My recollection is that it was a 15-bit number with a single-bit used as a "mask" to outline the players in front of the camera. The early demos treated the 15-bit number as RGB, 5 bits per channel.
Silverlight would be dead if it weren't for Netflix. I really wish they'd use something else ( although, honestly, it seems to outperform every Flash-based video service on my lower end computers ).
Natural lighting has been mentioned, and I second it, especially the fake windows... but I would also lay sod down (and maybe add a few grow lights to be switched on at night). Not because it has any benefit. I just think it would be neat. Also, some quiet fans on one side of the room that only blow occasionally... hidden behind a bunch of potted trees.
3D is exactly about providing two different images. All a "true 3D" display gets you is the ability to show them to more than one person at once, and even then, you could ( and I'm sure there are horrible practical problems with this ) just keep upping the number of Hz, and reserve entire viewpoints for specific tracked viewers. You could do it all on a cube of screens, or in a CAVE, and you'd probably save oodles of processing power and expense. You can even produce images that the user can pass through, where the only 3D display I've seen involved a mirror spinning at 1500 rpm behind bullet proof plastic, and produced a crummy looking untouchable image.
Consumer 3D is also not at the same capability ( just cheaper ) that it was at in the 70s or 80s. The sense of depth that can be achieved is directly tired to the resolution of the display being used. If you owned a 32 inch TV in 1990' with an optimistic 640x480 available resolution, you'll wind up with like, 50 grades of potential depth inside the screen.
It blows my mind that Slashdot, home of the "correlation is not causation" tag, would post anarticle with this title, based on some random boner's anecdotal experience. Clearly, stereo displays are stupid, look bad for all people at all times, and are not worth pursuing as a technology. By all means, advise consumer's to demand a test of anything they're thinking of buying. Let them judge for themselves whether it works, and whether the probably future of the technology is worth the price hike. But this article, and all the other nearly identical articles floating around, are stupid and pointless.
It could also be related to the fact that a consumer electronics expo is likely to be filled to brimming with devices that blast IR in every direction... multiple 3D sets, some from the same vendor, most from different vendors, all loudly announcing that it's time to switch eyes. Additionally, both setups were probably in rooms dominated by fluorescent lighting. If I had to plan an event that would give people headaches, step 1 would involve the mixing of fluorescent lights ahd shutter glasses.
That D-Pad is shit. I can understand not being quite up-to-snuff for playing a game, but you can't even navigate menus with that thing. Forget about entering text. I can't believe it took this long to address "complaints" about the utter worthlessness of those buttons.
They didn't add content and experience. They deigned to allow publishers to add content and experiences while charging them significantly more per unit than Sony and Nintendo. The only feature Xbox LIVE offers for free inside the walled garden is multiplayer gaming... the task that requires the -least- effort on the part of their servers (spend five seconds matchmaking,then get out of the way). The other services they've offered "while keeping the price the same"? Netflix ( costs extra, not actually Microsoft's content ), movie rentals ( costs extra, not Microsoft's content ), and demos ( A) should be free, by definition, B) Not really Microsoft's content, C) I think they might even charge publishers per demo download, but don't hold me to that, D) they're goddamn commercials. )
There must have been an increase in the cost of fuel ( for the trucks that drive through the tubes ), because I have a hard time believing they've had to throw significantly more resources into the "doing jack shit and taking a week to respond to people doing real work" department.
But hey, they realized they can't actually charge 150 dollars for Kinect and not attach a free game to it. Thank you, everyone who didn't pre-order it ( which I assume is absolutely everyone ). Now we can duck girders on a moving platform for less than the cost of an entire new Arcade bundle.
It's way too much for any type of copy. TV shows, compared to songs, are usually much more disposable. The Colbert Report is an extreme example. It comes on, I watch it, and I have no desire to ever watch that episode again. I watch backcatalogs on Netflix of a lot of things, but I've never h ad any desire to own them before getting streaming access. And yet Apple sells episodes ofthe ColbertReport for 2 dollars, if I recall correctly.
