The Raspberry Pi is using an unknown Broadcom SOC. Broadcom hasn't announced it yet, so the R-Pi team hasn't been able to give out the model number yet.
The only thing they've confirmed is that it has a nice GPU and its media capabilities are greater than everything currently available.
Quake 3 is over 10 years old. It uses a minimal amount of a modern GPU's feature set and it doesn't use the most efficient APIs to access it.
Quake 3 goes for an arcade look instead of the realism of modern games so it still looks pretty nice, so I guess it's a quick way to make a GPU seem capable. But I can't help thinking it's not representative of how people are coding games today.
The unfortunate consequence of megatexturing is that nobody will be able to make custom maps for this. Carmack talked about needing an expensive server with 192GiB of RAM to compile the maps.
The technology is really impressive, but I can't imagine it being worth this. id has always been very friendly to the map/mod community—they're the last company I'd have expected this from.
Nope, they say it reflects "less than 1% of the light falling onto it". So it could be as light as #020202 (but not #030303).
RGB hex values are gamma compressed—they represent perceived brightness and not actual light. #020202 actually represents about 0.06% the light of #FFF.
The correct value representing "less than 1%" (assuming #FFF is falling on it) is #191919.
Really? A strength? Seriously?
Is that why we got the ping of death back in Vista/Win7/2008 because of a forked TCP stack?....
Because Security is a "Strength" for Microsoft?
You'll notice a great majority of the exploits are found in old code. They've got quite rigorous security practices now, and their new code is benefiting greatly from it. I don't know if I'd say security is a strength of their products right now, as there's plenty of old code left to exploit. But they're certainly on the path to get there.
This thing has 128MiB or 256MiB of RAM. It should be able to handle Linux without sweating, and there are a lot of problems that can work well in that space.
The reason these kinds of devices are becoming popular is because you get a familiar, full-featured environment to play with. It doesn't distract from your problem by forcing you to write a boot loader, and you don't need to be a genius to get some code running on it.
One thing that bugs me about Bethesda is that they almost never ramp up the excitement. Sure there are plenty of interesting story lines, but I can probably count on half a hand the moments where something really exciting happened—a situation that made me go "oh shit!" and freak out a little about how I was going to survive. Not every quest line needs to have an awesome climax, but they could definitely use a lot more.
And make magic a first-class citizen, please. I'd love to use it heavily for offense/defense, but it was weak as hell in Oblivion compared to just wildly swinging a sword around. I really like being able to get creative about things, like walking on water while shooting enemies with my bow as they try to swim toward me. Other times I just want to be a little more Rambo and run in throwing fireballs looking badass. But in Oblivion the fireballs look and act like you're just throwing candles. There's nothing badass about them.
As for other developers releasing source, that's not always possible due to third-party technology licenses, ownership issues...
id has those issues as well, though I'm told it was much less for Doom 3 than in the past. They have someone replace all the code and clean it up for public release.
A while ago I started playing Section 8: Prejudice on PC, and experienced something odd. In all the other games I play (even Quake TF, which is very fast-paced), I have no problem tracking enemies when they're in my face and running around me. In Section 8, about 1/3rd of the time I'd completely lose track of them.
I soon came to realize this was due to optimization for consoles.
Consoles have very limited graphics power, so game levels are usually designed to keep you from seeing too much at once: they'll usually have a lot of buildings or a hill in the middle of a map to block your view. When this doesn't give enough of a boost, they lower your field of view -- basically zooming in slightly, to remove some things to draw from the edges.
We have about a 120 degree field of view. Most games until now stayed with the FOV Quake introduced: 90. Section 8 was using 70, with no way to change it. Even worse, it was treating widescreen as "4:3 with top and bottom chopped off", so the effect was even more zoomed. Eventually they did listen to a lot of complaints and added a (still clamped but better than nothing) setting that you could only change by modifying a config file. Most devs (especially the big ones) wouldn't have even given us that, so I guess I should be happy.
