(ignoring the environmental argument because I don't have the information to discuss it, and perhaps I just don't care:)
Or, skipping that argument, I don't really feel like having to move TVs around annually. Sure, OLEDs are much lighter and smaller than CRTs, and even than LCD displays, but it's still not an idea that appeals.
Why would you have to move a TV to replace a screen? If it's done properly, you'd simply be able to unclip the old, clip in the new, and you're done. You shouldn't even have to take the monitor off of the stand or wall. Anyway, I end up going behind my TV once or twice a year to hook up different components, to rearrange the cabling, or even just to clean back there, so even if I had to do that to replace a screen it would be much less work than moving around a relatively small 48" RPTV.
I'm sure I'm just dreaming here, and we'll not see this available any time soon, but it would be very nice if we did. Any OLED manufacturers listening out there? Replaceable screens with a standard interface, please!
That and how long with the OLED display they've built last? OLEDs don't like oxygen and the damn things will basically decompose. For large expensive displays like that there's still concerns in that area.
Who cares how long they last? OLED manufacturing should be cheap enough that you could realistically replace your screen every year and still be under the price of a similar LCD screen after 5-10 years. I know I'd be willing to buy a cheap new screen every 1000 hours or so if I could replace my current RPTV HDTV set with a nice flat panel that doesn't have the problems of plasma (horrible burn-in potential) at a price point much lower than LCD or plasma displays currently available.
This could open up a whole new avenue of revenue to TV manufacturers, following the razor/razorblade model. It'd be nice to see a standard set for replaceable screens, so even though I may buy a Mitsubishi set, I could replace it with a Pioneer screen or a Sony screen, or a no-name Chinese knock-off if I want to save a few dollars. Unfortunately, I doubt that'll happen.
And yes, you DID say that Hz was close enough to FPS to compare them
Close enough to compare them in terms of what the eye can see. The statement needs to be taken in the context of my comment (what the eye can and cannot see at what frame rate or frequency), and not as a general statement saying that fps == Hz.
I guess we just have to agree to disagree because I can point to just as many sources that say your theory is bunk as I'm sure you can to my point.
I'll agree to that, but not quite yet.:) I still find it hard to believe that you can run something like FarCry at 1600x1200 4xFSAA 8xAF at a reasonable frame rate on anything but the very latest video cards (reference). Yes, I know that there's absolutely no reason why you would care to run at that high of a resolution, with those FSAA or AF settings, but this ties right back into my claim that "higher fps rates at lower resolutions/detail settings == at least playable fps rates at higher resolutions/detail settings". 15 frames per second at those settings on a Radeon 9700 is unplayable, compared to a somewhat-acceptable 33 fps for a GeForce 6800. At the lower 1280x1024 setting with the same FSAA and AF settings, the 6800 gets a very playable 44 fps while the 9700 is still unplayable at 23. Turn down the resolution or FSAA or AF and I'm sure the 9700 can still hold its own, as can a GeForce 3 (though much worse than the 9700), but that's not the point.
75? I only wish we were so lucky in Illinois. 55mph top speed limit on highways. The flow of traffic is usually around 80mph, but still.:|
Have things changed in Illinois? I haven't been back there for a few years (born and raised, but moved out to Seattle after school), and the interstate limits were increased to 65 in the 90s. Yes, the state routes and non-Interstate highways were still 55, but I could get pretty much everywhere I ever cared to go on 55, 72, 74, 57, and 70. 55 from St. Louis to Chicago, with stops at Springfield and Bloomington/Normal, 72 from Springfield through Decatur to Champaign/Urbana or from Springfield through Jacksonville out to the river, 74 from Champaign/Urbana to Bloomington/Normal and on up to Peoria, the Quad Cities, and 80 out to the west or from CU through Danville into Indiana and eventually Indianapolis, 57 from Chicago to Effingham through Champaign/Urbana and then onto 70 down to St. Louis. The only real difficulty is getting from Springfield to Effingham without going miles out of the way to stay on interstates. Have to take 104 or 29 down to Taylorville and Pana, then make a decision whether to go all the way over to Shelbyville and then down to Effingham, take 29 down to 70 and come back up, or go on the smaller roads through little places like Cowden and Beecher City.
Driving out from Illinois to Seattle a few years back was a pretty fun trip. Once you get out of Illinois, the speed limit went up to 75, and by the time you get to the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana it's normally up around 85. Then it drops back down to 70 once you hit Washington, and then 60 as you get closer to Seattle (I haven't figured out why the Midwestern states prefer x5 limits, while the Western states prefer x0 limits).
What I usually do, is use the turn signal to indicate I want to pass, and if that doesn't work, a brief flash of the headlights usually does the trick. There is a difference in road behaviour in different countries though: In Germany, this works great, in France or The Netherlands, not as good. Germans are used to people passing at 190km/h.
