Microsoft acknowledged when the 360 was announced that they were designing games for 720p. It's not like anyone tried to pull the wool over your eyes.
More importantly, designing games to run at 1080p 60fps means hardware power goes unused when rendering for 720p or 480p TVs. That's a waste that could have been spent on prettier graphics. Most 360 owners don't even have HDTVs with 1080 lines so it makes more sense for games to look their best at 720p. If Bungie had sacrificed visual quality then sure Halo 3 could be 1080p at 60fps. They thought it would be better if it looked better on most people's TVs.
Outta curiosity, do you go after the PS3 with similar zeal? It's got a library of 61 games and only 24 of them are 1080p.
And yet tons of consumers are watching "HD" at 1366x540 because their TV only does 768p. The box takes 1080i, drops every other field, and scales the 1080x540 field to fit the 1366x768 screen.
I think you'd find game designers would say designing for 720p makes the most sense for this generation of consoles. Many people still haven't upgraded to HDTV. More importantly, the early adopters bought TVs that only have enough pixels to truly display 720p, or 768p. Oh sure the box says it can do 1080i, but it doesn't have the pixels so it downscales. It wasn't until the last year or two that true 1080 sets became widely available. So it won't be until the end of this console generation that even a majority of TVs can truly display 1080p.
Then for the games designing for 1080p means text is too hard to read or important details get lost when played on an SDTV. When games are designed for 720p, they're playable on both old and new TVs. Also, rendering at 1080p results in fewer fps than 720p. So option A is to scale back the visuals so the framerate is OK at 1080 and silky smooth at 720 or 480. Option B is to scale up the visuals by designing for 720p with an OK framerate. The designers for Halo 3 wanted the visuals to have a certain amount of pop to them and so they cut back on the resolution to achieve it.
So do the math for and it turns out 1152x640 is 80% of 1280x720. So for most of the sets displaying Halo 3, 80% of the possible detail is there.
Except the 360 is not expected to render games at 1080p. When the 360 was announced it was declared that games would get designed for 720p, not 1080p. There were never any plans for Halo 3 to render at 1080p.
So the real numbers you want are 1280x720=921600 1152x640=737280 737280/921600=0.8
So, it's rendering at 80% of the pixels in a true 720p image.
It would be really useful if I could click on "Song Title", "Artist", and "Album" to sort according to them. If I search for "Oasis", there's no easy to way to separate the albums titled that from the artist.
I suppose then you aren't one of those people who likes to listen to albums years after buying them? Or who likes to listen to music while reading a page? If I like an album a lot, I'm going to listen to it dozens of times. Ten to thirty hours of listening is worth five to ten dollars to me.
If you're looking for new music, how do you know you're really going to like a song you can only hear 30 seconds of? Songs with long openings for example, or jazz or techno pieces? I'm not about to give Amazon a dollar for a dud song when they could so easily stream half or the whole song at say 48kbps to give me a proper taste. Like standing a ways away from a live performance before paying to hear it up close and in better quality.
The problem is the left hand is positioned down the controller and the thumb has farther to reach than when manipulating the d-pad. Since you're used to dual shock shape I'm guessing you don't expect a controller to contour into you palms. You're used to the nubby ends of the dual shock.
As for your don't give a shit percent. So your argument is Sony shouldn't change it because a very small minority of games play more comfortably since both analog sticks are regularly used. Meanwhile comfort for the other games shouldn't matter.
If wikipedia is correct "The total mass of the Asteroid belt is estimated to be 3.0-3.6×1021 kilograms,[2][3] which is 4% of the Earth's Moon. Of that total mass, one-third is accounted for by Ceres alone. The four largest asteroids (if Ceres is included) contain almost half the total mass within the main belt.[4][5]"
You're welcome. I too sift/suffer through the articles looking for other's knowledge. I used to browse at +2, but now I usually wait for an article to be up for a while and read at +3 for the more useful information.
The ocean conveyor belt will slow down from the melting Greenland glaciers before it stops. This would be more gradual than the ~1000 ice age known as the Younger Drayas. This happened around 12,900 - 11,500 BCE and the prevailing theory is it was caused by Lake Agassiz draining into the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River. Evidence points to this return to glaciation taking about ten years. So ice melt from Greenland will take longer than ten years, but it might happen over a few decades.
That's the other thing I hope for. If the DS2 doubles the resolution of the screens (DS1 games will simply double their pixels for playing) then it will do about 400x400, which is nice and useful for wifi surfing too.
