Hope nobody minds, but here's a link to my own MINERVA - more single-player Half-Life 2, but entirely unofficial and apocryphal. And with more than a passing nod to a certain Marathon...
"The "Local Memory" is the RSX graphics memory. The Cell shouldn't need to read this. The PS3 would still work even if the Cell couldn't read this memory at all. This memory is where you store textures and other graphics data.
Presumably in the (unlikely?) event you did need the output from the RSX graphics chip for manipulation by the Cell processor gubbins, you could get it to render to main memory, let the processor do the appropriate data-diddling, then have the RSX read it back again?
The 'local memory' is presumably the RSX's private play area, and thus the RSX gets maximum-stupendous-speed priority, and the Cell gets occasional access at weekends. Which is a bonus, and not even necessary...
Is it memory local to the graphics subsystem, or something?
If so, then presumably getting the graphics chip to copy stuff out into main memory for the central processor to read would be the sensible workaround. But still, 16MB/s seems more like a throwback to the age of my old Atari ST. I think that could manage a few megabytes a second...
2-2.5 * pretty fucking good = what the hell more do you want?
Keeping up with Moore's Law (or nearest equivalent for graphics tech), providing me with greatly improved graphics hardware for exactly the same price (or less!) than the old lot?
Decent artwork and design are still the most important factors in good computer game visuals, but half-decent hardware is always appreciated. You can, however, go the other way - the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 seem specially designed to pump out huge quantities of hot air in order to show off intensively pixel-shadered, photorealistically rendered, billion-triangled Bad Art.
What I find really amazing is that they managed to pack at least double the performance of a Gamecube (this has been known for quite some time) into a chassis even smaller than the Gamecube.
My MacBook Pro manages to pack at least double the performance of my Toshiba T1100 PLUS into a much smaller chassis.
However, if the Wii has 2 to 2.5 times the hardware power of the Gamecube as the above article suggests, then they've fulfilled my expectations by more than enough.
A 2 to 2.5 times increase in performance is pretty shitty for five years of additional development - it suggests that the new graphics chip is really, really cheap compared with the old one.
Oh, for fuck's sake - stop with the pseudo-intellectual doublethink and legal definitions masturbation. Trying to justify stealing people's work (oh, sorry, it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement, blah blah blah) might work in your head, but the truth is you just like free films, music and software, bugger the consequences.
And as for the benefits of paying for stuff, just imagine if I turned up at Valve with a warezed copy of Half-Life 2 on my laptop. Would they have:
Congratulated me on my brave new approach to the distribution of their intellectual property,
Agreed that payment for their services was simply 'cluttering up' the discussion, or
Kicked me out of the building, cancelled my return air ticket and remaining hotel accommodation and demanded an apology?
Remuneration may not be some physical law of the universe, but I like to thank the people who make the stuff I buy. And, occasionally, they thank me back...;-)
According to your previous statement you either pay for things or do without. So, how is it that you are prancing around in a free Half Life T-shirt. According to your previous statement, you must have paid for the T-Shirt or done without.
I bought a copy of Half-Life 2 over Steam, built a mod for it, for fun, in my spare time, had that downloaded a couple of hundred thousand times, got invited over to Seattle by Valve (travel and accommodation paid for by themselves) and spent a week there - and on the last day, got given a swag-bag containing two T-shirts and a book.
So I think I did fairly well. One of the benefits of paying for software...;-)
Nice to see an illegal copy of Vista is number one...
Quiet, you - it's not criminally illegal, it's rightcopy defringement, or something like that. Yeah. It's in Sweden, and they're pirates, so that makes it absolutely all right. The fact that Sweden's got some odd legal loophole which makes it not a crime to post links to copyrighted material means that it's therefore absolutely not a crime to go ahead and download any of this copyrighted material, laws in the users' native countries be damned. Swedish pirates say what they're doing is fine, so therefore everything else they facilitate is too!
