And to add to that, all of the news agencies in the world couldn't get the important news out to most people anyway, that being whether or not particular people are ok. On the other hand, it only took me two phone calls last nite to make sure most of my family in San Diego was ok, and whether or not they were still in the line of danger. The first call to my parents' home phone, which was busy (unusual due to call waiting, but not given the circumstances). The second was to my dad's cell phone, which he had left on specifically because so many people were calling and the phone lines were so bad;)
Needless to say, if there are people you care about in the lines of these fires, try to get ahold of them and if you can't, try the numbers setup specifically to give family information about their relatives. You can find those numbers on any local area news channel's website.
if you think you can see more than 60fps you are either full of shit, or you are full of shit.
and if you believe that, you are full of shit.
30 fps is just above the minimum to see fluid motion. The maximum has been charted as somewhere in the hundreds or thousands, and can vary a great deal from person to person.
That being said, when playing a video game, the minimum for fluid motion is all that's required, but for best results you'll want a steady framerate, which varies very little.
I think a lot of people are going to form new opinions about framerates if Doom 3's FPS cap remains in place. 60 fps is very definitely within the limits of what a person can see, but the only real reason for pushing more frames is to maintain the highest possible minimum framerate. Framerate caps only leave room to drive the minimum up near the maximum, thereby making the play experience as smooth as possible. If more people learned that lesson, they'd be happier with their computers overall. If you're pumping out a 100fps average and the framerate drops to 60 you're going to feel like pulling your eyeballs out of your head, like everything's crawling, but if you had capped it at 60 to begin with there wouldn't have been a drop and everything would've played smooth as glass.
been playing first person shooters since wolfenstein3d. 60 fps is fine. I'll put up with 30 if I get all the pretty graphics options with it. most monitors don't support 100fps, anyways.
While I agree that 60 fps is fine, I have to take exception with the 'most monitors dont support 100fps, anyways' portion. I'm currently running at 1280x1024@32bpp @100Hz, so 100 fps would be just fine (and make it 120-150fps just to make sure the v-synch has new frames every time).
about the only way you're going to get 100fps in most modern games is to shut off all graphical detail and play in about 800X600. if you're playing with that level of detail, there's no real reason to play any of the new games. quake II, halflife and all the mods for them will give you everything you need.
On one hand you mention modern games on the other you say Q2 and HL are all you need. Which is it? I can play Q2 at 1600x1200 w/ more frames than my monitor can display, and HL is probably close, if I didn't have fps_max set to 60. I'm not sure what 'modern' games manage, as UT2003 is the best example I can think of, and while the demo ran fine the original release did not (on my computer), so I guess that'd be 0 fps (maybe I'll install that again and patch it and see how it goes). Until Doom 3 and HL2 come out, UT2003 is pretty much the only modern FPS on a modern engine, unless you're going to count Q3, which is still a bit over 3 years old iirc, and just as capable of running at 100fps at high resolutions as most of the others.
The article linked here is very short on information (and actually quite incorrect on a number of statements), but the earlier article quoted the framerate cap specifically, with the quote in this article as explanation for the reason why the cap was made:
The game tic simulation, including player movement, runs at 60hz, so if it rendered any faster, it would just be rendering identical frames
The article stated 'no more no less', which is just wrong, as no one at id has ever stated that Doom 3 would maintain a given minimum framerate, let alone a constant framerate.
I see what you're saying. If you enable FSAA at 31FPS, you'll end up having 30fps one moment, then 15fps with FSAA enabled the next.
Furthermore, let's for arguement's sake forget 30FPS, and instead use N as the fps value above which we can no longer discern a smoother picture.
You would actually need 2 values: N being the point at which FSAA is enabled M being the point at which FSAA is disabled and these values would have to be user-configurable. So, if the framerate goes over N while you have FSAA disabled, it enabled 2X FSAA, if it hits N again, it enables 4X FSAA, and so on. If it drops to M at any point, and your FSAA is set to 8x, it drops to 4X, and then 2X, and finally disables FSAA. This makes sense to me, but again, it all must be user-configurable both for the minimum and maximum framerates and for the feature in the first place (users must be able to disable this, both for benchmarking and personal dislike of FSAA).
My point, however, remains. Consider the following two points: A. There _is_ redering power wasted. B. There _are_ more useful things to do with it than render frames I cannot discern.
A is a debatable point, as most new GPUs add more features along with the increased power, and games that take advantage of those features will increase the load on older GPUs that don't have those feautures (unless they disable the features altogether), or pass the load to the CPU.
B is a mis-statement, as anyone can discern more frames than any graphics card is capable of putting out. If you're happy with 30 fps (and believe me, I'm a big proponent of limiting framerates, especially when it's a value clients can change), that's fine, but everyone can discern much higher rates (excepting the blind and those of extremely limited vision).
As long as you're happy with it, of course there's room to start doing other things, but the point remains that most graphics cards can't even render current games at 1600x1200 resolution at 30 fps with high quality settings (excepting FSAA).
What you said does not adress the why/why-nots of dynamic FSAA, it's simply a well-made point that definitely should affect the FSAA-enabling threshold.
and the ability to enable the dynamic FSAA feature, as well, should anyone implement it.
If I need no more than N fps, And FSAA will drop my rendering rate by 200%, I can set the dynamic FSAA-enabling threshold at 2N. Given a good implementation, I won't even discern the switch.
If you won't discern the switch, then you really don't need it, because if you can't tell the difference between FSAA on and off, why do it at all?;) Seriously, though, the difference between the two is reason enough not to implement something along those lines, although I could see the appeal to having FSAA shut off when framerates get too low.
>> Other than that, FSAA isn't a feature that is universally liked
probbably the most ingenious invention of all time is the ON/OFF switch. Let the user decide:-)
Exactly;)
>> The things that are most likely to be worked on are extending the viewing distance and model complexity while maintaining a decent (60fps or so) framerate
Model complexity is definitely a very good use for them extra GPU cycles. I fully agree with you there.
As for viewing distance - my opinion here is based on a combination of ignorance and some common sense, but doesn't the following sound a bit silly? You're looking through the scope of your sniper rifle, the business end of which is pointed at your mark 500 meters away. A car drives up near him (complicating the rendering process), your field of view decreases, whoops? I can only see 400 meters! where did the fog of war come from? where's my mark?!
Of course, but then the field of view is decreased in the majority of games that allow zooming, and this severely decreases the co
For the life of me I can't figure out the connection between a client's FPS and his ability to perform unreasonable jumps in the game world as generated on the server. But what the hell, the devs pro'lly know what they're talking about.
It has to do with dynamically calculating the height of the jump and the rounding of floating point numbers during movement (which is calculated per frame). It's not that the jumps are unreasonable, in fact either everyone should be able to perform the jumps or no one should, it's a matter of 1 unit (whether the floating point number is rounded up or down determines whether or not you make it).
More to the point though (on FPS limiting) - can someone with GPU/DirectX internals knowledge explain why doesn't a game (or a GPU) that realizes its churning more than the 30fps that the human eye can discern dynamically (and automatically) enable FSAA (AntiAliasing) and/or AF and use the spare GPU power to enhance picture quality, then dynamically stop doing so once you need the power to keep up with a playable 30 FPS?
30 fps is far below what a human eye can discern, it's simply close to the lowest level that the human eye can see as fluid motion. Besides that, dynamically enabling FSAA at some cutoff point and then disabling it when it falls below another cutoff point would just mean a lot of switching. FSAA can have a drastic effect on framerates, and can cause framerates to drop much more quickly than they normally would in intensive scenes. The numbers wouldn't be consistent on everyone's machine (ie if I cut to FSAA at 60 fps, the framerate may drop to 20 fps or 40 fps depending on how well my system can handle it), anyway.
