Natalled

Earlier this year both Microsoft and Sony presented what they called the “Future of gaming” class of controllers, but whats really going on here.
To answer that we have to look at their technologies and then derive intent from that.
It’s two seemingly very different control schemes, but are they, one uses a time-of-flight (TOF) camera to sense it’s surroundings and most notably the depth of it, the other one uses a high res camera to sense it’s surroundings that while it can’t measure depth it can track certain objects on the z axis reasonably well, however it is augmented by a glowing ping pong ball on a stick for “sub pixel 3d tracking”, it also has buttons which are useful at times.
Both systems also have an array of microphones which makes it easier to track and filter out voices. Read more »

Recent updates

Ok, a lot has happened recently, so let me update you on things and thoughts I had.
First, I finally got a real job, I am now a professional web programmer, not exactly my first choice but hey you can’t get it all, well at least it allows me to develop some ideas I have while I’m getting paid for doing things, and the upside is that it’s a pretty flexible job, being deadline based and all, I can take an extra long lunch if I need to as long as I get things done on time.
Fortunately I do a lot of back end work so deadlines and jobs are reasonably evenly spaced and phased, most of the time.

Anyway moving on to anime, my current anime viewing list is

Slayers revolution
Zero no tsukaima 3
Sekirei
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu
Mission-E
ToLoveRu – Trouble

See at least some of them or forfeit you license to be of the ruling class when I take over the world. Read more »

E3 08

It’s time for E3 in just a few short days, so let’s speculate on a few things that’s been rumored.

Sony (PS3, PSP)
Fisrt the SKUs, in order to break even or actually make money they have to change SKUs, there are two currently, the 40GB and the 80GB versions, booth of these will be replaced by the holiday season, the first one, the one to be announced at E3 will be a replacement for the cheaper 40GB variant, it will have an upgraded HDD, perhaps even more than 80GB, also it will be bundled with the DS3.

The 80GB one will come in October with a huge HDD and other stuff, seriously, they will need to add something else to the console for the higher cost to be worth it as this one will loose the PS2 BC chips (Seriously they are expensive to make), I am thinking integrated PlayTV and stuff like that, either way until that one comes

But until that one comes the ps3 will stay at the current price level, so they are not lying when they say that their not planning a price drop, we actually they are, they have price drops planned for the next few years planned, but certain insider trading rules say that they have to lie and deny until they do it, so I’m not surprised. Read more »

OpenGL whish list 3.0

It’s been a while, and no it’s not because of the computer, it’s because of time, time and lack of things to write about, though not this time, this is something I wanted to write all this year.
In the beginning I was just collecting my thoughts, though I really should have written it down somewhere, then as months progressed I had less and less time to think about this.
However a few things lately caught my eye that made me rethink.

1. A while back Nvidia acquired Aegia, the physics chips maker, at first I thought “great now they will add a physics sub processor to every graphics card”.
No, they added it trough cuda, and I didn’t get it since although the gpu can do it well, any use of the gpu limits your frame rate, and that is generally considered bad.
In essence computing more objects means you can render less objects. Read more »

Mythbusting the PS3

Today a want to rant a little(a lot) about the next gen(or should they now be called the current gen) console war and the whopping piles of stinking turds of bullshit surrounding them.
IT all started about 2 years ago at E3 where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo revealed their next gen consoles, and ever since that day where my whole class of game developers just stood there drooling i have kept a close eye on these systems, i have analyzed almost every aspect and a few that actually doesn’t exist yet.

So here is what i found out

Xbox 360
In terms of power and graphics capabilities the 360 is pretty decent i guess, but the rest of the base console is a bit underpowered and you need a bunch of add ons to get a reasonable level of functionality out of it.
Well one to each own, if you don’t need all that stuff then you don’t need to get it, which makes this console average in price,but i claim that you do and that makes it the most expensive one, the monthly subscription is probably the worst of all of this.
Well i guess i can’t really expect anything less from Microsoft.

Wii
I have to admit that it is a bit fun and i do admire what they where able to do with so little.
I actually played one just yesterday and it’s a neat little fun toy, but that’s about it, it is little more than a glorified high tech toy.
At least the other ones have other real uses like a media player or, well, stuff.
The thing is while the others have large untapped usages to be revealed in the future, the Wii is pretty much done and that is truly sad, cause it was fun while it lasted.

