as much as the game idea was fun and the graphics attractive, I think for me pacman was mostly about the sounds, the startup jingle, the wakkawakkawakka and let's not forget the death sound: I really wonder who came up with those!
Everything id said on the way to release was that it was a horror game. It was about being scared
I think you should reread the article: doom 3 didn't deliver at all on the scary part: how exactly is it scary to know that any time you open a door something materializes behind you? It might make you jump the first time, a bit the second, but after that it becomes just boring.
Compare this with the Ravenholm level in HL2, now that was scary, unexpected things happened all the time and the atmosphere was just amazing.
At least if doom 3 had been a run'n'gun game like doom1/2 there could've been a silver lining, but as things stand now it is just a boring tech demo for their engine.
I've bought every single ID game since Doom (which I got direct from Id way back when, probably one of the few Italian orders they ever received, I'm sure) but I decided to skip Doom3, it took me only an hour or so looking at it over the shoulder of a friend to decide that yes, the engine was cool but the gameplay just wasn't there.
Monster spawning behind you are not believable anymore, as it's not believable to have the whole game in the dark, as it's not believable to have every room look pretty much exactly the same.
I also didn't find doom3 scary at all, it looked quite boring as the endless variations of 'step over this and a monster appears behind you' were played out.
Ravenholm in HL2 *was* scary OTOH, and really, after finishing HL2 and Far Cry, Doom3 looked pointless: if at least it had the 'tons of monsters, varied environments, open spaces' formula of the original it would've been fun, but the way it is it's going to be the first Id game I won't be spending money on: I'd rather still play System Shock 1 (2 sucked in comparison) for a 'survival/horror' creepy slow paced game with an actual reasonable plot and great voice acting.
... or maybe I should write deffinitely like it seems a lot of people are doing nowadays.
I've seen plenty of resumes and cover letters with lose/loose, it's/its, you're/your and believe me, it doesn't help with making a good impression with whomever is interviewing you.
One thing I've noticed is that the spelling and grammar were a lot better in the early 90s, when people who were on the net in general got onto it only in college: it seems the new generation weaned on game message boards and l33t speak has a much lower command of the written English language and that they're actually proud of it.
Nowadays it seems that if somebody is writing in proper English in a messageboard or in an online game, odds are that they are immigrants for whom English is a second language (category to which I belong myself) or they are 30-35+ years old.
There also seems to be some sort of a stigma associated with being articulate on this side of the Atlantic, which is totally mindblowing to witness, as in Europe a firm command of your nation's language is seen as a very good thing to have as early as possible in your life, and if you don't express yourself articulately people will have a much, much, much lower opinion of you.
You do realize that 1kW/hr costs about 22 cents, whereas a 20lb bag of ice costs about $5, right?
hey, I'm not saying the OP had the perfect idea, but if he lives in a climate where he needs the A/C maybe 2 weeks total out of a year (somewhere like the west coast, for example) it might be more cost effective to spend $20 in ice (the bag is big, and probably will last a few days) than spending a few hundred in an a/c unit.
Most refrigerators are virtually incapable of pumping that much heat
you missed my point: the guy would make ice in his freezer, and use the ice to do the a/c-ing in the bedroom: this creates a sort of a heat pump since the kitchen will get warmer (due to the fridge) and the bedroom cooler (due to the melting ice).
#1 you can buy a bag of ice at the gas station/convenience store, not free but then neither is the electricity to run your freezer.
#2 even if you used the house freezer, you shut the door and basically you're pumping heat away from the bedroom into the kitchen, obviously you won't get huge temperature differentials, but 5-6C feels very noticeable when you're trying to fall asleep and it's too hot to do so.
actually I think I paid around $70 for my Elements 3 (due to an upgrade offer from PS5.0 LE that was included ages ago with my digital camera) and I'd say that your '90% of the same features' is way over-optimistic. Also Elements3 is not that gimped (heh) compared to PS/CS, definitely a lot less cut down than LE was compared to PS full way back when: I think Adobe maybe realized that as much as CYMK is needed for pros (which make the bulk of the PS/CS intended audience) pretty much everthing else is needed by the average amateur, which will be quite glad to fork over $70-$100 for a legitimate PS application.