I did a similar (but longer) drive this past winter, going from Seattle to New Mexico and back by way of California. I used the flash quite a bit, and most folks were more than willing to get out of the way.
In my normal daily driving, I typically don't bother with flashing people out of the way, since I don't have my cruise control set at a comfortable speed (I reserve the flash during daily driving for, "Hey, there's a cop back behind me, watch out," or, "Nice Porsche, I'm in one too"). When I'm doing long-distance driving, I'll set my cruise and give people a flash at a good distance before I get too close. If they don't move, or can't, I'll slow down and wait for a proper opening. 9 times out of 10, though, they'll move.
Wow so now a frequency measurement is equal to fps...ok wonderboy, then why not just up the refresh if it's close enough for your argument...fps is not soley determined by the video card..put your 500 dollar card in a p3 and watch it goto shit...
I didn't say that. I said they're comparable. If you want to be technically correct, frame rate and refresh rate are linked by vsync (ie, a monitor that can only do 60Hz will risk image tearing if you push your frame rate beyond 60fps. That's why any good game allows you to lock to vsync for a consistent frame rate, or take your chances and disable vsync waiting and just go for broke). In terms of what the eye can see, refresh rate and frame rate are similar in that you can still see jerky motion even at 60+ fps, and you can still see flicker at 60+ Hz.
You're correct that there's a CPU component to video card performance. You certainly can put a $500 video card in a P3, though you won't use much of its potential. However, you are buying yourself a bit of breathing room so that you don't have to upgrade your video card next time you want to upgrade your CPU (why would you buy a $500 video card and not get a $100 CPU upgrade, though?).
All else being equal (meaning a modern CPU, modern memory architecture like DDR or RDRAM (guh!), etc), a higher frame rate is better. If you have the money, go for the best out there. If you're on a budget, get the best card you can afford. If you want to play modern games, you're not really saving much by buying a $100 video card each year versus buying a $300-500 card every 2-3 years. Be my guest, go out and buy that GeForce4 MX card you've had your eyes on. Even my lowly original GeForce3 will beat that, and I paid less than $300 for that 2+ years ago.
you don't need a 500 dollar card to put all options high and get 60FPS...if YOU do then you need a computer tweaking
For older games like Quake3 or Half-Life, you're absolutely correct. Let's see you put all graphic effects at high, with 4x FSAA and 8x anisotropic filtering at 1600x1200 in FarCry or UT2004 and see how quickly even a GeForce3 melts down. I guess if you don't mind playing your games at the same frame rate as a powerpoint slide deck, you could certainly do this. For everyone else, it's not going to cut it. A card that scores 100+fps on older benchmarks (cards these days are topping 200fps on Q3 benchmarks, and are CPU-limited at all but the highest of resolutions and FSAA settings) will be lucky to run an average 30fps on newer games unless you really lower the resolution and detail levels. 30fps average is simply not enough to be enjoyable (remember, average).
Not trying to troll seriously..because I say the same thing..but if you talk to gamers they somehow have miraculous eyes where gaming at the most fps is necessary and they will argue till they're blue that they can actually SEE a difference....I just think they are dumb imo
Gamers don't have magic eyes, but perhaps you're the dumb one if you can't tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps. More importantly, gamers measure fps as averages, so even an average of 60fps can drop well below 30fps at times. If you add to that the knowledge that higher fps at lower graphical quality == acceptable (or better) fps at higher graphical quality, you'll realize that the search for the fastest (in terms of fps) video card is not so silly. Sure, my GeForce3 (yes, I'm not nearly at the cutting edge of video cards, but I was ~2 years ago when I bought the card:) can play Quake3 at 800x600 and no options in excess of 100fps, but that just means I can bump up the resolution and/or the graphic effects (more particles, geometry smoothing, higher level of detail, larger textures, etc) and still be able to play at a good framerate.
The limit on what we can percieve is 60 frames per second or something in that arena, you do the math.
Incorrect. First off, the eye doesn't see in "frames per second". Second, 60 fps is well below the maximum frame rate our eyes can see (nobody has yet proven a maximum frame rate). For example, look at a CRT monitor at 60Hz and then one at 100Hz. I bet you can tell the difference (yes, Hz and fps are different, but they're similar enough for this discussion). If you can't, or won't admit that you can, you'll still know when you have crazy eye fatigue and neck muscle strain later. The same goes for flourescent lights at 60Hz.
People make the mistake of saying that the eye can only see X frames per second (where X is 24, 30, 60, or what have you), when they mean to say, "It only takes X frames per second for the eye to discern motion," where X decreases as effects such as motion blur are added to the source media. 24 frames per second of a video game like Quake sucks horribly, but 24 frames per second for a movie is acceptable because the film camera picks up motion blur. That's also ignoring the fact that video games are measured in average frames per second (your 24fps Quake game is going to slow down horribly when you get multiple meshes and particles going). It's also horribly evident that 24fps is not nearly enough when you watch long horizontal or vertical pans in movies.
