I ran some raytracers and man, just getting a scene to render was a pixel by pixel affair, watching the image slowly update on the screen. It blows me away how yesterday's "holy shit this is awesome!" prerendered animation becomes today's game engine and tomorrow's "meh, what else have ya got?"
Heh. I remember the first raytracer I ran was in black and white, not even colour! Kids today with their colour raytracing.
and in my day we only had 2 dimensions, not 3, but we liked it!
I grew up with video games where the blob of pixels barely resembles anything. The power of gameplay, lasting gameplay far outstrips graphics. Not that a little eye candy doesn't hurt. I guess the core problem is that nothing Intel produces can run time optimize "Lair" into "Tetris" or otherwise correct for this.
It's ironic how often I find myself suckered into playing games, for hours at a time, which are very basic (crude even) in terms of graphics, but you can't beat their gameplay. Some of this stuff, with pixelised graphics in low-res could really get the heart rate up, and that's what it's all about, excitement, not screaming that the screen, "That did NOT touch me! I should NOT be dead, you %*&(*@!!!"
I'm sure Pixar and other rendering houses will leverage this to keep production costs down and get videos out to market quicker. Then you have side-projects like the GPGPU, if this raw power can be harnessed for other applications it could be a boast for researchers.
The number of objects in each frame for Cars (a breathtaking film on the big screen) still harnessed a lot of servers, with individual frames rendered in parts spread over servers, and took a considerable amount of time to render. Don't expect to play a RT Cars type game anytime soon. Further, their serves will still out-do anything the most 1337 gamer will have on a desktop for years.
Still, I do look forward to the prospect of a game where, f'rinstance you're looking through a sheet of ice at something on the other side -- a bit distorted as the ice lenses the object, but that would be pretty cool to see.
Or is it? Simply means games will appear more eye-candy than they currently are. Gameplay will not
change. EA will continue to use take last years sport game, through some new people into it, perhaps introduce
some bug which makes it unusable and peddle it as The New Deluxe Edition. I wonder how many geometric objects it will be
able to handle (and whether it handles transparancy with textures and patterns well) Having done a bit of
raytracing I'm familiar with how quick things can bog down. It'll probably be a bit clunky at first, but get much
better as horsepower and horsepower/dollar ratio improve.
There was some game I played on an Amiga (got that? A really old computer) where I raced around in
an aircar zapping stuff (some bastard borrowed the game and I've never seen it since!) Very nicely rendered graphics, beautiful even, nearly
looked ray-traced. Must have been about 15 years ago.
While I look forward to more realistic, or creative and beautiful gamescapes, do keep in mind -- we were all blown away
by the first high quality animated films, now almost everything animated is rendered, raytraced, etc. and there's a lot of
junk out there now. So this will be exciting for about 2 years then become "meh".
Lastly, they've got to get the motion down. Characters in games, including sports, look so damn wooden in their movement! That's
where real improvement needs doing.
but i'm glad i wasn't aware it started. seriously, unless u had already known about this article is 0% interesting. "the nerds were right"? of-fucking-course they were, didn't he goto highschool?
Some writers dwell on words they've written. Some don't care and are already on to something else.
Where I went to college was a small college paper. Someone I knew wrote for it and as there's a thing as "lead time" -- that amount of time between when a writer turns something in and it is published, during which anything can (and often does) happen. She wrote something scathing, including mispelling the college president's name. Before the issue came out it was revealed the president had nothing to do with it and for the most part there really was no scandal. When the paper came out and I asked her how she felt about it she was "meh, whatever." Maybe it did bug her she listened to the wrong source or didn't bother to quiz the president directly, but she didn't appear to lament it one bit.
This bloke is doing his mea culpa, so he's of a different cut of cloth. There's all kinds, just like there's all kinds of people who run a business, from Warren Buffet to Darl McBride.
I wonder about the investors who will now lose pretty well everything they banked on the crapshoot.
Then there's also the poor employees who will undoubtably suffer as they seek employment elsewhere. I'm quite certain most of them don't say a lot of bad things about Darl publicly with their names attached, but they have some real feeling of betrayal all the same.
