Well, I do turn my head a bit - maybe 10-20 degrees to sides - when I play some FPS. Just imagine yourself, e.g., strafing out of the corner. Supposedly your EYES are still locked on display before you, yet you can rotate your head a bit.
And this should mean a lot in such a detailed environment: make all these efforts to produce a precise acoustic environment and then to fail by ignoring head direction - so that sound would be inconsistent to picture on a fixed monitor before you?
BTW, when I was younger, I played Counter-Strike, and on some maps you could camp nicely behind a wooden wall, hear someone coming on the other side and precisely shoot the guy with a few bullets. They all were shouting "cheater" for the first time, thinking you can see through walls... Nope.
But when a man tries to establish precise source of some sound, one often turns his head to sides a few times. Something related to binaural hearing and psychoacoustic model, perhaps.
For those who play in headphones, not with 5.1 or 7.1 surround audio, a system that tracks head rotation and tilting (similar to what they have for airplane sims, where you wear hat with markers and a webcam tracks your head position... and view in displays is changed accordingly) is needed.
I haven't seen any of those at the market yet. Maybe you've heard about such things?
Deus Ex. System Shock 2. The Witcher. Baldur's Gate. Planescape Torment.
I'm ready to forgive Digger (c) Windmill Software, 1983, Tetris and Tapper for having no decent plot, though.
You know.
I'm considering adding a substantial solar power to my suburban house. I live in Ukraine. There we just don't have an option to sell power to utility at all.
So I will have to make second power network (low-power things like LED lighting) in the house, and maybe - just maybe - a quick switch device that would monitor power consumption of "usual" consumers and power it from solar if both consumption is low and sun is bright.
I would be glad to have an option to use utility power as "endless battery" for $5/mo, after all, an hour or two of sunlight would repay this fee, and then I would have net profit (without any power consumption in my house). And I surely won't get, for example, as much lead acid battery capacity and max. current for $5/mo as I can with connection to an endlessly powerful utility network which is also nice enough to buy out my extra power (If batteries were at full charge, subsequent solar energy would be wasted)...
I'd call this $4.95 "administrative fee for clearing energy balance" and go happily with it...
Well, all those who did any work with computers in 1990s does remember that the $4,999 models (say 486 DX2/66 or so) were wonderfully powerful and solved a lot of tasks...
Hey, what are Ukrainian IBM/Hitachi? I lived there for all my life but did not see a hard drive factory able to produce hard drives biggern than 20MB or CPUs better than i386 ("ElektronMash" plant)...
Hell, I've lived in country only a bit richer when I was young (average wages $100-$400 per annum), we went with all the family to plant the potatoes to have food every year. And I'd damned prefer to receive the Iskra 1030 Soviet PC i did get at 12 (Soviet clone of i8088, 10Gb HDD, 2*360 floppies, mono CGA) than to get some clean drinking water (which was an issue, our surely was not clear and was chlorinated), better food (well, we did not eat meat often, etc), and world-grade medical care.
Would I get the support - whom would I be now ? Another loser who needs clean water, med treatment etc.
Now I'm a programmer good enough to pay for it all for my family and read slashdot, and not to beg help from international organizations but instead get payments for software development from richer Westerners.
Don't give them fish, give them net. Well, and enough fish for them not to starve to death while learning fishing!
Our company uses Firebird as a main database engine, it is indeed feature-rich compared to MySQL (triggers, stored procs, events, transactions, versions) and more mature/stable than PostgreSQL; yet we replicate the base to MySQL/PHP system for web portal functionality. It turns out cheaper to establish a replication between two databases and use strong features of both (rich feature set and Borland's visual data controls + PHP/MySQL integration and raw speed), than settle for any single DB.
It would be disgusting to have no triggers/procedures on main DB; but working from PHP with Firebird seems to be not too native.
(We did also consider PostgreSQL but dropped it due to our 24x7 requirements and its VACUUM problems...)
Here in Ukraine (near Russia; also Ex-USSR) we had no option but to use M$ products for a long time. Our own machines were poor copies of IBM/360 and PDP/11, and since 1991 we were buying x86s. After everyone got accustomed to M$ windows, tax service (STA) came and began putting huge fines on businesses which had no license for windows. Absolutely ignoring everything but windows and office. TAX service. tax. In government they use old pentiums and w95/w98, stolen as well, it's just our STA never checks our own officials.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I do turn my head a bit - maybe 10-20 degrees to sides - when I play some FPS. Just imagine yourself, e.g., strafing out of the corner. Supposedly your EYES are still locked on display before you, yet you can rotate your head a bit. And this should mean a lot in such a detailed environment: make all these efforts to produce a precise acoustic environment and then to fail by ignoring head direction - so that sound would be inconsistent to picture on a fixed monitor before you? BTW, when I was younger, I played Counter-Strike, and on some maps you could camp nicely behind a wooden wall, hear someone coming on the other side and precisely shoot the guy with a few bullets. They all were shouting "cheater" for the first time, thinking you can see through walls... Nope. But when a man tries to establish precise source of some sound, one often turns his head to sides a few times. Something related to binaural hearing and psychoacoustic model, perhaps.
