"I imagine the AMD64 based solutions will be nice farm boxes as well. Rendering is so IO intensive, having a wider, faster memory bus has to help."
Depends on what he's using to render with, really. Frankly, I don't think AMD's 64-bit processor will be all that interesting to use for rendering until the renderer is optimized for it. You don't really get a speed boost from using 32-bit code on a 64-bit processor.
I personally wouldn't go the Renderdrive route. I don't have first-hand experience with it, but I have heard from other artists that have said that it imposes some rules about what you can do with it. Its core functionality is supposed to be pretty darned good, but if you try to step out of bounds of the renderer, you're in trouble.
You should examine, though, what your needs are and think about whether or not the limitations of the RD would really be a BFD to you or not.
So.. unless the RD is really what you're after, that leaves AMD and Intel. Frankly, this is a tough call. The deciding factor may very well be the renderer you use. AMD's done a real nice job of keeping the render speed per dollar ratio nice and affordable. Intel, however, has a few tricks under the hood that some 3D apps make really good use of. Hyperthreading really muddies the waters as well. For the longer more detailed scenes, I've seen a good deal of benefit from using Hyperthreading on a P4 via Lightwave. Although, for smaller scenes, the overhead of setting up multiple threads can often defeat the purpose of using HT.
Yeah, I know, not a very helpful answer. I think if you went AMD, you'd see a price savings, and not lose a whole heck of a lot of performance. At least that's the direction I'd go. However, I wouldn't buy either until I've taken a typical scene from my 3D app and performed a benchmark analysis on either of the two processors. I mean do this first hand, don't read the benchmark sites, they can be very misleading.
Fun stuff. Truth be told, though, I think you'll go with either one and find times where you ache for the other. Grass is always greener?
"Is there any possible way to explain "That's what I thought:P" as anything other than "Neener, neener, neener.""
Yeah. I spent that time to write all that, and you didn't acknowledge my effort. Considering how shitheaded you've been to me by this point, I'm surprised you expected more of me than that.
Funny you're complaining about my maturity here, and yes I admit you're not catching me at my best, but you're being no better.
You want me to be mature again? Fine, show me some respect first. I wouldn't have 'excellent' karma if I were just a shithead on here. I deserve at least some credit, here.
Um right. You can try to weasel your way out of it that way if you like, but don't try to act as though you ever had any objective thoughts about what my motives are.
"Does anyone else have the balls to stand up and say Red vs Blue SUCKS?"
Yes. I also have the balls to stand up and say "Linux blows goats!" Unfortunately, few would honor either of our sets of balls for it since niether of us were smart enough to provide a thoughtful rationale for why we have that opinion. I guess balls alone really aren't enough for this world.
"I suppose it's possible if it's a modded Xbox, but, otherwise, I have no idea how they even got that idea. For an article on Machinima, you'd think they'd at least try to be accurate as to how the recording was done."
*sigh* I tried to be subtle...
Why is this so difficult to understand? They just hooked up the XBOX to a VCR. Voila! That's all they needed to do! The 'record function' was, in all likelihood, a misunderstanding by the author of the story. I wouldn't normally be so harsh but seeing as how they have to get the video into a computer at some point to edit anyway, I don't see why everybody's got a question mark over their head about the idea of XBOX having a 'record option'. For all we know, it was an inaccurate reference to a game mode you have to put HALO in in order to just sit around and watch the other players.
If you know how to hook up an XBOX to a TV, then you have all the prerequisite knowledge you need to know in order to make your own machima movie using any tv-based game console ever created, including the Atari 2600.
"But saying that everybody who does machinima is completely devoid of talent in a long list of areas is, well, flamebait."
Gotta say I agree. Frankly, people with a creative spark can make something entertaining with just about anything. Remember the Star Wars kid trailers that hit the net last year? I don't remember a fancy term like machima being used for that. It was a creative outlet, and it was exhausted. We all had a few good laughs, though because some peeps stepped up to the plate and demonstrated some talent.
I'm a little surprised that this is being considered as a new genre. I mean we've had puppets for years, this is essentially a digital extension of it. Eh oh well.
