Remember when Hitler turned Germany into hell on earth, said it would last 1000 years, and ended up sustaining it for only five years? The Digitial MILLENIUM COPYRIGHT Act sounds awfully familiar.
Computers probably can perfectly simulate someone's voice, but wouldn't they require data for pitch, patterns, pauses, mental considerations, freudian slips, sneezes, coughs, burps, sighs, and other details? I think to perfectly simulate a voice, it would require all the meticulous modeling of the FF movie, just now for audio physics.
I've heard from many sources that Fiona was made less realistic to fit in with the rest of the movie.
However, Sakaguchi has stated in interviews that he wanted to convince his audience that they were watching real actors, and the fact that Square didn't make FF totally convincing was not because they didn't want to, or didn't know how, but because they didn't have the time and money. They've made it clear in interviews and e-mails I've received from Square's shading supervisor, Kevin Bjorke, that they're going to get even closer to photorealism next time.
When Hitler returns, he'll probably be the president of the United States. Or maybe he'll even be a cyber-hippie like one of us who's so obsessed with online rights that he'd sacrifice offline rights for them.
We may have a leader who sacrifices freedom to save the environment. For example, he may shut down power plants at night, or forbid auto transportation at certain times.
My biggest concern is biotech. "Our generation" (born after 1965, before 1990) is so obsessed with cyber rights that we're ignoring biotech. What's up with Celera, Monsanto, and all the stem-cell and cloning guys? A lot of today's hippies are uneducated about biology and prejudiced against biotech. After earning our B.S. in C.S. and working a computer job for a few years, we pretend that we've suffered to learn enough to hold a job, and refuse to learn anything about biology, and hate those who do. Well guess what? Our kids are going to learn genetic engineering, and create their own nations of fantasy creatures, storybook plants, and 140-year-old humans.
If a video game wants the player to use his imagination, it should be a pure text adventure. If a game wants to go for sensory overload, it should be like a movie or amusement park. On the PS1, Square was torn between these two extremes, and on the PS2 they've chosen the latter.
I'm glad that Square's settled with one or the other; games with movie-caliber graphics but no voice have always felt incoherent to me. Maybe later they'll make a pure text adventure, but otherwise I think they should lean for sensory overload.
1: Wall mounted systems. Everyone's dreamt of reclaiming desk space by hanging their monitor on the wall like a painting. Flatscreens can make that possible, so why doesn't anybody use them that way? It would add $0.00 to their cost and make them infinitely more useful. Especially the iMacs, if they ever go flat.
2: DDR motherboards. The fastest Mac is slower than the fastest Wintel. Macs COULD be much faster, but to get faster, they have to use Altivec, and to use Altivec, they need more memory bandwidth. DDR can probably provide that bandwidth, so why doesn't Apple put DDR in their G4 systems?
3: Longer batty life. Most notebook systems run twice as long with their backlight removed. If Apple combined a non-backlit (Game Boy style) screen with their already energy-efficient PowerPC chips, they could have the longest lasting laptops on the market. Since some people don't like reflective screens, Apple should start by selling 1/3 of their iBooks and Powerbooks with reflective screens, and the rest with backlit.
4: Touchscreens. One of Apple's Prime Directives is to make the worlds most intuitive and ergonomic electronics. They could do so by ditching the keyboard and mouse, make the screen touch sensitive and make the OS more voice sensitive. That would probably make their whole product line slightly less expensive and much more fun and easy to use.
The current goal of CG and video technology is to convince the viewer that the image displayed is not video but actually real, happening right in front of them. Let's compare the current best with the absolute best.
1: motion. Above some frame rate, the eye perceives smooth motion and blurring, probably 60. The perception of blurring is a natural function of the eye, and if the goal is realism, it must be present. However, if the goal is something other than reality, such as clarity, then maybe blurring should be absent, and possible strobing allowed.
2: resolution. For perfect realism, the resolution of an image should be above the upper limit of the eye. I think film grain interferes with this goal.
3: color. Current film, CRTs, and LCDs reproduce only about 20% of the eye's color capacity. We could reproduce up to 80% with 5 lasers, spaced evenly between the wavelengths of 400nm and 700nm.
4: focus. The eyes focus on images themselves. To acheieve realism, a video system must let the eyes choose their own subjects, and alter the image accordingly. Some HMDs can do this by detecting the movement of the eyes and cornea. Rotating large mirror systems can do this even better because they don't need to adjust the image because they display 3D naturally. Flat monitor systems, such as red blue, or polarized color, can adjust focus for only one person at a time.
