I've seen a few posters comment about rendering speed increasing if sound is disabled, but that's not really an option for a serious player
I totally agree... and hope that it's more of a threading bug than anything else!
Also, just in general I'd say the frame rates on the mac are a lot slower than on the PC. Are they even bothering to use hardware accelleration?
Both the Mac and Linux versions run slower than the Windows version... mostly because the game's 3D engine was written for MS Direct3D... the Mac and Linux versions have been hacked to use OpenGL.
That said, you're going to need a modern Mac (or Linux PC) to run this game... newer than what would be required to play on a Windows PC. The game runs more than fast enough on my 15" Aluminum PowerBook G4 (1.25 GHz G4, Radeon 9600 Mobility). Performance dops a bit when I run higher than 1024x768, though... it may be a fillrate issue with the GPU as this game makes heavy use of multipass rendering. Hopefully the new Radeon 9700 Mobility will fix that! The same game on a similar iMac 17" (1.25 GHz G4, GeForce FX 5200) runs quite a bit slower dispite similar system architecture. My guess is that the FX 5200 can't pump the pixels as fast as the Radeon 9600. Disabiling audio speeds up both machines, so there might be room for improvement.
I had an opportunity to play the demo on both a monster pc gamer rig and on a dual processor G5 at a local mom-and-pop computer store. The PC, with a Radeon 9800, showed about 3x the FPS frame rate as the Mac (dual 1.8 GHz G5, Radeon 9600) but game play felt about the same on both machines. Though the numbers are smaller on the Mac, the game didn't feel any "choppier" than the PC.
I've been playing the UT2K4 demo on both Windows and Mac (yay PowerBook) and the community chatter is right -- disabling audio results in framerates jumping anywhere from 50% - 200% faster. I hope it's a bug and not just the base requirement for UT2K4 audio!
But Napster is not napster anymore, the name was merely bought.
I'm glad someone has finally pointed this out. The "new napster" is actually run by Roxio, the folks that make EasyCD Creator for Windows and Toast for Mac.
Now if only the Nero guys would show us what a real music store could look like....!!
Wouldn't XP be Windows NT 6.0? I though Win2k was 5.0
Windows 2K is NT 5.0 and Windows XP is NT 5.1. Server 2003 is NT 5.2. These are the official version strings from Microsoft.
There is very little under-the-hood change between Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) and Windows XP (NT 5.1) aside from GUI modifications. From an application's point of view (or even a power user who makes all of his settings via the registry) there is not much different between the two. A lot of little things have been refined and updated, yes, but nothing huge.
And really... Win2K (NT 5.0) isn't a whole lot more than NT 4.0 SP4/SP5 + modern version of Direct X + modern drivers + light GUI polish. When NT 4 first shipped it did not come with Internet Explorer... later versions included a standalone version of IE... and still later versions included the deeply-rooted IE that we know and hate today.
NT 3.x was pretty archaic *looking* (Windows 3.x GUI, ugh!!) but still had most of the guts that NT 4 later used....
Call it what you will, but NT was the best thing Microsoft has ever done. We could all be using a heavily patched version of Win95 running atop DOS 7. "Win98 Seventh Edition!"
435 is a low number to you? For how long have you been working at Pixar? My Radeon Mobility M7 *occasionally* gets 70 or higher at that resolution, with that amount of video RAM.
70?? And video ram should have nothing to do with it, glxgears is just blasting out pixels like a machine gun. Unless Apple did some sort of magical OpenGL kung-fu to their X11 implementation, I'd say that something isn't right on your end. I rarely get less than 1000fps reported from glx gears in a big window (though that drops way down when I go full sreen).
However, I'm still only getting 435fps in glxgears with a 16MB graphics card at 1024x768 with DRI definitely on.
I've heard that glxgears is a terrible benchmark, but it piqued my curiousity enough to fire it up on my PowerBook (Radeon Mobility 9600, Mac OS X 10.3.2 w/ optional X11 installed). With the window geometry set to 1024x768 I'm getting ~1800 to ~2700 fps, it really bounces around. Given that glxgears doesn't use any texturing nor any other wizbang new features, I'm guessing that something's not right on your end. Maybe it's even rendering with software?
