No, you're looking at it the wrong way. A graphics card has several tasks, but you can broadly categorize the two major functions as: 1. Drawing stuff 2. Displaying what's been drawn These are mostly independent functions, though there is some synchronization that allows the display part to start displaying what has just been drawn as soon as possible.
When a card is drawing stuff, it's typically utilizing memory that is separate from what's being displayed. Thus, if you are computing stuff instead of drawing stuff, it has no effect on what is being displayed. However, it does mean that other drawing tasks may be slowed down, so if you were running a 3D game at the same time as computing stuff, the performance would suffer. But your typical desktop drawing activity leaves the GPU idle most of the time. In that sense, you are indeed using extra capacity in the GPU.
The sub $300 graphics card will probably still be faster than the $1000 CPU, and the high school geek might get a cracked version of the $1200 software, so it's still within his purview.
In any case, the USD1000 video card is sub $800 now, and will be half that in a few months. The advancement of technology will let all threats eventually percolate down to the lowest levels.
I don't think success will be determined by the quality of the hardware or the software running on it.
As shown repeatedly by Apple, success is determined by focusing on the whole picture: -the hardware -the software running on the device -the software running on the computer the device is attached to -the entire supply chain of the digital properties (the books, in this case) -the consumer--addressing all aspects of his experience, from opening the box, to buying books, to daily use, to: -customer service
In short, give the customer the experience he wants, and he'll pay a lot of money for it. If the whole thing does exactly what most people want, then most people will have no need to hack it. If any aspect is lacking, then there's an opportunity for someone else to slip in, but they'll have to do better in every way, not just one way.
I bought a laptop motherboard on Ebay once (I was mainly after the CPU that was on it). It was the victim of a soda spill. The soda, left unwashed, dissolved away several of the tiny legs of one of the main ICs. That one never saw life again.
I also bought a MacBook, and upon realizing that soda had spilled in it too, I took out the motherboard and ran it through the dishwasher, then parked it in front of a fan for a couple of days. The soda had eaten away two tiny traces, but I was able to repair them with conductive ink (applied with the help of a single hair and a 4x eyepiece magnifier). That MacBook still works fine today.
In short: water is generally harmless, if you let it dry. Soda is like acid, however, and should be rinsed off immediately.
I'm wondering how long it will be until all aspects of war are virtualized, and the rest of us can then just get on with our lives. Sort of like "A Taste for Armageddon," but leave out the mandatory execution part.
I was thinking about this too. Normally, on the news, you see a second or so of latency when a US anchor talks to a reporter on the other side of the world,but this is due to the signal being bounced off of geostationary satellites a couple of times. The satellites are ~22K miles away, so if you assume the signal must bounce off 2 satellites, then that's 8 hops * 22K mi / speed of light = nearly 1 second of latency for a round trip.
If, instead of using satellites, we assume that there's some kind of ground link between Las Vegas and Afghanistan, then the distance is somewhere between 8K miles (straight arc), and, I don't know, double that. Then the round-trip latency could be as low as 85 - 170 msec. Of course, it's likely that at least one satellite bounce is involved, but it could conceivably be a low-earth-orbit one instead of a geostationary one. The real latency figure is probably somewhere between the two cases I outlined.
So yes, in summary, putting the pilot so far away does seem to introduce some unavoidable latency. I suppose for certain types of missions, its tolerable. It's not like the drones are doing dogfights. It'd be interesting to get more details, but, I imagine, a lot may be classified.
A license would never work, but, how about something that can be implemented in software, sort of like a breathalyzer test for a car that locks out the ignition?
We need some kind of "moron-alyzer" test that locks out your internet access in case of stupidity.
I tried not wearing my watch for a while. I was fine for a few months, until I started making some airline trips. I didn't like being unable to tell the time during various parts of the flights.
I'm back to wearing my watch again. It's more convenient than pulling my phone out of my pocket, and its battery has regularly lasted more than 10 years each time.
Obviously, current user interfaces would suck on a watch.
However, give that puppy *good* voice recognition and speech output, and then they're on to something.
However, at this point in time, it doesn't seem like we've got the processing & battery density necessary for this to work well. Eventually, though, who knows?
Looks like this would compete with Microvision's products. Microvision uses a 2-axis MEMS scanner, so noise is not an issue. Also, why use phosphors if the lasers are already RGB? Must be an issue of efficiency, I gather. I can't see the Prysm product as filling anything but a niche.
