Jon Peddie Back Pages - It's all about the pixels
The problem with crystal balls
Posted by Jon Peddie on September 2nd 2010 | Discuss (0)
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Twice this past week I was confronted with soothsayers, magicians, and fortune tellers—you know—industry analysts and company guidance managers. One of the problems with having grown up in this industry (but, I’d like to point out, not being grown up thank you) is that you’ve heard and seen it before—a state that feels something like Run Lola Run, Groundhog Day, and déjà-vu. A highly involved, if not evolved, friend called the other day to bemoan the Rodney Dangerfield treatment S3D seems to be getting from the press, and a few commissioned analysts. Seems those hired guns had discovered the consumers don’t…
The data’s there, why not use it?
Posted by Jon Peddie on August 17th 2010 | Discuss (0)
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Every day we (or at least I) read about an augmented reality (AR) application or installation somewhere in the world. Maybe I’m just sensitive to the topic since it fulfills one of my fantasies about a sci-fi singularity world I can’t wait to enjoy. The idea of location-based information flowing to me based on a preferences algorithmic learning program (like the Pandora digital radio application) powered by gigantic cloud-based processors and delivered to my very smartphone (which knows who I am, and where I am) is so appealing I simply can’t wait. Why should I wait? Do I really have to?…
Leading edge, bleeding edge, or just edgy?
Posted by Jon Peddie on August 6th 2010 | Discuss (1)
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Siggraph is enigmatic, sphinx like, all knowing, all seeing, and unknowable. Is it a trade show, an academic conference, a big R&D lab, a screening room, a job fair, an artist’s colony, or a gathering of the clan? Yes, Siggraph is. As such, it’s probably a little disappointing to some that it’s not more of whichever aspect they want. It’s literally a shared experience, a happening, chaotic, spontaneous, shocking, surprising, sometimes loud, and annoying. It’s a mix of spiked neon hair, grey hair, no hair, and long shiny hair, but regardless of the costume and artifacts, no one who attends Siggraph…
The art of testing and other esoteric sidelines
Posted by Jon Peddie on July 22nd 2010 | Permalink
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directx
3d
graphics
opengl
benchmarking
testing
benchmarks
We test a lot of things here at JPR and at JPA before that. We’ve been testing stuff officially and unofficially for 30 some years—you’d think we’d know what we’re doing. Hell, we thought we knew what we were doing. This last batch of graphics AIBs really threw us. We couldn’t get things to work. Benchmarks wouldn’t bench. Command lines needed to set parameters wouldn’t work. Resolutions would stay stuck, and over-clocking tools defied us to make them behave—and all the while the clock is ticking …. No one wants to read about a test done on a product that was…
Been seeing double for a very long time
Posted by Jon Peddie on July 8th 2010 | Permalink
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The idea of using a computer for stereovision representation of molecules dates back to Project MAC at MIT in 1966. And in the early 1980s the concept became known “molecular graphics” and the Molecular Graphics Society (MGS) in the UK formalized the notion and science of computer-based molecular modeling. Initially much of the technology concentrated either on high-performance 3D graphics, including interactive rotation or 3D rendering of atoms as spheres (sometimes with radiosity). The first stereovision machine I saw was an Evans & Sutherland (E&S) workstation in the early eighties. It had a vector (“stroke”) display. The stereo device or selection…
It’s the noun stupid - Video Game Consoles
Posted by Jon Peddie on June 23rd 2010 | Permalink
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I couldn’t understand after all these years why the press keeps referring to, and getting excited about “video games,” and yet never mentioned the PC. The first console dates back to the “Brown Box,” Ralph Baer developed at Sanders in 1962 (although Baer says he thought of it in 1952.) Sanders licensed it to Magnavox in 1969, and Magnavox then released it in 1972 as the Odyssey. However, the first computer game, “Spacewar,” was developed on a PDP-1 in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen at MIT. Actually, using a computer to play a “game” dates back to…
Those ungrateful consumers
Posted by Jon Peddie on June 11th 2010 | Permalink
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Look at all we’ve done for them and have they once said thanks? No, all they want to do is talk about the good old days. The good old what? You mean when we had Windows 95, and a laptop had VGA resolution in a nine-inch screen, weighed ten pounds and ran on a battery for almost three hours? Yeah, that was great wasn’t it? Today we hardly even mention the battery life of a laptop. Kathleen Maher has a Vaio that refuses to quit, in fact she runs out of energy before it does. She also has an iPad and…
The Tyranny of Terminology
Posted by Jon Peddie on May 28th 2010 | Permalink
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One of the running jokes about the difference between the English, French and German languages are how rich and efficient English is and how complicated and wordy French and German can be. We struggle with terminology here all the time, trying to come up with meaningful, efficient, and entertaining nomenclature to describe the incredibly complex thingies we deal with every day. We are currently struggling with two developmental products that as of yet have not been totally defined or turned into a comfortable acronym. Our attempts this week concerned the new class of processors, which have graphics embedded in them, and…
To be S3D you have to see
Posted by Jon Peddie on May 14th 2010 | Permalink
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James Cameron called me the other day and told me (he never asks) I should pay more attention to 3D. I told him I’ve been involved in “3D” longer than he has been making movies, and what he really meant was Stereo-3D, or S3D. He didn’t get it, but he will. Maybe about the time I convince Jeffrey Katzenberg to say S3D. These movie types think they’ve just discovered imposibideum, like it’s some secret force of nature that was just lying under the surface waiting for them to remove the plenum and re- veal it to the rest of us. Obviously…
To 3D or not 3D, that’s no longer the question
Posted by Jon Peddie on April 28th 2010 | Permalink
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Visual stereoscopy, also known as S3D, has definitely come to the PC. It was actually always there, just not exposed. Soon there will be video stereoscopy available on your TV, you can see cinematic stereoscopy now in most metropolitan theaters in the industrialized world, and this time next year most new smartphones will offer web, game, and video stereoscopy content via auto-stereoscopic glasses-free displays. All of this gets bundled in the phrase “3D.” Obviously “3D” leaves a lot to be desired in terms of meaning and to the people using it. Yes, issues still exist and probably will for a couple…
