Using an optical trackman wheel here.. had a 'TrackMan stationary mouse' for a long time before that. The Stationary mouse had the advantage of being a bit more accurate but the newer optical one is so much more reliable that I wouldn't want to change back.
Interlaced video. That's what they monitor to properly de-interlace it. The standard deinterlacer chips available today can only accept standard 480i or 576i video, so deinterlacing will be some trivial method with almost not time wasted for pulldown detection for 1080i if it takes place at all (i.e. not for CRT-base displays, for fixed pixel displays they will just do a weave or bob).
At 1080i there is normally no 3-2 pull-down detection indeed. Considering using ntsc or pal output however we get to deal with 480i or 576i, at which pull-down detection will be used, at least for sets that support the so called 'film mode' (480p at 72hz or 576 at 100hz)
I am pretty sure that many sets out there do this using real 3-2 pulldown detection, and not some simple de-interlacer, one of my friends wrote the microcode for the chip that does this job for many tv sets that support this, and I know most of their competitors do the same. (not talking about the quality of this detection, it is not that easy to get it right and fast). I helped him specifically with providing some source video material for testing 3-2 pulldown ntsc and later for pal macrovision.
Oh, I know many find it more pleasant to look at, and that is a matter of opinion.
However, AA results in colouring pictures differently then they were intended to be. If that has an effect on gameplay or not depends a lot on which game you play.
My issue with your initial post is that in fact AA makes you lose a bit of detail while to me it looked as if you were arguing the opposite.
> Because of the hype for "Open Sauce" everything and "Standards" (Intel & Windows were considered a standard), DEC became ashamed of it's VERY EXCELLENT operating system and hardware, i.e. OpenVMS and Alpha.
Just for the record.. I have a nice old DEC VAX here running OpenVMS.. and I used to have a Multia, but it gave up a while ago (most likely due to a power spike), its system board looks possitively fried.. Anyway, I have some experience with their hardware and software.
When I bought my Multia, DEC was dumping them, and talk about discontinuation of the Alpha was already there. This was still in the Windows 95/NT 3.x time. I bought it mostly because it was really cheap and somethign nice to play with.
> They never stopped shipping, developing and supporting it, they just stopped selling it.
I dare you to get a machine with OpenVMS from HP now without being an existing OpenVMS customer.
> Compaq did the same with it after DEC, and HP is doing the same. Now, two years after all Alpha development has stopped, the Itanium still can't beat a Marvel (Alpha SMP) on performance. Oh, wel...
No doubt, the Alpha was way ahead of its time, and is a very practical cpu, the later doesn't seem to be true for the Ithanium.
My questions were specifically about OpenVMS as a platform, not about the hardware it was running on.
What I get from your post is that DEC was ashamed of a product that was rather profitable to them.. am I right there?
> Most of the UCC comp sci graduates go on to find work with Convergys - the local helpdesk outsourcer that handles most of RoadRunner cable's tech support calls.
Hmm.. last time I worked for them (soem 2 years ago) Convergys was a lot more then a helpdesk outsourcer. Their main business seemed to be providing billing systems for (mobile) phone providers.
Inkjet printers with 3rd party refills can be quite ok.. Yeah, you better be carefull with the refills you use, but when you do have the proper ink, they can be fairly cheap to operate.
The crappy PSC 1200 I have here (printer/copier) was like 60 euro.. I also spent 45 euro on a refill kit, and after a year I did manage to use up my original cartridges and approx 2/5 of the refills (2 out of 5 refills)
Ah, how many pages did I get out of the initial cartridges and the 2 refills? Around 1200. So... if it would give up now, that printer costed like 0.0875 euro/page on average... and it doesn't look like it has given up yet.
> You were really close with the telecine information, but you're missing one major part.
> The only time telecine/3:2 pulldown is ever involved with TV, HD or not, is when watching content originally produced in 24fps (a.k.a. movies).
And guess what, most modern TVs are constantly monitoring the video stream for exactly that. This is to ensure they pickup the change to 3-2 pulldown within the first 3 frames.
TO do this, they still need the 3 frame delay even when displaying non telecine material.
> The conversion to 30/60Hz is independent of whether the TV is digital, as regular NTSC analog signals are 60Hz 30fps interlaced.
Hmm, you are right for as far as that the conversion is independent of if you use a digital TV or not, but only a device that does progressive display will need to reverse telecine to prevent serious display artifacts. So, you are idneed correct that this is not a property of digital TVs so much. I used digital TVs for simplification since that seems to be the only kind of progressive mode tv that people are likely to encounter.
> If all you do with your HDTV is watch movies, then you will notice this effect. Blame the film companies and the NTSC for choosing different refresh rates. Blame the 3:2 converter in your DVD player. Just don't blame the TV. It is just displaying what it is given.
