Right. So would it be fair for me to say you're not beating the hotties off with a stick?
No offense intended, I didn't mean that as an attack. Frankly, I'm not one to talk. My point is that we, as geeks/nerds think other people are stupid, yet other people think we are stupid.
I have a feeling that example isn't going to go over to well so I'll use another. There are peeps out there that would think *I* am stupid because I don't know how to change the oil in m car. I could retort that I think those people are stupid for not knowing how to write a useful Mel script. If I look extra not-cool right now, you're getting my point.
What did kill the DC was Sega needed to make 10 million more units and had no money to do it. Limited growth potential, limited developer support.
That and the fact that no money meant they couldn't afford to go to 3rd party game developers/publishers and buy "exclusivity" for top titles.
One other money related factor might have been not being able to discount the console at an amount comparable to the competition.
Of course, the fact that the PS2 also doubled as a DVD player, when such things were quite expensive, probably gave it a significant foothold. IIRC the quoted number of games sold with new PS2s at launch was significantly lower than that of DC so the DVD factor seems plausible.
When the PS2 was launched in Japan retailers were annoyed that people were buying PS2s with DVDs, bet game sales were less than 1 per console. Something like for every 4 PS2s there would be 3 games sold. The theory at the time was that the launch lineup sucked so lots of people were buying them as inexpensive DVD players that may one day play cool games down the road.
I also remember that same article talking about how it wasn't good news for Sony, either. They needed to sell 4 games per console to make up for the loss they were taking on each sale. Ouch.
Just wanted to say, I thought that was cool of you to reflect on your thoughts. Lots of people around here don't do that, and I think it was a classy thing to do.
I'm teeter-tottering with two different attitudes here. First is I get what you mean, there's definitely issues with getting the talent and so on. Second, and this is where I'm having a bit of conflict here, is that I think the easiest way to fail is to say "you can't". I remember George Lucas talking about how he was in film school shooting student work and several of his classmates sat there complaining about how they couldn't get film. What he was saying was it was better to 'do' and solve the challenges as you go.
I don't have all the answers for you. I know it's a pain in the rear to get people to help out. But I can help out with a couple of things.
Right now I'm paying like $7/mo for 100 gigs of storage with a terrabyte of transfer every month. (or maybe it's 100 gigs transfer, I don't remember.) That should be more than enough to store videos, especially if DivX were used.
If you want to entice animation talent, target those trying to break into the industry. Provide the footage and say "we need a skeleton of this animation. You can use this in your animation reel!" Whether or not that would work... I dunno. A few years ago I think it would have worked great. But there's been this mentality of "you gotta pay me to work!" without the realiziation "Work, even if it's unpaid, is still experience!" I'm frustrated with some of the noise about this lately.
As for how many animators around you, I don't think that matters. It can all be done remotely. In fact, there are plenty of forums out there where you could recruit.
As for the system, even if it supports multiple actors with little error (which I doubt on both counts), you still have to go through the expense of setting it up. I don't think you realize the undertaking that'd be. Even the dancers would have to be patient with you. (That is, of course, assuming the system this guy has devised would work well with the type of movements they'd be doing.) There's always some stupid problem that requires specialist skill to overcome.
Anyway, I'm not trying to deflate your hopes. I do think the video-to-animation approach would get you more mileage. You'd be eyeball-deep invested either way you went.
I was once taking a taxi home after a night out and the taxi driver offered me a couple of Dreamcast games on CDRs. Thats when I knew that piracy had killed the Dreamcast. Sourcing the games was admittedly not for the general public, but once they were on CDr it was relatively easy for any old taxi driver to work out how to use Diskjuggler to copy from drive E to F.
You're still talking about and era of where CD-burners were rare. It's easy to notice people doing it once you're attuned to it, it doesn't mean lots of people were.
Everybody I know that has a PSP has homebrew firmware on it and can play ISOs (CSO usually) on them. It's still a stretch for me to say that piracy is killing the PSP or even doing it measurable harm. Why? I know 3 people with a PSP. Actually I probably know more, but since they don't homebrew, we haven't talked about it.
All I'm saying is that it's easy to over-estimate.
You probably just bumped into a computer geek doing a tour as a taxi driver for a while. Heck, I knew a guy a few years ago that would have been capable of burning Dreamcast ISOs that was a taxi driver for a while when the economy turned south.
Nope, what killed the Dreamcast was the Sony media spin, which went into full swing Spring 1999, touting the next gen Playstation 2 to have "Toy Story" graphics.
