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Comment Re:Win7 == VistaSE (haiku) (Score 2, Interesting) 672

by Esterhaus_48 (#26390789) Attached to: Ballmer Sets Loose Windows 7 Public Beta At CES
An echo chamber, to be sure. But what of competition?

In a world where all the applications worked seemlessly across operating systems (something similar to that of the PC hardware side), then competition would take hold and customers would get more choice.

How about if the DoJ breaks up Microsoft into 3 companies? One of them continues to support and update Windows XP. The others do likewise, except with Windows Vista and Windows Seven. They all compete to offer the best features, performance, and value to customers while maintaining application interoperability.

I think that would be interesting to see which survive, and which thrive.

And if we extended this to *nix, Mac, et al? More competition, more choices. A better tomorrow?
Hardware

The Best Gaming PC Money Can Buy 360

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-we-post-this-every-few-months dept.
SlappingOysters writes "Gameplayer has gone live with their best PC hardware configurations for Q1 2009. They've broken it into three tiers depending on the investor's budget. And while the prices are regional, it is comparative across the globe. The site has also detailed the 10 Hottest PC Games of 2009 to unveil the software on the horizon which may seduce gamers into an upgrade."
Science

Blind Man Navigates Obstacle Maze Unaided 191

Posted by samzenpus from the matthew-murdock dept.
iammani writes "The NYTimes runs a story about a blind man (blind because of a damaged visual cortex) successfully navigating an obstacle maze, unaided. Scientists have shown for the first time that it is possible for people who are blinded because of damage to the visual (striate) cortex can navigate by 'blindsight,' through which they can detect things in their vicinity without being aware of seeing them."

Comment Re:The obvious answer (Score 1) 179

by Esterhaus_48 (#15144146) Attached to: Oblivion's Missing Physics Acceleration
I absolutely agree with the above post. If developers were to dramatically ratchet up the phsyics complexity in modern game titles, the disruption would be felt in all areas of gameplay.
One thing that I know the average gamers grasp are bottlenecks, so I'll put things in those terms. Consider your favorite title, whatever that be. Now think of what efforts the developers put into balancing performance with image quality and, by association, realism. For many of the titles out there that you may consider your favorite, I'd hazard a guess that most are bottlenecked by the graphics card.
So, let's rebalance the equation just a bit by adding more objects to interact with. No longer can we get by with large polys that are parallax mapped to better approximate more complex geometries, because our collision detection and object deformation algorithms depend on higher raw geometry complexity. By raising the bar on the physics complexity, we've shifted the bottleneck a bit more towards the CPU and/or PPU, but in turn we've added more geometry to be sent to the graphics card. This geometry results in more fragments generated that must be processed, further increasing the workload of the graphics pipeline.
Now, I know what you're saying. We could certainly use techniques like occlusion culling and get rid of as much extraneous geometry as possible to reduce this overhead, but the bottom line is that the performance profile is now rebalanced in such a way that more physics added into the title may require that one adjust the other performance knobs a bit to maintain the same FPS. Things like resolution, aniso, FSAA, etc. The tradeoffs for moving closer to some asymptotic physics nirvana (regardless of CPU or PPU acceleration) may not be justified given the increase in workload on the graphics pipeline.
My point is, it's all about weighing the performance with the (subjective) image quality / immersiveness level. In so far as PCs are concerned (by comparison to console environments which has a known set of hardware speeds and feeds), we tend to lean towards ensuring adequate frames per second can be achieved in the 'average' configuration. The proverbial icing on the cake becomes toggle options in the video settings.
But, then again, this leads us to the issue of which options are available to whom, and how to establish a baseline for physics complexity in online titles, where players should have a level field, one which precludes the environment from providing advantage to one class of gaming configuration.

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