Erm...
Isn't actually downloading anything from such sites still illegal?
I pay for stuff, or do without. It has its advantages, especially with games...;-)
Anyone hoping for 9in MacBook Micros, 36in MacBook MegaPros or other outlandish designs might be disappointed - the hardware overview page describes the Apple laptop family as 'now complete'.
So, is this the full range?
The black MacBook seems a bit weird - it's $200 more than the nearest equivalent white model, except it has 20GB more hard disk and, erm, a rather pay-as-you-go black finish. Odd.
Uniquely texturing entire terrains sounds pretty cool, but the concept isn't entirely new - just an evolution on an already-existing idea.
I think the Myth RTS games from Bungie used very large textures for the terrain, and this moved on to Halo - terrain there is drawn using a large, low-resolution texture - the red, green and blue channels are used for the colour, while the alpha channel is used to determine which of two detail textures should be used - e.g. grass or sand. It works quite well. I think Far Cry does something similar, but more advanced still.
The former are still low-resolution, though - but the not-a-game Celestia has 'virtual texture' support, for rendering silly levels of detail on planet surfaces. Like, up to 128k by 64k pixels. The textures are split into many, many files for each level of detail, which are streamed in from the hard disk when required. Works fairly well.
Combining the two approaches, though, seems very new - the 'Mega Texturing' from John Carmack is probably dramatically different from an implementation point of view, and sounds rather interesting at any rate - the description of the upgraded, non-Quake-Wars version makes it sound like it could uniquely texture a whole world beyond just terrain, so could work for simulating real cities, as opposed to smoke-and-mirrors game cities.
I'm sure he talked about this in a.plan thing some years ago - anyone want to find it?
Actually, it's the first bit of next-gen visual content that's impressed me at all - although this has a lot to do with the artistic design, not just the technology behind it.
I'm of the opinion that as rendering (and audio) technology improves, it really helps distinguish between good and bad art. And dear me, Bungie know how to make good trailers. But can they still remember the 'games' thing of yesteryear?;-)
There are lots of images and videos with detailed descriptions over at the ESA site - similarly there's stuff over at the JPL website.
It's all real imaging data, carefully stitched together and colorised (using real data again) - it's probably about as good results as they can possibly get. Titan's gone from being a strange, difficult-to-imagine world to being somewhere almost homely (near-Earth-like rolling hills and eroded valleys) - all thanks to this one little space probe...
If you use JavaScript to render content, you're going to have a really hard time getting indexed by the search engines. If you're an individual, not such a big deal. If you're a company... make sure you have an alternative to pure javascript so that the search engine robots can find the content.
There's an FPS game map review site I used to visit often which has an utterly pointless Javascript 'compression' system behind it, originally coded to supposedly make it load more quickly over dialup connections.
As a result, the site is effectively invisible to search engines, and isn't exactly healthy these days.
I've found that one of the best 'fallback' browsers for simulating how a search engine sees things is good old lynx - as a result, I make sure my own pages are legible, navigable and sensibly structured from a low-level point of view. Also, it's a good way of checking that you haven't introduced too many wheel reinventions when good old <a href=...>s would have done the trick...
Many studies have shown that a diet of raw meat is perfectly healthy and natural for the human body, so your assertion that vegetarianism is the only solution is silly.
So those raw beef sandwiches I've been eating in Brussels are actually good for me?
Excellent!
Latest Web 2.0 project definitely goes to work!
on
Web 2.0 Goes To Work
·
· Score: 0, Troll
A friend has been working incredibly hard (heh) to get his latest project up (fnar) and pumping. (Ooer!)
Yes, it's Smutr, the fully Web 2.0 automated smut delivery system. Has pastel shades, rounded corners, beta status, AJAX and all that jizz, sorry, jazz.
(It was another friend who created Wankr. Maybe I should look for new friends...)
For bonus fun, if you pronounce it like "Wifi" but dropping the "f", you sound like a Northerner saying "wahey".