Other than that, FSAA isn't a feature that is universally liked, especially by those that prefer gaming at high resolution. FSAA at TV resolution is almost an unquestionable benefit, but FSAA at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 is probably unwanted, since it tends to look like someone whiped Vasoline all over your monitor rather than cleaning up the lines in the game.
Seems like a MUCH more efficient way to use your GPU. At LP's I'd always switch off FSAA&AF even when most of the time I'm pumping 70fps, just to keep above 30 on those few tight&insane spots.
The real question is, what kind of framerates do you have consistently (like averages) with FSAA enabled? If it's hovering at 30, you're not going to have a good time going back and forth between FSAA enabled and disabled.
The things that are most likely to be worked on are extending the viewing distance and model complexity while maintaining a decent (60fps or so) framerate, regardless of what features are enabled. Rather than messing with the features enabled (since features should stay on or off), they'll change the detail of what's drawn on the screen. This has already been done to a minor level on the Unreal engine, and has been done on a handful of other titles to an even greater extent (first game that comes to mind is Dark Reign 2, though it would seem very few people played that). Half-Life 2 has promised a lot of these types of features, but since it's been delayed we'll have to wait and see.
It doesn't state whether it's a 'rental' or you will still be able to play the game after HL2 is released. However, it seems that it's the full game, though it will be the Steam version rather than the standard retail version.
Our teachers picketed the school because of the administrators, only it was about a year or two after I graduated.
Interestingly enough, the administration that stepped in during my senior year (and was later picketed) mostly came from the San Diego school district, which had been heavily picketed the year before. Until that administration stepped in, most of the school's rules (those not mandated by the district, anyway) were discussed with student council before being enacted. The hat thing was district-wide, as far as I know, and any student wearing a hat on campus had their hat confiscated (my older step-brother actually had his confiscated when he went back after his classes were over to pick up his girlfriend, who had one more class than he did that year, while he was in his car in the parking lot no less).
But the article said that this is a charter school (in the US they call them private schools, I think).
Charter schools in the US aren't the same thing as private schools, as parents usually pay for private schools while charter schools are simply public schools with acceptance criteria which have to be met in the first place (and which parents have to choose to send their kids to).
Frankly, I could see implementing something like this in schools where children are sent after being kicked out of normal public schools, but implementing them in general is just worrisome, especially given that schools have a tendency to tell children they have no rights anyway.
Our school said it was out of respect as well, but there were additional points: 1) So they could see your eyes while you were in class (there was also a no sunglasses policy in classrooms, though they were at least allowed on campass, which the hats were not)
2) When students were allowed to wear hats and individual teachers had policies against hats in class, it took several minutes of class time to get students to remove them
3) When the whole school had a no hats in class policy (to resolve #2) it still took several minutes of class time to get students to remove them
Anything that actually showed gang afilliation was quickly banned anyway, in those cases it was specific items rather than the more general 'hats' rule which had nothing to do with gangs or weapons (in fact, the only rule they had about weapons was in regard to wallet chains and weapons in general, not clothing or other items that would hide them).
I think that it's interesting to think about what kinds of games a console has and to see how that affects people's opinions of them. For example, PS2 is heavy on the Japanese RPGs. If I were a big fan of those games, I'd clearly prefer that system. Personally, I like the FPS games, especially when they're done well. That's why I like my xbox. The closest I get to RPGs are Zelda-type games, and that's why I have my GameCube.
You see, I love Japanese RPGs, but since I rarely have large blocks of play time (I often can play a lot during the week, but not for long periods of time), my PS2 games don't get nearly as much play as my GC games. I love FPS games, but in the last couple of years most of the FPS games that have come out have been crap (imo, mostly because the CS/R6-style stuff doesn't appeal to me), but I do love Halo. I can't wait for GT4 to come out, yet the only other racing games I have are GT3 and Project Gotham (and I will probably get Project Gotham 2 as well).
I like a lot of different types of games, and the GC and PS2 clearly have the most single-console titles for me. The majority of my XBox library is multi-console stuff, although Halo, KOTOR, Project Gotham, and even Oddworld have made it worthwhile so far (and hopefully Crimson Skies, Project Gotham 2, Halo 2, and many more in the future).
First, there are more teen members than of the 20-30ish demographic. Second, their income is nearly 100% disposable. You can't count your rent, food, etc, as disposable income, as it isn't. The amount you spend on video games, big screen TV, etc. is disposable.
You're right, I can't count those things, which is why I mentioned them. When it comes down to it, I have about $300-400/ pay check in disposable income, which I readily admit is probably significantly higher than average for my age, although a good reason for that is because I don't have children. I get paid bi-weekly, so you can multiply by 26 and divide by 12 to get the average monthly disposable income fairly quickly. The average teenager gets paid $5.50/hour, works 20 hours a week, and has to pay for transportation in one way or another. In other words, their disposable income for a month is roughly equivalent to what mine is for 2 weeks, assuming they don't have a fairly nice car to pay for.
In your comment, you hit on one reason why the youth market is so important; not only do they have their own money to spend directly, they are far more likely to get gifts of games from parents, grandparents, etc.
That's right, but I also spent the majority of my own money on things unrelated to gaming, as did most of the people I knew (both in and out of the group of people I hung around with most of the time). Going by the high school parking lot around the time school lets out is about all it takes to realize this.
Fortunately, I realized some time ago that the average market they're going for is significantly different from myself, so I don't take all of my personal evidence for granted. The average gamer (as opposed to the average person that owns a console, someone that identifies themselves as a gamer) buys about half as many games as I do, if not fewer, so the idea for most companies is not to get me to buy their game (because they know there's a good chance I will compared to most other people), but to get the average gamer, or even better the average person that owns a console, to buy their game, because that's a much larger group and they're far less likely to actually buy a game in the first place. If you get them to keep coming back, you've got a customer that very few among your competition have.
On the other hand, the teenagers are still buying more amplifiers and speakers for their cars than games. The biggest exception being, of course, the ones that are installing PS1s in their cars.
If they are doing so well, why do they keep explaining themselves?
1) People keep asking the same questions, so they give them answers. 2) They have to put something out, or better developers will start to wonder if they have a plan to handle the perceived issues, and bail out as well.
Apple hasn't had to give a bunch of interviews about why iTunes and iTMS is being perceived as unsuccessful.
That's right, because they released iTunes as 'the best Windows application ever', and the press sucked their ass for more. Anyone that brings up a problem with iTunes gets shot down, and anyone that has issues with iTMS is in the same spot.
Sony doesn't have to give a bunch of interviews about the PS2's perceived failure.
Because there is no perceived failure, even when they're being outsold. Yet, if you look down the page a bit, their profits are dropping faster than their sales.
EA isn't out talking to everyone about the perceived poor reception of Madden '04.
Because there is no perceived poor reception of Madden '04. They could put Madden '04 in a box next year with Madden '05 on it and still rake in the cash. Most likely they'll update the stats, first, though.
Of course they have had to explain themselves for EA.com plenty of times. Quite the parallel I'd say.
It's been a while since I really read anything about EA.com, but if I remember correctly there was more than just a perception issue there.
People and companies don't explain themselves unless they have explaining to do. I love how they always talk about worldwide terms on the Nintendo side. I don't live worldwide, I live in the US.