5: direction. A realistic system lets the user move his head and eyes any way he wants. Currently, only HMDs can accomidate this.
So 5-laser HMDs are the most realistic solution. Holodecks are better but we can't do them.
Finally, don't worry about what the mainstream feels. They do want the next big thing, it just has to be a major improvement, not an incremental improvement. Just create whatever you like.
The world will be a worse place if what we can say with our mouths is restricted by copyright law. Hopefully Freenet will wipe all this out beforehand.
Nintendo is a complicated company. They often say one thing and do another. Or believe one thing and do another. For example, while gearing up for the NES in 1985 Yamauchi wanted it to be a network box that did it all: gaming, banking, day-trading, news, sports scores, web browsing (within an AOL-style network Nintendo themselves would build), music, movies, etc. However, Nintendo and all the other Japanese companies never got around to networking. Instead, they let the Americans (especially AOL and Netscape) take the lead. Even in Japan, Docomo (God I HATE that name!), Sega and Sony are ahead. Nintendo wants to build an online network, but only if they can control it, and only if children can pay for content on a whim. Basically, smart cards and broadband in every room and on every mobile phone/videophone. But that won't be ready until at least 2005. So in the mean time, they're sticking to conventional consoles with more guaranteed profit methods. And, since Nintendo always thinks about the future but never talks about it, they will be dumping R&D on a network, but they will never admit it and talk pure trash about networking until it's done. And once it is done, they will claim they've never done anything else.
Yamauchi. Big Brother before Bill Gates, eh?
Last week, I posted a question to comp.graphics.animation about Final Fantasy's skin shaders, and got a response from Square Pictures' senior shading guy Kevin Bjorke!
To use the reference that acutely he probably read the book. But then again newspeak is so common among Slashdotters that he might have just picked it up.
Today, we think we're smart for being able to learn new high tech as it appears, or better yet, inventing it and selling it, running rings around those twice or thrice our age.
How about when we turn 60, 70 or 80?
The world will be a different place by 2050. By then, our practical skills with computers and the internet will not be relevant, or they will be kept relevant by younger people who we will pay to keep us under the illusion that the year is still 2001, that the LotR movie is still in production, that Bill Gates still needs fighting, that the Chinese still don't like us. While we are paying them to keep us in the bubble, our grandchildren will be living in the real world. Our grandkids, who probably won't resemble us, will be designing the latest GM pets for Christmas (a real dragon for a Chinese parade!), will be drilling to find the aquatic life in Europa, will be effortlessly learning fluent Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and whatever other languages are relevant by then, while we still struggle and pretend to be learning Japanese ("All your base are belong to us, gomennasai! That one still cracks me up after 50 years, haw haw!"). The point is, we must not be smug just because we are young.
To the elderly, their youth was yesterday. So to us teenagers and young adults, we will wake up tommorow morning and be in our 70s or 80s. Tommorow, we will wake up to a world with different needs. Different hopes. Different alliances, perceptions, technologies. We can fight it, or we can become it and make it happen.
So what do we do? One key is to study the fundamentals. It takes a strong mind and deep insight to study today what will be useful half a century from now. The basics of science, philosophy, language, art and law will assist. Another key is to always do what you love. When you are old, people will look up to you. You can help them not with what you just learned, but with what you learned and liked at their age. So you can only really help those who are basically repeating your life. Try teaching children, and see what's easier! To serve them best, you must use every year ahead of you effectively. Only then can you lead every age group assertively.
With fundamental knowledge and assertive hindsight, you can be alert and effective in old age. Young people will look up to you not as an ignorant obstacle, but as a wise leader.
Since micropayments, broadband and all-purpose clients exist to eliminate all other media, they must have as many options as they media they are replacing. Think of all the ways we watch movies.
Sometimes we...
pay once and watch once: the cinema.
pay once and watch an infinite number of times over a finite interval: the rental.
pay once and watch an infinite number of times over an infinite interval: the purchase.
not pay but endure advertizments: the TV network.
For micropayment to replace all of these options, it must provide them in online form, and make them all equally convenient.
A solution: All power must lie in the server; none with the client.
