The latest issue of Widescreen Review Magazine reviews a new "virtual speakers through headphones" technology and rates them as *completely transparent* and a revolutionary technology. Those of you who don't know, Widescreen Review is one of the most critical and technical magazines out there. They are the guys who first promoted DTS as better than Dolby Digital and championed it in the industry. A fact, many now agree with but at the time, DTS was poo-pooed as sounding the same as Dolby Digital. Gary Reber, who did the review, is an influential person in the industry.
The new headphones do two things different:
1. They measure in-ear results and tailor the sound for each user. This is done automatically (test signal sequences and such) and not in a lab. There are default settings but they sound a lot like what you get from the typical 5.1 virtualization which sound fake or like the sound is coming inside your head.
2. They headphones measure which way is forward. In normal virtualization, as soon as you move your head, the virtual sound is immediately made false. This is because the sound moves with your head. In this new technology, if you turn your head left/right, the sound is still locked in place, towards the screen/monitor.
Finally, Gary Reber and a bunch of test experts themselves could not tell the difference between their very expensive speaker/amp setups (In the tens of thousands) and their headphone setup. They were walking around the room, up to speakers, etc. and were having a hard time. And Gary himself admits he didn't even want to take the review at first because it sounded gimicky.
Of course, to get the sound of that room and the speakers, you have to "set up" the headphones in that room because it uses the speaker system and in ear results to make adjustments to the sound. But wouldn't it be awesome to have a reference room to make measurements in (say the audiophile store in the city center), then come back home, and play games or watch movies with the equivalent of $100,000 speakers that the experts can't tell the difference with?
You bet.
I'm excited about this and it is all software that is to be licensed. It is going to be expensive at first but I can see this being the killer consumer technology of the future.
I said this to a friend before and he started laughing uncontrollably but I still think it's a good idea (or at the very least one that should be explored).
Once we have active suspensions, I think it would be cool to actually tilt the car into the turn, much like a boat does. I mean, I wouldn't do it at the extreme angles of a boat but it would help push you into the seat instead of into the side bolsters and you wouldn't be fighting against the sideways force so much this.
I think this would improve the driver's performance much like a good seat, driving position or steering wheel does without actually affecting the performance of the car.
I think things may get complicated with wheel angles (camber I think or the other one? Sorry, too lazy to look it up) but a slight angling might actually give a better contact patch on the outside wheel instead of the inside which would be preferred.
Your sentiments are understandable but here are a few points:
1. The seat belt problem is a political issue, not a technical one. Up here in Canada, we all wear seatbelts and motorized harnesses are not mandated so we don't have them.
2. Yes, cars are more complex but I think overall the complexity saves us money or adds real value. Because by the time your car gets overheated for a real reason, the damage has become real bad and more expensive.
3. I don't know if active suspension will ever become inexpensive but some things that were supposedly luxury are now pretty standard and accepted. ABS for example, has found its way into cheaper cars and A/C used to be a luxury. In fact, there are few things in my car that I would want to do without.
4. The active suspension doesn't stop you from noticing the wear on your car, it STOPS the wear on your car (except maybe the tires but the screaching sound might give you an indication of that). By obsorbing all those bumps, your whole car doesn't have to have themselves shaken all over the place. Basically, a spring can't do the same thing because it has no intelligence to tell a long prolonged pressure (e.g. a turn) vs. a short one (a bump in the road). It does estimate it (with shocks vs. springs) but it will never be as good as an intelligent system. That said, it's not very everybody. I drive a very tightly sprung car (a Ferrari 360 Modena and a loosely sprung IMHO Toyota Celica GT-S) and I actually find other cars that are supposedly tightly sprung (like an S2000) a little loose feeling now. For some, that rough feel is part of the experience. That said, I think there is a market for it, especially in the luxury/performance area.
If you have had a Quad XGA for three years now, which I can't imagine the price of at that time (must be CRT projector), you should be able and willing to spend a bit of change (I think around $600?) on a DVHS recorder.
Also, there is such a thing as satellite tv nowadays where you should be able to pick up HD channels. With DVHS, you may be able to record some of the movies as well.
I think automatic translation would be a great idea though I entirely agree that arbitrary documents, probably couldn't be translated with any sort of accuracy.