For those who play in headphones, not with 5.1 or 7.1 surround audio, a system that tracks head rotation and tilting (similar to what they have for airplane sims, where you wear hat with markers and a webcam tracks your head position... and view in displays is changed accordingly) is needed. I haven't seen any of those at the market yet. Maybe you've heard about such things?
Deus Ex. System Shock 2. The Witcher. Baldur's Gate. Planescape Torment. I'm ready to forgive Digger (c) Windmill Software, 1983, Tetris and Tapper for having no decent plot, though.
You know. I'm considering adding a substantial solar power to my suburban house. I live in Ukraine. There we just don't have an option to sell power to utility at all. So I will have to make second power network (low-power things like LED lighting) in the house, and maybe - just maybe - a quick switch device that would monitor power consumption of "usual" consumers and power it from solar if both consumption is low and sun is bright. I would be glad to have an option to use utility power as "endless battery" for $5/mo, after all, an hour or two of sunlight would repay this fee, and then I would have net profit (without any power consumption in my house). And I surely won't get, for example, as much lead acid battery capacity and max. current for $5/mo as I can with connection to an endlessly powerful utility network which is also nice enough to buy out my extra power (If batteries were at full charge, subsequent solar energy would be wasted)... I'd call this $4.95 "administrative fee for clearing energy balance" and go happily with it...
Iraquis? Serbs? er... Vietnamese? own schoolchildren?
Well, all those who did any work with computers in 1990s does remember that the $4,999 models (say 486 DX2/66 or so) were wonderfully powerful and solved a lot of tasks...
Hey, we can do it for $20/hr... unless it is SAP, which would cost $30/hr... (We are from Ukraine, incomes here are comparable to India)
Hey, what are Ukrainian IBM/Hitachi? I lived there for all my life but did not see a hard drive factory able to produce hard drives biggern than 20MB or CPUs better than i386 ("ElektronMash" plant)...
Hell, I've lived in country only a bit richer when I was young (average wages $100-$400 per annum), we went with all the family to plant the potatoes to have food every year. And I'd damned prefer to receive the Iskra 1030 Soviet PC i did get at 12 (Soviet clone of i8088, 10Gb HDD, 2*360 floppies, mono CGA) than to get some clean drinking water (which was an issue, our surely was not clear and was chlorinated), better food (well, we did not eat meat often, etc), and world-grade medical care. Would I get the support - whom would I be now ? Another loser who needs clean water, med treatment etc. Now I'm a programmer good enough to pay for it all for my family and read slashdot, and not to beg help from international organizations but instead get payments for software development from richer Westerners. Don't give them fish, give them net. Well, and enough fish for them not to starve to death while learning fishing!
VIA technology, also owner of C3. They make KM133 chipset for AMD processors, it had Savage4 video integrated into north bridge .
Are you sure? I've heard that one of M1 Abrams in Iraq was taken out by RPG from the back, where it has the least armour.
They could be Pentium Overdrives? PODP63, for example...
Our company uses Firebird as a main database engine, it is indeed feature-rich compared to MySQL (triggers, stored procs, events, transactions, versions) and more mature/stable than PostgreSQL; yet we replicate the base to MySQL/PHP system for web portal functionality.
It turns out cheaper to establish a replication between two databases and use strong features of both (rich feature set and Borland's visual data controls + PHP/MySQL integration and raw speed), than settle for any single DB.
It would be disgusting to have no triggers/procedures on main DB; but working from PHP with Firebird seems to be not too native.
(We did also consider PostgreSQL but dropped it due to our 24x7 requirements and its VACUUM problems...)
Here in Ukraine (near Russia; also Ex-USSR) we had no option but to use M$ products for a long time. Our own machines were poor copies of IBM/360 and PDP/11, and since 1991 we were buying x86s.
After everyone got accustomed to M$ windows,
tax service (STA) came and began putting huge fines on businesses which had no license for windows. Absolutely ignoring everything but windows and office.
TAX service.
tax.
In government they use old pentiums and w95/w98, stolen as well, it's just our STA never checks our own officials.
We see it different there in Ukraine.
Radioactive areas still exist, berries and fish must be checked for radiation, etc.
Public health has generally decreased.
Nevertheless it was many years ago, and I hope the meltdown was a good lesson for everyone in the world.