Ideally, the client must be nothing more than an I/O device for the player to interface with (and send payments to) a server that would store and process 100% of the game. The server would have the CPU, the GPU, and the whole game in RAM. The player would send his inputs over the broadband, the server would process them, and send the outputs back over the broadband, compressed in whatever format is convient, for the client to decode and display. The player would be under the impression that he is running the game locally on a top-of-the-line PC with zero load times. Also, he would be perfectly synchronized with all other players (who would connect and relate to the server in the same way). What other benefits would he have?
There would be cap for needed bandwidth. If the server sent the actual game code over the internet, the consumer would need as much bandwidth over the net as his local HD, which is several MBps. Under this system, he would need only enough for decent looking streaming video, 0.5 to 1.0 MBps.
The game code would only exist on the server(s), so it would be very hard to hack or pirate. If someone did manage to steal the code, it might be unusable (needing proprietary hardware) or undesirable (he could only host games isolated from the rest of the servers). Also, the developer could change and update parts of the game daily, making players want the genuine service to get live updates and stay current with other players.
The client hardware could be quite cheap.
All the world's content would be at the consumers' fingertips (gee, it sounds just like the internet, or Napster even).
Dragonball: Superman
Sailor Moon: Batman/Superman (hero has two identities)
Ranma: teeny-bopperishness (no wait, maybe teenybopperishness ripped off Ranma! No, Punky Brewster came first)
Evangelion: the 60s
The article mentions how the MPAA ratings system destroys good movies. But think of Schindler's List. It got an R, but many high schools showed it to their students, most of whom were a year or two below the recommended age. It showed that even today, the desire for progress can outweigh irrational fears.
All Intel needs to do is call Tualtin a P4. Architecturally they'll be wrong, but performance-wise they'll be about right (especially if they can use DDR with it) and it'll be a lot more stable and lower costing.
Slashdot Mirror
In Japan the winners were NES, SNES, PS1, PS2 and all Game Boys, while TG-16 and Saturn sold decently and the rest failed.
In USA the winners were Atari 2600, NES, PS1, the PC and all Game Boys, while SNES and Genesis tied, N64 sold decently and all others failed.
In Europe, the SMS, Genesis, PS1, PC and all Game Boys sold well, the NES and SNES sold decently and all others failed.
Remember when Hitler turned Germany into hell on earth, said it would last 1000 years, and ended up sustaining it for only five years? The Digitial MILLENIUM COPYRIGHT Act sounds awfully familiar.
Computers probably can perfectly simulate someone's voice, but wouldn't they require data for pitch, patterns, pauses, mental considerations, freudian slips, sneezes, coughs, burps, sighs, and other details? I think to perfectly simulate a voice, it would require all the meticulous modeling of the FF movie, just now for audio physics.
I've heard from many sources that Fiona was made less realistic to fit in with the rest of the movie.
However, Sakaguchi has stated in interviews that he wanted to convince his audience that they were watching real actors, and the fact that Square didn't make FF totally convincing was not because they didn't want to, or didn't know how, but because they didn't have the time and money. They've made it clear in interviews and e-mails I've received from Square's shading supervisor, Kevin Bjorke, that they're going to get even closer to photorealism next time.
Every time I see "Pentium MMX" I think "Pentium Mega Man X".
When Hitler returns, he'll probably be the president of the United States. Or maybe he'll even be a cyber-hippie like one of us who's so obsessed with online rights that he'd sacrifice offline rights for them.
We may have a leader who sacrifices freedom to save the environment. For example, he may shut down power plants at night, or forbid auto transportation at certain times.
My biggest concern is biotech. "Our generation" (born after 1965, before 1990) is so obsessed with cyber rights that we're ignoring biotech. What's up with Celera, Monsanto, and all the stem-cell and cloning guys? A lot of today's hippies are uneducated about biology and prejudiced against biotech. After earning our B.S. in C.S. and working a computer job for a few years, we pretend that we've suffered to learn enough to hold a job, and refuse to learn anything about biology, and hate those who do. Well guess what? Our kids are going to learn genetic engineering, and create their own nations of fantasy creatures, storybook plants, and 140-year-old humans.
If a video game wants the player to use his imagination, it should be a pure text adventure. If a game wants to go for sensory overload, it should be like a movie or amusement park. On the PS1, Square was torn between these two extremes, and on the PS2 they've chosen the latter.
I'm glad that Square's settled with one or the other; games with movie-caliber graphics but no voice have always felt incoherent to me. Maybe later they'll make a pure text adventure, but otherwise I think they should lean for sensory overload.
