As long as its only people in the parallel universes using circumvention software, then we can leave it up to that universe's MPAA to prosecute.
Just think, in a quantum scheme there may be a parallel universe where Jack Valenti is a benevolent benefactor to free speech. weird stuff, this many worlds theory.
Aah, I see your point now. Unfortunately, as you point out, games that fully exploit vertex and pixel shaders don't exist to any great degree yet, and certainly not with good benchmarking features. My post was pointing out that these are the programs currently used by the target market; these and CS, anyway. Since CS is running fine on my system with all details turned on at the highest resolution my monitor allows on a GeForce DDR I've no inclination to buy the new card yet.
On another note about this benchmarking, part of the problem will be that I don't anticipate anyone emulating vertex and pixel shading in software, so benchmarks will have to be about picture quality as well as fps, and thats a whole lot more difficult to measure.
Re:It's the new extensions that makes a difference
on
GeForce3 and Linux
·
· Score: 1
1) Its GeForce, not GeoForce (picky, but helpful when websearching to have the correct spelling)
2) If you are buying a cheap card now in order to wait for GeForce4 or a price drop on the 3, then the GeForce2mx is much more of a price/performance sweet spot than the Ultra is at.
3) While its true that the new per-pixel shaders are a good match with DirectX 8, they are also available to OpenGL, so there is nothing to stop their use on Linux if you are prepared to code for it.
The point of running games as benchmarks is that for the majority of card buyers thats the real world application that matters most. Some people will be using it for Maya/Lightwave/3DS, and viewperf or a couple of preset scenes are ideal, but for the market GeForce is aimed at UT and Q3A are used for the same reason the ZD Business tests use Office - artificial benchmarks give artificial results.
Right now, FSAA is just done by downsampling the image from a higher resolution. Thats why 800x600 with 2x FSAA benchmarks at within a single percent or so of 1600x1200. FSAA looks nicer on than off, but I find that the higher res looks nicer than the downsampled version, so unless you have such a fast card that you get decent frames per second at a resolution higher than your monitor can handle there isn't much point. I still find it amusing that the company that pushed the minimal graphic improvement that is FSAA is the same one that spent years telling us that 32-bit colour is a waste of power.
See how this story is helpfully filed in a section called 'Patents'? Now you know what to turn off in your preferences. I agree that this is the same old story with new names, but these names are pretty damn big ones. When someone announces they are trying to take Sony, Philips and Toshiba for all they can get then thats gutsy. Or stupid, I can't decide which.
"Magnequench asks the court for past damages measured by no less than a reasonable royalty, treble damages, a recall of all existing products of the defendants that infringe and the destruction or reconfiguration to non-infringing embodiments of all infringing products."
Why stop there? Clearly, the court should give them their first born, keys to the car, flowers once in a while...
With Sony, Circuit City and Philips in the list of defendants, they aren't exactly going for companies renowned for employing small law departments either. You know, with the inventors of SCMS and DIVX (the dead one) being attacked its difficult to know who to root for.
I'm guessing here, but I suspect that Morrison was referring to the finger twirling in the shape of a minaret - i.e. a thin pointy tower. Either that, the minarets are made of wool, or he was demonstrating why he was known as such a drug hoover again.
Alternatively, maybe the subject is making a tapestry of a castle? If my girlfriend is in a mood shes known to do the odd bit of cross-stitch, so its almost plausible.
'you can feel the "Titanic hit iceberg" desperation comming thru'
No, according to Microsoft its all the fault of those visciously fast and nimble icebergs crowding in and restricting the Titanic's freedom to innovate...
Thanks for the link, as it looks like a nice game, but this is a game 'GT Advance' from THQ, not part of the Gran Tourismo series from Polyphony Digital. The letters GT aren't copyrightable per se, so several companies (Sega with Sega GT for instance) have made technical racing games as a response to the success on the Playstation of Gran Tourismo. Since, as I mentioned, Polyphony have been bought by Sony, Dreamcast and PC owners are an easy target for a game that has 'GT' in the title but isn't quite as good.
