That was an interesting point about prediction but if we had two people on opposite sides of the universe predicting probabilities, results of a defined algorithm or any derived information then you wouldn't have to transfer information at all. The original topic was transmitting information faster than C. 1+1=2, you don't actually have to send the "2", the other person knows it's 2 before the "sent answer 2" arrives 300 million years later.
Yeah I agree. The PS3 has great backwards play. I was severely impressed with how the PS3 creates a virtual memory card on the hard drive from the XMB. It's a great feature.
At the same time, I wonder if they are digging a bigger hole. Have they identified cost as the major reason no one is buying the PS3? Should they not wait for MGS, GT5, FFXIII before jumping to that judgement? I think it's a lack of titles and a software cost-reduction like this is just going to force them to emulate. Now before I say that's a bad thing, they could enhance an emulator and make a superset of the PS2 with save states, scanlines, network play on non-network games and all kinds of features that emulators can offer but the original hardware can't. But the trade-off is making sure that the software implementation is absolutely perfect. Otherwise it's going to be another Sony database of backwards compatibility bugs (this bug database has been quite good with the real ps2 chip in the ps3).
This whole backwards vs forwards thing reminds me of Windows.
Water, electricity and people in a crowd (less so) take the shortest path. Hamsters would be funny but I doubt their message carrying ability could be exploited because they don't always take a predictable path (the shortest one). This water thing is really interesting I wonder if anything else takes a short path: photons, water (with gravity), electrons. Anything else?
I thought he brought up some good points comparing tetris and a typical rpg. I think it's a false comparison but still enjoyed the insanity-exposing step-back. This is good pre-reading for my IGDA meeting tonight.:)
Gran Turismo 3. My wall was the complex string test. You have to drive a 3minute lap with no driving aids on this ridiculous course in a Porsche. I was at 99% complete and that race is all I had to beat (gold). I put it down for 3 months after killing myself on it. The very day that I picked it back up again I beat it and got 100%. I haven't talked to anyone IRL that has gotten 100% although I know they are out there.
GT4, yeah, not going through that again. I'm just racing to have fun and getting bronze medals.
Ah, FF7. There's the game that I've beaten to the fullest and never anything beaten so much since. I was level 99, had my KotR materia split (yes) and when I fought Sephiroth, I won the battle in one round because I counter-attacked and killed him on his last attack. Really Sephiroth was nothing compared to the Ruby Weapon (which was omg wtf). The Emerald Weapon was hard but not too bad once I surfed for the materia strategy (auto-raise or something).
I think in about 10 years I'll start it again. *sigh* I want to forget more of it. Oh, also it helps to be in college not working over the summer. Maybe that won't happen again after all...:D
Creative is working on a solution called the ALchemy project. It's a simple app that scans your game directories and puts a new directsound3d.dll and.ini file in there that basically interrupts DirectSound calls and translates them to OpenAL, which bypasses the Vista audio stack and allows for full hardware 3D sound acceleration.
Which didn't pop up as "HAL surround sound in my book". Why the hate from the AC to the GP?
Anyway... this app that scans for dll's and replaces them? Is this good? Is this not a massive workaround? Ugh. I haven't made up my mind, I hope someone says to me something like "this is just temporary until Vista is out for a while". This just seems like a horrible solution.
As far as Creative in general, I took my X-Fi out after driver hell and have vowed to skip on the Creative hype machine forever. GPU is where it's at, sound is easy. My own fault for buying into the X-Fi. I saw no amazing audio clarity but instead EQ tricks and cheap "3d sound" changes that were changes to the audio for the sake of change. Sorry for the negativity.
My point was, if DVDs had taken off completely, there'd be no CDROMs distributed. But if you think about it, everyone packages a CD set and/or a DVD bonus. Heck, you have to order a DVD data disc as a 'special' item. Because DVDs didn't kill the CDROM, publishers have to publish to the lowest common denominator.
My point is, bluray will work the same way. We'll all burn to bluray, hd-dvd or both and we'll be inserting CD#238 in the year 2042.