After using Elements3 for a while as an image editor and, most importantly, as an image cataloguing application (was using picasa before, and before then a crappy kde app before I switched to XP as my base OS from RedHat (since I can run it anyways in vmware)) I have to say that the gimp has so much ground to cover to catch up it's not even funny.
I wish I had made the switch to Adobe earlier, it would surely have saved me a lot of grief, but until vmware made it possible to run linux seamlessly under win32 there's no way I could have done it (and no, the other way around would be pointless, as while linux runs perfectly under win32, win32 does not run perfectly under linux, esp. when it comes to games).
Heck, despite years of grumbling, gimp still don't have adjustment layers, let alone a decent UI and a way to catalogue your images well integrated with the main program. As much as server software under linux is world class (Apache for example), 'user' software still leaves a lot to be desired.
don't tell me you haven't yet figured out that for things to be very enjoyable for the majority of women (there are exceptions, but they are few and far between) you *do* need to use your fingers (in the manner implied) while you use the other parts you mentioned. Not to mention that having dexterous fingers is definitely an asset in 'warming things up' before 'progressing' to said parts.
I'd have thought that especially the Opteron line would've been a good fit with Apple, and by using those at least they could've mantained some semblance of being 'different' and justify the premium cost for their systems.
Not to mention that AMD's dual core offerings seem a lot better than Intel's, and with apps on the mac already fairly SMP-aware (due to all the dual-G5 boxes Apple sold) I'd have bet that OS/X on a dual dual-core Opteron 275 would've been a much stronger proposition.
fine that these are compatible with s939 after a BIOS update, but will you have to reinstall XP from scratch or will it 'magically' autodetect the 2nd processor? Don't think I've ever read an article discussing this issue yet.
I was definitely skeptical about the monthly fee as well, but since when I got the game that's pretty much the only thing I've been playing so in the end it's not that expensive. I like being able to buy prepaid cards at the store, though, if that was not possible I probably wouldn't have gotten it, as the idea of giving them my c/c to keep on file for recurring billing does not appeal to me.
it depends: IMHO the best AI would be the computer figuring out exactly how to beat the player and then, depending on the level of difficulty, choose less and less optimal strategies, but strategies that still 'make sense' so it doesn't feel dumb.
I would definitely make it 'cheat' (as in, dynamically adjust the damage from the bullet, say) to make things razor close but in the end often the player win ('often' again would depend from the level of difficulty).
Games are supposed to be entertainment and, like you said, always losing is not a lot of fun (even if it's somebody else online it's still frustrating for the average person, believe me), but winning because the computer opponent is obviously a moron, well, that's not really very good.
I personally finished Far Cry on the 'standard' level of difficulty (with no cheats) and found it quite ridiculously hard at times, and yet it had me coming back for more because mixed in with the really against-all-odds moments there were times where it was 'reasonable' and satisfying. I'd say the only 'bad' level was probably the last, which was way too hard if played as intended (if you realized that you could prevent the door to the ammo room from closing by sticking a chair in it it made things A LOT easier).
Can't some enterprising company hire someone like, say, Brian Azzarello / Warren Ellis / Alan Moore to put a storyline worth a damn into a game?
ever played Planescape:Torment? Unfortunately, probably due to the amount of text and subject matter (not to mention the box art, if they put Fall-from-grace on the cover it would've sold 3x for sure) it didn't do that well commercially and so no sequels or other games in the same vein...
I wish I hadn't played it so I could play it again, only computer game I've ever played that sort of came close to the sense of fulfillment you get from reading a good book.
Personally I'm quite enjoying WoW these days, first ever MMPORG I've played and it's a lot of fun.
and let me clarify, regardless of whom decided to take whose pics, IMHO those pics are 'joint' property of the couple (whether or not they have split up) so unless *both* people agree it's a big no-no for either of them to show them around.
