Friday, May 26, 2000

Marketing BS -- 8:29 pm CST, Update by The Master

Recently, the Marketing pukes over at nvidia stated their new GeForce 2 GPU was a "major step" towards the goal of real-time "Pixar-level animation.". According to this post on SiliconInvestor, it ain't quite so:

`Pixar-level animation' runs about 8 hundred thousand times slower than real-time on our renderfarm cpus. (I'm guessing. There's about 1000 cpus in the renderfarm and I guess we could produce all the frames in TS2 in about 50 days of renderfarm time. That comes to 1.2 million cpu hours for a 1.5 hour movie. That lags real time by a factor of 800,000.)

Do you really believe that their toy is a million times faster than one of the cpus on our Ultra Sparc servers? What's the chance that we wouldn't put one of these babies on every desk in the building? They cost a couple of hundred bucks, right? Why hasn't NVIDIA tried to give us a carton of these things? -- think of the publicity milage they could get out of it!

Don't forget that the scene descriptions of TS2 frames average between 500MB and 1GB. The data rate required to read the data in real time is at least 96Gb/sec. Think your AGP port can do that? Think again. 96 Gb/sec means that if they clock data in at 250 MHz, they need a bus 384 bits wide [this is typo. 384 _bytes_ wide!]. NBL!

Now, A.T. and I are huge Nvidia fans, but you have to remember, don't believe everything you read :-) Thanks Shugashack.

Bloodbath: Young Gods Info -- 4:39 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Wraith has posted some more screenshots and information on the mod he's working on for Quake III Arena called Bloodbath: Young Gods (hosted right here at The Haus). Included are some screenshots of a new level that Ghost in My Shell is working on--a Q3A conversion of Shogo's OF-Quaker.

As some of you may know, Wraith is the coder behind the popular Bloodbath mod for Shogo. Now he is turning his considerable skills toward Q3A. The Master and I have been doing some alpha testing for him. I think a lot of people are going to like this mod when it is done.

Q3Fortress Review -- 4:32 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Our very own J has sent over another review! This time he takes on beta 1c of the Q3Fortress mod for Quake III Arena. Team Fortress-style gameplay is all the rage online now. How does Q3Fortress stack up? Read the review and find out! You can find this and all over reviews on, appropriately enough, our reviews page.

John Romero's Next Project -- 10:56 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Something Awful got the scoop on the next project for John Romero and the Daikatana team. It looks like it will be, um, a game. The comments on the Shugashack were typically philosophical and well-worded.

New CL NVIDIA Drivers -- 9:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Creative Labs Asia Pacific new files page has a link to some new drivers for CL's NVIDIA-powered graphics cards, including the TNT, TNT2, TNT2 Ultra, GeForce, and GeForce2. You can download them directly here. I downloaded them and looked at the file dates and sizes. These appear to be based on NVIDIA's recently leaked 5.22 drivers (story). I'll try 'em out and get back with you (I'm feeling adventurous today). Thanks Blue.

It appears that the nvOpenGL.dll file in the archive is corrupted. I replaced it with the one from the NVIDIA 5.22 reference drivers and ran the installation program manually. Then I found out that the Blaster Control files are a separate download . They are separate programs now instead of being in the "Display Properties" dialog. All told the drivers seem about as fast as the 5.13s were. NHL 2000 runs just fine. Other than the installer problem, everything seems dandy.

History today -- 8:17 am CST, Update by The Master

• 1805: Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned King of Italy.
• 1865: Arrangements are made in New Orleans for the surrender of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi.
• 1868: Impeachment trial of Pres. Andrew Jackson ends with his aquittal on all remaining charges.
• 1940: Allied troop evacuation from Dunkirk begins.
• 1967: Beatles release "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." (Hey Eeyore! How's this one? :)
• 1969: Apollo 10 returns safely to Earth from its test run trip to the moon.
• 1981: 14 people killed in a Marine aircraft crash on the USS Nimitz.
• 1991: lauda Air 767 crashes in Thailand, killing all 223 aboard.

Thursday, May 25, 2000

Eminem on Napster -- 9:21 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

<My $.02>OK, let me state this much right now. I hate whiteboy rap. Hate it. I hate groups that, because they can't get anyone who can sing, get someone who can barely rap to be their lead grunter. Rap and metal were done well when Anthrax and Public Enemy recorded some tunes together (Bring the Noise is amazing). After that, it's just been garbage.</My $.02>

Enter gangsta rapper wanna-be, Eminem, who actually strung together some words resembling English to show his disdain for Napster and how he doesn't have a clue. You can catch the whole thing on Yahoo Music! if you feel like going insane. Thanks Shugashack, I think.

If you want to email me about how Eminem is the greatest musical artist of our time, please send your message to my alternate email address: /dev/null.

Webdog "Issues" -- 5:34 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Yep, we know that something is seriously wrong with the finger tracker. I tried a fix on my end but it didn't work. We'll have to wait until The Master gets home from work to fix it. Sorry for the inconvenience. He is the brains of this outfit, I'm the one who can spell :)

The Master comments: Unfortunately, the Webdog tracker has been having lots of stability problems lately because of performance issues on the Blues News server (according to Richard over at Webdog). Hopefully things will stabilize soon.

Return to Wolfenstein Preview -- 10:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3D Action Planet has posted a preview of Gray Matter's Return to Castle Wolfenstein based on an opportunity the author had to play the game at E3. The game is scheduled to be release in Q4 2000. Cool stuff. Thanks Stomped.

VE Interviews Tim Sweeney -- 9:43 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Voodoo Extreme has slapped up another interview with Epic's Tim Sweeney. Topics include GreenMarine's departure, various Unreal Tournament ports, and the obligatory VE weirdness.

Linux Q3A Tools -- 9:35 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Loki Software has released a beta Linux SDK for Quake III Arena, based in part on id's QERadiant code. The SDK is available from Loki's FTP server and from 3D Downloads. Thanks Blue's News.

History today -- 8:41 am CST, Update by The Master

• 1787: The Constitutional Convention was convened in Philadelphia.
• 1810: Argentinian revolt against Spain begins.
• 1895: Playwright Oscar Wilde is convicted of a morals charge and sentenced to prison.
• 1935: Babe Ruth hits his 714th and final home run of his career for the Boston Braves.
• 1946: Transjordan (now Jordan) became a kingdom as it proclaimed its new monarch, King Abdullah Ibn Ul-Hussein.
• 1961: President Kennedy makes his "send a man to the moon" speech.
• 1968: The Gateway to the West arch is completed in St. Louis.
• 1979: 275 people die in a DC-10 plane crash out of Chicago's O'Hare airport.
• 1992: Jay Leno debuts on his first "Tonight Show" after Johnny Carson's retirement.

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