Sad Day in City 17

I know its late news but I just found out actor Robert Culp has passed away this week. I remember him from the TV shows, Everyone Loves Raymond and The Greatest American Hero (best 80's series ever) but didn't realize he was also the voice of Dr. Breen, the antagonist of the Half Life 2 series. I should have known as his voice was very distinctive.

Pixar '1984' Ray Tracing Image

After reading Mark's GeForce GTX 400 post I started reviewing the technology behind OptiX, Nvidia's real time raytracing engine. I noticed that one of the examples on their sample page was inspired by 1984, a computer generated image of motion blurred pool balls first published in a 1984 Siggraph paper.

According to coauthor Robert Cook, this landmark image in photorealism was created by Thomas Porter while they were working in the Computer Graphics division of Lucasfilm. An interesting note is that none other than John Lasseter of Pixar fame illustrated the environment map for the balls.

I still remember first seeing this image in a book at the local library and being blown away by the realism of the motion blur, reflections and soft shadows.

Last year, fxguide posted a nice article about the image's 25-year anniversary and had invited 3D artists to replicate the shot using modern 3D software and hardware. I thought it was quite interesting to see the differences and read about the methods they used for their recreations.

GeForce GTX 400

Yesterday, NVIDIA officially paper launched their new GeForce GTX 400 series GPUs (GF100 was just the code name). It turns out that twitter announcement they made last month was just to say they were going to introduce the GF100 at the PAX East trade show. An announcement about an announcement? Lame!

Apparently this slight of hand misdirection upset a lot of people in the gaming community so they had to make a tweeter apology:

Apologies for the confusion around our most recent GF100 update. To clarify, launch date for GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 is March 26, 2010.

After reading some reviews it appears this card has regained the GPU speed crown (I was unaware that ATI has had the fastest cards for quite some time and that the GF100 was painfully late), however NVIDIA seems to have done it at the expense of running the cards hot and loud. Not that I'm into PC gaming anymore, but if I was going to build another system, it would be designed to run cool and quiet.

The demos look sweet but you need one of these new GTX 400's to run them which won't be shipping for a few weeks. I was curious to see how the ray tracing demo looked in real time. Rob was right though, they are using some sort of hybrid technique to display the image, rather than a full real-time ray tracing engine.

Bryce Terrain Modeling

As shown here, Bryce was famous for creating realistic (or surreal) landscapes. But from a previous post, Mark realized that the hard models used for the MetaTools Bryce 2 box art, namely the Japanese tori, were created entirely in Bryce using primitives and grayscale to height extrusions. Chris Casady was the artist responsible and he shows more examples of how it works here.

It's a rather unorthodox and time consuming way of modeling objects, but if you wanted to build your own content without having to use DXF models or purchase a separate 3D modeler, this was the only way to do it.

In addition to Chris's work, here are some other 100% generated, Bryce samples from Robert Bailey and Jackson Ting which I pulled from my original Bryce 2 CD. These images show that given enough patience and time, pretty much anything (at least non-organic) was possible.

Gnome Chompski

Remember the ceramic gnome from Half Life 2: Episode 2? Well he's back in L4D2 and is part of the achievement called Guardin' Gnome. The objective is to win him in a Carnival mini game and carry him to the helicopter at the end of the level. Sounds easy but if you ever played Carnival you know this is going to be real hard.

In order to get him you have to play a mini game at the beginning of the level and your teammates can help carry him throughout. Someone posted pictures of him completing this achievement but I have to warn you he uses a lot of blue language. The pics are rather funny though.

Krud, we need to try this during our next gaming night!

Jonathan is Still Alive

Now its probably not a big shock but it's finally official that Jonathan Coulton is going to create music for the upcoming game, Portal 2.

He made a funny comment that sequels are hard to live up to, except for rare examples like The Empire Strikes Back. A lot of people say that, but put me in the minority camp that actually liked the original Star Wars the best.

HP Reborn

My sister Angie asked me if I could fix her computer (Rob's old HP Workstation). It was infected with some spyware that I couldn't completely get rid of when I briefly looked at a few months ago, so I took it home to perform a clean install (which is really the only sure fire way to get rid of malware).

As I was cleaning the inside I noticed that the original restore CD was literally flopping around inside the case. I have no idea how it got there. I remember cleaning the system out when I picked it up from Rob's apartment but I don't think it fell in. Perhaps Melody stuck it inside the case in-between the false bezel thinking that is was where the discs go.