There are exceptions, and I can see people buying episodes of a Firefly, or a Gilmore Girls ( embarassing confessiion ) for two dollars, if itcomeswith guaranteed future redownloads afterdrive failures and such. But the vastmajority of TV shows are far too ephemeral. Even the Sopranos, whichI greatly enjoyed... It was fun. It's over now. I'll never watch it again.
I never saw APB advertised, or evenmontiioned anywhere but Steam. If the software had been free, with a brief trial before a subscription stage, or if the software had cost, but the game was free to play, I might have given it a shot. Too many companies, and EA in particular, seem to see MMOs as both magical money machines and silver bullets against piracy. In my mind, MMOs in particular have to prove themselves before a sane humanwould join up, even if they have a reasonable price structure.
I also wanted to give Fallen Earth a chance. Oh, well.
I've started taking multiple photos of everything I care about with my 5.0 Mp A610 and stitching them together. Even crushing the stitched image back down to the camera's resolution leaves you with a much better image than than straight shot. It's depressing.
As a side note, for anyone who hasn't stumbled across it: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
I'm not sure if this is the original, or one-and-only, but it's possible to add RAW and other features (brickout : ) to cameras that don't normally support them with a little futzing around.
This is an actual question directed at you, not an argument, so bear with me... In a frame that captures the full available range in a scene (where a bright sky, for example will have detail), the dark areas will be underexposed and noisy, but not completely black (the way an overexposed sky will appear completely white). Couldn't four adjacent pixels simply be added together to produce an image with four times the range, and one quarter the resolution? So if, for example, three of the underexposed pixels aren't lucky enough to get a single bit of light, and one pixel gets lucky and grabs some, you can treat it like a single pixel that's sensitive to units of light 1/4 as strong (abundant? I don't know how it works) as the actual pixels. You'd probably get extra noise and blurring added, (for pixels that sit on actual boundaries in the captured scene, but are merged together), but in principle, wouldn't you get more range information in such an image?
Wasn't this an episode of Doctor Who a couple of years ago? It turned out some kind of monster had organized the whole thing so it could eat people in the underground tunnels, I think.China should check for monsters.
It's always more fun to write a random generator to compare real results to, and it always winds up taking more factors into account than I would otherwise.
Remember the movie Big? His huge, genius idea at the end of the movie that blows everyone away is a computerized comic book that lets kids choose their own adventure. He and the woman he slept with (in spite of the fact that he was actually 14... Somehow I don't think that would have flown in "13 Going On 30") claimed it would cost about 18 dollars. I don't know if they meant "per cartridge", and that the actual game system would cost about 1000 dollars, but I've always been pretty offended by the film's implication that this was a successful plan in 1988.
It's cheesy, and tacky to the point that it borders on soft-porn, but it's some of the most original sci-fi out there, and it lasted for quite awhile in its various forms. I couldn't stand the bland, soap-operish characters in Farscape. If I wanted to want boring sci-fi with an aimless, meandering plot, I'd watch DS9. I still love the cornball battle song.
My dream computer has always been a completely modular system, with every component accessible and hot-swappable. I always imagined it being about the size and shape as a normal computer, but covered in slots, with video cards, RAM, drives, etc in the form of cartridges... pin lengths designed to make sure the right things contact in the right order...
While lamenting the poor graphical performance of my laptop, I investigated external graphics cards. While they aren't currently suitable for... well... anything, a nice 50gbps optical cable might make it a plausible scenario.
I would even prefer an external video card for my desktop computer (if performance matched the internal version). It could have its own case, cooling, and powerbrick, instead of murdering my internal power supply, heating my computer up, screaming like a jet engine, and possible bursting into flames when my haphazard system design blocks vital airflow.
Setting up PXE boot on my home network is the best move I've ever made. No more searching for my Windows disc whenever I need to reinstall, no more wondering when my Windows disc got so scratched up, no more temporarily installing CD drives onto computers than don't actually need them just for the install, no more leaving the laptop with a broken disc drive that can't boot from external media in the closet.
Slashdot Mirror
My recollection is that it was a 15-bit number with a single-bit used as a "mask" to outline the players in front of the camera. The early demos treated the 15-bit number as RGB, 5 bits per channel.
It's important that this be read in the voices of Stephen Fry ( as principal ) and Hugh Laurie ( as concerned parent ).