I think, however, it would be great for a software program to come out that would enforce writing in simple English sentences so that you could pass ideas to non-English speaking users quickly.
This would be akin to a programming language but the language would be English. For example, when we write documentation for our software, I insist on the language to be simple, direct and non-technical. While, at times, I'll write more complicated documents depending on my target (though I prefer simple, direct and non-technical by default most of the times anyways).
In the same way, we could write English that is simple and direct and the translation software would flag anything it doesn't understand. After a while, you will probably learn its style and you'd have a lot less need to revise.
For example, a sentence the translator couldn't translate easily or a sentence that could be ambiguous could be flagged like bad grammar (or supposed bad grammar) in a Word document is. Then we could just edit it.
At the end, we'd have a simple and direct translation to another language that we can almost be guaranteed works because the engine was smart enough to tell us when it doesn't. And by the nature of it flagging it naturally and unobtrusively (because you can go back later to edit, and not while you are in your train of thought) you actually learn to write in a translation safe way.
It's not a translator but it's going to be a whole shitload cheaper than one. Another thing is if you are writing documentation for multiple languages that just happens to be simple and direct, it would facilitate a great first draft. Then your translator only need be paid for the revisions which would probably be much cheaper than doing it from scratch.
The originaly Star Wars trilogy has been pushed back another 10 years. Lucas says that he is now spending time on the next trilogy and doesn't have time for the original and he would like to make the original release absolutely perfect.
In related news, Lucas is rumored to be modifying the original trilogy to match with the timeline of the final trilogy and a special edition of the latest trilogy is being prepared for the same reasons.
So you don't want a windowing system that is flexible, because people might want to take advantage of that flexibility?
I'm afraid you have it ass backwards. An integrated system allows you the *flexibility* to do whatever you want, including a uniform interface.
You can still do whatever you want with the interface ultimately but you would be encouraged to do it the consistent way. The encouragement would come from the fact that you wouldn't have to build standard features from scratch every time.
For example, Windows never stopped Photoshop from implementing their proprietary windowing subsystem for their palettes and such. But I, for one, am glad that they still use standard drop down menus, minimize/maximize buttons, etc.
Wow... This is brilliant on the part of the insurance company.
1. They allow drivers to voluntarily put this device in their cars for reduced insurance rates.
2. Drivers get used to having these devices in their cars.
3. Now that everybody is used to it, it is much easier to require it for insurance. So, they require it for insurance. With a few insurance companies doing it, it becomes the norm.
Of course, the caveat to the insurance companies is that fast driving does not mean dangerous driving. Many drive slower and (seemingly) safer but have more accidents.
Unfortunately, those boxes can't measure driver skill or the situations under which good/bad driving occurs. For example, 100 km/h is safe on the highway unless there is a lot of traffic with heavy rain and/or snow. Also, I drive a van at a fraction of the speed of my sports car. Driving at any speed in a van is much scarier than burning rubber in a sports car.
Re:Obligatory Futurama reference ...
on
3D Monitor
·
· Score: 1
What would you say to a game of Tennis?
Sorry, I couldn't help it. One of my old friends had something similar and had a helluva time figuring out where the ball was.
When you have a lawyer (especially for the first time) and you don't understand the law, you feel obligated to listen to your lawyer. Before I understood that what I want is ultimately what should drive my decision, I let a lawyer convince me into behavior that I later regretted. It wasn't quite so public or bad but I understand how should could have been suggested into a course of action ("You're just protecting your name and this is how we do it corporately.")
Lawyers encourage you to be aggressive.
That Katie later withdrew her statements and apologized doesn't mean she was a meanie to begin with. Just like the social psychology studies, a person in a perceived position of power (a lawyer is certainly one) can affect your behavior.
I'm not saying Katie's behavior was right. Only that it is forgivable and she ultimately did the right thing. We should forgive her.
You make it sound like supporting only MPEG2 is a good thing.
This reduces the quality of the video coming out of Blu Ray or MPEG4 by a factor of 3. MPEG2 is not as good at compressing video with a given bit rate. In other words, the new codecs can hold 3x the quality or content in the same amount of space.
But that is moot.