Play Station 3
It wouldn’t be a stretch to see why i chose this to be my next console, It’s not really because it’s powerful, because it is, it really does have a vast untapped resource developers are just now starting to get a grip on.
No it’s everything, it’s the cell, the blue ray drive, the wifi, the HDD, the (free) on line services, the link to the PSP, the backwards compatibility to the ps1 and 2, the sixaxis controller, the future proofing and the way Sony thinks.

Now what do i hear about the PS3, nothing but constant complaining about the mistakes Sony make with it, so let’s do some debunking.

Myth #1 :Lack of force feedback (vibration) in the controller makes it suck
Now if you call that force feedback then you need to get back on your medication, yes it’s nice to get a haptic clue about what is happening, but the vibration in the dualshock2 controller is way to crude to be of any real use.
With that said, i hope they do get some good force feedback in the PS4 controller and not just vibration.

Myth #2 :Lack of HD cables sucks too
This one is simple, HD cables are standard equipment you can get everywhere and not everybody have hdmi capable tv sets.
So why make it more expensive then it need to be, just get one if you need it when you buy the ps3 and your done.

Myth #3 :Sony underestimated the Wii
No i don’t think so, the Wii and the PS3 really don’t overlap significantly in any target group, they are two different machines produced by two different companies using two completely different philosophies.
They didn’t underestimate the Wii, they underestimated the publics overestimation of the Wii.
But most importantly they don’t care, and they know exactly why they don’t have to.

Myth #4 :No “must have” games at launch
Well sort of true, but then again did you all forget the xbox 360 launch, the only good game there was Project Gotham racing 3 and it was a bit average.
The truth is that no console gets any really good game at launch, no they don’t start appearing until about a year after the launch.
This is simply a direct function of time, not the platform or corporate structure, only time, so just wait till next Christmas and we will see who’s laughing now.
Now he PS3 actually had a pretty decent set of launch titles, mostly because of the delays, but that’s a different story.

Myth #5 :Blue-Ray
This complaint actually boggles my mind, i heard some people claim that only a handful of videophile elites actually needs Blue-ray and that the PS3 would be better without it.
Now this is wrong in so many ways, just ask the guys who made phantasmagoria or the early games that where made for the cd-rom format, they would tell you this, “if there is space, we can and must fill it”.
Already today some PS2 game use 2 or more DVD discs, it’s mostly video but let’s just presume they want to increase the quality of the video to maybe just 720P, now that would take a whole lot of space and pretty soon we are looking at multiple blue-ray discs.
Another thing the PS3 excel at that takes up lot’s of space is mega texturing, where single texture maps can take as much as 1GB or more for each level.
So you see there is lot’s of usage for it, but not perhaps right today, unless your a videophile that is.

Myth #6 :The 360 is more powerful than the PS3
Now this is like comparing apples with grapes, the PS3 is a radically different system than the 3 core PPC that lies within the 360, it uses 7 SPUs that while they don’t do some stuff as fast as one 360 ppc with normal software, two of them will outperform a 360 core hands down with pure fp-math, and to boot there are 7 of them + the main PPC core.
There are also some other differences, for one at 25Gb/s the memory bandwidth is more than the double to the cell than to the 360 cores, and where normal multi core processors have to share that bandwidth, the cell does not have to share, it can just pass around the data internally at 300Gb/s.
But when we are speaking about raw power it’s like this, the PS3 has about 2Tflop of processing power and the 360 about half of that.
What about the memory then, the 360 has access to more memory, well this is true and not true at the same time, both systems has the same amount of memory, but the PS3 has 256MB for the cpu and the same amount for the GPU, however when you look at it, the gpu and the cpus in the 360 has to share a band with of 22Gb/s while the ps3 has 20Gb/s for the gpu and 25Gb/s for the cpu.

Interesting numbers indeed and it’s all in how you use it, but it’s clear that the PS3 is more powerful, just wait for a well optimized version of the same game comes out on both platforms, like Oblivion, but better.

Myth #7 :The PS3 is the most expensive console
yes it’s expensive, up to $900 in Europe, but it’s not the most expensive one if you count all the stuff you actually need to get.
Now is it worth it, yes it is, it’s actually cheap considering what you get, now if they only sold a kit to convert it into a desktop and they would rule the world, o, wait, that’s right, it’s free for download.

Myth #8 :The European PS3 can’t play PS2 games
This used to be true since it does not have a PS2 chip in it, but ever since firmware 1.60 they have included an software emulator for the PS2 and judging from the advancements in firmware 1.70 they are pretty soon able to be equal if not better then a real PS2.
Well it would be nice to have forced hardware antialiasing at 1080p in GT4.

Well that’s all for now, now all i have to do is to go out there and get one, i will of cause take pictures of the ceremonial unpacking of this expensive (but l33t) tech product.

