[X] My Assistant

Saw a playthrough of a Spiderman game on PS5 (though I could not find it on GameFaqs, maybe it's really supposed to be a PS4 game?).
They made progress on uselessly smooth and complex graphic gimmicks.
Now if they also worked more on original voice synthesizers, maybe they could cut costs by cutting off unnecessary human elements.

edit (Unrelated, to avoid double-post):

Screw Mozilla. I was trying to clean up entries from about:config that in Thunderbird that may be unused remnants of previous installations, and my entire Calendar (or whatever the thing that store planning and appointments is called) got destroyed.
It's like if an OS stored on the desktop a file that if accidentally renamed/modified/deleted would require a complete reinstallation of said OS and possibly also random loss of hard disk data (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)
Now I will start making backups, but even this process is abnormally tremendously tedious.
Damn it! (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

This post has been edited by uareader: Sep 8 2022, 18:38

Just bought a Griffin iMic to use as a USB audio interface for my laptop so I can move the Bose adapter over to my Nintendo Switch dock. I have no way to play back HDMI audio with my setup, and the headphone output on the Switch introduces terrible ground loop buzz.

Using Linux makes me feel like I am lazy from using Windows.

This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Sep 13 2022, 08:09

I formulated a theory on why rendered graphics may look weird:
An object is never in contact with another object. It is in contact with the shadow that separate them.

I wonder if graphics would look less like they're floating or merging into each others if this could somehow be applied to rendering.

I formulated a theory on why rendered graphics may look weird:
An object is never in contact with another object. It is in contact with the shadow that separate them.

I wonder if graphics would look less like they're floating or merging into each others if this could somehow be applied to rendering.

Depends on perspective as well. Are brains can work out when the perspective breaks physics or what we expect.

This video looks more believable because the camera movements are closer to free hand, it was static it wouldn't be sold as well.

My Griffin iMic came in the mail today.

Despite being a basic USB Audio Class device from the early to mid 2000's (mine was new in box and the copyright year is 2004 - so it's as old as my Powerbook), the Nintendo Switch ignores it even while it works with my Bose USB adapter from much later. Which is a bit bizarre. This is literally a USB 1.1 era device.

Although I can still use it with my laptops and leave the bose adapter connected to the switch. That way I get a stereo line level input, too.

The noise level is quite good, too.

On the downside, the USB cable that's attached to it developed some sort of very slightly sticky residue in that vacuum sealed package in the last eighteen years. So I might think about soldering a new one on at some point. For now I don't mind it, though.

Alsamixer exposes some nice controls for it, too.

Allegedly the imic 2 has lower noise levels, but I can't hear anything with my stereo cranked to the max so I'm not sure it matters.
Anyway, happy with my ~$30 purchase. Nice USB sound card that's obscure enough now (to anyone who doesn't own a PowerPC Mac cube) that the prices are reasonable, even for a brand new in box one.
Mine uses a Philips UDA1325 chip. Apparently, it used to be available in a DIP package as well... I'd buy some for my own projects, if I could only find them. Or any other DIP packaged USB audio codec chip. I've messed with some surface mount ones before and would rather not have to.

[i.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/t2x1mwwl.jpg)

It also pushes a substantially stronger signal than the built in headphone output on my laptop. That switch on the front between the two jacks lets you choose between line level and mic-level for audio input. Left position for line level.
The box also came with a little gold plated 3.5" to stereo RCA adapter, which was handy and half the reason I chose this particular unit when factoring in the price of buying another adapter separately. That and all the mac idiots who bought cube G4's seem to love them (cube G4's have no analogue audio at all).

I formulated a theory on why rendered graphics may look weird:
An object is never in contact with another object. It is in contact with the shadow that separate them.

I wonder if graphics would look less like they're floating or merging into each others if this could somehow be applied to rendering.

I think it's often field of vision/view at fault. Also you get z fighting if you try to have a shadow in a conventional 3D lighting environment and you don't put the shadow on an intermediary layer. Z-fighting is way worse. Think Mario 64 shadows.
Also you are describing a problem ray tracing could actually solve, if I understand correctly. Historically it just wasn't used because of the extreme computational power it requires. To this day RTX cards are space heaters.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 13 2022, 06:38

In the leaked benches, 4060 marginally faster than 3070. The 4090 appears to be a big jump in performance over the 3090 ti however the power limit could be absolutely insane.

People are saying it could hit 800w in custom top tier partner cards. Reminds me when AMD put out 500w cards that caught fire.


edit: I was right, heat pumps are just the more efficient reverse cycle AC that we adopted in Australia like 20 years ago. "Merica liked those shit window mounted ACs for some reason.

This post has been edited by EsotericSatire: Sep 13 2022, 12:59

My parents car detect things around the car and display a simplified view of them on a screen: cars, trucks, pedestrians, speed limits...but for some reason, the thing it detect the most reliably (when it actually often fail the first 3 and is late in detecting the last) is garbage bins.
I wonder if garbage trucks makers are a sponsor of this system or something?

IDK, I think people probably back into garbage bins more often than pedestrians while exiting driveways.