Sorry to jump ahead and not explain myself, I was too busy getting back to my "doobie". Whatever.
It also means DVD install discs, ha, even bluray aren't data discs in practice. Of course there will be exceptions, but video didn't kill the radio star. Maybe maimed.
Here's my shot at it. 3d in a webpage probably isn't neccessary and to me, it represents tech for tech's sake. But if you insist (CAD, very specialized use, experiemental interfaces) then maybe flash and some XML model (X3D) VRML replacement would suit you. Of course, replacement standards don't really address your question.
What I think the GP is saying is exactly what I think of VRML as bad design. For example, let's say I was going to design Online Phonebook Town. Sigh with me, this should all look familiar to a lot of you, it's been tried so many times. Ok so I might have these key design elements:
- You can run through rivers and streams to interact with a huge phonebook in the middle of a town square. - When you are looking for a plumber, you go into the plumber building in the town square. - The plumber building has a huge wrench sign hanging out front (of course). - You can play MP3s from your computer in your "home" with a huge 3d control panel.
Sounds shiny and exciting, but the actual result is a 3d version of what is already usable in 2d. When people want to call a plumber they aren't really looking for a 3d experience, they want information transparently. When they need a phonebook, they don't want to run over a grassy hill with WASD and see a sky texture. When people want to play music, they probably already have a music player. Who in the world has a collection of MP3s and are just waiting for a VRML virtual town client to come along and play it for them? This feature bloat is an indication of poor direction.
Instead of navigating a horrible 3d metaphor, I'd rather just search in 2d with yahoo. Instead of having a 3d cd player in my "town", I'd rather have Windows integrate with Winamp/iTunes/Whatever. Instead of giving me a 3d desk with WASD controls, models of my "recycle bin", some rehashing of folders as drawers or files as pieces of paper in an 3d application; how about putting more work into the lower level components like the OS or display interfaces? The background music player might work better with a side display on the keyboard or a second monitor. Anyway, nevermind the audio player example... it's just something I've seen attempted in a 3d environment.
I hesitantly like mature and modern attempts at this 3d metaphor like Project Looking Glass and Compiz/Beryl but so far the best use I see is a flashy demo movie. I'd rather watch the demo movie rather than depend on it. The usability isn't there, VRML was just the start of this continuing effort to get something usable. Beryl is great for making a 2d desktop slightly 3d. And even then, sometimes goes overboard with window wobbling (wtf). The effect is neat but it's kind of like an ice sculpture (pretty and useless).
To sum up my opinions: 1. VRML has a history of creating bad interface metaphors. 2. The 3d metaphor for navigating large amounts of data has mostly been replaced by 2d visualization. 3. Online data interactivity has largely been replaced by AJAX and Flash. 4. Any attempt to organize interfaces together seamlessly should be done with a smart OS not with a bad 3d metaphor for how I work. 5. A full 3d metaphor is useless. 3d icing on a 2d cake is ok, just don't add too much.
I worked at a place that had a NAT'd IP range. The range at work was one octet off from my home range. So one day at home when I thought I was ssh'ing to my server, I mistyped one octet and ssh'd to an invalid IP address. Except, I saw a lab-router> prompt. My heart jumped a beat and I pondered what to do next. I hit ^-] and typed quit and called my cable company. I escalated to a tech and told them that they have some lab network exposed that shouldn't be. I specifically asked them to call me back, they didn't but then the next day it wasn't available anymore and wasn't again.
It was clearly a cisco 2600 (or similar), I recognized the banner. I found it incredibly funny that their lab wasn't VLAN'd away from the customer network.
Huh? I don't think anyone could snail-mail CDs fast enough without using very large bulk shipments. You figure: - 2 day air shipping by specialized carrier - an unlimited amount of CD drives all operating at the same time would still take some time to maintain, load, setup, etc even with unlimited staff
So let's call it three days. Using GP's 110 Md/s number, I'd have 259,200 Metallica albums transferred at this speed in a digital format, of course I suppose the filenames and album names would all be duplicates so without a storage system that is not filename based, it'd just write in place I suppose.