If yahoo didn't comply with her request(s) to take them down she's quite right to sue in my book, in this type of situation I think the policy should be 'take them down right away and figure things out later'. I would also sue the guy as well, although I'm not quite sure exactly if it's even legally feasible to do so.
no, they won't, especially if Sony 'coincidentally' will release a bunch of prerendered videos and claim that they are actual gameplay footage: people will be ooh-ing and aah-ing and wait for the PS3 launch which will cause MS to lose money on Christmas sales.
I don't really care either way about which brand comes out on top (heck, I have an xbox, a ps2, a gc and a dreamcast to give you an idea) but it would be nice for once not to have to be witness to the usual overhyping (with prerendered videos) and underdelivering shenanigans: you'd expect people to have become a bit more jaded after what happened the last time around with the PS2, but I guess not, considering how many people seem to believe the PS3 videos were real-time.
If the Xbox, a considerably old piece of gaming hardware, can play Doom 3 at the same level as a modern high-end PC
a high-end PC will play doom3 at 1600x1200 with 4xFSAA and Aniso at much higher framerates than the xbox which is running at a quarter the resolution. I also doubt that the shader code running on the xbox is the same as on the PC, given that the xbox has a geforce3.5-class GPU which is 2 generations behind.
I personally think HL2 is a much better yardstick when it comes to graphics quality because, as much as doom3 looked cool, HL2 was a *lot* better (as a game as well, Ravenholm was a heck of a lot scarier than anything doom3 ever did with its teleporting-behind-your-back monsters).
From these posts it does seem you're completely sold on the Sony hype, hey, good for you, I hope you're right; personally I've seen enough console launches in my life to be very, very, very skeptical when it comes to pre-launch demo videos (and some post launch ones as well).
The PS2, despite being hyped beyond all realistic boundaries,
that's why when I see these videos I keep thinking 'unrealistic hype' and that the actual shipping games will be a lot plainer looking: still light years ahead of a PS2 (heck, my PC is already light years ahead of it) but nowhere near THAT much.
why is it unrealistic to assume that, given previous generational advancements in gaming hardware, this one will see equivalent advancement?
because the PC industry has not slowed to a crawl hardware-wise in the meantime, the 6800 series cards (and upcoming G70) and equivalent cards from ATI are light years ahead of what we had 5 years ago and there's no way they'd be able to come even close to that stuff in real time. That's why I am skeptical.
Of course the PS3 and X360 will clean the floor compared to the PS2 and xbox, we're just disagreeing about the magnitude of this cleaning.
HL2 already looks amazing compared to anything possible on the PS2 (esp. with everything maxed out at 1600x1200) and my personal expectation is that the PS3 might be a tad better than that, but not that much: what was shown in those videos (esp. regarding explosions, smoke, physics and poly count) is too far ahead IMHO. Maybe on the PS4, and even then I'm not sure.
Like I said before, I hope I'll have to eat these posts when the PS3 comes out, but I somehow doubt that will be the case.
They've actually said that the PS3's graphics chip is TWICE as powerful as the current top-of-the-line Nvidia card.
exactly, I am running TWO 6800GTs in SLI (although they're not ultras they're only maybe 10% slower) which means I'm running something comparable to the PS3 in terms of graphics power. When the G70 will come out for the PC the PC will again be twice as powerful as likely you'll be able to run it in SLI (which obviously you can't do on a console).
Far Cry, was released in 2004 to run on hardware that was top of the line in 2003
actually Far Cry with the latest patch supports HDR which is definitely not a 2003 feature (and besides looking great it kills the framerate quite a bit). The only thing that sort of comes close to those shots were shots of the new unreal engine, but nobody really knows the framerates it's capable of on current hardware or how much those shots were touched up before being released to the press.
Like somebody said above, the new xbox is 6 months away from launch, they've showed circuit boards etc. but very few (if any) demos, the PS3 is going to launch 6 months AFTER the xbox and yet, despite not having seen any hardware shot, they have already plenty perfect looking demos: I am finding that quite hard to believe.
On similar specs I agree that the consoles will outperform a PC, but given how notoriously hard to program for Sony's consoles have been, I really doubt they'd already have been able to optimize things that much. If that was the case 2 years down the road you'd see things that would blow these demos out of the water (just compare SSX to SSX3 for example) which seems hard to believe.