That's because Nintendo's a worldwide company and they have their biggest success in the worldwide market. I don't see why people aren't surprised when Japanese companies make decisions based on Japan instead of the US. The same thing occurred with the company I work for, except on a smaller scale, in that our west coast office basically shut down because they kept sending people from the east coast to do west coast work instead of picking up the phone. NoA has to deal with the Japanese company's decisions and then try to make those decisions work for the US. Sega had to deal with a console that failed in the home market, despite good sales in the US it was dumped (and then of course there ended up being more Japanese development than US development, even after support was dropped by Sega).
If Nintendo talked about their sales since lowering the price you'd be saying it's just a short-term gain, and that's probably right, but the question is how far it's going to fall rather than how long it will last, and whether or not Microsoft and Sony are going to do anything in answer to it.
EA, Activision, THQ, Take-Two, these are not worldwide companies and don't care about the Gamecube's success or failure in Japan.
Those are worldwide companies and many of them do care about GC's success in Japan, but they make Japanese market games for the Cube and don't let it's success in the Japanese market affect their development decisions in the US market. EA's decision not to support online play on the GC is a mystery to me, as well, since the only additional support they get on the Sony side is Sony pushing the hardware, even though Sony is actively competing with them in that particular market (whereas Nintendo is not).
They want consoles in the houses in the US and Europe and Nintendo just isn't delivering.
They develop games for the US and European markets for the consoles that are in the houses in those markets. The next problem, of course, comes with development cycles. Even if Nintendo takes #2 in the US today and keeps it through the remainder of the life of this console, there probably isn't much time for a developer to start a new game for the console before the next one comes out. What it would help them with, though, is launch and first gen. titles for the next console.
Personally, there's only one game that I see in the next year coming out for my GC that's worth buying, and that's the next Zelda. The only marquee title for GC exclusively this holiday that I know if is Mario Kart, and it's just not my speed. May be a great game, but not my thing.
Personally, I see a lot more stuff coming out for xbox this season that appeals to me. Things like Rainbow 6, Counterstrike, Deus Ex 2 (which looks AMAZING), Crimson Skies, etc. The rest of the games I see coming out that interest me, like XIII, Metal Arms, etc., are crossplatform, so they don't count.
Personally, I have a lot of games I want for each console this coming XMas, but your list simply reminds me of why I might be out of touch with the more general audience, and have been since Counterstrike and Rainbow 6 were first released for the PC. Crimson Skies looks interesting to me, and Deus Ex *might* be interesting, but CS and Rainbow6-3 not in the slightest. XIII hasn't looked remotely interesting to me since I first heard about it.
Mario Kart I will definitely buy. Then there's Pikmin 2, FF:CC (though that's definitely after XMas), and a handful of other games. Most of the games I'm looking forward to for XBox are cross-platform games, with Crimson Skies being the notable exception. Most of the games I'm looking forward to on PS2 are RPGs.
Personally, though, I don't see why people keep buying the crapload of slow-paced FPS games that have been shoveled out since R6 and CS came along, any more than I understand why people will keep buying Madden every year (though I've played either CS or R6 more times than I've played Madden). Hell, even playing Madden 2004 I didn't see why it was any better than the MS football game I bought last year (because it was cheaper than the others, got the same ratings in most mags, and I went through a short phase of wanting some sports games for tactical gameplay that was missing elsewhere).
Of course, many of my Cube titles are sequels of games from previous Nintendo consoles, and I really can't say that bothers me much. Perhaps a big part of it is simply that I skipped the last 2 of Nintendo's consoles and really missed a lot of the great gameplay from their titles. Additionally, though, they are sometimes (if not always) willing to take risks with their franchises, something not many others have done lately. Metroid Prime is definitely not the Metroid I played as a kid (but Metroid Fusion is close, and I enjoy that, as well). Super Smash Bros. is just a fun, simple game that utilizes a great selection of recognizable characters. Zelda is certainly not the same old Zelda (for better or worse).
On the other hand, Nintendo is working on original titles (which they quickly make into franchises it would seem) such as Pikmin and Animal Crossing, though how strong the characters are remains to be seen (I think the characters in Animal Crossing will probably not outlive the game or be very universally recognizable, though they are good characters as you play the game). They're also working hard with other developers to make strong 2nd party offerings (like Eternal Darkness and the stuff they're working on with Namco, including the 1st party Pac-Man (which of course is a Namco property)).
I just don't really get a lot of recognition that way from Sony. I couldn't even tell you what 1st party titles there are from Sony, it's all about which 3rd parties they have on board, and we've seen some of them branch out to other consoles recently. Frankly, I don't enjoy seeing franchises that I grew up with on the Nintendo still coming out on the PS2, since it's easily the worst of the 3 consoles. I will buy Castlevania and probably more FF games, but I will also cringe as the games get closer and closer to the limits of what the console can do (FFVIII did this for me on the PS1, as well). But it's hard to blame the developers, since Sony's got the market share, regardless of the hardware.
I think that portion of the article is a good example of what is wrong with a lot of MMOG players. They find they don't like what they've already played, yet they still look towards the next game as if it's going to solve all of the problems. The author of the article already knew far more about WoW than I had even known was available about the game, and was writing about it as if he had already played the game.
WoW may or may not solve some of the problems with MMOGs, but it's not out yet and no one will even have any idea if it does until then. I still have problems with the payment model, even though I've tried 3 games for myself (UO, EQ, and PlanetSide), and my girlfriend just saw the payment model for herself last nite when I was showing her some of the information on Final Fantasy XI, and thought they (or I) were insane. She could've understood either the up-front payment or the subscription model, but the combination is too far out there, and I tend to agree. Even if I had to pay slightly more than normal for the first month, or subscribe for a minimum of 3 months at the start I could understand it, but $50 + $X/month is just too much. Luckily, I managed to find each of the games I've tried so far for less than $50, but in each case it certainly meant waiting quite a while (though less time with PS) after the launch, or even the stability problems being reduced.
PlanetSide had much less of the level treadmill and the 'pest control' aspects, but still started you off as basically cannon fodder rather than a useful individual. It also had a very short build-up until you reached the maximum level, and no content beyond the basic storyline (and a very sparse world with hotly contested areas that change hands constantly).
At the start of EQ, it seemed like there was something to do immediately, but then I realized after a couple of hours that I wouldn't be able to complete my first quest until I had levelled up a great deal (I couldn't even start on my way towards the area I needed to get to to start the quest without facing enemies that were significantly more powerful than I was). Oh, and getting killed by insects and bats was not my idea of fun, not to mention having to kill so many of them to get to level 3 (woohoo! ding!).
UO felt like a world that was already well established in which there was nothing to be done, and immediately presented me with a wolf to attack my character and another player that decided to help the wolf out. Oh, or a rabbit, which also had a 50/50 chance of killing my character.
I don't need to be all-powerful when I start a game, I just want a sense of something to do and a feeling that my character is maybe slightly more powerful than I really am in some way. It doesn't matter if it means that an orc in WoW has the same power (both in attack power and defensive power) as a bat in EQ, at least I would get killed by a swarm of orcs instead of a swarm of bats. If I have to commit genocide to level up, though, there's still something wrong. Genocide should be reserved for high-level characters (and committed quite easily against bats and low-level orcs).
Calculating the collision volume for a sphere, moving along a simple arc, is trivial, so in this case, I could solve my problem rather easily. However, creating a collision volume for a 1000+ polygon character, using true polygonal collision, along a curve, is MUCH more difficult, and beyond the scope of a real time game.
I can understand that it would be significantly more difficult to create the collision volume when using polygonal collision (rather than hit-boxes), but they weren't even getting it right with hit-boxes.