(adopts stereotypical "wow, an AC with useful information" stance)
Thanks for the info; I'll have to try using my Linux box for accessing Real media. As I was explaining, most of my complaints as a client are about the horrible windows software Real supply, rather than the drop in quality in comparison to the equivalent.wm or.mov file. My argument about how Real media servers are more expensive still holds for the provider though, and another argument for.wm springs to mind:
Would you say, at a guess, that the number of users excluded because they don't have a platform that can play Windows Media files (and according to another post there is a Mac client available for this) is greater or lesser than the number of users lost because they can't be bothered to download several megabytes of Realplayer when Windows Media player is installed with their OS by default?
"While one game doesnt really matter, MS could (conceivably) make the same offer to all of the other upcoming "BIG" titles--so the XBOX gets all the goodies b/c they have the most money"
Its certainly an interesting idea, but there are two problems with it:
1) The Sony Corporation aren't exactly small fry either, and already have deals sewn up with Square, Polyphony and others.
2) Nintendo, while not as rich as Microsoft, aren't likely to give away exclusive rights to Mario or Zelda unless Microsoft want to buy the whole company.
Somehow I don't think even Microsoft have the guts to try and buy the whole console industry.
Err, sorry you're wrong here. This is competing on a level playing field. Do you really believe that there is another reason Polyphony Digital haven't released a Gran Tourismo game for a non-Sony platform? Or Rare release Goldeneye for anything other than Nintendo64? Sega payed good cash to make Dead Or Alive 2 a Dreamcast exclusive for 6 months as well, so that leaves a grand total of no-one in the console market who doesn't do this. Its standard operating procedure on consoles, where people just recognise good games, not who does the most frames per second.
No guarantee its a good thing, but at least, since titles that have had paid exclusivity by console manufacturers include Goldeneye, Tekken, Soul Calibur, most of the Final Fantasy series, the Gran Tourismo series and the original Tomb Raider, this isn't a definite sign that
(a) Microsoft are doing something unusually evil, or
(b) The Matrix game will have to suck.
"What examples of fair uses absolutely require access to the work in its most modern, digital, uncorrupted, un-macrovisioned form? The only one that jumped out at me is making a backup copy in case the original is destroyed. But perhaps there are others"
Several friends of mine write reviews for DVD websites. Its quite common to write a head-to-head review of two or more different releases of the same film; for example a reviewer of the new Criterion release of "Spartacus" would be remiss in their duty if they didn't answer the question of if it was worth purchasing for owners of the previously released version. In this case a picture can paint a thousand words about exactly how the image quality on the two discs compares, which in turn means you need exact images taken from the two discs - readers don't want to know what a photo of one television looks like in comparison to another.
If I remember correctly, the increasing popularity of Windows Media format over Real Media is mainly down to two things:
1) Cost. Real charge a lot more for the server licenses and encoders than Microsoft do; not surprising as every.wm file out there is an implicit advert for the joys of switching to Windows rather than Mac or whichever flavour of *nix you might want.
2) Quality. Given the option, I choose.wm over.rm every download, as to my eye the.wm looks better for the given file size. Its crisper but blockier, so I can see some would disagree, but then everything is going to be a matter of personal judgement to some extent.
Also, the general nightmare of getting Realplayer and Realjukebox to not gobble resources and stick its spyware and taskbar rubbish off my system means that I'll take every opportunity I can to get the piece of junk off my box.
None of the currently popular formats are ideal - mpeg 1 isn't the greatest quality per byte and doesn't stream well, Real has the player problem above, WM is Windows only and Quicktime is only Windows or Mac. Since Windows is such a large share of the market I can see why some would rather forego the other platforms to avoid the other problems.
I'm just guessing here, but this tech is amost certainly aimed at those that cannot pick up the tv signal for the program they wish to watch on it. Since you'll be needing broadband to get an acceptable picture, and thats only available alongside cable tv in many areas, I can see how this is going to be of slightly limited use.
Yes, Jet Set Radio is doing cartoon rendering in basically the same way as CartoonReyes for 3DS MAX, but as you say it was pretty cool to see it being done in realtime in the game. Unfortunately however, looking at upcoming titles it would appear that its started a bit of a trend. Unlike several titles (why on earth the latest Sonic title felt the need to cartoon shade a character that appeared in full 3d on his previous outing I'll never know) Akira is crying out to use this however.
