I think the topic you're really getting at here makes actually perfect sense. As we hear so often, Story is always the number one emphasis of Pixar - and they have developed an amazing sense for pushing the tech behind their movies selectively, in a way that technological shortcomings never distract or detract in any way from the story.
Note how Toy Story timed in nicely with the arrival of solid Phong shading techniques in the CG world - plastic toys. This is a trend in Pixar movies, straight through Sulley's fur in Monsters Inc, hair and fur having become a significant area of advancement in the industry over the past few years.
In an obvious contrast, Square's Final Fantasy, pushed photorealism on every front at once, and the result was characters that were technologially impressive but awkward to watch as actors - distracting to what little story laid underneath as there was obviously something wrong, constantly stealing the viewer's attention... You don't see Pixar making realistic humans, because they understand that sense of interference.
As much as shaders and other CG fronts have advanced in recent years, all we have now is a steadily growing library of realistic effects, which, when used selectively, can greatly assist in conveying emotion, story and character. Pixar has made very good stylistic decisions on pushing visuals in the right places at the right times.
Would realistic fish be fun to watch anyway? Actually, will fish be fun to watch for an hour and a half? A sense of weight is usually key to sucessful acting, so this is in fact a very ambitious movie in terms of animation, to compliment the rendering advancements...
I'm not a big gamer (~2hrs/week) outside of keeping up with breakthroughs, but as an animation student and big Maya user, the opportunity to run Linux on a console offers me a great added utility - a render box.
Only problem is, it's a bit on the expensive side... and I don't think an Xbox Linux kit will be seen anytime soon, though that would certainly be preferable (aside from the hardware advantage, it would be much cheaper - already has HD and network card).
On the Topic of Employee Indifference to Theft...
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 1
Over winter break from school I tried to apply for a temporary job at a nearby Best Buy. Anyone wanting to apply is required to register with an automated phone interview (recorded question, answer 0 or 1, and response time is monitored).
Now Best Buy salespeople are usually decidedly more knowledgeable than their Compusa rivals, but nonetheless the phone questionaire is probably relevant to such stores in general. The interview went something like this (seriously):
1) If you saw another employee steal somehthing from the store, would you tell the manager? 2) Is stealing something worth just $5 still wrong? 3) Would you ever come to work drunk or high? 4) Is stealing something worth just $5 still wrong? 5) Would you steal something from us while on the job? 6) Would you ever arrive drunk or high and steal something from us while on the job? ...
Get the idea? So two things could have happened: 1) Compusa management sighs; thankfully the employee did not understand the opportunity to steal when it presented itself. 2) At closing, the "clueless" employee repeats the action of downloading Office onto an iPod, and walks away happily... and possibly drunk or high as well.
... Should consumers fail to sign up for AOL during that initial period, AOL said in the memo that it would "remind the customer of the AOL offer through the use of on-screen 'Pop-ups' that will appear five times within the first month of activity (or until the user signs up for AOL, whichever comes first)."...
Don't they annoy the OOBE'r enough already? Chrike, if AOL actually pulls half of this off, what a lousy precedent it will set for other advertising execs to follow... buying pop-up ads for extended periods of time on new PCs... this one has to be too farfetched for most cases.
And hey, I don't want my grandma to be subjected to this kind of hooliganism!
Interesting that Microsoft has specifically stated that it is avoiding this kind of functionality in the XBox, but I'll bet what's described here isn't too far off the mark from their ultimate strategy.
Microsoft wants out of the dark corner of your apartment and into the living room. It will spend uberbucks to prevent Sony from taking the home integration spotlight.
Look at what Microsoft's investing in... You've obviously got Xbox and UltimateTV now, each of which are being marketed to very specific audiences. But then you've got this talk about MS negotiating with movie studios to create on-demand, Internet-based music services... MS has big plans in the entertainment industry, and an intergrated do-it-all entertainment box would be a spiffy way to break in. Right now, they're targeting specific crowds to build up their name in home entertainment, but maybe when broadband connectivity improves in years ahead, they'll move to lump it all together and set up us the bomb.
Wonder if the XBox will offer a hardware expansion to incorporate UltimateTV...
This Game has Been Censored for Adult Content
on
Gamecube In Danger?
·
· Score: 1
Regardless of whether or not Nintendo decides to completely pull the Gamecube, it is obvious that the company is aiming to avoid direct competition with Sony and Microsoft. If the Gamecube is released, it won't dare push very hard at the 15-24-year-old demographic that Sony and Microsoft are after; Nintendo has neither the funds or the third party relationships to mess with the giants. Kiddie system. Deal with it.
You do have to realize that the Game Boy line of products has been Nintendo's cash cow for well over 10 years - not SNES, not N64. When giant corporations move in, smaller businesses usually specialize by necessity. So it's possible that the Handheld line will become Nintendo's focus, with the Gamecube ultimately playing a more significant role in boosting Game Boy Advance than breaking new ground on its own.
My money's on Microsoft. Face it, they're just playing the industry better than anyone else... and - *take a deep breath* - they are the innovative force right now in gaming.