The problem described for Q3 is a combination of simple rounding errors by converting from floats to ints in the movement code, using a linear approximation based on previous position (rather than a continuous calculation based on actual location and time variables), and coupling the time-step to the framerate. Quake 3 eventually 'fixed' this in a patch by forcing the time-step to 125Hz. Doom 3 apparently is forcing the time-step to 60Hz (or perhaps is using 120Hz or 180Hz and forcing the framerate to 60fps to simplify the rendering).
In theory, though it would cause some slow-down (not sure how it would affect it as a real-time game, I'd have to do significant testing), you could do simplified prediction for most cases and then more accurate prediction (even in a smaller area) for actual collisions (or predicted collisions, which could still be misses). That should mean that the only time detection is more intensive than the previous hit-box model would be with predicted collisions, though the time savings from complete misses should make up for it.
In fact, for something as simple as deciding whether or not a jump lands at a certain height, you're really comparing the path of a cube anyway, as you only need to determine if the height of the jump was enough to land on the platform and if anything prevented the landing in flight (ie an obstruction at head-height or lower, although you may also have to deal with other players and/or projectiles while in flight).
The biggest point, though, beyond all theoretical tangents, is that whatever shortcuts are made to go away from true polygonal collision and true curves should be consistent for every player in the game. The simulation of the world behind all of the rendering should let every player jump just as high as any other player, regardless of whether or not they can render enough frames to get them there. Just because I reach the proper height to get to that platform between frames 4 and 5 of my jump (and am therefore lower than the platform on both frames 4 and 5) doesn't mean that I shouldn't land on the platform, because the physics simulation should know that the curve of the jump would have put me on that platform before frame 5 was rendered.
What do they base this perception or opinion on? Actual roll-up-your-sleeves analysis or the "features list" on their distro's box? Its kinda vague.
The survey was simply asking about perception, not why that perception existed. More than likely a great deal of that has to do with the number of security patches that have come out for Windows XP over the last year, and the more general press about Linux and security.
I think the idea that any OS is 'innately secure' is somewhat rediculous, though, as almost anything you put on a network is going to have to be locked down to make it secure. Linux may be more secure by default than Windows, but either one takes good administration to be really secure.
If teens have more disposable income than I do (with rent, car payment, car insurance, credit card debt, electric, phone), then there's something seriously wrong with their parents. How many parents even have enough money to throw at their teens like that in the first place (hell, I only have a girlfriend, no kids to deal with). I got a whole $5 a week when I was a teenager, and I spent absolutely nothing on games (I'd get my parents to get them for XMas or my birthday, so I'd have maybe 2 or 3 games a year, and since most of my XMas presents in my teen years involved much more expensive gifts I didn't often get games until my birthday, at which point I'd get one new one or maybe 3 old ones). My youngest step-brother only recently stopped getting allowance from our parents and was getting the same amount.
The only time teens have a large disposable income is when they have a job and their parents pay for their car (and insurance) or their parents are just flat out rich, which we all know is not a large percentage of the population.
At the ripe old age of 25 I have far more video games than I ever did as a kid or a teenager, and far more money to throw at them, even including what I might have gotten for XMas back then (hell, I still get games for XMas from my parents). I also managed to get every major console of the generation for the first time in my life (even though I was close during the 16-bit era), and have a significantly larger TV to play them on, and a decent PC for games on that platform.
I love how governments can claim to have a budget surplus when they are in debt. Yeah, I could save a lot of money if I didn't pay my debts, too.
I'm not saying that this isn't a good thing for Canada, since the other governments don't seem to understand the idea of spending less money than they bring in, but being in the black when you have a multi-billion dollar debt is just a matter of accounting rather than a grounded view of reality.
When my girlfriend is working (she just recently had back surgery, so she's not been working for 3 weeks) I have plenty of free time to play games. I find that most of it is spent playing Cube and PS1 games, even though I have the PS2, GC, XBox, and DC. I'm slowly picking up most of the remakes and sequels to the DC games I already have so that the DC can go into the closet for a while.
I think I might still have more PS2 games than Cube games, but it's fairly close, and I've had the Cube significantly less time than any of the others (I bought it just before the GB Player came out when I found out the Player bundle wouldn't include a game). I might pick up another Cube for the bedroom when the Zelda bundle comes out, or after XMas (if the Zelda bundle is still available or another good bundle comes along), simply because I want the Zelda games and I would really like to be able to play something else (besides a PC game) while my gf is playing Animal Crossing.
When it all comes down to it, I'll simply wait until there are a significant number of titles I want for a console in the next generation before picking one of them up. Hopefully the price will come down by then, too. For now, though, I'll simply continue buying the games I want, regardless of where they're released, and that's the way I like it. It just happens that Nintendo's putting out a lot more quality titles (even if there are a lot of remakes and sequels) at the moment than most of the others. It doesn't mean that I've stopped buying games for the other consoles (my last trip to GameStop yielded TimeSplitters 2 for GC, Silent Hill 2 for XBox, and Frequency for PS2, helped by the fact they had buy 2 get 1 free on used games so I only spent a bit under $50).
I would have to say it can't have much of a measurable success rate if it's only a recent replacement (since success would have to be measured into the late teens and early twenties). My girlfriend's brother was in a DARE class just last year.
I seem to recall that the only reason that America won the Revolutionary War was because of support from the French.
Yes, it's the only reason, because I read it on Slashdot.
Regardless of how much help the US got from France in the Revolution, the French sure got plenty of help from the US since then, like a couple of World Wars. I seem to recall that France was occupied by Germans for a while there.
(C) Copyright Wireless Application Protocol Forum Ltd, 2000 All rights reserved 5.2 GSM Location Information The WTA GSM user agent provides access to GSM location information. The following octets must be returned for the GSM location information: octets 1 - 3 Mobile Country & Network Codes (MCC & MNC), coded as specified in GSM 04.08. octets 4 - 5 Location Area Code (LAC), coded as specified in GSM 04.08. octets 6 - 7 Cell Identity Value (Cell ID), coded as specified in GSM 04.08. octet 8 Timing Advance, coded as specified for the Timing Advance information element in GSM 04.08 starting at octet 2 (the IEI is removed). The Timing Advance value is that of the active dedicated connection (call or SMS). If there is no active dedicated connection, the value is that of the last active dedicated connection. NOTE: The ME should store the last value of the Timing Advance. NOTE: Using the Status value, the application can be aware of potential misinterpretation of the Timing Advance value. octet 9 Status, coded as a bit field: Bit 8 Bit 7 Bit 6 Bit 5 Bit 4 Bit 3 Bit 2 Bit 1 Phone status NMR present SPARE WAP-171-WTA IGSM, Version 07-Jul-2000 Page 11(22) Phone status: 0 = the device is in idle mode (not connected) 1 = the device is not in idle mode NMR (Network Measurement Results) present: 0 = the NMR field is not present 1 = the NMR field is present The following octets are returned for the Network Measurement Results (as indicated by the NMR bit of the Status octet): octets 10 - 25 Network Measurement Results, coded as for the Measurement Results information element in GSM 04.08 starting at octet 2 (the IEI is removed).
As for phones not using GPS, Samsung provided several thousand which used GPS to provide location information to E911 services for the winter Olympics last year. Nokia has a handful of phones that use GPS as well, as do most other cell phone manufacturers. It only takes a google search to find any of this information, and I didn't have to write code for any cell phone (and if I did write code for a cell phone, I wouldn't have to know there was a GPS system in it unless I was developing GPS features and the cell phone manufacturer actually provided developer access to the GPS (which most of these phones don't).
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Class: NEC WIZ MAG ENC
Well there you go, the item doesn't work for those of class: tech support rep.
Exactly.