WHen watching video and movies on a HDTV, you will notice this effect in the sense of lack of some artifacts in high motion scenes that you'd see on a traditional TV.
WHen playing games or doing video editing, you may notice the effect from the slight lag it introduces. As I explained earlier in this post, that lag is always there, not just when displaying telecine material.
For proper display of telecine material you actually need 3 fields of delay on average, not 3 frames. The 3 frames are needed for detection.
> I do not see how this relates. The USA is a democracy, so it has no need to have one given to it.
And why not? I live in a democracy as well, shall we come invade you next time we dislike what your government does?
> Iraq was most definitely not a democracy. I fail to see how relieving a country of its dictator is a bad thing.
Ah yes... that is only true if you also manage to replace it with somethign better. I am not going to judge that, I'll leave that to the Iraqi people.
What your argiment completely ignores is that this affects a lot more then Iraq. Your argument simply justifies anyone who feels their system is better to invade others with in their eyes inferior systems.
> That sounds about as likely as the claim that "MUDs will die out soon unless they are converted to better languages like.NET.
*lol*
On the MUD I have been arch and coder on for a decade, the usual rant was that unless we went all graphical, the MUD would die... Well, they got so wound up in arguing about this and a dozen other irrelevant issues that it did die practically (its still open, but it hasn't seen any new code releases in the last year or so, and neither has it seen any new players.
I did start a new MUD after leaving there.. we are still quite busy building our own lib, but should be getting somewhere this year I hope;)
I'm not the poster of the parent, but I think your post asks for a reply.
> Gamer who judge game on graphics is foolish gamer.
True when talkign about pac-man era games..
Also definitely true is that you don't need good graphics to make a good game..
But also true is that there are quite a few gaming genres out there where graphics quality and especially resolution (and as a result detail level) are very important.
The later catagory includes especially many FPS games.
> How did you friend have his PS2 hooked up to his TV, RF, composite, S-Video, component?
> How old is your friends TV?
No matter which way you turn this, a 720p HDTV connected with component video will still have an inferior resolution and connection to the display hardware. Add to that the fact that modern TVs do all kinds of video processing that is optimized for moving video, and you will simply never match the display quality of a standard computer monitor.
> Mind you, that consoles will prevail this war. They are designed for gaming; small caches, wide/fast busses, unlike computers that are in fact designed for general purpose usage.
True in theory... the reality is that general purpose computers can throw enough hardware at it so the difference is irrelevant.
> Graphics? resolution? Who really cares? Unless you're nearly blind, it shouldn't matter.
I suggest you go play all your games in a nice 2x2 resolution then if it doesn't matter.
1600x1200 instead of 800x600 doesn't matter to see that there is soemthing on the other side of the map.. but it makes a huge difference for being able to see whats at the other end of the map..
That the lower resolution doesn't matter much in many fo the games you played is another thing, but that is a matter of which games you play.
> A game as to be really good for me to want to bother installing it and configuring it on the PC, whereas on a console I can just drop something in.
Hmm.. last time I installed a game on a windows machien, it was a matter of inserting the CD, click 'next' a couple of times, click 'finish' once, and the game started.
> Hard to imagine my 50-year-old dad getting into Doom 3
Hmnm, my girlfriend is looking forward to it even more then I am.. guess we'd actually get to move 2 PCs into the living room so we do get to see eachother still after we got our copies..
> so it's inevitable that you'll end up with a lot more crashes, etc. Now, crashes and failures on "PCs" are generally accepted and tolerated, but on a consumer appliance, this is probably not the case.
Uhm....
You realize that the most crash prone OS in wide use was one of those 3: Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows ME
All of those were consumer products.
It seems to me that crashes and failures are especially acceptable on consumer products..
I definitely agree, and whats more.. you never get to the end of the table/mousepad/cable or such.. and can just give it a big swing to turn around quickly and such...
It takes some gettign used to, but it is a much better controller then a mouse indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
Using an optical trackman wheel here.. had a 'TrackMan stationary mouse' for a long time before that. The Stationary mouse had the advantage of being a bit more accurate but the newer optical one is so much more reliable that I wouldn't want to change back.
Does it do color for that price tho? The price I quoted is for a mixed use of color and black/white (aprox 4x more b/w then color tho)
Hmm, it never did for me.
What I did find tho is that people who played with a trackball are often quite opiniated about it.. they either really like it or they hate it..
Interlaced video. That's what they monitor to properly de-interlace it. The standard deinterlacer chips available today can only accept standard 480i or 576i video, so deinterlacing will be some trivial method with almost not time wasted for pulldown detection for 1080i if it takes place at all (i.e. not for CRT-base displays, for fixed pixel displays they will just do a weave or bob).