As a CRXologist, I can confirm this.
Silverlight would be dead if it weren't for Netflix. I really wish they'd use something else ( although, honestly, it seems to outperform every Flash-based video service on my lower end computers ).
Unless you skip pixels OMG QUANTUM TUNNELING!!1!
In conclusion, God sucks at collision checking.
It's not something that you just dump microscopic dielectric objects on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.
Natural lighting has been mentioned, and I second it, especially the fake windows... but I would also lay sod down (and maybe add a few grow lights to be switched on at night). Not because it has any benefit. I just think it would be neat. Also, some quiet fans on one side of the room that only blow occasionally... hidden behind a bunch of potted trees.
3D is exactly about providing two different images. All a "true 3D" display gets you is the ability to show them to more than one person at once, and even then, you could ( and I'm sure there are horrible practical problems with this ) just keep upping the number of Hz, and reserve entire viewpoints for specific tracked viewers. You could do it all on a cube of screens, or in a CAVE, and you'd probably save oodles of processing power and expense. You can even produce images that the user can pass through, where the only 3D display I've seen involved a mirror spinning at 1500 rpm behind bullet proof plastic, and produced a crummy looking untouchable image.
Consumer 3D is also not at the same capability ( just cheaper ) that it was at in the 70s or 80s. The sense of depth that can be achieved is directly tired to the resolution of the display being used. If you owned a 32 inch TV in 1990' with an optimistic 640x480 available resolution, you'll wind up with like, 50 grades of potential depth inside the screen.
It blows my mind that Slashdot, home of the "correlation is not causation" tag, would post anarticle with this title, based on some random boner's anecdotal experience. Clearly, stereo displays are stupid, look bad for all people at all times, and are not worth pursuing as a technology.
By all means, advise consumer's to demand a test of anything they're thinking of buying. Let them judge for themselves whether it works, and whether the probably future of the technology is worth the price hike. But this article, and all the other nearly identical articles floating around, are stupid and pointless.
It could also be related to the fact that a consumer electronics expo is likely to be filled to brimming with devices that blast IR in every direction... multiple 3D sets, some from the same vendor, most from different vendors, all loudly announcing that it's time to switch eyes. Additionally, both setups were probably in rooms dominated by fluorescent lighting. If I had to plan an event that would give people headaches, step 1 would involve the mixing of fluorescent lights ahd shutter glasses.
That D-Pad is shit. I can understand not being quite up-to-snuff for playing a game, but you can't even navigate menus with that thing. Forget about entering text. I can't believe it took this long to address "complaints" about the utter worthlessness of those buttons.
They didn't add content and experience. They deigned to allow publishers to add content and experiences while charging them significantly more per unit than Sony and Nintendo. The only feature Xbox LIVE offers for free inside the walled garden is multiplayer gaming... the task that requires the -least- effort on the part of their servers (spend five seconds matchmaking,then get out of the way). The other services they've offered "while keeping the price the same"? Netflix ( costs extra, not actually Microsoft's content ), movie rentals ( costs extra, not Microsoft's content ), and demos ( A) should be free, by definition, B) Not really Microsoft's content, C) I think they might even charge publishers per demo download, but don't hold me to that, D) they're goddamn commercials. )
There must have been an increase in the cost of fuel ( for the trucks that drive through the tubes ), because I have a hard time believing they've had to throw significantly more resources into the "doing jack shit and taking a week to respond to people doing real work" department.
But hey, they realized they can't actually charge 150 dollars for Kinect and not attach a free game to it. Thank you, everyone who didn't pre-order it ( which I assume is absolutely everyone ). Now we can duck girders on a moving platform for less than the cost of an entire new Arcade bundle.
/vent
Now what am I supposed to wish upon my enemies?
It's way too much for any type of copy. TV shows, compared to songs, are usually much more disposable. The Colbert Report is an extreme example. It comes on, I watch it, and I have no desire to ever watch that episode again. I watch backcatalogs on Netflix of a lot of things, but I've never h ad any desire to own them before getting streaming access. And yet Apple sells episodes ofthe ColbertReport for 2 dollars, if I recall correctly.