PC gaming today is crap. Even Portal 2 was designed for consoles first, with constant loading and nothing requiring the fast/precise aim of a mouse.
Long run, high-RPM drives are probably on their way out, since high-density, lower-RPM ones do impressive linear performance and absurdly low cost, while decent solid state gear kicks out the I/OPs better than an entire shelf of 15k screamers
It seems like we'll eventually have both a HDD and SSD in our system, with a smart filesystem which automatically puts randomly accessed files on the SSD and sequentially accessed files on the HDD.
It's pretty easy to see where this is going, though, and these companies are only thinking ahead.
Google quantifies you somehow. Person A and Person B aren't friends, but they both read a lot of/. and constantly search for tentacle porn. If Person A clicks on a link involving Natalie Portman and an over-excited tentacle monster, it might display that result with more importance for Person B.
FFmpeg is made of developers, not PR hounds. They're going to care more about data---seeing how close they are in quality---than random people deciding FFmpeg sucks.
"Embarrassingly parallel" refers to a problem made up of many isolated tasks -- such as running a fragment (pixel) shader on millions of different fragments, or a HTTP server handling thousands of clients -- that can all be run concurrently without any communication between them.
It's odd that they use that term here, because the other anti-aliasing techniques are embarrassingly parallel as well.
SSAA (super-sampling) always renders each pixel n times at various locations within the pixel, and blends them together.
MSAA (multi-sampling) is basically the same as SSAA, but only works on polygon edges and is very dependant on proper mipmapping to reduce aliasing introduced when scaling textures.
Simply limiting the volume is going to cause more problems without really solve anything. So you've limited me to 75% volume. I'm just going to put all my music right up at that 75%! But this time it will sound even worse because now I'll only be using 75% of my available dynamic range.
A system like ReplayGain is much better because it preserves all the dynamic range and fidelity of the original track. Instead of limiting the volume, it adjusts post-decode every album/track to have the same average volume. Overhead: a few tens of bytes for the proper ID3 tags.
The problem with the "Loudness Wars" is that it's not actually the loudness that we're complaining about, it's the lack of dynamic range. No volume limit or ReplayGain is going to solve this one. Dynamic range is awesome if you're listening in a quiet environment. You need low-volume parts for the louder ones to mean something. But in a car... not so much. Tracks with high dynamic range (example) can easily lose entire parts of a song if the environment is too loud for them to play over.
Perhaps some new tech is needed, similar to MP3Pro -- give a track with full dynamic range, and then some additional low-bandwidth bits that describe how to compress the dynamic range when you want it.
Sounds like the solution to the problem of parents who aren't normally supportive of their child's education.
This is all about getting the most out of their time in the classroom, and should benefit all types of students. It shifts time wasted on fast learners to the slow learners. It's really not there to compensate for poor parental support.
Fast learners can fast forward lectures at home once they understand a subject, take a quick test in class, then move on to the next thing without any teacher involvement. Slow learners can pause and rewind at home, and get dedicated support in class. Teachers can accurately view the progress of all their students. Everyone wins.
One interesting point he makes in his talks is that every student will, at some time, hit a speed bump and get knocked into the "slow" category. In the current system, if it happens at the wrong time the student can be screwed long-term—leaving them perpetually behind, with poor test scores and no hope of advanced placement. In Khan's system, the student is allowed to learn at their own pace and usually catches up to everyone else.
I can't help being jealous of these kids -- I imagine like many people here, being able to learn exactly at my own pace would have done a lot to keep me engaged in school.
I hope this catches on with public schools. It may be one of the most important shifts in education since... well, ever. Finally, technology in the classroom means something.
since this stuff is meant to be open, it it inherently something which can't be patented.
In most cases when the term "open standard" is used, it only means that anyone can participate in making it—not that it must be provided free of charge, and not that anyone can freely implement it.
A friend of mine used to work as a deep diving welder. Things get pretty cold when you've got that much water between you and the sun, so they'd pump down warm water from the surface to let the divers stay under for as long as possible.