Blu Ray is planning to adopt either MPEG4, WMV(VC-9) or both in July of this year. They've agreed that using an old codec is a bad idea. See the current August 2004 issue of Widescreen magazine for details.
There is also a good interview with Microsoft on WMV. Whether you like Microsoft or not (and I'm guessing not for most), the Interview is informative.
The one bone I have to pick about SQL is there is no standard way of retrieving the value of an Identity, Counter, AutoIncrement (or whatever your database calls it) field after inserting a record. This is brain dead.
Every SQL dialect has a special, unique way of getting the value in this field. Many (not all) things in SQL can be written to be compatible with virtually every database (if you are very very careful) except this one important thing. I know you can requery the database with all the fields or insert a unique ID manually but this seems like a horrible hack to me.
The cap doesn't seem that unreasonable as it is probably protecting other text messaging users from spam.
According to the article, some users were sending 100,000 messages per month. This is the equivalent of 3,333 messages per day. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of legitimate uses for this many messages except for commercial dispatch (for example) but in those instances, those companies should be expected to pay. I mean, as a messaging user, I sure don't want to subsidize a dispatch company for their commercial usage of the feature.
Perhaps the limit is a little too low but I personally don't see many people using an average of more than 33 messages per day. Note this is average and not, for example, one bad day with the server going up and down all the time.
Wives and shit ironing robots don't even come close.
I would tend to agree. I've never had much need for having shit ironed. In fact, I don't much want to imagine the action much less the smell.
Re:Why Final Fantasy failed.
on
Shrek 2 How-To
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, using animation to do serious drama is stupid. Just like those failures: Akira, Grave of the Fireflies, Cowboy Bebop and a vast cross section of Hiyao Miyazake's work.
Just because Final Fantasy failed doesn't mean CG and drama can't succeed. This is like saying there is no room for cyber movies because of Johnny Mnemonic. Up until the Matrix, this is EXACTLY what everyone was saying.
Well, there are a lot of reasons but one that many don't know about is this.
But first a bit of background.
I was actually able to see a prototype of a (very low powered) laser that draws an image onto your retina. This was like maybe 5 years ago and it was the size of a full size freezer.
By looking into something that is quite similar to a viewfinder attached to the said freezer sized prototype, you could see an image. The cool part, is that you don't actually need a background "black" and hence the image can float in the air for you while you look at other things. They predict this device could be stuck on a pair of glasses (or sunglasses) in the future ala terminator overlay style. Yes, I saw it work but at the time it was the huge prototype.
I know how regular 3D works with one image to the left and one image to the right. But one of the big problems is that your eye cannot FOCUS on the image because to you an image might look like it is close to your face (via the left/right eye difference) but the actual image is far back where the screen is. This disparity causes you to feel nauseous. But a laser (and they hadn't done this yet) could modulate to place the image focally where it's supposed to be.
To make this more clear, if I drop a pebble in a pond, the curve of the ripple is different when I am near the drop point (very curved) compared to when I am far away (almost linear). In real life, the curve of the things you look at are all different based on how close/far they are. In 3D MOVIES, the line is always the same shape but your brain is interpreting it as either closer or farther (or is trying to anyways). Whamo. Instant headaches and nausea because your brain is having trouble figuring out what you are actually seeing the object.
Doh! I know I'm too late to get modded up on this but I just have to say it.
12 is a great number but it is NOT a good reason for having 12" in a foot. It IS a great reason why our numbering system should have been base 12 to begin with! Barring changing our numbering system though, metric works great.
If games were priced at around $20 MSRP, I'd buy them just to put into my library. In a sense, they'd be like collectibles that I might play occasionally, especially when friends are over.
I find DVDs are actually pretty reasonably priced (CDs not!), especially some of the ones that have been on the market for a while and have come down to $10. I have a huge library of DVDs and friends will sometimes borrow them. I like this.
Games have no such collectible value. Unless I absolutely LOVE the game, I'm not going to add it to my collection for $60 for the sake of having it. But at $20, I would buy many of them.
At the risk of being called flamebait, I don't mind great games costing more. I'd be willing to pay more for a game like Gran Turismo 4 when it comes out because of its play value. But for those cool but not great racing games (I'm a driving game fan), I'd pack in a bunch of them at $20 a piece that I would never consider buying at $60.