DDR also means double data rate, a kind of RAM.
How about touch-sensitive HUDs on Windshields? It wouldn't require averting the eyes.
4 things I wanted to see at MWNY:
1: Wall mounted systems. Everyone's dreamt of reclaiming desk space by hanging their monitor on the wall like a painting. Flatscreens can make that possible, so why doesn't anybody use them that way? It would add $0.00 to their cost and make them infinitely more useful. Especially the iMacs, if they ever go flat.
2: DDR motherboards. The fastest Mac is slower than the fastest Wintel. Macs COULD be much faster, but to get faster, they have to use Altivec, and to use Altivec, they need more memory bandwidth. DDR can probably provide that bandwidth, so why doesn't Apple put DDR in their G4 systems?
3: Longer batty life. Most notebook systems run twice as long with their backlight removed. If Apple combined a non-backlit (Game Boy style) screen with their already energy-efficient PowerPC chips, they could have the longest lasting laptops on the market. Since some people don't like reflective screens, Apple should start by selling 1/3 of their iBooks and Powerbooks with reflective screens, and the rest with backlit.
4: Touchscreens. One of Apple's Prime Directives is to make the worlds most intuitive and ergonomic electronics. They could do so by ditching the keyboard and mouse, make the screen touch sensitive and make the OS more voice sensitive. That would probably make their whole product line slightly less expensive and much more fun and easy to use.
The current goal of CG and video technology is to convince the viewer that the image displayed is not video but actually real, happening right in front of them. Let's compare the current best with the absolute best.
1: motion. Above some frame rate, the eye perceives smooth motion and blurring, probably 60. The perception of blurring is a natural function of the eye, and if the goal is realism, it must be present. However, if the goal is something other than reality, such as clarity, then maybe blurring should be absent, and possible strobing allowed.
2: resolution. For perfect realism, the resolution of an image should be above the upper limit of the eye. I think film grain interferes with this goal.
3: color. Current film, CRTs, and LCDs reproduce only about 20% of the eye's color capacity. We could reproduce up to 80% with 5 lasers, spaced evenly between the wavelengths of 400nm and 700nm.
4: focus. The eyes focus on images themselves. To acheieve realism, a video system must let the eyes choose their own subjects, and alter the image accordingly. Some HMDs can do this by detecting the movement of the eyes and cornea. Rotating large mirror systems can do this even better because they don't need to adjust the image because they display 3D naturally. Flat monitor systems, such as red blue, or polarized color, can adjust focus for only one person at a time.
5: direction. A realistic system lets the user move his head and eyes any way he wants. Currently, only HMDs can accomidate this.
So 5-laser HMDs are the most realistic solution. Holodecks are better but we can't do them.
Finally, don't worry about what the mainstream feels. They do want the next big thing, it just has to be a major improvement, not an incremental improvement. Just create whatever you like.
The world will be a worse place if what we can say with our mouths is restricted by copyright law. Hopefully Freenet will wipe all this out beforehand.
Nintendo is a complicated company. They often say one thing and do another. Or believe one thing and do another. For example, while gearing up for the NES in 1985 Yamauchi wanted it to be a network box that did it all: gaming, banking, day-trading, news, sports scores, web browsing (within an AOL-style network Nintendo themselves would build), music, movies, etc. However, Nintendo and all the other Japanese companies never got around to networking. Instead, they let the Americans (especially AOL and Netscape) take the lead. Even in Japan, Docomo (God I HATE that name!), Sega and Sony are ahead. Nintendo wants to build an online network, but only if they can control it, and only if children can pay for content on a whim. Basically, smart cards and broadband in every room and on every mobile phone/videophone. But that won't be ready until at least 2005. So in the mean time, they're sticking to conventional consoles with more guaranteed profit methods. And, since Nintendo always thinks about the future but never talks about it, they will be dumping R&D on a network, but they will never admit it and talk pure trash about networking until it's done. And once it is done, they will claim they've never done anything else. Yamauchi. Big Brother before Bill Gates, eh?
Last week, I posted a question to comp.graphics.animation about Final Fantasy's skin shaders, and got a response from Square Pictures' senior shading guy Kevin Bjorke!
How long until we get Google Sounds? And Google movies?
Can Google display the full image with just one click? Why does it take two?