The Mac OS X kernel itself is a derrivative of Mach. This is were essential kernel services plug in. A lot of the userland and driver space is based on BSD in general... some bits are from 4.4BSD Lite 2, some from FreeBSD, and some from OpenBSD. In fact, there was an article somewhere in which the author ran the latest Darwin (the opensource, non-gui part of Mac OS X) source through some scripts to discover that there's more OpenBSD in Mac OS X than there is FreeBSD.
Remember, Mac OS X is based on NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP, which were based on 4.3BSD and did not have any FreeBSD or OpenBSD code (in fact, NeXTSTEP probably predated FreeBSD).
As far as the "Macintosh" side of things, only the Carbon runtime libaries were ported over for legacy semi-ported Carbon applications. Native Mac OS X apps are Mach-O binaries and use the (NeXTSTEP "NS") Cocoa library for GUI. There is also a "Classic" virtual machine for running Mac OS 9.2.2.
It's been a long time since I've done much IIgs digging, but do a quick google and you'll find gobs of neat apps. I used to run Platinum Paint, Fantivision (animation), and gobs of games on my GS. There was even a port of Wolf3D, but it required 2 MB of RAM (I only had the stock 1 MB at the time).
The GS/OS (especially GS/OS 6.0) was very Mac-like. There was even a port of HyperCard. The GS had color and better audio a year before the Mac, but used wide rectangular pixels, so the overall resolution/quality wasn't all there. But still, it wasn't until the Mac IIsi many years later that a person could buy a color Mac for the price of a IIgs.
Huh? GEOS came out in 1986... the Apple Lisa shipped with a trash can icon in 1983, the Mac did the same in 1984. I belive it was first mocked up in 1982, check folklore.org for the specifics straight from the engineers themselves. folklore.org
Good luck, even the browser "with few dependencies" is a PITA to compile.
I think the "compile your own lightweight browser on something other than Linux" thing is going to be mighty difficult until Mozilla Foundation makes an offical very-light-weight, browser-only derivative. The current SeaMonkey Full Blown Mozilla is a pig. FireFox isn't really that much better anymore. They need to trim a lot of fat or someone is going to need to make a standalone Konq/KHTML browser. The idea of recycling old Sun Ultra 1's or PII-350 PC's into web surfing stations will remain a (slow) pipedream.
Video Toaster was great for local-access cable channel type work, but it wasn't even full broadcast quality... at least it was cheap.
Some of the early rough-out effects for Jurassic Park were prototyped using an old version of Lightwave on an Amiga, but that's about it. All of the CGI effects in the movie were done on big iron Silicon Graphics machines at ILM, some of which included the use of the SGI IRIX version of Lightwave.
Again, Jurassic Park effects were done with big iron... not with a consumer-level computer with a single 680x0 processor and an NTSC/PAL video board.
Is silver so expensive that these compaines have no way of adding silver to the paste? What made them think nobody would ever put their pastes to the test?
IIRC, copper conducts heat better than silver... why not make a copper paste, surly it would be much cheaper to make. Or would the companies use copper-colored pigment and lie to us about the copper too?
With the exception of the minitower flavored G4s, most Macs are very quiet... some don't even have fans. The loudest, by far, were the "hairdryer" 1.0 - 1.4 GHz G4 systems. Still not as loud as an SGI Octane, but loud enough.
I don't recall that the "Yikes" PCI G4 was all that loud, maybe you have a bad fan. If you want a really quiet Mac for a server, get an iMac, eMac, an old G4 Cube (no fan!) or a new G5 (lots of slow-moving, quiet fans).
XServe is very loud, but its designed that way... suited for a back room or datacenter/server room... small case, lots of air flow in the event of building air conditioning failure.
Subject says all... but be sure to run Software Update and let it update to 10.3.2... fixes a few bugs and security holes, but more importantly, it also contains new gfx drivers that bring OpenGL back up to speed. (10.3.0 was only slower than 10.2.8 in one area -- OpenGL... but 10.3.2 fixes that).
How do you think a diesel engine works? It mixes fuel and air, then compresses it to the point where it explodes... See for yourself here... Now, diesel fuel won't ignite with a match, etc, but that's a different issue.