Again, it would sure be nice if that kind of CG was created in realtime with a $300 piece of hardware, but I think I'll remain on the skeptic side for a while longer (also remembering the PS2 hype some years back).
It somehow feels that Sony is trying to pull a dreamcast on the xbox360 (overpromising so people will wait) but I'm not sure they'll be able to manage it this time.
There are only two reasons I can imagine why you would suggest that it looks "too" good: 1) You have not been following the evolution of gaming consoles in the past, or noted the significant differences they had (the improvements have always been incredibly significant); or 2) You have not played any of the top current console games at any great length.
actually I have done both, and I still have the feeling that those demos had things composited in/prerendered: given how far away the console is from shipping you'd expect the final hardware to be barely hot of the presses, which means very little dev time, which means that whatever engines/software would not be yet very optimized.
The lighting effects, the materials, the smoke effects, the explosions all seem too good to be true to my jaded eyes (especially running in 720p like it's sort of implied): I might be proven wrong when it ships, and I really hope I will, but until then I'll keep wearing my skeptic hat.
I have a PC with a 6800GT in SLI and there is no way that it could ever do what was shown in those videos in 720p (Far Cry sure looks awesome, but it's still an order of magnitude or two worse than them). As much as the CPUs in the consoles are more powerful, the marketing material talks about their video card being a little more powerful than a 6800Ultra/SLI setup, which in my opinion is nowhere (by far) near enough to produce that kind of CGI in realtime.
Again, I hope I'm wrong, I really do, I guess we'll see in 6-8 months.
I will be very surprised if the actual game will look like the video, what with the Grand Canyon, motion blur, focus depth, lighting effects, forests made of realistic trees, pit stops with tons of guys running around and everything: it does look a bit too good as well and quite possibly prerendered/composited...
... could somebody please explain me how exactly this whole concept of 'rider' bills got started and, most important, how it continues without being made illegal?
Who exactly has the authority to 'attach' things to a bill? If I was a politician and was sure that a bill had a 100% chance of passing (say, one of these 'emergency, need money for our troops' bills), what would prevent me from attaching to it a few pork projects for the people who elected me for example?
actually even the throw back was debunked, they hung up a pig carcass in such a way that a minimal push would cause it to fall down then they tried with lots of different weapons and no dice.
'one finger in the right spot' doesn't mean anything, you could have a finger and 400lb of pressure and then OF COURSE you could push anything backwards: the momentum a projectile has is not as big as you probably imagine, although v is quite high m is also quite small (p = mv).
Americans refuse to work in a factory or dig holes or whatever menial labor job for $4 bucks an hour
if it was possible to live on a $4/hour salary I'm sure a lot of Americans would line up for those jobs. It was not that long ago that a vanilla assembly line factory worker was able to bring home enough $$$ to support a stay-at-home mom, children and a house in the suburbs, to do that now you'd need to gross anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000/year depending on where you live, and I don't know of many blue collar jobs that pay that much.
I am not one to advocate protectionism, but it's starting to get nuts with so many jobs disappearing due to somebody in China or India being able to do them for 1/10th the cost.
I'm not sure how things could be fixed, some starting points would be to make the minimum wage something more representative of what the cost of living is, which probably would mean tripling or quadrupling the current one in most areas of the USA/Canada.
Another good thing would be to make corporations pay equivalent salaries wherever their workforce is: say, if IBM is a US company, *and* in the US an average software developer should be paid $70,000/year, IBM should be made to pay that amount regardless if they hire a local or remote engineer thus rendering outsourcing totally pointless.
Will this ever happen? I totally doubt it, the way things are going now society will become more and more polarized between the haves and have nots, if credit cards did not exist and people had to actually pay for everything out of their own pockets I'm sure the bubble would burst quite quickly.
It would be nice if some economist did some study of the effect of personal debt availability vs recessions, IMHO as much as being able to increase your personal debt will enable you to keep things going for a while longer, it can't last forever.
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as much as the game idea was fun and the graphics attractive, I think for me pacman was mostly about the sounds, the startup jingle, the wakkawakkawakka and let's not forget the death sound: I really wonder who came up with those!
