Still in development, but keep your eyes on Planeshift a very ambitious and so far very well done online role-playing game. (It's playable now but not complete and a very large download). I hear that a new preview version (with a MacOSX port) is on it's way.
There are a few other games in progress based on CrystalSpace as well (which works on Mac, Linux, Windows, and other platforms as well with varying degrees of support).
The only reason AIM is useful to AOL is as an essential component of their larger AOL service that lets AOL subscribers talk to everyone else. It simply adds value to their real service, considered by itself it would seem to be losing lots of money.
Want to help create a free and open VR platform? After some major reworking of the system, we're about to start releasing new versions of VOS/Interreality. Rather than paying a company to use their world to chat, buy and sell virtual consumer goods, VOS enables a distributed network of interconnected worlds; host a piece of it on your cable modem and make it do something interesting! It's Free Software (open source) of course and extensible to more specialized games as well (two have already begun). Let us know if you're interested in helping!
Um well they did add a ray tracer... as an alternative, not a replacement. Yafray is also an option. Sometimes carefully setting up a scene to work with radiosity and manual environment maps takes just as long as a raytraced rander:)
I have been told that Blender also works well with DrQueue, basic software to set up a multi-machine rendering farm.
It takes days to learn the shortcut keys that are essential for basic editing, especially if you are also trying to use other 3d programs or 2d programs along side it that have their own shortcuts that the artist has to remember too,
This is true for every serious modeling & animation package there is. And any other highly specialized software with a million features and a very tight and fast workflow.
No, this race *is* all about prestige. I will be very suprised if any of them finish-- and *very* suprised if it's under 10 hours.
It's not about results at all-- It's a high profile event in which teams get media coverage (from what I've seen so far CMU has totally won that race!) and prestige within the DARPA network of project managers.
I've only used a couple of internet cafes in the US and UK, and they were all terribly expensive. Maybe they have a big bandwidth bill or are trying to recoup equipment costs. PCs are cheap enough now that that shouldn't be as bad.
And the coffee is usually expensive too.
(Never been to a gaming focused place).
Don't overcharge for coffee/food or get boring on the comfort/decor, that's why I'm at the cafe and not at home or the library!
This might be interesting to some readers: I just read that DrQueue, free render queue management software, now has more integration with Blender. It also seems to have good integration with Maya, as well.
Any other good batch process managers out there, useful for rendering, compiling, or other heavy work? (I've heard of Condor which looks great except for a few serious restrictions on I/O)
I guess so. Thing is, I wrote that completely independently of Tim B-L: I only read his article *after* making that post.
Tim's article goes into depth and gives some good ideas on managing your documents and determining what links should look like, etc. It's short, I recommend reading it.
(1) A tool that generates a content-based unique identifier for a document. an sha or md5 sum would be nice. Or a magic string stuck somewhere in the first KB or so of the file. (in a comment for instance). The "lookup" URL with this identifier should be stored in an index, and be visible somewhere.
(2) A server (e.g. Apache) module which searches the filesystem for a document given a unique ID. This should be a real search of everything (or a subsection of the filesystem), possible using efficient OS-supplied search mechanisms, or just by walking the whole damn thing. some caching would be helpful. (If I know that I'm requesting an ancient document that no-one else seems to care about , I don't mind waiting for a little while).
This has been a real problem for a long time. But the web is distributed. The only real solution is for people to realize that moving stuff around all the time breaks links, and avoid it. One thing that would help is a translation layer in the web server, that separates the URL from the server's filesystem. This is basic software engineering common sense.
Non-transparent CGI, PHP and ASP scripts are even worse, they tend to change all the time. Instead they should be using the "path info", or be in the server (mod_perl, etc.)
Example: "http://science.slashdot.org/article/03/11/24/1272 50" is a much better permanent URL for this story, than exposing the details of some perl script called "article.pl" that takes a parameter named "sid", and it will be easier to adapt to all future versions of Slash or other software, or to simple archive as a static file someday. Using the PATH_INFO CGI variable you can make a CGI like "article.pl" use URLS like that above.
The idea that the basic job of a webserver is to pull files off your disk is incomplete: it's job ought to be to take your URL through *any* kind of query lookup, which might map to the filesystem and might not. The HTTP RFC's imply this as well.
reed
Re:hasn't anyone ever heard of
on
Superball!
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The games seem to be sponsored by a company to promote it's proprietary 3D graphics technology. (Please do not confuse this company named "X3D" with the candidate ISO standard X3D, which is a new, expanded version of VRML).
I looked around the site, but couldn't find a single screenshot of the 3D graphics. All of the images are standard 2D chessboard diagrams, even the playback applet.
The best I could find was a monitor on the edge of a photo of Miss NYC in stereo glasses.
Seemed like a fairly good looking chess set.... but it would be nice to see some animated playback, in the correct time! I thought "X3D" was trying to promote it's technology, but I can't see any of it.
Anyone catch it on ESPN2? Did they show the gfx there at all?