Diesel burns well in certain conditions, but doesn't explode unless it's under great pressure. Have you ever seen a smudge pot? Basiclly diesel and a wick (often a metal pail with a couple inches of diesel and a diesel-soaked ball of twine). Makes for a long-lasting bright torch (but smokes like crazy). A more refined method is atomization, burning a fine mist. This is what fuel oil burners use (fuel oil is a slightly lower grade of what's basiclly diesel).
In the case of a diesel engine, air is brought into the cylinder, compressed to somewhere between 14:1 and 24:1, at which point diesel is injected into the already-compressed cylinder. The heat of compression plus the properties of diesel result in a powerful explosion. (This is where diesel engines differ from gasoline engines... a gas engine has lower compression, sprays in the gasoline before the cylinder is compressed, and relies on a spark plug to ignite the mix). The higher compression of a diesel engine as well as the powerful injection system requires beefier components which, when combined with the really fast ignition of the diesel, results in a loud clattering engine. The new breed of CDI disels are almost as quiet as modern gasoline cars, though.
Sadly, American's "More room in coach" is on its way out. They've been quietly cramming those extra few rows of seats back into their planes. Also, many of their planes never got the extra room in the first place. Seatguru.com has some more details.
Let me guess, you don't live near Detroit nor the Twin Cities.
Welcome to US airlines. They all suck. If you live in the Dallas/FtWorth area you curse American and hope that Continental is better. If you live in the Houston area, you curse Continental and hope that American is better... wash, rinse, repeat...
I've never had much trouble with Northwest in the Minneapolis area, no worse than any of the other major carriers (Continental, Delta, American). What does irritate me is how codesharing and alliances has left many cities with far fewer flight choices. Many areas once served by both Continental and Northwest are now served only by one of the two. Cities that once had multiple 737-sized flights by American and TWA are now stuck with a couple 757-sized American flights following that buyout. And what's up with United? I used to see United flights all over the place, and now I'm lucky if I see a "United Express" Embrier commuter.
Northwest, Continental, Delta, and KLM codeshare their flights. In fact, the four are very tightly knit... most area once served by both Northwest and Continental are now just served by one of the two, especially after the 1998 "kind of a merger".
At any rate, you need to carefully read the segment data when you book your flights online... this includes the plane type, operator ("Delta Flight 555 Operated by Northwest Flight 333"), and other little tidbits.
In my personal experience, I rank Delta and Northwest in the middle of the pack... Continental and American a bit higher. JetBlue and Frontier have better in-flight entertainment, but has a higher ratio of "scary seatmates". Southwest is just plain scary. But really, it's all cattle class (or cattle class plus) unless you fly Virgin Upper Class. Give it up for roadtrips!
Since Apple models itself a hardware company, do they offer patches on a similar basis as Microsoft or to they rely more on the BSD patching system?
Closer to Microsoft than anything else. Apple's patches generally come in the form of installer applications that can be downloaded and installed automatically via the bundled "Software Update" application (GUI and command line) or can be downloaded and installed manually from the support section of their website.
Apple does not publish the source of any of their GUI applications or the GUI framework itself. It does however release the source to the rest of the OS under the name "Darwin". Patches and other updates to Mac OS X generally find their way into Darwin and can be browsed at http://developer.apple.com/darwin.
The typical artist/writer/mom-or-dad user can click a couple buttons and have OS X update itself (or even set it to always keep itself updated). More technical users can browse the Darwin website for more details. (This was recently done by several folks wanting to know more about how Panther, Mac OS X 10.3, does its automatic defragmentation and optimizing. They dug around in the Darwin souce until they found that particular part of the HFS+ architecture. Examined the code and made a few posts explaining the process to everyone else).
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen a few posters comment about rendering speed increasing if sound is disabled, but that's not really an option for a serious player
I totally agree... and hope that it's more of a threading bug than anything else!
Also, just in general I'd say the frame rates on the mac are a lot slower than on the PC. Are they even bothering to use hardware accelleration?
Both the Mac and Linux versions run slower than the Windows version... mostly because the game's 3D engine was written for MS Direct3D... the Mac and Linux versions have been hacked to use OpenGL.
