If we wanted space, we'd just get additional drives.
Again, an area where SCSI shines. It's tough to put 48 IDE drives in a PC-clone case!
And it is easier to put 48 SCSI drives into a PC-clone case? At least with IDE you can get > 100GB per drive, which in a drive bay-limited PC is nice to have.
Its unfortunate that the market (that's us) continues to support games that don't innovate. If you really want publishers to let developers spend time and money innovating, stop buying games that are "more of the same, but requires a GF(X)-level video card."
I disagree. At that point, we'll be looking for polygons> per pixel and 2400x1800 resolution with internal 64 bit color calculations, 64 bit Z buffers, 100Hz, etc.
We will only be satisfied when we can jack our optic nerve directly into the video system.
Field of view changes very little with changes in resolution. Go ahead, try it.
FOV is based on the "camera angle" (which is probably hardcoded in NWN) and width/height ratio. In 800x600, you actually have a wider FOV than in 1280x1024.
What do you mean "will have"? I think "has already" is more appropriate! Will anyone actually care when/if DNF is released? I'm personally looking for it to go the route of either "Prey" or "Daikatana"...
There's more to clinical immortality than the immune system. Telomeres (chains on the ends of strands of DNA) that break down a little with each copy are a much bigger hurdle on the road to immortality. There have been studies that claim that injecting fetal mice (?) with telomerase, an enzyme that builds up the telomeres, causes their telomeres to be extraordinarily long, allowing thier DNA, and therefore their cells, to reproduce many more times than is normal. This results in a not only a longer lifespan, but a longer time before the effects of aging become apparent.
Yes, I was comparing Apples and Oranges to get my point across. The key to my point is: once the government starts picking and choosing technologies based on past "crimes," it will eventually spill out into the market in general. Government contractors will stop buying the products because they won't be compatible with the government's internal solutions. The demand for workers skilled in using the products will drop. Consumers stop buying the products because they are lemmings, and they see that the gov't won't buy it, so they shouldn't either. Now you've decimated not only a company, but (in the M$ case) an entire workforce.
Having a few counties do this isn't going to hurt much... but this is dangerously close to "real bad news."
The problem is that (especially with government agencies) once things get rolling, they are hard to stop. Who in a government agency is going to stand up and say, "OK, enough time has passed, we can buy M$ stuff now?" What if, by the time someone does stand up and say something, the company has gone down the tubes? Maybe if "temporarily" was well-defined, I'd agree with you and go on my merry way... but it isn't.
Having this law in a few places won't hurt much, but, as I said before, if this becomes widespread, it will ignore the fact that reform IS possible.
The comments that say, "Hooray!" for the simple fact that it hurts M$ are ludicrous. I agree that M$ stuff is junk, but that doesn't mean that a company can't be reformed. Allowing laws like this to proliferate would basically mean "conviction of antitrust statutes causes your company to cease to exist." Companies can be reformed (as can laws), but some of the above comments are verging on lunacy. Should we pass a law that says, "If you are convicted of a felony, the minimun sentence is death by lethal injection?"
IANAL, but I thought there was a law saying that a company can't use a "trademark - 1" (meaning changing one letter or adding/removing one letter) name for a product. Anyone have any insight into this?
I agree, nVidia should make it clearer that this will help in the OpenGL 1.x to 2.0 transition easier. Perhaps they have interesting ideas that the ARB doesn't like, so they put them out anyway as Cg, to test the market's response. IMHO, Cg will make the world a better place, either by becoming a standard, or by forcing another standard to improve. nVidia has smart people, they make good hardware, and excellent drivers. They support (to a degree) Linux. I'm definitely biased toward them because of their products' performance, but I agree that open standards are better than closed ones.
OK, so 3DLabs is on the ball. But what ball is that? A ball of an as-of-yet "unapproved" specification (see an approved spec here?). How many hardware vendors are going to support OpenGL 2.0 with 110% effort when the spec is still being reviewed? Does that mean hardware vendors aren't allowed to try to gain market/mind share in the meantime?
I did note that Carmack hasn't seemed to say anything about Cg yet. As I'm sure most of us are, I am very interested in what he has to say. I suspect that he will be highly unimpressed.
That brings up an interesting question: is it better to wait for an Open implementation of something than use a Closed implementation of a similar thing that is available now?
Even if Cg fails, at least it exists *now* and helps developers *now*. How long do we have to wait for OpenGL 2.0? Does it make sense to struggle with multiple implementations of GPU hardware and their ASM's when 95-99% of the experience gained will be useless in 6 months anyway? Why not use the best tool for the task, instead of worrying about whether it is Open or not? If an Open standard of something like Cg (OpenGL 2.0) arrives, and is better, then the market will choose it, right? Just like the market chose to keep OpenGL around when DX hit the scene...