;)
And to add to that, all of the news agencies in the world couldn't get the important news out to most people anyway, that being whether or not particular people are ok. On the other hand, it only took me two phone calls last nite to make sure most of my family in San Diego was ok, and whether or not they were still in the line of danger. The first call to my parents' home phone, which was busy (unusual due to call waiting, but not given the circumstances). The second was to my dad's cell phone, which he had left on specifically because so many people were calling and the phone lines were so bad
Needless to say, if there are people you care about in the lines of these fires, try to get ahold of them and if you can't, try the numbers setup specifically to give family information about their relatives. You can find those numbers on any local area news channel's website.
In the meantime, back to games...
if you think you can see more than 60fps you are either full of shit, or you are full of shit.
and if you believe that, you are full of shit.
30 fps is just above the minimum to see fluid motion. The maximum has been charted as somewhere in the hundreds or thousands, and can vary a great deal from person to person.
That being said, when playing a video game, the minimum for fluid motion is all that's required, but for best results you'll want a steady framerate, which varies very little.
I think a lot of people are going to form new opinions about framerates if Doom 3's FPS cap remains in place. 60 fps is very definitely within the limits of what a person can see, but the only real reason for pushing more frames is to maintain the highest possible minimum framerate. Framerate caps only leave room to drive the minimum up near the maximum, thereby making the play experience as smooth as possible. If more people learned that lesson, they'd be happier with their computers overall. If you're pumping out a 100fps average and the framerate drops to 60 you're going to feel like pulling your eyeballs out of your head, like everything's crawling, but if you had capped it at 60 to begin with there wouldn't have been a drop and everything would've played smooth as glass.
been playing first person shooters since wolfenstein3d. 60 fps is fine. I'll put up with 30 if I get all the pretty graphics options with it. most monitors don't support 100fps, anyways.
While I agree that 60 fps is fine, I have to take exception with the 'most monitors dont support 100fps, anyways' portion. I'm currently running at 1280x1024@32bpp @100Hz, so 100 fps would be just fine (and make it 120-150fps just to make sure the v-synch has new frames every time).
about the only way you're going to get 100fps in most modern games is to shut off all graphical detail and play in about 800X600. if you're playing with that level of detail, there's no real reason to play any of the new games. quake II, halflife and all the mods for them will give you everything you need.
On one hand you mention modern games on the other you say Q2 and HL are all you need. Which is it? I can play Q2 at 1600x1200 w/ more frames than my monitor can display, and HL is probably close, if I didn't have fps_max set to 60. I'm not sure what 'modern' games manage, as UT2003 is the best example I can think of, and while the demo ran fine the original release did not (on my computer), so I guess that'd be 0 fps (maybe I'll install that again and patch it and see how it goes). Until Doom 3 and HL2 come out, UT2003 is pretty much the only modern FPS on a modern engine, unless you're going to count Q3, which is still a bit over 3 years old iirc, and just as capable of running at 100fps at high resolutions as most of the others.
Pretty sure he said game tic, not frame rate?
The article linked here is very short on information (and actually quite incorrect on a number of statements), but the earlier article quoted the framerate cap specifically, with the quote in this article as explanation for the reason why the cap was made:
The game tic simulation, including player movement, runs at 60hz, so if it rendered any faster, it would just be rendering identical frames
The article stated 'no more no less', which is just wrong, as no one at id has ever stated that Doom 3 would maintain a given minimum framerate, let alone a constant framerate.
I see what you're saying. If you enable FSAA at 31FPS, you'll end up having 30fps one moment, then 15fps with FSAA enabled the next.
;) Seriously, though, the difference between the two is reason enough not to implement something along those lines, although I could see the appeal to having FSAA shut off when framerates get too low.
:-)
;)
Furthermore, let's for arguement's sake forget 30FPS, and instead use N as the fps value above which we can no longer discern a smoother picture.
You would actually need 2 values:
N being the point at which FSAA is enabled
M being the point at which FSAA is disabled
and these values would have to be user-configurable. So, if the framerate goes over N while you have FSAA disabled, it enabled 2X FSAA, if it hits N again, it enables 4X FSAA, and so on. If it drops to M at any point, and your FSAA is set to 8x, it drops to 4X, and then 2X, and finally disables FSAA. This makes sense to me, but again, it all must be user-configurable both for the minimum and maximum framerates and for the feature in the first place (users must be able to disable this, both for benchmarking and personal dislike of FSAA).
My point, however, remains. Consider the following two points:
A. There _is_ redering power wasted.
B. There _are_ more useful things to do with it than render frames I cannot discern.
A is a debatable point, as most new GPUs add more features along with the increased power, and games that take advantage of those features will increase the load on older GPUs that don't have those feautures (unless they disable the features altogether), or pass the load to the CPU.
B is a mis-statement, as anyone can discern more frames than any graphics card is capable of putting out. If you're happy with 30 fps (and believe me, I'm a big proponent of limiting framerates, especially when it's a value clients can change), that's fine, but everyone can discern much higher rates (excepting the blind and those of extremely limited vision).
As long as you're happy with it, of course there's room to start doing other things, but the point remains that most graphics cards can't even render current games at 1600x1200 resolution at 30 fps with high quality settings (excepting FSAA).
What you said does not adress the why/why-nots of dynamic FSAA, it's simply a well-made point that definitely should affect the FSAA-enabling threshold.
and the ability to enable the dynamic FSAA feature, as well, should anyone implement it.
If I need no more than N fps, And FSAA will drop my rendering rate by 200%, I can set the dynamic FSAA-enabling threshold at 2N. Given a good implementation, I won't even discern the switch.
If you won't discern the switch, then you really don't need it, because if you can't tell the difference between FSAA on and off, why do it at all?
>> Other than that, FSAA isn't a feature that is universally liked
probbably the most ingenious invention of all time is the ON/OFF switch. Let the user decide
Exactly
>> The things that are most likely to be worked on are extending the viewing distance and model complexity while maintaining a decent (60fps or so) framerate
Model complexity is definitely a very good use for them extra GPU cycles. I fully agree with you there.
As for viewing distance - my opinion here is based on a combination of ignorance and some common sense, but doesn't the following sound a bit silly?
You're looking through the scope of your sniper rifle, the business end of which is pointed at your mark 500 meters away.
A car drives up near him (complicating the rendering process), your field of view decreases, whoops? I can only see 400 meters! where did the fog of war come from? where's my mark?!
Of course, but then the field of view is decreased in the majority of games that allow zooming, and this severely decreases the co
For the life of me I can't figure out the connection between a client's FPS and his ability to perform unreasonable jumps in the game world as generated on the server. But what the hell, the devs pro'lly know what they're talking about.
It has to do with dynamically calculating the height of the jump and the rounding of floating point numbers during movement (which is calculated per frame). It's not that the jumps are unreasonable, in fact either everyone should be able to perform the jumps or no one should, it's a matter of 1 unit (whether the floating point number is rounded up or down determines whether or not you make it).
More to the point though (on FPS limiting) - can someone with GPU/DirectX internals knowledge explain why doesn't a game (or a GPU) that realizes its churning more than the 30fps that the human eye can discern dynamically (and automatically) enable FSAA (AntiAliasing) and/or AF and use the spare GPU power to enhance picture quality, then dynamically stop doing so once you need the power to keep up with a playable 30 FPS?
30 fps is far below what a human eye can discern, it's simply close to the lowest level that the human eye can see as fluid motion. Besides that, dynamically enabling FSAA at some cutoff point and then disabling it when it falls below another cutoff point would just mean a lot of switching. FSAA can have a drastic effect on framerates, and can cause framerates to drop much more quickly than they normally would in intensive scenes. The numbers wouldn't be consistent on everyone's machine (ie if I cut to FSAA at 60 fps, the framerate may drop to 20 fps or 40 fps depending on how well my system can handle it), anyway.