"but ANYTHING that does 3d will read/write to a.3ds file, if they take themselves seriously. Whats wrong with that?".3DS is horribly old? It's kinda like saying "Why can't everybody just use.GIF?" It's an okay format and all, but it has a 256 color limit, it only has a 1-bit transparency channel, and it doesn't acommodate the many other various graphic features that have come along since..3DS format is very much like that for many technical reasons.
Frankly, I have a difficult time imagining 'one format to rule them all'. Lightwave, for example, has a number of nifty features that probably aren't present in other apps. On top of that, every app has a different idea about how it operates. Lightwave has a feature called "powergons", it's basically the attaching of a LW command to each polygon. "Clone the object called Ball and align it to the normal of this polygon." That's a neat trick for Lightwave, but would 3D Studio MAX or Maya make any use of it? Their philsophies are so different that the answer may not be a simple 'yes'. What if Maya's bones use a different deformation equation than Lightwave's, how do you account for that so that you get a virtually identical render out of either of them? Do you just 'bake' the motion of each point thus removing the ability to animate it, or do you just hope that the two apps are close enough?
Lots and lots of questions would have to be answered here. It really is not a simple problem. We need it though. Man it'd be nice if I could use what I know with Lightwave in the workflow of a place that relies solely on Maya. "File/Export/.U3D". Man that'd be sweet. But there are so many technical hurdles here that I'd be surprised if they finally settled on one. It seems easier just to have convertor apps that go from one app to another with a particular mind-set in mind. That's probably why it's worked that way all these years.
"Here's a hint. Whenever a NEWS article ends with a question mark, the answer is no. News is about reporting things that happen, not asking if something's happened or not."
Games : Is nitpicking the definition of 'news' dead?
PC Games (Games) | Posted by simoniker on Monday April 19, @07:57PM from the people-never-stop-bitching-dept.
NanoGator asks: "Is it really appropriate to mod nitwits up for complaining about the questions sometimes posted to Slashdot?" Well NanoGator does have a point. For some reason, there are a lot of people here who don't quite understand the concept that Slashdot is a suitable place for discussion as well as the reporting of news. Could this be the end of Microsoft as we know it?
"I mean, come on - one single writable CD can hold a hundred or so songs. How hard would it be for even the most prolific band to keep a copy of everything they submitted to MP3.com"
I suppose you missed this little snippet: "are now enabling former MP3.com artists to visit www.MP3isBack.com and recover their MP3.com music, instantly re-generating their artist pages with just a few clicks"
I'm baffled as to how you were modded up so fast for this comment.
"What is it that workers here can do to compete with people whose cost of living is fraction of what it is here?"
They can provide more bang for the buck. Sadly, I don't have all the answers here, best I can do is roughly point you in the right direction. Make that extra money they spend on the domestic worker go further. Maybe we're more creative. Maybe we communicate more clearly. Maybe the quality of our work is higher. Etc.
Being competitive is more than just trying to work for less money. It's about value. There are things that can be done here.
"Your blandishment that "The workforce here should compete" is just a little too naive to grasp that reality. That reality is that once you add up salary, healthcare and other benefits companyX simply cannot find people here to work for what they can pay *there*"
There are more ways to compete than just "lower pay until equlibirium is restored."
Honestly, if you're going to accuse me of spreading half-derived tripe then at least try to make more of what I said than just an argument.
" For instance, if you give them an assignment and they do it wrong, they won't get your correction until the next working day. And running a meeting means that you either have to get up really early or they stay up really late."
Sounds like half the cost = double the time to completion.
"I believe that if this continues to happen, the US as a whole will suffer. Other un-scroupulous countries will steal our IP, knowledge, etc and eventually become close to our equal. Our goverenment needs to step in a lay down some fines on companies that outsource too much."
The workforce here should compete. That's a better solution than trying to get the gov't to legislate to protect its workers.
- Improve your communication skills. India's native language isn't english, and sometimes that's painfully apparent. The better domestic IT workers are at articulating their thoughts, the broader the language barrier will appear.
- Be more responsive in the work place. India is in a very different time zone. Face to face answers to inquiries could potentially go a long way. Why wait until tomorrow for a response?
- Be more 'available'. This may mean an extra hour of work out of the day. Maybe don't go out for lunch, eat in so you have the apppearance of being at the office longer. Get there earlier, leave later. Ugh I hate suggesting this, but it's funny how bosses think sitting at a desk == productivity.