Instead of a clamshell with the screen and keyboard on the inside, put two touch screens on the outside. "Open" the phone so both screens are facing the viewer and then one becomes a virtual keyboard. When not needed for typing, the second screen finally provides enough resolution to effectively browse pages or run some types of programs. Instead of 480x240 on once screen, there'd be 480x480 combined.
Re:Fox News Reporter == Journalist?
on
Fox Hacks Fark
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· Score: 1
Are you talking about the same CNN, NBC, and CBS that abdicated their responsibility as the Fourth Estate following 9/11 to critically analyze the bullshit coming from the Bush Administration and associated think tanks?
Those corporations are in business to make money for their shareholders. They didn't want to lose ratings by upsetting the viewers with tough stories about what was really happening and why, and is it the right course of action. Equally important is they'd lose their access to administration officials who wouldn't give them the time of day.
Mind you, those owners and management tend to be more conservative and Republican the higher up the chain you go. Journalists tend to be more liberal, but they aren't the ones deciding which stories to run.
Depends partly on if you know the song is offered commercially for sale. If the artist's website isn't giving away the song, then the artist wants you to pay for a copy. You don't pay, so that's wrong. Thus immoral and unethical.
unethical
adjective not conforming to approved standards of social or professional behavior
Some industries in the USA were performing just fine, until the same product started coming in from China and other countries with weaker labor, health, and environmental standards.
If people in the USA should be protected by certain labor, health, and environmental standards, people in other countries should have the same protections. Enforcing those protections drives up the cost of those imported products, making American production more competitive. American wages will still remain higher, but production can still be more competitive.
If countries refuse to implement those protections for their people, impose a sliding scale of tariffs on them until they do.
Corporations are racing to the bottom for the cheapest production in countries with the weakest protections. This race to the bottom is the wrong way to help the world's people.
Slashdot Mirror
You registered 7 years ago, around March of 2000. My first comment is from then.
Okay, but how will Google get any carrier to accept their software if it means losing all those profits from services sold separately?
As opposed to those fake 720p HDTVs?
Microsoft acknowledged when the 360 was announced that they were designing games for 720p. It's not like anyone tried to pull the wool over your eyes.
More importantly, designing games to run at 1080p 60fps means hardware power goes unused when rendering for 720p or 480p TVs. That's a waste that could have been spent on prettier graphics. Most 360 owners don't even have HDTVs with 1080 lines so it makes more sense for games to look their best at 720p. If Bungie had sacrificed visual quality then sure Halo 3 could be 1080p at 60fps. They thought it would be better if it looked better on most people's TVs.
Outta curiosity, do you go after the PS3 with similar zeal? It's got a library of 61 games and only 24 of them are 1080p.
And yet tons of consumers are watching "HD" at 1366x540 because their TV only does 768p. The box takes 1080i, drops every other field, and scales the 1080x540 field to fit the 1366x768 screen.
That's considered HD, though arguably it isn't.
I think you'd find game designers would say designing for 720p makes the most sense for this generation of consoles. Many people still haven't upgraded to HDTV. More importantly, the early adopters bought TVs that only have enough pixels to truly display 720p, or 768p. Oh sure the box says it can do 1080i, but it doesn't have the pixels so it downscales. It wasn't until the last year or two that true 1080 sets became widely available. So it won't be until the end of this console generation that even a majority of TVs can truly display 1080p.
Then for the games designing for 1080p means text is too hard to read or important details get lost when played on an SDTV. When games are designed for 720p, they're playable on both old and new TVs. Also, rendering at 1080p results in fewer fps than 720p. So option A is to scale back the visuals so the framerate is OK at 1080 and silky smooth at 720 or 480. Option B is to scale up the visuals by designing for 720p with an OK framerate. The designers for Halo 3 wanted the visuals to have a certain amount of pop to them and so they cut back on the resolution to achieve it.
So do the math for and it turns out 1152x640 is 80% of 1280x720. So for most of the sets displaying Halo 3, 80% of the possible detail is there.
Except the 360 is not expected to render games at 1080p. When the 360 was announced it was declared that games would get designed for 720p, not 1080p. There were never any plans for Halo 3 to render at 1080p.
So the real numbers you want are 1280x720=921600
1152x640=737280
737280/921600=0.8
So, it's rendering at 80% of the pixels in a true 720p image.
yeah but if one cares to listen to music in the background for an hour a day, that's 365 hours a year to fill.