That said, you're going to need a modern Mac (or Linux PC) to run this game... newer than what would be required to play on a Windows PC. The game runs more than fast enough on my 15" Aluminum PowerBook G4 (1.25 GHz G4, Radeon 9600 Mobility). Performance dops a bit when I run higher than 1024x768, though... it may be a fillrate issue with the GPU as this game makes heavy use of multipass rendering. Hopefully the new Radeon 9700 Mobility will fix that! The same game on a similar iMac 17" (1.25 GHz G4, GeForce FX 5200) runs quite a bit slower dispite similar system architecture. My guess is that the FX 5200 can't pump the pixels as fast as the Radeon 9600. Disabiling audio speeds up both machines, so there might be room for improvement.
I had an opportunity to play the demo on both a monster pc gamer rig and on a dual processor G5 at a local mom-and-pop computer store. The PC, with a Radeon 9800, showed about 3x the FPS frame rate as the Mac (dual 1.8 GHz G5, Radeon 9600) but game play felt about the same on both machines. Though the numbers are smaller on the Mac, the game didn't feel any "choppier" than the PC.
I've been playing the UT2K4 demo on both Windows and Mac (yay PowerBook) and the community chatter is right -- disabling audio results in framerates jumping anywhere from 50% - 200% faster. I hope it's a bug and not just the base requirement for UT2K4 audio!
But Napster is not napster anymore, the name was merely bought.
I'm glad someone has finally pointed this out. The "new napster" is actually run by Roxio, the folks that make EasyCD Creator for Windows and Toast for Mac.
Now if only the Nero guys would show us what a real music store could look like....!!
Wouldn't XP be Windows NT 6.0? I though Win2k was 5.0
Windows 2K is NT 5.0 and Windows XP is NT 5.1. Server 2003 is NT 5.2. These are the official version strings from Microsoft.
There is very little under-the-hood change between Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) and Windows XP (NT 5.1) aside from GUI modifications. From an application's point of view (or even a power user who makes all of his settings via the registry) there is not much different between the two. A lot of little things have been refined and updated, yes, but nothing huge.
And really... Win2K (NT 5.0) isn't a whole lot more than NT 4.0 SP4/SP5 + modern version of Direct X + modern drivers + light GUI polish. When NT 4 first shipped it did not come with Internet Explorer... later versions included a standalone version of IE... and still later versions included the deeply-rooted IE that we know and hate today.
NT 3.x was pretty archaic *looking* (Windows 3.x GUI, ugh!!) but still had most of the guts that NT 4 later used....
Call it what you will, but NT was the best thing Microsoft has ever done. We could all be using a heavily patched version of Win95 running atop DOS 7. "Win98 Seventh Edition!"
435 is a low number to you? For how long have you been working at Pixar? My Radeon Mobility M7 *occasionally* gets 70 or higher at that resolution, with that amount of video RAM.
70?? And video ram should have nothing to do with it, glxgears is just blasting out pixels like a machine gun. Unless Apple did some sort of magical OpenGL kung-fu to their X11 implementation, I'd say that something isn't right on your end. I rarely get less than 1000fps reported from glx gears in a big window (though that drops way down when I go full sreen).
However, I'm still only getting 435fps in glxgears with a 16MB graphics card at 1024x768 with DRI definitely on.
I've heard that glxgears is a terrible benchmark, but it piqued my curiousity enough to fire it up on my PowerBook (Radeon Mobility 9600, Mac OS X 10.3.2 w/ optional X11 installed). With the window geometry set to 1024x768 I'm getting ~1800 to ~2700 fps, it really bounces around. Given that glxgears doesn't use any texturing nor any other wizbang new features, I'm guessing that something's not right on your end. Maybe it's even rendering with software?
I mean, not any geek could hack on a purple box.
c t00.jpg
Back in the day, I knew a lot of geeks that dreamed of being able to hack on a Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Impact or an Onyx2...
http://futuretech.mirror.vuurwerk.net/apps/i2impa
http://www.hpc.susx.ac.uk/images/onyx2.jpg
(Besides, how many "grape" iMacs were ever sold? It wasn't a popular flavor and the whole 5-flavors thing only lasted about a year or two).