Enough participants here can make a big difference. "Yeah, you could spend less with them, but you won't be getting what WE offer!"
"What keeps you from adopting it is that you are afraid of the unknown. You're afraid that your skills aren't developed enough to successfully administer a Linux based system."
No, that really doesn't describe me.
"I have yet to encounter a sound card that I couldn't configure. and if I did encounter such a beast, I wouldn't blame the kernel developers, I'd blame the sound card manufacturer for not supporting the Linux community."
I don't really want to blame anybody. I just want it to work. I don't want to fiddle endlessly with my OS to make something as basic as sound work. You were right in a previous statement that Linux isn't for me. It isn't. Sad thing is, I'm the type of person who'd make good use of it if it so interested me. But it doesn't. It's needlessly hard at times. The only time I've seen Linux work right was when I burned a Knoppix disc and booted with it. Now that was a nice little slice of heaven. Sadly, though, it wasan't enough to keep me. Maybe in a couple of more years.
"If it worked at all for any length of time and his 'phone support' tech wasn't able to keep it working, that becomes the fault of the phone support person or is due to his inability to follow instructions (commonly referred to as 'PEBCAK')"
I got news for ya: The customer is not always stupid. The customer can follow the instructions to the letter, and the product can still fail. Is it really his fault, or is Linux not providing him with the right intuitive tools to really know what's going on?
Frankly, it shouldn't be an issue at all. Video and sound on computers are just expected to work. One shouldn't have to fiddle with them at all.
"Should I write an article saying that Windows sucks because I need to instally all kinds of drivers to get it working on my computer??? Or that Windows 2000 sucks because it doesn't support my video card? Or even that ATI sucks because it doesn't have a driver for my exact configuration??? No, that would make me a troll."
I don't agree. I think you should have written that article. It's a legitimate complaint. It sucks having to track down drivers for Windows. Fortunately, they almost always exist, but I've had people pay me $50 an hour to go through that mess. (Serious! At one point I had to go out and buy somebody a new modem because I just plain couldn't find a 2000 driver for it.)
Sound and video are very basic elements of computing. You HAVE to have them. If the OS makes it difficult to make these work, then noise needs to be made about it. Windows DOES suck because it doesn't have built in generic drivers like Linux has. Windows DOES suck because some companies only support certain flavors of it. Even if the OS isn't an issue at all, it *does* suck that somebody couldn't get their configuration to work.
I could sit here all high and mighty and tell you that Windows works great with every bit of hardware out there and that you must be an idiot for not knowing what I know about how to make Windows work. But where's the benefit there? Why wouldn't it be more beneficial to me to listen to your complaints and come up with a reasonable solution? Why is my treating the article like it's a troll a valid response?
That's really my basic problem with the handling of this article here. Dude had a problem, but in order to defend Linux's reputation, it's branded as a troll and people move on. Why not simply address it? Drivers in general on any OS are a pain in the ass. Nobody's done it right yet. Well maybe Apple, sadly that involved having a virtual monopoly over how the machines are made, there. That methodology simply wouldn't work in the general PC market.
"Now tell me Linux is worst regarding sound cards and that the article is not trollish....
That is why several Linux enthusiasts find the article trollish in nature."
I can understand that. I've been there. Lotsa Windows FUD floating around Slashdot. The problem with that attitude is that treating it like it's a troll doesn't help the new guys trying to start with Linux. I myself have had similar problems that the author of the story has. I can honestly tell you I haven't gotten sound to work while trying to switch to Linux. I've had issues getting video to work correctly as well. It's supposed to be 'blindingly obvious' how to set your refresh rate or have the distro automatically find your sound card and make it work, but alas, I've had difficulty. Treating it like it doesn't ever happen just isn't the solution.
Slashdot Mirror
"I imagine the AMD64 based solutions will be nice farm boxes as well. Rendering is so IO intensive, having a wider, faster memory bus has to help."
Depends on what he's using to render with, really. Frankly, I don't think AMD's 64-bit processor will be all that interesting to use for rendering until the renderer is optimized for it. You don't really get a speed boost from using 32-bit code on a 64-bit processor.
"What exactly are the claims of the patent?"
:P
Well seeing as how everybody and their mother mentioned here that the patent was made public, you might consider just reading it.