Some of the divers discovered they could get even warmer by sticking the hoses into the neck of their wetsuit. After a few weeks of doing so, a number of jellyfish swam near the surface. You can probably guess what happened next -- one of them got sucked into the pump and shot through the hose, straight down the back of his wetsuit and settling right between his legs.
It took a few days before he was able to walk after that, and probably a week more before he could do it comfortably. I guess he was lucky they weren't a more deadly variety, and that he had a buddy nearby to help him surface and remove his wetsuit.
No, I'm pretty sure what he means is "high speed", because that's the name given to Category 2 cables by the HDMI spec. They differ in more than resolution support, so simply calling them "1080p version" wouldn't work.
I didn't actually mention the Wii U or any of its new features, least of all the stupid new Dreamcast Tablet controller. Everything I said was about the Wii. Why? Really because, there's not much to talk about yet. The only thing they've shown that looks complete at all is the new controller. All the videos I've seen show acceptable graphics, but they're all just tech demos and thus not representative of anything but carefully prepared cutscenes.
The only interesting thing we know about the hardware is that the GPU is a Radeon HD, meaning it will support the modern programmable pipeline of modern desktop GPUs and thus be great to code for. The CPU is a multi-core Power but that doesn't mean much. In terms of performance, it could be anywhere -- but it will at least make creating cross-platform games easier.
I hope as much as the next guy that Nintendo knocks it out of the park -- I loved my NES, SNES, and N64. The hardware looks like it might be capable. I'm just not sold on their attitude. I think they've lost touch with gamers. I hope I'm wrong. Even if I am, it's going to be a tough battle to gain market share -- especially if they're not focusing on multiplayer and instead trying to replicate the Wii's success following the same game plan with yet another gimmicky controller.
I suppose we'll eventually see a package deal with movies, TV, and music all for one monthly price. I doubt we'll ever see lossless included in that, but we can dream;).
It's not a subscription service, but FLAC has been gaining more and more speed online.
Topspin handles a lot of big names (I see Beastie Boys, The Doors, Linkin Park, Lady Gaga, and Paul McCartney on their front page. Lots more deeper in.) as well as a ton of awesome indie bands (The Whigs are great, check them out!).
The one big advantage the Wii had (motion control, and all the party-friendly games that came with it) has been trumped by both the 360 and PS3. The smaller advantage it has is price -- that can be a good thing to compete on, but the 360 is closing that gap as well (I'm convinced the only reason the base 360 still costs more is because they know it's worth more and people are glad to pay for it).
That was boss Satoru Iwata's response when asked by a shareholder today whether the hardcore will accept Nintendo's next home console.
"Wii was not accepted by core gamers because they did not want to abandon their preferred control approach," he said, as reported by Andriasang.
Yea, the motion controls were a little stupid for "hardcore" games, but I don't think any new controller (their Classic Pro wasn't the best, but would have been acceptable) is going to solve that. The Wii has so many other problems.
A) Multiplayer is a huge attraction of modern games. The Wii just doesn't make it as easy, big, or social as the 360 does. B) The graphics were a toy in comparison. C) Very few "hardcore" games were made for it, simply because the vast hardware differences forced game companies to make the choice of 360/PS3 or Wii with little ability to scale between them. The few ports and cross-platform games that came out for it were typically underwhelming shells of their true selves.
The CEO then suggested the eye-catching Zelda HD tech demo showcased at E3 was only possible on the Wii U.
"Regarding Zelda HD, Japanese developers said that it could not be replicated on other machines," Iwata said.
And this is just untrue, of course. Though there is the possibility that he actually believes it.
Slashdot Mirror
The Raspberry Pi is using an unknown Broadcom SOC. Broadcom hasn't announced it yet, so the R-Pi team hasn't been able to give out the model number yet.
The only thing they've confirmed is that it has a nice GPU and its media capabilities are greater than everything currently available.
Quake 3 is over 10 years old. It uses a minimal amount of a modern GPU's feature set and it doesn't use the most efficient APIs to access it.