You've never touched a Dreamcast? I'd recommend it; since the last price reduction they are practically giving them away, as they've stopped making new hardware. That doesn't stop it having truly astounding games as Crazy Taxi (and in a better version than the soon-to-be-released PS2 one as well), Phantasy Star Online, Soul Calibur (better than the Tekken series in many peoples eyes), Metropolis Street Racer etc. etc.
Anyway, back to the point - Jet Set Radio uses a (then innovative) cel-shading technique to make its 3d characters look like 2d hand-drawn animated ones, and so is ideal for a game based on an animated film such as Akira.
If you've only got a PC but own Quake 3 then try one of the models inspired by this idea over on Polycount: Honey was the first one I saw that experimented with this technique.
(ok, so this is semi-offtopic, as its about the DVD not the game. Still, mirko asked, so its only fair)
I think there will be a European (Region 2) release as well as the US Region 1 one. These will almost certainly both be Region encoded, as multiple companies are involved with the distribution rights globally, if memory serves.
Anyway, if you've not got your machine region chipped then do it now; missing out on imports is just too much hassle to do without. After that, try someone like Play 247 or Movietyme USA if you don't want to do the importing from the US. You'll be wanting the limited edition tin from the US anyway if you're a fan.
HypersnapDX will happily take grabs of the DirectDraw layer. It will do this in the native resolution being pumped to the screen as well, for the highest possible quality on any DVD screengrabs you might be wanting (for your personal use, copyright zealots).
By the way, I just think its a cool product for making myself desktop backdrops, this is not an ad. No doubt there are other things that can do this too, if you don't want this one.
There is no need to bomb anything and get into an argument, just 'accidentally' crash something into one of their ageing concrete supports and helpfully assist with the evacuation into custody for breaking the law of whichever country they evacuate to.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as its only people in the parallel universes using circumvention software, then we can leave it up to that universe's MPAA to prosecute.
Just think, in a quantum scheme there may be a parallel universe where Jack Valenti is a benevolent benefactor to free speech. weird stuff, this many worlds theory.
Aah, I see your point now. Unfortunately, as you point out, games that fully exploit vertex and pixel shaders don't exist to any great degree yet, and certainly not with good benchmarking features. My post was pointing out that these are the programs currently used by the target market; these and CS, anyway. Since CS is running fine on my system with all details turned on at the highest resolution my monitor allows on a GeForce DDR I've no inclination to buy the new card yet. On another note about this benchmarking, part of the problem will be that I don't anticipate anyone emulating vertex and pixel shading in software, so benchmarks will have to be about picture quality as well as fps, and thats a whole lot more difficult to measure.
1) Its GeForce, not GeoForce (picky, but helpful when websearching to have the correct spelling)
2) If you are buying a cheap card now in order to wait for GeForce4 or a price drop on the 3, then the GeForce2mx is much more of a price/performance sweet spot than the Ultra is at.
3) While its true that the new per-pixel shaders are a good match with DirectX 8, they are also available to OpenGL, so there is nothing to stop their use on Linux if you are prepared to code for it.
The point of running games as benchmarks is that for the majority of card buyers thats the real world application that matters most. Some people will be using it for Maya/Lightwave/3DS, and viewperf or a couple of preset scenes are ideal, but for the market GeForce is aimed at UT and Q3A are used for the same reason the ZD Business tests use Office - artificial benchmarks give artificial results.
Right now, FSAA is just done by downsampling the image from a higher resolution. Thats why 800x600 with 2x FSAA benchmarks at within a single percent or so of 1600x1200. FSAA looks nicer on than off, but I find that the higher res looks nicer than the downsampled version, so unless you have such a fast card that you get decent frames per second at a resolution higher than your monitor can handle there isn't much point. I still find it amusing that the company that pushed the minimal graphic improvement that is FSAA is the same one that spent years telling us that 32-bit colour is a waste of power.
"Yes, I *would* rather have my head in the sand"
See how this story is helpfully filed in a section called 'Patents'? Now you know what to turn off in your preferences. I agree that this is the same old story with new names, but these names are pretty damn big ones. When someone announces they are trying to take Sony, Philips and Toshiba for all they can get then thats gutsy. Or stupid, I can't decide which.