They stole that from Nintendo's playbook; they're notorious for doing that every console generation.
Not the GameCube generation. Even after the PS2 hype was in full swing, Nintendo was noted for doing demos and throwing out numbers that were much more within the realm of reality. I distinctly remember reading in a magazine somewhere that Nintedo was saying the GC could handle something like 12 million polys a second while the PS2 was touting 66 million. It was the difference between "We were able to draw this x-thousand polygon racecar at y-thousand frames per second" and "we can draw a blank pixel on the screen 66 million times in a second."
Frankly I cannot recall Nintendo bragging about the graphic prowess of the GBA, DS, or the Wii. I think you're thinking of the Ultra 64. Maybe even the SuperNES. I dunno if I'd call that 'notorious', but I guess since it's easy to remember you may be right.
I point this out all the time to people who wonder why Sony goes to such great lengths to try and protect the PS3 and PSP from piracy. It doesn't matter if Sony officially supports home-brew or not, they need developers and developers want security for their applications.
Sony's trying to protect their revenue stream. A PSP running emulators means, potentially, no more UMD sales.
Piracy has never killed a system, not even the Dreamcast. They can start panicking when PC gaming dies.
There is a difference between 'possible' and 'stupidly easy'.
It was only stupidly easy if you had a CD burner, a broadband connection, and knew your way around IRC and warez sites... in 1999. You may have had several buddies doing it, but the masses weren't. Piracy did not kill the Dreamcast.
What did kill the DC was Sega needed to make 10 million more units and had no money to do it. Limited growth potential, limited developer support.
That iss a seriously tenuous line of thought you've followed there. It's almost like you started with a conclusion and then looked to retrofit a connection from A to B to justify it.
That's a seriously tenuous thread you've followed there. It's almost like you started with a conclusion and then looked to retrofit a connection from A to B to justify it.
Some would call that "bias"...
You're right. The people biased against Microsoft would call my comment biased.
I really don't understand why you're being so argumentative about it. If it's not appealling, fine, but no need to bunch your panties about it. You can either listen and have a direction to go or stand there with your arms crossed saying "nope nope nope I won't listen until you solve all my problems for me."
Anyway...
I meant exactly as it sounds. Record the 'movement artist' with a video camera. Have animators watch that footage and match it. The more cameras you use, the easier it gets to hand plot the motion. (Basically you're just having a human do what the computer does automatically.)
Is the artist going to be free? Depends. Animators trying to break into the industry need experience. Given them sample videos to match will help them learn the skills they need for the job. Pitch it the right way, you can probably get volunteers. Or, gasp, you pay them. Maybe pay a bounty for the motion. It's real simple. You don't need specs for hardware you're never going to build (which you'll have to pay money for, anyway) to get inexpensive/free motion.
Funny thing is, you're going to need help with the mocap data anyway. The rig has to be correct to work properly with the mesh. Data glitches will need to be fixed. The likelihood of the mocap character doing preciesly what you want him or her to do right out of the gate is laughably low. You need artistic talent no matter which way you slice it.
So you mean the problem is _less serious_ by the fact that it's been on _more_ Windows versions than stated? Maybe you mean that MS has said 'it's not a problem because this and that?'
Well, let's put it this way:
If you read just the headline, you'd assume "ah, well, I'm not using Windows 7, so I'm unaffected." In that case the bias against Windows 7 could potentially be more dangerous than if objectivity had reigned.
Hostile bias is bad. It doesn't matter how evil or deserving the company you're talking about is.
I think the point was that Sony corp. made an official public statement by about what they feel a stolen song is worth, and filed it in court. Even if the case verdict isn't a legal precedent, surely the researched market analysis filed in a foreign court can still be cited as a fair assessment that is endorsed by Sony. (Ok, IANAL, and the case in the U.S.A. was probably some legally-independent entity, completely separate from the Sony-owned company in this case, but it still has to count for something.)
On a side note, I think it's totally awesome that Sony has given us such a great example of what the difference is between infringement and theft.:D
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I may have been too quick on the draw to reply. I'm sitting here thinking he wants to take over Hollywood when maybe all he's after is an inexpensive personal one-on-one mocap system that small companies could use to capture one or two people. In that case, he can throw what I said above out the window.
With RF, you also eliminate issues with hiding the normal lights/reflectors with clothing/costumes, etc. As I understand at the moment, motion capture is done with an actor in a leotard to avoid these problems. With RF, you open up new possibilities of filming a real actor in real costume, and being able to motion detect them in real time.
