Slaughtahouse

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora 1440p, Ultra I pushed myself through a couple missions and discovered a few interesting areas in the Upper Plains. Not as bad as I originally thought. Found a unique area which seems to highlight a gorge, with all the stones smoothed off, washed, and rounded edges from a former river or body of moving water. It opens up the main plot again and provides something a bit more unique to the area. That being said, after I completed a couple missions (I'm on 18 out of 31 for the main campaign), I headed back to the main region to do some side quests and freshen up my perspective. Enjoying the game a bit more again. I was playing on my monitor (1440p) the past couple days so screenshots are lower res, but I disabled upscaling (it's native w. TAA). Most of the screenshots below are just "screenshots" by pressing F12, not photomode. I also tried making a couple videos using the built-in video recorder from AMD. I've never done this before so if looks like crap, my bad. I don't think the bitrate was high enough. First video is flying from the planes to hometree (main base in the jungle). Second video is a quest in the jungle where you need to transport a large moth. I failed it because I stressed out the moth too much by taking too much time, exposing it to too much "stress". Explorer mode is enabled so I have really have to find the location, which is part of the fun (for me). P.S. If this is too much Avatar, please tell me to stop P.S.S. I hope you enjoy looking at grass.

Nothing wrong with simpleton. I used to drink preground filter coffee. When I worked it the UK, I was at a small Architectural practice / studio and we always had a kettle of tea and a french press for black coffee. Now axle grease… that’s crossing the line XD. On topic, after the post today, I went to a local shop and grabbed some new beans. Im working through a so-so batch of “espresso blend” I got from my butcher earlier this week but hope to try this batch called Scuro next week. Note to future self: don’t buy beans from the butcher. Tastes like butcher paper.

For sure I tried to use a fair scheme based on general rules of thumb. Not necessarily moores law but that relative performance should improve by 30-50%+ per the same $ spent on the previous gen. It’s just getting out of hand… Rant incoming: Banks are still keeping interest rates high in an effort to drain bank accounts / kill the total amount of jobs available on the market (demand) so at some point, we must hit a breaking point. I just can’t understand how consumers can keep spending this much on GPU hardware. It’s not just the high end SKUs, it’s the entire stack. Here in Canada, everyone who signed a mortgage when the rates bottomed out in 2020/2021 will need to renew their mortgage (max 5 year term) at a new rate. So 2025/2026 should be fun. Either rates come down or people will continue to lose their homes. Something could be said about taking a mortgage higher than you can sustain in that market when rates were stupidly low but banks here are federally controlled and they’re fairly risk averse. Yet some people took a variable rate when rates were good so IDK… Not sure how it exactly works in the US but my understanding is that your rate is locked in for the entire term (25 etc.). So unless you need to sell your house for whatever other external factor (lose a job, having a child, moving closer to another school / employer etc.) you’re locked in. /end rant Anyway, I know that doesn’t justify these prices from Nvidia but when EVERYTHING is getting more expensive, which didn’t happen in the 2008 financial crisis, I just can’t believe this model will be sustainable considering current market conditions. However, it doesn’t help AMD isn’t expected to compete in the high end this year either with RDNA4 so who knows. Nvidia pulling in record revenue and profits because “AI” but I suspect companies will only invest so much into AI before they slow down their spend and impact Nvidia’s bottom line. Maybe that will help the gaming segment but no idea when that bubble will burst or if it even will. Bleak times ahead…

It’s not too complex but I tried to provide more context. In that regard, the post may be too confusing Ultimately, darker bean = more resistance = coarser grind to compensate. Lighter bean = less resistance = finer grind to compensate. Still learning but it’s definitely fun and if you’re into coffee, highly recommend going prosumer. Whilst I don’t drink tea* nearly as often, it’s winter and both my wife and I have been in and out of colds / sicknesses. We’ve been drinking a lot of tea recently. My wife’s family is Polish and tea is fairly popular there. The mother-in-law sent some tea leaves in a parcel a couple months ago. We’re drinking a baked apple black tea and it’s pretty delicious. Honey and lemon for a bit of acid and sweetness and it holds up well. Pieczone = baked, jabiuszka = apple.