The Mac OS X kernel itself is a derrivative of Mach. This is were essential kernel services plug in. A lot of the userland and driver space is based on BSD in general... some bits are from 4.4BSD Lite 2, some from FreeBSD, and some from OpenBSD. In fact, there was an article somewhere in which the author ran the latest Darwin (the opensource, non-gui part of Mac OS X) source through some scripts to discover that there's more OpenBSD in Mac OS X than there is FreeBSD.
Remember, Mac OS X is based on NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP, which were based on 4.3BSD and did not have any FreeBSD or OpenBSD code (in fact, NeXTSTEP probably predated FreeBSD).
As far as the "Macintosh" side of things, only the Carbon runtime libaries were ported over for legacy semi-ported Carbon applications. Native Mac OS X apps are Mach-O binaries and use the (NeXTSTEP "NS") Cocoa library for GUI. There is also a "Classic" virtual machine for running Mac OS 9.2.2.
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox- 8010/index.html
For the low low price of $17,000 the Xerox Star had a better GUI than the Lisa, Mac, or Geos. Ran on beefier hardware too.
Neat stuff, I wonder if a Xerox Star emulator would ever be possible...?
It's been a long time since I've done much IIgs digging, but do a quick google and you'll find gobs of neat apps. I used to run Platinum Paint, Fantivision (animation), and gobs of games on my GS. There was even a port of Wolf3D, but it required 2 MB of RAM (I only had the stock 1 MB at the time).
The GS/OS (especially GS/OS 6.0) was very Mac-like. There was even a port of HyperCard. The GS had color and better audio a year before the Mac, but used wide rectangular pixels, so the overall resolution/quality wasn't all there. But still, it wasn't until the Mac IIsi many years later that a person could buy a color Mac for the price of a IIgs.
Huh? GEOS came out in 1986... the Apple Lisa shipped with a trash can icon in 1983, the Mac did the same in 1984. I belive it was first mocked up in 1982, check folklore.org for the specifics straight from the engineers themselves.
folklore.org
Good luck, even the browser "with few dependencies" is a PITA to compile.
I think the "compile your own lightweight browser on something other than Linux" thing is going to be mighty difficult until Mozilla Foundation makes an offical very-light-weight, browser-only derivative. The current SeaMonkey Full Blown Mozilla is a pig. FireFox isn't really that much better anymore. They need to trim a lot of fat or someone is going to need to make a standalone Konq/KHTML browser. The idea of recycling old Sun Ultra 1's or PII-350 PC's into web surfing stations will remain a (slow) pipedream.
Video Toaster was great for local-access cable channel type work, but it wasn't even full broadcast quality... at least it was cheap.
Some of the early rough-out effects for Jurassic Park were prototyped using an old version of Lightwave on an Amiga, but that's about it. All of the CGI effects in the movie were done on big iron Silicon Graphics machines at ILM, some of which included the use of the SGI IRIX version of Lightwave.
Again, Jurassic Park effects were done with big iron... not with a consumer-level computer with a single 680x0 processor and an NTSC/PAL video board.
Is silver so expensive that these compaines have no way of adding silver to the paste? What made them think nobody would ever put their pastes to the test?
IIRC, copper conducts heat better than silver... why not make a copper paste, surly it would be much cheaper to make. Or would the companies use copper-colored pigment and lie to us about the copper too?
With the exception of the minitower flavored G4s, most Macs are very quiet... some don't even have fans. The loudest, by far, were the "hairdryer" 1.0 - 1.4 GHz G4 systems. Still not as loud as an SGI Octane, but loud enough.
I don't recall that the "Yikes" PCI G4 was all that loud, maybe you have a bad fan. If you want a really quiet Mac for a server, get an iMac, eMac, an old G4 Cube (no fan!) or a new G5 (lots of slow-moving, quiet fans).
XServe is very loud, but its designed that way... suited for a back room or datacenter/server room... small case, lots of air flow in the event of building air conditioning failure.
Subject says all... but be sure to run Software Update and let it update to 10.3.2... fixes a few bugs and security holes, but more importantly, it also contains new gfx drivers that bring OpenGL back up to speed. (10.3.0 was only slower than 10.2.8 in one area -- OpenGL... but 10.3.2 fixes that).
How do you think a diesel engine works? It mixes fuel and air, then compresses it to the point where it explodes... See for yourself here... Now, diesel fuel won't ignite with a match, etc, but that's a different issue.