Anyways I'm still impressed on how well built the HP is. No tools needed to open the case and there is plenty of room to work inside. The DVD burner no longer ejects so I need to replace that but I should be able to find a fairly cheap one online or from work.

Angie loves the large widescreen LCD as its perfect for watching movies in bed. I thought Rob would be happy to know his old 3D work horse is still performing strong.

MacWorld Boston 2007

I was watching old MacWorld YouTube video's the other day and came across the one where Steve Jobs announced the partnership with Microsoft. I never heard an Apple focused audience boo so loud when Steve mentioned Internet Explorer would be the default browser on all new Macs but give credit to the master presenter as he instantly turns it around with a simple one liner, "and because we believe in choice...".

Part of the deal was that Microsoft was going to purchase 150 million dollars worth of non-voting Apple stock. Now the Microsoft press release (nor the Apple one) never mentioned exactly how many shares that was, but looking at the price of Apple stock back in Jan 1997, I estimated it cost around $5.4375 per share. Divide that by 150 million and you get 27,586,206 shares.

Also part of the same deal was that Microsoft couldn't sell these shares for at least 3 years. Now I don't know when (or if) they ever sold these shares after the vestment period but if they happened to have held them until now the total value would be worth $6,199,999,798.50 (at today's price of $224.75) a share. Now subtract the initial 150 million dollar investment it would still leave them with a tidy profit of $6,172,413,592.50. Yes, that's slightly over 6 billion with a "B". How's that for a killer deal!

Broadband2Go

In preparation for our upcoming pilgrimage to California, I've been looking into this Broadband2Go device. Since AT&T is dragging their feet on allowing users to tether the iPhone (unless you jailbreak) this seems like a viable alternative. Staying with my Mom there is no internet connectivity and is dry of "open" hotspots in the neighborhood.

I found it cheaper at Walmart of all places and $20 for 250MB of bandwidth seems pretty reasonable. I could see myself using this device more often when I want the mobile connection with the MacBook Pro or I could just wear out my welcome at Marcos' house just for the Wifi!!

Rated M

I can handle M ratings in games I still have control over, volume control. As much as I like L4D 1&2, COD MW 1&2, GOW 1&2 etc., I'm not a real big fan of the profanity. But of course sometimes there is a filter though they don't always work as you'd like them to. But all in all I still have control of the volume control and can ultimately mute or set a very low volume and not hear it.

Which brings me to God of War. I always wanted to try that game, but never did. I also missed the sequel. Now God of War 3 is out and I saw a preview and thought I should try and get this game because I do like the visuals. But of course there was the M rating which I didn't really think much about until I went on gametrailers.com. The trailer had the description of nudity in it. This is a game I can't get even though I have other M rated games. I can't control the nudity like I can the volume, which is really annoying because this game always gets such good reviews as far as gameplay graphics and sound go.

I understand wanting to be more like a movie, L4D does a great job in that. But do they really need to go so far as to have nudity? Here's a game I want to play but can't because they took it too far for me and so I'll never get to try it. No they won't miss any money by me not getting it, but it's still a shame to ruin it for people like me.

Earthquake

Ok, 4.4 is actually small and thus morning didn't last very long. However, living near the epicenter makes it feel much larger than it was. First I heard it, a rumble, which is what woke me as I'm a light sleeper. Then it started shaking till it felt stron but tappered off a bit, but as it did, wham!, it hit nice and hard in the second half of the tremor with a nice jolt, which then died off.

Now even though I didn't get out of bed or throw of my covers, I did prop myself up to listen if I could hear cracking wood and such which would help me determine if I should get under my desk. As I heard no such sounds other than the quake sound, I opted to stay in bed. I heard others in the main part of the house wake up but decided I'd try to sleep 15 more minutes as it was almost time to get up anyway.

I got up 10 min later and wanted coffee.

Game Night

So it seems that Saturday has become our unofficial game night. Marcos and I seem to be playing the past few Sat nights almost as if it were a normal event like the way the 4 of us used to have Friday nights for Warcraft 3. Those were fun gaming nights!

But now recently the 2 of us have been making a habit of Saturday nights doing what I (dare I say we yet, Mark? :-) ) love best in a video game at this time… zombie hunting! Left4Dead 2 is our habit and we seem to be fine with our habit/addiction night. Nothing better than accidently shooting a team mate as the coach and hearing him say, "Excuse me?! Excuse me?!?"

