On 22/04/2014 09:30 AM, scott wrote:
>> The party is over, my friends.
>
> I would imagine a lot of people said the same in 1850 about the
> Industrial Revolution. And look what's changed since then (in terms of
> manufacturing).

Um... has anything changed? Apart from the invention of plastic, I can't 
really think of anything.

> Sure, desktop CPU clock frequency is not as important as it used to be,
> but there are plenty of other metrics. Two off the top of my head are
> battery energy density and internet connection speed, both show no sign
> of having reached the limit, and both will give real benefits to a large
> number of people.

I don't know, man. I think Internet speeds have now reached the point 
where page loading is near-instant, and any further boost is of no real 
benefit.

...until you try to download a large file, but that's reasonably rare. 
Still, with Bioshock: Infinite clocking in at 17 GB, I'm sure glad of 
the speed on the rare occasions where I use it! o_O

Actually, come to think of it, it seems that now Firefox is that's 
holding things up! It seems to take longer for Firefox to do the page 
rendering than it does to actually download the files! So all that stuff 
I said about CPU speed not mattering anymore? I guess I was wrong. :-S 
(Assuming it's actually CPU-limited, and not disk-limited...)

> Bring on 8000x4000x120p streaming video, projected from my phone :-)

 From what I've seen, the limitation is that all projectors work at 
800x600, or if you buy an expensive one, 1024x768. Christ only knows why 
they don't make them in any higher resolutions...

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On 19/04/2014 09:08 PM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> Ladies and gentlemen, we are all living in the future!
>
> Actually we are living in the present.

*sigh* O RLY?

>> The CPU is hardly ever the thing you're waiting
>> for. (Hardcore gaming aside... and even then, most of the hard work is
>> GPU-limited.
>
> Not always. There are many computationally-intensive things that games
> have to do with the CPU because the GPU is too specialized for that.
> (And besides, it's already pretty busy calculating pixel shaders to do
> other things.)
>
> The is not just theoretical, because some games *do* benefit from
> extra CPU cores, and in fact some of them require additional cores if
> you want to turn on certain features.

AI would be the main one, I guess... depending on what algorithm the 
game uses.

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On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 20:17:55 +0200, Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

> On 19/04/2014 09:08 PM, Warp wrote:
>> Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>>> Ladies and gentlemen, we are all living in the future!
>>
>> Actually we are living in the present.
>
> *sigh* O RLY?
>
>>> The CPU is hardly ever the thing you're waiting
>>> for. (Hardcore gaming aside... and even then, most of the hard work is
>>> GPU-limited.
>>
>> Not always. There are many computationally-intensive things that games
>> have to do with the CPU because the GPU is too specialized for that.
>> (And besides, it's already pretty busy calculating pixel shaders to do
>> other things.)
>>
>> The is not just theoretical, because some games *do* benefit from
>> extra CPU cores, and in fact some of them require additional cores if
>> you want to turn on certain features.
>
> AI would be the main one, I guess... depending on what algorithm the  
> game uses.

I've noticed physics takes a big chunk as well.

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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On 22/04/2014 7:16 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 22/04/2014 09:30 AM, scott wrote:
>>> The party is over, my friends.
>>
>> I would imagine a lot of people said the same in 1850 about the
>> Industrial Revolution. And look what's changed since then (in terms of
>> manufacturing).
>
> Um... has anything changed? Apart from the invention of plastic, I can't
> really think of anything.
>

I despair of the youth of today. </echo, echo, echo...>
How are we to keep The Empire if the, the ... others are so abysmally 
wanting.

The change that I've seen in my lifetime, and it is not really that 
long, is quite a lot. From few cars on the road (car spotting was going 
out of fashion) to going to an airport to watch plains taking off, in 
the 50's and 60's. To Dick Tracey video watches and to watch 40 year old 
TV programmes on demand.  From thinking 9600 baud was state of the art 
to fibre optic speeds. I could go on and I do. ;-)


> I don't know, man. I think Internet speeds have now reached the point
> where page loading is near-instant, and any further boost is of no real
> benefit.
>
> ....until you try to download a large file, but that's reasonably rare.
> Still, with Bioshock: Infinite clocking in at 17 GB, I'm sure glad of
> the speed on the rare occasions where I use it! o_O
>

A lot of people use their broadband connection to stream Terrestrial TV. 
They might not know it but they do.

> Actually, come to think of it, it seems that now Firefox is that's
> holding things up! It seems to take longer for Firefox to do the page
> rendering than it does to actually download the files! So all that stuff
> I said about CPU speed not mattering anymore? I guess I was wrong. :-S
> (Assuming it's actually CPU-limited, and not disk-limited...)
>
I've noticed that too, recently. But if you think that is bad. Try it on 
a thin client. </boak>



-- 
Regards
     Stephen

I solemnly promise to kick the next angle, I see.

