Posts by Dave 126

Re: Yawn....

Yep, it's boring, but that's not a bad thing. It's the difficulty in bringing anything radically new to a pocket device (size and power constraints) that forces designers to look at the small details. Polishing away lots of little niggles can lead to a markedly better user experience over time. Or in Apple's case, include long missing g features such as waterproofing, wireless charging and multiple SIM support (this isn't a jibe, Apple have done done things first too, and often find them very well. I don't see value in being first for the sake of being first, but some features were long overdue).

Look at Samsung - very little difference between the S8 and S9 other than the finger print sensor has been made slightly less awkward. Otherwise it's just a slightly better screen, slightly faster processor, slightly this, slightly that. And that's okay.

If you want a crazy radical phone, wait til next year when Samsung and some if their Chinese partners roll out some phones with flexible displays. But the first generation with likely be clunky, poorly supported in software and not proven to be durable. I'll take boring.

Re: Err, Dave126...

Oops! Oh well, at least even my van can keep up with a push chair. Unless it's a particularly steep hill.

Re: Problem-solution dichotomy

Number of times a car has been stolen * huge inconvenience of such. Versus:

Number of times a stressed parent holding has used keyless fob to lock vehicle after their brood has exited the vehicle * convenience of such.

Weighing of pros and cons requires numbers.

Over a CAT network, probably not for games - you'd need high bandwidth between the main CPU and RAM, and the GPU. However, Thunderbolt is fast enough - though you won't get the most out of higher end graphics cards. External Thunderbolt GPU boxes have been around for around six years (Sony Vaio X), but it's only recently with newer versions of Thunderbolt, and support in Mac OS and from some gaming laptop vendors that the concept is gaining traction.

What you can do over a network is stream video and human input, so the game *runs* on your desktop PC but you play it on your laptop or Nvidia Shield tablet - or run the game in your PlayStation 3 and run it in your Xperia phone or PlayStation TV. I've only tried the latter, and it wasn't perfect with video compression artifacts and dropped frames despite both devices being cable connected to the LAN.

You can share a GPU over a network - or rather a machine containing a GPU - for applications where the GPU is fed some numbers and can return a result when it's good a ready - for example, simulating an explosion, ray tracing an architectural scene or, famously, simulating some protein folding. This requires a piece of client software running in the GPU machine, controlled by the host software in the machine you're working on. Bunkspeed Hypershot, used for rendering product images, works this way. You can the master software on a Windows machine to render a SolidWorks model, and it'll use the GPUs and CPUs on every machine (Windows, Mac, Linux) on your network to render the image more quickly.

The internet connection might be paid for by mommy and daddy for Netflicks, just as how in the nineties a £1,000 PC was bought by parents for work but a teenager could play games on it on the side.

Competitive gamers often retire by the age of 30, so a good chunk of their gaming career is spent when they are still in education and without a job.

NVidia making cards for the cloud doesn't stop them making cards for home rigs, especially since the demand from crypto miners has eased off. It's not only Nvidia who are looking at streamed gaming - Microsoft are looking at it too. Previous efforts haven't taken off, as you say, but then fibre broadband is becoming more common today.

Nvidia are talking this up because they are not selling to Sony or Microsoft consoles.

For gamers who aren't as twitchy, sone might prefer to spend a two hours a week playing on sumptuous graphics instead of ten hours a week on moderate graphics for the same money. See the recent demonstrations of real-time ray-traced game footage (can't remember if it was the Unreal engine or Unity or whatever ) using daftly expensive GPU arrays. With the cloud you can rent as much processing grunt as you want.

Re: $2,000? Try $500!

I can see higher resolution, frame rate and draw-distance giving competitive advantages, but I'm not sure that other GPU-taxing effects such as fancier lighting effects and more leaves on virtual trees effect the actual gameplay. But hey, Doom was fun on 486 hardware, GoldenEye was fun on N64 hardware, Halo was fun on XBOX hardware... if you're focusing your crosshairs on your mate's avatar's head you don't have time to admire the virtual scenery.