Having a patterned screen would require convergence calibration with the beam. This could be automated with a camera feedback system, but that adds expense. This is also why it can't practically use a DMD driver: you can calibrate a swept beam just by changing the timing. You can't calibrate a DMD in the same way, since the mirrors are just bistable (2 position only).
I've kind of wondered if the ease of access to pornography has changed people's attitudes with regard to being in porno videos themselves. The recent article about what percentage of teens have participated in "sexting" makes me think that attitudes are indeed changing.
There is no 120 hz standard video format. That's the TV taking a 60 hz signal and doubling it up internally. That's not the same thing as taking 120 hz as input and showing that on the screen. In any case, the 3D formats are part of the HDMI 1.4 standard, which didn't exist when TVs based on HDMI 1.3 were made.
I think Holographic displays are really the holy grail of 3d displays. But they will have a tremendous impact on the way movies are filmed not just watched. Every set would have to be built to work in 360 degree 3d, well at least hopefully.
Not really. You'll find that live stage productions often don't look very good from beside or behind the stage, but that doesn't make them unappealing.
Certainly, you could imagine holographic movies that allow viewing from any angle. I suppose the upskirt fetishists would be in heaven. But a lot of the art & creativity of a movie comes from the director controlling exactly how you view a scene.
While look-at-from-any-angle holographic displays may be neat and useful, another type of interesting 3D display would be a lightfield display that represents looking into a window into another world. Just like a window, you'd see different scenery depending at what angle you view it from. Creating a display like this would require that each pixel of a TV sent out, in a controlled manner, different light rays depending upon the direction. Essentially, each pixel sends out a whole "image" of rays over its hemisphere of emission (you could actually send out a smaller cone than a hemisphere and still have something compelling).
You can construct such a display for a single viewer just by tracking the viewer's eyes and providing the appropriate image depending upon where they were with respect to the display.
The 3D "signal" is a new format that the old TV probably doesn't know what to do with at all. It's like expecting your old MP3 player to handle AAC or some other format that came out after it was made.
Re:My brain/eyes are incompatible with 3D TV/movie
on
Hot Or Not — 3D TV
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· Score: 1
No, this is a type of problem that simply cannot be avoided with stereoscopic displays.
Here's an example. If you're reading this on a monitor, then hold up a finger a few inches in front of it.
If you focus on the monitor, then you see two fingers. If you focus on the finger, stuff on the monitor gets doubled up.
Mind you, both things can be "in focus" in the optical sense. It's just the nature of human stereo vision that only the object your eyes are converging on looks "right", and other things don't (unless the stereo disparity is low).
When the director creates a stereoscopic 3D movie, he has to decide for you what is the object being converged upon. Stereo cameras, whether real or virtual, have a convergence depth control. This adjusts which objects appear at the same distance as the movie screen, which appear behind, and which appear in front.
When you watch the movie, if you happen to look at the object being converged upon, it will look okay, and if you try to look at something else, it will take some effort (assuming it's even possible) because your eyes are trying to converge two images that are not meant to be converged. It's kind of like trying to look at those random dot stereograms that require you to look at them with your eyes straight ahead.
So if the director wants you to look at the computer monitor in the movie, objects in front of it will be doubled up (because that's how they are supposed to appear, just like your finger did), and if you try to resolve the objects in front, you're giving yourself a hard time.
Of course, there's another issue at play, and that is that your eyes will be converged and focused at the distance of the actual screen you're viewing. When you try to converge your eyes to a different distance, your eyes normally want to change the focus as well. But to keep the screen in focus, they have to remain focused at the same distance. This difference (vs. how viewing normal 3D objects works) is another source of strain. Your brain gets used to it after a while, and then, once you come out of the theater, your brain has to readjust back to reality again, which again causes some strain.
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They do if you measure time in X's. Each additional one is one more X.
No, you're looking at it the wrong way. A graphics card has several tasks, but you can broadly categorize the two major functions as:
1. Drawing stuff
2. Displaying what's been drawn
These are mostly independent functions, though there is some synchronization that allows the display part to start displaying what has just been drawn as soon as possible.
When a card is drawing stuff, it's typically utilizing memory that is separate from what's being displayed. Thus, if you are computing stuff instead of drawing stuff, it has no effect on what is being displayed. However, it does mean that other drawing tasks may be slowed down, so if you were running a 3D game at the same time as computing stuff, the performance would suffer. But your typical desktop drawing activity leaves the GPU idle most of the time. In that sense, you are indeed using extra capacity in the GPU.