Quake 3 goes for an arcade look instead of the realism of modern games so it still looks pretty nice, so I guess it's a quick way to make a GPU seem capable. But I can't help thinking it's not representative of how people are coding games today.
It's about 3x higher and far nearer to space than most people will ever get to experience. It looks pretty cool.
In my experience playing with coders and mappers: the people who make games are rarely star players.
It's in his QuakeCon keynote. I don't remember at what point, though.
The unfortunate consequence of megatexturing is that nobody will be able to make custom maps for this. Carmack talked about needing an expensive server with 192GiB of RAM to compile the maps.
The technology is really impressive, but I can't imagine it being worth this. id has always been very friendly to the map/mod community—they're the last company I'd have expected this from.
Nope, they say it reflects "less than 1% of the light falling onto it". So it could be as light as #020202 (but not #030303).
RGB hex values are gamma compressed—they represent perceived brightness and not actual light. #020202 actually represents about 0.06% the light of #FFF.
The correct value representing "less than 1%" (assuming #FFF is falling on it) is #191919.
Really? A strength? Seriously? Is that why we got the ping of death back in Vista/Win7/2008 because of a forked TCP stack?.... Because Security is a "Strength" for Microsoft?
You'll notice a great majority of the exploits are found in old code. They've got quite rigorous security practices now, and their new code is benefiting greatly from it. I don't know if I'd say security is a strength of their products right now, as there's plenty of old code left to exploit. But they're certainly on the path to get there.
This thing has 128MiB or 256MiB of RAM. It should be able to handle Linux without sweating, and there are a lot of problems that can work well in that space.
The reason these kinds of devices are becoming popular is because you get a familiar, full-featured environment to play with. It doesn't distract from your problem by forcing you to write a boot loader, and you don't need to be a genius to get some code running on it.
One thing that bugs me about Bethesda is that they almost never ramp up the excitement. Sure there are plenty of interesting story lines, but I can probably count on half a hand the moments where something really exciting happened—a situation that made me go "oh shit!" and freak out a little about how I was going to survive. Not every quest line needs to have an awesome climax, but they could definitely use a lot more.
And make magic a first-class citizen, please. I'd love to use it heavily for offense/defense, but it was weak as hell in Oblivion compared to just wildly swinging a sword around. I really like being able to get creative about things, like walking on water while shooting enemies with my bow as they try to swim toward me. Other times I just want to be a little more Rambo and run in throwing fireballs looking badass. But in Oblivion the fireballs look and act like you're just throwing candles. There's nothing badass about them.
As for other developers releasing source, that's not always possible due to third-party technology licenses, ownership issues...
id has those issues as well, though I'm told it was much less for Doom 3 than in the past. They have someone replace all the code and clean it up for public release.
A while ago I started playing Section 8: Prejudice on PC, and experienced something odd. In all the other games I play (even Quake TF, which is very fast-paced), I have no problem tracking enemies when they're in my face and running around me. In Section 8, about 1/3rd of the time I'd completely lose track of them.
I soon came to realize this was due to optimization for consoles.
Consoles have very limited graphics power, so game levels are usually designed to keep you from seeing too much at once: they'll usually have a lot of buildings or a hill in the middle of a map to block your view. When this doesn't give enough of a boost, they lower your field of view -- basically zooming in slightly, to remove some things to draw from the edges.
We have about a 120 degree field of view. Most games until now stayed with the FOV Quake introduced: 90. Section 8 was using 70, with no way to change it. Even worse, it was treating widescreen as "4:3 with top and bottom chopped off", so the effect was even more zoomed. Eventually they did listen to a lot of complaints and added a (still clamped but better than nothing) setting that you could only change by modifying a config file. Most devs (especially the big ones) wouldn't have even given us that, so I guess I should be happy.
PC gaming today is crap. Even Portal 2 was designed for consoles first, with constant loading and nothing requiring the fast/precise aim of a mouse.