There are exceptions, and I can see people buying episodes of a Firefly, or a Gilmore Girls ( embarassing confessiion ) for two dollars, if itcomeswith guaranteed future redownloads afterdrive failures and such. But the vastmajority of TV shows are far too ephemeral. Even the Sopranos, whichI greatly enjoyed... It was fun. It's over now. I'll never watch it again.
I never saw APB advertised, or evenmontiioned anywhere but Steam. If the software had been free, with a brief trial before a subscription stage, or if the software had cost, but the game was free to play, I might have given it a shot. Too many companies, and EA in particular, seem to see MMOs as both magical money machines and silver bullets against piracy. In my mind, MMOs in particular have to prove themselves before a sane humanwould join up, even if they have a reasonable price structure.
I also wanted to give Fallen Earth a chance. Oh, well.
I've started taking multiple photos of everything I care about with my 5.0 Mp A610 and stitching them together. Even crushing the stitched image back down to the camera's resolution leaves you with a much better image than than straight shot. It's depressing.
As a side note, for anyone who hasn't stumbled across it: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
I'm not sure if this is the original, or one-and-only, but it's possible to add RAW and other features (brickout : ) to cameras that don't normally support them with a little futzing around.
This is an actual question directed at you, not an argument, so bear with me... In a frame that captures the full available range in a scene (where a bright sky, for example will have detail), the dark areas will be underexposed and noisy, but not completely black (the way an overexposed sky will appear completely white). Couldn't four adjacent pixels simply be added together to produce an image with four times the range, and one quarter the resolution? So if, for example, three of the underexposed pixels aren't lucky enough to get a single bit of light, and one pixel gets lucky and grabs some, you can treat it like a single pixel that's sensitive to units of light 1/4 as strong (abundant? I don't know how it works) as the actual pixels. You'd probably get extra noise and blurring added, (for pixels that sit on actual boundaries in the captured scene, but are merged together), but in principle, wouldn't you get more range information in such an image?
Wasn't this an episode of Doctor Who a couple of years ago? It turned out some kind of monster had organized the whole thing so it could eat people in the underground tunnels, I think.China should check for monsters.
Yes, yes: Mormons
Yes: Red letter bibles and door-to-door salesmen
It's always more fun to write a random generator to compare real results to, and it always winds up taking more factors into account than I would otherwise.
Remember the movie Big? His huge, genius idea at the end of the movie that blows everyone away is a computerized comic book that lets kids choose their own adventure. He and the woman he slept with (in spite of the fact that he was actually 14... Somehow I don't think that would have flown in "13 Going On 30") claimed it would cost about 18 dollars. I don't know if they meant "per cartridge", and that the actual game system would cost about 1000 dollars, but I've always been pretty offended by the film's implication that this was a successful plan in 1988.
It's cheesy, and tacky to the point that it borders on soft-porn, but it's some of the most original sci-fi out there, and it lasted for quite awhile in its various forms. I couldn't stand the bland, soap-operish characters in Farscape. If I wanted to want boring sci-fi with an aimless, meandering plot, I'd watch DS9. I still love the cornball battle song.
Or the forward-only time machine slowing down to take pot-shots at the Fuhrer.
I thought GPU operations were one-way enough that separation issues were much more about bandwidth than latency.
My dream computer has always been a completely modular system, with every component accessible and hot-swappable. I always imagined it being about the size and shape as a normal computer, but covered in slots, with video cards, RAM, drives, etc in the form of cartridges... pin lengths designed to make sure the right things contact in the right order...
While lamenting the poor graphical performance of my laptop, I investigated external graphics cards. While they aren't currently suitable for... well... anything, a nice 50gbps optical cable might make it a plausible scenario.
I would even prefer an external video card for my desktop computer (if performance matched the internal version). It could have its own case, cooling, and powerbrick, instead of murdering my internal power supply, heating my computer up, screaming like a jet engine, and possible bursting into flames when my haphazard system design blocks vital airflow.
Setting up PXE boot on my home network is the best move I've ever made. No more searching for my Windows disc whenever I need to reinstall, no more wondering when my Windows disc got so scratched up, no more temporarily installing CD drives onto computers than don't actually need them just for the install, no more leaving the laptop with a broken disc drive that can't boot from external media in the closet.