Especially since game developers are already developing products for multi-core systems like the PS3 and XBox360. I imagine it's easier to work on games for multiple platforms if all the target platforms have the same [very] high-level concept..
Those who've played it know of that which I speak of. Skiing was the result a bug in their physics engine that turned into such a popular feature, they've gone out of their way to put it into the sequels.
Too bad none of the sequels live up to the original.
I totally agree. I found myself clapping after a certain demonstration at the end.
Then I noticed the looks I was getting from people walking past my office and stopped.
Very cool demonstration, I look forward to the game.
Heh. Good catch. I think you're right, I just copied it out of the article comments though. His final value of 72.59 years is correct, dunno where the 199,229 came from.
Actually, after doing the math, it should be 72.58 years, or more correctly 72.53 years, (365.24 days/year)
Yes, and depending on how the writes are being spread across the media, the device could last a day or years. From the comments in TA, someone posted the following specs:
MTBF specs vary based on the manufacturer and the calculation used; the following are some sample specs I have found:
Write Frequency = 6,016,204,800 KB per day (68 MB/sec)
E-Disk® capacity = 155,648 MB
Number of Flash chips = 608
Size of Flash chips = 2048 Mbit or 256 MB or 262,144 KB
Number of writes to Flash chip = 64 KB / 16 KB = 4
Total E-Disk® physical blocks = (262,114 / 16) x 608 = 9,961,472
Total max writes to E-Disk® drive = 9,961,472 x 1,000,000 = 9,961,472,000,000
Endurance (in days) = 9,961,472,000,000 / (4 X (6,016,204,800/64)) = 26,492 days
Endurance (in years) = 199,229 days / 365 = 72.59 years
Samsung could also use a form of wear leveling to increase device longevity.
Re:Massive processor, not much for graphics though
on
The Xbox 360 Unveiled
·
· Score: 1
Means it's got a single CPU "Chip" which contains three actual CPU cores.
In a very general sense, you could look at it as having three separate CPUs. However, depending on how those CPUs are architected, they may have to fight over memory bandwidth and other system resources (a-la Intel). Or they may use a much more efficent design, like AMD's HyperTransport.
Regardless, it's still a crapload of processing power. Hopefully the CPU design isn't crippled by the rest of the hardware.
It may have optical out, but that is hardly an indicator of sound quality. (in fact, some might even argue optical
Personally, I've never had an issue getting AC3, Dolby Digital, or DTS out of my SB. Most cards on the market have a toslink output on them, but really, unless you're pushing the audio over a great distance (>25ft) you're probably better off sticking to the S/PDIF connection instead of toslink. If your audio processing hardware operated using light, then that'd be one thing, but sadly such things are still sci-fi. The only reason one would need to go to optical cable would be to reduce interference and signal degradation over a long distance... but I digress.
My current motherboard is an Abit A8V. (Socket 939, Asus K8T800 chipset) To say the audio quality from either the optical or the S/PDIF outputs is dismal would be an understatement. The center channel was always barely audible, and even in what the manufacturer called '5.1 surround' mode, it was impossible to get any audio out of my rear channels except for when playing games.. and even that was crappy. After fighting with it for an hour to get decent audio out of it, I finally gave up on it and disabled the onboard audio in the BIOS, then installed my trusty SB.
Life is good again, and the audio is much better. I'm a purist though; I use a good-quality progressive DVD player to play my DVDs... my PC is for games and development.
Personally, I'd love to just get a good-ol' barebones mobo too. The first thing I do when I buy a new one these days is disable _everything_ except for the NIC..
Stay away from onboard video.. that's just common sense.
The onboard audio these days is passable, if you're using a sub-$100 set of stereo speakers. But if you're an audiophile like myself with several thousand dollars invested in a nice 7.1 spkr setup, (or heck, even a $300 set of 5.1 speakers) then the onboard audio just doesn't cut it. I thought I'd give a couple boards a try, but their optical/digital outputs were a pain to configure, the sound "configuration" software was a joke, and 'equalizer' functionality only resulted in badly distorted and staticy sound.
I've yet to encounter a current on-board audio chipset that didn't sound and perform like crap. Even the 4-year old SB I have in my test box sounds better.
I will admit that compared to past products, the audio on today's boards is much better.. but it still cannot compare to a dedicated expansion card IMNSHO.
Sadly, I doubt the next N console is gonna have holo-deck type processing power.
Most likely it'll be some sort of LCD-shutter glasses technology, as already used in '3D' movies.
I find the claim "only that it has never been applied to videogames" somewhat misleading, as this technology has been available for PC games for many years (http://www.xforce3d.com/) It will, however, be the first time such technology has been natively supported by a game platform.
As for culling, the use of this pseudo-3D technology isn't going to change a thing.. your POV will remain the same, just the illusion of depth will be enhanced. Also, consider that if the hardware is powerful enough, some forms of culling (such as back-face) are unnecessary. Take for example the PS2 with it's 2.56Kb graphics pipeline.. I've heard developers rarely need to do backface culling with it.
From the front page of the L Store's website:
(posted 11-16-2004 4 days after the information above)
As we have passed today the 1 million mark of support emails sent to us by all of you, Liebermann Inc. would like to announce it is entering final negotiation stages for possible borad large scale funding for a complete re-structuring of its corporate structure and product line that includes plans for the simultaneous re-launch of both North American and European operations and the possible opening of three retails stores in the cities of Los Angeles, New York City, and London, UK in the months ahead. Liebermann Inc. will soon be opening a global forums space that can be accessed directly via our homepage to collect your ideas, opinions, input and comments and serve as a worldwide area of discussion to all of what you want us to become and the products you would like to see developed. Equally Liebermann Inc. will be posting updates as to the terms and results of it's current funding negotiations and would like to state that no matter the result and possible new large scale corporate entity it may become, it will unshakably remain and improve upon the unique spirit that millions of you have learned to love and admire.....