Diesel burns well in certain conditions, but doesn't explode unless it's under great pressure. Have you ever seen a smudge pot? Basiclly diesel and a wick (often a metal pail with a couple inches of diesel and a diesel-soaked ball of twine). Makes for a long-lasting bright torch (but smokes like crazy). A more refined method is atomization, burning a fine mist. This is what fuel oil burners use (fuel oil is a slightly lower grade of what's basiclly diesel).
In the case of a diesel engine, air is brought into the cylinder, compressed to somewhere between 14:1 and 24:1, at which point diesel is injected into the already-compressed cylinder. The heat of compression plus the properties of diesel result in a powerful explosion. (This is where diesel engines differ from gasoline engines... a gas engine has lower compression, sprays in the gasoline before the cylinder is compressed, and relies on a spark plug to ignite the mix). The higher compression of a diesel engine as well as the powerful injection system requires beefier components which, when combined with the really fast ignition of the diesel, results in a loud clattering engine. The new breed of CDI disels are almost as quiet as modern gasoline cars, though.
Sadly, American's "More room in coach" is on its way out. They've been quietly cramming those extra few rows of seats back into their planes. Also, many of their planes never got the extra room in the first place. Seatguru.com has some more details.
They were once my favorite airline
Let me guess, you don't live near Detroit nor the Twin Cities.
Welcome to US airlines. They all suck. If you live in the Dallas/FtWorth area you curse American and hope that Continental is better. If you live in the Houston area, you curse Continental and hope that American is better... wash, rinse, repeat...
If Jetblue jumped off a bridge, would you?
No, but if Continental did...
[insert rant about NWA/Continental "almost a merger" alliance...]
I've never had much trouble with Northwest in the Minneapolis area, no worse than any of the other major carriers (Continental, Delta, American). What does irritate me is how codesharing and alliances has left many cities with far fewer flight choices. Many areas once served by both Continental and Northwest are now served only by one of the two. Cities that once had multiple 737-sized flights by American and TWA are now stuck with a couple 757-sized American flights following that buyout. And what's up with United? I used to see United flights all over the place, and now I'm lucky if I see a "United Express" Embrier commuter.
Northwest, Continental, Delta, and KLM codeshare their flights. In fact, the four are very tightly knit... most area once served by both Northwest and Continental are now just served by one of the two, especially after the 1998 "kind of a merger".
At any rate, you need to carefully read the segment data when you book your flights online... this includes the plane type, operator ("Delta Flight 555 Operated by Northwest Flight 333"), and other little tidbits.
In my personal experience, I rank Delta and Northwest in the middle of the pack... Continental and American a bit higher. JetBlue and Frontier have better in-flight entertainment, but has a higher ratio of "scary seatmates". Southwest is just plain scary. But really, it's all cattle class (or cattle class plus) unless you fly Virgin Upper Class. Give it up for roadtrips!
As the former owner of a Nortwest Frequent Flyer card (which I just cut up on reading this story)
?? You don't have to use NWA WorldPerks miles for just NWA flights. You can cash them in on Continental, Delta, and KLM flights as well.
Hard to tell, it could be any flavor of un*x. SGI has a short blub on their website about the terrain simulation hardware. Might even be IRIX running a different window manager.
Since Apple models itself a hardware company, do they offer patches on a similar basis as Microsoft or to they rely more on the BSD patching system?
Closer to Microsoft than anything else. Apple's patches generally come in the form of installer applications that can be downloaded and installed automatically via the bundled "Software Update" application (GUI and command line) or can be downloaded and installed manually from the support section of their website.
Apple does not publish the source of any of their GUI applications or the GUI framework itself. It does however release the source to the rest of the OS under the name "Darwin". Patches and other updates to Mac OS X generally find their way into Darwin and can be browsed at http://developer.apple.com/darwin.
The typical artist/writer/mom-or-dad user can click a couple buttons and have OS X update itself (or even set it to always keep itself updated). More technical users can browse the Darwin website for more details. (This was recently done by several folks wanting to know more about how Panther, Mac OS X 10.3, does its automatic defragmentation and optimizing. They dug around in the Darwin souce until they found that particular part of the HFS+ architecture. Examined the code and made a few posts explaining the process to everyone else).