Follow up on the ol' coffee journey. Approx. 5 months with the switch from Delonghi Dedica Espresso machine/ Bodum Grinder to Rocket Appartmento espresso machine and Eureka Mignon Facile grinder. 1. Fancier espresso machine simply won't work with a standard grinder. Found out the hard way. Grinds are too coarse and espresso / water will just splash out of the portafilter. I really didn't want to spend more on a grinder and I thought it was the beans or the tamping pressure but no matter how hard I tried with the Bodum grinder, I couldn't get a good cup. I learned that you need to approx. brew coffee for about 25 seconds and when it's too coarse, you'll get too much water and less extraction. Now with a proper grinder (flat burr), you can not only fine tune it and you really need to tune it per every bean type. I'm not a specialist by any means but darker the roast, the more oil or simply resistance there is when pulling, so you generally need to step back the grind and make it coarser. Otherwise, coffee will drip out. Maybe you can wait 3mns for an espresso to pull but I am not sure if it will be good if the grinds are exposed to that heat for so long. Some people weigh their grinds and I believe the reco is 12grams for a single shot and 18g for a double shot. Whilst that is likely true, and I started to weigh grinds at the beginning manually, I've made approx. 3 (2-4) coffees per day X 5 months? So at least 400 coffees and you get a good feel how much grinds need to be in the portafilter for it to pull nicely without weighing it. Some fancier grinders have timers so once you know how long it takes to grind with that bean at said setting, it's consistant. My grinder doesn't have a timer or scale so it's all manual, which is fine For this grinder, it goes from 1 to 6 but between each number there are approx. 10-15 steps? Lower the number, finer the grind. I usually keep it at the edge of 3 and 4 mark but if I change bean roast, I will need to adjust a few steps. I've never reached the number "4" or gone below "3" for context. The TL;DR is you will need a better grinder to operate with a prosumer espresso machine. 2. Beans matter. A lot. I used to prefer light to medium roasts with the Delonghi / bodum combo. I found I got more fruity notes and aromatics vs. dark roasts which usually tasted like just rough, diner coffee. Not necessarily bad but no interesting notes. Complete opposite on the Rocket Appartmento. Maybe due to the lack of oil in the bean, you have to grind a lighter roast super fine to get it to pour nicely and even when you do, you don't get a lot of flavour. I found the cheaper setup just as good, if not better for light roasts. Dark or Medium / Dark are now my favourite roasts by a wide margin. Darker roasts taste smokey, in a good way. Like a peated / islay single malt whiskey. With more oil on the bean, there is a bit more resistance so you need to readjust the grinder to be slightly more coarse. A good pull usually starts out by pulling like oil. The liquid is viscous and sticks together. I usually can tell quickly if the pull will be crap if I see espresso splashing allover the inside of the cup. Example of a good pull: If you let it go too long (after 30 seconds), it starts to get oddly, and not in a good way, sweet. If you don't brew long enough (20 seconds or less) its usually bitter. So 25 seconds is always my target but the grind / tamping / weight determines the flow. 3. Milk frothing is fairly straight forward. Just goes incredibly fast with this machine. In a small milk frothing jug, it takes about 4-5 seconds to get cappuccino consistent milk (micro bubbles only). Where it pours out silky. If you go too long, bubbles get bigger and it will start to boil. I haven't tried making a latte (too much milk for me) but I imagine it would take more milk and more time. I'm not good at making proper latte art but I usually just pour in about half the milk quickly with the cup tilted to intergrade the milk and coffee together, then tilt the coffee cup back to a level state and try to pour and jiggle the jug to get some pattern. I wouldn't say its that difficult, it's just difficult to be consistent. My wife is happy with my "art" at its current level so I'm content. Examples: If you have any questions, shoot

Wow Zork sounds awesome. Btw, I love those axo section cut, drafted view in that last map.