Other than that, FSAA isn't a feature that is universally liked, especially by those that prefer gaming at high resolution. FSAA at TV resolution is almost an unquestionable benefit, but FSAA at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 is probably unwanted, since it tends to look like someone whiped Vasoline all over your monitor rather than cleaning up the lines in the game.
Seems like a MUCH more efficient way to use your GPU. At LP's I'd always switch off FSAA&AF even when most of the time I'm pumping 70fps, just to keep above 30 on those few tight&insane spots.
The real question is, what kind of framerates do you have consistently (like averages) with FSAA enabled? If it's hovering at 30, you're not going to have a good time going back and forth between FSAA enabled and disabled.
The things that are most likely to be worked on are extending the viewing distance and model complexity while maintaining a decent (60fps or so) framerate, regardless of what features are enabled. Rather than messing with the features enabled (since features should stay on or off), they'll change the detail of what's drawn on the screen. This has already been done to a minor level on the Unreal engine, and has been done on a handful of other titles to an even greater extent (first game that comes to mind is Dark Reign 2, though it would seem very few people played that). Half-Life 2 has promised a lot of these types of features, but since it's been delayed we'll have to wait and see.
It doesn't state whether it's a 'rental' or you will still be able to play the game after HL2 is released. However, it seems that it's the full game, though it will be the Steam version rather than the standard retail version.
Our teachers picketed the school because of the administrators, only it was about a year or two after I graduated.
Interestingly enough, the administration that stepped in during my senior year (and was later picketed) mostly came from the San Diego school district, which had been heavily picketed the year before. Until that administration stepped in, most of the school's rules (those not mandated by the district, anyway) were discussed with student council before being enacted. The hat thing was district-wide, as far as I know, and any student wearing a hat on campus had their hat confiscated (my older step-brother actually had his confiscated when he went back after his classes were over to pick up his girlfriend, who had one more class than he did that year, while he was in his car in the parking lot no less).
But the article said that this is a charter school (in the US they call them private schools, I think).
Charter schools in the US aren't the same thing as private schools, as parents usually pay for private schools while charter schools are simply public schools with acceptance criteria which have to be met in the first place (and which parents have to choose to send their kids to).
Frankly, I could see implementing something like this in schools where children are sent after being kicked out of normal public schools, but implementing them in general is just worrisome, especially given that schools have a tendency to tell children they have no rights anyway.
Our school said it was out of respect as well, but there were additional points:
1) So they could see your eyes while you were in class (there was also a no sunglasses policy in classrooms, though they were at least allowed on campass, which the hats were not)
2) When students were allowed to wear hats and individual teachers had policies against hats in class, it took several minutes of class time to get students to remove them
3) When the whole school had a no hats in class policy (to resolve #2) it still took several minutes of class time to get students to remove them
Anything that actually showed gang afilliation was quickly banned anyway, in those cases it was specific items rather than the more general 'hats' rule which had nothing to do with gangs or weapons (in fact, the only rule they had about weapons was in regard to wallet chains and weapons in general, not clothing or other items that would hide them).
I think that it's interesting to think about what kinds of games a console has and to see how that affects people's opinions of them. For example, PS2 is heavy on the Japanese RPGs. If I were a big fan of those games, I'd clearly prefer that system. Personally, I like the FPS games, especially when they're done well. That's why I like my xbox. The closest I get to RPGs are Zelda-type games, and that's why I have my GameCube.
You see, I love Japanese RPGs, but since I rarely have large blocks of play time (I often can play a lot during the week, but not for long periods of time), my PS2 games don't get nearly as much play as my GC games. I love FPS games, but in the last couple of years most of the FPS games that have come out have been crap (imo, mostly because the CS/R6-style stuff doesn't appeal to me), but I do love Halo. I can't wait for GT4 to come out, yet the only other racing games I have are GT3 and Project Gotham (and I will probably get Project Gotham 2 as well).
I like a lot of different types of games, and the GC and PS2 clearly have the most single-console titles for me. The majority of my XBox library is multi-console stuff, although Halo, KOTOR, Project Gotham, and even Oddworld have made it worthwhile so far (and hopefully Crimson Skies, Project Gotham 2, Halo 2, and many more in the future).
First, there are more teen members than of the 20-30ish demographic. Second, their income is nearly 100% disposable. You can't count your rent, food, etc, as disposable income, as it isn't. The amount you spend on video games, big screen TV, etc. is disposable.
You're right, I can't count those things, which is why I mentioned them. When it comes down to it, I have about $300-400/ pay check in disposable income, which I readily admit is probably significantly higher than average for my age, although a good reason for that is because I don't have children. I get paid bi-weekly, so you can multiply by 26 and divide by 12 to get the average monthly disposable income fairly quickly. The average teenager gets paid $5.50/hour, works 20 hours a week, and has to pay for transportation in one way or another. In other words, their disposable income for a month is roughly equivalent to what mine is for 2 weeks, assuming they don't have a fairly nice car to pay for.
In your comment, you hit on one reason why the youth market is so important; not only do they have their own money to spend directly, they are far more likely to get gifts of games from parents, grandparents, etc.
That's right, but I also spent the majority of my own money on things unrelated to gaming, as did most of the people I knew (both in and out of the group of people I hung around with most of the time). Going by the high school parking lot around the time school lets out is about all it takes to realize this.
Fortunately, I realized some time ago that the average market they're going for is significantly different from myself, so I don't take all of my personal evidence for granted. The average gamer (as opposed to the average person that owns a console, someone that identifies themselves as a gamer) buys about half as many games as I do, if not fewer, so the idea for most companies is not to get me to buy their game (because they know there's a good chance I will compared to most other people), but to get the average gamer, or even better the average person that owns a console, to buy their game, because that's a much larger group and they're far less likely to actually buy a game in the first place. If you get them to keep coming back, you've got a customer that very few among your competition have.
On the other hand, the teenagers are still buying more amplifiers and speakers for their cars than games. The biggest exception being, of course, the ones that are installing PS1s in their cars.
If they are doing so well, why do they keep explaining themselves?
1) People keep asking the same questions, so they give them answers.
2) They have to put something out, or better developers will start to wonder if they have a plan to handle the perceived issues, and bail out as well.
Apple hasn't had to give a bunch of interviews about why iTunes and iTMS is being perceived as unsuccessful.
That's right, because they released iTunes as 'the best Windows application ever', and the press sucked their ass for more. Anyone that brings up a problem with iTunes gets shot down, and anyone that has issues with iTMS is in the same spot.
Sony doesn't have to give a bunch of interviews about the PS2's perceived failure.
Because there is no perceived failure, even when they're being outsold. Yet, if you look down the page a bit, their profits are dropping faster than their sales.
EA isn't out talking to everyone about the perceived poor reception of Madden '04.
Because there is no perceived poor reception of Madden '04. They could put Madden '04 in a box next year with Madden '05 on it and still rake in the cash. Most likely they'll update the stats, first, though.
Of course they have had to explain themselves for EA.com plenty of times. Quite the parallel I'd say.
It's been a while since I really read anything about EA.com, but if I remember correctly there was more than just a perception issue there.
People and companies don't explain themselves unless they have explaining to do. I love how they always talk about worldwide terms on the Nintendo side. I don't live worldwide, I live in the US.
