I'm not sure why this is "Informative" if it doesn't at all apply to Xboxes. The Xbox does not use vanilla DirectX 8.1, there is no reason to assume that the 360 uses an unmodified version of DirectX.
One thing I haven't heard people bring up is the limitations of the "look" of raytracing. In real time graphics right now, we are pretty stuck using the Blinn-Phong lighting model, which can be best summed up in the words of Red vs Blue:
"We're in the future now. Everything is very shiny."
Raytracing is, generally, the same. It does beautiful reflections and refractions, however diffuse surfaces are not nearly as convincing. I think it's great that we'll be able to run real-time raytracing...but not really that great. I think it's a lot of hardware work for almost no value-add to gaming. With the right shader in RenderMan you can make just about anything, so it's not like raytracing is useless, but I don't see this technology ever going anywhere. Just my opinion.
Wow, you must have spent a long time loading up that reply.
OpenGL lags far, far behind Direct3D with regard to simple things like multiple render targets, and pbuffers are still a WGL extenstion. The OpenGL 2.0 spec was over due by more than a year. They finally got on board with vertex/index buffer objects last year, and guess who's interface it was modeled after. (DirectX)
They want to "lure" developers into using Direct3D? Developers work with Direct3D when they want an API that is actually decent to work with, has a good CAPS interface, actually supports all of the features of modern cards, and is constantly being upgraded. If the ARB moved any slower we'd still be doing software T&L.
This may sound stupid...
Pick your college on where you want to be for 4 years of your life. If you are someone who is driven to learn, you will learn regardless of where you are, what obsticles are put in your way, no matter what. This is what defines someone who is going to be a good programmer and someone who isn't, not the college you go to.
I chose poorly, I went to "a good school", RIT. I have many, many bones to pick with the CS department at RIT. If I had it to do over, I'd pick somewhere warm with lots of girls.
As another user said, experience is key. GPA means nothing to anyone outside of college, what university gave you the paper means next to nothing. The only way it will probably help you is if someone you are interviewing with went to the same school and you can have that connection. Experience is probably the most important thing, a very close second is interview. If you can ace interviews you are golden. I highly suggest doing as many interviews as you can for fun and food. For example, Microsoft gives you $70 a day...for FOOD(and beer counts!). Their interviews are also awesome, and a lot of fun.
So to recap...when choosing a college, rate your choices (in no particular order) on:
a) Nice weather (as defiend by you)
b) Proximity to activities. (Mountains, ocean, clubs etc)
c) Members of the opposite sex.
d) The feeling you get when you are on the campus
And not on their "reputation"
Aren't colleges accountable anyway? No Child Left Behind is a good idea, in spirit, to keep our required, public education system to a reasonable level. College is not required. It's pretty easy, if you don't "make the grade" you fail, and they kick you out. As far as the quality of information provided at these schools, well, that is another topic since probably all but 3% of colleges try to do anything but produce mediocrity.
I don't think this is anything but a thinly veiled attempt at gathering more information on people however they possibly can.
Yet again a bunch of people on Slashdot jump all over something without doing all of the homework.
Old Arcade games are not what Live Arcade is about, nor will that be all it will launch with. There are many independant games which most people have never seen before comming out on Live Arcade. Games that take full advantage of the Xbox's hardware shaders, etc.
How many people here have actually done B&W digital work? Sure, you can run grain filters, simulate over/underdeveloping, simulate the effects of different developers with PhotoShop, but it is tedious and it almost never fails to look like a digital image.
How many here have seen an actual print done by Ansel, not one of the posters or digitized images. They don't even come close to the real thing. Ansel was a beautiful B&W printer. I think that the printing alone would have frusturated him. Sure it's all well and good to have an image on your screen, now get it in a form I can actually hold. Ansel also had a very well-researched printing method. Kept under good conitions, his prints will last far beyond most things that are printed today. Computer printing isn't even in infancy yet. I have not yet seen a digital B&W print that came close to a good print on silver.
There's also the archival qualities of digital images vs negatives. Now before you think this is an easy answer, I can throw my negatives into storage now, and in 50 years take them out and print them just as well as I can print them tomorow. In 50 years, we won't be using anything close to the same file formats, media and lets not forget how rapidly data-mediums deteriorate. So in order to archivally store digital images they need to be maintained constantly, moved to new formats, backed up and so on.
