.jpg.ce846aae50e732dc4985eb712252381f.jpg)
angshuman
-
Posts
655 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by angshuman
-
-
Best damn mouse ever made.
-
Holy sh** this looks incredible...
-
IIRC the primary PS3 Dashboard's kernel is also Linux-based (although I don't understand how they can get away with not distributing the source code). YDL is a full-featured Linux distribution that you can install and dual-boot into.
-
Okay, that is a definite plus. If we could put Linux on the PS3 is there other OSes that could be installed or is Linux based material is it?
I believe Yellow Dog Linux (the "official" PS3 Linux distro) co-exists peacefully with the PS3 primary dashboard OS, and you can choose to boot either of the OS's during startup.
-
Well, I wouldn't write them off completely; Intel have just completely restructured now to a much smaller research footprint, so their lead in Research Power will be significantly reduced in the future.
Sources?
-
Application development is very convenient on a GNU/Linux platform (completely my biased opinion, of course). For people that want to write, distribute and share homebrew apps such as games, media frontends and encoders/decoders, a familiar and powerful platform is a huge deal.
-
Hyperthreading 101
When a program is executing on a processor, several of the processor's resources remain under-utilized. This is caused due to branch misprediction bubbles, long-latency memory accesses, as well as insufficient inherent instruction-level parallelism in the program to saturate the processor's functional units. Designers typically place more compute resources on a processor than the expected average-case application demand, in order to better handle peaky behavior. This leads to underutilization during most periods of time.
To improve utilization, Simultaneous Multithreading (which Intel calls Hyperthreading) attempts to inject two program streams into the same processor. The architecture is designed such that the Operating System thinks there are two physical processors on the system, but in reality the processor is mixing-and-matching instructions from the two programs in an attempt to maximize its internal resource utilization.
What does this buy us? Throughput. Consider the following crude example: Let us say that the processor has 100 units of a particular resource. Consider two programs that both require, say, 80 resource units throughout their execution. If the entire processor is devoted to a single application (i.e., HT is off), then let us say that each program requires 10 seconds to complete. If we wish to run both programs to completion, then we will use up 20 seconds in all. Now, switch on HT. Assume that resource distribution is even, and each program now gets 50 resource units. This means the execution time of each program will increase to (80 / 50) * 10 = 16 seconds, but they will both finish at the same time. Thus, although each application takes longer to execute (16s vs. 10s), the total execution time of the two apps has reduced (16s vs. 20s).
Of course, in reality, things are a whole lot more complicated due to implementation overheads, unpredictable program behavior, etc. Surprisingly, HT does seem to work well on a lot of workloads (esp. if you have multiple processor-intensive applications running simultaneously) . However, most desktop systems usually have a single compute-intensive thread (a game, media decoder, etc.) and multiple OS threads that are mostly I/O bound, so the utility of SMT on such systems is questionable.
-
... SyncMaster 913TM (which sucks, don't buy it, colours are bleak and ugly and I can never get black to actually look like black.. only some crappy gray ...
Ha! Ha! What did I tell ya about TN panels?
... a SyncMaster 193P+ which is the best of the bunch and still it isn't close to my CRT at home when it comes to colours, contrast and picture smoothness.That would be a PVA panel IIRC. And yeah, TN, PVA, S-PVA or TW-S-IPS, nothing can beat a CRT.
Maybe I just don't like TFT's?I hear you, man. Sadly, I feel the sheer practicality of flat panels in terms of footprint provides such an overwhelming advantage that the loss in image quality is worth it.
-
I was wondering the same thing. Blu-Ray is cool if you're a huge movie fan and own an HDTV and want the best picture and sound you can get from your movies, but even as a huge movie fan I was never going to go out and replace my whole collection. Just the ones I feel deserve the HD treatment.
Check out this cool comparison between DVD and HD:
http://www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/index.html
I especially like the "Shot 4" (where the hobbits are huddled under a tree). There really is quite a difference.
There's no denying the fact that the massive resolutions supported by both HD formats provides an immense increase in image quality. I still feel that most home users do not tap into the full potential image quality that can be extracted even from modest DVD resolutions. For those not yet ready to make the switch to HD, here are some pictures showing exactly what is achievable using a HTPC and some excellent freeware. I might have posted these links sometime in the past, so please forgive me if you've seen these before. Oh, and of course, the difference here is nowhere near as dramatic as mkreku's HD shots (you can't magically generate data where there isn't any), but it's significant enough to make most people throw their DVD players out the window and invest in a HTPC.
http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17427
http://www.htpcnews.com/index.php?option=c...d=132&Itemid=54
-
Yes.
No.
-
Let's use AVC (high compressibility) and MPEG2 (low compressibility) as an example. I assume you are suggesting the following chain?
