"I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."
You're wrong, as they only used 40 kV for a 50 cm flame, and the mode of operation is the reverse of what you suggested, that is, it removes the flame from the fuel (not to mention that they use time-varying electric fields which is different from what you're talking about): http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/28/6362578-fight-fire-with-a-magic-wand
Pro tip: next time do some research before posting.
In GL since 4.0 one could use the indirectdraw calls (GL_ARB_draw_indirect) which read the drawing parameters from GPU memory and so those can be generated by transform feedback. Combine that with NVIDIA's bindless graphics extension which gives you essentially GPU pointers you can use to make in-GPU data structures, and you could build a self-drawing scenegraph on the GPU.
XP (and previous Windows) is well known for having a crappy audio architecture, problems with latencies and really poor quality resampling by the volume control (!). There are threads about this on various A/V forums. MS had to redo the audio subsystems completely in Vista/7.
Frankly, I don't have the knowledge to comment on the technical aspects of this topic.
You should have stopped right there and not spent the effort writing the rest of the post and boosting FUD. Indeed, you only confirm this later in the post:
I really don't know a lot about these things
Then why post? From the point of view of someone that writes both OpenGL and Direct3D, your post makes no valid point, mostly based on a false analogy with X. The problems of X do not map to any corresponding issues with OpenGL. You might as well have used rotten apples for examples.
And if a new model for graphical display results in being directly compatible with DirectX?
This is a good example of the nonsense statements in your post. What new model for graphical display??? Any recent version of either OpenGL (3.x/4.x) or Direct3D both are based on the same fundamental architecture! OpenGL brings the programmer just as close to the hardware as Direct3D does. With NVIDIA's direct access extension even the state handling is on the same level, and one can easily create a wrapper to handle that for drivers that don't support it.
The rest of your last paragraph, in particular, is about as technically sound as Doc Brown's discussion of the flux capacitor in Back to the Future.
Since around 3.x OpenGL hasn't been held back at all, and any new hardware feature has been immediately made available as an extension by at least NVIDIA's drivers. I know no one that uses only core OpenGL, nor is there any need for it since all compatible hardware supports all the important extensions.
Damn slashdot removed my < and >... Why do we have to use HTML for input? It should be an option, not mandated. This is why we can't have nice things -.-
Replace _EXT in my post above with <function/define name>_EXT
This is no longer true. OpenGL support is now apace with any new hardware features, making them available as OpenGL extensions, basically _EXT. The extensions are available to the developer immediately upon installation of the appropriate driver--and at least NVIDIA driver releases support all features of the hardware immediately).
I have an MSc in CS specializing in computer graphics, but my specific area is in rendering, not computational geometry. My real question is then, is this useful for rendering specifically?
Don't miss the piss-poor spectrum CFLs produce; LEDs are not much better. Nowhere close to incandescents' smooth blackbody spectrum, which can be easily filtered to match daylight.
LED lights still have shit spectra and their color rendering index is unimpressive. http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/lightandcolor/images/lightsourcesfigure3.jpg
You can't filter those spikes away! On the other hand, special reflectors on high end incandescent lights can easily filter the excessive red band down on incandescents and get a very close match to daylight--this is used in some museum and photography lights for example. But even unfiltered incandescents have a better color reproduction than the best white LEDs out there.
The headache probably has something to do with the poor, spiky spectrum of CFLs and LED lights. This gives them a lousy Color Rendering Index, regardless of their color temperature. On the other hand, incandescents are blackbody emitters like the sun, and moreover, their spectrum is easily filtered to match daylight in high end incandescents as used for museums and photography.
Efficiency mandates should only be acceptable in the case of _all else being equal_; that is, no compromise on performance along other metrics than efficiency should be forced onto the consumer. In the case of light bulbs, CFLs and LEDs suffer from horrible color rendering ability, because even for the same color temperatures, they have a spectrum that is very far from daylight, and cannot be corrected by filtering (most light energy is in the spikes of the spectrum). Incandescent light bulbs can be easily filtered since they have a smooth blackbody spectrum just like the sun's to mimick daylight almost completely (for example Solux and other similar bulbs).
You forgot the most important one--the inability to get the smooth spectrum of a blackbody emitter, such as the sun. You can easily filter an incandescent bulb's spectrum to mimic daylight extremely well. It's impossible to do this with the spiky spectrum of a CFL or incandescent (most of the light energy is in the spikes anyway). So colors of lit objects look crap even if your CFL/LED has the same color temperature as daylight. The reason is that the color temperature is just an aggregate measure of the spectrum of the light, and differently shaped light spectra can give the same colored temperature. But these different light spectra, when lighting colored objects, will give different colors to the eye since the resulting color is the product of the light spectrum with the object's reflectance. This is why color temperature doesn't tell you anything about the Color Rendering Index of the light.