Then there is the viseral quality of being in a wet darkroom with your fingers in your work. The water is running and it's almost like a little trance you get yourself into while you work. Sure digital is great, no dust spots, undo, multiple files, and perfect duplicates. All that considered though, film will never die, because, as humans, we don't like everything exactly the same, and part of appreciating the art is seeing the artist's hand. Part of art, is having your hands in it, and I know that, for myself, and many others, we will never be satisfied with simply a digital camera and Photoshop.
Film will never die, for the same reasons that people will continue to slave over a canvas instead of using "superior" tools such as a Watcom tablet and one of the plethora of drawing programs that are out there.
I, personally, will coninue to use film for a few reasons. One is for archival purposes. I can put a properly fixed negative in proper storage conditions and it will be just as good in 50 years as it is right now. There is no way in hell that I could do the same with any kind of digital image. It would need to be maintained with regard to file format and media type. If I print something with silver, dry mount it and put it in a frame it will last a very long time and still look the same, this can NOT be said (currently) of very many digital printing processes. (Methods like Lambda printing are pretty cool though)
Another reason to use film is the physical connection with your work. Developing your film by hand and printing by hand is very important I think.I don't think that it is possible to become a competent digital photographer without knowing your darkroom stuff. Then there is the issue of resolution. To get the fidelity of film, 4 megapixles just doesn't cut it. Even with 35mm, I can shoot Illford PanF or Kodak TechPan and blow up a print poster size before I even start to see any grain. A wimpy little digital camera just can't do that. Most digial cameras support manual settings through a very inconvenient little menu system on the LCD. The expensive ones, (read $5k+) actually act like manual SLRs and have the settings where they should be.
I have a Nikon FM2 and a Minolta X-570. I love my Nikon. It's all manual except the light meter, and I'm pretty sure I could drop it down a flight of steps and it would be none the worse (though I wouldn't ever). Whomever suggested medium format, I would disregard this. Medium format is GREAT, however they are very expensive for a good one. I would start with 35mm before thinking about medium format or 4x5 or anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure why this is "Informative" if it doesn't at all apply to Xboxes. The Xbox does not use vanilla DirectX 8.1, there is no reason to assume that the 360 uses an unmodified version of DirectX.
One thing I haven't heard people bring up is the limitations of the "look" of raytracing. In real time graphics right now, we are pretty stuck using the Blinn-Phong lighting model, which can be best summed up in the words of Red vs Blue: "We're in the future now. Everything is very shiny." Raytracing is, generally, the same. It does beautiful reflections and refractions, however diffuse surfaces are not nearly as convincing. I think it's great that we'll be able to run real-time raytracing...but not really that great. I think it's a lot of hardware work for almost no value-add to gaming. With the right shader in RenderMan you can make just about anything, so it's not like raytracing is useless, but I don't see this technology ever going anywhere. Just my opinion.
Wow, you must have spent a long time loading up that reply.
OpenGL lags far, far behind Direct3D with regard to simple things like multiple render targets, and pbuffers are still a WGL extenstion. The OpenGL 2.0 spec was over due by more than a year. They finally got on board with vertex/index buffer objects last year, and guess who's interface it was modeled after. (DirectX)
They want to "lure" developers into using Direct3D? Developers work with Direct3D when they want an API that is actually decent to work with, has a good CAPS interface, actually supports all of the features of modern cards, and is constantly being upgraded. If the ARB moved any slower we'd still be doing software T&L.
Seriously, put down the "open-pipe".