Long run, high-RPM drives are probably on their way out, since high-density, lower-RPM ones do impressive linear performance and absurdly low cost, while decent solid state gear kicks out the I/OPs better than an entire shelf of 15k screamers
It seems like we'll eventually have both a HDD and SSD in our system, with a smart filesystem which automatically puts randomly accessed files on the SSD and sequentially accessed files on the HDD.
It's pretty easy to see where this is going, though, and these companies are only thinking ahead.
Google quantifies you somehow. Person A and Person B aren't friends, but they both read a lot of /. and constantly search for tentacle porn. If Person A clicks on a link involving Natalie Portman and an over-excited tentacle monster, it might display that result with more importance for Person B.
FFmpeg is made of developers, not PR hounds. They're going to care more about data---seeing how close they are in quality---than random people deciding FFmpeg sucks.
"Embarrassingly parallel" refers to a problem made up of many isolated tasks -- such as running a fragment (pixel) shader on millions of different fragments, or a HTTP server handling thousands of clients -- that can all be run concurrently without any communication between them.
It's odd that they use that term here, because the other anti-aliasing techniques are embarrassingly parallel as well.
SSAA (super-sampling) always renders each pixel n times at various locations within the pixel, and blends them together.
MSAA (multi-sampling) is basically the same as SSAA, but only works on polygon edges and is very dependant on proper mipmapping to reduce aliasing introduced when scaling textures.
Simply limiting the volume is going to cause more problems without really solve anything. So you've limited me to 75% volume. I'm just going to put all my music right up at that 75%! But this time it will sound even worse because now I'll only be using 75% of my available dynamic range.
A system like ReplayGain is much better because it preserves all the dynamic range and fidelity of the original track. Instead of limiting the volume, it adjusts post-decode every album/track to have the same average volume. Overhead: a few tens of bytes for the proper ID3 tags.
The problem with the "Loudness Wars" is that it's not actually the loudness that we're complaining about, it's the lack of dynamic range. No volume limit or ReplayGain is going to solve this one. Dynamic range is awesome if you're listening in a quiet environment. You need low-volume parts for the louder ones to mean something. But in a car... not so much. Tracks with high dynamic range (example) can easily lose entire parts of a song if the environment is too loud for them to play over.
Perhaps some new tech is needed, similar to MP3Pro -- give a track with full dynamic range, and then some additional low-bandwidth bits that describe how to compress the dynamic range when you want it.
Sounds like the solution to the problem of parents who aren't normally supportive of their child's education.
This is all about getting the most out of their time in the classroom, and should benefit all types of students. It shifts time wasted on fast learners to the slow learners. It's really not there to compensate for poor parental support.
Fast learners can fast forward lectures at home once they understand a subject, take a quick test in class, then move on to the next thing without any teacher involvement. Slow learners can pause and rewind at home, and get dedicated support in class. Teachers can accurately view the progress of all their students. Everyone wins.
One interesting point he makes in his talks is that every student will, at some time, hit a speed bump and get knocked into the "slow" category. In the current system, if it happens at the wrong time the student can be screwed long-term—leaving them perpetually behind, with poor test scores and no hope of advanced placement. In Khan's system, the student is allowed to learn at their own pace and usually catches up to everyone else.
Pretty much, all according to plan.
I can't help being jealous of these kids -- I imagine like many people here, being able to learn exactly at my own pace would have done a lot to keep me engaged in school.
I hope this catches on with public schools. It may be one of the most important shifts in education since... well, ever. Finally, technology in the classroom means something.
since this stuff is meant to be open, it it inherently something which can't be patented.
In most cases when the term "open standard" is used, it only means that anyone can participate in making it—not that it must be provided free of charge, and not that anyone can freely implement it.
Unfortunately.
A friend of mine used to work as a deep diving welder. Things get pretty cold when you've got that much water between you and the sun, so they'd pump down warm water from the surface to let the divers stay under for as long as possible.