Everything id said on the way to release was that it was a horror game. It was about being scared
I think you should reread the article: doom 3 didn't deliver at all on the scary part: how exactly is it scary to know that any time you open a door something materializes behind you? It might make you jump the first time, a bit the second, but after that it becomes just boring.
Compare this with the Ravenholm level in HL2, now that was scary, unexpected things happened all the time and the atmosphere was just amazing.
At least if doom 3 had been a run'n'gun game like doom1/2 there could've been a silver lining, but as things stand now it is just a boring tech demo for their engine.
I've bought every single ID game since Doom (which I got direct from Id way back when, probably one of the few Italian orders they ever received, I'm sure) but I decided to skip Doom3, it took me only an hour or so looking at it over the shoulder of a friend to decide that yes, the engine was cool but the gameplay just wasn't there.
Monster spawning behind you are not believable anymore, as it's not believable to have the whole game in the dark, as it's not believable to have every room look pretty much exactly the same.
I also didn't find doom3 scary at all, it looked quite boring as the endless variations of 'step over this and a monster appears behind you' were played out.
Ravenholm in HL2 *was* scary OTOH, and really, after finishing HL2 and Far Cry, Doom3 looked pointless: if at least it had the 'tons of monsters, varied environments, open spaces' formula of the original it would've been fun, but the way it is it's going to be the first Id game I won't be spending money on: I'd rather still play System Shock 1 (2 sucked in comparison) for a 'survival/horror' creepy slow paced game with an actual reasonable plot and great voice acting.
... or maybe I should write deffinitely like it seems a lot of people are doing nowadays.
I've seen plenty of resumes and cover letters with lose/loose, it's/its, you're/your and believe me, it doesn't help with making a good impression with whomever is interviewing you.
One thing I've noticed is that the spelling and grammar were a lot better in the early 90s, when people who were on the net in general got onto it only in college: it seems the new generation weaned on game message boards and l33t speak has a much lower command of the written English language and that they're actually proud of it.
Nowadays it seems that if somebody is writing in proper English in a messageboard or in an online game, odds are that they are immigrants for whom English is a second language (category to which I belong myself) or they are 30-35+ years old.
There also seems to be some sort of a stigma associated with being articulate on this side of the Atlantic, which is totally mindblowing to witness, as in Europe a firm command of your nation's language is seen as a very good thing to have as early as possible in your life, and if you don't express yourself articulately people will have a much, much, much lower opinion of you.
You do realize that 1kW/hr costs about 22 cents, whereas a 20lb bag of ice costs about $5, right?
hey, I'm not saying the OP had the perfect idea, but if he lives in a climate where he needs the A/C maybe 2 weeks total out of a year (somewhere like the west coast, for example) it might be more cost effective to spend $20 in ice (the bag is big, and probably will last a few days) than spending a few hundred in an a/c unit.
Most refrigerators are virtually incapable of pumping that much heat
you missed my point: the guy would make ice in his freezer, and use the ice to do the a/c-ing in the bedroom: this creates a sort of a heat pump since the kitchen will get warmer (due to the fridge) and the bedroom cooler (due to the melting ice).
#1 you can buy a bag of ice at the gas station/convenience store, not free but then neither is the electricity to run your freezer.
#2 even if you used the house freezer, you shut the door and basically you're pumping heat away from the bedroom into the kitchen, obviously you won't get huge temperature differentials, but 5-6C feels very noticeable when you're trying to fall asleep and it's too hot to do so.
or even $100 for cut down version
actually I think I paid around $70 for my Elements 3 (due to an upgrade offer from PS5.0 LE that was included ages ago with my digital camera) and I'd say that your '90% of the same features' is way over-optimistic. Also Elements3 is not that gimped (heh) compared to PS/CS, definitely a lot less cut down than LE was compared to PS full way back when: I think Adobe maybe realized that as much as CYMK is needed for pros (which make the bulk of the PS/CS intended audience) pretty much everthing else is needed by the average amateur, which will be quite glad to fork over $70-$100 for a legitimate PS application.