Took some extra days off to extend holidays. I tried to make pork belly for the first time today. The dish, not sure if authentic, is Banh Mi. A Vietnamese style street food sandwich. I follow the recipe here (as I normally do) but subbed out making a fresh bun by grabbing a portuguese style bun from a local bakery and I did a different pickled veg option (only carrots). https://www.brianlagerstrom.com/recipes/bahn-mi-with-crispy-baguette Turned out better than I expected. Highly recommend giving it a go. Pork Belly was about 4 USD a Lb.

I mean… I think their gameplay did the exact opposite… no? Even going into Starfield, I didn’t expect innovative gameplay. I expected a more fleshed out universe, in space, with typical Bethesda gameplay. For better or worse, that’s what we got. Same RPG systems, same movement, same loading screens, same plot / intro tropes. I like Starfield and don’t want to rag on it for the sake of it but winning the most innovative gameplay award for 2023? What!? Was the community smoking crack? In 2023, I played a variety of very high quality games. One of which was Cocoon, a game where the gameplay is unlike any other game. You carry orbs which are both explorable worlds and puzzle pieces. For all its complexity, it does so with only one button / input. Which I thought was the best part. Not even a nomination. Yikes

Maybe I am misunderstanding the entire discussion here but my understanding is that Steam will still run on Windows 7. It just won’t receive security updates and support. If you’re a retro enthusiast, I don’t think it matters if you have the latest and greatest version of Steam. Games and Steam will still operate. I think it’s very reasonable to drop support given Microsoft already dropped support a year ago.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora 4K, Ultra (HDR) I took a break between 24th to New years but started to play again last night. Overall, I am still enjoying the game but at the 30hr mark (~50% completion), fatigue is unfortunately settling in. The game is still fun to play but the second region (planes), which I've spent a good 10hrs in now, is not as good as the first region (jungle). Less environment to traverse and take advantage of the good first person climbing and jumping. However, since it is so taxing, I've adjusted the FSR2 scaling from quality (67% reso) to balanced (58%) to avoid dropping below 40 fps and out of the VRR window of my TV. The direhorse, while still fun and novel, is just an inferior and slower mount than your Ikran (flying banshee). I haven't seen or found a quest where it's needed nor does it have any unique abilities, compared to the Ikran, which I'll expand upon later. I feel like I am losing track of the main quest as missions begin to repeat and fall into the Ubisoft formula. It's unfortunate because this was shaping up to be one of my favourite surprise games of the year. For context, I destroyed what must be about 15 bases. I went back to the main board which tracks pollution across Pandora and it's at 17% clear. What? Unless the mechabases (large super ones tied to main quests) accommodate for at least 50% of the total pollution, there is no way I have the mental capacity to do anymore by choice / freewill. It feels like these extra regions could have been DLC but for the stories sake (you need to tie all the regions together) it makes sense. What I am enjoying more than when I initially started playing are the RPG skills. I originally thought they were lacking but I've obtained some new and interesting ones, like performing strikes, screeches, and wind gusts with my Ikran to attack or confuse enemies. Stealth ones started to stack nicely and playing on hard, you really need to use them as you die very, very quickly. Not ARMA level difficult but a few consecutive rounds (5-10) or a grenade and you're dead. I've put all my points into Stealth and Riding skills, Memories of the Hunter and Rider trees. The other trees are Vitality (health), Warrior (Attack / strength), and Maker (foraging / crafting.) I also discovered there are two states of a base after you clear it out. The first, wild life enters and some foliage appears. The second (after time passes), its fully covered in nature, moss, weeds, vines etc. So I'd revise my initial impression of the bases. They're fun and fit within the theme, but just too many overall. Last note, not sure if a bug for me exclusively but in the photo mode, most of my foliage disappears or becomes fuzzy when the image is written to my drive. I only discovered this in the planes region because the quantity of foliage (grass) is insane. See example below. This area was so visually impressive but the photo lost about half the detail. If you zoom in, you will see half the foliage is there, but about 75% transparent. Anyway, I still recommend the game but unless you are an Avatar fan (like me), wait for a sale. I will try to wrap it up ASAP so I can scratch this one off my list and move to Alan Wake 2

