By contrast when you see the kids run into Miss Hooley's school in Ballamory (for example), you know those kids really think they're meeting Miss Hooley for real. Or Sesame Street which had a few actors but usually had plenty who weren't, who really thought they were talking to Big Bird. There is something more powerful and innocent about that kind of kids TV.
In summary Barney and his massive marketing machine sucks.
I've played Flow all the way to the bottom and onto the next level and I sort of agree with what you are.
Part of the problem with the game is there are no obvious instructions as what you're meant to do. It turns out you eat everything in site (except the blues & reds that move you up and down). You even eat the humongous creatures by going for the spots in their body. Once you get all the spots the creature (without it eating you in turn), it will dissolve into bits that you eat.
But it is a trippy experience and I can see that the game could be fleshed out in interesting ways, or even make a cool screensaver. BTW, Want to know what happens when you get to the bottom? You start again in an orange ocean as a different creature.
The thing is, America's Army had weapons that jammed and it was all too easy to be killed too. Which is why AA is still considered to be a very good FPS and up there with the likes of CS.
And if the AI is poor, don't use AI - let the opposing forces be played by real humans. Imagine a middle east simulator where you could choose to be an insurgent (poorly armed, but can ambush, has local knowledge, can blend in with civilians), or a US soldier (heavily armed, but obvious and vulnerable to ambush). Both sides would have to get smart fast and you end up with a far more realistic simulation, and arguably something which is more instructive and "fun".
A simulation isn't much good if it doesn't provide at least a rough approximation to some aspect that it is trying to simulate. I am not familiar with with this particular game, but I've played AA a several times and one thing you can discover all too easily is how to be shot in the head by the opposing team if you go blazing in.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't a bias to claim creationists use pseudo science because they do. All of the time.
A3 (Amazon's search engine) has had street level photographs for a couple of years now. It is possible to enter an address by zip code and then see the picture of that address as it looks from the side of moving vehicle. It's interesting and useful that MS might also do it, but it isn't new or original.
Seems I wasn't too far off - this thread has a lot of technical insider info about the audio / video in PS3 and mentions that 1080p/24 is coming. So it can do it in firmware, and will at some stage. http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=361 88
Still, it would be nice if Sony did support it. I suppose it depends if they can tweak the output to run at 24fps or if its a hardware restriction.
What makes me laugh is when people make excuses that the Wii doesn't play DVDs. It quite obviously could. And it's quite obvious that a lot of people would love it if it did. So what's their excuse for not playing DVDs? The cynical part of me thinks Nintendo will suddenly remember that it does play discs and you can enable this functionality for $25 or whatever that translates to in points. Which wouldn't be so bad if the console weren't almost costing as much as the DVD capable and vastly more powerful 360 to begin with.
The article says quite clearly that the PS3 has 1080p output. What you mean is that it doesn't do 1080p24. And it seems likely and reasonable that a firmware update could address that and other issues.
Its too early to say what the PS3 is like playing games through Linux since it's framebuffer and may remain so, but it kicks seven shades of shit out of the mini when it plays games natively.
The mini certainly has more RAM than the PS3 (512 vs 256Mb) which might be noticeable, but I think I'd prefer a PS3 any day. It's worth noting that Apple want their place under the TV too - look at their iTV offering. The problem as I see it is that people don't want the complexity of running two devices to play video when one would do. On that basis the PS3 is much superior. Having said that, who knows what the future holds? Sony may spend so long trying to produce a VOD solution that Apple or somebody else wins by default. The same for the gaming aspect.
Apparently it as bad as the number 13 for some western countries. Buildings miss floors 4, (13), and 14 etc.. Personally I laugh at the superstitious bullshit that emanates from supposedly enlightened countries. But some people believe it as they do fung shui and other nonsense. Sad but true.
That said, I'm in no hurry to buy one. I'm quick defend it when necessary but I'm still quite happy to hang on until next year before buying one. Much as I love the concept of a PS3 (games + music + video + Linux + random functionality) I can wait.
There are currently something like 110 million PS2 consoles in the world. It is reasonable to believe of those that there is an enormous number that are very or somewhat likely to move to the PS3. So there is demand, at least for a while. It's just a matter of how quickly Sony can push those consoles out to people who want them before consumers and games makers give up.
As to how many consoles they actually sold, you'd have to wait for their stock holders report or when Sony itself chooses to break the silence. They continue to say they'll ship 1 million consoles by end of calendar year so perhaps things aren't as bad as people make out. Personally that sounds rather optimistic, but who knows until they say?
What appears definite is that they sold some 85000 in Japan and probably 200-250000 in the US on launch and must have added to that tally since. EA claimed 200,000 units were sold at launch but do they judge that on how many people bought their games or are they privy to Sony sales figures?
4 is an unlucky number in some Asian countries.
The XBox was killed stone dead virtually the second the 360 came out. From the looks of it Sony intend to have some overlap between their PS3 & PS2 just like they did with the PS1. IIRC The PS1 lived for something like 3 years after the PS2 came out.
Not true. Watch this guy using Fedora from a PS3. He spends about 30 minutes walking through everything including using the PS3 to play music, fullscreen video and games - http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/7770. It's plenty fast enough to use a media center even when running a version of Linux which hasn't even been optimized for the PS3 and is running everything from the PPC CPU. Future versions would likely shift a lot of work onto SPUs and might even feature accelerated graphics either because Sony or NVidia release a driver or again by somebody writing a SPU assisted backend to Mesa and other libraries.