Just because movies play at 24fps, or NTSC plays at 30fps (well, 29.xxx fps, and shown in half-frames for an effective 60Hz refresh rate), or PAL is at 25fps, or your LCD monitor happens to refresh at 60Hz doesn't mean that's all the eye can see. I'm also ignoring the more motion-receptive portions of your eye (peripheral vision), which you can play around with by looking at a CRT out of the corner of your eye. I bet you can even tell that a 100Hz CRT flickers by looking at it that way.
I hear rumors that Porsche will be coming out with a rear engine, air cooled model.
Even Porsche got on the whole water-cooling fad. True, they had water-cooled engines for years (starting with the 924), but they no longer have any air-cooled engines. The M96 engine in the Boxster and the 996 911 is water-cooled, as are the V6 and V8 engines in the Cayenne, the V10 in the Carrera GT, and the non-M96-based engines in the GT3 Cup cars (and the detuned version in the street GT3 car). The last air-cooled Porsche was the 993 911, which ended its run with the 1998 model year. Water-cooling is truly the way of the future!
Aqua is really slick, but eventually it gets old, wheras there are dozens of really nice looking themes for KDE
(do you mean Luna, XP's default visual style, or did you really mean Aqua, OS X's interface?) This article was more about icons than look & feel. While many people may not like the Playschool look of the Luna widgets, I've never heard anyone complain about the new icons.
However, if you want to talk about look & feel, you can change that in XP just as well as in KDE. ThemeXP has a bunch of good themes (called "Visual Styles" for XP), and you can either search Google for the uxtheme.dll hack to allow you to use those themes, or pay for TGTSoft's StyleXP (TGTSoft used to host a free hack for uxtheme.dll, but it no longer worked on XP SP1; thus you should search google for the hack if you don't feel like buying StyleXP).
Was the remake of Majora's mask etc good? I was a little sad that they didn't increase the framerate a little for Ocarina of Time, but it was still fun to play the Master Quest version even though it made my eyes hurt.
I don't know. I went to all the trouble to register the GBA games that qualified for the Zelda disc, and then never played it. The manual does warn that some of the music and sound effects are screwed up, apparently due to the N64 emulation they're using. I expect it's of the same caliber as the OOT remake, with a low frame rate and the original low-res textures and such.
I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly how such a feature should be used, but it's not hard to imagine how it could be used.
I've got your prior art right here. Check out the changelist. I'm missing dates on the changelist, but from the age of the files on my server, I can prove that version 2.5 (added focus-based fade) was built on August 9, 2001. Version 3.1 added mouse-click pass-through when the window is non-focused. From the front page, that version was June 13, 2003.
It's not exactly what's described in the patent (I don't believe it fits all 40 claims, but it fits a good majority of them), mostly because it's focus-based and not time-based, but it also shows a good example of where this type of functionality could be useful.
I thought the premise of Wind Waker was that it was set earlier in his life.
So you never played/completed Wind Waker? I'll not spoil it for you, but here's a teaser -- it's set far into the future (that much you can get from reading the backstory in the manual). Interestingly enough, the backstory also explains that this Link is not the Link you know, and it also explains why he starts out in different clothes and then puts on the green stuff.
I guess you didn't bother to learn how to use the wind waker, then, huh? You have to sail early in the game, but not far. You also have to sail late in the game if you want to visit every square and get every item, but you don't have to sail everywhere forever. That's what the waterspout warp stuff was for.
I just watched the trailer. Very nice. I'm looking forward to it coming out.
I was torn on the trailer. Some things looked nice (a few of the closer shots of Link under different lighting, though it was no better than graphics we've already seen in released games on the XBox), and some things looked horrible (the particle effects, particularly the dust clouds from the horse's hooves, were appalingly bad and reminiscent of N64-era particle effects). I'm not going to hold my breath on this one, though chances are I'll buy it. The most compelling part will be speculation about what freebie Nintendo gives away with pre-orders this time. With Wind Waker, it was a remake of Ocarina of Time. Later, they gave away a compilation of Zelda 1, 2, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask in conjunction with either buying a couple specific GBA games or with a Nintendo Power subscription. I'm hoping this one will have a disk with Link to the Past on it, and maybe remakes of the three pre-GBA GameBoy Zelda games.
The official component cable is garbage. I bought both the Microsoft cable, and the Monster Version (the 80 dollar version), put them side by side on a HD Widescreen Projection TV. It's a world of difference. If the reason you don't want that is because of the component's look, get the monster cable. It is my media center.