Okay, I know this is the typical response but it has to be said: Where the $#@ is the credibility in this piece?
There is no information on how the people being surveyed were selected and how they were surveyed. I always find it suspicious at the least and downright misleading at the worst when people do their own surveys without revealing the details of data collection. A sample size would be nice.
It doesn't have to be super-detailed for the press release but it ought to at least say "Through out Internet survey to 100 of our members" would at least give context to their results.
If it's skewed I want to know. If it's accurate, I want to know that too.
Okay, I may be burning Karma here on a data point of "1" but I'm curious. I am Japanese and have played games all my life.
But I get incredibly sick and disoriented playing FPS. I've tried on several occasions thinking that my vertigo might improve but have finally given up knowing that I will just feel sick in the end.
I can play GTA, Tomb Raider and many a third person games and I love any racer but FPS just makes me sick. I wonder if Japanese (or Asians) are in any way pre-disposed to not orienting with FPS for some reason. Maybe it doesn't make all Japanese sick but maybe we just aren't built for it. Kind of like the fact that, generally speaking, we ain't built for milk (lactose intolerance in asians is high).
One of the best applications for this chip is a programmable Graphics card.
Imagine the optimizations that you could do for the next release of the Doom engine. They could own the market for GPUs that optimizes itself for specific games. Could be amazing.
Couldn't we break the "single" hierarchy model after all? Maybe each drive could have multiple hierarchies that are mirrors of each other in structure only but unique in content. E.g.:
- Applications - Config - Data
These hierarchies are usually independantly looked at but you can "change view" to see, for example, all of the "application" files and "config files" in "/graphics/photoshop/".
I know it's not 100% (for example, my "data" files aren't always tied to my application structure), but it has the benefit of copying an entire app and in some cases the data (e.g. an accounting programs data) at one time.
With a consistent naming structure or perhaps the use of some GUID based ids for components, we could potentially solve dependency issues. Maybe another hierarchy then for GUIDs that would, of course, be protected like the app so one library couldn't masquerade for another.
Slashdot Mirror
And in a dramatic reversal, Shrimp takes Prawn (twice no less). Before you mod me down, read the parent.
This is not as funny as it seems.
The latest issue of Widescreen Review Magazine reviews a new "virtual speakers through headphones" technology and rates them as *completely transparent* and a revolutionary technology. Those of you who don't know, Widescreen Review is one of the most critical and technical magazines out there. They are the guys who first promoted DTS as better than Dolby Digital and championed it in the industry. A fact, many now agree with but at the time, DTS was poo-pooed as sounding the same as Dolby Digital. Gary Reber, who did the review, is an influential person in the industry.
The new headphones do two things different:
1. They measure in-ear results and tailor the sound for each user. This is done automatically (test signal sequences and such) and not in a lab. There are default settings but they sound a lot like what you get from the typical 5.1 virtualization which sound fake or like the sound is coming inside your head.
2. They headphones measure which way is forward. In normal virtualization, as soon as you move your head, the virtual sound is immediately made false. This is because the sound moves with your head. In this new technology, if you turn your head left/right, the sound is still locked in place, towards the screen/monitor.
Finally, Gary Reber and a bunch of test experts themselves could not tell the difference between their very expensive speaker/amp setups (In the tens of thousands) and their headphone setup. They were walking around the room, up to speakers, etc. and were having a hard time. And Gary himself admits he didn't even want to take the review at first because it sounded gimicky.
Of course, to get the sound of that room and the speakers, you have to "set up" the headphones in that room because it uses the speaker system and in ear results to make adjustments to the sound. But wouldn't it be awesome to have a reference room to make measurements in (say the audiophile store in the city center), then come back home, and play games or watch movies with the equivalent of $100,000 speakers that the experts can't tell the difference with?
You bet.
I'm excited about this and it is all software that is to be licensed. It is going to be expensive at first but I can see this being the killer consumer technology of the future.
I said this to a friend before and he started laughing uncontrollably but I still think it's a good idea (or at the very least one that should be explored).
Once we have active suspensions, I think it would be cool to actually tilt the car into the turn, much like a boat does. I mean, I wouldn't do it at the extreme angles of a boat but it would help push you into the seat instead of into the side bolsters and you wouldn't be fighting against the sideways force so much this.