That's because Nintendo's a worldwide company and they have their biggest success in the worldwide market. I don't see why people aren't surprised when Japanese companies make decisions based on Japan instead of the US. The same thing occurred with the company I work for, except on a smaller scale, in that our west coast office basically shut down because they kept sending people from the east coast to do west coast work instead of picking up the phone. NoA has to deal with the Japanese company's decisions and then try to make those decisions work for the US. Sega had to deal with a console that failed in the home market, despite good sales in the US it was dumped (and then of course there ended up being more Japanese development than US development, even after support was dropped by Sega).
If Nintendo talked about their sales since lowering the price you'd be saying it's just a short-term gain, and that's probably right, but the question is how far it's going to fall rather than how long it will last, and whether or not Microsoft and Sony are going to do anything in answer to it.
EA, Activision, THQ, Take-Two, these are not worldwide companies and don't care about the Gamecube's success or failure in Japan.
Those are worldwide companies and many of them do care about GC's success in Japan, but they make Japanese market games for the Cube and don't let it's success in the Japanese market affect their development decisions in the US market. EA's decision not to support online play on the GC is a mystery to me, as well, since the only additional support they get on the Sony side is Sony pushing the hardware, even though Sony is actively competing with them in that particular market (whereas Nintendo is not).
They want consoles in the houses in the US and Europe and Nintendo just isn't delivering.
They develop games for the US and European markets for the consoles that are in the houses in those markets. The next problem, of course, comes with development cycles. Even if Nintendo takes #2 in the US today and keeps it through the remainder of the life of this console, there probably isn't much time for a developer to start a new game for the console before the next one comes out. What it would help them with, though, is launch and first gen. titles for the next console.
Personally, there's only one game that I see in the next year coming out for my GC that's worth buying, and that's the next Zelda. The only marquee title for GC exclusively this holiday that I know if is Mario Kart, and it's just not my speed. May be a great game, but not my thing.
Personally, I see a lot more stuff coming out for xbox this season that appeals to me. Things like Rainbow 6, Counterstrike, Deus Ex 2 (which looks AMAZING), Crimson Skies, etc. The rest of the games I see coming out that interest me, like XIII, Metal Arms, etc., are crossplatform, so they don't count.
Personally, I have a lot of games I want for each console this coming XMas, but your list simply reminds me of why I might be out of touch with the more general audience, and have been since Counterstrike and Rainbow 6 were first released for the PC. Crimson Skies looks interesting to me, and Deus Ex *might* be interesting, but CS and Rainbow6-3 not in the slightest. XIII hasn't looked remotely interesting to me since I first heard about it.
Mario Kart I will definitely buy. Then there's Pikmin 2, FF:CC (though that's definitely after XMas), and a handful of other games. Most of the games I'm looking forward to for XBox are cross-platform games, with Crimson Skies being the notable exception. Most of the games I'm looking forward to on PS2 are RPGs.
Personally, though, I don't see why people keep buying the crapload of slow-paced FPS games that have been shoveled out since R6 and CS came along, any more than I understand why people will keep buying Madden every year (though I've played either CS or R6 more times than I've played Madden). Hell, even playing Madden 2004 I didn't see why it was any better than the MS football game I bought last year (because it was cheaper than the others, got the same ratings in most mags, and I went through a short phase of wanting some sports games for tactical gameplay that was missing elsewhere).
Of course, many of my Cube titles are sequels of games from previous Nintendo consoles, and I really can't say that bothers me much. Perhaps a big part of it is simply that I skipped the last 2 of Nintendo's consoles and really missed a lot of the great gameplay from their titles. Additionally, though, they are sometimes (if not always) willing to take risks with their franchises, something not many others have done lately. Metroid Prime is definitely not the Metroid I played as a kid (but Metroid Fusion is close, and I enjoy that, as well). Super Smash Bros. is just a fun, simple game that utilizes a great selection of recognizable characters. Zelda is certainly not the same old Zelda (for better or worse).
On the other hand, Nintendo is working on original titles (which they quickly make into franchises it would seem) such as Pikmin and Animal Crossing, though how strong the characters are remains to be seen (I think the characters in Animal Crossing will probably not outlive the game or be very universally recognizable, though they are good characters as you play the game). They're also working hard with other developers to make strong 2nd party offerings (like Eternal Darkness and the stuff they're working on with Namco, including the 1st party Pac-Man (which of course is a Namco property)).
I just don't really get a lot of recognition that way from Sony. I couldn't even tell you what 1st party titles there are from Sony, it's all about which 3rd parties they have on board, and we've seen some of them branch out to other consoles recently. Frankly, I don't enjoy seeing franchises that I grew up with on the Nintendo still coming out on the PS2, since it's easily the worst of the 3 consoles. I will buy Castlevania and probably more FF games, but I will also cringe as the games get closer and closer to the limits of what the console can do (FFVIII did this for me on the PS1, as well). But it's hard to blame the developers, since Sony's got the market share, regardless of the hardware.
I think that portion of the article is a good example of what is wrong with a lot of MMOG players. They find they don't like what they've already played, yet they still look towards the next game as if it's going to solve all of the problems. The author of the article already knew far more about WoW than I had even known was available about the game, and was writing about it as if he had already played the game.
WoW may or may not solve some of the problems with MMOGs, but it's not out yet and no one will even have any idea if it does until then. I still have problems with the payment model, even though I've tried 3 games for myself (UO, EQ, and PlanetSide), and my girlfriend just saw the payment model for herself last nite when I was showing her some of the information on Final Fantasy XI, and thought they (or I) were insane. She could've understood either the up-front payment or the subscription model, but the combination is too far out there, and I tend to agree. Even if I had to pay slightly more than normal for the first month, or subscribe for a minimum of 3 months at the start I could understand it, but $50 + $X/month is just too much. Luckily, I managed to find each of the games I've tried so far for less than $50, but in each case it certainly meant waiting quite a while (though less time with PS) after the launch, or even the stability problems being reduced.
PlanetSide had much less of the level treadmill and the 'pest control' aspects, but still started you off as basically cannon fodder rather than a useful individual. It also had a very short build-up until you reached the maximum level, and no content beyond the basic storyline (and a very sparse world with hotly contested areas that change hands constantly).
At the start of EQ, it seemed like there was something to do immediately, but then I realized after a couple of hours that I wouldn't be able to complete my first quest until I had levelled up a great deal (I couldn't even start on my way towards the area I needed to get to to start the quest without facing enemies that were significantly more powerful than I was). Oh, and getting killed by insects and bats was not my idea of fun, not to mention having to kill so many of them to get to level 3 (woohoo! ding!).
UO felt like a world that was already well established in which there was nothing to be done, and immediately presented me with a wolf to attack my character and another player that decided to help the wolf out. Oh, or a rabbit, which also had a 50/50 chance of killing my character.
I don't need to be all-powerful when I start a game, I just want a sense of something to do and a feeling that my character is maybe slightly more powerful than I really am in some way. It doesn't matter if it means that an orc in WoW has the same power (both in attack power and defensive power) as a bat in EQ, at least I would get killed by a swarm of orcs instead of a swarm of bats. If I have to commit genocide to level up, though, there's still something wrong. Genocide should be reserved for high-level characters (and committed quite easily against bats and low-level orcs).
Calculating the collision volume for a sphere, moving along a simple arc, is trivial, so in this case, I could solve my problem rather easily. However, creating a collision volume for a 1000+ polygon character, using true polygonal collision, along a curve, is MUCH more difficult, and beyond the scope of a real time game.
I can understand that it would be significantly more difficult to create the collision volume when using polygonal collision (rather than hit-boxes), but they weren't even getting it right with hit-boxes.