So a journo got it wrong, not like he's Dan Rather being lead down the garden path and left there by CBS researchers and management.
of course he doesn't have a crapshoot for $70 million either...
"Chuck, have a look at this one." "So he's reading something on a laptop, is it a document or the internet?" "Use the higher magnification, it's a website." "Ok, I see it now. Something about Patenting a knife and fork... he's typing something." "Looks harmless enough." "Oh, my god, he's making some reference to life in Soviet Russia! Security security move on I-424, Victor section!" "Code yellow! He's obviously some kind of subversive." "Wait! There's something about a Beowulf Cluster, sounds like a cell!!!" "Code Orange, Code Orange!" "Holy sweet mother of Jesus! He's welcoming his new overlords!" "CODE RED!! CODE RED!! Take that m**********r down!"
I only aim to eliminate the minimum of content. When it becomes more annoying I may opt for more of a blanket attack on scripts. If there's simply a one-click and flash doesn't appear, without affecting other scripts/plugins that would be very welcome.
Does this mean I get to keep "Punching the Monkey?" I just can't find enough ways to win free ringtones.
The news made a fuss over an anniversary of facial pattern recognition in characters (:-) ) I don't see why they haven't recognised the 10th anniversary of Punching the Monkey. I've seen these ads, initially in java or javascript plus a gif, for at least 10 years.
a variety of contextual, site, geographic and demographic targeting options to ensure the ads reach relevant users with precision and scale.
And all that's apparently missing is ensuring the surfer has Flash installed.
Personally I detest Flash ads and for this reason keep renaming the NPSWF32.dll file as NPSWF32.dllfsdfsd (while I don't have an instance
of Firefox open, lest it track the bastid) when I have no intention of viewing Flash content. Too many pages are so whizzy with
Flash I position the browser so the Flash bit is offscreen or simply don't visit the sites at all. I don't see many company/commercial sites
since they apparently all now believe their best way to reach the customer is with some bloated object 500K or bigger (i'm still on dial-up)
and all whizzy. So all this means is I'll see some more puzzle pieces, unless they detect no-flash and throw animated (ugh) gifs at me.
frist ps0t?? natalie pr0tman with hot gnomes etc etc etc? No really, I love GNOME, and Ubuntu, and I'm really going to love GNOME 2.20 in next month's Ubuntu!
It be an enhanced GNOME. Didn't ye get the email?
Enahnce your GNOME, stay up longer, get better performance from your GNOME, have great timing and more control over your power! contact XXXXX@yahoo.co.uk.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear's path, and only I will *fnzownt*
AT&T is the company that used to own people's phones, so one would expect them to do something like this. Fairly easy and profitable for them, even if it is morally suspect.
Aye, the more ye be tightenin' yer grip, MPAA and AT&T, the more p2p content and customers will slip through yer fingars!
Arr, where isOliver Wendell Jones and his swashbuckling Banana PC when ye need them!
Now, merely wanting it is one thing, but the more important point is that 'AT&T has agreed to start filtering content at some mysterious point in the future.' We're left to wonder about the legal implications of that, but given that AT&T already has the ability to wiretap everything for the NSA
Avast, all the p2p sites need to do is mask the activity by sendin' and receivin' "noise" (content of random or random packets of encoded content with pre-arranged means of embedding send
and receive commands, encoded by phrases passed by other means.) Arr, I be reading too many cryptographer tales.
Didn't Frank Herbert describe something just like this in Dune? Pain through nerve induction?
Aye'm quite of a mind it was Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson following up his works that would be the causin' of such pain as a cat o' nine tails all the afternoon!
The ones that already use Kalashnikovs for crowd control? I'll take the ray over stopping a round, thx.
Aye, but do ye think they'd have less reservations usin' one o' these devices knowin' they would leave no visible wounds? Aye see these bein' used often and with far more room for abuse.
Ye, stepped out of line! *fnzownt*
Ye don't have correct change! *fnzownt*
Avast, I don't be likin' the look of ye! *fnzownt*
Detailed specs from Raytheon's patent filing show that the gun essentially plays Britney Spears' new single at an extremely high volume in a concentrated "cone of pain."...oh the pain.