Why-aye, pet! Nintendo's a canny bastard fer choosing a name like that. Te can always tell when a Geordie's left the toon and got a job somewhere proper, aye!
I scored eight out of eight. I'd never heard any of the sites before, beyond the eMule and Kazaa ones - and those I've never used. All I used was information presented to me in the screenshots.
It was an easy test, and was full of clues.
Screensavers: One site gives the licence for each download, and usually the price if it's shareware - the 'Order Now' link at the top suggests this is how the business makes its money. The other just provides downloads - and doesn't have any ads. How does this service make its money? Guess.
Smilies: One has 'FREE' in giant letters, the other has a 'BUY' button. Which is the safe one?
Games: Bit trickier, but one is 'FREE-FREE-FREE' all over, the other has a forum, a FAQ and a contact page. One's too good to be true, the other sounds like it's run by enthusiasts.
Lyrics: Tricky again. But one claims to be built by its users and has a pitifully small selection of requests to complete its database (to be submitted by email to a generic address, too) - the other seems to have been running since 2000 and has links to request and submit song lyrics. Plus a guestbook and a advertising sales link - hardly things to provide if your business strategy involves pissing off your visitors.
Filesharing: Okay. A list. Bearshare: it's a 'sponsored download' (hmmm...); eMule is open source, has forums, a shop and a donations link (again, things you wouldn't have if you pissed off your users); Blubster is '100% free!' with no on-site advertisements or other obvious means of deriving revenue, and Kazaa is 'NO SPYWARE', but is 'FREE' - and again with no obvious means of making money.
There you go. All the information for scoring eight out of eight. Easy!
Essentially, think about how the website is making its money. If it's pushing something desirable as free, then it's suspicious - so unless it's obviously run by enthusiasts and has an easily-contactable community behind it, then there's almost no such thing as that proverbial free lunch...
Re:Ingrained Behaviour
on
EA Spouse Outed
·
· Score: 2, Funny
This is not only good for the economy as a whole, but it's also a good way to increase personal income and purchasing power.
Absolutely - when I was over in the USA the other week, I found my effective personal income and purchasing power was greatly increased by the sorry state of the Dollar compared with the Euro.
So please, carry on! I have my eye on a rather nice telephoto lens to complement the one I bought last week, and the reduction is price is brilliant!:-)
He expects Apples magical engineers to just whip out a feature complete copy of the Windows API in just a few months?
Give me a load of All-Bran or other fibre-rich foodstuffs to work on, and I'm sure I could produce a feature-complete copy of Microsoft Windows in 24 hours or so. Even less, if laxatives are involved.
Slashdot Mirror
Hope nobody minds, but here's a link to my own MINERVA - more single-player Half-Life 2, but entirely unofficial and apocryphal. And with more than a passing nod to a certain Marathon...
Valve likes it, anyhow. And yes, I'm a complete fanboy!
"The "Local Memory" is the RSX graphics memory. The Cell shouldn't need to read this. The PS3 would still work even if the Cell couldn't read this memory at all. This memory is where you store textures and other graphics data.
Presumably in the (unlikely?) event you did need the output from the RSX graphics chip for manipulation by the Cell processor gubbins, you could get it to render to main memory, let the processor do the appropriate data-diddling, then have the RSX read it back again?
The 'local memory' is presumably the RSX's private play area, and thus the RSX gets maximum-stupendous-speed priority, and the Cell gets occasional access at weekends. Which is a bonus, and not even necessary...
Is it memory local to the graphics subsystem, or something?
If so, then presumably getting the graphics chip to copy stuff out into main memory for the central processor to read would be the sensible workaround. But still, 16MB/s seems more like a throwback to the age of my old Atari ST. I think that could manage a few megabytes a second...
2-2.5 * pretty fucking good = what the hell more do you want?