To use the reference that acutely he probably read the book. But then again newspeak is so common among Slashdotters that he might have just picked it up.
Today, we think we're smart for being able to learn new high tech as it appears, or better yet, inventing it and selling it, running rings around those twice or thrice our age.
How about when we turn 60, 70 or 80?
The world will be a different place by 2050. By then, our practical skills with computers and the internet will not be relevant, or they will be kept relevant by younger people who we will pay to keep us under the illusion that the year is still 2001, that the LotR movie is still in production, that Bill Gates still needs fighting, that the Chinese still don't like us. While we are paying them to keep us in the bubble, our grandchildren will be living in the real world. Our grandkids, who probably won't resemble us, will be designing the latest GM pets for Christmas (a real dragon for a Chinese parade!), will be drilling to find the aquatic life in Europa, will be effortlessly learning fluent Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and whatever other languages are relevant by then, while we still struggle and pretend to be learning Japanese ("All your base are belong to us, gomennasai! That one still cracks me up after 50 years, haw haw!"). The point is, we must not be smug just because we are young.
To the elderly, their youth was yesterday. So to us teenagers and young adults, we will wake up tommorow morning and be in our 70s or 80s. Tommorow, we will wake up to a world with different needs. Different hopes. Different alliances, perceptions, technologies. We can fight it, or we can become it and make it happen.
So what do we do? One key is to study the fundamentals. It takes a strong mind and deep insight to study today what will be useful half a century from now. The basics of science, philosophy, language, art and law will assist. Another key is to always do what you love. When you are old, people will look up to you. You can help them not with what you just learned, but with what you learned and liked at their age. So you can only really help those who are basically repeating your life. Try teaching children, and see what's easier! To serve them best, you must use every year ahead of you effectively. Only then can you lead every age group assertively.
With fundamental knowledge and assertive hindsight, you can be alert and effective in old age. Young people will look up to you not as an ignorant obstacle, but as a wise leader.
Since micropayments, broadband and all-purpose clients exist to eliminate all other media, they must have as many options as they media they are replacing. Think of all the ways we watch movies.
Sometimes we...
pay once and watch once: the cinema.
pay once and watch an infinite number of times over a finite interval: the rental.
pay once and watch an infinite number of times over an infinite interval: the purchase.
not pay but endure advertizments: the TV network.
For micropayment to replace all of these options, it must provide them in online form, and make them all equally convenient.
A solution: All power must lie in the server; none with the client.
Ideally, the client must be nothing more than an I/O device for the player to interface with (and send payments to) a server that would store and process 100% of the game. The server would have the CPU, the GPU, and the whole game in RAM. The player would send his inputs over the broadband, the server would process them, and send the outputs back over the broadband, compressed in whatever format is convient, for the client to decode and display. The player would be under the impression that he is running the game locally on a top-of-the-line PC with zero load times. Also, he would be perfectly synchronized with all other players (who would connect and relate to the server in the same way). What other benefits would he have?
There would be cap for needed bandwidth. If the server sent the actual game code over the internet, the consumer would need as much bandwidth over the net as his local HD, which is several MBps. Under this system, he would need only enough for decent looking streaming video, 0.5 to 1.0 MBps.
The game code would only exist on the server(s), so it would be very hard to hack or pirate. If someone did manage to steal the code, it might be unusable (needing proprietary hardware) or undesirable (he could only host games isolated from the rest of the servers). Also, the developer could change and update parts of the game daily, making players want the genuine service to get live updates and stay current with other players.
The client hardware could be quite cheap.
All the world's content would be at the consumers' fingertips (gee, it sounds just like the internet, or Napster even).
Dragonball: Superman Sailor Moon: Batman/Superman (hero has two identities) Ranma: teeny-bopperishness (no wait, maybe teenybopperishness ripped off Ranma! No, Punky Brewster came first) Evangelion: the 60s
Speculate, if you dare.
The article mentions how the MPAA ratings system destroys good movies. But think of Schindler's List. It got an R, but many high schools showed it to their students, most of whom were a year or two below the recommended age. It showed that even today, the desire for progress can outweigh irrational fears.
All Intel needs to do is call Tualtin a P4. Architecturally they'll be wrong, but performance-wise they'll be about right (especially if they can use DDR with it) and it'll be a lot more stable and lower costing.
Does the new technology in this P3 come from Xbox development? Xbox R&D gave us the nForce chipset, so maybe the same is true of this chip?