Using RF for mo-cap is not a new idea. Generally speaking, previous forms of mocap that used RF (in a variety of ways) has had problems with reliability, working with multiple actors in a volume, interference, and an already very mature toolset for performing optical capture. With optical, trackers are dirt cheap and scaling up to support more actors is mainly a matter of more processing power and sometimes adding more cameras.
I hope for his sake that his capture system is thoroughly tested in real world situations (like the fifty or so stage crew all using walkie talkies and everybody having cell phones running) and accounted for all the variables. If he hasn't, he'll easily be looked over.
The one 'media' where creators cannot participate in open source is movement -- dance, martial art, acting, miming, etc -- because there's no cheap way to digitize their work.
It's called rotoscoping and all it costs is time. Plus, if you want to recruit people for it, let them know that the more motion they duplicate, the more practical animation experience they'll have.
Remember the 80's, when it was an Apple person throwing the hammer to destroy the IBM PC "big brother"? Does anyone else find it amusingly ironic that the most controlled platform in existence today is Apple's, and that the Apple fanboys who would have considered themselves to be that person throwing off the chains of PC control in the 80's are today touting the benefits of not having any control over the hardware and software you buy?
I'd probably be more amused if I interpreted that commercial the way you did. I didn't see "PCs are under Big Brother Control". I always saw it as "don't be a conformist!" Maybe that's because I saw that commercial before the prerequisite reading.
That said, the commercial's still amusing for similar reasons. "Stand out from the crowd, buy an iPhone!" Tee hee.
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To me, fashion=stupid.
Right. So would it be fair for me to say you're not beating the hotties off with a stick?
No offense intended, I didn't mean that as an attack. Frankly, I'm not one to talk. My point is that we, as geeks/nerds think other people are stupid, yet other people think we are stupid.
I have a feeling that example isn't going to go over to well so I'll use another. There are peeps out there that would think *I* am stupid because I don't know how to change the oil in m car. I could retort that I think those people are stupid for not knowing how to write a useful Mel script. If I look extra not-cool right now, you're getting my point.
Instead of putting all this effort into anti-phishing technology, we should make people less stupid.
You can make people less ignorant, but there is no way to make them less stupid.
You know, it's funny, chicks look at our fashion sense the same way we look at their understanding of the internet.
To be fair, do any phones offer anti-phishing on the device?
Do users of any other phone need it?
Oh, come on. Web browsing on other phones isn't that bad.
Piracy did not kill the Dreamcast.
What did kill the DC was Sega needed to make 10 million more units and had no money to do it. Limited growth potential, limited developer support.
That and the fact that no money meant they couldn't afford to go to 3rd party game developers/publishers and buy "exclusivity" for top titles.
One other money related factor might have been not being able to discount the console at an amount comparable to the competition.
Of course, the fact that the PS2 also doubled as a DVD player, when such things were quite expensive, probably gave it a significant foothold. IIRC the quoted number of games sold with new PS2s at launch was significantly lower than that of DC so the DVD factor seems plausible.
When the PS2 was launched in Japan retailers were annoyed that people were buying PS2s with DVDs, bet game sales were less than 1 per console. Something like for every 4 PS2s there would be 3 games sold. The theory at the time was that the launch lineup sucked so lots of people were buying them as inexpensive DVD players that may one day play cool games down the road.
I also remember that same article talking about how it wasn't good news for Sony, either. They needed to sell 4 games per console to make up for the loss they were taking on each sale. Ouch.
Just wanted to say, I thought that was cool of you to reflect on your thoughts. Lots of people around here don't do that, and I think it was a classy thing to do.
I'm teeter-tottering with two different attitudes here. First is I get what you mean, there's definitely issues with getting the talent and so on. Second, and this is where I'm having a bit of conflict here, is that I think the easiest way to fail is to say "you can't". I remember George Lucas talking about how he was in film school shooting student work and several of his classmates sat there complaining about how they couldn't get film. What he was saying was it was better to 'do' and solve the challenges as you go.
I don't have all the answers for you. I know it's a pain in the rear to get people to help out. But I can help out with a couple of things.
Right now I'm paying like $7/mo for 100 gigs of storage with a terrabyte of transfer every month. (or maybe it's 100 gigs transfer, I don't remember.) That should be more than enough to store videos, especially if DivX were used.
If you want to entice animation talent, target those trying to break into the industry. Provide the footage and say "we need a skeleton of this animation. You can use this in your animation reel!" Whether or not that would work... I dunno. A few years ago I think it would have worked great. But there's been this mentality of "you gotta pay me to work!" without the realiziation "Work, even if it's unpaid, is still experience!" I'm frustrated with some of the noise about this lately.