Anyway concerning the PS2, it is interesting to note that there are new games coming out for it and it is still selling by the shitload. Contrast with the XBox which Microsoft have virtually killed stone dead barely 4 years after it was launched. The moral here is that if you want a console with a shelf life of more than 4 years you're probably better off not buying an XBox.
Even Nintendo have shown a disturbing trend with their handhelds of putting out one revision after another, each promising to fix the flaws in the last version. If they carry that over to the Wii, I fully expect Wii MkII will trumpet all the bustage from the first model that the second claims to fix - HD output, DVD playback, a strap that doesn't break, a more precise remote etc.
I doubt it would be significantly cheaper and it sure as hell would be no good for gaming. Besides, are you suggesting that everyone should build their own STBs just to save a few dollars on what the PS3 offers already in addition to its main functionality.
What the hell does "graphics performance" matter for a PVR?
Who said it did? The graphics performance is for playing games.
Perhaps you prefer having umpteen devices attached to your TV to offer the functionality you can get out of one. Perhaps you prefer to build your own kit. I don't.
Wrong, the kids in Ballamory are not actors - they're regular pre-school kids. As I said, I know there were a couple of child actors in Sesame Street but there were also many who weren't.
The wii remote is fine for actions that result in the same actions being performed in-game. e.g. you swing this way and the in-game player swings the same. It won't be fine for complex games where there is no natural mapping and the game expects you to remember gestures to perform some action. Gestures suck big time. Gestures make poor substitutes for simple button presses. Numerous Wii games (Madden, COD3, Marvel Ultimate Alliance & more) have already been criticised for terrible control schemes - something that barely warrants a mention on other consoles.
I have a PC, why do I need another one that doesn't have the functionality and expandability of my existing PC?
No doubt you rationalise the lack of DVD playback on the Wii too right?
Anyway back to PC. The PS3 is a games console, HD movie player, media entertainment systems and PC (where PC = supporting random other PPC OS) that sits under your TV. One cable, one power supply, one machine. You claim you don't need another PC which is fair enough but do you question there no worth at all for in a single box that sits under your TV that does all those things and runs just about any program that is available for Linux? That would include Firefox, Openoffice, VLC, GAIM, MythTV, XMAME, UAE, DosBox, Qemu, countless other emulation apps for SNES / NES / PS / GB / GBA / Atari / Sega etc.
Right from day 1 the PS3 supported Fedora Core 5 (a pretty impressive feat). 10 days on and Yellow Dog Linux has appeared. It is likely that someone will produce a MythTV-centric Linux which turns your humble PS3 into a PVR and numerous other things. Right under your TV. Naturally it would be possible to cobble together the parts to make your own PC, but I doubt the graphics performance (or even the HD outputs) would be there for the same price.
And compared to other STB style PCs such as Intel's Viiv vision, or even the Mac Mini, the price is an absolute steal.
Not even modular - programmable. Most vending machines here in Ireland switched from accepting Irish coins to euro coins practically overnight. Some even accepted both coinage with the appropriate exchange rate for a few weeks. After a trip abroad I was almost stuck in a long term airport car park at 1am on 1st January 2002 because the machine only took euro notes. Fortunately Mr Credit Card came to the rescue.
If something like 300 million Europeans can totally dump one currency for another in the space of a few months, I'm sure the US economy can cope with some new coins and redesigned banknotes. Even if the old notes are in circulation for a while, the banks / casinos will gather 99% of them up, in the space of a year just through the course of normal business.
Using RFID would be rather annoying for blind people (who must keep a reader) and a massive intrusion of privacy for everyone else. Though I'm sure muggers and pickpockets would be very grateful for a device which lets them see how much money you have in your pocket.
By China you mean virtually every other country in the world. Besides, if US used coins for 1 & 2 dollars (and got rid of dollar bills) you wouldn't have as many bills to stack. Nor is stacking a necessity. My euros are usually crumpled up and stuffed in my pocket. I don't even need to unfold them to know what I have - a grey one is a five, a red one is a ten, a blue is a twenty and so on. By contrast the similarity between US bills makes sorting and folding a virtual necessity.
By contrast when you see the kids run into Miss Hooley's school in Ballamory (for example), you know those kids really think they're meeting Miss Hooley for real. Or Sesame Street which had a few actors but usually had plenty who weren't, who really thought they were talking to Big Bird. There is something more powerful and innocent about that kind of kids TV.
In summary Barney and his massive marketing machine sucks.
Part of the problem with the game is there are no obvious instructions as what you're meant to do. It turns out you eat everything in site (except the blues & reds that move you up and down). You even eat the humongous creatures by going for the spots in their body. Once you get all the spots the creature (without it eating you in turn), it will dissolve into bits that you eat.
But it is a trippy experience and I can see that the game could be fleshed out in interesting ways, or even make a cool screensaver. BTW, Want to know what happens when you get to the bottom? You start again in an orange ocean as a different creature.
And if the AI is poor, don't use AI - let the opposing forces be played by real humans. Imagine a middle east simulator where you could choose to be an insurgent (poorly armed, but can ambush, has local knowledge, can blend in with civilians), or a US soldier (heavily armed, but obvious and vulnerable to ambush). Both sides would have to get smart fast and you end up with a far more realistic simulation, and arguably something which is more instructive and "fun".
A simulation isn't much good if it doesn't provide at least a rough approximation to some aspect that it is trying to simulate. I am not familiar with with this particular game, but I've played AA a several times and one thing you can discover all too easily is how to be shot in the head by the opposing team if you go blazing in.