You obviously haven't written many PC 3D engines lately then. Low framebuffer precision per component means that after a few blending operations your actual pixel color can be sufficiently off the correct value as to make a difference.
Plus, higher pixel depths will allow us to more accurately simulate the accumlation of light in the frame buffer, leading to much more realistic and "correct" lighting solutions.
Well, I won't argue with you about the beige cases, because I don't know how to. I own a bunch of them, and even though I think they're hideously ugly, PC hardware in any other color feels weird to me.
That having been said, the new iBooks have a 2D area just larger than a piece of notebook paper, and weigh under 5 pounds with the battery in.
Also, any and all praise I dole out has largely to do with OSX, and it rocking so hard. OSX kicks many forms of ass simultaneously, and I refuse to ever honestly support an OS without protected memory.
There really isn't anything horribly wrong with DirectX (well, at least with versions 7 and 8). Well, unless you count you count the fact that it was designed by MS, which is apparently frowned upon in these parts.
Ultimately though, it's not the fact that the easy to use API on the XBox is DirectX, but the fact that MS won't let you go lower than that. DirectX is the only way to program the XBox per the MS developer stuff, and quite frankly, the prospect of engineering a lower level library for the Nvidia GPU doesn't sound like fun.
That's why the Gamecube and the PS2 have a lot more growth potential IMHO. The XBox may ahe a slight edge right now, but what you're seeing right now is a lot closer to topping out than what you're seeing on the Gamecube.
Yeah, yeah, yeah... I've run the benchmarks for the XBox. I've built the test apps, and I've written my own tests. It's very rare that a hardware manufacturer outright LIES in their peak performance numbers.
What's even rarer though, is having those numbers mean ANYTHING in terms of what you're going to get in a real-world scenario. By the time you're doing physics, input handling, audio, and don't forget about having to make compromises geometry/texture-wise due to MEMORY limitations, you'll never see the peak numbers. Never. Not even close. So far from them that, in fact, they are pretty much irrelevant.
It's been my experience, BTW, that the Gamecube comes the closest in that regard thanks in no small part to it's awesome texturing facilities and PRACTICAL parallelism between the CPU and GPU, rather than the XBox setup where the GPU is far too easy to stall.
The biggest feature hype I've been hearing about lately has been bumpmapping on the XBox. The Gamecube is highly capable of bumpmapping efficiently (with better lighting, I might add, due to having more texture stages). PS2 technically can do it too, although not very efficiently. The thing is, you're not seeing games on the Gamecube flaunting it because it's a bogus feature. At low resolutions, bump maps really aren't even that effective. Take DOA3 on the XBox for example. At 640x480 and a typical camera distance, the bump maps on the characters either bilinear filter themselves into oblivion or become unsightly noise.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
I've run the benchmarks for the XBox. I've built the test apps, and I've written my own tests. It's very rare that a hardware manufacturer outright LIES in their peak performance numbers.
What's even rarer though, is having those numbers mean ANYTHING in terms of what you're going to get in a real-world scenario. By the time you're doing physics, input handling, audio, and don't forget about having to make compromises geometry/texture-wise due to MEMORY limitations, you'll never see the peak numbers. Never. Not even close. So far from them that, in fact, they are pretty much irrelevant.
It's been my experience, BTW, that the Gamecube comes the closest in that regard thanks in no small part to it's awesome texturing facilities and PRACTICAL parallelism between the CPU and GPU, rather than the XBox setup where the GPU is far too easy to stall.
The biggest feature hype I've been hearing about lately has been bumpmapping on the XBox. The Gamecube is highly capable of bumpmapping efficiently (with better lighting, I might add, due to having more texture stages). PS2 technically can do it too, although not very efficiently. The thing is, you're not seeing games on the Gamecube flaunting it because it's a bogus feature. At low resolutions, bump maps really aren't even that effective. Take DOA3 on the XBox for example. At 640x480 and a typical camera distance, the bump maps on the characters either bilinear filter themselves into oblivion or become unsightly noise.
Ok, rant over.
JubeiX
The PS2 cannot do bump-mapping on the cheap, but the Gamecube certainly can. It's multi-texturing capabilities actually exceed the XBox's by a significant margin.
XBox has 4 stage multitexture, GV has 8.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously haven't written many PC 3D engines lately then. Low framebuffer precision per component means that after a few blending operations your actual pixel color can be sufficiently off the correct value as to make a difference.
Plus, higher pixel depths will allow us to more accurately simulate the accumlation of light in the frame buffer, leading to much more realistic and "correct" lighting solutions.
