UltraMega

8 hours ago, neurotix said:

Sega Dreamcast was a great era for Sega and the first console capable of running arcade games 1:1. It didn't have ports of arcade games, it had full on arcade games identical to the arcade like Crazy Taxi and many Capcom and SNK 2D fighters.

 

And yes, I've known about the Dreamcast/Xbox successor thing for years. Sega actually released quite a few games for the Xbox that are really good like Panzer Dragoon Orta, Crazy Taxi 3, and Shemmue 2.

 

I'm unsurprised someone did this. The Xbox came stock with 64MB RAM I believe, and if you're good enough at soldering you can remove the stock chip and replace it with a 128MB chip. People have been doing this already for years to allow soft modded Xboxes to play back 720p video streams in XBMC (Xbox media center- what turned into Kodi).

 

I have a soft modded Xbox myself and used to watch 480p anime on it, until I upgraded to a Raspberry Pi 3b with Kodi. The Xbox was filled with emulators and other "stuff" but unfortunately, it's clock capacitor is dead and that's basically CMOS for the thing, meaning if I turn the thing on I just get the dashboard instead of my modded XBMC interface. It also has a broken DVD drive that is stuck and won't open, preventing me from reinstalling the hack by loading a glitched savegame in Tom Clancy Splinter Cell. So I'd need to fix the DVD drive and clock capacitor before I could get it back to running the soft mod.

 

*Shrug* I have a retropie with emulators and it's way more portable, can run it at 1080p if I want, it is way smaller and lighter.

 

Still cool someone got a game running at 720p that isn't supposed to but this RAM mod people were doing in 2004.

Just a quick note, arcade games released on dreamcast were not 1:1 ports. Usually lower frame rate and/or visuals. Daytona for example was 60 fps and higher res in the arcade vs 30 and lower res on dreamcast. 

As for Xbox mods, I believe the Sega arcade version of the original Xbox hardware not only came with double the ram, but also a had option for a faster CPU. There are also mods to replace the original 733mhz CPU with a ~1.4GHZ CPU. 

1 hour ago, axipher said:

I'm looking to dip my feet in some more useful Generative AI than just using ChatGPT for basic Code generation.

 

My work is smartly taking a cautious approach to implementing AI as tools for employees to use.

 

One part of my work is to generate Proposal Documents for potential jobs (new conveyor belt for an underground copper mine, new rock crusher installation, new air quality monitoring and automated ventilation, etc.)  We have thousands of existing Proposals that just get recycled but always end up being pretty narrow-minded.  So one of our AI initiatives was to look for something that can run either local, or in our already paid for Azure Cloud, that we can feed in our massive inventory of existing proposal documents.

 

Ideally:

- Use local storage, or known secure cloud storage with known datacenter selection for legal requirements

- Extract basic meta data from title page of proposal (word documents)

- Be able to rank proposals based on if they were successful or not

- Take some prompt questions about a new job

- Search through existing proposals for seemingly related work

- Generate a new Proposal that can be used as a baseline for creating something new

 

 

I feel like there are so many options out there now, and I just don't have the AI know-how to try to navigate the different types of models, ways to convert our existing documents in to tokens for the AI model, etc.  I'm really hoping to leverage some of the knowledge here to guide me in the right direction for some options to look at testing out.

I think this would work https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/chat-with-rtx-available-now/

Closest thing I'm aware of to what your looking for, tho there are probably dozen of other options. 

On 13/05/2024 at 07:38, Slaughtahouse said:

'We need smaller games,' says Xbox's Matt Booty, right after Microsoft shut down the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush—and was reportedly about to pitch a sequel | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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The mixed messages go up to 11.

 

I think it simply comes down to leadership needing to be held accountable for not defining a clear vision and sticking to it. You know, here's our vision for Xbox for the next 5 - 10 years, here are our goals to help us get there, and provide progress updates along the way. 

 

Seems like they're all over the place. Spend billions acquiring Zenimax/ Bethesda, Activision, and then do not provide the support and resources they really need to deliver more content at the pace Xbox needs for game pass. AAA games have 5 year+ long cycles at min.* They literally just got the ball rolling and then they kill their devs. Insane. 

 

We need more small indie, high profile games; Kills the studio that did exactly just that.

 

Nothing to do with marco economic "head winds" lol. 