After using Elements3 for a while as an image editor and, most importantly, as an image cataloguing application (was using picasa before, and before then a crappy kde app before I switched to XP as my base OS from RedHat (since I can run it anyways in vmware)) I have to say that the gimp has so much ground to cover to catch up it's not even funny.
I wish I had made the switch to Adobe earlier, it would surely have saved me a lot of grief, but until vmware made it possible to run linux seamlessly under win32 there's no way I could have done it (and no, the other way around would be pointless, as while linux runs perfectly under win32, win32 does not run perfectly under linux, esp. when it comes to games).
Heck, despite years of grumbling, gimp still don't have adjustment layers, let alone a decent UI and a way to catalogue your images well integrated with the main program. As much as server software under linux is world class (Apache for example), 'user' software still leaves a lot to be desired.
don't tell me you haven't yet figured out that for things to be very enjoyable for the majority of women (there are exceptions, but they are few and far between) you *do* need to use your fingers (in the manner implied) while you use the other parts you mentioned. Not to mention that having dexterous fingers is definitely an asset in 'warming things up' before 'progressing' to said parts.
I'd have thought that especially the Opteron line would've been a good fit with Apple, and by using those at least they could've mantained some semblance of being 'different' and justify the premium cost for their systems.
Not to mention that AMD's dual core offerings seem a lot better than Intel's, and with apps on the mac already fairly SMP-aware (due to all the dual-G5 boxes Apple sold) I'd have bet that OS/X on a dual dual-core Opteron 275 would've been a much stronger proposition.
fine that these are compatible with s939 after a BIOS update, but will you have to reinstall XP from scratch or will it 'magically' autodetect the 2nd processor? Don't think I've ever read an article discussing this issue yet.
I was definitely skeptical about the monthly fee as well, but since when I got the game that's pretty much the only thing I've been playing so in the end it's not that expensive. I like being able to buy prepaid cards at the store, though, if that was not possible I probably wouldn't have gotten it, as the idea of giving them my c/c to keep on file for recurring billing does not appeal to me.
When the machine does, it's simply frustrating.
it depends: IMHO the best AI would be the computer figuring out exactly how to beat the player and then, depending on the level of difficulty, choose less and less optimal strategies, but strategies that still 'make sense' so it doesn't feel dumb.
I would definitely make it 'cheat' (as in, dynamically adjust the damage from the bullet, say) to make things razor close but in the end often the player win ('often' again would depend from the level of difficulty).
Games are supposed to be entertainment and, like you said, always losing is not a lot of fun (even if it's somebody else online it's still frustrating for the average person, believe me), but winning because the computer opponent is obviously a moron, well, that's not really very good.
I personally finished Far Cry on the 'standard' level of difficulty (with no cheats) and found it quite ridiculously hard at times, and yet it had me coming back for more because mixed in with the really against-all-odds moments there were times where it was 'reasonable' and satisfying. I'd say the only 'bad' level was probably the last, which was way too hard if played as intended (if you realized that you could prevent the door to the ammo room from closing by sticking a chair in it it made things A LOT easier).
Can't some enterprising company hire someone like, say, Brian Azzarello / Warren Ellis / Alan Moore to put a storyline worth a damn into a game?
ever played Planescape:Torment? Unfortunately, probably due to the amount of text and subject matter (not to mention the box art, if they put Fall-from-grace on the cover it would've sold 3x for sure) it didn't do that well commercially and so no sequels or other games in the same vein...
I wish I hadn't played it so I could play it again, only computer game I've ever played that sort of came close to the sense of fulfillment you get from reading a good book.
Personally I'm quite enjoying WoW these days, first ever MMPORG I've played and it's a lot of fun.
and let me clarify, regardless of whom decided to take whose pics, IMHO those pics are 'joint' property of the couple (whether or not they have split up) so unless *both* people agree it's a big no-no for either of them to show them around.
If yahoo didn't comply with her request(s) to take them down she's quite right to sue in my book, in this type of situation I think the policy should be 'take them down right away and figure things out later'. I would also sue the guy as well, although I'm not quite sure exactly if it's even legally feasible to do so.
he wanted pictures of her because they gave him pleasure,
:)
for all you know she wanted the pics to be taken because they gave *her* pleasure, don't be sexist
and when it will be possible to play it effectively without a keyboard+mouse combo.