I personally wouldn't go the Renderdrive route. I don't have first-hand experience with it, but I have heard from other artists that have said that it imposes some rules about what you can do with it. Its core functionality is supposed to be pretty darned good, but if you try to step out of bounds of the renderer, you're in trouble.
You should examine, though, what your needs are and think about whether or not the limitations of the RD would really be a BFD to you or not.
So.. unless the RD is really what you're after, that leaves AMD and Intel. Frankly, this is a tough call. The deciding factor may very well be the renderer you use. AMD's done a real nice job of keeping the render speed per dollar ratio nice and affordable. Intel, however, has a few tricks under the hood that some 3D apps make really good use of. Hyperthreading really muddies the waters as well. For the longer more detailed scenes, I've seen a good deal of benefit from using Hyperthreading on a P4 via Lightwave. Although, for smaller scenes, the overhead of setting up multiple threads can often defeat the purpose of using HT.
Yeah, I know, not a very helpful answer. I think if you went AMD, you'd see a price savings, and not lose a whole heck of a lot of performance. At least that's the direction I'd go. However, I wouldn't buy either until I've taken a typical scene from my 3D app and performed a benchmark analysis on either of the two processors. I mean do this first hand, don't read the benchmark sites, they can be very misleading.
Fun stuff. Truth be told, though, I think you'll go with either one and find times where you ache for the other. Grass is always greener?
.. he was scorned as a "Camping Faggot" when he went up with a railgun.
"However, they are YOU so it'll be easy to exploit their weak spots."
I'm kicking my ass! Do you mind?!
"Is there any possible way to explain "That's what I thought :P" as anything other than "Neener, neener, neener.""
Yeah. I spent that time to write all that, and you didn't acknowledge my effort. Considering how shitheaded you've been to me by this point, I'm surprised you expected more of me than that.
Funny you're complaining about my maturity here, and yes I admit you're not catching me at my best, but you're being no better.
You want me to be mature again? Fine, show me some respect first. I wouldn't have 'excellent' karma if I were just a shithead on here. I deserve at least some credit, here.
Um right. You can try to weasel your way out of it that way if you like, but don't try to act as though you ever had any objective thoughts about what my motives are.
Grow up.
"Does anyone else have the balls to stand up and say Red vs Blue SUCKS?"
Yes. I also have the balls to stand up and say "Linux blows goats!" Unfortunately, few would honor either of our sets of balls for it since niether of us were smart enough to provide a thoughtful rationale for why we have that opinion. I guess balls alone really aren't enough for this world.
"I suppose it's possible if it's a modded Xbox, but, otherwise, I have no idea how they even got that idea. For an article on Machinima, you'd think they'd at least try to be accurate as to how the recording was done."
*sigh* I tried to be subtle...
Why is this so difficult to understand? They just hooked up the XBOX to a VCR. Voila! That's all they needed to do! The 'record function' was, in all likelihood, a misunderstanding by the author of the story. I wouldn't normally be so harsh but seeing as how they have to get the video into a computer at some point to edit anyway, I don't see why everybody's got a question mark over their head about the idea of XBOX having a 'record option'. For all we know, it was an inaccurate reference to a game mode you have to put HALO in in order to just sit around and watch the other players.
If you know how to hook up an XBOX to a TV, then you have all the prerequisite knowledge you need to know in order to make your own machima movie using any tv-based game console ever created, including the Atari 2600.
"But saying that everybody who does machinima is completely devoid of talent in a long list of areas is, well, flamebait."
Gotta say I agree. Frankly, people with a creative spark can make something entertaining with just about anything. Remember the Star Wars kid trailers that hit the net last year? I don't remember a fancy term like machima being used for that. It was a creative outlet, and it was exhausted. We all had a few good laughs, though because some peeps stepped up to the plate and demonstrated some talent.
I'm a little surprised that this is being considered as a new genre. I mean we've had puppets for years, this is essentially a digital extension of it. Eh oh well.
"Is my Xbox missing something, or is this a lovely little piece of misinformation?"
Well I'm not an X-BOX owner, but I'm pretty sure they have a video out.