I think this would improve the driver's performance much like a good seat, driving position or steering wheel does without actually affecting the performance of the car.
I think things may get complicated with wheel angles (camber I think or the other one? Sorry, too lazy to look it up) but a slight angling might actually give a better contact patch on the outside wheel instead of the inside which would be preferred.
Your sentiments are understandable but here are a few points:
1. The seat belt problem is a political issue, not a technical one. Up here in Canada, we all wear seatbelts and motorized harnesses are not mandated so we don't have them.
2. Yes, cars are more complex but I think overall the complexity saves us money or adds real value. Because by the time your car gets overheated for a real reason, the damage has become real bad and more expensive.
3. I don't know if active suspension will ever become inexpensive but some things that were supposedly luxury are now pretty standard and accepted. ABS for example, has found its way into cheaper cars and A/C used to be a luxury. In fact, there are few things in my car that I would want to do without.
4. The active suspension doesn't stop you from noticing the wear on your car, it STOPS the wear on your car (except maybe the tires but the screaching sound might give you an indication of that). By obsorbing all those bumps, your whole car doesn't have to have themselves shaken all over the place. Basically, a spring can't do the same thing because it has no intelligence to tell a long prolonged pressure (e.g. a turn) vs. a short one (a bump in the road). It does estimate it (with shocks vs. springs) but it will never be as good as an intelligent system. That said, it's not very everybody. I drive a very tightly sprung car (a Ferrari 360 Modena and a loosely sprung IMHO Toyota Celica GT-S) and I actually find other cars that are supposedly tightly sprung (like an S2000) a little loose feeling now. For some, that rough feel is part of the experience. That said, I think there is a market for it, especially in the luxury/performance area.
If you have had a Quad XGA for three years now, which I can't imagine the price of at that time (must be CRT projector), you should be able and willing to spend a bit of change (I think around $600?) on a DVHS recorder.
Also, there is such a thing as satellite tv nowadays where you should be able to pick up HD channels. With DVHS, you may be able to record some of the movies as well.
I think automatic translation would be a great idea though I entirely agree that arbitrary documents, probably couldn't be translated with any sort of accuracy.
I think, however, it would be great for a software program to come out that would enforce writing in simple English sentences so that you could pass ideas to non-English speaking users quickly.
This would be akin to a programming language but the language would be English. For example, when we write documentation for our software, I insist on the language to be simple, direct and non-technical. While, at times, I'll write more complicated documents depending on my target (though I prefer simple, direct and non-technical by default most of the times anyways).
In the same way, we could write English that is simple and direct and the translation software would flag anything it doesn't understand. After a while, you will probably learn its style and you'd have a lot less need to revise.
For example, a sentence the translator couldn't translate easily or a sentence that could be ambiguous could be flagged like bad grammar (or supposed bad grammar) in a Word document is. Then we could just edit it.
At the end, we'd have a simple and direct translation to another language that we can almost be guaranteed works because the engine was smart enough to tell us when it doesn't. And by the nature of it flagging it naturally and unobtrusively (because you can go back later to edit, and not while you are in your train of thought) you actually learn to write in a translation safe way.
It's not a translator but it's going to be a whole shitload cheaper than one. Another thing is if you are writing documentation for multiple languages that just happens to be simple and direct, it would facilitate a great first draft. Then your translator only need be paid for the revisions which would probably be much cheaper than doing it from scratch.
The originaly Star Wars trilogy has been pushed back another 10 years. Lucas says that he is now spending time on the next trilogy and doesn't have time for the original and he would like to make the original release absolutely perfect.
In related news, Lucas is rumored to be modifying the original trilogy to match with the timeline of the final trilogy and a special edition of the latest trilogy is being prepared for the same reasons.
I wonder if George Lucas will revise history again and say that he *DID* originally plan to film 9 chapters from the beginning.
The story on this has changed a few times.
So you don't want a windowing system that is flexible, because people might want to take advantage of that flexibility?
I'm afraid you have it ass backwards. An integrated system allows you the *flexibility* to do whatever you want, including a uniform interface.
You can still do whatever you want with the interface ultimately but you would be encouraged to do it the consistent way. The encouragement would come from the fact that you wouldn't have to build standard features from scratch every time.