Incandescents are the only blackbody spectrum light emitter we have, and thus the only one that can match the color reproduction of sunlight--with limited filtering or colored reflectors. In comparison, the spiky spectrum of a CFL or LED cannot be filtered to give you daylight spectrum without filtering away the spikes where most of the light energy is and thus giving up on the efficiency advantage.
Daylight spectrum has documented health, productivity, and health benefits. You can fake almost completely with special incandescent bulbs, but not with any other type.
Still crap, you have three obvious major spikes (RGB) in your spectrum. While that's enough to match any color temperature, it's insufficient for lighting objects properly since the lit color of an object is the product of the light's spectrum with the object's reflectance. This is why different light sources with the same color temperature will produce different looking colors of colored objects. This is why CRI / Color Rendering Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
CFLs and LEDs CAN NEVER approximate true daylight because they have spiky spectrum by virtue of their method of operation. *only* a blackbody emitter can approximate the smooth spectrum of daylight. There are incandescnet lightbulbs (such as Solux) that match daylight almost exactly by use of some filtering which slightly reduces efficiency, but not too much since the incandescent spectrum is smooth and close already. With CFLs and LEDs, you'd have to filter the spikes to get a similar result, yet most of the light energy is in those bands, so you'd lose all the efficiency advantage.
Note that accurate color rendition is not just a matter of concern for photographers and museums! Studies have been done showing that daylight spectrum has psychological benefits and even improves productivity.
I've addressed all these issues and more in a thread on headfi years ago when the ban on incandescents first was announced, and I'll dig up a link if someone here needs more information.
Yes, let's have a few more wind farms that kill 5000 birds a year each and even more bats, including endangered species (sure, cars kill birds too, but how many times is it something like an endangered golden eagle, which is a bird that Jimmy Carter's Altamont wind farm kills regularly).
What the fuck are you talking about? Breeder reactors are old tech that require no technological advancement. It just requires political advancement and the countering of anti-nuclear hysteria.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a well known fallacy. http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
"I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."
Deficit hawk? But why? Why should the US worry about debt eumerated in a currency of which it is the monopoly issuer?
Yet another poster that didn't bother to do an iota of research beyond the article. They use oscillating fields which separate the flame from the fuel and used no more than 40 kV (that's makes for a rather small current at 600 W): http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/28/6362578-fight-fire-with-a-magic-wand
You're wrong, as they only used 40 kV for a 50 cm flame, and the mode of operation is the reverse of what you suggested, that is, it removes the flame from the fuel (not to mention that they use time-varying electric fields which is different from what you're talking about): http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/28/6362578-fight-fire-with-a-magic-wand
Pro tip: next time do some research before posting.
In GL since 4.0 one could use the indirectdraw calls (GL_ARB_draw_indirect) which read the drawing parameters from GPU memory and so those can be generated by transform feedback. Combine that with NVIDIA's bindless graphics extension which gives you essentially GPU pointers you can use to make in-GPU data structures, and you could build a self-drawing scenegraph on the GPU.
XP (and previous Windows) is well known for having a crappy audio architecture, problems with latencies and really poor quality resampling by the volume control (!). There are threads about this on various A/V forums. MS had to redo the audio subsystems completely in Vista/7.
Frankly, I don't have the knowledge to comment on the technical aspects of this topic.
You should have stopped right there and not spent the effort writing the rest of the post and boosting FUD. Indeed, you only confirm this later in the post:
I really don't know a lot about these things
Then why post? From the point of view of someone that writes both OpenGL and Direct3D, your post makes no valid point, mostly based on a false analogy with X. The problems of X do not map to any corresponding issues with OpenGL. You might as well have used rotten apples for examples.
And if a new model for graphical display results in being directly compatible with DirectX?
This is a good example of the nonsense statements in your post. What new model for graphical display??? Any recent version of either OpenGL (3.x/4.x) or Direct3D both are based on the same fundamental architecture! OpenGL brings the programmer just as close to the hardware as Direct3D does. With NVIDIA's direct access extension even the state handling is on the same level, and one can easily create a wrapper to handle that for drivers that don't support it.
The rest of your last paragraph, in particular, is about as technically sound as Doc Brown's discussion of the flux capacitor in Back to the Future.
Since around 3.x OpenGL hasn't been held back at all, and any new hardware feature has been immediately made available as an extension by at least NVIDIA's drivers. I know no one that uses only core OpenGL, nor is there any need for it since all compatible hardware supports all the important extensions.
Damn slashdot removed my < and > ... Why do we have to use HTML for input? It should be an option, not mandated. This is why we can't have nice things -.-
Replace _EXT in my post above with <function/define name>_EXT
This is no longer true. OpenGL support is now apace with any new hardware features, making them available as OpenGL extensions, basically _EXT. The extensions are available to the developer immediately upon installation of the appropriate driver--and at least NVIDIA driver releases support all features of the hardware immediately).