I agree that their leadership on Xbox is poor, but their leadership wouldn't really matter if they had good games. People only need to talk about execs setting up a good vision for the brand when the games aren't there to do that on their own. 

Sony missed their most recent sales target as well. 

Just can't have a good gaming market without good games. Nintendo is doing well, and Nintendo has a healthy stream of good games. 

Just a note on the Hi-Fi Rush thing, according to a report I read the other day Hi-Fi Rush was developed by a small group within the dev team that made Ghostwire Tokyo. It wasn't a big project at all, John on Digital Foundry said the other day that Hi-Fi Rush had 1400 people work on it for 5 years, and that is wrong. It was a small project by a small group within a larger dev team. It seems entirely possible that Microsoft closed the studio but kept the 4-5 people that made Hi-Fi Rush. 

While it does seem confusing that they closed down a dev that made a highly acclaimed game, personally I played Ghostwire Tokyo and I tried Hi-Fi Rush. Ghostwire was a very "meh" game that didn't have a lot going on. The world was very copy paste and the gameplay was very simple and underwhelming. Hi-Fi Rush I just didn't like at all. I appreciate the visual design and how it did a good job nailing the comic book vibe, but I think it was seen as a hit mostly because it was a surprise release. It's not actually very fun to play IMO, and it's not a game that attracts many buyers. 

There was definitely a better way for Microsoft to handle this, but based on the two games the studio released recently, it doesn't really surprise me that they would get the axe. 

Consoles sales declining are a huge factor here, but it makes sense that AMD would be falling behind since their GPUs don't really have any AI specific feature. I suspect the 7000 series will be the last gen from AMD that lacks more dedicated hardware for stuff like AI or RT. Right now Nvidia can sell RTX GPUs to gamers and anyone looking to run some AI, but AMD isn't there yet. Once they are, I'm sure their gaming revenue will normalize somewhat. For now, this just points out what we already know; AI hardware is becoming more important and AMD is behind on integrating AI hardware into their GPUs. 

Nvidia's gaming revenue was flat last quarter. Seems reasonable to assume if AI wasn't propping up sales of RTX GPUs, Nvidia would also be seeing a decline.

There just isn't really enough compelling reasons to buy a new gaming GPU or console these days with so few big budget games of significant quality being released. Apparently Square Enix lost $200 million on the Suicide Squad game and that was after the Justice League game flopped. I guess they needed to be beat over the head with it until they realized people don't want games filled with more buzz words than quality content. So long as big dev studios are losing money by releasing games full of micro transactions and live service crap that no one asked for, the gaming market will suffer. Can't have a healthy gaming market without good games. 

12 minutes ago, Andrew said:

Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time  of day? In this part of the country? Localised entirely within EHW?

There was a big solar flare from a sun spot, directed at earth, emmited approximately 32 hours ago. The flare is hitting the earth now. 

It's visible to the naked eye in more norther areas. Closer to the equater like where I am, it may be visible via your phone camera's ability to take night photos, or photos with a long exposure. 

My phone was able to capture it with a 3 second exposure. My gfs iPhone was able to capture it better than my $200 android phone. 

I can't see it anymore, but it may be visible again tomorrow night. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/behemoth-sunspot-ar3664-unleashes-its-biggest-solar-flare-yet-sparking-radio-blackouts-on-earth-video/ar-BB1maM28?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Solar Flare! 

Watch monster sunspot grow to be 15 times wider than Earth (video) | Space

WWW.SPACE.COM

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The sunspot region AR3664 is so large, you might be able to see it with only eclipse glasses.

Go outside and look at the sky. If you can't see the Aurora, try taking a night photo/long exposure photo with ur phone. 

I'm in central California. 

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Back to the main story. Xbox now had an abundance of studios and teams. It had a popular subscription service. It had two next-generation consoles, including the budget-priced Xbox Series S to attract a wider audience. And it was launching all its games on PC, too, to give it an even wider group of players to attract into Game Pass. But then the growth stopped. The Game Pass subscriber base stalled.
 

Microsoft had convinced as many Xbox players that it could to subscribe, so was now focused on getting PC players to sign-up. Some of this was due to the post-pandemic fall in engagement the games industry saw as people were no longer in lockdown at home. But also, there's the simple fact the subscription business may not appeal as widely as Microsoft had expected.