The cables included in the Microsoft HD pack are light gauge cables. However, unlike the Monster solutions I've seen, the cables aren't important. The A/V box is separate, allowing you to use whatever high-quality cables you please. Microsoft did the Right Thing (tm) here, compared to Nintendo's integrated component cables (GC adaptor on one end, YPrPb RCA plugs on the other, light gauge crappy wire). The price would be much more than $20 if they had included good cables, but if you care you can simply go and buy a better set of cables.
Also, if you're going to spend $80 on cables, at least go to a good Hi Fi store (ie, not Circuit City, Best Buy, CompUSA, etc) and buy a good set of cables (Monster cables are typically overpriced for the quality; I personally prefer Audioquest/Cinemaquest cables). And don't forget to get a good optical audio cable while you're at it. DD 5.1 is a must-have feature for games, IMHO!
If you hook a component video cable to the Xbox, it does indeed drive a 480p display.
A standard, un-modded XBox with the DVD player attachment will not do progressive output for DVDs, even with the HD pack. However, that's not a limitation of the hardware, but the software. There are hacks that can change that, and if you're already hacking your XBox to run XBMP, you may as well do the hack to play DVDs in progressive output.
Modding my Xbox was the best possible thing I could've done for it. Microsoft is incredibly foolish not getting on-board with an "official" application like XBMC for people who wish to have run it on Xboxes that aren't modded. It would be very popular.
It's also not the target demographic of XBox. It would compete with the Windows Media Center PCs, and gets away from the idea of XBox as a gaming platform. More importantly, if Microsoft were to release a supported XBMC-like application for XBox, you and everyone else here would be screaming foul, saying that Microsoft is trying to leverage their weight to take over your living room.
Then we're much past the end of the world already. WTL is not the first project Microsoft has put on Sourceforge. To my knowledge, that happened at the end of March, when WiX, or Windows Installer XML toolset, was uploaded to Sourceforge. WiX is a great way to build MSI installers without having to shell out bucks for gui installer tools like Installshield (yes, Visual Studio.NET and.NET 2003 have an installer project that will build an MSI, but they're very limited in scope). For now, it works best with installs that don't need any user input, since there's no forms designer, but if you're savvy enough you can even build UI forms into the XML file.
Like WTL, WiX is another Microsoft project that's pretty much been a one-man show for years, and it's great to see it openly acknowledged and put out there for the entire world to use. We use it every single day at work, and have gone through all of the growing pains over the last few years so you don't have to.
I prefer RiceCop for my occasionaly dose of rice hilariousness.
P.S. Bryan is Korean. His definition of a Rice Boy: Rice-Boy is a stereotype. The typical Rice-Boy can be identified by his car, or rather what he does to it. Generally, Rice-Boy will start out with a car that was not meant to go fast (typically a Honda Civic), and attempt to "fix it up," usually consisting of aftermarket rims, lowering springs and an aftermarket exhaust system with a large exhaust tip.
Rice refers to the cars, not the drivers. It is a bit of a derogatory term, since it typically implies Japanese (or at least Asian) cars, but it can be applied just as well to domestic makes. There are plenty of riced J-body (Cavalier, Sunfire) cars out there, and the Focus is another rice favorite. If I'm feeling PC, I call them "carbohydrate-based staple food racers", but "riceboy" gets that across much more succinctly.
Besides, he forgot to mention the park bench wings, outrageous bodykits, stickers, and gaudy paint jobs that riceboys so love.
I just hope that halo 2 works via gamespy, so those of us that think paying a monthly sub. fee is just nuts when all we want to do is just blow **** up!
Oh my! $50/year or $5/mo is soooo much! Boohoohoo!
That and we may have chipped our xboxes so that we can use xbox media center...
Thankfully, your modchip and your aversion to paying for a quality service will keep you off of Live. Good riddance.
Another new aspect of Forza Motorsport is its inclusion of "drivatars," AI-controlled drivers you can "train" in your own original driving style.
I saw the original research into these "drivatars" at a MSR techfest a year or so ago. They had them hooked up to PGR, with a bunch of graphical debugging spew turned on (showing estimated driving lines, what the AI was thinking, etc). It was very cool. There was talk at the time of being able to download drivatars based on professional drivers on the then-new XBox Live service. Hopefully they do that.
And on a side note, does it bother anybody else when people refer to "wheels" as "rims"? A wheel is more than just a "rim", so why call it that? When I read "rims" in reference to wheels, my brain automatically translates it to "riceboy crap".
provide it as a free service to a university's students... It cost almost $600 last time I bought books
You do realize that you'd just be transfering the cost, right? "Free" means "included in your tuition", which means rather than paying $600 for your books at a book store, you're paying $600 more in tuition and get your books for free. Sure, some amortization is possible, but is it really fair for a student whose major typically requires $200 in books to subsidize a major that requires $600 in books? I'd rather see textbook costs drop to a realistic level ($90+ for a single book is ridiculous, but it's the way things are going), rather than provide it "for free" in your tuition.
