Comment Re:It is great news!! I am not joking! (Score 1) 117
I agree. Given the problems in the Panama Canal, an ice-free Arctic Ocean would be a HUGE boon to shipping across the top of the world.
I agree. Given the problems in the Panama Canal, an ice-free Arctic Ocean would be a HUGE boon to shipping across the top of the world.
Has always been natural to me.
My mind adapts to visual stimuli very easily since a very young age in the 80s, I always had an insanely vivid imagination.
When I learned to draw (went to Animation School) and first learned how to draw 3D by hand, it came very naturally to me.
Then I quickly went to using 3Dmax (also known as 3D studio max later)
And my mind quickly adapted that way of visualising things, I often had fun with my internal visualisation powers, and powerful it is.
You may not believe this (I've totally given up telling my friends how I see the world by now, no one even grasp it)
But hear me out - I can do anything with everything around me.
Inside my mind I can quickly visualize an entire city, the entire store, properties around me and the people I see around me in an instant.
I can create scenarios (and it's a ton of fun) where I can add physicial events to just about anything, imagine a water pipe that burst out of a man hole
or rips up the streets, cars being tossed over, every single detail will be there (probably not entirely physically correct) but it sure looks like it.
I can literally re-arrange the furniture inside a huge home in an instant inside of my mind, I can break things into particles, parts, and arrange them together
any way I want inside my mind, it's almost like a superpower. I can simulate a building flooding, the grocerices on the shelves will fly across with the water, crash into things, things get wet, rips appart according to material qualities, and it's absolutely spectaccular.
No idea what to do with that kind of visualization powers. But I've always been capable of doing this, pretty much anything I can think of.
...Because I have a Meta Quest 3, and it doesn't like bad words.
For example I have a very bad word as a part of my Router password.
If I use any other router password I will be allowed to submit that in the Meta Quest 3 browser.
But it won't let me submit in the "field form" for Password with that bad word in it.
But it works on the PC with that word.
Yeah, as if they're going to be "that open". Nope and nope!
Added a "User Space" slashbox to my side bar with the code for My Messages
Given the banking industry's history of racial bias, I sure hope somebody's looking out for the 3/4ths folks. Depending on what they're ingesting for source material into the large language model, redlining could come back by accident fairly easily.
Quite literally!
Kids should not learn to code?
As if A.I. is perfect or ever would be.
In fact - more than EVER should kids absolutely learn how to code.
We're in deep trouble with Generation Alpha, they've grown up with a smartphone thumb muscle memory, they don't know anything else than being a consumer of content and products.
They should get creative and have fun coding, and if they don't - we'll have a serious lack of skilled minds to see what really goes on behind the mystery world of programs, apps and software. We need those eyes to become super skilled at finding flaws the powers that be will not want us to find.
We need the future to have ethical hackers, people who are interested in what is going on under the hood, if we don't have those with the basic skills - we're doomed, for real.
For the same interest an automechanic was interested in cars as a kid, and wanted to know what makes it run - for the same reason kids needs to be curious by themselves to find out, why - why is this doing that, and even more important - how can I take BACK control of it?
Oh yessir, we need kids to become coders!
The sub-orbital "Who'll get hit".
The chances are 1 in a billion, they say - will you be the "lucky" winner to have space debree hit you during your sunday morning walk?
They see themselves as the agent of God's wrath. Which is a good thing, because the one thing you can count on theocracies to do is tell you the rules ahead of time (unlike atheist regimes, that change the rules from day to day and then put you in a work gulag for not knowing the rules).
I think weight, in this case, refers to number of stored and fully vectorized tokens.
Just look at youtube the last few weeks, every single youtube video is a repeat of itself, same experience, same amazement over some tech demos.
Fun until it just ain't and reality sets in, there just isn't enough stuff to use it, or even have fun with it. Sure, I can buy the "cinema" experience, it's gotta be grand for that, but it cost over 3 grand and that only makes it an expensive showoff piece, which is good enough for some, but not for most.
Take the nearest competitor which ofc. is the Quest series. Sure, no one is playing in the Metaverse, but that's not even it, it got SteamVR, it's got Bigscreen for movie experiences, and the resolution is good enough for the same entertainment value the 7 x pricier competition have with much less FOV and smaller lenses.
Just to make things worse, it's front heavy WITHOUT a battery in it, and you're tethered to a battery to boot, with a cable strap down your body, not most peoples idea of fun, its cumbersome, it will always remind you that you're not in a different place, much like the first generation of HTC Vive did with is clunky headset and cables you needed to untwirl every 5 minutes.
And despite it's relatively heavy processing power, it's nowhere near powerful enough to handle VR with that insane resolution, this was the problem that the Pimax series with 8K resolution suffered, there's STILL not enough computer power in a Desktop to handle that kind of resolution, the way Apple solves it is by blurring the things you don't look at, hence lowering the resolution and polygonal details.
And the last but most important thing, Quest has built up an entire ecosystem around their platform, and they're open to other players such as Microsoft and Steam VR, with Xbox support, All the thousands of VR games from Steam VR and Meta-store together is enough to make it a viable entertaining long-term platform.
Apples closed ecosystem and draconian demands from their developers and "partners" - not so much. It was doomed to be a showpiece where Apple "went there" tried that, and kinda wonders where it will go, but still - closed and restricted.
They would have had a winning chance if they opened up to the entire world, and included a few controllers to open up to Games, but Games isn't Apples thing, theyr'e so "oooh serious", and that's fine, it's a niché to be "serious only", it will sell - but the Vision Pro won't because it's embarking on an area that ALREADY is very niché, and took over 8 years to build up from scratch. And you don't built that up by starting off "closed" to the rest of the world.