Why Xbox believes it must cut costs and close studios | Eurogamer.net

Lots of bad news for the Xbox brand lately. TLDR, Microsoft is not selling as many game pass subscriptions and games in general as it had hoped and is trying to cut costs as a result. To be fair, Sony has been doing a bit of the same lately.

One thing that really doesn't get brough up enough is the simple fact that Microsoft has not delivered a single game to really move the needle for Xbox/Game Pass since maybe MSFS2020. Every big budget game they have released has flopped hard due to simply being poor quality. Halo Infinite is an extremely one note Halo game with massive launch issues, Starfield was a major disappointment, The new Forza is so buggy and broken that Microsoft started dumping fake reviews onto Game Pass to hide how low it's score was. These articles blame all kinds of economic conditions and business hurdles but often fail to mention just how poorly Microsoft has delivered on just putting out a line-up of competent and functional games. I don't think they have a single current gen game that people hold in high regard outside of some smaller indie titles that get good reviews but not a lot of sales. 100 billion spent and not a single successful big budget game to show for it. From my perspective it seems like all they need to do is get their house in order to the point where they can release at least 2 successful big budget games a year. Heck, even a single game per year that actually stood out would be a huge improvement. It's crazy to me that people talk about the Xbox brand struggling without mentioning that there is not even a current gen Halo game almost 4 years into the current Xbox lifecycle. There's not even one in development as far as we know. I mean, we all probably assume there is, but nothing has been announced. That in and of itself is all you really need to know IMO when talking about the brand struggling. 

A bit of a side rant, I think this console generation has been a bit of a disaster because the hardware is just not compelling. PS5 and Xbox are so similar, they might as well be the same. Had they launched one year earlier, they wouldn't have come with half baked RT hardware that has every other developer bending over backward to try to force the feature into their games. No one would miss RT on consoles at all if it were not included. Had these consoles come out a year or two later, they could have launched with more practical RT hardware and probably some DLSS like hardware driven upscaling. But as is, these consoles really offer nothing to be excited about. The hardware is a little bit too weak to really handle UE5, but UE5 has taken over the game development industry. Close to 4 years since these consoles launched and still the most impressive tech to come out for them is the Matrix demo, with nothing else even getting close. We have games running crappy RT effects with native rendering going down as low as 540p at times, and then upscaled with FSR which was never designed to be pushed so hard. It's just a bit of a mess, and I think the failures of this gen have more to do with the hardware being badly timed and thus not able to work well with popular dev tools/UE5, and a huge lack of solid and interesting games coming out than they do with economic conditions or anything else. Perhaps when GTA6 comes out, hardware sales will start to catch up, but it seems like it's too little too late at this point, at least for current gen console hardware.  

/rant

High level nerd skills, the curse the binds us. 

13 hours ago, Sir Beregond said:

Time for a good old fashioned "does the Star Trek transporter kill you and make a copy?" debate. 

 

Here's a Riker troll face.

 

In this context, it definitely kills you. 

Not just that, but since only data is transferred, and only at the speed of light, a pretty large "transporter buffer" would need to be in effect to compensate for the data transfer time. The receiver transporter would need to have access to all the constituent matter to reassemble a person, not just based on instant entanglements, but also the transporter buffers ability to cache the data. 

17 hours ago, GanjaSMK said:

Perhaps related, but unrelated reading; thought maybe it might also be interesting. Doesn't really fit for an article post IMHO. 

 

MIT Uncovers Photomolecular Effect: Light Can Vaporize Water Without Heat

SCITECHDAILY.COM

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MIT researchers have uncovered that light can induce evaporation, not just heat, demonstrating this across various natural and synthetic water surfaces. This discovery could impact climate modeling and lead to...

 

Definitely never thought about light and heat being sperate forces in relation to evaporation before. I think I would have guessed light could cause evaporation, as would most people perhaps but without ever really giving it serious thought. Definitely raises some interesting prospects to think of light and heat as separate forces for evaporating water. 

Water is pretty interesting in chemistry. As far as I know, it's the only substance that has the ability to be all three different states of matter at relatively close temperatures to each different energy level/matter state barrier. 

I didn't know anti-cheat could make use of TPM. That is a revalation on its own. 

Interesting news, tho the terminology around this stuff seems to have evolved to be a little more misleading since the last time I read up on any of this in a serious way. 