Then again, I'm no longer in school, so it won't affect me unless I have kids at some point in the (very very far) future.
You're absolutely correct that these "game snobs" are looking at the past through rose-colored graphics, forgetting all of the stinkers of yesteryear. However, it's not just games where this applies. How many times have you heard people complain about how bad movies are now, or music, or books? It's exactly the same phenomenon. When your grandfather tells you how much better things were "back in the day", it's for exactly the same reason. He's looking back at all the good things, while ignoring all of the bad.
Face it, everything mostly sucks. It always has, and it always will. There will always be some gems that really stand out, and those will be what are remembered when people fondly look back on "the old days". Get over it.
Since when is the GameCube rapidly falling behind the XBox in sales?
XBox sales are up since the price drop. The same thing happened with the Gamecube when it dropped to $99. The surge may or may not be sustainable, but the XBox is quickly gaining momentum (new XBox Live features, a very strong spring line-up, and a promising Fall and Holiday line-up to come). Gamecube doesn't have much on the horizon, nor anything really strong this spring either (a port of WarioWare from the GBA to GC, without even updating the graphics? What else has Nintendo released lately for the GC? I can't think of anything major). Metroid Prime 2 and Paper Mario 2 may be interesting for the holiday season, but that's about it.
Wrong. The Game Boy Advance SP is $100, the normal Game Boy Advance runs around $70.
Bah. Nobody buys the normal GBA anymore. $30 isn't enough when you consider that you also have to buy a light for it (quality lights will run you upwards of $20). Since the SP's release, you can pretty much assume that anytime someone says "Game Boy Advance" they really mean "Game Boy Advance SP".
Slashdot Mirror
(ignoring the environmental argument because I don't have the information to discuss it, and perhaps I just don't care :)
Why would you have to move a TV to replace a screen? If it's done properly, you'd simply be able to unclip the old, clip in the new, and you're done. You shouldn't even have to take the monitor off of the stand or wall. Anyway, I end up going behind my TV once or twice a year to hook up different components, to rearrange the cabling, or even just to clean back there, so even if I had to do that to replace a screen it would be much less work than moving around a relatively small 48" RPTV.
I'm sure I'm just dreaming here, and we'll not see this available any time soon, but it would be very nice if we did. Any OLED manufacturers listening out there? Replaceable screens with a standard interface, please!
Who cares how long they last? OLED manufacturing should be cheap enough that you could realistically replace your screen every year and still be under the price of a similar LCD screen after 5-10 years. I know I'd be willing to buy a cheap new screen every 1000 hours or so if I could replace my current RPTV HDTV set with a nice flat panel that doesn't have the problems of plasma (horrible burn-in potential) at a price point much lower than LCD or plasma displays currently available.
This could open up a whole new avenue of revenue to TV manufacturers, following the razor/razorblade model. It'd be nice to see a standard set for replaceable screens, so even though I may buy a Mitsubishi set, I could replace it with a Pioneer screen or a Sony screen, or a no-name Chinese knock-off if I want to save a few dollars. Unfortunately, I doubt that'll happen.
Close enough to compare them in terms of what the eye can see. The statement needs to be taken in the context of my comment (what the eye can and cannot see at what frame rate or frequency), and not as a general statement saying that fps == Hz.
I'll agree to that, but not quite yet. :) I still find it hard to believe that you can run something like FarCry at 1600x1200 4xFSAA 8xAF at a reasonable frame rate on anything but the very latest video cards (reference). Yes, I know that there's absolutely no reason why you would care to run at that high of a resolution, with those FSAA or AF settings, but this ties right back into my claim that "higher fps rates at lower resolutions/detail settings == at least playable fps rates at higher resolutions/detail settings". 15 frames per second at those settings on a Radeon 9700 is unplayable, compared to a somewhat-acceptable 33 fps for a GeForce 6800. At the lower 1280x1024 setting with the same FSAA and AF settings, the 6800 gets a very playable 44 fps while the 9700 is still unplayable at 23. Turn down the resolution or FSAA or AF and I'm sure the 9700 can still hold its own, as can a GeForce 3 (though much worse than the 9700), but that's not the point.
Have things changed in Illinois? I haven't been back there for a few years (born and raised, but moved out to Seattle after school), and the interstate limits were increased to 65 in the 90s. Yes, the state routes and non-Interstate highways were still 55, but I could get pretty much everywhere I ever cared to go on 55, 72, 74, 57, and 70. 55 from St. Louis to Chicago, with stops at Springfield and Bloomington/Normal, 72 from Springfield through Decatur to Champaign/Urbana or from Springfield through Jacksonville out to the river, 74 from Champaign/Urbana to Bloomington/Normal and on up to Peoria, the Quad Cities, and 80 out to the west or from CU through Danville into Indiana and eventually Indianapolis, 57 from Chicago to Effingham through Champaign/Urbana and then onto 70 down to St. Louis. The only real difficulty is getting from Springfield to Effingham without going miles out of the way to stay on interstates. Have to take 104 or 29 down to Taylorville and Pana, then make a decision whether to go all the way over to Shelbyville and then down to Effingham, take 29 down to 70 and come back up, or go on the smaller roads through little places like Cowden and Beecher City.