This is the first MMPORG I've ever played in my life and it's insanely fun, and there's no way I could ever play anything like this on a console.
People will be awestruck at the Xbox 360
no, they won't, especially if Sony 'coincidentally' will release a bunch of prerendered videos and claim that they are actual gameplay footage: people will be ooh-ing and aah-ing and wait for the PS3 launch which will cause MS to lose money on Christmas sales.
I don't really care either way about which brand comes out on top (heck, I have an xbox, a ps2, a gc and a dreamcast to give you an idea) but it would be nice for once not to have to be witness to the usual overhyping (with prerendered videos) and underdelivering shenanigans: you'd expect people to have become a bit more jaded after what happened the last time around with the PS2, but I guess not, considering how many people seem to believe the PS3 videos were real-time.
If the Xbox, a considerably old piece of gaming hardware, can play Doom 3 at the same level as a modern high-end PC
a high-end PC will play doom3 at 1600x1200 with 4xFSAA and Aniso at much higher framerates than the xbox which is running at a quarter the resolution. I also doubt that the shader code running on the xbox is the same as on the PC, given that the xbox has a geforce3.5-class GPU which is 2 generations behind.
I personally think HL2 is a much better yardstick when it comes to graphics quality because, as much as doom3 looked cool, HL2 was a *lot* better (as a game as well, Ravenholm was a heck of a lot scarier than anything doom3 ever did with its teleporting-behind-your-back monsters).
From these posts it does seem you're completely sold on the Sony hype, hey, good for you, I hope you're right; personally I've seen enough console launches in my life to be very, very, very skeptical when it comes to pre-launch demo videos (and some post launch ones as well).
The PS2, despite being hyped beyond all realistic boundaries,
that's why when I see these videos I keep thinking 'unrealistic hype' and that the actual shipping games will be a lot plainer looking: still light years ahead of a PS2 (heck, my PC is already light years ahead of it) but nowhere near THAT much.
why is it unrealistic to assume that, given previous generational advancements in gaming hardware, this one will see equivalent advancement?
because the PC industry has not slowed to a crawl hardware-wise in the meantime, the 6800 series cards (and upcoming G70) and equivalent cards from ATI are light years ahead of what we had 5 years ago and there's no way they'd be able to come even close to that stuff in real time. That's why I am skeptical.
Of course the PS3 and X360 will clean the floor compared to the PS2 and xbox, we're just disagreeing about the magnitude of this cleaning.
HL2 already looks amazing compared to anything possible on the PS2 (esp. with everything maxed out at 1600x1200) and my personal expectation is that the PS3 might be a tad better than that, but not that much: what was shown in those videos (esp. regarding explosions, smoke, physics and poly count) is too far ahead IMHO. Maybe on the PS4, and even then I'm not sure.
Like I said before, I hope I'll have to eat these posts when the PS3 comes out, but I somehow doubt that will be the case.
They've actually said that the PS3's graphics chip is TWICE as powerful as the current top-of-the-line Nvidia card.
exactly, I am running TWO 6800GTs in SLI (although they're not ultras they're only maybe 10% slower) which means I'm running something comparable to the PS3 in terms of graphics power. When the G70 will come out for the PC the PC will again be twice as powerful as likely you'll be able to run it in SLI (which obviously you can't do on a console).
Far Cry, was released in 2004 to run on hardware that was top of the line in 2003
actually Far Cry with the latest patch supports HDR which is definitely not a 2003 feature (and besides looking great it kills the framerate quite a bit). The only thing that sort of comes close to those shots were shots of the new unreal engine, but nobody really knows the framerates it's capable of on current hardware or how much those shots were touched up before being released to the press.
Like somebody said above, the new xbox is 6 months away from launch, they've showed circuit boards etc. but very few (if any) demos, the PS3 is going to launch 6 months AFTER the xbox and yet, despite not having seen any hardware shot, they have already plenty perfect looking demos: I am finding that quite hard to believe.