As for how many animators around you, I don't think that matters. It can all be done remotely. In fact, there are plenty of forums out there where you could recruit.
As for the system, even if it supports multiple actors with little error (which I doubt on both counts), you still have to go through the expense of setting it up. I don't think you realize the undertaking that'd be. Even the dancers would have to be patient with you. (That is, of course, assuming the system this guy has devised would work well with the type of movements they'd be doing.) There's always some stupid problem that requires specialist skill to overcome.
Anyway, I'm not trying to deflate your hopes. I do think the video-to-animation approach would get you more mileage. You'd be eyeball-deep invested either way you went.
I was once taking a taxi home after a night out and the taxi driver offered me a couple of Dreamcast games on CDRs. Thats when I knew that piracy had killed the Dreamcast. Sourcing the games was admittedly not for the general public, but once they were on CDr it was relatively easy for any old taxi driver to work out how to use Diskjuggler to copy from drive E to F.
You're still talking about and era of where CD-burners were rare. It's easy to notice people doing it once you're attuned to it, it doesn't mean lots of people were.
Everybody I know that has a PSP has homebrew firmware on it and can play ISOs (CSO usually) on them. It's still a stretch for me to say that piracy is killing the PSP or even doing it measurable harm. Why? I know 3 people with a PSP. Actually I probably know more, but since they don't homebrew, we haven't talked about it.
All I'm saying is that it's easy to over-estimate.
You probably just bumped into a computer geek doing a tour as a taxi driver for a while. Heck, I knew a guy a few years ago that would have been capable of burning Dreamcast ISOs that was a taxi driver for a while when the economy turned south.
Nope, what killed the Dreamcast was the Sony media spin, which went into full swing Spring 1999, touting the next gen Playstation 2 to have "Toy Story" graphics.
They stole that from Nintendo's playbook; they're notorious for doing that every console generation.
Not the GameCube generation. Even after the PS2 hype was in full swing, Nintendo was noted for doing demos and throwing out numbers that were much more within the realm of reality. I distinctly remember reading in a magazine somewhere that Nintedo was saying the GC could handle something like 12 million polys a second while the PS2 was touting 66 million. It was the difference between "We were able to draw this x-thousand polygon racecar at y-thousand frames per second" and "we can draw a blank pixel on the screen 66 million times in a second."
Frankly I cannot recall Nintendo bragging about the graphic prowess of the GBA, DS, or the Wii. I think you're thinking of the Ultra 64. Maybe even the SuperNES. I dunno if I'd call that 'notorious', but I guess since it's easy to remember you may be right.
I point this out all the time to people who wonder why Sony goes to such great lengths to try and protect the PS3 and PSP from piracy. It doesn't matter if Sony officially supports home-brew or not, they need developers and developers want security for their applications.
Sony's trying to protect their revenue stream. A PSP running emulators means, potentially, no more UMD sales.
Piracy has never killed a system, not even the Dreamcast. They can start panicking when PC gaming dies.
There is a difference between 'possible' and 'stupidly easy'.
It was only stupidly easy if you had a CD burner, a broadband connection, and knew your way around IRC and warez sites... in 1999. You may have had several buddies doing it, but the masses weren't. Piracy did not kill the Dreamcast.
What did kill the DC was Sega needed to make 10 million more units and had no money to do it. Limited growth potential, limited developer support.
Honest people would have seen the humor in what I said. ;)
Well, I suppose it would be funny if you get to make up your own meanings for words...
Hence how the cycle began. Glad we agree!
Are you an AI bot?
You use words without any apparent understanding of their meaning.
Honest people would have seen the humor in what I said. ;)
That iss a seriously tenuous line of thought you've followed there. It's almost like you started with a conclusion and then looked to retrofit a connection from A to B to justify it.
Some would call that "bias"...
That's a seriously tenuous thread you've followed there. It's almost like you started with a conclusion and then looked to retrofit a connection from A to B to justify it.
Some would call that "bias"...
You're right. The people biased against Microsoft would call my comment biased.
I really don't understand why you're being so argumentative about it. If it's not appealling, fine, but no need to bunch your panties about it. You can either listen and have a direction to go or stand there with your arms crossed saying "nope nope nope I won't listen until you solve all my problems for me."
Anyway...
I meant exactly as it sounds. Record the 'movement artist' with a video camera. Have animators watch that footage and match it. The more cameras you use, the easier it gets to hand plot the motion. (Basically you're just having a human do what the computer does automatically.)