So, ship 259k CDs. A jewel case with 4 inserts weighs 11g and a CD disc itself weighs about 15g. All those CDs would weigh 6,739.2 kilograms = 7.42 tons in 3 days and every three days just to keep up with my 110 Md/s pipe.:D
Competitive, if you like a tanks weight of plastic every month at your doorstep. "Sign here please."
If it lacks beasty memory, I say start thinking about how to utilize the massive arrays of CPUs to compress and store information in the tiny buckets. The PS3 is a standard platform that you can rely on 7 SPEs existing, I'd say do what the game developers do with compressed textures. Linux has a compressed caching module but I can't tell if they are trying to just tackle disk paging (like swap) and not what I'm suggesting for all RAM pages. I'd hope that Terra Soft treats the PS3 as an embedded device and use CramFS or CRAMES in their YDL release for the PS3. But they probably already thought of this.
I hear you on $this way Perl does OO, I don't like the syntax, not that it matters.
I no doubt believe that slashdotters fall outside of my comments, I'm really talking about the daycoders who don't care about the tech. These people I know don't read/., they just pay the bills writing [technology name].
Says a Rails guy... I went to see Dave Thomas talk about Ruby on Rails (he has that pickax book out), this was exactly one of his points and it had little to do with pimping his book. He said something to the effect of: There are no plain programmers anymore. People are J2EE programmers with Hibernate, Spring, Framework N experience. Sure people can't know everything, it's good to specialize. But his point is still valid. I agree with him and I think people are in one camp and very rarely in two mismatching camps at the same time. You're either in Python and against Perl but rarely see a Java and Perl guy.
I think you may be the last of the wingnuts still pretending this ever had *anything* to do with oil. So where's all this cheap oil? I mean that was the point of this whole war, right? Surely they didn't forget about it.
That's fair. No one tells me what to think so I have to come to my own conclusions, maybe I'm wrong.
So far, what I've been told by my government is that Iraq is about "homeland security, a threat against America and 9-11 activities", that's the general statement that the White House is releasing. It's high level stuff, conceptual. The war on terror is a war on a concept, not even a person.
I'm in the camp that terrorism is going to happen regardless, it's the price of living with humans. People blow other people up. But the White House can't say this, they'd rather pander to our patriotism and stay all high level on us. I don't buy it, sorry. I think we're motivated by our energy needs. I don't think we have a choice. America is spread out and powered by oil burning vehicles and (some) power plants, I want my milk truck to work and stay cold as much as you do. We don't have the technology to do anything different, so sorry liberals (me) but we have to go invade a small country with a large supply of strawberries (scratch that, oil).
Now before you reply with some flame on my personally, please give me a reason why we are there outside of: - Spread democracy (not our job) - Remove Saddam (not 9-11 related) - Secure the indigenous people of a foreign country (not our job) - Weapons of mass destruction (oh so questionable)
He tortured his own people, yes. I'd agree with you on the net gain on lives saved. Hey... I'm not the only one that voted this year. Everyone wants the real answer and all the contractors I know there in Iraq would agree with me on the oil bit. But if you said, "Hippy liberal, the world is a place of pain and power, grow up and stop hugging the trees. We can invade whoever we want." I would agree and do just that (when I'm older).
I'm not talking about force feedback at all. Is this flamebait, wtf is going on here. The OP was talking about the disconnect between the Wiimote and the sword getting blocked. See my mouse+edge of the screen bits.
Great reference to the famous (to me) Future Crew but it's looking like it predated graphics. We'll likely never know, like who wrote "Apple Pie" in the cooking world.
Never mind this comment, this thread and TFA humbles me down to the carpet and I just want to listen.
I dunno, I saw a comedian do an impression of Madden (an amazing and 100% perfect impression) on 2006 Thankgiving football (primetime of sorts). It was brilliant, hilarious and jaw-droppingly good. He's replaced Madden on the radio and fooled me ala War of the Worlds (Why is Madden saying crazy things on the radio, has he gone mad?)