Now if somehow we could get David and Rob to sink to out depths and get a 360, Live and L4D2!!! Come on boys! It's zombie killin' time!

They Live - Half-Life 2 Comparisons

The "bubble gum" reference in John Carpenter's They Live to the PC game Duke Nukem 3D was clear but it wasn't until Mark pointed out, and I watched They Live again, that I saw the connection to Half-Life 2. Nice catch!

A truly underrated movie. As Mark mentioned, the online comments are hilarious.

"It is more truth behind this movie than people can imagine."

"Totally awesome movie, I advise anyone to watch. Replace the culprits with bankers and you have our world of today."

Home Theater Geeks

During my search for new podcasts in the TWIT network, I decided to try Home Theater Geeks with Scott Wilkinson. Even though I don't have a home theater or any immediate plans to get one, I still found HTG immensely informative and entertaining. Scott is a top notch host who can articulate and explain home theater technology to the common consumer rather well. His guests are also well chosen, including people from Pioneer, the HDMI consortium and Sony Pictures. It's definitely worth a listen.

Final Fantasy XIII

Someone did a comparison of the latest Final Fantasy game on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Can you see a difference?

Xbox Media Center

After looking at my original Xbox sitting unused in my office the past few years, I decided to turn it into a XBMC media center for my girls bedroom. I found a nice tutorial on the internet to softmod my Xbox using the original Splinter Cell (which I already happen to own).

After I complete this and get it all working, my next project will be to figure out how to make the darn thing more quiet.

Time Machine

Why break our new tradition of posting at least a blog a day? Let's keep this streak going!

I've been meaning to tell you that after upgrading to Leopard, I decided to take advantage of one of the main features, Time Machine. I purchased a $50 bare bones 500 GB SATA drive from Amazon and popped it in my Power Mac G5.

Installation was dirt simple due to the wonderful internal design. Just open the lid, slide in the drive in the second slot and use the cables and set screws already in the case provided by Apple. Once the drive was installed I fired the system up, formatted it as HFS+ and designated it as a Time Machine drive. Now I can sleep well at night knowing my years of photos and home videos are finally being backed up on a daily basis.

Samsung LN52B750

I'm getting close to taking the plunge and feel this HDTV is the right fit. It's the Samsung LN52B750. Thanks to Marcos' link on CNET to get me started, I did some research and keep coming back to this.

Any comments or other suggestions?

Windows 98

So it all started when I needed a copy of my résumé. Unfortunately for me the only copy I had was on a floppy disk. (Shows you how long I needed to use it!). I scoured all the PC's in my work area and to my surprise I found one machine that still had a floppy disk drive. I was able to recover and was a happy camper. In my search for my résumé I found a bunch of 3 ½ discs as well as old Zip and Jaz discs that got me thinking....what is still on these puppies! I have been without a working PC for quite some time and needed a way to hook up a SCSI card and my old Zip drive.

A co-worker of mine overheard my woes and asked if I wanted her old PC. Sure...why not! She came the next day to work with all the original "cow boxes" with a monitor, external speakers, and all the original software. Of course it was a Gateway and had no idea what kind of specs this thing had. I brought it home and started to unpack this thing. To my surprise this thing was in original "pristine" condition. I mean no crusty old keyboard, fingerprints or dust bunnies in the case. Fired it up and it was good ol' Windows 98! (I laughed...haven't seen this thing in a long time!) So I've been in my basement off and on getting data off these old drives. Found some old gems including MacDrive for Windows98. Installed that and now going through some old Mac OS stuff. So Friday is my "free night"..no kids :)...and I can't wait to install The Seventh Guest and freak myself out in the basement listening to the haunting FatMan tracks! Feeling lonely???

Fake Intel

Did you guys see this story about the fake Intel Core i7 processors being sold on NewEgg? Pretty interesting considering all the effort to make the packaging look legit.

They Live

On my way back from Indianapolis last week I caught up on some old NetFlix movies I've been meaning to watch, one being the highly underrated cult film, They Live. How can you not like a film about aliens with skull faces and features one of the greatest fight scenes ever?

In case you haven't seen it, it stars "Rowdy" Roddy Piper from WWF fame and Keith David (famous actor but also voice of the Arbiter in the Halo series) who's part was written specifically for him by director John Carpenter after being impressed with his superb performance in The Thing. They Live is based on a short story called "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" written by Ray Nelson way back in 1963. It's a brief but very entertaining story that I recommend reading.