Keeping up with Moore's Law (or nearest equivalent for graphics tech), providing me with greatly improved graphics hardware for exactly the same price (or less!) than the old lot?
Decent artwork and design are still the most important factors in good computer game visuals, but half-decent hardware is always appreciated. You can, however, go the other way - the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 seem specially designed to pump out huge quantities of hot air in order to show off intensively pixel-shadered, photorealistically rendered, billion-triangled Bad Art.
What I find really amazing is that they managed to pack at least double the performance of a Gamecube (this has been known for quite some time) into a chassis even smaller than the Gamecube.
;-)
My MacBook Pro manages to pack at least double the performance of my Toshiba T1100 PLUS into a much smaller chassis.
Technology improves over time...
However, if the Wii has 2 to 2.5 times the hardware power of the Gamecube as the above article suggests, then they've fulfilled my expectations by more than enough.
A 2 to 2.5 times increase in performance is pretty shitty for five years of additional development - it suggests that the new graphics chip is really, really cheap compared with the old one.
And as for the benefits of paying for stuff, just imagine if I turned up at Valve with a warezed copy of Half-Life 2 on my laptop. Would they have:
Remuneration may not be some physical law of the universe, but I like to thank the people who make the stuff I buy. And, occasionally, they thank me back...
According to your previous statement you either pay for things or do without. So, how is it that you are prancing around in a free Half Life T-shirt. According to your previous statement, you must have paid for the T-Shirt or done without.
;-)
I bought a copy of Half-Life 2 over Steam, built a mod for it, for fun, in my spare time, had that downloaded a couple of hundred thousand times, got invited over to Seattle by Valve (travel and accommodation paid for by themselves) and spent a week there - and on the last day, got given a swag-bag containing two T-shirts and a book.
So I think I did fairly well. One of the benefits of paying for software...
Claiming that a bundled t-shirt is free: er ... priceless.
Nope, it wasn't bundled - it was free.
Although I did have to pay to get to the airport.
Nice to see an illegal copy of Vista is number one...
;-)
Quiet, you - it's not criminally illegal, it's rightcopy defringement, or something like that. Yeah. It's in Sweden, and they're pirates, so that makes it absolutely all right. The fact that Sweden's got some odd legal loophole which makes it not a crime to post links to copyrighted material means that it's therefore absolutely not a crime to go ahead and download any of this copyrighted material, laws in the users' native countries be damned. Swedish pirates say what they're doing is fine, so therefore everything else they facilitate is too!
Erm...
Isn't actually downloading anything from such sites still illegal?
I pay for stuff, or do without. It has its advantages, especially with games...
* prances around in free Half-Life 2 T-shirt *
Yup, I was expecting something along the lines of "The Game"...
:-(
Aww, crap. I just lost.
Crates? Barrels? Yes, but what are the civilian applications?
Anyone hoping for 9in MacBook Micros, 36in MacBook MegaPros or other outlandish designs might be disappointed - the hardware overview page describes the Apple laptop family as 'now complete'.
So, is this the full range?
The black MacBook seems a bit weird - it's $200 more than the nearest equivalent white model, except it has 20GB more hard disk and, erm, a rather pay-as-you-go black finish. Odd.
Uniquely texturing entire terrains sounds pretty cool, but the concept isn't entirely new - just an evolution on an already-existing idea.
.plan thing some years ago - anyone want to find it?
I think the Myth RTS games from Bungie used very large textures for the terrain, and this moved on to Halo - terrain there is drawn using a large, low-resolution texture - the red, green and blue channels are used for the colour, while the alpha channel is used to determine which of two detail textures should be used - e.g. grass or sand. It works quite well. I think Far Cry does something similar, but more advanced still.
The former are still low-resolution, though - but the not-a-game Celestia has 'virtual texture' support, for rendering silly levels of detail on planet surfaces. Like, up to 128k by 64k pixels. The textures are split into many, many files for each level of detail, which are streamed in from the hard disk when required. Works fairly well.