To me a lot of this seems like a big hassle, which Is why I tend to prefer RPC over passing programs around. (Though I acknowledge the problems with RPC -- the concept BTW, not the Sun "RPC" service in Unix -- and acknowledge the advantages of scripts/bytecode). But in the cases I'm interested in, RPC has always seemed more flexible and scalable.
An interesting tidbit from the VP of there.com: he is wondering about hosting: does the original creator of the game run the third-party contentent (code)? A big problem with robustness, security and scalability there. And what will the technical architecture look like? I'm surprised that they haven't thought about these issues with There (or maybe they have but don't want to give them away).
Well, as one of the lead developers on the VOS project, I think it could look a bit like VOS of course! I'm inclined towards an open distributed architecture, with some standard authentication mechanism that lets you either pay to enter or use a sector of the world (or not pay, of course), or looks you up in a list of subscribers. Bitpass and PayPal can be used here. Maybe there is a central authority for a particular set of such sectors that can do billing and accounting more conveniently.
If broadband continues to become more popular (and ISPs stop blocking ports and restricting upload bandwidth!) then people can host their own segments of worlds on their home servers. Maybe some object replication would be useful as well.
Another interesting tidbit is offering many methods of access: special game client, web sites, on your mobile phone, etc. Is this a hard technical problem or not? Will it be affected by the architecture of the game/world/metaverse?
Obviously easy to use authoring tools (based on libraries of common objects and basic customizable building blocks) will be essential, though we shouldn't exclude those with more skill in more advanced modeling programs.
Finally, I wonder how much growth there can be in the standard MMORPG which requires a large investment of time and dedication of its players. Would a game/world that doesn't dominate your entire life be as much fun?
Also, has anyone had a chance to try out Second Life yet?
poor Principal S. would make only $100,000/year instead of the $147,000/year he has become accustomed to.
So... where does that $100,000 come from again?
And it's a rare school principal that makes 100,000!
Here's an idea: shave off... maybe 1/10 of the "defense" budget and give it to schools. That should double or triple the income of most school systems at least....
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not quite so surprised at the temperature -- a lot more at the humidity it survived!
I think Roland means "real" as opposed to the plans and proposals and simulations he describes.
Still in development, but keep your eyes on Planeshift a very ambitious and so far very well done online role-playing game. (It's playable now but not complete and a very large download). I hear that a new preview version (with a MacOSX port) is on it's way.
There are a few other games in progress based on CrystalSpace as well (which works on Mac, Linux, Windows, and other platforms as well with varying degrees of support).
Step 4: Your customers flee to free alternative.
The only reason AIM is useful to AOL is as an essential component of their larger AOL service that lets AOL subscribers talk to everyone else. It simply adds value to their real service, considered by itself it would seem to be losing lots of money.
Want to help create a free and open VR platform? After some major reworking of the system, we're about to start releasing new versions of VOS/Interreality. Rather than paying a company to use their world to chat, buy and sell virtual consumer goods, VOS enables a distributed network of interconnected worlds; host a piece of it on your cable modem and make it do something interesting! It's Free Software (open source) of course and extensible to more specialized games as well (two have already begun). Let us know if you're interested in helping!
Um well they did add a ray tracer... as an alternative, not a replacement. Yafray is also an option. Sometimes carefully setting up a scene to work with radiosity and manual environment maps takes just as long as a raytraced rander :)
I have been told that Blender also works well with DrQueue, basic software to set up a multi-machine rendering farm.
This is true for every serious modeling & animation package there is. And any other highly specialized software with a million features and a very tight and fast workflow.
What is this card's OpenGL performance?
Chickens are cheap and easily replaced. Oxen are expensive and require lots of training. If one dies you will have lots of downtime.
Plus chickens lay yummy eggs.
So long as feed is cheap, I'd go with the chickens.
Which book are you referring too? "Virtual Communities"?
Call it ".mob"
:)
I call dibs on "smart.mob".
No, this race *is* all about prestige. I will be very suprised if any of them finish-- and *very* suprised if it's under 10 hours.
It's not about results at all-- It's a high profile event in which teams get media coverage (from what I've seen so far CMU has totally won that race!) and prestige within the DARPA network of project managers.
I've only used a couple of internet cafes in the US and UK, and they were all terribly expensive. Maybe they have a big bandwidth bill or are trying to recoup equipment costs. PCs are cheap enough now that that shouldn't be as bad.
And the coffee is usually expensive too.
(Never been to a gaming focused place).
Don't overcharge for coffee/food or get boring on the comfort/decor, that's why I'm at the cafe and not at home or the library!
Huh?
wrenkin wrote:
This might be interesting to some readers: I just read that DrQueue, free render queue management software, now has more integration with Blender. It also seems to have good integration with Maya, as well.
Any other good batch process managers out there, useful for rendering, compiling, or other heavy work? (I've heard of Condor which looks great except for a few serious restrictions on I/O)
reed
Thanks for this important news, from those of us who have no connection whatsoever to the outside world other than Slashdot.org.