That's exactly what the AMD Fusion project is all about (integrating the GPU & CPU together). Google it.
The sub $300 graphics card will probably still be faster than the $1000 CPU, and the high school geek might get a cracked version of the $1200 software, so it's still within his purview.
In any case, the USD1000 video card is sub $800 now, and will be half that in a few months. The advancement of technology will let all threats eventually percolate down to the lowest levels.
Vive la différence!
What's "normal" to you might be "insane" to someone else.
For instance, do you sit for hours staring at a moving picture box? Isn't that like suicide?
We've declared torture of people illegal, and yet it still happens. Methinks this solution has some holes in it.
Hotdogs have meat in them???
That's the first thing I thought of, anyway.
I don't think success will be determined by the quality of the hardware or the software running on it.
As shown repeatedly by Apple, success is determined by focusing on the whole picture:
-the hardware
-the software running on the device
-the software running on the computer the device is attached to
-the entire supply chain of the digital properties (the books, in this case)
-the consumer--addressing all aspects of his experience, from opening the box, to buying books, to daily use, to:
-customer service
In short, give the customer the experience he wants, and he'll pay a lot of money for it.
If the whole thing does exactly what most people want, then most people will have no need to hack it.
If any aspect is lacking, then there's an opportunity for someone else to slip in, but they'll have to do better in every way, not just one way.
I bought a laptop motherboard on Ebay once (I was mainly after the CPU that was on it). It was the victim of a soda spill. The soda, left unwashed, dissolved away several of the tiny legs of one of the main ICs. That one never saw life again.
I also bought a MacBook, and upon realizing that soda had spilled in it too, I took out the motherboard and ran it through the dishwasher, then parked it in front of a fan for a couple of days. The soda had eaten away two tiny traces, but I was able to repair them with conductive ink (applied with the help of a single hair and a 4x eyepiece magnifier). That MacBook still works fine today.
In short: water is generally harmless, if you let it dry. Soda is like acid, however, and should be rinsed off immediately.
I'm wondering how long it will be until all aspects of war are virtualized, and the rest of us can then just get on with our lives. Sort of like "A Taste for Armageddon," but leave out the mandatory execution part.
I was thinking about this too. Normally, on the news, you see a second or so of latency when a US anchor talks to a reporter on the other side of the world,but this is due to the signal being bounced off of geostationary satellites a couple of times. The satellites are ~22K miles away, so if you assume the signal must bounce off 2 satellites, then that's 8 hops * 22K mi / speed of light = nearly 1 second of latency for a round trip.
If, instead of using satellites, we assume that there's some kind of ground link between Las Vegas and Afghanistan, then the distance is somewhere between 8K miles (straight arc), and, I don't know, double that. Then the round-trip latency could be as low as 85 - 170 msec. Of course, it's likely that at least one satellite bounce is involved, but it could conceivably be a low-earth-orbit one instead of a geostationary one. The real latency figure is probably somewhere between the two cases I outlined.
So yes, in summary, putting the pilot so far away does seem to introduce some unavoidable latency. I suppose for certain types of missions, its tolerable. It's not like the drones are doing dogfights. It'd be interesting to get more details, but, I imagine, a lot may be classified.
A license would never work, but, how about something that can be implemented in software, sort of like a breathalyzer test for a car that locks out the ignition?
We need some kind of "moron-alyzer" test that locks out your internet access in case of stupidity.
I tried not wearing my watch for a while. I was fine for a few months, until I started making some airline trips. I didn't like being unable to tell the time during various parts of the flights.
I'm back to wearing my watch again. It's more convenient than pulling my phone out of my pocket, and its battery has regularly lasted more than 10 years each time.
Obviously, current user interfaces would suck on a watch.
However, give that puppy *good* voice recognition and speech output, and then they're on to something.
However, at this point in time, it doesn't seem like we've got the processing & battery density necessary for this to work well. Eventually, though, who knows?
Looks like this would compete with Microvision's products.
Microvision uses a 2-axis MEMS scanner, so noise is not an issue.
Also, why use phosphors if the lasers are already RGB?
Must be an issue of efficiency, I gather.
I can't see the Prysm product as filling anything but a niche.