Set up a laser diode from a laser pointer to point into the camera and power it with a standard wall charger.
I have an MSc in CS specializing in computer graphics, but my specific area is in rendering, not computational geometry. My real question is then, is this useful for rendering specifically?
It took me a couple of seconds to get the joke...I sure hope I'm not in those 84% :p
Heh, the eskimos drink a lot of tea which neutralizes the excess mercury they consume due to their seafood-heavy diet. Maybe we could do the same!
Don't miss the piss-poor spectrum CFLs produce; LEDs are not much better. Nowhere close to incandescents' smooth blackbody spectrum, which can be easily filtered to match daylight.
LED lights still have shit spectra and their color rendering index is unimpressive. http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/lightandcolor/images/lightsourcesfigure3.jpg You can't filter those spikes away! On the other hand, special reflectors on high end incandescent lights can easily filter the excessive red band down on incandescents and get a very close match to daylight--this is used in some museum and photography lights for example. But even unfiltered incandescents have a better color reproduction than the best white LEDs out there.
The headache probably has something to do with the poor, spiky spectrum of CFLs and LED lights. This gives them a lousy Color Rendering Index, regardless of their color temperature. On the other hand, incandescents are blackbody emitters like the sun, and moreover, their spectrum is easily filtered to match daylight in high end incandescents as used for museums and photography.
Efficiency mandates should only be acceptable in the case of _all else being equal_; that is, no compromise on performance along other metrics than efficiency should be forced onto the consumer. In the case of light bulbs, CFLs and LEDs suffer from horrible color rendering ability, because even for the same color temperatures, they have a spectrum that is very far from daylight, and cannot be corrected by filtering (most light energy is in the spikes of the spectrum). Incandescent light bulbs can be easily filtered since they have a smooth blackbody spectrum just like the sun's to mimick daylight almost completely (for example Solux and other similar bulbs).
You forgot the most important one--the inability to get the smooth spectrum of a blackbody emitter, such as the sun. You can easily filter an incandescent bulb's spectrum to mimic daylight extremely well. It's impossible to do this with the spiky spectrum of a CFL or incandescent (most of the light energy is in the spikes anyway). So colors of lit objects look crap even if your CFL/LED has the same color temperature as daylight. The reason is that the color temperature is just an aggregate measure of the spectrum of the light, and differently shaped light spectra can give the same colored temperature. But these different light spectra, when lighting colored objects, will give different colors to the eye since the resulting color is the product of the light spectrum with the object's reflectance. This is why color temperature doesn't tell you anything about the Color Rendering Index of the light.
Hey kids, can y'all say "ad hominem"?
Incandescents are the only blackbody spectrum light emitter we have, and thus the only one that can match the color reproduction of sunlight--with limited filtering or colored reflectors. In comparison, the spiky spectrum of a CFL or LED cannot be filtered to give you daylight spectrum without filtering away the spikes where most of the light energy is and thus giving up on the efficiency advantage.
Daylight spectrum has documented health, productivity, and health benefits. You can fake almost completely with special incandescent bulbs, but not with any other type.
Still crap, you have three obvious major spikes (RGB) in your spectrum. While that's enough to match any color temperature, it's insufficient for lighting objects properly since the lit color of an object is the product of the light's spectrum with the object's reflectance. This is why different light sources with the same color temperature will produce different looking colors of colored objects. This is why CRI / Color Rendering Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
CFLs and LEDs CAN NEVER approximate true daylight because they have spiky spectrum by virtue of their method of operation. *only* a blackbody emitter can approximate the smooth spectrum of daylight. There are incandescnet lightbulbs (such as Solux) that match daylight almost exactly by use of some filtering which slightly reduces efficiency, but not too much since the incandescent spectrum is smooth and close already. With CFLs and LEDs, you'd have to filter the spikes to get a similar result, yet most of the light energy is in those bands, so you'd lose all the efficiency advantage.
Note that accurate color rendition is not just a matter of concern for photographers and museums! Studies have been done showing that daylight spectrum has psychological benefits and even improves productivity.
I've addressed all these issues and more in a thread on headfi years ago when the ban on incandescents first was announced, and I'll dig up a link if someone here needs more information.
Yes, let's have a few more wind farms that kill 5000 birds a year each and even more bats, including endangered species (sure, cars kill birds too, but how many times is it something like an endangered golden eagle, which is a bird that Jimmy Carter's Altamont wind farm kills regularly).
What the fuck are you talking about? Breeder reactors are old tech that require no technological advancement. It just requires political advancement and the countering of anti-nuclear hysteria.