He said something to the effect of: [Madden Voice] "Heh, umhh I'm just amazed that people uh *heh* pay money year after year uh *heh* for the same video game from me *heh*!"
It was pretty subtle (maybe most people didn't get it) but "spin control" didn't apply to FOX primetime football on Thanksgiving. Hilariously on-topic.
That's a good point c6gunner. I assume you're using the Stanford source, which is fine. But if you use that then I can use the 600k deaths since the war study. It's a fine methodology if you ask me, they wander around and survey who's died recently. But you're point is still valid. Half less dying is better than no improvement at all.
So I guess the next questions is why is this our problem? Why our problem? If it was such a fucking tragedy then the rest of the world would be in there with us. But alas, it's not about life, it's about oil because we use the most of it.
I would buy two wii motes if I could dual wield in said "jp samurai game". Picture: Player1 = left hand, Player2 = right hand. The Wii should be able do this. Yes, I know the nunchuck can offer this kind of thing but I'm talking about dpads and buttons on both hands. Would offer something a bit more (complexity).
Play WiiSports, specifically the baseball game. Get up to bat, tell Player2 not to pitch. Wave the baseball bat around at the plate and observe the 1:1 motion. Imagine this is your sword/lightsaber/etc. It works pretty well.
I understand what you are saying about the "follow through" disconnect but I don't think it's as big of an issue as I thought before I saw WiiSports. In baseball, the bat hits the ball, slows a bit and the disconnect really isn't there because the time passed on impact is super short (by the time you've said "I hit it!" the ball is in the outfield). Granted, baseball is not the same as a sword block like you are saying, by that I mean blocks in a KOTOR type game would be often and rapid compared to the one-shot nature of a baseball hit.
I dunno... check the demo yourself. I was thinking (and lurking) in these types of conversations on/. pre-release but now I'm a believer after playing it for a couple hours.
Now my thoughts are on the latency with the bat I observed in WiiSports. Might be an issue if you're trying to do extremely precise movement. There is a bit of that going on when you are up to bat. But really, check the 1:1 motion in WiiSports baseball, it might answer this for you. I imagine if my arm was forward in real-life and the sword was blocked "mid-swing", I'd just return my arm all the way back.
You do this with your mouse and desktop screen all the time. No one is panicking "oh noes! my mouse cursor has stopped on the edge of the screen!" Although I guess it does create a strange disconnect: "I am using a computer" instead of "My hand is inside the computer". Meh.
Slashdot Mirror
That was an interesting point about prediction but if we had two people on opposite sides of the universe predicting probabilities, results of a defined algorithm or any derived information then you wouldn't have to transfer information at all. The original topic was transmitting information faster than C. 1+1=2, you don't actually have to send the "2", the other person knows it's 2 before the "sent answer 2" arrives 300 million years later.
Good point, I put (with gravity) next to the second water "word" but not the first water word in the GP.
Yeah I agree. The PS3 has great backwards play. I was severely impressed with how the PS3 creates a virtual memory card on the hard drive from the XMB. It's a great feature.
At the same time, I wonder if they are digging a bigger hole. Have they identified cost as the major reason no one is buying the PS3? Should they not wait for MGS, GT5, FFXIII before jumping to that judgement? I think it's a lack of titles and a software cost-reduction like this is just going to force them to emulate. Now before I say that's a bad thing, they could enhance an emulator and make a superset of the PS2 with save states, scanlines, network play on non-network games and all kinds of features that emulators can offer but the original hardware can't. But the trade-off is making sure that the software implementation is absolutely perfect. Otherwise it's going to be another Sony database of backwards compatibility bugs (this bug database has been quite good with the real ps2 chip in the ps3).
This whole backwards vs forwards thing reminds me of Windows.