Blow me down, that's inhumane! Better they should walk the plank
"It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile. Because the beam penetrates skin only
to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury.
But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonizing sensation I've just
felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about. "
Arr! This be a popular thing to consider against terrorists, insurgents and other bilge, but what of when a
swab asks Sen. Kerry one too many questions?
In fact, it is easy to see the raygun being used not as an alternative to lethal force (when I can see that it is quite justified), but as an extra weapon in the battle against dissent.
Because it is, in essence, a simple machine, it is easy to see similar devices being pressed into service in places with extremely dubious reputations.
"Blow me down, Senator, but why did ye let the scallywag take Ohio uncontested?"
"Belay the questioning, ye poxy bilge-bellied picaroon!" *FFFNNZZZZZOOWWNT* "Yaaaarrr!"
Sounds funny, do ye think? But by Davy Jone's locker, it doesn't bode us at all well when bloomin' cops
be using it on the populace for crowd control or to force lubbers to obey their commands.
"Arr, get out of the vehicle and make way for boardin', swabbie!"
"Aye, but what of me constitutional rights against unreasonable looting and pillaging?" *FFFNNZZZZZOOWWNT* "Yaaaarrr!"
Aye a sobering thought. And will yer video camera help ye then? And what of the other wrong people layin' their mitts on this
terrible new technology by way of the interweb -- ye don't like how a match is going? Give the swab in goal an itch he'd claw
out with his own hook for just a second for the ball to pass into the net. Aye. People already are
misusing lasers, what of these? No visible injury, sounds perfect for torture.
What next, use this on pirates? Well I'll be scuppered!
Avast ye swab! I could indeed, build up some servers and ye could. I be thinking the old gag just not worth bothering with when CPUs be the topic. Perhaps when they be getting around to the Commodore 64 again...
twelve and a half percent! twelve and a half percent! awk!
Throw more core and L2 cache at it. It be having a familiar ring, like when it was all about CPU speed.
I typed Harpertown into Google and I be finding a lot about Intel's processor. I wonder what the folk of Harpertowns (whar ever they be) and other towns feel about their town names be crowded out on Google searches by a bit of silicon. Yarr.
Slashdot Mirror
I ran some raytracers and man, just getting a scene to render was a pixel by pixel affair, watching the image slowly update on the screen. It blows me away how yesterday's "holy shit this is awesome!" prerendered animation becomes today's game engine and tomorrow's "meh, what else have ya got?"
Heh. I remember the first raytracer I ran was in black and white, not even colour! Kids today with their colour raytracing.
and in my day we only had 2 dimensions, not 3, but we liked it!
I grew up with video games where the blob of pixels barely resembles anything. The power of gameplay, lasting gameplay far outstrips graphics. Not that a little eye candy doesn't hurt. I guess the core problem is that nothing Intel produces can run time optimize "Lair" into "Tetris" or otherwise correct for this.
It's ironic how often I find myself suckered into playing games, for hours at a time, which are very basic (crude even) in terms of graphics, but you can't beat their gameplay. Some of this stuff, with pixelised graphics in low-res could really get the heart rate up, and that's what it's all about, excitement, not screaming that the screen, "That did NOT touch me! I should NOT be dead, you %*&(*@!!!"
I'm sure Pixar and other rendering houses will leverage this to keep production costs down and get videos out to market quicker. Then you have side-projects like the GPGPU, if this raw power can be harnessed for other applications it could be a boast for researchers.
The number of objects in each frame for Cars (a breathtaking film on the big screen) still harnessed a lot of servers, with individual frames rendered in parts spread over servers, and took a considerable amount of time to render. Don't expect to play a RT Cars type game anytime soon. Further, their serves will still out-do anything the most 1337 gamer will have on a desktop for years.
Still, I do look forward to the prospect of a game where, f'rinstance you're looking through a sheet of ice at something on the other side -- a bit distorted as the ice lenses the object, but that would be pretty cool to see.