As I understand it, the term quantum teleportation is actually just sending information via entanglement, which is something that we weren't sure was possible a decade or so ago. Nothing is actually being teleported, but information can be sent from on entangled atom, or in this case a photon, to another via entangled qbits. This new method seems to refine the process so that is is more reliable. That said, entanglement can only send info at the speed of light so it's not a method of overcoming the light speed barrier which makes it's practical applications pretty limited. 

Props to anyone who can identify any one of the mathematical properties represented here: 

8 hours ago, neurotix said:

You beat me to it, pio. I was going to quote and say the same thing.

 

Yeah, we have a great number of dedicated users who all love the site and support it. Additionally, having dealt with you a lot privately and being former staff (which I accepted long ago now), I can confidently say that we have the best admin on Earth

 

It's warm enough now where I live that I can wear the t-shirts I have. I will be wearing them to physical therapy, as well as restaurants. I tell people the url and what the site is about regularly because I want to see it grow (like in the Growing the Site thread).

 

Great site with a great admin and a ton of greatly experienced, talented users in many ways.

Agreed on Administration.

If I had a tech issue that I had questions about that I could not find the answer to on my own, this would be the absolute best place to seek further information. Hands down. It is extremely rare that I find myself in that situation, but it's great to know where to go when it happens. I think it's extremely rare for all of us to need help on tech stuff because we are all so good at our craft. It's too bad there are not more users here seeking expert knowledge (maybe a marketing angle @ENTERPRISE)

Quote

The initial Webb observations also provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth, this molecule is "only produced by life", primarily by phytoplankton in marine environments.

 

The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, along with the shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that K2-18 b may have a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

 

"It was a real shock, I had sleepless nights for a week," enthused Dr. Madhusudhan, recalling the moment when the analysis showed a possible hint of DMS in the planet's atmosphere. "That week, I didn't even muster the courage to break it to my own team."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/webb-studies-planet-k2-18-b-again-to-confirm-presence-of-gas-only-produced-by-life/ar-AA1nGfUo

If real, this is probably some kind of alge or something similar. This planet is ~ 2.6 times the size of earth and suspected to be an ocean planet. Given the size of the planet, it would be virtually impossible for any intelligent life to ever make it to space due to the increased gravity which would make reaching escape velocity extremely difficult. So while they a may be life, and we may never really know for sure, it's very unlikely to be intelligent life. 

This seems relevant:

Apple Car | Project Titan, Canceled

APPLEINSIDER.COM

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Apple's Project Titan could have led to a fully autonomous Apple Car, but it was canceled in February 2024. Learn about it here.

They just don't know where to direct all that cash. I think the era of iterating on the same design for mass appeal is just over. As @Sir Beregondpointed out, there is just virtually nothing to gain from upgrades for the average user. 

IMO Apple would have been better off focusing on a cheaper VR headset, maybe something around the same cost as an iphone. If they had been able to successfully create an appealing product that felt more in reach, they could have had a shot at creating a new market segment. Still, I think VR is ultimately niche for now and any near future, and it was a mistake to make this an area of focus to begin with. Apple magic goes hand in hand with mass appeal. 

Bill Gates wrote a book in 1995 that described his vision for future tech, and in it he described what he called at the time, a "pocket computer". I read the book sometime around 2014, so it was well after smart phones came to fruition, but it was really interesting to see how spot on some of the predictions from Gates were back then. More interesting perhaps, is that Gates had such a clear vision for the future that Microsoft let go to Apple under Balmer despite clear insight that an iphone like device was inevitable. I mention this because back then, there was a clear path to the future of computing. Smaller, better, faster. Now, I'm not sure what comes next for a company like Apple. When the hardware is already so perfected, the only thing left to do is real science. That has never been Apple's focus. Yes, they make some great chips today, but they also typically have a process node advantage from their deep pockets so it's not exactly an even comparison on the engineering side. 

Quote

A group of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) have created the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene, a development that could lead to advanced electronic devices and quantum computing applications.

 

Seen as the building block of electronic devices, semiconductors are essential for communications, computing, healthcare, military systems, transportation and countless other applications.

 

Semiconductors are typically made from silicon, a material that revolutionised the electronics industry and ushered in the digital age. Purified silicon is used in devices such as computer chips, transistors, integrated circuits and liquid crystal displays.