Driving out from Illinois to Seattle a few years back was a pretty fun trip. Once you get out of Illinois, the speed limit went up to 75, and by the time you get to the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana it's normally up around 85. Then it drops back down to 70 once you hit Washington, and then 60 as you get closer to Seattle (I haven't figured out why the Midwestern states prefer x5 limits, while the Western states prefer x0 limits).
I did a similar (but longer) drive this past winter, going from Seattle to New Mexico and back by way of California. I used the flash quite a bit, and most folks were more than willing to get out of the way.
In my normal daily driving, I typically don't bother with flashing people out of the way, since I don't have my cruise control set at a comfortable speed (I reserve the flash during daily driving for, "Hey, there's a cop back behind me, watch out," or, "Nice Porsche, I'm in one too"). When I'm doing long-distance driving, I'll set my cruise and give people a flash at a good distance before I get too close. If they don't move, or can't, I'll slow down and wait for a proper opening. 9 times out of 10, though, they'll move.
I didn't say that. I said they're comparable. If you want to be technically correct, frame rate and refresh rate are linked by vsync (ie, a monitor that can only do 60Hz will risk image tearing if you push your frame rate beyond 60fps. That's why any good game allows you to lock to vsync for a consistent frame rate, or take your chances and disable vsync waiting and just go for broke). In terms of what the eye can see, refresh rate and frame rate are similar in that you can still see jerky motion even at 60+ fps, and you can still see flicker at 60+ Hz.
You're correct that there's a CPU component to video card performance. You certainly can put a $500 video card in a P3, though you won't use much of its potential. However, you are buying yourself a bit of breathing room so that you don't have to upgrade your video card next time you want to upgrade your CPU (why would you buy a $500 video card and not get a $100 CPU upgrade, though?).
All else being equal (meaning a modern CPU, modern memory architecture like DDR or RDRAM (guh!), etc), a higher frame rate is better. If you have the money, go for the best out there. If you're on a budget, get the best card you can afford. If you want to play modern games, you're not really saving much by buying a $100 video card each year versus buying a $300-500 card every 2-3 years. Be my guest, go out and buy that GeForce4 MX card you've had your eyes on. Even my lowly original GeForce3 will beat that, and I paid less than $300 for that 2+ years ago.
For older games like Quake3 or Half-Life, you're absolutely correct. Let's see you put all graphic effects at high, with 4x FSAA and 8x anisotropic filtering at 1600x1200 in FarCry or UT2004 and see how quickly even a GeForce3 melts down. I guess if you don't mind playing your games at the same frame rate as a powerpoint slide deck, you could certainly do this. For everyone else, it's not going to cut it. A card that scores 100+fps on older benchmarks (cards these days are topping 200fps on Q3 benchmarks, and are CPU-limited at all but the highest of resolutions and FSAA settings) will be lucky to run an average 30fps on newer games unless you really lower the resolution and detail levels. 30fps average is simply not enough to be enjoyable (remember, average).
Gamers don't have magic eyes, but perhaps you're the dumb one if you can't tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps. More importantly, gamers measure fps as averages, so even an average of 60fps can drop well below 30fps at times. If you add to that the knowledge that higher fps at lower graphical quality == acceptable (or better) fps at higher graphical quality, you'll realize that the search for the fastest (in terms of fps) video card is not so silly. Sure, my GeForce3 (yes, I'm not nearly at the cutting edge of video cards, but I was ~2 years ago when I bought the card :) can play Quake3 at 800x600 and no options in excess of 100fps, but that just means I can bump up the resolution and/or the graphic effects (more particles, geometry smoothing, higher level of detail, larger textures, etc) and still be able to play at a good framerate.
Incorrect. First off, the eye doesn't see in "frames per second". Second, 60 fps is well below the maximum frame rate our eyes can see (nobody has yet proven a maximum frame rate). For example, look at a CRT monitor at 60Hz and then one at 100Hz. I bet you can tell the difference (yes, Hz and fps are different, but they're similar enough for this discussion). If you can't, or won't admit that you can, you'll still know when you have crazy eye fatigue and neck muscle strain later. The same goes for flourescent lights at 60Hz.