Applying critical thinking to these discussions is sometimes not possible when speaking about Nvidia cards and pricing. I also believe there is nothing wrong with a good solid rant I feel that Nvidia rolled out of the Crypto bed and woke up in the AI bed and unfortunately, is extending all of this pain to consumers personally. The 4060 Ti and 4060 were absolutely ridiculous poor cards. I had my 3060 Ti in 2020 and I paid 400$ for it. For Nvidia to come out with a updated model that performs nearly identical across all resolutions and worse at 4K was absolutely insane. Then the grift tax by slapping on 16gb onto a 192-bit card for $500 to convince misinformed consumers that extra VRAM will solve their problem shows Nvidia's true colours once again. Their marketing department is absolutely on top of their game right now... I went AMD for the first time and I am generally happy about it but it doesn't bring me "joy" to spend 1,000 USD on a 7900 XTX. More and more RT titles will be coming out and unless AMD solves the problem, that gap will widen immensely with the next gen. I fully foresee going back to Nvidia but it really comes down to price and value for me. I would hope for Blackwell we see... 5090 with +24gb VRAM with 30-60% perf> 4090 -> $1,000 to $1,200 5080 with +20gb VRAM with 10-15% perf improvement over 4090 -> $700 5070 with 16gb VRAM between 4080 to 4090 level performance -> $500 5060 with 12gb VRAM and 4070 to 4070 Ti performance -> $300 For all the other milking SKUs (Ti / Supers) they can add their 3-7% performance uplift for whatever scalping price they want but those should be the approx perf. and vram per segment at launch, if Blackwell does release this fall / winter. Anything less in performance or more in cost will be seriously questionable.

I am a bit surprised about Solidworks being so poor on AMD from your experience. It wasn't that long ago (10 years ago?) that AMD was much more affordable and simply worked very well for Solidworks. I think at the time they had better OpenGL perf vs. competing Nvidia cards but I could be wrong. That said, I've seen the same stranglehold from Nvidia in the professional / visualization market on the hardware side. HP, Lenovo, Dell (the big 3) that basically own the OEM market for workstations typically pair with Nvidia. Google the Z, P, or Precision stations for context. I don't even recall I've ever seen a workstation come from one of them with AMD out of the box in a long time or why a business would opt for AMD specifically. Anyway, the OEM market is fairly small these days in comparison to Data center / Enterprise and now smaller, Gaming market. Intel and AMD need to compete there, otherwise, Nvidia will continue to stronghold the entire market and you'll continue to see their dominance across the board. I've always figured that going to a lower bus, whilst suffering bandwidth performance, was a win for power consumption. I know this generation (Ada) was a poor example but discussing bus width without full context of the features of the card, like cache, is technically jumping the gun. Even if its a clear red flag to use power users. Yes, it's not a good sign for memory intensive applications, especially gaming at larger resolutions, but who knows. My gut and probably everyone else here too is that Nvidia will trim on the hardware to maximize profit per SKU and rely more on their "AI" solutions and other technologies that they've already invested heavily into to mislead convince consumers about their superior performance. We're a vocal minority unfortunately. If most consumers are OK with upscaled resolutions to unlock other features (ray tracing), I suspect this trend to continue. Why increase power consumption (poor marketing), chase resolution, and offer better bandwidth when "4K gaming" is technically OK on a 192-bit bus with 4K output at DLSS performance (1080p render) or Quality (1440p render)? Nvidia knows those are the features people pay for. DLSS, Raytracing. That's why it's in big shiny letters on the box. Either way, get ready for more 3-4x more perf that Ampere and Ada charts...

If they come up with simply the same formula in a more fleshed out region, Elder Scrolls 6 should be just as good as any other past Bethesda game. My fear is not the game being good, rather that they will excuse basic quality of life features that any game in the past 5 years supports. FoV slider missing from Starfield and a major update allowing players to “eat food” without going into the menu was a joke.

I agree with a lot of those points but I have still found my time in the game more interesting when exploring space. Even if it’s not as good as it should or could have been, I have still enjoyed the small side quests I have found. Not the random encounters when you warp to a planet but the side quests that drive you to land at a random base or station. I believe those are hand crafted quests and they’ve been fun. I really can’t follow the main quest but Ill give it another go soon. Edit: And I’ll remind others here to try the UC faction quests. I have not completed it yet so it could dissolve into nothing but so far, those quests have been the most interesting (to me) and I personally enjoyed the Alien (film) references.