He's literally the competition, and he saw his move to advertise for his product.
Not for me to say if this will age like milk or wine, but I have the Quest 3 and there's a couple of things you might want to know before you decide to jump in.
I've had the HTC vive since it was released in 2016.
Ok, it's amazing the first month you try it, it really is. Nothing prepares you for a good VR experience (Galagy Gear VR is NOT a good VR experience).
Badly adjusted Lighthouses with Htc VIVE is NOT a good VR experience. Early VR with Cameras for tracking is NOT a good vr experiece.
1) You need ROCK solid tracking to experience really good immersion and to actually "fool" your brain into believing its somewhere else, doesn't matter if it's simple graphics or ultra-realism. One glitch, and it kills the experience for most. Tracking has come a LONG way since 2016.
2) You either love it or hate it. There are a percentage of people that don't really feel the VR effect, to them it might as well be a cardboard switch VR or a phone with a couple of fresnel lenses in it, deliver a real VR headset to them, they go Meh... I don't see the difference. But for the vast majority that experience VR for the first time with proper tracking, zero frame-losses, high frame rates, it's actually kinda mind-blowing.
3) VR isn't really good for work applications, unless you need to see stuff in real-life size, let's say architectural visualization or surgery practice (you still need haptic feedback). It's hard on your face (pressure against your chin), messes up your hair so you really need to take another shower to shape your hair back to position again, it really irks a lot of people (including me). Watching movies in VR can be good as a "cinematic" experience, but the resolution must be really good in order to feel the difference between a good huge TV or a VR headset, if it's low resolution, it will just be annoying to you and you won't see the point.
4) VR IS good for gaming, but there are VERY FEW real good AAA games, Alyx is the PCVR no#1 game, and with a good setup - it's absolutely spectaccular in every way. Asgards Wrath and Red Matter 2 (on the Quest 3), is a really good time in VR and shows it's potential, and you will be entertained for a few 100 hours for sure, after that - your VR will gather dust for a few months or years till the next AAA+ release, and it's long and far between, the rest is 2000+ one-man-studio apps money grabs that you'll play for 30 minutes and go MEH after a while.
5) It does give you a good Workout (play beatsaber or sports workout games, you'll be losing weight in no time), but the novelty will wear out after a while, kinda like going to the gym 3 weeks with that 1 year gym membership you got and regret later.
6) VR headsets are still super annoying to wear, yes you can get Bobo-VR balancing headstraps, and good facemasks + extended battery strap ons, but it's mostly for hardcore VR fans, not the general public who won't be playing it for years. You'll usually think twice before you go "oh I wanna play VR today", you will remember those cool first moments and go oooh this is really cool, but then after a while you'll find yourself glued to your usual screen again, more comfy, more freedom, more social etc. It's just not
7) VR must be entirely wireless to be enjoyable, it really must! I remember the early days of HTC Vive, yes, games were amazing, few, but amazing, but you will not be bothered to play again because you've got a heavy cable down your neck, you'll have to take off the headset and "untwirl" your cable mess each 5 minutes, and the setup becomes a drag.
Quest 2 and 3 kinda fixed that issue, but the Quest 2 has the same ugly fresnel lenses, cheap sure...but not good enough for crystal clarity, Quest 3 has bigger pancake lenses (crystal clear ones), Apples vision pro has half the size (small oled screens so it can't have bigger FOV or lenses) which gives you the tunnel-vision of the HTC Vive, albeit with quite amazing resolution, but what for? Watching movies? You'll tire of that boulder on your face after 14 days.
Here's what you need to get a mind-blowing experience that will keep you going back for more:
- You need SUPERFAST WiFi, and super reliable as well, this will set you back at least 500 bucks extra for proper gear to get that. You'll most likely need a low latency gaming router, and a new Wifi card too, then Alyx + NMS etc. will look very good and be really playable. It will make you want to go back to VR a few months here and there, because it's now actually good, but you need a good graphics card + a strong computer to get High-Res PCVR gaming, but it is good, expensive a.f. but good.
Conclusion (according to me who had had most of the VR stuff over time):
It's def. not for everyone. It won't beat the smartphone as your must-have gadget anytime soon. The expenses of getting a good VR experience is high, you need a good Wifi Connection, a good Internet connection, your entry level Quest 3 will be fine for that, if you want spectaccular VR - add a 5000$ PC setup to that, and you'll see the future of gaming.
Future workplace? Not so much. They are still really bulky and annoying to wear. Quality VR content is still to little, you get Youtube VR, within 1 week you've seen all the Low-res 180Vr + 360Vr stuff in existence, it's just too little, too few people have high-quality VR cameras, so everything looks blurry and low-res except 2-3 tech demos made with super-insane-expensive VR cameras + heavy editing.
Wacthing movies is WAY more fun and comfortable on a really good Television or projector.
A little more than 2 cents from me, I personally enjoy the Quest 3, for me it's worth it, but I don't expect to use it every day, it's just not there yet for that. It's fun for sure, even more fun to show first-timers as a "talking point" when people visit, for that alone the 500$ is totally worth it, but remember - it's not be-all-change-all yet, it's just not there yet.
The Nubians, who were pushed upstream. But not before the new Egyptians learned how to build pyramids from them.
God is Gravity! And what better preschool example of gravity do we have, than how liquid flows downhill!
It's a well established human tradition.
9000 years ago as the Sahara dried up, all the humans moved to the Nile Valley.
"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"