I guess so. Thing is, I wrote that completely independently of Tim B-L: I only read his article *after* making that post.
Tim's article goes into depth and gives some good ideas on managing your documents and determining what links should look like, etc. It's short, I recommend reading it.
reed
Good idea. I see two pieces:
(1) A tool that generates a content-based unique identifier for a document. an sha or md5 sum would be nice. Or a magic string stuck somewhere in the first KB or so of the file. (in a comment for instance). The "lookup" URL with this identifier should be stored in an index, and be visible somewhere.
(2) A server (e.g. Apache) module which searches the filesystem for a document given a unique ID. This should be a real search of everything (or a subsection of the filesystem), possible using efficient OS-supplied search mechanisms, or just by walking the whole damn thing. some caching would be helpful. (If I know that I'm requesting an ancient document that no-one else seems to care about , I don't mind waiting for a little while).
This has been a real problem for a long time. But the web is distributed. The only real solution is for people to realize that moving stuff around all the time breaks links, and avoid it. One thing that would help is a translation layer in the web server, that separates the URL from the server's filesystem. This is basic software engineering common sense.
2 50" is a much better permanent URL for this story, than exposing the details of some perl script called "article.pl" that takes a parameter named "sid", and it will be easier to adapt to all future versions of Slash or other software, or to simple archive as a static file someday. Using the PATH_INFO CGI variable you can make a CGI like "article.pl" use URLS like that above.
Non-transparent CGI, PHP and ASP scripts are even worse, they tend to change all the time. Instead they should be using the "path info", or be in the server (mod_perl, etc.)
Example: "http://science.slashdot.org/article/03/11/24/127
The idea that the basic job of a webserver is to pull files off your disk is incomplete: it's job ought to be to take your URL through *any* kind of query lookup, which might map to the filesystem and might not. The HTTP RFC's imply this as well.
reed
That's neat. But why don't we actually use it?
1024-low 1024-std 117-low 118-low 118-std 118-up-low 118-up-std 2dn-low 2dn-std 3up-low 3up-std 4dn-low 4dn-std 118-slow-low 118-slow-std 118-up-slow-low 118-up-slow-std 3-slow-low 3-slow-std backwards-slow backwards
These ought to start working as soon as nettobert.physics.wwu.edu comes back online.
reedThe games seem to be sponsored by a company to promote it's proprietary 3D graphics technology. (Please do not confuse this company named "X3D" with the candidate ISO standard X3D, which is a new, expanded version of VRML).
I looked around the site, but couldn't find a single screenshot of the 3D graphics. All of the images are standard 2D chessboard diagrams, even the playback applet.
The best I could find was a monitor on the edge of a photo of Miss NYC in stereo glasses. Seemed like a fairly good looking chess set.... but it would be nice to see some animated playback, in the correct time! I thought "X3D" was trying to promote it's technology, but I can't see any of it.
Anyone catch it on ESPN2? Did they show the gfx there at all?
reedTo me a lot of this seems like a big hassle, which Is why I tend to prefer RPC over passing programs around. (Though I acknowledge the problems with RPC -- the concept BTW, not the Sun "RPC" service in Unix -- and acknowledge the advantages of scripts/bytecode). But in the cases I'm interested in, RPC has always seemed more flexible and scalable.
reed
An interesting tidbit from the VP of there.com: he is wondering about hosting: does the original creator of the game run the third-party contentent (code)? A big problem with robustness, security and scalability there. And what will the technical architecture look like? I'm surprised that they haven't thought about these issues with There (or maybe they have but don't want to give them away).
Well, as one of the lead developers on the VOS project, I think it could look a bit like VOS of course! I'm inclined towards an open distributed architecture, with some standard authentication mechanism that lets you either pay to enter or use a sector of the world (or not pay, of course), or looks you up in a list of subscribers. Bitpass and PayPal can be used here. Maybe there is a central authority for a particular set of such sectors that can do billing and accounting more conveniently.
If broadband continues to become more popular (and ISPs stop blocking ports and restricting upload bandwidth!) then people can host their own segments of worlds on their home servers. Maybe some object replication would be useful as well.
Another interesting tidbit is offering many methods of access: special game client, web sites, on your mobile phone, etc. Is this a hard technical problem or not? Will it be affected by the architecture of the game/world/metaverse?
Obviously easy to use authoring tools (based on libraries of common objects and basic customizable building blocks) will be essential, though we shouldn't exclude those with more skill in more advanced modeling programs.
Finally, I wonder how much growth there can be in the standard MMORPG which requires a large investment of time and dedication of its players. Would a game/world that doesn't dominate your entire life be as much fun?
Also, has anyone had a chance to try out Second Life yet?
reedSo... where does that $100,000 come from again? And it's a rare school principal that makes 100,000!
Here's an idea: shave off... maybe 1/10 of the "defense" budget and give it to schools. That should double or triple the income of most school systems at least....