And if Cg supports those types of effects NOW, we can code for them NOW, and when the cards that CAN display them without bogging down the framerate, we can play the games with those effects immediately. We won't have to wait until OpenGL 1.4 with NVIDIA_COOL_FLAME_EFFECT_EXT to be widely available.
Vertex Shader ASM is hard(er than Cg)
Pixel Shader ASM is hard(er than Cg)
My understanding of Cg is that it'll be used as a shader replacement, NOT an OpenGL replacement. You'll still have to write tons and tons of OGL. Now you can just simplify the SHADER part.
I love comments like this one: "It's not OPEN, it must be a load of CRAP!!!" Raving lunacy, if you ask me (but then again, you didn't).
Aside from the fact that if it WAS open (Mesa's OpenGL 2.0 implementation?), we wouldn't have a stable, well-supported, ubiquitous, working product until 2010.
BTW, game companies need to make money. It's hard to make money selling support services for an open game. Just like its hard to make a quality game without funding of some sort. Just like its hard to live in America without a paying job.
"No matter how good the compiler is, it will never be as efficient as a person writing in solid OpenGL and DirectX."
I'd agree with you if GPUs weren't changing every 6 months. By the time you've tweaked your hand-made GPU ASM, another GPU is out and it with its Cg compiler will outperform your hand-written code!
"it seems that this new "language" is little more than some scripting."
Exactly what makes a language a "little more than some scripting"? This isn't a troll...
"why you think that NVidia made Cg instead of supporting OpenGL 2.0 on their hardware?"
Maybe because OpenGL 2.0 is vaporware? If it wasn't, Doom 3 would be using it:)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, my bad... I forgot that everyone except me can afford $10+ per GB for storage.
If we wanted space, we'd just get additional drives.
Again, an area where SCSI shines. It's tough to put 48 IDE drives in a PC-clone case!
And it is easier to put 48 SCSI drives into a PC-clone case? At least with IDE you can get > 100GB per drive, which in a drive bay-limited PC is nice to have.
Its unfortunate that the market (that's us) continues to support games that don't innovate. If you really want publishers to let developers spend time and money innovating, stop buying games that are "more of the same, but requires a GF(X)-level video card."
I'll certainly need clean clothes after sitting next to a 300 degree F radiator playing games for hours on end, drooling over my 200 fps.
I disagree. At that point, we'll be looking for polygons> per pixel and 2400x1800 resolution with internal 64 bit color calculations, 64 bit Z buffers, 100Hz, etc.
We will only be satisfied when we can jack our optic nerve directly into the video system.
Field of view changes very little with changes in resolution. Go ahead, try it.
FOV is based on the "camera angle" (which is probably hardcoded in NWN) and width/height ratio. In 800x600, you actually have a wider FOV than in 1280x1024.
What do you mean "will have"? I think "has already" is more appropriate! Will anyone actually care when/if DNF is released? I'm personally looking for it to go the route of either "Prey" or "Daikatana"...
That seems extremely foolish. Swapping frame buffers doesn't take long, and you end up with a GPU sitting idle the entire time. Why bother?
Attack of the Cloned Thymii?
There's more to clinical immortality than the immune system. Telomeres (chains on the ends of strands of DNA) that break down a little with each copy are a much bigger hurdle on the road to immortality. There have been studies that claim that injecting fetal mice (?) with telomerase, an enzyme that builds up the telomeres, causes their telomeres to be extraordinarily long, allowing thier DNA, and therefore their cells, to reproduce many more times than is normal. This results in a not only a longer lifespan, but a longer time before the effects of aging become apparent.
Yes, I was comparing Apples and Oranges to get my point across. The key to my point is: once the government starts picking and choosing technologies based on past "crimes," it will eventually spill out into the market in general. Government contractors will stop buying the products because they won't be compatible with the government's internal solutions. The demand for workers skilled in using the products will drop. Consumers stop buying the products because they are lemmings, and they see that the gov't won't buy it, so they shouldn't either. Now you've decimated not only a company, but (in the M$ case) an entire workforce.
Having a few counties do this isn't going to hurt much... but this is dangerously close to "real bad news."
The problem is that (especially with government agencies) once things get rolling, they are hard to stop. Who in a government agency is going to stand up and say, "OK, enough time has passed, we can buy M$ stuff now?" What if, by the time someone does stand up and say something, the company has gone down the tubes? Maybe if "temporarily" was well-defined, I'd agree with you and go on my merry way... but it isn't.