It would be really useful if I could click on "Song Title", "Artist", and "Album" to sort according to them. If I search for "Oasis", there's no easy to way to separate the albums titled that from the artist.
I suppose then you aren't one of those people who likes to listen to albums years after buying them? Or who likes to listen to music while reading a page? If I like an album a lot, I'm going to listen to it dozens of times. Ten to thirty hours of listening is worth five to ten dollars to me.
How does that happen? Or where do I go to find an honest look at it?
If you're looking for new music, how do you know you're really going to like a song you can only hear 30 seconds of? Songs with long openings for example, or jazz or techno pieces? I'm not about to give Amazon a dollar for a dud song when they could so easily stream half or the whole song at say 48kbps to give me a proper taste. Like standing a ways away from a live performance before paying to hear it up close and in better quality.
The problem is the left hand is positioned down the controller and the thumb has farther to reach than when manipulating the d-pad. Since you're used to dual shock shape I'm guessing you don't expect a controller to contour into you palms. You're used to the nubby ends of the dual shock.
As for your don't give a shit percent. So your argument is Sony shouldn't change it because a very small minority of games play more comfortably since both analog sticks are regularly used. Meanwhile comfort for the other games shouldn't matter.
If wikipedia is correct "The total mass of the Asteroid belt is estimated to be 3.0-3.6×1021 kilograms,[2][3] which is 4% of the Earth's Moon. Of that total mass, one-third is accounted for by Ceres alone. The four largest asteroids (if Ceres is included) contain almost half the total mass within the main belt.[4][5]"
If he owns a DeLorean he's my new best friend.
Meanwhile about what percentage of all the other critically well-received games use the left analog stick and the buttons on the right?
You're declaring symmetry is more important than comfort and usability? You have some strange priorities.
You're welcome. I too sift/suffer through the articles looking for other's knowledge. I used to browse at +2, but now I usually wait for an article to be up for a while and read at +3 for the more useful information.
The ocean conveyor belt will slow down from the melting Greenland glaciers before it stops. This would be more gradual than the ~1000 ice age known as the Younger Drayas. This happened around 12,900 - 11,500 BCE and the prevailing theory is it was caused by Lake Agassiz draining into the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River. Evidence points to this return to glaciation taking about ten years. So ice melt from Greenland will take longer than ten years, but it might happen over a few decades.
So you left out just how much Microsoft gave up to get it's standard into Blu-ray?
That's the other thing I hope for. If the DS2 doubles the resolution of the screens (DS1 games will simply double their pixels for playing) then it will do about 400x400, which is nice and useful for wifi surfing too.
Instead of a clamshell with the screen and keyboard on the inside, put two touch screens on the outside. "Open" the phone so both screens are facing the viewer and then one becomes a virtual keyboard. When not needed for typing, the second screen finally provides enough resolution to effectively browse pages or run some types of programs. Instead of 480x240 on once screen, there'd be 480x480 combined.
Are you talking about the same CNN, NBC, and CBS that abdicated their responsibility as the Fourth Estate following 9/11 to critically analyze the bullshit coming from the Bush Administration and associated think tanks?
Those corporations are in business to make money for their shareholders. They didn't want to lose ratings by upsetting the viewers with tough stories about what was really happening and why, and is it the right course of action. Equally important is they'd lose their access to administration officials who wouldn't give them the time of day.
Mind you, those owners and management tend to be more conservative and Republican the higher up the chain you go. Journalists tend to be more liberal, but they aren't the ones deciding which stories to run.
Depends partly on if you know the song is offered commercially for sale. If the artist's website isn't giving away the song, then the artist wants you to pay for a copy. You don't pay, so that's wrong. Thus immoral and unethical.
unethical
adjective
not conforming to approved standards of social or professional behavior
Then you could bike to work in 30 to 45 minutes. No license plate required. Wear reflectors and good luck not getting hit. I've done it before.
Some industries in the USA were performing just fine, until the same product started coming in from China and other countries with weaker labor, health, and environmental standards.
If people in the USA should be protected by certain labor, health, and environmental standards, people in other countries should have the same protections. Enforcing those protections drives up the cost of those imported products, making American production more competitive. American wages will still remain higher, but production can still be more competitive.
If countries refuse to implement those protections for their people, impose a sliding scale of tariffs on them until they do.
Corporations are racing to the bottom for the cheapest production in countries with the weakest protections. This race to the bottom is the wrong way to help the world's people.