Is the artist going to be free? Depends. Animators trying to break into the industry need experience. Given them sample videos to match will help them learn the skills they need for the job. Pitch it the right way, you can probably get volunteers. Or, gasp, you pay them. Maybe pay a bounty for the motion. It's real simple. You don't need specs for hardware you're never going to build (which you'll have to pay money for, anyway) to get inexpensive/free motion.
Funny thing is, you're going to need help with the mocap data anyway. The rig has to be correct to work properly with the mesh. Data glitches will need to be fixed. The likelihood of the mocap character doing preciesly what you want him or her to do right out of the gate is laughably low. You need artistic talent no matter which way you slice it.
"I think they fear waking up to the news that a wide-spread vulnerability affected n million iPhone users."
And an "interpreted language" is magically vulnerable to exploits while a hard-coded app isn't.... why, exactly?
Apple is in control of the hard-coded apps.
So you mean the problem is _less serious_ by the fact that it's been on _more_ Windows versions than stated? Maybe you mean that MS has said 'it's not a problem because this and that?'
Well, let's put it this way:
If you read just the headline, you'd assume "ah, well, I'm not using Windows 7, so I'm unaffected." In that case the bias against Windows 7 could potentially be more dangerous than if objectivity had reigned.
Hostile bias is bad. It doesn't matter how evil or deserving the company you're talking about is.
For technophiles, the iPhone is dead. The n900, with it's Debian-based-OS and open platform, is our new lord and savior.
http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/
Remember folks, it's okay to tout your fanboy product if popular opinion also likes it.
I think they fear waking up to the news that a wide-spread vulnerability affected n million iPhone users.
Among a certain crowd, that program passes the Turing test.
Now now, let's not ruffle Youtube's feathers.
I think the point was that Sony corp. made an official public statement by about what they feel a stolen song is worth, and filed it in court. Even if the case verdict isn't a legal precedent, surely the researched market analysis filed in a foreign court can still be cited as a fair assessment that is endorsed by Sony. (Ok, IANAL, and the case in the U.S.A. was probably some legally-independent entity, completely separate from the Sony-owned company in this case, but it still has to count for something.)
On a side note, I think it's totally awesome that Sony has given us such a great example of what the difference is between infringement and theft. :D
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I may have been too quick on the draw to reply. I'm sitting here thinking he wants to take over Hollywood when maybe all he's after is an inexpensive personal one-on-one mocap system that small companies could use to capture one or two people. In that case, he can throw what I said above out the window.
I apologize for my knee-jerk reaction.
Great idea.
With RF, you also eliminate issues with hiding the normal lights/reflectors with clothing/costumes, etc. As I understand at the moment, motion capture is done with an actor in a leotard to avoid these problems. With RF, you open up new possibilities of filming a real actor in real costume, and being able to motion detect them in real time.
Using RF for mo-cap is not a new idea. Generally speaking, previous forms of mocap that used RF (in a variety of ways) has had problems with reliability, working with multiple actors in a volume, interference, and an already very mature toolset for performing optical capture. With optical, trackers are dirt cheap and scaling up to support more actors is mainly a matter of more processing power and sometimes adding more cameras.
I hope for his sake that his capture system is thoroughly tested in real world situations (like the fifty or so stage crew all using walkie talkies and everybody having cell phones running) and accounted for all the variables. If he hasn't, he'll easily be looked over.
The one 'media' where creators cannot participate in open source is movement -- dance, martial art, acting, miming, etc -- because there's no cheap way to digitize their work.
It's called rotoscoping and all it costs is time. Plus, if you want to recruit people for it, let them know that the more motion they duplicate, the more practical animation experience they'll have.
Remember the 80's, when it was an Apple person throwing the hammer to destroy the IBM PC "big brother"? Does anyone else find it amusingly ironic that the most controlled platform in existence today is Apple's, and that the Apple fanboys who would have considered themselves to be that person throwing off the chains of PC control in the 80's are today touting the benefits of not having any control over the hardware and software you buy?
I'd probably be more amused if I interpreted that commercial the way you did. I didn't see "PCs are under Big Brother Control". I always saw it as "don't be a conformist!" Maybe that's because I saw that commercial before the prerequisite reading.
That said, the commercial's still amusing for similar reasons. "Stand out from the crowd, buy an iPhone!" Tee hee.
I misread your post and modded it 'overrated'. I read it again and realized I made a mistake. I apologize. I'm posting here to undo that moderation.