"Magnequench asks the court for past damages measured by no less than a reasonable royalty, treble damages, a recall of all existing products of the defendants that infringe and the destruction or reconfiguration to non-infringing embodiments of all infringing products."
Why stop there? Clearly, the court should give them their first born, keys to the car, flowers once in a while...
With Sony, Circuit City and Philips in the list of defendants, they aren't exactly going for companies renowned for employing small law departments either. You know, with the inventors of SCMS and DIVX (the dead one) being attacked its difficult to know who to root for.
I'm guessing here, but I suspect that Morrison was referring to the finger twirling in the shape of a minaret - i.e. a thin pointy tower. Either that, the minarets are made of wool, or he was demonstrating why he was known as such a drug hoover again.
Alternatively, maybe the subject is making a tapestry of a castle? If my girlfriend is in a mood shes known to do the odd bit of cross-stitch, so its almost plausible.
'you can feel the "Titanic hit iceberg" desperation comming thru'
No, according to Microsoft its all the fault of those visciously fast and nimble icebergs crowding in and restricting the Titanic's freedom to innovate...
Since I've seen this post several times on several threads over the last few weeks, I strongly doubt he is serious.
Although, in a sick but desperate attempt to bring this post back on topic, I guess if he was he could power the car...
sorry. If I hadn't checked for a lack of confirmation on news sites I wouldn't have said that.
Thanks for the link, as it looks like a nice game, but this is a game 'GT Advance' from THQ, not part of the Gran Tourismo series from Polyphony Digital. The letters GT aren't copyrightable per se, so several companies (Sega with Sega GT for instance) have made technical racing games as a response to the success on the Playstation of Gran Tourismo. Since, as I mentioned, Polyphony have been bought by Sony, Dreamcast and PC owners are an easy target for a game that has 'GT' in the title but isn't quite as good.
I'm not a USian either, but it looks like they mean Senators.
(adopts stereotypical "wow, an AC with useful information" stance) .wm or .mov file. My argument about how Real media servers are more expensive still holds for the provider though, and another argument for .wm springs to mind:
Thanks for the info; I'll have to try using my Linux box for accessing Real media. As I was explaining, most of my complaints as a client are about the horrible windows software Real supply, rather than the drop in quality in comparison to the equivalent
Would you say, at a guess, that the number of users excluded because they don't have a platform that can play Windows Media files (and according to another post there is a Mac client available for this) is greater or lesser than the number of users lost because they can't be bothered to download several megabytes of Realplayer when Windows Media player is installed with their OS by default?
"While one game doesnt really matter, MS could (conceivably) make the same offer to all of the other upcoming "BIG" titles--so the XBOX gets all the goodies b/c they have the most money"
Its certainly an interesting idea, but there are two problems with it:
1) The Sony Corporation aren't exactly small fry either, and already have deals sewn up with Square, Polyphony and others.
2) Nintendo, while not as rich as Microsoft, aren't likely to give away exclusive rights to Mario or Zelda unless Microsoft want to buy the whole company.
Somehow I don't think even Microsoft have the guts to try and buy the whole console industry.
Err, sorry you're wrong here. This is competing on a level playing field. Do you really believe that there is another reason Polyphony Digital haven't released a Gran Tourismo game for a non-Sony platform? Or Rare release Goldeneye for anything other than Nintendo64? Sega payed good cash to make Dead Or Alive 2 a Dreamcast exclusive for 6 months as well, so that leaves a grand total of no-one in the console market who doesn't do this. Its standard operating procedure on consoles, where people just recognise good games, not who does the most frames per second.
No guarantee its a good thing, but at least, since titles that have had paid exclusivity by console manufacturers include Goldeneye, Tekken, Soul Calibur, most of the Final Fantasy series, the Gran Tourismo series and the original Tomb Raider, this isn't a definite sign that
(a) Microsoft are doing something unusually evil, or
(b) The Matrix game will have to suck.