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>>> The is not just theoretical, because some games *do* benefit from
>>> extra CPU cores, and in fact some of them require additional cores if
>>> you want to turn on certain features.
>>
>> AI would be the main one, I guess... depending on what algorithm the
>> game uses.
>
> I've noticed physics takes a big chunk as well.

I thought the whole point of PhysX was to put that on the GPU?

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I don't know, man. I think Internet speeds have now reached the point 
> where page loading is near-instant, and any further boost is of no real 
> benefit.

If you haven't noticed, YouTube has for some time supported
1920x1080 video. Likewise most online video rentals do so.

(While increase in resolution doesn't linearly correlate to bitrate
requirement with modern video compression techniques, the extra
details in full-HD video does obviously need a higher bitrate than
lower-resolution one, if you want any kind of finer detail preserved.)

> ...until you try to download a large file, but that's reasonably rare. 
> Still, with Bioshock: Infinite clocking in at 17 GB, I'm sure glad of 
> the speed on the rare occasions where I use it! o_O

It's nice when I buy such a game from Steam and it takes like an hour
to download instead of the 10 to 20 hours that it took not so many
years ago (when my internet connection was much slower.)

>  From what I've seen, the limitation is that all projectors work at 
> 800x600, or if you buy an expensive one, 1024x768. Christ only knows why 
> they don't make them in any higher resolutions...

I'm sure there are higher-resolution ones, but they are probably quite
expensive.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 19:16:33 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>  From what I've seen, the limitation is that all projectors work at
> 800x600, or if you buy an expensive one, 1024x768. Christ only knows why
> they don't make them in any higher resolutions...

Um, I've got one that does full 1080p.  It's nearly 10 years old (I'd 
have to check when we actually bought it, but it's at least 8 years old).

I honestly don't know where you get the crazy idea that higher 
resolutions aren't available.  I mean, if you're projecting on a 8-10 
foot 16:9 diagonal area, 1024x768 is going to look like shit.  800x600 
even more so.

1920x1080, though, looks pretty nice on the ~12' diagonal space we've got 
in our living room.  When I can get the room dark enough (we need 
blackout blinds in there, but have mesh ones that direct sunlight just 
dances through, more or less).

But another case of "maybe Andy should google before making blanket 
statements about how 'all' of something is absolutely limited to 'x'." ;)

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> I honestly don't know where you get the crazy idea that higher 
> resolutions aren't available.  I mean, if you're projecting on a 8-10 
> foot 16:9 diagonal area, 1024x768 is going to look like shit.  800x600 
> even more so.

Well, he also is of the opinion that the screen of an iPhone is
postal-stamp-sized, you have to keep it an inch from your eyes to
see anything, it's impossible to use a web browser on one because of
the small size, and the screen gets so dirty in 10 seconds that it
won't be usable after that.

Of course the millions of people who use iPhones all day long for
surfing the net and play games are delusional.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 20:02:17 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> I honestly don't know where you get the crazy idea that higher
>> resolutions aren't available.  I mean, if you're projecting on a 8-10
>> foot 16:9 diagonal area, 1024x768 is going to look like shit.  800x600
>> even more so.
> 
> Well, he also is of the opinion that the screen of an iPhone is
> postal-stamp-sized, you have to keep it an inch from your eyes to see
> anything, it's impossible to use a web browser on one because of the
> small size, and the screen gets so dirty in 10 seconds that it won't be
> usable after that.

True.  Wait, you mean that isn't the case? ;)

> Of course the millions of people who use iPhones all day long for
> surfing the net and play games are delusional.

Naturally.  I'm sure my 9" tablet is running about 320x200 and requires a 
magnifying glass to use.

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 22/04/2014 11:27 PM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> I don't know, man. I think Internet speeds have now reached the point
>> where page loading is near-instant, and any further boost is of no real
>> benefit.
>
> If you haven't noticed, YouTube has for some time supported
> 1920x1080 video. Likewise most online video rentals do so.

I wouldn't know about online video rentals. But I have noticed that 
YouTube used to be unreliable to the point of being useless (i.e., every 
8 to 10 seconds it freezes to buffer some more data - moreso at busy 
times of the day), and the pictures used to be so utterly blurry that 
you can't even recognise people's faces. They do seem to have fixed that 
now, so there's that I guess...

> It's nice when I buy such a game from Steam and it takes like an hour
> to download instead of the 10 to 20 hours that it took not so many
> years ago (when my internet connection was much slower.)

Indeed. What I downloaded Star Wreck (which is, like, 4GB), it took TWO 
DAYS to fetch it via BitTorrent. The other day I downloaded 17 GB inside 
of an afternoon...

>>    From what I've seen, the limitation is that all projectors work at
>> 800x600, or if you buy an expensive one, 1024x768. Christ only knows why
>> they don't make them in any higher resolutions...
>
> I'm sure there are higher-resolution ones, but they are probably quite
> expensive.

The majority one the ones in the price list I looked at were 1024x768. 
And we wanted it so we could do computer training sessions; almost every 
known application program needs a higher resolution than that if you 
actually want to see the entire main window...

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