Water, electricity and people in a crowd (less so) take the shortest path. Hamsters would be funny but I doubt their message carrying ability could be exploited because they don't always take a predictable path (the shortest one). This water thing is really interesting I wonder if anything else takes a short path: photons, water (with gravity), electrons. Anything else?
We have the Quicksilver launcher that we have.
I thought he brought up some good points comparing tetris and a typical rpg. I think it's a false comparison but still enjoyed the insanity-exposing step-back. This is good pre-reading for my IGDA meeting tonight. :)
Gran Turismo 3. My wall was the complex string test. You have to drive a 3minute lap with no driving aids on this ridiculous course in a Porsche. I was at 99% complete and that race is all I had to beat (gold). I put it down for 3 months after killing myself on it. The very day that I picked it back up again I beat it and got 100%. I haven't talked to anyone IRL that has gotten 100% although I know they are out there.
GT4, yeah, not going through that again. I'm just racing to have fun and getting bronze medals.
Ah, FF7. There's the game that I've beaten to the fullest and never anything beaten so much since. I was level 99, had my KotR materia split (yes) and when I fought Sephiroth, I won the battle in one round because I counter-attacked and killed him on his last attack. Really Sephiroth was nothing compared to the Ruby Weapon (which was omg wtf). The Emerald Weapon was hard but not too bad once I surfed for the materia strategy (auto-raise or something).
... :D
I think in about 10 years I'll start it again. *sigh* I want to forget more of it. Oh, also it helps to be in college not working over the summer. Maybe that won't happen again after all
Anyway
As far as Creative in general, I took my X-Fi out after driver hell and have vowed to skip on the Creative hype machine forever. GPU is where it's at, sound is easy. My own fault for buying into the X-Fi. I saw no amazing audio clarity but instead EQ tricks and cheap "3d sound" changes that were changes to the audio for the sake of change. Sorry for the negativity.
What's a towlie?
My point was, if DVDs had taken off completely, there'd be no CDROMs distributed. But if you think about it, everyone packages a CD set and/or a DVD bonus. Heck, you have to order a DVD data disc as a 'special' item. Because DVDs didn't kill the CDROM, publishers have to publish to the lowest common denominator.
My point is, bluray will work the same way. We'll all burn to bluray, hd-dvd or both and we'll be inserting CD#238 in the year 2042.
Sorry to jump ahead and not explain myself, I was too busy getting back to my "doobie". Whatever.
CD4 = The 4th compact disc.
It also means DVD install discs, ha, even bluray aren't data discs in practice. Of course there will be exceptions, but video didn't kill the radio star. Maybe maimed.
Here's my shot at it. 3d in a webpage probably isn't neccessary and to me, it represents tech for tech's sake. But if you insist (CAD, very specialized use, experiemental interfaces) then maybe flash and some XML model (X3D) VRML replacement would suit you. Of course, replacement standards don't really address your question.
... it's just something I've seen attempted in a 3d environment.
What I think the GP is saying is exactly what I think of VRML as bad design. For example, let's say I was going to design Online Phonebook Town. Sigh with me, this should all look familiar to a lot of you, it's been tried so many times. Ok so I might have these key design elements:
- You can run through rivers and streams to interact with a huge phonebook in the middle of a town square.
- When you are looking for a plumber, you go into the plumber building in the town square.
- The plumber building has a huge wrench sign hanging out front (of course).
- You can play MP3s from your computer in your "home" with a huge 3d control panel.
Sounds shiny and exciting, but the actual result is a 3d version of what is already usable in 2d. When people want to call a plumber they aren't really looking for a 3d experience, they want information transparently. When they need a phonebook, they don't want to run over a grassy hill with WASD and see a sky texture. When people want to play music, they probably already have a music player. Who in the world has a collection of MP3s and are just waiting for a VRML virtual town client to come along and play it for them? This feature bloat is an indication of poor direction.