At 1080i there is normally no 3-2 pull-down detection indeed. Considering using ntsc or pal output however we get to deal with 480i or 576i, at which pull-down detection will be used, at least for sets that support the so called 'film mode' (480p at 72hz or 576 at 100hz)
I am pretty sure that many sets out there do this using real 3-2 pulldown detection, and not some simple de-interlacer, one of my friends wrote the microcode for the chip that does this job for many tv sets that support this, and I know most of their competitors do the same. (not talking about the quality of this detection, it is not that easy to get it right and fast). I helped him specifically with providing some source video material for testing 3-2 pulldown ntsc and later for pal macrovision.
Oh, I know many find it more pleasant to look at, and that is a matter of opinion.
However, AA results in colouring pictures differently then they were intended to be. If that has an effect on gameplay or not depends a lot on which game you play.
My issue with your initial post is that in fact AA makes you lose a bit of detail while to me it looked as if you were arguing the opposite.
> Because of the hype for "Open Sauce" everything and "Standards" (Intel & Windows were considered a standard), DEC became ashamed of it's VERY EXCELLENT operating system and hardware, i.e. OpenVMS and Alpha.
Just for the record.. I have a nice old DEC VAX here running OpenVMS.. and I used to have a Multia, but it gave up a while ago (most likely due to a power spike), its system board looks possitively fried.. Anyway, I have some experience with their hardware and software.
When I bought my Multia, DEC was dumping them, and talk about discontinuation of the Alpha was already there. This was still in the Windows 95/NT 3.x time. I bought it mostly because it was really cheap and somethign nice to play with.
> They never stopped shipping, developing and supporting it, they just stopped selling it.
I dare you to get a machine with OpenVMS from HP now without being an existing OpenVMS customer.
> Compaq did the same with it after DEC, and HP is doing the same. Now, two years after all Alpha development has stopped, the Itanium still can't beat a Marvel (Alpha SMP) on performance. Oh, wel...
No doubt, the Alpha was way ahead of its time, and is a very practical cpu, the later doesn't seem to be true for the Ithanium.
My questions were specifically about OpenVMS as a platform, not about the hardware it was running on.
What I get from your post is that DEC was ashamed of a product that was rather profitable to them.. am I right there?
How interesting.. not a single comment that actually has any information value at all.. I knew the standard was somewhat low here, but this low?
> Most of the UCC comp sci graduates go on to find work with Convergys - the local helpdesk outsourcer that handles most of RoadRunner cable's tech support calls.
Hmm.. last time I worked for them (soem 2 years ago) Convergys was a lot more then a helpdesk outsourcer. Their main business seemed to be providing billing systems for (mobile) phone providers.
What is more, people have been saying that alot about FreeBSD 3.x as well.
Inkjet printers with 3rd party refills can be quite ok.. Yeah, you better be carefull with the refills you use, but when you do have the proper ink, they can be fairly cheap to operate.
;P
The crappy PSC 1200 I have here (printer/copier) was like 60 euro.. I also spent 45 euro on a refill kit, and after a year I did manage to use up my original cartridges and approx 2/5 of the refills (2 out of 5 refills)
Ah, how many pages did I get out of the initial cartridges and the 2 refills? Around 1200.
So... if it would give up now, that printer costed like 0.0875 euro/page on average... and it doesn't look like it has given up yet.
I don't see this as a ripoff really
I just wonder about something...
If OpenVMS is so profitable, why is DEC no longer among us? and Compaq? and why is it being phased out?
Don't get me wrong, I know it has been profitable for a logn time, I am just seriously doubting that it still is.
> You were really close with the telecine information, but you're missing one major part.
> The only time telecine/3:2 pulldown is ever involved with TV, HD or not, is when watching content originally produced in 24fps (a.k.a. movies).
And guess what, most modern TVs are constantly monitoring the video stream for exactly that. This is to ensure they pickup the change to 3-2 pulldown within the first 3 frames.
TO do this, they still need the 3 frame delay even when displaying non telecine material.
> The conversion to 30/60Hz is independent of whether the TV is digital, as regular NTSC analog signals are 60Hz 30fps interlaced.
Hmm, you are right for as far as that the conversion is independent of if you use a digital TV or not, but only a device that does progressive display will need to reverse telecine to prevent serious display artifacts. So, you are idneed correct that this is not a property of digital TVs so much. I used digital TVs for simplification since that seems to be the only kind of progressive mode tv that people are likely to encounter.
> If all you do with your HDTV is watch movies, then you will notice this effect. Blame the film companies and the NTSC for choosing different refresh rates. Blame the 3:2 converter in your DVD player. Just don't blame the TV. It is just displaying what it is given.
