Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   For example, I recently bought the game "The Last Remnant"
[...]
> I have even maxed up all graphical settings and I'm getting pretty good
> framerates (something like 20 FPS and up). Of course this is mostly thanks
> to my GPU, but at least the CPU isn't getting badly in the way.

  Speaking of which, it's rather impressive what kind of graphics modern
3D cards can produce. For example this game uses quite effectively a
combination of focal blur, luminous blooms and (I assume) HDRI for
rendering really impressive images... in real-time.

  The focal blur is not used only for shows, but actually for composition
purposes. For example there's a cut-scene (rendered in real-time with the
game engine) which has some objects on the foreground and some people in
the background. The focus was on the people while the objects were blurred.
Then the people started talking about the objects and turned to look at
them, and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
blurred. Really cool-looking.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
> something? I've yet to see that one personally...

...OK, I guess I've just been lucky then! :-}

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:
> and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
> blurred. Really cool-looking.

Very cinemagraphic!

Next up: Making the splashing of water based on the actual movement of water 
in the simulation. :-)

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/HarmonicFluids/

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
> something? I've yet to see that one personally...

Yes.  If the AVG full system scan kicks in while you're playing a game, 
it can slow things down to the point where the game is unplayable.

-- 
Chambers

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> No - I got the impression they deliberately made the software 
> inefficient so that people would mistake this for "powerful".

They honestly didn't, although it appears that way to many people.

Since the majority of Windows licenses come from new computer purchases, 
MS targets computers that will be mainstream in 6-12 months time for 
optimization.  They optimize until those machines run their software 
well, and then stop optimizing (focusing on other things, like adding 
features, hunting bugs, or working on other software).

While it's true that the software *could* be made to run just as well on 
older hardware, MS just doesn't put the effort into making it work 
because they won't ever see enough of a return on it to justify the 
developer time.

This strategy nearly killed Windows Mobile, too.  MS was targeting 
phones they expected to be released, but all of a sudden people realized 
that their phones were now "good enough" and manufacturers stopped 
upgrading the hardware at the same rate.  Suddenly, MS was left with a 
mobile OS that expected more powerful hardware than it had available, 
and so every Windows phone out was complete crap for a while (you could 
argue that they're still complete crap, but that's for other reasons).

-- 
Chambers

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Warp wrote:
>   The focal blur is not used only for shows, but actually for composition
> purposes. For example there's a cut-scene (rendered in real-time with the
> game engine) which has some objects on the foreground and some people in
> the background. The focus was on the people while the objects were blurred.
> Then the people started talking about the objects and turned to look at
> them, and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
> blurred. Really cool-looking.

Yeah, Red Faction: Guerrilla does that, too, with the added bonus that 
you get to knock down buildings with a sledgehammer :)

-- 
Chambers

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andrel wrote:
> On 6-6-2009 23:32, Warp wrote:
>> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>> Regardless of the degree of veracity of anything that has been written
>>> in this thread, I'm not sure that such a thread is very relevant here.
>> 
>>> only joking of course. I sorta agree with you in the case where this
>>> citations comes from. There is just this problem of this group being
>>> p.o-t, so anything posted here is not very relevant here.
>> 
>>   I don't understand what you mean.
> 
> That is not entirely true.
> 
>> Approximately 100% of people who
>> read this group are computer users.
> So? A fair amount have views on religion too, close to but not entirely
> 100% I would guess. Possibly about the same percentage as those playing
> games.

Way to derail the thread, thanks.

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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
>> blurred. Really cool-looking.
> 
> Very cinemagraphic!
> 
> Next up: Making the splashing of water based on the actual movement of
> water in the simulation. :-)

I'm interested in that, but I don't care about realtimeness :)

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On 8-6-2009 20:26, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> On 6-6-2009 23:32, Warp wrote:
>>> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>>> Regardless of the degree of veracity of anything that has been written
>>>> in this thread, I'm not sure that such a thread is very relevant here.
>>>> only joking of course. I sorta agree with you in the case where this
>>>> citations comes from. There is just this problem of this group being
>>>> p.o-t, so anything posted here is not very relevant here.
>>>   I don't understand what you mean.
>> That is not entirely true.
>>
>>> Approximately 100% of people who
>>> read this group are computer users.
>> So? A fair amount have views on religion too, close to but not entirely
>> 100% I would guess. Possibly about the same percentage as those playing
>> games.
> 
> Way to derail the thread, thanks.

I do my best ;)
Actually I though of it as binding two threads together.

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Warp wrote:

I know this is tangential to the thrust of your post, and please forgive 
my ignorance, but in VERY GENERAL terms, how does a game run faster on 
two cores?  What is done to exploit the added processor?

-Jim

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