Having a patterned screen would require convergence calibration with the beam. This could be automated with a camera feedback system, but that adds expense. This is also why it can't practically use a DMD driver: you can calibrate a swept beam just by changing the timing. You can't calibrate a DMD in the same way, since the mirrors are just bistable (2 position only).
I've kind of wondered if the ease of access to pornography has changed people's attitudes with regard to being in porno videos themselves. The recent article about what percentage of teens have participated in "sexting" makes me think that attitudes are indeed changing.
There is no 120 hz standard video format. That's the TV taking a 60 hz signal and doubling it up internally. That's not the same thing as taking 120 hz as input and showing that on the screen. In any case, the 3D formats are part of the HDMI 1.4 standard, which didn't exist when TVs based on HDMI 1.3 were made.
I think Holographic displays are really the holy grail of 3d displays. But they will have a tremendous impact on the way movies are filmed not just watched. Every set would have to be built to work in 360 degree 3d, well at least hopefully.
Not really. You'll find that live stage productions often don't look very good from beside or behind the stage, but that doesn't make them unappealing.
Certainly, you could imagine holographic movies that allow viewing from any angle. I suppose the upskirt fetishists would be in heaven. But a lot of the art & creativity of a movie comes from the director controlling exactly how you view a scene.
While look-at-from-any-angle holographic displays may be neat and useful, another type of interesting 3D display would be a lightfield display that represents looking into a window into another world. Just like a window, you'd see different scenery depending at what angle you view it from. Creating a display like this would require that each pixel of a TV sent out, in a controlled manner, different light rays depending upon the direction. Essentially, each pixel sends out a whole "image" of rays over its hemisphere of emission (you could actually send out a smaller cone than a hemisphere and still have something compelling).
You can construct such a display for a single viewer just by tracking the viewer's eyes and providing the appropriate image depending upon where they were with respect to the display.
Who wants to wear headphones just to listen to music?
The 3D "signal" is a new format that the old TV probably doesn't know what to do with at all. It's like expecting your old MP3 player to handle AAC or some other format that came out after it was made.
No, this is a type of problem that simply cannot be avoided with stereoscopic displays.
Here's an example. If you're reading this on a monitor, then hold up a finger a few inches in front of it.
If you focus on the monitor, then you see two fingers. If you focus on the finger, stuff on the monitor gets doubled up.
Mind you, both things can be "in focus" in the optical sense. It's just the nature of human stereo vision that only the object your eyes are converging on looks "right", and other things don't (unless the stereo disparity is low).
When the director creates a stereoscopic 3D movie, he has to decide for you what is the object being converged upon. Stereo cameras, whether real or virtual, have a convergence depth control. This adjusts which objects appear at the same distance as the movie screen, which appear behind, and which appear in front.
When you watch the movie, if you happen to look at the object being converged upon, it will look okay, and if you try to look at something else, it will take some effort (assuming it's even possible) because your eyes are trying to converge two images that are not meant to be converged. It's kind of like trying to look at those random dot stereograms that require you to look at them with your eyes straight ahead.
So if the director wants you to look at the computer monitor in the movie, objects in front of it will be doubled up (because that's how they are supposed to appear, just like your finger did), and if you try to resolve the objects in front, you're giving yourself a hard time.
Of course, there's another issue at play, and that is that your eyes will be converged and focused at the distance of the actual screen you're viewing. When you try to converge your eyes to a different distance, your eyes normally want to change the focus as well. But to keep the screen in focus, they have to remain focused at the same distance. This difference (vs. how viewing normal 3D objects works) is another source of strain. Your brain gets used to it after a while, and then, once you come out of the theater, your brain has to readjust back to reality again, which again causes some strain.
There's 120hz and there's 120hz. A non-3D 120hz TV takes the same image (or possibly an interpolated image) and displays it multiple times.
A 3D 120hz TV takes 2 different images and displays them alternately.
Because 3D demands doing something different, the non-3D TV may not be able to handle it, unless its hardware is sufficiently reprogrammable.
In addition, there needs to be an IR transmitter somewhere to sync the glasses with the TV.
Nice visualization of circular polarization:
http://www.rkm3d.com/How-3D-Works/3D-circular-polarization-explained.html
Hmm, I think the intended pronunciation is "nuh TAHL", not "NAY tuhl".
The latter one had never occurred to me, though it seems appropriate as well.