People make the mistake of saying that the eye can only see X frames per second (where X is 24, 30, 60, or what have you), when they mean to say, "It only takes X frames per second for the eye to discern motion," where X decreases as effects such as motion blur are added to the source media. 24 frames per second of a video game like Quake sucks horribly, but 24 frames per second for a movie is acceptable because the film camera picks up motion blur. That's also ignoring the fact that video games are measured in average frames per second (your 24fps Quake game is going to slow down horribly when you get multiple meshes and particles going). It's also horribly evident that 24fps is not nearly enough when you watch long horizontal or vertical pans in movies.
Just because movies play at 24fps, or NTSC plays at 30fps (well, 29.xxx fps, and shown in half-frames for an effective 60Hz refresh rate), or PAL is at 25fps, or your LCD monitor happens to refresh at 60Hz doesn't mean that's all the eye can see. I'm also ignoring the more motion-receptive portions of your eye (peripheral vision), which you can play around with by looking at a CRT out of the corner of your eye. I bet you can even tell that a 100Hz CRT flickers by looking at it that way.
Even Porsche got on the whole water-cooling fad. True, they had water-cooled engines for years (starting with the 924), but they no longer have any air-cooled engines. The M96 engine in the Boxster and the 996 911 is water-cooled, as are the V6 and V8 engines in the Cayenne, the V10 in the Carrera GT, and the non-M96-based engines in the GT3 Cup cars (and the detuned version in the street GT3 car). The last air-cooled Porsche was the 993 911, which ended its run with the 1998 model year. Water-cooling is truly the way of the future!
Like the phone manufacturer? Or did you mean VTEC (Variable valve Timing and lift Electronic Control)?
(do you mean Luna, XP's default visual style, or did you really mean Aqua, OS X's interface?) This article was more about icons than look & feel. While many people may not like the Playschool look of the Luna widgets, I've never heard anyone complain about the new icons.
However, if you want to talk about look & feel, you can change that in XP just as well as in KDE. ThemeXP has a bunch of good themes (called "Visual Styles" for XP), and you can either search Google for the uxtheme.dll hack to allow you to use those themes, or pay for TGTSoft's StyleXP (TGTSoft used to host a free hack for uxtheme.dll, but it no longer worked on XP SP1; thus you should search google for the hack if you don't feel like buying StyleXP).
I don't know. I went to all the trouble to register the GBA games that qualified for the Zelda disc, and then never played it. The manual does warn that some of the music and sound effects are screwed up, apparently due to the N64 emulation they're using. I expect it's of the same caliber as the OOT remake, with a low frame rate and the original low-res textures and such.
I've got your prior art right here. Check out the changelist. I'm missing dates on the changelist, but from the age of the files on my server, I can prove that version 2.5 (added focus-based fade) was built on August 9, 2001. Version 3.1 added mouse-click pass-through when the window is non-focused. From the front page, that version was June 13, 2003.
It's not exactly what's described in the patent (I don't believe it fits all 40 claims, but it fits a good majority of them), mostly because it's focus-based and not time-based, but it also shows a good example of where this type of functionality could be useful.
So you never played/completed Wind Waker? I'll not spoil it for you, but here's a teaser -- it's set far into the future (that much you can get from reading the backstory in the manual). Interestingly enough, the backstory also explains that this Link is not the Link you know, and it also explains why he starts out in different clothes and then puts on the green stuff.
I guess you didn't bother to learn how to use the wind waker, then, huh? You have to sail early in the game, but not far. You also have to sail late in the game if you want to visit every square and get every item, but you don't have to sail everywhere forever. That's what the waterspout warp stuff was for.
I was torn on the trailer. Some things looked nice (a few of the closer shots of Link under different lighting, though it was no better than graphics we've already seen in released games on the XBox), and some things looked horrible (the particle effects, particularly the dust clouds from the horse's hooves, were appalingly bad and reminiscent of N64-era particle effects). I'm not going to hold my breath on this one, though chances are I'll buy it. The most compelling part will be speculation about what freebie Nintendo gives away with pre-orders this time. With Wind Waker, it was a remake of Ocarina of Time. Later, they gave away a compilation of Zelda 1, 2, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask in conjunction with either buying a couple specific GBA games or with a Nintendo Power subscription. I'm hoping this one will have a disk with Link to the Past on it, and maybe remakes of the three pre-GBA GameBoy Zelda games.
The cables included in the Microsoft HD pack are light gauge cables. However, unlike the Monster solutions I've seen, the cables aren't important. The A/V box is separate, allowing you to use whatever high-quality cables you please. Microsoft did the Right Thing (tm) here, compared to Nintendo's integrated component cables (GC adaptor on one end, YPrPb RCA plugs on the other, light gauge crappy wire). The price would be much more than $20 if they had included good cables, but if you care you can simply go and buy a better set of cables.