Instead of navigating a horrible 3d metaphor, I'd rather just search in 2d with yahoo. Instead of having a 3d cd player in my "town", I'd rather have Windows integrate with Winamp/iTunes/Whatever. Instead of giving me a 3d desk with WASD controls, models of my "recycle bin", some rehashing of folders as drawers or files as pieces of paper in an 3d application; how about putting more work into the lower level components like the OS or display interfaces? The background music player might work better with a side display on the keyboard or a second monitor. Anyway, nevermind the audio player example
I hesitantly like mature and modern attempts at this 3d metaphor like Project Looking Glass and Compiz/Beryl but so far the best use I see is a flashy demo movie. I'd rather watch the demo movie rather than depend on it. The usability isn't there, VRML was just the start of this continuing effort to get something usable. Beryl is great for making a 2d desktop slightly 3d. And even then, sometimes goes overboard with window wobbling (wtf). The effect is neat but it's kind of like an ice sculpture (pretty and useless).
To sum up my opinions:
1. VRML has a history of creating bad interface metaphors.
2. The 3d metaphor for navigating large amounts of data has mostly been replaced by 2d visualization.
3. Online data interactivity has largely been replaced by AJAX and Flash.
4. Any attempt to organize interfaces together seamlessly should be done with a smart OS not with a bad 3d metaphor for how I work.
5. A full 3d metaphor is useless. 3d icing on a 2d cake is ok, just don't add too much.
I worked at a place that had a NAT'd IP range. The range at work was one octet off from my home range. So one day at home when I thought I was ssh'ing to my server, I mistyped one octet and ssh'd to an invalid IP address. Except, I saw a lab-router> prompt. My heart jumped a beat and I pondered what to do next. I hit ^-] and typed quit and called my cable company. I escalated to a tech and told them that they have some lab network exposed that shouldn't be. I specifically asked them to call me back, they didn't but then the next day it wasn't available anymore and wasn't again.
It was clearly a cisco 2600 (or similar), I recognized the banner. I found it incredibly funny that their lab wasn't VLAN'd away from the customer network.
Huh? I don't think anyone could snail-mail CDs fast enough without using very large bulk shipments. You figure:
:D
- 2 day air shipping by specialized carrier
- an unlimited amount of CD drives all operating at the same time would still take some time to maintain, load, setup, etc even with unlimited staff
So let's call it three days. Using GP's 110 Md/s number, I'd have 259,200 Metallica albums transferred at this speed in a digital format, of course I suppose the filenames and album names would all be duplicates so without a storage system that is not filename based, it'd just write in place I suppose.
So, ship 259k CDs. A jewel case with 4 inserts weighs 11g and a CD disc itself weighs about 15g. All those CDs would weigh 6,739.2 kilograms = 7.42 tons in 3 days and every three days just to keep up with my 110 Md/s pipe.
Competitive, if you like a tanks weight of plastic every month at your doorstep. "Sign here please."
Humor my speculation...
If it lacks beasty memory, I say start thinking about how to utilize the massive arrays of CPUs to compress and store information in the tiny buckets. The PS3 is a standard platform that you can rely on 7 SPEs existing, I'd say do what the game developers do with compressed textures. Linux has a compressed caching module but I can't tell if they are trying to just tackle disk paging (like swap) and not what I'm suggesting for all RAM pages. I'd hope that Terra Soft treats the PS3 as an embedded device and use CramFS or CRAMES in their YDL release for the PS3. But they probably already thought of this.
I hear you on $this way Perl does OO, I don't like the syntax, not that it matters.
/., they just pay the bills writing [technology name].
I no doubt believe that slashdotters fall outside of my comments, I'm really talking about the daycoders who don't care about the tech. These people I know don't read
So far, what I've been told by my government is that Iraq is about "homeland security, a threat against America and 9-11 activities", that's the general statement that the White House is releasing. It's high level stuff, conceptual. The war on terror is a war on a concept, not even a person.
