"A Deepness In The Sky" by Vernor Vinge is set 10,000 years in the future (or is that 300 giga seconds?) and they are still counting from year zero *nix time. Hah! Page 225 if you can't grep your paper edition.
Oh well, that's it then, I'm off to top myself. A bleak future indeed, what's the point of raising kids... ^H^H^H^H^H. Simple economics is all that's behind this. They spent a lot of money upfront and want to get enough back to make a profit overall. They took a huge risk and we'll get another consumer toy. That's all.
I propose a Slashdot "Boycott the PSX2" campaign. I won't join it, I don't agree with it, I'm just wondering if anyone cares -that- much.
You said this book and others -appear- to lag some way behind current technology and methods and then ask if this book is any different. I've read this book cover to cover, instead of judging by appearances, and it challenges your argument that looking at someone else's coding methods teaches more than a book. Of course I'd learn a lot if I could be a fly on the wall at id Software and look at how they work, their coding methods, but if as I suspect you mean looking at their code, well, all I can say is read the book. While I'm here, do any game industry types have any opinions on the author's argument that game middleware such as NetImmerse or Renderware will be increasingly used in future?
Infinitely more than what's needed? PSX2 claims 6.2 Gflops. A 1 GHz Athlon does 4 Gflops IIRC, but isn't X-Box supposed to come with a GeForce to do hardware T&L, which is worth a few Gflops? PSX2 has 3.2 Gbytes/s memory bandwidth, what about an Athlon, 200 MHz system bus is 1.6 Gbyte/s. Seems to me we're comparing red apples and green apples.
Few people will buy just an X-Box, they will buy several games as well (duh). Add up all the revenue over the life of a games console, subtract the bill of materials over the same period, and MS can make a profit overall. Or take a loss and derail the PSX2 bandwagon. Go stick some figures into Excel ^H^H^H^H^H StarOffice. As I've said before, that's the problem (we) Linux and Open Source games advocates have to address, how to subsidise the hardware.
Hmm. I went crazy trying to find a libjpeg that kept SuSE 6.2 and Enlightenment 16.0 and various other stuff happy simultaneously. Eventually I faked it for E 16.0 by creating a symlink called "libjpeg.so.62" and pointing it at the SuSE supplied "libjpeg.so.6.0.1". If an RPM wants some other version of libjpeg, using a similar trick seems to be the workaround.
$200 - eventually. Look at the Microprocessor Report article (my copy is not to hand). The PSX2 chips are huge, Sony have to pay for the fabs and the yields. They do this by charging you for the software which subsidises the hardware. Hence my axegrind, Linux won't subsidise PSX2, who pays?
Suppose we could get enough PSX2 documentation to start writing open source games, porting Linux and other such apparently cool ideas. Sony wouldn't be able to recoup the huge cost of developing their hardware, because the same documentation and tools that would enable the cuddly fun stuff would also let less altruistic souls create games that would be serious big budget competitors to Sony licensed games. Hence opening the PSX2 too early would kill the goose that lays the golden egg by denying Sony the income they need from games sales. I'd love to be wrong on this.
Slashdot Mirror
"A Deepness In The Sky" by Vernor Vinge is set 10,000 years in the future (or is that 300 giga seconds?) and they are still counting from year zero *nix time. Hah! Page 225 if you can't grep your paper edition.
Oh well, that's it then, I'm off to top myself. A bleak future indeed, what's the point of raising kids ... ^H^H^H^H^H. Simple economics is all that's behind this. They spent a lot of money upfront and want to get enough back to make a profit overall. They took a huge risk and we'll get another consumer toy. That's all.
I propose a Slashdot "Boycott the PSX2" campaign. I won't join it, I don't agree with it, I'm just wondering if anyone cares -that- much.
Fire up your copy of Tux A Quest for Herring with the right command line argument and instead of Tux you get his girlfriend, Gown.
Which doesn't rule out Susie as a girlfriend, I have no preconceptions about penguin polygamy or polyandry.
You said this book and others -appear- to lag some way behind current technology and methods and then ask if this book is any different. I've read this book cover to cover, instead of judging by appearances, and it challenges your argument that looking at someone else's coding methods teaches more than a book. Of course I'd learn a lot if I could be a fly on the wall at id Software and look at how they work, their coding methods, but if as I suspect you mean looking at their code, well, all I can say is read the book. While I'm here, do any game industry types have any opinions on the author's argument that game middleware such as NetImmerse or Renderware will be increasingly used in future?
http://www.research.philips.com/generalinfo/specia l/3dlcd/tech/tech.htm
Your dumping argument is brilliant. IANAL, but if anyone out there can back this guy up, you'll make me very happy.
Infinitely more than what's needed? PSX2 claims 6.2 Gflops. A 1 GHz Athlon does 4 Gflops IIRC, but isn't X-Box supposed to come with a GeForce to do hardware T&L, which is worth a few Gflops? PSX2 has 3.2 Gbytes/s memory bandwidth, what about an Athlon, 200 MHz system bus is 1.6 Gbyte/s. Seems to me we're comparing red apples and green apples.
Few people will buy just an X-Box, they will buy several games as well (duh). Add up all the revenue over the life of a games console, subtract the bill of materials over the same period, and MS can make a profit overall. Or take a loss and derail the PSX2 bandwagon. Go stick some figures into Excel ^H^H^H^H^H StarOffice. As I've said before, that's the problem (we) Linux and Open Source games advocates have to address, how to subsidise the hardware.
Hmm. I went crazy trying to find a libjpeg that kept SuSE 6.2 and Enlightenment 16.0 and various other stuff happy simultaneously. Eventually I faked it for E 16.0 by creating a symlink called "libjpeg.so.62" and pointing it at the SuSE supplied "libjpeg.so.6.0.1". If an RPM wants some other version of libjpeg, using a similar trick seems to be the workaround.
$200 - eventually. Look at the Microprocessor Report article (my copy is not to hand). The PSX2 chips are huge, Sony have to pay for the fabs and the yields. They do this by charging you for the software which subsidises the hardware. Hence my axegrind, Linux won't subsidise PSX2, who pays?
Suppose we could get enough PSX2 documentation to start writing open source games, porting Linux and other such apparently cool ideas. Sony wouldn't be able to recoup the huge cost of developing their hardware, because the same documentation and tools that would enable the cuddly fun stuff would also let less altruistic souls create games that would be serious big budget competitors to Sony licensed games. Hence opening the PSX2 too early would kill the goose that lays the golden egg by denying Sony the income they need from games sales. I'd love to be wrong on this.