Some of the divers discovered they could get even warmer by sticking the hoses into the neck of their wetsuit. After a few weeks of doing so, a number of jellyfish swam near the surface. You can probably guess what happened next -- one of them got sucked into the pump and shot through the hose, straight down the back of his wetsuit and settling right between his legs.
It took a few days before he was able to walk after that, and probably a week more before he could do it comfortably. I guess he was lucky they weren't a more deadly variety, and that he had a buddy nearby to help him surface and remove his wetsuit.
No, I'm pretty sure what he means is "high speed", because that's the name given to Category 2 cables by the HDMI spec. They differ in more than resolution support, so simply calling them "1080p version" wouldn't work.
I didn't actually mention the Wii U or any of its new features, least of all the stupid new Dreamcast Tablet controller. Everything I said was about the Wii. Why? Really because, there's not much to talk about yet. The only thing they've shown that looks complete at all is the new controller. All the videos I've seen show acceptable graphics, but they're all just tech demos and thus not representative of anything but carefully prepared cutscenes.
The only interesting thing we know about the hardware is that the GPU is a Radeon HD, meaning it will support the modern programmable pipeline of modern desktop GPUs and thus be great to code for. The CPU is a multi-core Power but that doesn't mean much. In terms of performance, it could be anywhere -- but it will at least make creating cross-platform games easier.
I hope as much as the next guy that Nintendo knocks it out of the park -- I loved my NES, SNES, and N64. The hardware looks like it might be capable. I'm just not sold on their attitude. I think they've lost touch with gamers. I hope I'm wrong. Even if I am, it's going to be a tough battle to gain market share -- especially if they're not focusing on multiplayer and instead trying to replicate the Wii's success following the same game plan with yet another gimmicky controller.
I suppose we'll eventually see a package deal with movies, TV, and music all for one monthly price. I doubt we'll ever see lossless included in that, but we can dream ;).
It's not a subscription service, but FLAC has been gaining more and more speed online.
Topspin handles a lot of big names (I see Beastie Boys, The Doors, Linkin Park, Lady Gaga, and Paul McCartney on their front page. Lots more deeper in.) as well as a ton of awesome indie bands (The Whigs are great, check them out!).
Bandcamp focuses on indie bands. I've recently bought albums from Young Beautiful in a Hurry, Beast Make Bomb, and Andrew Figueroa Chiang and the Blazing Rays of the Sun through them. You can usually stream entire albums (not just previews) for free as much as you want before you buy, so it makes for a really nice experience.
Both usually have MP3, AAC, FLAC, ALAC, and sometimes even audiophile quality 24bit/96kHz FLAC (if bands provide).
The one big advantage the Wii had (motion control, and all the party-friendly games that came with it) has been trumped by both the 360 and PS3. The smaller advantage it has is price -- that can be a good thing to compete on, but the 360 is closing that gap as well (I'm convinced the only reason the base 360 still costs more is because they know it's worth more and people are glad to pay for it).
That was boss Satoru Iwata's response when asked by a shareholder today whether the hardcore will accept Nintendo's next home console.
"Wii was not accepted by core gamers because they did not want to abandon their preferred control approach," he said, as reported by Andriasang.
Yea, the motion controls were a little stupid for "hardcore" games, but I don't think any new controller (their Classic Pro wasn't the best, but would have been acceptable) is going to solve that. The Wii has so many other problems.
A) Multiplayer is a huge attraction of modern games. The Wii just doesn't make it as easy, big, or social as the 360 does. B) The graphics were a toy in comparison. C) Very few "hardcore" games were made for it, simply because the vast hardware differences forced game companies to make the choice of 360/PS3 or Wii with little ability to scale between them. The few ports and cross-platform games that came out for it were typically underwhelming shells of their true selves.
The CEO then suggested the eye-catching Zelda HD tech demo showcased at E3 was only possible on the Wii U.
"Regarding Zelda HD, Japanese developers said that it could not be replicated on other machines," Iwata said.
And this is just untrue, of course. Though there is the possibility that he actually believes it.