I'm in the camp that terrorism is going to happen regardless, it's the price of living with humans. People blow other people up. But the White House can't say this, they'd rather pander to our patriotism and stay all high level on us. I don't buy it, sorry. I think we're motivated by our energy needs. I don't think we have a choice. America is spread out and powered by oil burning vehicles and (some) power plants, I want my milk truck to work and stay cold as much as you do. We don't have the technology to do anything different, so sorry liberals (me) but we have to go invade a small country with a large supply of strawberries (scratch that, oil).
Now before you reply with some flame on my personally, please give me a reason why we are there outside of:
- Spread democracy (not our job)
- Remove Saddam (not 9-11 related)
- Secure the indigenous people of a foreign country (not our job)
- Weapons of mass destruction (oh so questionable)
He tortured his own people, yes. I'd agree with you on the net gain on lives saved. Hey
I'm not talking about force feedback at all. Is this flamebait, wtf is going on here. The OP was talking about the disconnect between the Wiimote and the sword getting blocked. See my mouse+edge of the screen bits.
Great reference to the famous (to me) Future Crew but it's looking like it predated graphics. We'll likely never know, like who wrote "Apple Pie" in the cooking world.
Never mind this comment, this thread and TFA humbles me down to the carpet and I just want to listen.
I dunno, I saw a comedian do an impression of Madden (an amazing and 100% perfect impression) on 2006 Thankgiving football (primetime of sorts). It was brilliant, hilarious and jaw-droppingly good. He's replaced Madden on the radio and fooled me ala War of the Worlds (Why is Madden saying crazy things on the radio, has he gone mad?)
He said something to the effect of:
[Madden Voice]
"Heh, umhh I'm just amazed that people uh *heh* pay money year after year uh *heh* for the same video game from me *heh*!"
It was pretty subtle (maybe most people didn't get it) but "spin control" didn't apply to FOX primetime football on Thanksgiving. Hilariously on-topic.
That's a good point c6gunner. I assume you're using the Stanford source, which is fine. But if you use that then I can use the 600k deaths since the war study. It's a fine methodology if you ask me, they wander around and survey who's died recently. But you're point is still valid. Half less dying is better than no improvement at all.
So I guess the next questions is why is this our problem? Why our problem? If it was such a fucking tragedy then the rest of the world would be in there with us. But alas, it's not about life, it's about oil because we use the most of it.
I would buy two wii motes if I could dual wield in said "jp samurai game". Picture: Player1 = left hand, Player2 = right hand. The Wii should be able do this. Yes, I know the nunchuck can offer this kind of thing but I'm talking about dpads and buttons on both hands. Would offer something a bit more (complexity).
Tag > bad idea?
Play WiiSports, specifically the baseball game. Get up to bat, tell Player2 not to pitch. Wave the baseball bat around at the plate and observe the 1:1 motion. Imagine this is your sword/lightsaber/etc. It works pretty well.
... check the demo yourself. I was thinking (and lurking) in these types of conversations on /. pre-release but now I'm a believer after playing it for a couple hours.
I understand what you are saying about the "follow through" disconnect but I don't think it's as big of an issue as I thought before I saw WiiSports. In baseball, the bat hits the ball, slows a bit and the disconnect really isn't there because the time passed on impact is super short (by the time you've said "I hit it!" the ball is in the outfield). Granted, baseball is not the same as a sword block like you are saying, by that I mean blocks in a KOTOR type game would be often and rapid compared to the one-shot nature of a baseball hit.
I dunno
Now my thoughts are on the latency with the bat I observed in WiiSports. Might be an issue if you're trying to do extremely precise movement. There is a bit of that going on when you are up to bat. But really, check the 1:1 motion in WiiSports baseball, it might answer this for you. I imagine if my arm was forward in real-life and the sword was blocked "mid-swing", I'd just return my arm all the way back.
You do this with your mouse and desktop screen all the time. No one is panicking "oh noes! my mouse cursor has stopped on the edge of the screen!" Although I guess it does create a strange disconnect: "I am using a computer" instead of "My hand is inside the computer". Meh.
Yeah that picture made me laugh too. Remember how the really small two peg pieces would embed into your foot? Ow, pointy.