WHen watching video and movies on a HDTV, you will notice this effect in the sense of lack of some artifacts in high motion scenes that you'd see on a traditional TV.
WHen playing games or doing video editing, you may notice the effect from the slight lag it introduces. As I explained earlier in this post, that lag is always there, not just when displaying telecine material.
For proper display of telecine material you actually need 3 fields of delay on average, not 3 frames. The 3 frames are needed for detection.
> I do not see how this relates. The USA is a democracy, so it has no need to have one given to it.
And why not? I live in a democracy as well, shall we come invade you next time we dislike what your government does?
> Iraq was most definitely not a democracy. I fail to see how relieving a country of its dictator is a bad thing.
Ah yes... that is only true if you also manage to replace it with somethign better. I am not going to judge that, I'll leave that to the Iraqi people.
What your argiment completely ignores is that this affects a lot more then Iraq. Your argument simply justifies anyone who feels their system is better to invade others with in their eyes inferior systems.
I don't like AA either.. at least for gaming.. It can do wonders for other things..
I was however just tryign to point out that it can never ever add detail, at the very best it only makes you lose a little detail.
Off topic probably but..
.NET.
;)
> That sounds about as likely as the claim that "MUDs will die out soon unless they are converted to better languages like
*lol*
On the MUD I have been arch and coder on for a decade, the usual rant was that unless we went all graphical, the MUD would die... Well, they got so wound up in arguing about this and a dozen other irrelevant issues that it did die practically (its still open, but it hasn't seen any new code releases in the last year or so, and neither has it seen any new players.
I did start a new MUD after leaving there.. we are still quite busy building our own lib, but should be getting somewhere this year I hope
I'm not the poster of the parent, but I think your post asks for a reply.
> Gamer who judge game on graphics is foolish gamer.
True when talkign about pac-man era games..
Also definitely true is that you don't need good graphics to make a good game..
But also true is that there are quite a few gaming genres out there where graphics quality and especially resolution (and as a result detail level) are very important.
The later catagory includes especially many FPS games.
> How did you friend have his PS2 hooked up to his TV, RF, composite, S-Video, component?
> How old is your friends TV?
No matter which way you turn this, a 720p HDTV connected with component video will still have an inferior resolution and connection to the display hardware. Add to that the fact that modern TVs do all kinds of video processing that is optimized for moving video, and you will simply never match the display quality of a standard computer monitor.
> Mind you, that consoles will prevail this war. They are designed for gaming; small caches, wide/fast busses, unlike computers that are in fact designed for general purpose usage.
True in theory... the reality is that general purpose computers can throw enough hardware at it so the difference is irrelevant.
> Graphics? resolution? Who really cares? Unless you're nearly blind, it shouldn't matter.
I suggest you go play all your games in a nice 2x2 resolution then if it doesn't matter.
1600x1200 instead of 800x600 doesn't matter to see that there is soemthing on the other side of the map.. but it makes a huge difference for being able to see whats at the other end of the map..
That the lower resolution doesn't matter much in many fo the games you played is another thing, but that is a matter of which games you play.
> It's not going to solve that problem..
Well, obviously you prefer to have 2 versions of the x-box around to play all your games then when the new one comes out...
If you believe you do not have to uopgrade every few years with consoles then you are either:
- ignoring past experience
- ignoring current developments
- content with only playing todays titles and don't worry about tomorrow
> Uhhh. I said : Just as PCs in their current form will not exist in the near future...
Which is a prediction I have heard for over a decade...
It hasn't happened so far.. the way computers are used have changed a lot tho..
Portable hardware has added variety, but didn't so much replace what was there.
> A game as to be really good for me to want to bother installing it and configuring it on the PC, whereas on a console I can just drop something in.
Hmm.. last time I installed a game on a windows machien, it was a matter of inserting the CD, click 'next' a couple of times, click 'finish' once, and the game started.
More work? definitely. difficult? well..
> Hard to imagine my 50-year-old dad getting into Doom 3
Hmnm, my girlfriend is looking forward to it even more then I am.. guess we'd actually get to move 2 PCs into the living room so we do get to see eachother still after we got our copies..
> so it's inevitable that you'll end up with a lot more crashes, etc. Now, crashes and failures on "PCs" are generally accepted and tolerated, but on a consumer appliance, this is probably not the case.
Uhm....
You realize that the most crash prone OS in wide use was one of those 3:
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
All of those were consumer products.
It seems to me that crashes and failures are especially acceptable on consumer products..
I definitely agree, and whats more.. you never get to the end of the table/mousepad/cable or such.. and can just give it a big swing to turn around quickly and such...
It takes some gettign used to, but it is a much better controller then a mouse indeed.
When you are serious about playing racing games, do yourself the favor of buying a steering wheel..