 

Its highly stable atomic structure means it has the conductive properties of metal as well as being an insulator, so silicon can both conduct and block electricity. This characteristic allows semiconductors to switch on and off.

https://www.gasworld.com/story/georgia-tech-group-create-worlds-first-graphene-based-semiconductor/2138021.article/

Is it finally coming the fruition? Perhaps. 

17 hours ago, neurotix said:

Hey @UltraMegacan you please post a link for me to the controller thing you have for Smartphone gaming? I'm thinking of getting one for my brother for his birthday.

 

Also, considering I know virtually nothing about emulation on Smartphones, what's the best PSX emu and best SNES emu? Hopefully ones that are free and adless.

 

Thanks buddy.

Just search for the Razor Kishi. 

Quote

We heard over the weekend that the Vision Pro headset Apple spent eight years and billions of dollars developing was rapidly losing steam in terms of both interest and sales.
 

After between 160,000 and 180,000 devices were sold in pre-orders across a weekend in January ahead of the official launch, reports claimed Apple Stores were now selling just a handful of units per week. In-store demo bookings were right down, too, and many of those who do book often don't turn up.
 

Now, famed Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has echoed those reports. He writes that Cupertino has cut its Vision Pro shipments to 400,000 to 450,000 units, around half the 800,000 units that were originally planned, due to waning demand.
 

Kuo adds that Apple cut the orders ahead of the Vision Pro launching in markets outside of the US, the only location it's currently available. This indicates that demand in the United States has fallen sharply beyond expectations, according to the analyst, and that Apple expects similar cool demand in other regions.

Apple slashes Vision Pro production, might cancel 2025 model in response to plummeting demand | TechSpot

IMO, Apple needs a new CEO. One that is in touch with developing technology vs trying to perfect ideas from ten years ago. The Apple magic is gone. We're all waiting for Apple to come out with a really great AI to revitalize the Siri level excitement, but I don't think they are capable. I've been following this stuff a lot, and AI seems to have caught them really off guard, and I suspect they will be playing catchup from now on. While Microsoft is building on demand AI super computers, Apple is still dicking around. 

15 years old, but still feels relevant: 

Utilizes extra RAM if you have 128MB RAM upgrade.

18 minutes ago, iamjanco said:

While I'll admit that I think the tech behind it is fascinating, examples like the rappin' Mona Lisa above seem to substantiate that we are devolving as a species ( it's got electrolytes comes to mind). 

 

Now show me the progress we've made curing cancer using such tech and you might be able to color me impressed  .

That is definitely the most entertaining bit in the research release, but the rest are much more down to earth. Impressive tech. Remind me of Star Trek or Star Wars sifi stuff when they show pictures of people from the past being animated. That always seemed so far-fetched as a kid, but now it's one of the more simple things for AI to do. 

Quote

The Visual Affective Skills Animator, or VASA, is a machine-learning framework that analyzes a facial photo and then animates it to a voice, syncing the lips and mouth movements to the audio. It also simulates facial expressions, head movements, and even unseen body movements.

Like all generative AI, it isn't perfect. Machines still have trouble with fine details like fingers or, in VASA's case, teeth. Paying close attention to the avatar's teeth, one can see that they change sizes and shape, giving them an accordion-like quality. It is relatively subtle and seems to fluctuate depending on the amount of movement going on in the animation.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vasa-1/

On 14/04/2024 at 07:26, Sir Beregond said:

Thanks ChatGPT!

Hey, it's useful for summaries if nothing else. 

• ADLINK’s New GPU: The article discusses ADLINK’s unveiling of a new graphics card featuring Intel’s Arc A380E GPU, designed for basic tasks with a low-profile form factor¹.
• Intel Arc A380E Specs: Intel’s GPU is based on the Alchemist architecture, has eight Xe-cores, 6GB GDDR6 memory, 128 EUs, and is rated at 50W TBP. It includes 128 XMX engines for AI workloads²³.
• EGX-PCIE-A380E Features: ADLINK’s graphics card is compact, single-slot, and supports DirectX 12, Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL 4.6, and OpenCL 3.0. It has a PCIe 4.0 x 8 interface and 4 Mini-DP ports⁴.
• Industrial and Edge AI Use: The card is ideal for industrial IoT workloads and edge AI use cases, leveraging the onboard chip’s AI performance. Pricing and release date are yet to be announced.