This may sound stupid... Pick your college on where you want to be for 4 years of your life. If you are someone who is driven to learn, you will learn regardless of where you are, what obsticles are put in your way, no matter what. This is what defines someone who is going to be a good programmer and someone who isn't, not the college you go to. I chose poorly, I went to "a good school", RIT. I have many, many bones to pick with the CS department at RIT. If I had it to do over, I'd pick somewhere warm with lots of girls. As another user said, experience is key. GPA means nothing to anyone outside of college, what university gave you the paper means next to nothing. The only way it will probably help you is if someone you are interviewing with went to the same school and you can have that connection. Experience is probably the most important thing, a very close second is interview. If you can ace interviews you are golden. I highly suggest doing as many interviews as you can for fun and food. For example, Microsoft gives you $70 a day...for FOOD(and beer counts!). Their interviews are also awesome, and a lot of fun. So to recap...when choosing a college, rate your choices (in no particular order) on: a) Nice weather (as defiend by you) b) Proximity to activities. (Mountains, ocean, clubs etc) c) Members of the opposite sex. d) The feeling you get when you are on the campus And not on their "reputation"
Aren't colleges accountable anyway? No Child Left Behind is a good idea, in spirit, to keep our required, public education system to a reasonable level. College is not required. It's pretty easy, if you don't "make the grade" you fail, and they kick you out. As far as the quality of information provided at these schools, well, that is another topic since probably all but 3% of colleges try to do anything but produce mediocrity. I don't think this is anything but a thinly veiled attempt at gathering more information on people however they possibly can.
Yet again a bunch of people on Slashdot jump all over something without doing all of the homework.
Old Arcade games are not what Live Arcade is about, nor will that be all it will launch with. There are many independant games which most people have never seen before comming out on Live Arcade. Games that take full advantage of the Xbox's hardware shaders, etc.
How many people here have actually done B&W digital work? Sure, you can run grain filters, simulate over/underdeveloping, simulate the effects of different developers with PhotoShop, but it is tedious and it almost never fails to look like a digital image.
How many here have seen an actual print done by Ansel, not one of the posters or digitized images. They don't even come close to the real thing. Ansel was a beautiful B&W printer. I think that the printing alone would have frusturated him. Sure it's all well and good to have an image on your screen, now get it in a form I can actually hold. Ansel also had a very well-researched printing method. Kept under good conitions, his prints will last far beyond most things that are printed today. Computer printing isn't even in infancy yet. I have not yet seen a digital B&W print that came close to a good print on silver.
There's also the archival qualities of digital images vs negatives. Now before you think this is an easy answer, I can throw my negatives into storage now, and in 50 years take them out and print them just as well as I can print them tomorow. In 50 years, we won't be using anything close to the same file formats, media and lets not forget how rapidly data-mediums deteriorate. So in order to archivally store digital images they need to be maintained constantly, moved to new formats, backed up and so on.
Then there is the viseral quality of being in a wet darkroom with your fingers in your work. The water is running and it's almost like a little trance you get yourself into while you work. Sure digital is great, no dust spots, undo, multiple files, and perfect duplicates. All that considered though, film will never die, because, as humans, we don't like everything exactly the same, and part of appreciating the art is seeing the artist's hand. Part of art, is having your hands in it, and I know that, for myself, and many others, we will never be satisfied with simply a digital camera and Photoshop.
Film will never die, for the same reasons that people will continue to slave over a canvas instead of using "superior" tools such as a Watcom tablet and one of the plethora of drawing programs that are out there.
I, personally, will coninue to use film for a few reasons. One is for archival purposes. I can put a properly fixed negative in proper storage conditions and it will be just as good in 50 years as it is right now. There is no way in hell that I could do the same with any kind of digital image. It would need to be maintained with regard to file format and media type. If I print something with silver, dry mount it and put it in a frame it will last a very long time and still look the same, this can NOT be said (currently) of very many digital printing processes. (Methods like Lambda printing are pretty cool though)
Another reason to use film is the physical connection with your work. Developing your film by hand and printing by hand is very important I think.I don't think that it is possible to become a competent digital photographer without knowing your darkroom stuff. Then there is the issue of resolution. To get the fidelity of film, 4 megapixles just doesn't cut it. Even with 35mm, I can shoot Illford PanF or Kodak TechPan and blow up a print poster size before I even start to see any grain. A wimpy little digital camera just can't do that. Most digial cameras support manual settings through a very inconvenient little menu system on the LCD. The expensive ones, (read $5k+) actually act like manual SLRs and have the settings where they should be.
I have a Nikon FM2 and a Minolta X-570. I love my Nikon. It's all manual except the light meter, and I'm pretty sure I could drop it down a flight of steps and it would be none the worse (though I wouldn't ever). Whomever suggested medium format, I would disregard this. Medium format is GREAT, however they are very expensive for a good one. I would start with 35mm before thinking about medium format or 4x5 or anything else.