Well, I say that, but there's a fascinating article over on Quantamagazine at the moment about how windows and houseplants in real life can act like pinhole cameras can allow inferences as to what is around a corner. Obviously this sort of effect won't be in the first few generations of real-time ray-traced games, but simpler effects such as reflected light might give you a clue that some virtual bastard is hiding around a virtual corner with a virtual shotgun as you're running for the rocket launcher. Again. Bastard.

Re: LAN parties.

Err, the people who go to LAN parties buy gaming rigs and run the games locally, just as they do today? Nvidia and AMD are still happy.

Re: Taking away half the fun.

There's currently enough people living with fibre broadband for LG and Samsung to sell 4K HDR televisions for Netflicks; they don't need to wait for 60% or whatever coverage of the population in order to start shifting units.

Anyway, people living out in the sticks have alternative forms of recreation to video games, such as mountain biking, surfing and drinking cider.

Re: 3ms latency...

Do bear in mind that in competitive online gaming, there latency that matters isn't just between the mouse and screen, but between a player in London and a player Madrid or New York. For sure, during 'e-Sports' competitions players are assembled on a Local Area Network, but that isn't how they usually get to practice.

Placing the accelerator in a cellular base station only makes sense if all the players are in the same geographic area.

> And still pay a premium price for not being able to use the whole screen.

There isn't a premium price - the notch is cut as part of the same process as the whole screen being cut out.

You're not losing a slice of screen, you're actually gaining a couple of 'ears' of screen for the most important icons.

Re: And people trust goo ...

Pareto analysis: I get 80 % of the info I want from 20% of the possible notification icons, namely battery, time, and signal levels in the right, and SMS, WhatsApp and email on the left. Other notifications I'm not fussed about; indeed, I wouldn't want them to be given equal status to the above.

I don't have a notch because Samsung sticks too many sensors up there, but I wouldn't be upset by a phone that did have a notch.

> People with poor impulse control who want the new iPhone (eg) but can't afford to buy it outright

Apple (with Barclays in the UK) have finance plans to spread the cost of iPhones - over 3, 6, 12, 24 and 36 months. But yeah, you'd have to do the maths.

Re: I never quite understood why one would get a bundle

Also, if you buy a phone outright you are covered by the Sales of Goods Act, so should it malfunction you can return it for an immediate refund or new unit - your choice. By contrast, if you get the phone on a bundle it is not 'yours' until the contract reaches term, so the carrier often insists on sending the handset away for a couple of weeks to be repaired.

Re: 3D TV

The features that allow a TV to display 3d content - such as high refresh rates - are those that improve some forms of 2D content. As such, most good TV s can display 3D content, even if the consumer has no use for it.

Re: An "AI powered cooking assistant"?

Occasionally I might use a browser to view a recipe, and the timer function on my phone... so that's two apps. Can't think of a third, unless I went all Heston and bought a IR imaging camera.

Re: Heart age

Only this morning I heard on the radio that if you smoke and are socially isolated it's 50/50 which is the biggest health hazard. It's a reasonable assumption there is a correlation between one's social engagement and the youthfulness of one's wife.

And I'm deliberately ignoring other health benefits that might come from having a youthful wife, such as a desire to keep oneself fit for her, joining her on country walks, or being taken out dancing, let alone more domestic physical activity.

> What value does AI add to this? It just seems to me an expensive and long winded way of working something out that we already know so you can add "AI" to the name.

Try reading the article again.

There's a data set of patients who have had different factors who have gone to have heart attacks. The correlation isnt clear to the medics since there are many, possibly inter-dependant, variables - i.e it's not obvious, as you think it is. The computer software, using techniques that gave come to be known as AI or Machine Learning, generates various models that fit the data. These models are then tested against more data sets.