Or is it? Simply means games will appear more eye-candy than they currently are. Gameplay will not change. EA will continue to use take last years sport game, through some new people into it, perhaps introduce some bug which makes it unusable and peddle it as The New Deluxe Edition. I wonder how many geometric objects it will be able to handle (and whether it handles transparancy with textures and patterns well) Having done a bit of raytracing I'm familiar with how quick things can bog down. It'll probably be a bit clunky at first, but get much better as horsepower and horsepower/dollar ratio improve.
There was some game I played on an Amiga (got that? A really old computer) where I raced around in an aircar zapping stuff (some bastard borrowed the game and I've never seen it since!) Very nicely rendered graphics, beautiful even, nearly looked ray-traced. Must have been about 15 years ago.
While I look forward to more realistic, or creative and beautiful gamescapes, do keep in mind -- we were all blown away by the first high quality animated films, now almost everything animated is rendered, raytraced, etc. and there's a lot of junk out there now. So this will be exciting for about 2 years then become "meh".
Lastly, they've got to get the motion down. Characters in games, including sports, look so damn wooden in their movement! That's where real improvement needs doing.
Nope, nothin concrete, BUT(!) there's ultra sekrit spy photos of Microsoft's zuPhones!!!
I wonder if it will pop-up Flash ads during phone calls.
nah, they'd never do that .. would they?
but i'm glad i wasn't aware it started. seriously, unless u had already known about this article is 0% interesting. "the nerds were right"? of-fucking-course they were, didn't he goto highschool?
Some writers dwell on words they've written. Some don't care and are already on to something else.
Where I went to college was a small college paper. Someone I knew wrote for it and as there's a thing as "lead time" -- that amount of time between when a writer turns something in and it is published, during which anything can (and often does) happen. She wrote something scathing, including mispelling the college president's name. Before the issue came out it was revealed the president had nothing to do with it and for the most part there really was no scandal. When the paper came out and I asked her how she felt about it she was "meh, whatever." Maybe it did bug her she listened to the wrong source or didn't bother to quiz the president directly, but she didn't appear to lament it one bit.
This bloke is doing his mea culpa, so he's of a different cut of cloth. There's all kinds, just like there's all kinds of people who run a business, from Warren Buffet to Darl McBride.
He's only a journo who got it wrong.
I wonder about the investors who will now lose pretty well everything they banked on the crapshoot.
Then there's also the poor employees who will undoubtably suffer as they seek employment elsewhere. I'm quite certain most of them don't say a lot of bad things about Darl publicly with their names attached, but they have some real feeling of betrayal all the same.
So a journo got it wrong, not like he's Dan Rather being lead down the garden path and left there by CBS researchers and management.
of course he doesn't have a crapshoot for $70 million either...
"Chuck, have a look at this one."
"So he's reading something on a laptop, is it a document or the internet?"
"Use the higher magnification, it's a website."
"Ok, I see it now. Something about Patenting a knife and fork... he's typing something."
"Looks harmless enough."
"Oh, my god, he's making some reference to life in Soviet Russia! Security security move on I-424, Victor section!"
"Code yellow! He's obviously some kind of subversive."
"Wait! There's something about a Beowulf Cluster, sounds like a cell!!!"
"Code Orange, Code Orange!"
"Holy sweet mother of Jesus! He's welcoming his new overlords!"
"CODE RED!! CODE RED!! Take that m**********r down!"
[NO CARRIER]
I, for one, welcome out Monkey Punching overlords!
I only aim to eliminate the minimum of content. When it becomes more annoying I may opt for more of a blanket attack on scripts. If there's simply a one-click and flash doesn't appear, without affecting other scripts/plugins that would be very welcome.
Does this mean I get to keep "Punching the Monkey?" I just can't find enough ways to win free ringtones.
The news made a fuss over an anniversary of facial pattern recognition in characters ( :-) ) I don't see why they haven't recognised the 10th anniversary of Punching the Monkey. I've seen these ads, initially in java or javascript plus a gif, for at least 10 years.
And all that's apparently missing is ensuring the surfer has Flash installed.