Not true. Not true at all.
While Japanese uses a lot of the same kanji as Chinese, they sometimes have different (even if only slightly) meanings associated with them.
Also, consider that a literate (in the eyes of the goverment) japanese individual does not know as many kanji as a Chinese individual.
Other languages don't use as heavily Chinese derived kanji either. See Korean.
JubeiX
Well, I won't argue with you about the beige cases, because I don't know how to. I own a bunch of them, and even though I think they're hideously ugly, PC hardware in any other color feels weird to me.
That having been said, the new iBooks have a 2D area just larger than a piece of notebook paper, and weigh under 5 pounds with the battery in.
Also, any and all praise I dole out has largely to do with OSX, and it rocking so hard. OSX kicks many forms of ass simultaneously, and I refuse to ever honestly support an OS without protected memory.
JubeiX
"My first goal would be to get rid of those fruity cases."
I point you towards the new iBooks and G4 TiBooks.
JubeiX
There really isn't anything horribly wrong with DirectX (well, at least with versions 7 and 8). Well, unless you count you count the fact that it was designed by MS, which is apparently frowned upon in these parts.
Ultimately though, it's not the fact that the easy to use API on the XBox is DirectX, but the fact that MS won't let you go lower than that. DirectX is the only way to program the XBox per the MS developer stuff, and quite frankly, the prospect of engineering a lower level library for the Nvidia GPU doesn't sound like fun.
That's why the Gamecube and the PS2 have a lot more growth potential IMHO. The XBox may ahe a slight edge right now, but what you're seeing right now is a lot closer to topping out than what you're seeing on the Gamecube.
JubeiX
Yeah, yeah, yeah... I've run the benchmarks for the XBox. I've built the test apps, and I've written my own tests. It's very rare that a hardware manufacturer outright LIES in their peak performance numbers.
What's even rarer though, is having those numbers mean ANYTHING in terms of what you're going to get in a real-world scenario. By the time you're doing physics, input handling, audio, and don't forget about having to make compromises geometry/texture-wise due to MEMORY limitations, you'll never see the peak numbers. Never. Not even close. So far from them that, in fact, they are pretty much irrelevant.
It's been my experience, BTW, that the Gamecube comes the closest in that regard thanks in no small part to it's awesome texturing facilities and PRACTICAL parallelism between the CPU and GPU, rather than the XBox setup where the GPU is far too easy to stall.
The biggest feature hype I've been hearing about lately has been bumpmapping on the XBox. The Gamecube is highly capable of bumpmapping efficiently (with better lighting, I might add, due to having more texture stages). PS2 technically can do it too, although not very efficiently. The thing is, you're not seeing games on the Gamecube flaunting it because it's a bogus feature. At low resolutions, bump maps really aren't even that effective. Take DOA3 on the XBox for example. At 640x480 and a typical camera distance, the bump maps on the characters either bilinear filter themselves into oblivion or become unsightly noise.
Ok, rant over.
JubeiX
Yeah, yeah, yeah... I've run the benchmarks for the XBox. I've built the test apps, and I've written my own tests. It's very rare that a hardware manufacturer outright LIES in their peak performance numbers. What's even rarer though, is having those numbers mean ANYTHING in terms of what you're going to get in a real-world scenario. By the time you're doing physics, input handling, audio, and don't forget about having to make compromises geometry/texture-wise due to MEMORY limitations, you'll never see the peak numbers. Never. Not even close. So far from them that, in fact, they are pretty much irrelevant. It's been my experience, BTW, that the Gamecube comes the closest in that regard thanks in no small part to it's awesome texturing facilities and PRACTICAL parallelism between the CPU and GPU, rather than the XBox setup where the GPU is far too easy to stall. The biggest feature hype I've been hearing about lately has been bumpmapping on the XBox. The Gamecube is highly capable of bumpmapping efficiently (with better lighting, I might add, due to having more texture stages). PS2 technically can do it too, although not very efficiently. The thing is, you're not seeing games on the Gamecube flaunting it because it's a bogus feature. At low resolutions, bump maps really aren't even that effective. Take DOA3 on the XBox for example. At 640x480 and a typical camera distance, the bump maps on the characters either bilinear filter themselves into oblivion or become unsightly noise. Ok, rant over. JubeiX
The PS2 cannot do bump-mapping on the cheap, but the Gamecube certainly can. It's multi-texturing capabilities actually exceed the XBox's by a significant margin. XBox has 4 stage multitexture, GV has 8.