Re: Correlation does not imply causation

"An apple a day, if aimed with sufficient accuracy, keeps the doctor away"

- P G Wodehouse

Re: @onefang

Not really. Magic Leap have been hyping up their technology to gain funding, whereas in this scenario Apple are playing the part of the investor, and one that has the resources to perform due diligence at that.

I had a quick look at www.kguttag.com to see if he'd looked at Akonia, but a search returned no results. Karl Guttag has been a critic of Magic Leap's claims for some years now, and as an expert on HUDs is the guy iFixit consulted on their recent Magic Leap developer headset. His site is worth a browser as he explains the different techniques that could be used to superimpose an image over one's view, and has given hands-on reviews of various AR display companies exhibiting at CES.

Re: Honestly.. this is the problem with the Android phone market

The market is mature. That's largely a good thing for users. Innovation for the sake of it is largely a red herring. Now the big changes are over and done with, designers can concentrate on creating a balanced and refined experience.

Most people want a phone that is pretty good in all areas, not a phone with one standout feature and several niggles.

Re: Lifetime ...

Cost of official battery replacement on a high end handset is around 10% if the original cost... the sort of margin that could be lost in buying a handset on a special offer, or buying one brand over another.

If you buy a high end handset that's shipped with Oreo then updates aren't dependant on binary blobs from silicon vendors any more.

Even in the days of swappable batteries and no software updates required, people would often get a new phone every year or two - there's nothing new here. Indeed, the update cycle used to be a year, now two years is the norm.

Re: People are just not spending money

> If I had the money, I'd buy a few grands worth or Euros right now

The way that markets work is that the current rate of Sterling against Euro is already partially determined by expectations of the Pound losing value in future, so it's not the dead cert investment you think it is. Some people of course have bet on Sterling because they think that it won't drop as much as others think it will, and vice versa.

Re: There may be trouble ahead ....

What percentage of Huawei's customers are developers or have any desire to root their phone?

Re: There's noticeable value ... upgrading from a $200 or $300 smartphone

Last year's £900 phone is eventually discounted to around £500, and at that money there's a strong case for the value. Admittedly the value takes the form of lots of little features that add up (compatability, water proofing, Qi charging, fast processor) and/or a strong feature that is important to some users ( excellent camera, for example).

Of course these features often work in unison.. a good camera with fast processor can only record high frame rate high definition video if the storage is fast enough.

Re: Apple will end up like Nokia

- Symbian couldn't easily evolve to support things like GPUs and lots of RAM. iOS, now 64bit only, has so far managed everything that has been asked of it, including running high resolution displays very quickly.

- Nokia might have had some solid models towards their end, but they also produced a huge range of weird phones.

Re: Waveguide wizardry

I dunno, but this critical article has lots of diagrams of said waveguides taken from Magic Leap's various patent applications:

https://www.kguttag.com/2018/01/06/magic-leap-house-of-cards/

Re: Feature Comparison Table

Yep, the only other headset worth comparing it to is Microsoft's Hololens, for the reasons SkippyBing outlined.

As I understand it, the Hololens doesn't display over as much of the user's field of view as the Magic Leap, nor does it attempt to spoof different focal planes.

MS have taken a more sober approach, targetting industries and sectors such as architecture and plant design that traditionally have benefitted from (and thus spent good money on) visualisation equipment, works stations and CAD software. Hololens is about $3,000 which is acceptable for those sectors.

Re: So it's not that magical now that it's real ? Shocking, innit ?

Indeed, I don't consider it worthwhile drawing parallels between Google Glass and Magic Leap's device. For starters, the chief hurdle to Google Glass's adoption (and thus further development) was social push back - people don't want to be filmed in public places - whereas this Magic Leap isn't designed to be worn out and about in town.

Sidenote: I learnt just the other day that the much lauded GCam algorithms used in the Google Pixel phones came out of Google's Glass project. The weight and size constraints of the Glass headset prevented them from using a bigger camera module, so the engineers had to look at what they could do with software.