Ghostrunner is free on EGS today. Go git before the year ends!

I didn’t watch the video but I mean that’s how we all felt here (referring to your Skyrim friend). I admit, I am a huge sucker for Bethesda games. They got me hooked since that day I walked into a Zellers (Canadian Target) and discovered Oblivion. That was my first console RPG and I only picked it up because A) I got a 360 on launch and I need another game besides Perfect Dark Zero and B) the screenshots on the back resembled Lord of the Rings. Starfield is still a good game but… it lacks “the world” that ties it all together in my opinion. I recall vividly exploring Cyrodiil, Skyrim, Washington D.C, etc. In Starfield, the key planets that have cities feel like nothing but the cities. All other planets are empty, and largely that is OK but it just doesn’t work as well as it should. Im sure this premise of game could be done but for Bethesda to apply their typical formula, it just doesn’t hold up when, as you mentioned worlds are procedurally generated and well, disconnected. I played it for most of September and I do intend on finishing it, at least the UC faction quest line, but it didnt have the hooks in me (the world) to stick through it in one long marathon. More on topic, one of the reasons it’s getting reviewed bombed is because back in November, Bethesda decided to respond to Steam reviews. Their responses by and large were trying to convince the authors that they didn’t understand that experience of exploring empty planets. Not sure why they decided to shoot themselves in the foot when the average daily count was already so low. Mix that with their philosophy to avoid frequent and signifiant patches, accessibility options, and rely on mods… I think it just pushed the community over the edge. Again, it’s a good game, but it could of been great. Sad to see them try and innovate yet feel so dated at the same time.

Crap, forgot about one more! Prime (Amazon) is also giving away games. Most seem like small or unknown indie but Deathloop is tucked away in there. Just note that Prime seems to have their own DRM / store front now for some games(Amazon Game Store). Sometimes, the games are DRM free (E.g., I have RCT 2 DRM free like GoG) or alternatively, they’re tied to an existing platform like Steam. Deathloop is for Epic Game Store. Prime Gaming GAMING.AMAZON.COM Prime Gaming Home Page

Just a friendly reminder that Epic Game Store is doing their annual free game giveaways. Yesterday Ghostwire: Tokyo, today and tomorrow it’s The Outer Worlds: Spacers Choice (edition with all DLC expansions). Just a moment... STORE.EPICGAMES.COM

Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays everyone

Are you using the correct Polaris drivers for your setup? https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-23-11-1-polaris-vega It's been a different branch for the past few months.

Thanks for sharing! Nice project and glad you brought some joy to your client Honestly, I’ve seen more and more arcades here (Toronto) pop up for adults where they have vintage machines and newer stuff like sims whilst serving cocktails and such. E.g., https://tilttoronto.com/ I’d be surprised there aren’t any in the UK. I was at an arcade recently for an event and got to play Godzilla with a cocktail in the cupholder. It was great and just getting my hands on the tactile buttons again with all the crazy sound effects was great!

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora 4K, Ultra (HDR) I don't want to spoil the Ikran sequence (build up to get to it) but once you bond with it, the game really opens up. Approx. 20hrs in, I made it to the next region (Upper Plains) where you can ride the direhorse. Upper Plains are super taxing on the GPU. Where I normally get 60-70fps with my settings, closer to 50fps. All that grass...

2023-12-22 - Holiday Sales (Round 3) A friendly reminder that the Steam Winter Sale is now live Welcome to Steam STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM The Steam Winter Sale is on now — find great deals on thousands of games! Plus vote for the best games of 2023 in the Steam Awards and earn free stickers.

Yes I linked it at the bottom of the OP. I will try to contact the ISP today. There sees to be conflicting info where the OP there still has an issue (to my knowledge) whilst another user successfully resolved it by replacing their modem / router (HH 3000). Update: Contacted ISP, they will send a new modem. I’ll follow up if issue still persists.