"but ANYTHING that does 3d will read/write to a .3ds file, if they take themselves seriously. Whats wrong with that?" .3DS is horribly old? It's kinda like saying "Why can't everybody just use .GIF?" It's an okay format and all, but it has a 256 color limit, it only has a 1-bit transparency channel, and it doesn't acommodate the many other various graphic features that have come along since. .3DS format is very much like that for many technical reasons.
Frankly, I have a difficult time imagining 'one format to rule them all'. Lightwave, for example, has a number of nifty features that probably aren't present in other apps. On top of that, every app has a different idea about how it operates. Lightwave has a feature called "powergons", it's basically the attaching of a LW command to each polygon. "Clone the object called Ball and align it to the normal of this polygon." That's a neat trick for Lightwave, but would 3D Studio MAX or Maya make any use of it? Their philsophies are so different that the answer may not be a simple 'yes'. What if Maya's bones use a different deformation equation than Lightwave's, how do you account for that so that you get a virtually identical render out of either of them? Do you just 'bake' the motion of each point thus removing the ability to animate it, or do you just hope that the two apps are close enough?
Lots and lots of questions would have to be answered here. It really is not a simple problem. We need it though. Man it'd be nice if I could use what I know with Lightwave in the workflow of a place that relies solely on Maya. "File/Export/.U3D". Man that'd be sweet. But there are so many technical hurdles here that I'd be surprised if they finally settled on one. It seems easier just to have convertor apps that go from one app to another with a particular mind-set in mind. That's probably why it's worked that way all these years.
"Any wonder why I run Linux now? Any takers? Anyone?"
Because you're not a gamer so it was really really easy for you to switch?
"Here's a hint. Whenever a NEWS article ends with a question mark, the answer is no. News is about reporting things that happen, not asking if something's happened or not."
Games : Is nitpicking the definition of 'news' dead?
PC Games (Games) | Posted by simoniker on Monday April 19, @07:57PM from the people-never-stop-bitching-dept.
NanoGator asks: "Is it really appropriate to mod nitwits up for complaining about the questions sometimes posted to Slashdot?" Well NanoGator does have a point. For some reason, there are a lot of people here who don't quite understand the concept that Slashdot is a suitable place for discussion as well as the reporting of news. Could this be the end of Microsoft as we know it?
"I mean, come on - one single writable CD can hold a hundred or so songs. How hard would it be for even the most prolific band to keep a copy of everything they submitted to MP3.com"
I suppose you missed this little snippet: "are now enabling former MP3.com artists to visit www.MP3isBack.com and recover their MP3.com music, instantly re-generating their artist pages with just a few clicks"
I'm baffled as to how you were modded up so fast for this comment.
"Wake up and smell the coffee, boy. You aren't paying us for our efforts and until you do we don't have to answer to you or anyone else."
Lame attitude to have. I hope others don't share it, otherwise Linux faces certain doom.
"What is it that workers here can do to compete with people whose cost of living is fraction of what it is here?"
They can provide more bang for the buck. Sadly, I don't have all the answers here, best I can do is roughly point you in the right direction. Make that extra money they spend on the domestic worker go further. Maybe we're more creative. Maybe we communicate more clearly. Maybe the quality of our work is higher. Etc.
Being competitive is more than just trying to work for less money. It's about value. There are things that can be done here.
"Your blandishment that "The workforce here should compete" is just a little too naive to grasp that reality. That reality is that once you add up
salary, healthcare and other benefits companyX simply cannot find people here to work for what they can pay *there*"
There are more ways to compete than just "lower pay until equlibirium is restored."
Honestly, if you're going to accuse me of spreading half-derived tripe then at least try to make more of what I said than just an argument.
" For instance, if you give them an assignment and they do it wrong, they won't get your correction until the next working day. And running a meeting means that you either have to get up really early or they stay up really late."
Sounds like half the cost = double the time to completion.
"I believe that if this continues to happen, the US as a whole will suffer. Other un-scroupulous countries will steal our IP, knowledge, etc and eventually become close to our equal. Our goverenment needs to step in a lay down some fines on companies that outsource too much."
The workforce here should compete. That's a better solution than trying to get the gov't to legislate to protect its workers.
- Improve your communication skills. India's native language isn't english, and sometimes that's painfully apparent. The better domestic IT workers are at articulating their thoughts, the broader the language barrier will appear.