Personally I detest Flash ads and for this reason keep renaming the NPSWF32.dll file as NPSWF32.dllfsdfsd (while I don't have an instance of Firefox open, lest it track the bastid) when I have no intention of viewing Flash content. Too many pages are so whizzy with Flash I position the browser so the Flash bit is offscreen or simply don't visit the sites at all. I don't see many company/commercial sites since they apparently all now believe their best way to reach the customer is with some bloated object 500K or bigger (i'm still on dial-up) and all whizzy. So all this means is I'll see some more puzzle pieces, unless they detect no-flash and throw animated (ugh) gifs at me.
I'll just have to wrassle with The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking for a while.
Lucky for Google, I'm the exception and shouldn't make much of a dent in their stock value.
It be an enhanced GNOME. Didn't ye get the email?
Enahnce your GNOME, stay up longer, get better performance from your GNOME, have great timing and more control over your power! contact XXXXX@yahoo.co.uk.
scupper me, all we were t'were pirates!
Arr! Aye mod ye funny *fnzownt*
Aye, the more ye be tightenin' yer grip, MPAA and AT&T, the more p2p content and customers will slip through yer fingars!
arr, wrong idiom!
Arr, where isOliver Wendell Jones and his swashbuckling Banana PC when ye need them!
Avast, all the p2p sites need to do is mask the activity by sendin' and receivin' "noise" (content of random or random packets of encoded content with pre-arranged means of embedding send and receive commands, encoded by phrases passed by other means.) Arr, I be reading too many cryptographer tales.
Didn't Frank Herbert describe something just like this in Dune? Pain through nerve induction?
Aye'm quite of a mind it was Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson following up his works that would be the causin' of such pain as a cat o' nine tails all the afternoon!
The ones that already use Kalashnikovs for crowd control? I'll take the ray over stopping a round, thx.
Aye, but do ye think they'd have less reservations usin' one o' these devices knowin' they would leave no visible wounds? Aye see these bein' used often and with far more room for abuse.
Detailed specs from Raytheon's patent filing show that the gun essentially plays Britney Spears' new single at an extremely high volume in a concentrated "cone of pain." ...oh the pain.
Blow me down, that's inhumane! Better they should walk the plank
Arr! This be a popular thing to consider against terrorists, insurgents and other bilge, but what of when a swab asks Sen. Kerry one too many questions?
"Blow me down, Senator, but why did ye let the scallywag take Ohio uncontested?"
"Belay the questioning, ye poxy bilge-bellied picaroon!"
*FFFNNZZZZZOOWWNT*
"Yaaaarrr!"
Sounds funny, do ye think? But by Davy Jone's locker, it doesn't bode us at all well when bloomin' cops be using it on the populace for crowd control or to force lubbers to obey their commands.
"Arr, get out of the vehicle and make way for boardin', swabbie!"
"Aye, but what of me constitutional rights against unreasonable looting and pillaging?"
*FFFNNZZZZZOOWWNT*
"Yaaaarrr!"
Aye a sobering thought. And will yer video camera help ye then? And what of the other wrong people layin' their mitts on this terrible new technology by way of the interweb -- ye don't like how a match is going? Give the swab in goal an itch he'd claw out with his own hook for just a second for the ball to pass into the net. Aye. People already are misusing lasers, what of these? No visible injury, sounds perfect for torture.
What next, use this on pirates? Well I'll be scuppered!
Supposedly, Intel's next generation architeture, Nehalem, will have much less L2 cache.
Avast, be it the next Celeron? Corduoelon, sommat like that?
we be calling it Corduroy, it'll be making headlines!
Avast ye swab! I could indeed, build up some servers and ye could. I be thinking the old gag just not worth bothering with when CPUs be the topic. Perhaps when they be getting around to the Commodore 64 again ...
twelve and a half percent! twelve and a half percent! awk!
Throw more core and L2 cache at it. It be having a familiar ring, like when it was all about CPU speed.
I typed Harpertown into Google and I be finding a lot about Intel's processor. I wonder what the folk of Harpertowns (whar ever they be) and other towns feel about their town names be crowded out on Google searches by a bit of silicon. Yarr.
They be takin' on the Jolly Roger. I be thinkin' they be changin' the iPhone to detect meddlin' with their cabal. Add a checksum or something.
Lawsuits be expensive.