The reason why most of the benchmarks were so close is because none of these games (with the exception of parts of Quake3) are using the OpenGL T&L pipeline because at the time they were made there were no hardware T&L engines and so by 'rolling their own' T&L they could get significant speedups. The nVidia Tree demo should be evidence to anyone what a dramatic difference having hardware T&L can make. That tree demo has far more complexity than your average shoot-em-up game, and these are the kind of things we can expect when developers make games for hardware T&L (most new games will use the hardware). So the real problem with the benchmarks was running a bleeding edge graphics card on yesterday's software. It does well, even better than the competition, but don't expect a 3X increase...you can't get much faster than 100FPS no matter how you try. But the GeForce should be able to do 60FPS with 10X the polygon count of current cards (assuming the developer is handling T&L with OpenGL)
The installation was really smooth. It took about 25 minutes from boot to KDE desktop (and I never touched a console). The installation is clean, easy, and autodetected all of my hardware. I have to say it made Linux look very professional. The only thing I thought odd was the small amount of installation options (minimal, full, or full + source), but I realize this makes it easier to make sure that the first boot works fine, and there are no shortcuts pointing to programs that dont' exist, etc. Besides, all of the software can be added/removed after installation is complete. Overall, I'm very impressed (and BootMagic is a big improvement over lilo...)
You can't just feed the living by liquefying the dead. Law of conservation of mass and energy. If the machines are extracting energy from the humans, they have to be feeding them an equal amount of energy in some other form...And from what I could see no plant life could live on the planet, so they must have made synthetic food...which, once again, would require an energy source.
And it still doesn't overcome my main problem, which is of ALL the energy sources, why tap the miniscule electrical energy in the human body?
Although I have to agree the Matrix rocks in many unspeakable ways, I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the holes in the plot. Although I was wowed by the effects, a few thoughts occurred to me afterward.
a) Why use humans for batteries? I mean, even if you decided that the only energy source was living creatures, why use humans, when they are obviously so high maintenance, and require 'agents' to 'police' their minds? Or at least give them all lobotomies. While I'm on the subject, if humans are the only energy source, where do they get the energy to grow the food to nourish the humans? It didn't make sense.
b) It seemed the romantic twist at the end was very forced and didn't have any buildup from earlier in the movie. It seemed to just come from nowhere.
c) If these 'agents' are part of the matrix, and are put their to monitor the program, why should they be restrained the same physical laws as the humans? In fact they shouldn't _have_ to fight at all, just *click* to delete people they dont' like. It didn't make sense for the AI to *create* a matrix which could destroy it. If I write programs, I debug it with authority!
Slashdot Mirror
The reason why most of the benchmarks were so close is because none of these games (with the exception of parts of Quake3) are using the OpenGL T&L pipeline because at the time they were made there were no hardware T&L engines and so by 'rolling their own' T&L they could get significant speedups. The nVidia Tree demo should be evidence to anyone what a dramatic difference having hardware T&L can make. That tree demo has far more complexity than your average shoot-em-up game, and these are the kind of things we can expect when developers make games for hardware T&L (most new games will use the hardware). So the real problem with the benchmarks was running a bleeding edge graphics card on yesterday's software. It does well, even better than the competition, but don't expect a 3X increase...you can't get much faster than 100FPS no matter how you try. But the GeForce should be able to do 60FPS with 10X the polygon count of current cards (assuming the developer is handling T&L with OpenGL)
The installation was really smooth. It took about 25 minutes from boot to KDE desktop (and I never touched a console). The installation is clean, easy, and autodetected all of my hardware. I have to say it made Linux look very professional. The only thing I thought odd was the small amount of installation options (minimal, full, or full + source), but I realize this makes it easier to make sure that the first boot works fine, and there are no shortcuts pointing to programs that dont' exist, etc. Besides, all of the software can be added/removed after installation is complete. Overall, I'm very impressed (and BootMagic is a big improvement over lilo...)
Code Monkey.
'Nuff said.
Could be just me, but whenever I hear 'Red Book' I think immediately of 'OpenGL Programming Guide' by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board.
You can't just feed the living by liquefying the dead. Law of conservation of mass and energy. If the machines are extracting energy from the humans, they have to be feeding them an equal amount of energy in some other form...And from what I could see no plant life could live on the planet, so they must have made synthetic food...which, once again, would require an energy source.
And it still doesn't overcome my main problem, which is of ALL the energy sources, why tap the miniscule electrical energy in the human body?
Although I have to agree the Matrix rocks in many unspeakable ways, I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the holes in the plot. Although I was wowed by the effects, a few thoughts occurred to me afterward.
a) Why use humans for batteries? I mean, even if you decided that the only energy source was living creatures, why use humans, when they are obviously so high maintenance, and require 'agents' to 'police' their minds? Or at least give them all lobotomies. While I'm on the subject, if humans are the only energy source, where do they get the energy to grow the food to nourish the humans? It didn't make sense.
b) It seemed the romantic twist at the end was very forced and didn't have any buildup from earlier in the movie. It seemed to just come from nowhere.
c) If these 'agents' are part of the matrix, and are put their to monitor the program, why should they be restrained the same physical laws as the humans? In fact they shouldn't _have_ to fight at all, just *click* to delete people they dont' like. It didn't make sense for the AI to *create* a matrix which could destroy it. If I write programs, I debug it with authority!