Raw video ---> AVC-encoded data ---> MPEG2-encoded data ---> Decoded video
We'll throw practical implementation issues out of the window for a while. Even conceptually, there's no way an MPEG2 encoding process can understand the data structures in an AVC-encoded data stream, or appreciate the algorithms that were used to construct the data. If it did, it MPEG2 would be able to provide compressibility as good as AVC! Therefore, the only way to convert an AVC-encoded data stream to an MPEG2 data stream would be to first re-construct the video stream via an AVC decoder, and then re-encode it using MPEG2, like so:
Raw video ---> AVC-encoded data ---> Decoded video ---> MPEG2-encoded data ---> Decoded video
The problem with this is that the moment you use a lossy compression algorithm such as AVC, you destroy some amount of data in your video stream, no matter how good the algorithm is. So it's always better to encode directly from the "rawest" possible source you have into your target format. Of course, as I mentioned, you can use a variety of filters to enhance and remove artifacts from your raw video stream before compression.
Raw video ---> (filters) ---> Filtered video ---> MPEG2-encoded data ---> Decoded video
I suppose (as you suggested in your question) you could look at an AVC encode-decode sequence as such a "filter". This is especially true since a lot of these filters perform some form of noise-removal, and co-incidentally, noise/grain-removal is a (sometimes undesirable) side-effect of AVC compression. In practice it is much better (and orders of magnitude faster) to use purpose-built filters for this.
-
I've combined movies with that before, but they always turn out lower quality or super large filesize.
If possible, use a better MPEG-4 based codec (H.264, WMV9 or XviD). Doom9 has plenty of guides on how to do this using fully open-source tools. Once you try x264 (or even XviD), you won't ever want to use any other codec again. Unfortunately, if you want to maintain compatibility with a standard DVD player, you'll *have* to use MPEG2, which really sucks. Yet, even if you have to use MPEG2, AviSynth has a bunch of filters that can be used to significantly boost your image quality and increase the compressibility of the video stream before sending it to the encoder.
-
.. some other huge title I've forgotten right now.
-
So much for standardized hardware.
I know developers were already disappointed with the fact that some had hard drives and some didn't.
I'm not thrilled about this new trend either. At the same time, the changes announced aren't all that significant. 90 -> 65 would imply lesser heat issues but shouldn't have any impact on gameplay, and a larger HDD shouldn't affect most games. The 1080/HDMI thing is probably a lot more significant for some people. Personally, I'm happy with 720p since most large-screen 1080p display devices are beyond my reach anyway. <_<
I hope this results in v1 prices falling dramatically. :joy:
-
Ugly.
But then, it's a Supra. :joy:
-
I thought the original question was more about Twitch vs. Stats than camera views?
I have mixed feelings about twitch. IMO in most action games twitch is not implemented well. They all make me feel I am getting too old for reflex-action stuff (and I've always had poor reflexes to begin with). On the other hand, Ninja Gaiden made me fall in love with twitch action all over again. As an action/adventure game, it was perfect. The game did have some minor role-playing elements (weapon upgrades, semblance of a story), but I would have loved a proper RPG with NG-style action (JE made a genuine attempt but fell short).
IMO neither combat style nor camera angles have anything to do with RP'ing. If the player's intelligence and strategic abilities are allowed to affect how the character behaves in the gameworld, why shouldn't the player's reflex abilities also be allowed to have an effect on the character?
-
Pssst. Let's get the Bok.
That's easy. Just get an 8800GTX, attach a new label saying "OMG teh new GeForce 9900GTXXX LOL" and throw it into a well. The Bok can't swim.
-
I came third. :'(
Sucks to be Deraldin though.
-
Am I seeing a Depth Of Field effect here?
-
i think backwards compatability is one of the most important things a system has, actually. what's the point of having three system around one when can play all the games? also, there are some old games that never lose their charm, and i wouldn't want to hook up one system for one game and then another for a different game.
It depends on how often people on the whole keep wanting to play their old games.
Not necessarily. One of the reasons I personally would like to buy a PS3 is because there are a lot of PS2 games (JRPGs mostly) that I've never played and would now like to try out. But I guess there aren't many people like me; most PS3 buyers would probably be PS2 owners already.
-
Huh?!?? Gamespot's just naming the nominees at this point. The winner will be chosen at the end of the year.
Your forgot to click on the gigantic yellow envelope right at the bottom.
:">
Indeed.
-
Huh?!?? Gamespot's just naming the nominees at this point. The winner will be chosen at the end of the year.
-
Surely thou dost me thine Holy Google Mail!
Sorry, I don't understand archaic English that well
.But I can try! Translated word-for-word into modern-day English, your sentence reads:
Surely you do me your Holy Google Mail!Do you want a Gmail invite?
-
Actually I don't see the reason for not using an e-mail client.
One of the key reasons is what Tarna mentioned... the address book. Also, most web-based email services have internal virus scanners.
.
Are you going to get Vista?
in Skeeter's Junkyard
Posted
I'm boycotting Vista. DRM, HDCP, spyware and bloatware all rolled into one beautiful package? No thanks. I think I can survive without playing DX10 games. In fact, the forced-obsolescence that MS is pushing via DX10 is part of why I hate Vista. I might pick up an X360 though. Microsoft is free to put in all the crap they want to into their closed box, I don't care a damn. But there's no way in hell I'm letting that piece of Malware get within miles of my PC. In fact, as more and more games switch to DX10, the utility of WinXP on my machine will also be reduced to nil, so I can finally realize my dream of having a 100% clean Linux-based desktop system.