"What examples of fair uses absolutely require access to the work in its most modern, digital, uncorrupted, un-macrovisioned form? The only one that jumped out at me is making a backup copy in case the original is destroyed. But perhaps there are others"
Several friends of mine write reviews for DVD websites. Its quite common to write a head-to-head review of two or more different releases of the same film; for example a reviewer of the new Criterion release of "Spartacus" would be remiss in their duty if they didn't answer the question of if it was worth purchasing for owners of the previously released version. In this case a picture can paint a thousand words about exactly how the image quality on the two discs compares, which in turn means you need exact images taken from the two discs - readers don't want to know what a photo of one television looks like in comparison to another.
If I remember correctly, the increasing popularity of Windows Media format over Real Media is mainly down to two things:
.wm file out there is an implicit advert for the joys of switching to Windows rather than Mac or whichever flavour of *nix you might want.
.wm over .rm every download, as to my eye the .wm looks better for the given file size. Its crisper but blockier, so I can see some would disagree, but then everything is going to be a matter of personal judgement to some extent.
1) Cost. Real charge a lot more for the server licenses and encoders than Microsoft do; not surprising as every
2) Quality. Given the option, I choose
Also, the general nightmare of getting Realplayer and Realjukebox to not gobble resources and stick its spyware and taskbar rubbish off my system means that I'll take every opportunity I can to get the piece of junk off my box.
None of the currently popular formats are ideal - mpeg 1 isn't the greatest quality per byte and doesn't stream well, Real has the player problem above, WM is Windows only and Quicktime is only Windows or Mac. Since Windows is such a large share of the market I can see why some would rather forego the other platforms to avoid the other problems.
I'm just guessing here, but this tech is amost certainly aimed at those that cannot pick up the tv signal for the program they wish to watch on it. Since you'll be needing broadband to get an acceptable picture, and thats only available alongside cable tv in many areas, I can see how this is going to be of slightly limited use.
Yes, Jet Set Radio is doing cartoon rendering in basically the same way as CartoonReyes for 3DS MAX, but as you say it was pretty cool to see it being done in realtime in the game. Unfortunately however, looking at upcoming titles it would appear that its started a bit of a trend. Unlike several titles (why on earth the latest Sonic title felt the need to cartoon shade a character that appeared in full 3d on his previous outing I'll never know) Akira is crying out to use this however.
Anyway, back to the point - Jet Set Radio uses a (then innovative) cel-shading technique to make its 3d characters look like 2d hand-drawn animated ones, and so is ideal for a game based on an animated film such as Akira. If you've only got a PC but own Quake 3 then try one of the models inspired by this idea over on Polycount: Honey was the first one I saw that experimented with this technique.
(ok, so this is semi-offtopic, as its about the DVD not the game. Still, mirko asked, so its only fair)
I think there will be a European (Region 2) release as well as the US Region 1 one. These will almost certainly both be Region encoded, as multiple companies are involved with the distribution rights globally, if memory serves.
Anyway, if you've not got your machine region chipped then do it now; missing out on imports is just too much hassle to do without. After that, try someone like Play 247 or Movietyme USA if you don't want to do the importing from the US. You'll be wanting the limited edition tin from the US anyway if you're a fan.
It must have the following ingredients:
1) Cel shading. Jet Set Radio rules, but now everyone and their dog has to code the same technique.
2) Any beat-em-up or third-person shooter section must do a bullet-time thing at one point.
3) Please, oh please let us ride Kaneda's bike!
4) Mind numbing cut-scenes taken straight from the film, or (more likely) drawn by the game artists in a noticibly inferior style.
5) There is about as much chance of us not seeing that big railgun as there is of there not being one in Doom3.
any other suggestions? (and please, lets hope lens flares have finally died a death)
HypersnapDX will happily take grabs of the DirectDraw layer. It will do this in the native resolution being pumped to the screen as well, for the highest possible quality on any DVD screengrabs you might be wanting (for your personal use, copyright zealots). By the way, I just think its a cool product for making myself desktop backdrops, this is not an ad. No doubt there are other things that can do this too, if you don't want this one.
There is no need to bomb anything and get into an argument, just 'accidentally' crash something into one of their ageing concrete supports and helpfully assist with the evacuation into custody for breaking the law of whichever country they evacuate to.