On similar specs I agree that the consoles will outperform a PC, but given how notoriously hard to program for Sony's consoles have been, I really doubt they'd already have been able to optimize things that much. If that was the case 2 years down the road you'd see things that would blow these demos out of the water (just compare SSX to SSX3 for example) which seems hard to believe.
Again, it would sure be nice if that kind of CG was created in realtime with a $300 piece of hardware, but I think I'll remain on the skeptic side for a while longer (also remembering the PS2 hype some years back).
It somehow feels that Sony is trying to pull a dreamcast on the xbox360 (overpromising so people will wait) but I'm not sure they'll be able to manage it this time.
There are only two reasons I can imagine why you would suggest that it looks "too" good: 1) You have not been following the evolution of gaming consoles in the past, or noted the significant differences they had (the improvements have always been incredibly significant); or 2) You have not played any of the top current console games at any great length.
actually I have done both, and I still have the feeling that those demos had things composited in/prerendered: given how far away the console is from shipping you'd expect the final hardware to be barely hot of the presses, which means very little dev time, which means that whatever engines/software would not be yet very optimized.
The lighting effects, the materials, the smoke effects, the explosions all seem too good to be true to my jaded eyes (especially running in 720p like it's sort of implied): I might be proven wrong when it ships, and I really hope I will, but until then I'll keep wearing my skeptic hat.
I have a PC with a 6800GT in SLI and there is no way that it could ever do what was shown in those videos in 720p (Far Cry sure looks awesome, but it's still an order of magnitude or two worse than them). As much as the CPUs in the consoles are more powerful, the marketing material talks about their video card being a little more powerful than a 6800Ultra/SLI setup, which in my opinion is nowhere (by far) near enough to produce that kind of CGI in realtime.
Again, I hope I'm wrong, I really do, I guess we'll see in 6-8 months.
I will be very surprised if the actual game will look like the video, what with the Grand Canyon, motion blur, focus depth, lighting effects, forests made of realistic trees, pit stops with tons of guys running around and everything: it does look a bit too good as well and quite possibly prerendered/composited...
... could somebody please explain me how exactly this whole concept of 'rider' bills got started and, most important, how it continues without being made illegal?
Who exactly has the authority to 'attach' things to a bill? If I was a politician and was sure that a bill had a 100% chance of passing (say, one of these 'emergency, need money for our troops' bills), what would prevent me from attaching to it a few pork projects for the people who elected me for example?
actually even the throw back was debunked, they hung up a pig carcass in such a way that a minimal push would cause it to fall down then they tried with lots of different weapons and no dice.
'one finger in the right spot' doesn't mean anything, you could have a finger and 400lb of pressure and then OF COURSE you could push anything backwards: the momentum a projectile has is not as big as you probably imagine, although v is quite high m is also quite small (p = mv).
Americans refuse to work in a factory or dig holes or whatever menial labor job for $4 bucks an hour
if it was possible to live on a $4/hour salary I'm sure a lot of Americans would line up for those jobs. It was not that long ago that a vanilla assembly line factory worker was able to bring home enough $$$ to support a stay-at-home mom, children and a house in the suburbs, to do that now you'd need to gross anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000/year depending on where you live, and I don't know of many blue collar jobs that pay that much.
I am not one to advocate protectionism, but it's starting to get nuts with so many jobs disappearing due to somebody in China or India being able to do them for 1/10th the cost.
I'm not sure how things could be fixed, some starting points would be to make the minimum wage something more representative of what the cost of living is, which probably would mean tripling or quadrupling the current one in most areas of the USA/Canada.
Another good thing would be to make corporations pay equivalent salaries wherever their workforce is: say, if IBM is a US company, *and* in the US an average software developer should be paid $70,000/year, IBM should be made to pay that amount regardless if they hire a local or remote engineer thus rendering outsourcing totally pointless.
Will this ever happen? I totally doubt it, the way things are going now society will become more and more polarized between the haves and have nots, if credit cards did not exist and people had to actually pay for everything out of their own pockets I'm sure the bubble would burst quite quickly.
It would be nice if some economist did some study of the effect of personal debt availability vs recessions, IMHO as much as being able to increase your personal debt will enable you to keep things going for a while longer, it can't last forever.