Also, if you're going to spend $80 on cables, at least go to a good Hi Fi store (ie, not Circuit City, Best Buy, CompUSA, etc) and buy a good set of cables (Monster cables are typically overpriced for the quality; I personally prefer Audioquest/Cinemaquest cables). And don't forget to get a good optical audio cable while you're at it. DD 5.1 is a must-have feature for games, IMHO!
A standard, un-modded XBox with the DVD player attachment will not do progressive output for DVDs, even with the HD pack. However, that's not a limitation of the hardware, but the software. There are hacks that can change that, and if you're already hacking your XBox to run XBMP, you may as well do the hack to play DVDs in progressive output.
It's also not the target demographic of XBox. It would compete with the Windows Media Center PCs, and gets away from the idea of XBox as a gaming platform. More importantly, if Microsoft were to release a supported XBMC-like application for XBox, you and everyone else here would be screaming foul, saying that Microsoft is trying to leverage their weight to take over your living room.
Then we're much past the end of the world already. WTL is not the first project Microsoft has put on Sourceforge. To my knowledge, that happened at the end of March, when WiX, or Windows Installer XML toolset, was uploaded to Sourceforge. WiX is a great way to build MSI installers without having to shell out bucks for gui installer tools like Installshield (yes, Visual Studio.NET and .NET 2003 have an installer project that will build an MSI, but they're very limited in scope). For now, it works best with installs that don't need any user input, since there's no forms designer, but if you're savvy enough you can even build UI forms into the XML file.
Like WTL, WiX is another Microsoft project that's pretty much been a one-man show for years, and it's great to see it openly acknowledged and put out there for the entire world to use. We use it every single day at work, and have gone through all of the growing pains over the last few years so you don't have to.
I prefer RiceCop for my occasionaly dose of rice hilariousness.
Rice refers to the cars, not the drivers. It is a bit of a derogatory term, since it typically implies Japanese (or at least Asian) cars, but it can be applied just as well to domestic makes. There are plenty of riced J-body (Cavalier, Sunfire) cars out there, and the Focus is another rice favorite. If I'm feeling PC, I call them "carbohydrate-based staple food racers", but "riceboy" gets that across much more succinctly.
Besides, he forgot to mention the park bench wings, outrageous bodykits, stickers, and gaudy paint jobs that riceboys so love.
Oh my! $50/year or $5/mo is soooo much! Boohoohoo!
Thankfully, your modchip and your aversion to paying for a quality service will keep you off of Live. Good riddance.
I thought the more interesting part was
I saw the original research into these "drivatars" at a MSR techfest a year or so ago. They had them hooked up to PGR, with a bunch of graphical debugging spew turned on (showing estimated driving lines, what the AI was thinking, etc). It was very cool. There was talk at the time of being able to download drivatars based on professional drivers on the then-new XBox Live service. Hopefully they do that.
And on a side note, does it bother anybody else when people refer to "wheels" as "rims"? A wheel is more than just a "rim", so why call it that? When I read "rims" in reference to wheels, my brain automatically translates it to "riceboy crap".
You do realize that you'd just be transfering the cost, right? "Free" means "included in your tuition", which means rather than paying $600 for your books at a book store, you're paying $600 more in tuition and get your books for free. Sure, some amortization is possible, but is it really fair for a student whose major typically requires $200 in books to subsidize a major that requires $600 in books? I'd rather see textbook costs drop to a realistic level ($90+ for a single book is ridiculous, but it's the way things are going), rather than provide it "for free" in your tuition.
Then again, I'm no longer in school, so it won't affect me unless I have kids at some point in the (very very far) future.
You're absolutely correct that these "game snobs" are looking at the past through rose-colored graphics, forgetting all of the stinkers of yesteryear. However, it's not just games where this applies. How many times have you heard people complain about how bad movies are now, or music, or books? It's exactly the same phenomenon. When your grandfather tells you how much better things were "back in the day", it's for exactly the same reason. He's looking back at all the good things, while ignoring all of the bad.
Face it, everything mostly sucks. It always has, and it always will. There will always be some gems that really stand out, and those will be what are remembered when people fondly look back on "the old days". Get over it.
XBox sales are up since the price drop. The same thing happened with the Gamecube when it dropped to $99. The surge may or may not be sustainable, but the XBox is quickly gaining momentum (new XBox Live features, a very strong spring line-up, and a promising Fall and Holiday line-up to come). Gamecube doesn't have much on the horizon, nor anything really strong this spring either (a port of WarioWare from the GBA to GC, without even updating the graphics? What else has Nintendo released lately for the GC? I can't think of anything major). Metroid Prime 2 and Paper Mario 2 may be interesting for the holiday season, but that's about it.
Bah. Nobody buys the normal GBA anymore. $30 isn't enough when you consider that you also have to buy a light for it (quality lights will run you upwards of $20). Since the SP's release, you can pretty much assume that anytime someone says "Game Boy Advance" they really mean "Game Boy Advance SP".