For example, Windows never stopped Photoshop from implementing their proprietary windowing subsystem for their palettes and such. But I, for one, am glad that they still use standard drop down menus, minimize/maximize buttons, etc.
Somebody mod the parent "why is this modded funny?" up please. This IS how the banking system works.
Wow... This is brilliant on the part of the insurance company.
1. They allow drivers to voluntarily put this device in their cars for reduced insurance rates.
2. Drivers get used to having these devices in their cars.
3. Now that everybody is used to it, it is much easier to require it for insurance. So, they require it for insurance. With a few insurance companies doing it, it becomes the norm.
Of course, the caveat to the insurance companies is that fast driving does not mean dangerous driving. Many drive slower and (seemingly) safer but have more accidents.
Unfortunately, those boxes can't measure driver skill or the situations under which good/bad driving occurs. For example, 100 km/h is safe on the highway unless there is a lot of traffic with heavy rain and/or snow. Also, I drive a van at a fraction of the speed of my sports car. Driving at any speed in a van is much scarier than burning rubber in a sports car.
What would you say to a game of Tennis?
Sorry, I couldn't help it. One of my old friends had something similar and had a helluva time figuring out where the ball was.
You've never had a lawyer before.
When you have a lawyer (especially for the first time) and you don't understand the law, you feel obligated to listen to your lawyer. Before I understood that what I want is ultimately what should drive my decision, I let a lawyer convince me into behavior that I later regretted. It wasn't quite so public or bad but I understand how should could have been suggested into a course of action ("You're just protecting your name and this is how we do it corporately.")
Lawyers encourage you to be aggressive.
That Katie later withdrew her statements and apologized doesn't mean she was a meanie to begin with. Just like the social psychology studies, a person in a perceived position of power (a lawyer is certainly one) can affect your behavior.
I'm not saying Katie's behavior was right. Only that it is forgivable and she ultimately did the right thing. We should forgive her.
You make it sound like supporting only MPEG2
is a good thing.
This reduces the quality of the video coming out of Blu Ray or MPEG4 by a factor of 3. MPEG2 is not as good at compressing video with a given bit rate. In other words, the new codecs can hold 3x the quality or content in the same amount of space.
But that is moot.
Blu Ray is planning to adopt either MPEG4, WMV(VC-9) or both in July of this year. They've agreed that using an old codec is a bad idea. See the current August 2004 issue of Widescreen magazine for details.
There is also a good interview with Microsoft on WMV. Whether you like Microsoft or not (and I'm guessing not for most), the Interview is informative.
The one bone I have to pick about SQL is there is no standard way of retrieving the value of an Identity, Counter, AutoIncrement (or whatever your database calls it) field after inserting a record. This is brain dead.
Every SQL dialect has a special, unique way of getting the value in this field. Many (not all) things in SQL can be written to be compatible with virtually every database (if you are very very careful) except this one important thing. I know you can requery the database with all the fields or insert a unique ID manually but this seems like a horrible hack to me.
The cap doesn't seem that unreasonable as it is probably protecting other text messaging users from spam.
According to the article, some users were sending 100,000 messages per month. This is the equivalent of 3,333 messages per day. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of legitimate uses for this many messages except for commercial dispatch (for example) but in those instances, those companies should be expected to pay. I mean, as a messaging user, I sure don't want to subsidize a dispatch company for their commercial usage of the feature.
Perhaps the limit is a little too low but I personally don't see many people using an average of more than 33 messages per day. Note this is average and not, for example, one bad day with the server going up and down all the time.
I would tend to agree. I've never had much need for having shit ironed. In fact, I don't much want to imagine the action much less the smell.
Yeah, using animation to do serious drama is stupid. Just like those failures: Akira, Grave of the Fireflies, Cowboy Bebop and a vast cross section of Hiyao Miyazake's work.
Just because Final Fantasy failed doesn't mean CG and drama can't succeed. This is like saying there is no room for cyber movies because of Johnny Mnemonic. Up until the Matrix, this is EXACTLY what everyone was saying.
Well, there are a lot of reasons but one that many don't know about is this.
But first a bit of background.
I was actually able to see a prototype of a (very low powered) laser that draws an image onto your retina. This was like maybe 5 years ago and it was the size of a full size freezer.