Should also mention that the iRiver play MP3,ASF,WMA,WAV, and OGG, which was the selling feature for me.
It's also got optical AND analogue line in/out, and built-in mic which records straight to MP3.
Oh, and you can read text files with it too, and it has a built-in FM tuner.
It's got USB ultra-high speed connectivity, so copying 10GB of music took very little time at all, and doubles as a portable hard-drive.
I've had my iRiver iHP-120 for a month now, and I LOVES IT.
Slashdot Mirror
Especially since game developers are already developing products for multi-core systems like the PS3 and XBox360. I imagine it's easier to work on games for multiple platforms if all the target platforms have the same [very] high-level concept..
A month or so ago, someone took some HL2 models and rendered them with HDL. Then he put those renderings into his back-yard.
You can see them here
Those who've played it know of that which I speak of. Skiing was the result a bug in their physics engine that turned into such a popular feature, they've gone out of their way to put it into the sequels.
Too bad none of the sequels live up to the original.
I totally agree. I found myself clapping after a certain demonstration at the end.
Then I noticed the looks I was getting from people walking past my office and stopped.
Very cool demonstration, I look forward to the game.
Heh. Good catch. I think you're right, I just copied it out of the article comments though. His final value of 72.59 years is correct, dunno where the 199,229 came from.
Actually, after doing the math, it should be 72.58 years, or more correctly 72.53 years, (365.24 days/year)
Samsung could also use a form of wear leveling to increase device longevity.
Means it's got a single CPU "Chip" which contains three actual CPU cores.
In a very general sense, you could look at it as having three separate CPUs. However, depending on how those CPUs are architected, they may have to fight over memory bandwidth and other system resources (a-la Intel). Or they may use a much more efficent design, like AMD's HyperTransport.
Regardless, it's still a crapload of processing power. Hopefully the CPU design isn't crippled by the rest of the hardware.
The German Robocup included teams from:
- Portugal
- Iran
- The Netherlands
- Austria
- France
- Italy
- Russia
- Denmark
- United Arab Emirates
And of course, Germany.It may have optical out, but that is hardly an indicator of sound quality. (in fact, some might even argue optical
Personally, I've never had an issue getting AC3, Dolby Digital, or DTS out of my SB. Most cards on the market have a toslink output on them, but really, unless you're pushing the audio over a great distance (>25ft) you're probably better off sticking to the S/PDIF connection instead of toslink. If your audio processing hardware operated using light, then that'd be one thing, but sadly such things are still sci-fi. The only reason one would need to go to optical cable would be to reduce interference and signal degradation over a long distance... but I digress.
My current motherboard is an Abit A8V. (Socket 939, Asus K8T800 chipset) To say the audio quality from either the optical or the S/PDIF outputs is dismal would be an understatement. The center channel was always barely audible, and even in what the manufacturer called '5.1 surround' mode, it was impossible to get any audio out of my rear channels except for when playing games.. and even that was crappy. After fighting with it for an hour to get decent audio out of it, I finally gave up on it and disabled the onboard audio in the BIOS, then installed my trusty SB.
Life is good again, and the audio is much better. I'm a purist though; I use a good-quality progressive DVD player to play my DVDs... my PC is for games and development.
Personally, I'd love to just get a good-ol' barebones mobo too. The first thing I do when I buy a new one these days is disable _everything_ except for the NIC..
Stay away from onboard video.. that's just common sense.
The onboard audio these days is passable, if you're using a sub-$100 set of stereo speakers. But if you're an audiophile like myself with several thousand dollars invested in a nice 7.1 spkr setup, (or heck, even a $300 set of 5.1 speakers) then the onboard audio just doesn't cut it. I thought I'd give a couple boards a try, but their optical/digital outputs were a pain to configure, the sound "configuration" software was a joke, and 'equalizer' functionality only resulted in badly distorted and staticy sound.
I've yet to encounter a current on-board audio chipset that didn't sound and perform like crap. Even the 4-year old SB I have in my test box sounds better.
I will admit that compared to past products, the audio on today's boards is much better.. but it still cannot compare to a dedicated expansion card IMNSHO.
Sadly, I doubt the next N console is gonna have holo-deck type processing power.
Most likely it'll be some sort of LCD-shutter glasses technology, as already used in '3D' movies.
I find the claim "only that it has never been applied to videogames" somewhat misleading, as this technology has been available for PC games for many years (http://www.xforce3d.com/) It will, however, be the first time such technology has been natively supported by a game platform.
As for culling, the use of this pseudo-3D technology isn't going to change a thing.. your POV will remain the same, just the illusion of depth will be enhanced. Also, consider that if the hardware is powerful enough, some forms of culling (such as back-face) are unnecessary. Take for example the PS2 with it's 2.56Kb graphics pipeline.. I've heard developers rarely need to do backface culling with it.
Additionally, they were running on older hardware back then. PA upgraded their servers early this year (mid Feb, if I recall)
Should also mention that the iRiver play MP3,ASF,WMA,WAV, and OGG, which was the selling feature for me.
It's also got optical AND analogue line in/out, and built-in mic which records straight to MP3.
Oh, and you can read text files with it too, and it has a built-in FM tuner.
It's got USB ultra-high speed connectivity, so copying 10GB of music took very little time at all, and doubles as a portable hard-drive.
I've had my iRiver iHP-120 for a month now, and I LOVES IT.