Combining the two approaches, though, seems very new - the 'Mega Texturing' from John Carmack is probably dramatically different from an implementation point of view, and sounds rather interesting at any rate - the description of the upgraded, non-Quake-Wars version makes it sound like it could uniquely texture a whole world beyond just terrain, so could work for simulating real cities, as opposed to smoke-and-mirrors game cities.
I'm sure he talked about this in a
Actually, it's the first bit of next-gen visual content that's impressed me at all - although this has a lot to do with the artistic design, not just the technology behind it.
;-)
I'm of the opinion that as rendering (and audio) technology improves, it really helps distinguish between good and bad art. And dear me, Bungie know how to make good trailers. But can they still remember the 'games' thing of yesteryear?
There are lots of images and videos with detailed descriptions over at the ESA site - similarly there's stuff over at the JPL website.
It's all real imaging data, carefully stitched together and colorised (using real data again) - it's probably about as good results as they can possibly get. Titan's gone from being a strange, difficult-to-imagine world to being somewhere almost homely (near-Earth-like rolling hills and eroded valleys) - all thanks to this one little space probe...
If you use JavaScript to render content, you're going to have a really hard time getting indexed by the search engines. If you're an individual, not such a big deal. If you're a company... make sure you have an alternative to pure javascript so that the search engine robots can find the content.
There's an FPS game map review site I used to visit often which has an utterly pointless Javascript 'compression' system behind it, originally coded to supposedly make it load more quickly over dialup connections.
As a result, the site is effectively invisible to search engines, and isn't exactly healthy these days.
I've found that one of the best 'fallback' browsers for simulating how a search engine sees things is good old lynx - as a result, I make sure my own pages are legible, navigable and sensibly structured from a low-level point of view. Also, it's a good way of checking that you haven't introduced too many wheel reinventions when good old <a href=...>s would have done the trick...
Many studies have shown that a diet of raw meat is perfectly healthy and natural for the human body, so your assertion that vegetarianism is the only solution is silly.
So those raw beef sandwiches I've been eating in Brussels are actually good for me?
Excellent!
A friend has been working incredibly hard (heh) to get his latest project up (fnar) and pumping. (Ooer!)
Yes, it's Smutr, the fully Web 2.0 automated smut delivery system. Has pastel shades, rounded corners, beta status, AJAX and all that jizz, sorry, jazz.
(It was another friend who created Wankr. Maybe I should look for new friends...)
For bonus fun, if you pronounce it like "Wifi" but dropping the "f", you sound like a Northerner saying "wahey".
Why-aye, pet! Nintendo's a canny bastard fer choosing a name like that. Te can always tell when a Geordie's left the toon and got a job somewhere proper, aye!
Actually, it says 'MADE IN JAPAN' on the lens I did buy - but otherwise your point is accurate... ;-)
It was an easy test, and was full of clues.
There you go. All the information for scoring eight out of eight. Easy!
Essentially, think about how the website is making its money. If it's pushing something desirable as free, then it's suspicious - so unless it's obviously run by enthusiasts and has an easily-contactable community behind it, then there's almost no such thing as that proverbial free lunch...
This is not only good for the economy as a whole, but it's also a good way to increase personal income and purchasing power.
:-)
Absolutely - when I was over in the USA the other week, I found my effective personal income and purchasing power was greatly increased by the sorry state of the Dollar compared with the Euro.
So please, carry on! I have my eye on a rather nice telephoto lens to complement the one I bought last week, and the reduction is price is brilliant!
He expects Apples magical engineers to just whip out a feature complete copy of the Windows API in just a few months?
Give me a load of All-Bran or other fibre-rich foodstuffs to work on, and I'm sure I could produce a feature-complete copy of Microsoft Windows in 24 hours or so. Even less, if laxatives are involved.
Yes. There are some truly strange and distasteful things waiting to be found in this game...