By looking into something that is quite similar to a viewfinder attached to the said freezer sized prototype, you could see an image. The cool part, is that you don't actually need a background "black" and hence the image can float in the air for you while you look at other things. They predict this device could be stuck on a pair of glasses (or sunglasses) in the future ala terminator overlay style. Yes, I saw it work but at the time it was the huge prototype.
I know how regular 3D works with one image to the left and one image to the right. But one of the big problems is that your eye cannot FOCUS on the image because to you an image might look like it is close to your face (via the left/right eye difference) but the actual image is far back where the screen is. This disparity causes you to feel nauseous. But a laser (and they hadn't done this yet) could modulate to place the image focally where it's supposed to be.
To make this more clear, if I drop a pebble in a pond, the curve of the ripple is different when I am near the drop point (very curved) compared to when I am far away (almost linear). In real life, the curve of the things you look at are all different based on how close/far they are. In 3D MOVIES, the line is always the same shape but your brain is interpreting it as either closer or farther (or is trying to anyways). Whamo. Instant headaches and nausea because your brain is having trouble figuring out what you are actually seeing the object.
Doh! I know I'm too late to get modded up on this but I just have to say it.
12 is a great number but it is NOT a good reason for having 12" in a foot. It IS a great reason why our numbering system should have been base 12 to begin with! Barring changing our numbering system though, metric works great.
If games were priced at around $20 MSRP, I'd buy them just to put into my library. In a sense, they'd be like collectibles that I might play occasionally, especially when friends are over.
I find DVDs are actually pretty reasonably priced (CDs not!), especially some of the ones that have been on the market for a while and have come down to $10. I have a huge library of DVDs and friends will sometimes borrow them. I like this.
Games have no such collectible value. Unless I absolutely LOVE the game, I'm not going to add it to my collection for $60 for the sake of having it. But at $20, I would buy many of them.
At the risk of being called flamebait, I don't mind great games costing more. I'd be willing to pay more for a game like Gran Turismo 4 when it comes out because of its play value. But for those cool but not great racing games (I'm a driving game fan), I'd pack in a bunch of them at $20 a piece that I would never consider buying at $60.
Okay, I know this is the typical response but it has to be said: Where the $#@ is the credibility in this piece?
There is no information on how the people being surveyed were selected and how they were surveyed. I always find it suspicious at the least and downright misleading at the worst when people do their own surveys without revealing the details of data collection. A sample size would be nice.
It doesn't have to be super-detailed for the press release but it ought to at least say "Through out Internet survey to 100 of our members" would at least give context to their results.
If it's skewed I want to know. If it's accurate, I want to know that too.
Okay, I may be burning Karma here on a data point of "1" but I'm curious. I am Japanese and have played games all my life.
But I get incredibly sick and disoriented playing FPS. I've tried on several occasions thinking that my vertigo might improve but have finally given up knowing that I will just feel sick in the end.
I can play GTA, Tomb Raider and many a third person games and I love any racer but FPS just makes me sick. I wonder if Japanese (or Asians) are in any way pre-disposed to not orienting with FPS for some reason. Maybe it doesn't make all Japanese sick but maybe we just aren't built for it. Kind of like the fact that, generally speaking, we ain't built for milk (lactose intolerance in asians is high).
One of the best applications for this chip is a programmable Graphics card.
Imagine the optimizations that you could do for the next release of the Doom engine. They could own the market for GPUs that optimizes itself for specific games. Could be amazing.
Couldn't we break the "single" hierarchy model after all? Maybe each drive could have multiple hierarchies that are mirrors of each other in structure only but unique in content. E.g.:
- Applications
- Config
- Data
These hierarchies are usually independantly looked at but you can "change view" to see, for example, all of the "application" files and "config files" in "/graphics/photoshop/".
I know it's not 100% (for example, my "data" files aren't always tied to my application structure), but it has the benefit of copying an entire app and in some cases the data (e.g. an accounting programs data) at one time.
With a consistent naming structure or perhaps the use of some GUID based ids for components, we could potentially solve dependency issues. Maybe another hierarchy then for GUIDs that would, of course, be protected like the app so one library couldn't masquerade for another.