While watching the movie I couldn't help but think it inspired certain elements of Half Life 2 as well as Duke Nukem 3D. Back in 2008 the film was rumored to have been considered for a remake, but apparently that never happened.

It's official

Oh what to do what to do?! I have no money to start getting things on Steam! But I like the news!

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/08/valve-officially-announces-steam-and-game-library-coming-to-mac-in-april/

MacHeist nanoBundle 2

Although I've always been intrigued, I never purchased any MacHeist bundle until today. What made me pull the trigger was the RipIt application, something I was planning on buying since it makes backup copies of my 300+ DVD collection so simple. Since the MacHeist nano Bundle 2 was the same $19.95 price I would have paid for just RipIt, this was a no brainer.

I can also see myself using the FTP/SFTP application Flow, especially since I never got around to purchasing Transmit. I'll have to play around with the other bundled apps to see if they are something I could use in my daily workflow, but at this point even if I don't they are essentially free. There's just 3 days left in case anybody wants to purchase this great deal.

Portal 2

Valve announced the other day that the sequel to my all time favorite game is finally being released this holiday season. More details on the upcoming title can be found on Gameinformer's website.

If you look at the Valve press release you will notice that some of the letters are underlined. Put all the letters together will give you "drattmanh0nee". But what does that mean? Well after a quick Google search I found out that this was an Easter Egg suggesting that Portal 2 is going to have co-op mode. How cool is that?

Also, apparently the original Portal game has been updated to give the fans something to do during the meantime (a la Slusho style).

Aliens versus Predator (1999)

After reading a few days ago that Aliens vs. Predator was released for the PC and consoles, my initial reaction was that somebody decided to remake it? A little further research showed that the same developer, Rebellion, is responsible for this latest release, subtly renaming it "vs." I have fond memories of the "versus" CD-ROM version for the PC/Mac where a gamer had the choice of playing as a Marine, Alien or Predator.

The Aliens/Predator universe is a perfect match for the FPS genre and it was an entertaining title to play- but it had one flaw that bugged the heck out of me. No matter how many aliens I killed, they continuously spawned from an unseen point with no definite end. The way I like to play FPS is to "clean house" and move on to the next level but this game was designed to never let a player do that. I suppose the developers attempted to mimic the mood of the films by feeling overwhelmed and having you run for your life, but I just felt frustrated. Unfortunately this was one of the few titles that I never finished playing.

I did notice that this game has been rereleased on Steam so I might consider giving it another go sometime in the future.

As a comparison here's a screen of the 2010 version. What a difference a decade makes! Have fun playing it Krudd!

Aliens vs. Predator

Well, I got Aliens vs. Predator. Why? I wanted to see more than just the videos on YouTube and GameTrailers. They looked cool and I did read good stuff about it, so figuired why not.

I just finished the human campaign and have to say wow! I know it's just another fps, but it was still fun! Very nice graphics sound etc., but I also enjoyed the story! I think for me it achieved the desired result in feeling you were in the movie. The familiar sounds and weapons and music were all there and creepy darkness where are they coming from I see them on my motion tracker but still can't tell where they are sensations are there also and well done!

I had fun and will start the Alien campaign next. I'm saving the Predator one for last because hey, he's the coolest!

Steam coming to the Mac?

I love it! This would be one less reason for me to use Bootcamp.

More 3D Photorealism

What prompted me to write about the 2003 iSpec film was this incredible 2009 film by Alex Roman that I discovered today. It's quite amazing to say the least. It was also created using 3ds Max but coupled with the $1000, V-Ray renderer. While watching it, I had a hard time believing it was (almost) completely computer generated. There were some filmed elements such as the skies, photographer and birds, but everything else was rendered in pure 3D.

It runs 12½ minutes long but it's worth a watch, in particular, in full screen.

3D Photorealism

I've been meaning to blog about Joseph Kosinski's short film, iSpec, after I first saw it online in 2004. This was an early example of animation that personally blew me away in terms of photorealism. By today's standards it's more obvious that it's computer generated, but one can still appreciate the love that went into faithfully recreating the Colorado Lounge from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Using 3ds Max and Mental Ray, the renders reportedly took over three hours per frame in order to achieve the realism that Kosinski required.

You can check out the director's other projects on his main page including the GOW Mad World trailer and his upcoming feature film directorial debut, Tron Legacy.