My parents car detect things around the car and display a simplified view of them on a screen: cars, trucks, pedestrians, speed limits...but for some reason, the thing it detect the most reliably (when it actually often fail the first 3 and is late in detecting the last) is garbage bins.
I wonder if garbage trucks makers are a sponsor of this system or something?

all those years of selecting garbage cans whenever it asked for 'select people' 'click all squares with bikes' 'which of the pictures here have a car in them' are finally paying off

The bass line in Janet Jackson's Rhythm nation can crash old 5400 laptop hard drives lol.

Guessing resonant frequencies?

Guessing resonant frequencies?

Yeah. The after effects they used on mastering the song just managed to be around the resonance point of some drives.


Nvidia managed to kill EVGA with their pricing and supply problems of the 3000 series. They didn't supply enough when the subsidies made the 3000 series profitable and supply only just caught up as demand dropped off from miners and gamers.

Nvidia managed to kill EVGA with their pricing and supply problems of the 3000 series. They didn't supply enough when the subsidies made the 3000 series profitable and supply only just caught up as demand dropped off from miners and gamers.

Here it is for people who don't know the context: [www.tomshardware.com] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/evga-aban...cts-with-nvidia

That's a pretty big player leaving the field.

Yeah Nvidia has screwed the board partners pretty hard with the 3000 series.

- Limited allocation when there were subsidies for launch. As part of the allocation negotiation they get different deals for a limited period to get partners to take on cards. Launch is one of the most profitable time windows.
- Nvidia restricts pricing strategies, so board partners can not fully capitalize on potential higher tier cards that have sustainable profit margins.
- limited supply when partners were making money off selling directly to miners. Nvidia also got in on that spicy action.
- Nvidia gets most of the big government contracts and corporate contracts directly.
- Supply recovered and they pushed allocation onto board partners too close to the launch of the new cards, and then also undercut board partners by hundreds of dollars to clear their stock. It was like musical chairs to see who would take the losses.

EVGA said their margin on the consumer segment for cards was only a couple of percent, and potentially a loss overall for the 3000 series with the firesale due to crypto market dropping out and consumer sentiment dropping.

They make more profit on their PSUs, motherboards, CPU coolers, which are only 20% of sales.

I have an EVGA PSU, can confirm.

Also I blame nvidia for trying to put a stranglehold on board makers - and also for trying to lock certain chips down to specific amounts of VRAM to do market segmentation. Manufacturers aren't allowed to do anything to really make their cards stand out.

Also "Founders' Edition is basically the thing 3dfx tried to do, if they manage to kill off all their third (second?) party manufacturers.

Edit:

The iMic (ancient USB soundcard thing from an earlier post) has also 100% fixed/sidestepped the noise my 802.11n (wifi) cardbus/PCMCIA card was introducing on my powerbook G4's headphone output. And the sticky residue on the USB cable seems to have gone away after a day or so in the air. It must have been some weird thing to do with being sealed in a vacuum pack for ~23 years.

Works great on my more conventional/modern PC hardware, too.

For ~$25, not bad. Don't have to choose between using headphones and having half-decent wifi speeds anymore.

USB is kind of nice sometimes for that backwards compatibility. To think that I can comfortably use a 23 year old USB device today... the only other thing from that period that I think any computers might actually have anymore is a PS/2 keyboard port. Maximum sample rate is 48KHz, but that's all I need honestly.

I guess the PCI sound card in my desktop PC is getting to that age now (I think it's currently around 19; Audigy 2 ZS). But it's significantly trickier to get a PC with a conventional (parallel) PCI slot in current year unless you've gone out of your way for it.

If using Windows or Mac OS, though, what I have just said may or may not apply. For USB cards, it'll likely still work, but I have doubts about PCI sound cards. The KX project might technically be viable on a Win10 PC, but you're not going to have signed drivers.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 17 2022, 08:16

Nvidia also takes all the best binned chips these days, not to make them perform better as the reference boards often have power limitations but to reduce their RMA liability and shift that cost onto the partners.

I've recently watched a playthrough of [gamefaqs.gamespot.com] Time Gal on Sega CD from 1992.

When I see those modern games that also requires timed button pushes, I'm thinking: "There we are, having looped back right to the beginning."

I actually have that game for my sega cd.

Mostly as a curiosity. Only good Sega CD games we got in the states are Snatcher, Keio Flying Squadron, Popful Mail, Lunar/Lunar 2, Monkey Island, and Final Fight CD.

Japan has a few more RPG's that seem decent, plus a Shin Megami Tensei Sega CD port.

I guess some people would add Sonic CD to that list. I love the music in the JP/EU versions (US has an entirely different soundtrack which isn't bad but is mostly meh to me). The game itself is not fun for me though, regardless of region. Sonic 2 was peak Sonic.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 20 2022, 06:42

There are like 22 new mega drive games in development this year. Its pretty hectic, its because the dev kit works pretty well still and has been improved so indy devs are dipping their toes in and then it can be deployed to other platforms with emulators I guess.


Sega also released new megadrive controllers on Amazon.

I was looking at maybe getting that Mega Sg - FGPA mega drive but its price has shot through the roof. I'd pay maybe 200 for it, not 700 dang.

There is a cheaper retron mega drive clone but it has poor reviews for reliability.


I am not sure if I should rebuy an actual mega drive, I'd ahve to mod it. I do have a broken, mini mega drive somewhere too that i could fix.