Vista not!

They have been asking for it for a long time, Microsoft that is, every bad decision, every bug and every stupidity that comes out from them is about to reach a terrifying apex with the release of Vista.
So let’s bash them a little.

Now many that has seen the latest vista screen shots and listened to their propaganda might say, what’s wrong with vista, it’s more secure, has better looking graphics and so on.
True, but here is a few reasons why it’s not good.

1. WGA, or windows genuine advantage was introduced a little while ago, and it was an incredible failure, not only did it fail to correctly identify pirated copies a bit now and then, it actually gave false positives about 40% of the time with genuine copies, not exactly the intended result.
What wga did was to disallow users to upgrade their “pirated” copies (save for the most critical of upgrades) leaving them open to an avalanche of viruses, Trojans, spyware and other similar stuff, this didn’t just hurt the illegitimate users but also the legitimate ones by providing a safe harbor for that stuff, this army of zombies hurts everybody, Microsoft included.

Windows Vista will use something that can only be described as wga2, now this is supposed to be even more powerful than wga in every way, making it unable to even install or use.
Now under normal circumstances this wouldn’t be much of an problem unless we include some other factors, like the price of Vista home and the fact that pirated versions of windows make up for something like 50% of their user base, bad indeed.

2. The new user interface is another concern, now it doesn’t matter how pretty aeroglass is, if it doesn’t preform well what good is it for, both the newest Linux and mac gui’s will run on even a 32mb card like some laptops still have (aeroglass needs at least 128 MB just to run), and they sure do look (or can look) equally as good, and on top of that they preform a lot better, though i have to admit that i like the windows XP gui better than the mac one and Linux has just to many gui’s to make a quick comparison.
Now Vistas gui is directly tied to DX10, this is bad, because we all now what DX is good for, that’s right, games and only games, i have yet to find a major application (besides games) that uses DX instead of openGL.

3. Speaking of DX10, it’s a mistake to make DX10 Vista only, it’s like Microsoft expects everybody to upgrade to vista at launch day, yea right as if i am going to buy a new multi core computer with a GF8800 in SLI mode and on top of that buy a os that costs almost as much as the computer, well the first part is sort of true, but then again, will i have the money to get Vistified, i think not.
So the early adopters will be few, in fact mostly businesses will get it in the start and gamers will be the last to follow.
So what does DX10 need to get popular, that’s right, games, but gamers won’t get vista for a while, but they will get the hardware, and the only other graphics API that support the SM4 hardware is openGL, well it will support SM4 when the hardware is released, but that is still way ahead of DX10.
So you got the situation that gamers have the hardware and the drivers that support SM4 in openGL at least, but they don’t have vista and DX10 that supports SM4, the New vista users will not have the hardware or the need to get the latest games, but they will have the software for it.
Hmmmm…… i wonder what API the game developers are going to be using from now on.

4. the price from $233 to $450, but then again the $233 Vista Home Basic version is nothing to bring home, you want to spend at least $300-350 on it.
It’s a bit over the top, hell you can get a new (cheap ass) computer or a nice graphics card for just one user license, and here they are expecting rapid adoption, rapid adoption of Linux that is, you know the free os that does the same things but only more and better, it’s only fault is that is is made for better (read: geekier) people.
Then theres the fact that among Microsoft’s user base about 50% are pirated versions, and there is a reason for that, it’s not that they don’t want to spend that money, it’s because that can’t.
My sister and her BF use two computers and a mac, both with xp on them, she is still a student on maternity leave so he provides for the family, so try and justify getting genuine licenses for those computers, try justifying them upgrading both computers and getting vista on them, no Microsoft’s greed does stand in the way of that.
So if you want the expensive and gargantuan bloatware, be my guest, just don’t blame me afterwards.

So Vista is a lost cause, but hey what’s that on the horizon, could it be the next development cycle for the os after vistas successor, hey look it is. And i am going to help them on the way with a few tips and a new business model.

1. scrap the old core, make a new one or use the Linux core, i don’t care, as long as it’s super secure, lightweight, versatile and open source.

2. call what you have “Windows ****** core”, and make it free and available for download

3. make a slim graphical shell around it with only the basics, if you want you can also make a shinier aeroglass like behemoth on top of that.
Though large parts of it should be open source so people can mod it

4. call what you have “Windows ****** base”, and make it free and available for download

5. add another layer of basic applications, like notepad, a media player, a browser and so on and call it “Windows ****** home light”, this should be sold at a price you would rather find in the value bin in a game store.