Having this law in a few places won't hurt much, but, as I said before, if this becomes widespread, it will ignore the fact that reform IS possible.
Do these copy protected CDs work on CDRW-capable non-PC players? If not, that's a potential point you can use against the bad guys.
"This device has no immediate usage as a pirating aid, yet I still can't listen to this piece of sh*t CD!!!"
The comments that say, "Hooray!" for the simple fact that it hurts M$ are ludicrous. I agree that M$ stuff is junk, but that doesn't mean that a company can't be reformed. Allowing laws like this to proliferate would basically mean "conviction of antitrust statutes causes your company to cease to exist." Companies can be reformed (as can laws), but some of the above comments are verging on lunacy. Should we pass a law that says, "If you are convicted of a felony, the minimun sentence is death by lethal injection?"
IANAL, but I thought there was a law saying that a company can't use a "trademark - 1" (meaning changing one letter or adding/removing one letter) name for a product. Anyone have any insight into this?
1) Stop doing stupid things that can cause you to get infected!
2) Trust no one!
3) Throw your computer out the window!
I agree, nVidia should make it clearer that this will help in the OpenGL 1.x to 2.0 transition easier. Perhaps they have interesting ideas that the ARB doesn't like, so they put them out anyway as Cg, to test the market's response. IMHO, Cg will make the world a better place, either by becoming a standard, or by forcing another standard to improve. nVidia has smart people, they make good hardware, and excellent drivers. They support (to a degree) Linux. I'm definitely biased toward them because of their products' performance, but I agree that open standards are better than closed ones.
OK, so 3DLabs is on the ball. But what ball is that? A ball of an as-of-yet "unapproved" specification (see an approved spec here?). How many hardware vendors are going to support OpenGL 2.0 with 110% effort when the spec is still being reviewed? Does that mean hardware vendors aren't allowed to try to gain market/mind share in the meantime?
I did note that Carmack hasn't seemed to say anything about Cg yet. As I'm sure most of us are, I am very interested in what he has to say. I suspect that he will be highly unimpressed.
That brings up an interesting question: is it better to wait for an Open implementation of something than use a Closed implementation of a similar thing that is available now?
Even if Cg fails, at least it exists *now* and helps developers *now*. How long do we have to wait for OpenGL 2.0? Does it make sense to struggle with multiple implementations of GPU hardware and their ASM's when 95-99% of the experience gained will be useless in 6 months anyway? Why not use the best tool for the task, instead of worrying about whether it is Open or not? If an Open standard of something like Cg (OpenGL 2.0) arrives, and is better, then the market will choose it, right? Just like the market chose to keep OpenGL around when DX hit the scene...
And if Cg supports those types of effects NOW, we can code for them NOW, and when the cards that CAN display them without bogging down the framerate, we can play the games with those effects immediately. We won't have to wait until OpenGL 1.4 with NVIDIA_COOL_FLAME_EFFECT_EXT to be widely available.
You missed the main point of Cg:
Vertex Shader ASM is hard(er than Cg)
Pixel Shader ASM is hard(er than Cg)
My understanding of Cg is that it'll be used as a shader replacement, NOT an OpenGL replacement. You'll still have to write tons and tons of OGL. Now you can just simplify the SHADER part.
I love comments like this one: "It's not OPEN, it must be a load of CRAP!!!" Raving lunacy, if you ask me (but then again, you didn't).
Aside from the fact that if it WAS open (Mesa's OpenGL 2.0 implementation?), we wouldn't have a stable, well-supported, ubiquitous, working product until 2010.
BTW, game companies need to make money. It's hard to make money selling support services for an open game. Just like its hard to make a quality game without funding of some sort. Just like its hard to live in America without a paying job.
One of the figures in a .pdf on nVidia's site says, "PS2" as well. I believe it was their Cg white paper here.
"No matter how good the compiler is, it will never be as efficient as a person writing in solid OpenGL and DirectX."
I'd agree with you if GPUs weren't changing every 6 months. By the time you've tweaked your hand-made GPU ASM, another GPU is out and it with its Cg compiler will outperform your hand-written code!
"it seems that this new "language" is little more than some scripting."
Exactly what makes a language a "little more than some scripting"? This isn't a troll...
"why you think that NVidia made Cg instead of supporting OpenGL 2.0 on their hardware?" Maybe because OpenGL 2.0 is vaporware? If it wasn't, Doom 3 would be using it :)