I'd like to recommend the website http://whattorent.com .
I discovered the site via a german website ( ehrensenf.de ) and so far it's given me a couple of very solid titles. I'll chew through them as soon as I have the time.

Vain

At first I also wondered why Fiat would invest in Chrysler. Chrisisler is a waste of money from any point of view.
However, this way Fiat gets to use Chrysler's US infrastructure and can thus put cars that are more fit to the modern US market into the showrooms. And Chrysler has no other option than sell itself to whoever is stupid enough to invest in it. Cerberus surely wants to get rid of it.

Vain

They should definitely render that stereoscopically and show it on 3d hardware.
The interior really looked very touchable. Regarding the exterior I wasn't happy with some surface properties.
Nevertheless stunning work.

Vain

Quote from wien :

I mean how mind numbingly stupid do you have to be to limit the major version your app will run in to the current one? Why are Microsoft helping these idiots out?

Smart programmers do that because you don't want changes in some MS API from Windows 6.0 to 7.0 make your program eat the user's whole eMail database. That's why you don't let your program run on software that isn't even in the same branch of development as what you tested on.

MS should've called it Windows 6.1 because it is Windows 6.1. The marketing department is merely looking for a reason to sell new licenses to windows 6.0-customers.

Vain

Ripped off with no regrets.



Vain

One important aspect missing from this discussion is that this work has been completed by a single artist and not, as originally intended, by one artist per displayed country.
From this source:

Quote :

The Czech Republic, which holds the EU presidency, thought it had commissioned work from 27 European artists.

But it turned out to have been entirely completed by Czech artist David Cerny and two associates.

Considering this I made the following comment on a different forum:

Quote from Vain :

For me what's stirring up the interest is that what was supposed to be a collaborative work of europeans became the expression of a single man's first thought about other countries. The exhibition completely failed at giving a picture of how europe views it's own downsides. It actually opposes the original task directly. Instead of each country displaying it's own stereotypes to achieve some sort of company in in-perfection it's one man who accuses other countries of stereotypes.

It really is an organisational failure on a pretty big scale.

Besides that, I don't want to comment on the displayed stereotypes. After all, I don't consider them valid in the first place due to the fact that they merely display one person's prejudice.

Vain

I don't think there's much they can do wrong with GT5.
In GT4, even after several hundret laps (I think it's in the area of a thousand by now) I still enjoy going around the Nordschleife in a stock Vauxhall Tigra with the cheapest tyres on offer.
As long as I can keep doing that I'm absolutely willing to fork out the 400€ for graphics improvements.

The only downside is that there won't be 200 cars of all sorts of classes on the track simultaneously. But I guess I can live with that.

Vain

Today I watched Pitch Black and enjoyed it.
It's 2 hours well spent if:
1. You didn't have anything to do anyway.
2. You get enjoyment out of trashy action movies with overly cool main characters and mediocre acting.

Vain

Technically it's not a solution yet, but it can be found within O(n²*2^n).

Vain

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

A fridge, once split blood will last a while, but I'd suspect it is just the same blood type, rather than actually draining him as that wouldn't be healthy.

Actually, the blood reserves aren't for emergency purposes. The real explanation is that Obama is a vampire.

Let's wait for Wesley Snipes to show up at the inauguration.

Vain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iffley_Road

Quote :

The road is famous for the Oxford University athletics venue, the Iffley Road Track, where Sir Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes for the first time ever on 6 May 1954. A blue plaque now records the event for passers by on the road.

Is wikipedia allowed?

Vain

Consider it a nightly linux kernel build. Those also sometimes eat your partition table. That's what you get for running cutting edge builds.

I would understand if this was the RC, but as it is I can't see your point.

Vain

I also enjoyed it immensily. Definitely what WRC should be like.

Vain

I used to work as a software-tester for 3d apps and working with Vista was horrible. Severe performance-issues and many difficult to reproduce Vista-only bugs made it more of a hassle than an OS. We were allowed to choose the systems we tested on freely. As a result people came to work early so they could make sure they got one of the Xp machines before they were all occupied. That says a lot about Vista.
However I find the latest news about 7 rather interesting. If it really provides decent performance while improving usability it's right where it should be. Due to the large userbase windows should always be about evolution and not revolution.

However I'm unhappy about the fact that it's unlikely that the free Vista license I got from my university will ever be used.

Vain

Finally! Ze Führer has reincarnated!
*Gets the uniform from the basement and removes the raincover from the tank in the garage*
Victor! Please change the little flag beside the names for ze german empire!


Vain

Generally my opinion is that drivers need to be taught what to do with their car in extreme situations because the necessary behaviour is different depending on wether the car has ABS/ESP or not.
I remember a quite specific situation where I evaded an obstacle on a slippery road by causing oversteer. An ABS car wouldn't have allowed me to do so and the vehicle would've responded in an unexpected way.
What I'm going for is that drivers need to be taught how their car behaves in an emergency-situation so they know what they have to expect.