- Be more responsive in the work place. India is in a very different time zone. Face to face answers to inquiries could potentially go a long way. Why wait until tomorrow for a response?
- Be more 'available'. This may mean an extra hour of work out of the day. Maybe don't go out for lunch, eat in so you have the apppearance of being at the office longer. Get there earlier, leave later. Ugh I hate suggesting this, but it's funny how bosses think sitting at a desk == productivity.
Enough participants here can make a big difference. "Yeah, you could spend less with them, but you won't be getting what WE offer!"
"What keeps you from adopting it is that you are afraid of the unknown. You're afraid that your skills aren't developed enough to successfully administer a Linux based system."
No, that really doesn't describe me.
"I have yet to encounter a sound card that I couldn't configure. and if I did encounter such a beast, I wouldn't blame the kernel developers, I'd blame the sound card manufacturer for not supporting the Linux community."
I don't really want to blame anybody. I just want it to work. I don't want to fiddle endlessly with my OS to make something as basic as sound work. You were right in a previous statement that Linux isn't for me. It isn't. Sad thing is, I'm the type of person who'd make good use of it if it so interested me. But it doesn't. It's needlessly hard at times. The only time I've seen Linux work right was when I burned a Knoppix disc and booted with it. Now that was a nice little slice of heaven. Sadly, though, it wasan't enough to keep me. Maybe in a couple of more years.
"If it worked at all for any length of time and his 'phone support' tech wasn't able to keep it working, that becomes the fault of the phone support person or is due to his inability to follow instructions (commonly referred to as 'PEBCAK')"
I got news for ya: The customer is not always stupid. The customer can follow the instructions to the letter, and the product can still fail. Is it really his fault, or is Linux not providing him with the right intuitive tools to really know what's going on?
Frankly, it shouldn't be an issue at all. Video and sound on computers are just expected to work. One shouldn't have to fiddle with them at all.
"So how do you play Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares on Win2K/XP since it will crash upon opening on either OS?"
I've played MOO2 on both 2k and XP. Worked fine for me. Got any more info so I can help ya troubleshoot it?
"Should I write an article saying that Windows sucks because I need to instally all kinds of drivers to get it working on my computer??? Or that Windows 2000 sucks because it doesn't support my video card? Or even that ATI sucks because it doesn't have a driver for my exact configuration??? No, that would make me a troll."
I don't agree. I think you should have written that article. It's a legitimate complaint. It sucks having to track down drivers for Windows. Fortunately, they almost always exist, but I've had people pay me $50 an hour to go through that mess. (Serious! At one point I had to go out and buy somebody a new modem because I just plain couldn't find a 2000 driver for it.)
Sound and video are very basic elements of computing. You HAVE to have them. If the OS makes it difficult to make these work, then noise needs to be made about it. Windows DOES suck because it doesn't have built in generic drivers like Linux has. Windows DOES suck because some companies only support certain flavors of it. Even if the OS isn't an issue at all, it *does* suck that somebody couldn't get their configuration to work.
I could sit here all high and mighty and tell you that Windows works great with every bit of hardware out there and that you must be an idiot for not knowing what I know about how to make Windows work. But where's the benefit there? Why wouldn't it be more beneficial to me to listen to your complaints and come up with a reasonable solution? Why is my treating the article like it's a troll a valid response?
That's really my basic problem with the handling of this article here. Dude had a problem, but in order to defend Linux's reputation, it's branded as a troll and people move on. Why not simply address it? Drivers in general on any OS are a pain in the ass. Nobody's done it right yet. Well maybe Apple, sadly that involved having a virtual monopoly over how the machines are made, there. That methodology simply wouldn't work in the general PC market.
"Now tell me Linux is worst regarding sound cards and that the article is not trollish....
That is why several Linux enthusiasts find the article trollish in nature."
I can understand that. I've been there. Lotsa Windows FUD floating around Slashdot. The problem with that attitude is that treating it like it's a troll doesn't help the new guys trying to start with Linux. I myself have had similar problems that the author of the story has. I can honestly tell you I haven't gotten sound to work while trying to switch to Linux. I've had issues getting video to work correctly as well. It's supposed to be 'blindingly obvious' how to set your refresh rate or have the distro automatically find your sound card and make it work, but alas, I've had difficulty. Treating it like it doesn't ever happen just isn't the solution.