Continue adding layers like this, each one adding functionality and services like a word processor, anti virus protection, document management, media downloading services and so on, the idea is to make every version of windows genuine, not by forcing everyone to buy one, but making it free or at least super cheap to get.
I do think Microsoft can live on a service model instead of the failing monopoly they have today on the OS market.

R.I.P Sweden

This Sunday was a tragic day, the alliance – of four right wing parties – won the election, this is bad for everybody but them.
Why? you ask, well it’s simple, they have suggested a lot of drastic changes (over 200 of them) and most of those changes will be implemented by the end of the year.
And for you who don’t know what that means i have a motor cycle metaphor to go with that.
Imagine your on a really fast motor cycle going strait forward at OMG speeds.
Now imagine your suddenly turning 90 degreed to the right, without slowing down or leaning in the curve, that’s maximum hurtage folks, and it’s about to happen to Sweden.

On a positive side though
1. I will probably get a job more easily next year, and to continue on my world domination plan.
2. They only won by just less than 2% witch means that they only got 178 vs 171 seats in the parliament, so the left side can exploit the fact that the other side only need to have 4 absentees or 4 dissidents to win a vote, this actually happens often, in fact a minority can sometimes achieve good results against a “united” majority when it’s this close.

So what is going to happen then, in the future i mean.
And the short answer is, i don’t know.
And with “i don’t know” i mean i don’t know about the stuff that is not OMGWTFPOINES obvious, it is obvious that they don’t have a real plan for moving away from our oil addiction, they don’t have a plan for peak oil, and i don’t think they care either, seriously, Fredrik Rienfeldt – our next PM – said in an interview right after the election “if we don’t meet the economic goals we will not be reelected”, which is true but the correct answer would have been “We will work hard to not let that happen” same thing one might say, but it does tell a little about the intention, what Fredrik is saying is “i don’t care about the result, i just want to do my thing”.
Hmm… interesting, so he doesn’t care, and it is gunning for only one term two at best, well i can’t tell, can anyone really, let me just say that i don’t have any great “faith” in them.

But then again, to me faith is a bad word, and insult even or the eight sin if you lean that way.

Electomaina

September 17 is an important date, this day has more chance to cause more fatalities if all goes wrong than 9/11.
I am of cause talking about the Swedish parliamentary election, and this one is going to be as close as ever, there are more players, more crazy ideas, and a cabal of four of the largest parties that is overtly in it only because they feel that it is their turn to rule, well it’s not, i hope.

The reason is simple, they want to change a whole lot of things, like property tax, they want to remove it completely, now this is bad and will of cause benefit rich people mostly and it it a good tax to begin with, hey even the US has higher property tax than Sweden, and Swedish taxes are traditionally one of the highest in the world, we like it that way, it makes us better than you.

Now that’s not all, they have lot’s of bad suggestions, like reducing the unemployment insurance, hey it’s an insurance, people pay for it, so don’t touch it.
And among this they want to lower taxes to the left and right.

Now if you an American or just plainly stupid and think “what can be wrong with lowering taxes”, a lot, you see, the thing is the money you get form those taxes do pay for something and in that situation you have to do one of three things.

1.Make or increase other taxes
2.Cutbacks in various areas
3.Invade another country and steal their money

The normal way of solving this is a combination of 1 and 2, now this is bad, so very bad, and particularly when it’s a tax that provide the base income of the state, like income tax.
That’s a lot of money we are talking about, and i don’t think they are going to add new taxes so that only leaves cutbacks and invading a small country (Norway, you had 100 years of freedom, don’t expect 100 more), so what is going to be cut, daycare, health care, law enforcement, education, public services., all of the above.
Those taxes are there for a reason and if you want to change then, then do it slowly, really slowly, not all at once and not that much.

So who are those numbheads, you Americans will not believe this but these are our liberals, but our liberals are not the liberal left, no it’s the liberal right, it’s the same liberals, they stand for pretty much the same things, it’s just that American politicians are so far to the right that your left wing wackos are our right wing nutballs.
Our left wing think Lenin was a bit soft when it comes to market economy.

Sadly they all need to read Plan B, if they did, politics would change to the better.

Speaking of witch, i had an idea last night (while reading the above book) on how to rebuild large cities like New York in an more environmentally and humanly sound way.

So thanks for hearing me whine, see ya next time.

Lebanon under fire

You know, i just have to rant a little about the whole situation in Lebanon.
I don’t understand Israel, i don’t understand how they think, how they can ever justify, their actions and i can’t understand how they are able to stand on two feet – as that obviously takes more brainpower than they are currently displaying.