The problem described for Q3 is a combination of simple rounding errors by converting from floats to ints in the movement code, using a linear approximation based on previous position (rather than a continuous calculation based on actual location and time variables), and coupling the time-step to the framerate. Quake 3 eventually 'fixed' this in a patch by forcing the time-step to 125Hz. Doom 3 apparently is forcing the time-step to 60Hz (or perhaps is using 120Hz or 180Hz and forcing the framerate to 60fps to simplify the rendering).
In theory, though it would cause some slow-down (not sure how it would affect it as a real-time game, I'd have to do significant testing), you could do simplified prediction for most cases and then more accurate prediction (even in a smaller area) for actual collisions (or predicted collisions, which could still be misses). That should mean that the only time detection is more intensive than the previous hit-box model would be with predicted collisions, though the time savings from complete misses should make up for it.
In fact, for something as simple as deciding whether or not a jump lands at a certain height, you're really comparing the path of a cube anyway, as you only need to determine if the height of the jump was enough to land on the platform and if anything prevented the landing in flight (ie an obstruction at head-height or lower, although you may also have to deal with other players and/or projectiles while in flight).
The biggest point, though, beyond all theoretical tangents, is that whatever shortcuts are made to go away from true polygonal collision and true curves should be consistent for every player in the game. The simulation of the world behind all of the rendering should let every player jump just as high as any other player, regardless of whether or not they can render enough frames to get them there. Just because I reach the proper height to get to that platform between frames 4 and 5 of my jump (and am therefore lower than the platform on both frames 4 and 5) doesn't mean that I shouldn't land on the platform, because the physics simulation should know that the curve of the jump would have put me on that platform before frame 5 was rendered.
What do they base this perception or opinion on? Actual roll-up-your-sleeves analysis or the "features list" on their distro's box? Its kinda vague.
The survey was simply asking about perception, not why that perception existed. More than likely a great deal of that has to do with the number of security patches that have come out for Windows XP over the last year, and the more general press about Linux and security.
I think the idea that any OS is 'innately secure' is somewhat rediculous, though, as almost anything you put on a network is going to have to be locked down to make it secure. Linux may be more secure by default than Windows, but either one takes good administration to be really secure.
If teens have more disposable income than I do (with rent, car payment, car insurance, credit card debt, electric, phone), then there's something seriously wrong with their parents. How many parents even have enough money to throw at their teens like that in the first place (hell, I only have a girlfriend, no kids to deal with). I got a whole $5 a week when I was a teenager, and I spent absolutely nothing on games (I'd get my parents to get them for XMas or my birthday, so I'd have maybe 2 or 3 games a year, and since most of my XMas presents in my teen years involved much more expensive gifts I didn't often get games until my birthday, at which point I'd get one new one or maybe 3 old ones). My youngest step-brother only recently stopped getting allowance from our parents and was getting the same amount.
The only time teens have a large disposable income is when they have a job and their parents pay for their car (and insurance) or their parents are just flat out rich, which we all know is not a large percentage of the population.
At the ripe old age of 25 I have far more video games than I ever did as a kid or a teenager, and far more money to throw at them, even including what I might have gotten for XMas back then (hell, I still get games for XMas from my parents). I also managed to get every major console of the generation for the first time in my life (even though I was close during the 16-bit era), and have a significantly larger TV to play them on, and a decent PC for games on that platform.
I love how governments can claim to have a budget surplus when they are in debt. Yeah, I could save a lot of money if I didn't pay my debts, too.
I'm not saying that this isn't a good thing for Canada, since the other governments don't seem to understand the idea of spending less money than they bring in, but being in the black when you have a multi-billion dollar debt is just a matter of accounting rather than a grounded view of reality.
When my girlfriend is working (she just recently had back surgery, so she's not been working for 3 weeks) I have plenty of free time to play games. I find that most of it is spent playing Cube and PS1 games, even though I have the PS2, GC, XBox, and DC. I'm slowly picking up most of the remakes and sequels to the DC games I already have so that the DC can go into the closet for a while.
I think I might still have more PS2 games than Cube games, but it's fairly close, and I've had the Cube significantly less time than any of the others (I bought it just before the GB Player came out when I found out the Player bundle wouldn't include a game). I might pick up another Cube for the bedroom when the Zelda bundle comes out, or after XMas (if the Zelda bundle is still available or another good bundle comes along), simply because I want the Zelda games and I would really like to be able to play something else (besides a PC game) while my gf is playing Animal Crossing.
When it all comes down to it, I'll simply wait until there are a significant number of titles I want for a console in the next generation before picking one of them up. Hopefully the price will come down by then, too. For now, though, I'll simply continue buying the games I want, regardless of where they're released, and that's the way I like it. It just happens that Nintendo's putting out a lot more quality titles (even if there are a lot of remakes and sequels) at the moment than most of the others. It doesn't mean that I've stopped buying games for the other consoles (my last trip to GameStop yielded TimeSplitters 2 for GC, Silent Hill 2 for XBox, and Frequency for PS2, helped by the fact they had buy 2 get 1 free on used games so I only spent a bit under $50).
I would have to say it can't have much of a measurable success rate if it's only a recent replacement (since success would have to be measured into the late teens and early twenties). My girlfriend's brother was in a DARE class just last year.
I seem to recall that the only reason that America won the Revolutionary War was because of support from the French.
Yes, it's the only reason, because I read it on Slashdot.
Regardless of how much help the US got from France in the Revolution, the French sure got plenty of help from the US since then, like a couple of World Wars. I seem to recall that France was occupied by Germans for a while there.
If they never sell it means that eventually at least some of the cell service providers will be giving away the N-Gage with just about any contract.
(C) Copyright Wireless Application Protocol Forum Ltd, 2000A IGSM, Version 07-Jul-2000 Page 11(22)
All rights reserved
5.2 GSM Location Information
The WTA GSM user agent provides access to GSM location information. The following octets must be returned for the
GSM location information:
octets 1 - 3 Mobile Country & Network Codes (MCC & MNC), coded as specified in GSM 04.08.
octets 4 - 5 Location Area Code (LAC), coded as specified in GSM 04.08.
octets 6 - 7 Cell Identity Value (Cell ID), coded as specified in GSM 04.08.
octet 8 Timing Advance, coded as specified for the Timing Advance information element in GSM 04.08
starting at octet 2 (the IEI is removed). The Timing Advance value is that of the active dedicated
connection (call or SMS). If there is no active dedicated connection, the value is that of the last
active dedicated connection.
NOTE: The ME should store the last value of the Timing Advance.
NOTE: Using the Status value, the application can be aware of potential misinterpretation of the
Timing Advance value.
octet 9 Status, coded as a bit field:
Bit 8 Bit 7 Bit 6 Bit 5 Bit 4 Bit 3 Bit 2 Bit 1
Phone
status
NMR
present
SPARE
WAP-171-WT
Phone status:
0 = the device is in idle mode (not connected)
1 = the device is not in idle mode
NMR (Network Measurement Results) present:
0 = the NMR field is not present
1 = the NMR field is present
The following octets are returned for the Network Measurement Results (as indicated by the NMR bit of the Status octet):
octets 10 - 25 Network Measurement Results, coded as for the Measurement Results information element in GSM
04.08 starting at octet 2 (the IEI is removed).
As for phones not using GPS, Samsung provided several thousand which used GPS to provide location information to E911 services for the winter Olympics last year. Nokia has a handful of phones that use GPS as well, as do most other cell phone manufacturers. It only takes a google search to find any of this information, and I didn't have to write code for any cell phone (and if I did write code for a cell phone, I wouldn't have to know there was a GPS system in it unless I was developing GPS features and the cell phone manufacturer actually provided developer access to the GPS (which most of these phones don't).