However, using systems like ESP you can just teach the average driver that he merely has to stamp on the brakes and point the steering wheel away from the obstacle and the car will use all available traction to make that happen.
That is much easier, much safer and in many situations even better than proper driving without assistant-systems because a driver without ESP only has one single brake channel while ESP can actuate each brake seperately to make better use of the available traction.

ESP is developed by vehicle engineers with 20 years of experience. The brake pedal is operated by people who think vinyls add traction.

Vain

I forgot the exact source, but during my involvement in a science project at university I've seen statistical data that analysed the propability of accidents for cars with optional ABS or optional ESP. Those cars equiped with the system in question had a significantly lower propability of having crashes or being involved in crashes with significant damage than their counterparts without the system.

ABS and ESP save lifes. They are as important as seat belts.

The average driver is best protected by not being allowed to drive a car. Unless the driver is a racing driver he should be disconnected from the real physics as much as possible. Computers can drive much better than the average driver.

Vain

P.S.: I fully acknowledge that I've made a "weak" statement. I can't quantify the effect and don't have a link to sources to back up the statement. Usually I wouldn't post in such a situation, but I believe that wrong assumptions about the effects of assistant-systems can make people lose their lives.

Last edited by Vain, Thu 18 Dec 2008, 00:10.

For basic/generic 3d programming I found the Irrlicht engine to be very helpful. It's a snap to load simple map data and make it interact with physics routines. For future projects you can also add TrueAxis to your browser bookmarks. Create an object, give it graphics properties using Irrlicht and connect it to a physics object in TrueAxis. Manipulate the TrueAxis object using forces and in a different thread make the Irrlicht object draw itself. That's all you have to do and you can already start implementing the gamedesign.

The Irrlicht project also has an xml engine IrrXML that makes loading config files easy as "int bitdepth = xml_load(pointerToFile, "bitdepth");" and a basic sound engine IrrKlang.

That said, for your programming experience it is useful to do the gfx implementation the hard way once and actually come up with your own ways of drawing real time shadows using stencil buffering instead of telling an engine "IrrlichtGraphicsObject.drawShadow();".

The above structure of "Irrlicht for the graphics, TrueAxis for the physics, SDL_net for networking, IrrXML for loading data, IrrKlang for sounds, etc. ..." will force you to structure your objects very well. You will only look at the code that represents your game design. You will never mix different tasks like game design and sound calls in one c++ object. That makes code look very nice and easy to maintain/restructure. If done well you can exchange the complete graphics engine merely by editing the constructor of your most basic entity-object.

Vain

Quote from Electric Eye :

Go go go twat!
Jerk...

I sincerely hope scania didn't take the picture as badly as you did. I have no grief against scania and mostly enjoy his posts.

Anyone is free to poke fun at me when I make mistakes similarly below my usual level.

Vain

I believe it would be very useful to make a statement on the concept behind the road going cars in LFS. Are they taken directly from the street or are they intended for racing?
The current development state of LFS doesn't allow the users to make a decision and it has caused a lot of discussion/criticism.
Afterwards the discussion about wether ABS is appropriate for the cars will be much easier.

Also, is technical feedback encouraged in this discussion? I'd like to comment on the way LFS seems to work in LFS in comparison to my experience from working with Bosch but I'm not going to go through the trouble if there are no chances of positively affecting anything.

Vain

Scawen didn't mention any possibility to remove the lock on the setup options so I wouldn't hope for it.

Vain

Quote from Don :

thats WRC, not S2000.

this is fabia s2000: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v= ... 0aMqg&feature=related, http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v= ... phHuY&feature=related

I don't know about you, but I find this much more spectacular. That's 415 HP at the rear wheels. And it's not even more dangerous because 1.3 tons just don't go that quickly around corners.

Anyway, I consider WRC an entry level competition from now on.

Vain

The Xbox's growing potential is limited though. The architecture is pretty standard for any PC developer. You just know what x86 processors do well and what they don't do well. Switching your mindset to cell processors and even several of them will take a couple of years of experience however.

Generally I found this discussion extremely interesting so far. Keep it up.

Vain

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Next time it snows I'll test this, and see where the cut-off point is.

Modern implementations of ABS can estimate the surface by judging the way the tyres behave and estimate the surface. This information is used to switch to different modes of operation. The ABS in modern vehicle will behave differently on snow than on dry tarmac.
A good estimate for the lowest operation speed of ABS is an estimated free rolling velocity of 1 m/s.
Notice that ABS doesn't just unblock the wheels and attempts to approach the braking pressure closest to locking. It tries to estimate the longitudinal slippage of the tyre and achieve 80-90% of best deceleration so that transversal slipping caused by steering inputs will not immediately lock the tyres and the vehicle remains maneuverable.

ABS doesn't optimise braking distance. It allows vehicle maneuverability under braking.

Vain

Oh, I'm sorry I missed that. I saw the picture but didn't know what it was supposed to represent. I still don't know. It doesn't look much like anything at all.
Anyway, since it claims to be braking torque and I'm fairly sure that it's what LFS calculated I rest my case. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Vain