First, attacking Lebanon does not increase the security in the state of Israel.
In fact is does the exact opposite, this whole episode started when a group of misguided youngsters kidnapped a equally young and misguided Israeli soldier, this was not a particularly smart move.
Because of this Israel entered Gaza with tanks, bulldozers, gunships, jet fighters and other WTFPWN machines, this wasn’t either a smart move, that was an overreaction similar to killing a fly with a claymore mine.
Now everybody reacted to this, even the US though it was a little bit over the top, and Hizbollah started launching their rockets into Haifa.
Naturally Israel just had to overreact, this time they just had to bomb Lebanon.
But here is the thing, Lebanon is innocent, Hizbollah is actually a Syrian organization with suspected contacts to it’s government, how else would they get the thousands of rockets they constantly fire into Israel, i used to be in the artillery and that is not some kind if IED it’s military ordinance, the Germans used something like this in WW2.

Speaking of witch, why is it that for every day that passes Israel looks more and more like the Germans did during WW2.
And Israel if any should have leaned that particular lesson.

So, now that Israel are committing war crimes every day by targeting civilians and protected buildings, like the airport, they almost hit a jet plane full of tourists – and the irony is that if they would have hit that plane and it would have been full of American tourists this whole thing would have ended within 24 hours – Targeting a Civilian airport of an innocent country is nothing else than a war crime, it’s not even in the gray zone and you cant claim that your just defending yourself – from what, the dreaded Boeing 767 tactical recreational reconnaissance personnel carrier – Now targeting the UN compound is also not good.

Israel claimed that it was an accident, but you don’t bomb an compound for hours with laser guided bombs and your commanding officer knows that the target in question is of limits by accident.
We will just have to wait and see how it plays out, but if the army asks me to go to protect Lebanon, i wouldn’t refuse.

And now for something completely different.
My sister finally revealed the name of her kid this weekend, it’s “Evan” witch means “young warrior”, it’s really fitting if you have seen him in action, he already knows charge, rend and next week he will learn hamstring. Couldn’t resist the WoW joke there.

Realtimeish graphics stuff

It has been a slow news month, although E3 sure did impress i thought i write a little about what i have been going for the last month or so.

You see a while ago gamedev.net aquired the rights to Neon Helium productions or NeHe for short.
And with that came the promise to revamp the website and lessons, this is now being done with the help of a handful of community regulars, and this includes me.
Currently we haven’t gotten that far as we are currently discussing things like writing standards and functional specifications of the base code to lesson 1, and on top of that our dev wiki apparently died a day ago, but i hope that soon we will start to get things together an actually produce something.

Now the new lessons won’t be like the previous ones (well ok, some will) but i think that they will rather follow the current developments in real time computer graphics, for instance vertex buffer objects are now on lesson45, this was fine like 5 years ago, but today most if not all software use vertex arrays and vertex buffer objects, so one person suggested that vertex arrays would be moved up to like lesson5 and VBO’s shortly thereafter, i agree on this.

Another thing to consider is the span of hardware people use, on the Nehe forums i have seen everything from the latest of the latest of the most powerful and hardware that was hardly top of the line during the voodoo days (as in 3DFX voodoo, not the religion, but it may as well be that since to run modern stuff on that stuff you will need some real magic).
Now this span is troublesome to game programmers and artists out there since you always want to use thee best of the best and still have as many players as possible, one great indicator of this is World of Warcraft, for all it’s greatness it is still the definition of low poly modeling, they could have done it better.
Instead game developers are now trying to add as many add on effects for people with the graphics power to turn on.
The new lessons will also reflect this need of graphics throttling, i am pretty sure that supersampling, true motion blur and FSAA tuts are needed, but we also need to make sure that whatever can adjust the quality/speed ratio should.
Along this the new lessons should teach the proper way to do things according to the strengths and weaknesses of modern graphics accelerators.

To tell you the truth, i am a bit exited about this, NeHe is a pretty popular place and whatever we produce it will have an impact on a lot of new openGL based software, in fact it will have a slight effect on how real time graphics are developing, this has an undeniably great coolness factor to it.
It would be cool if ATI and NVIDIA started to request custom lessons from us, or if the ARB asked us to write a new extension or two.

And on an related issue, tutorial 03 (HDR) is in the works, but don’t hold your breath just yet, i need to build and texture some custom geometry first to really show the power of normal mapping, tut 02 a-c will also get updated geometry, textures and normal map as soon as i complete the high def base mesh of around 10 million polygons.