Here's something interesting: The rumored name of Nintendo's next gaming console is "Star Cube", which uses a PowerPC-based architecture, a GPU from ArtX (which is now owned by ATI), and allegedly has MacOS-based development kits. Wonder how far this little relationship will go? Apple Cube's "fun" little sibling?
Slashdot Mirror
I think the topic you're really getting at here makes actually perfect sense. As we hear so often, Story is always the number one emphasis of Pixar - and they have developed an amazing sense for pushing the tech behind their movies selectively, in a way that technological shortcomings never distract or detract in any way from the story.
Note how Toy Story timed in nicely with the arrival of solid Phong shading techniques in the CG world - plastic toys. This is a trend in Pixar movies, straight through Sulley's fur in Monsters Inc, hair and fur having become a significant area of advancement in the industry over the past few years.
In an obvious contrast, Square's Final Fantasy, pushed photorealism on every front at once, and the result was characters that were technologially impressive but awkward to watch as actors - distracting to what little story laid underneath as there was obviously something wrong, constantly stealing the viewer's attention... You don't see Pixar making realistic humans, because they understand that sense of interference.
As much as shaders and other CG fronts have advanced in recent years, all we have now is a steadily growing library of realistic effects, which, when used selectively, can greatly assist in conveying emotion, story and character. Pixar has made very good stylistic decisions on pushing visuals in the right places at the right times.
Would realistic fish be fun to watch anyway? Actually, will fish be fun to watch for an hour and a half? A sense of weight is usually key to sucessful acting, so this is in fact a very ambitious movie in terms of animation, to compliment the rendering advancements...
I'm not a big gamer (~2hrs/week) outside of keeping up with breakthroughs, but as an animation student and big Maya user, the opportunity to run Linux on a console offers me a great added utility - a render box.
Only problem is, it's a bit on the expensive side... and I don't think an Xbox Linux kit will be seen anytime soon, though that would certainly be preferable (aside from the hardware advantage, it would be much cheaper - already has HD and network card).
Over winter break from school I tried to apply for a temporary job at a nearby Best Buy. Anyone wanting to apply is required to register with an automated phone interview (recorded question, answer 0 or 1, and response time is monitored).
Now Best Buy salespeople are usually decidedly more knowledgeable than their Compusa rivals, but nonetheless the phone questionaire is probably relevant to such stores in general. The interview went something like this (seriously):
1) If you saw another employee steal somehthing from the store, would you tell the manager?
2) Is stealing something worth just $5 still wrong?
3) Would you ever come to work drunk or high?
4) Is stealing something worth just $5 still wrong?
5) Would you steal something from us while on the job?
6) Would you ever arrive drunk or high and steal something from us while on the job?
...
Get the idea? So two things could have happened:
1) Compusa management sighs; thankfully the employee did not understand the opportunity to steal when it presented itself.
2) At closing, the "clueless" employee repeats the action of downloading Office onto an iPod, and walks away happily... and possibly drunk or high as well.
Don't they annoy the OOBE'r enough already? Chrike, if AOL actually pulls half of this off, what a lousy precedent it will set for other advertising execs to follow... buying pop-up ads for extended periods of time on new PCs... this one has to be too farfetched for most cases.
And hey, I don't want my grandma to be subjected to this kind of hooliganism!
Interesting that Microsoft has specifically stated that it is avoiding this kind of functionality in the XBox, but I'll bet what's described here isn't too far off the mark from their ultimate strategy.
Microsoft wants out of the dark corner of your apartment and into the living room. It will spend uberbucks to prevent Sony from taking the home integration spotlight.
Look at what Microsoft's investing in... You've obviously got Xbox and UltimateTV now, each of which are being marketed to very specific audiences. But then you've got this talk about MS negotiating with movie studios to create on-demand, Internet-based music services... MS has big plans in the entertainment industry, and an intergrated do-it-all entertainment box would be a spiffy way to break in. Right now, they're targeting specific crowds to build up their name in home entertainment, but maybe when broadband connectivity improves in years ahead, they'll move to lump it all together and set up us the bomb.
Wonder if the XBox will offer a hardware expansion to incorporate UltimateTV...
Regardless of whether or not Nintendo decides to completely pull the Gamecube, it is obvious that the company is aiming to avoid direct competition with Sony and Microsoft. If the Gamecube is released, it won't dare push very hard at the 15-24-year-old demographic that Sony and Microsoft are after; Nintendo has neither the funds or the third party relationships to mess with the giants. Kiddie system. Deal with it.
You do have to realize that the Game Boy line of products has been Nintendo's cash cow for well over 10 years - not SNES, not N64. When giant corporations move in, smaller businesses usually specialize by necessity. So it's possible that the Handheld line will become Nintendo's focus, with the Gamecube ultimately playing a more significant role in boosting Game Boy Advance than breaking new ground on its own.
My money's on Microsoft. Face it, they're just playing the industry better than anyone else... and - *take a deep breath* - they are the innovative force right now in gaming.
Here's something interesting: The rumored name of Nintendo's next gaming console is "Star Cube", which uses a PowerPC-based architecture, a GPU from ArtX (which is now owned by ATI), and allegedly has MacOS-based development kits. Wonder how far this little relationship will go? Apple Cube's "fun" little sibling?
Say Hello to Mario.