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[#] Sun Mar 06 2022 21:18:51 UTC from Nurb432

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Conceptually I think VR/AR will survive the long haul. But it wont be an everyday thing for the masses like its being marketed as now.  It has, and will remain, a niche.  Is that a dud? 

Sun Mar 06 2022 02:50:08 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar

And that's why I think VR will be a dud: because the same people who have been wrong for decades say that it will be the next big thing.

 



[#] Mon Mar 07 2022 15:17:33 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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Right, that's what I meant; it'll be interesting for video games and simulations but it won't become the thing you're attached to all day like your smartphone.

[#] Mon Mar 07 2022 23:21:23 UTC from LoanShark

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Likewise, if VR replaces the Web as the standard interface with which

people communicate to and on a computer, we'll experience the same
transition again.
I don't think it's going to happen, and here's why:

but don't you believe in THE METAVERSE?

[#] Mon Mar 07 2022 23:22:56 UTC from LoanShark

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2022-03-06 14:50 from IGnatius T Foobar
We used to have the framework in place to do that, as you might
remember.

Well, I didn't remember, but now that you mention it maybe I have a slight tickle in my brain.

Door games can of course be hosted in a javascript based terminal widget on the web, if somebody had sufficient time to implement it. (I don't, so I'm just armchairing here.)

[#] Tue Mar 08 2022 22:05:00 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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Yes, and door games can also be hosted in a VR world where you interact with a perfect replica of a real VT-100 green screen, or maybe even an ASR-33 paper teletype.

I suppose I always thought door games were out of place, that a BBS and a game were among the things you could do on a hosted system, rather than one acting as a container for the other. If I wanted to run some retro text games I would certainly provide both terminal and web-terminal access to them. I wouldn't put them *in* the BBS.

And no, I don't believe in THE METAVERSE any more than I believed in THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY. Something will come out of the technology but it won't be what they're currently envisioning. Mark Zuckerberg isn't any more visionary than Al Gore.

[#] Wed Mar 09 2022 03:45:32 UTC from test2

Subject: Hotter than reality by FAR

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Felicia, 15 years ago.

 

 



[#] Wed Mar 09 2022 06:09:13 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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I sat down to add a few dozen car mods to my driving simulator, Assetto Corsa... 

6 hours ago. I've since driven, in real time, far enough that I would be in San Diego if I had done it in a real car. Of course, there were some fatal crashes in there. 

You're wrong on this one, Ig. It is already ramping up. 

It actually *is* the cyberpunk vision of the future everyone was writing about in the 80s... it is *largely* already realized. It may actually be the singularity. Certainly a primitive form of it - but if it is *this* good in its 8 bit stage... 

Once they've developed it as far as PCs came along from 8 bit to 64 bit... it is going to be... a societal paradigm shift. 

I played pool with a guy in China. I played a whole round of mini-putt golf with a furry in Michigan and another tourist from somewhere else in the country. 

It has the potential to develop the kind of "esperanto" language that was used in Blade Runner, because it brings people from all kinds of different cultures together, all over the world and dumps them in the same virtual landscape. Forums don't do that, the web doesn't do that... Actually... I can see the potential for virtual "babelfish" that translate languages on the fly much the same way Google will translate a webpage. 

The barrier right now is the high cost of entry. It is much the same place where PCs were when Apple, Tandy, and IBM were the only game in town. Oculus is bringing the C-64 era of VR around. 

On those casual games - that is what revitalized Nintendo, with the Wii. They had been 3rd place behind Sony and Microsoft forever - and now they're the dominant console in gaming with the Switch, preceded by the Wii U and the Wii. But it was the pack in and the WiiMotes that made that sell... and when you hit VRChat - it has a very Wii Sports feel, down to the music. The games... aren't quite as polished as Wii Sports games - not yet... but they're getting there. 

Do you still game? Like... as a hardcore gamer? Did you get Fallout IV, Fallout III, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, all of the GTA franchises? Have you at least played all the others? Did you ever get to the level of playing HARD on at least the first few levels of songs on Guitar Hero and Rock Band? I'm not a super hardcore gamer - but I suppose for my age I'm pretty damn active in gaming.  I know a guy about 10 years younger than me who spends entire evenings, frequently, playing MMORPGs. 

If you AREN'T... you can't possibly know why you're wrong. If you *are* - you just haven't exposed to the mind blowing title that will make you buy in - but it'll come, and once you see it, it'll be like every other time someone introduced you to some new game you had dismissed. You'll go home, lay in bed that night, seeing the game in your mind, feeling it - and knowing you *want* it... that you won't be content just going and playing it at someone else's house. 

That is going to happen, and keep happening, until VR headsets are as ubiquitous as cell phones. Speaking of which, I knew that the iPhone was going to be a hit when a friend let me play Super Monkey Ball on it - and every time, I got just a little bit further, and I resented giving it back, because I wanted to play MORE... and I knew that it meant lots of other people were *going* to buy iPhones for that very same reason. I resisted - and eventually those titles came to Android for the most part... but the point remains - some technology has hooks. VR is one of those technologies. 

We had a game night a couple of months ago, and invited over a bunch of "track" people to sit down and play Assetto Corsa. We were all trading off, and then the one dude's wife sat down... and she played and wouldn't stop and the rest of us all got to drinking and just... she was so into it we couldn't break her loose. When she came back... she had to go out for air... she had overdone it. Like a person introduced to *blow* for their first time, or some other narcotic or intoxicant - who overdoes it immediately. I've *never* seen this happen with technology before. It is *powerful* stuff. 

Mostly... it creates SUPER strong dopamine hits - especially with the right title matched to the right person. Racing simulators, sports simulators, flying simulators, music and rhythm games, agility and dexterity games, puzzle games - open world sandbox exploration, FRPs, FPSers, Multiplayer... sex simulators... 

Whatever it is you get your dopamine rush from in gaming - VR is like freebasing it. 

Headsets are going to get lighter, higher resolution, and cheaper. Full body tracking and haptic feedback is going to get better... someone will figure out how to fix it so you experience movement while stationary. 30 years from now - it'll be the primary interface for personal computing. The only thing that could be better is some sort of wetbrain technology where we tap right into the cerebral cortex and make you HALLUCINATE the experience - basically digital lucid dreaming. But, if we get there - that is just VR without the goggles. 

 




Sun Mar 06 2022 14:50:08 EST from IGnatius T Foobar


And that's why I think VR will be a dud: because the same people who have been wrong for decades say that it will be the next big thing.

 



[#] Sun Mar 13 2022 14:52:30 UTC from darknetuser

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I suppose I always thought door games were out of place, that a BBS
and a game were among the things you could do on a hosted system,
rather than one acting as a container for the other. If I wanted to
run some retro text games I would certainly provide both terminal and

web-terminal access to them. I wouldn't put them *in* the BBS.

I don't think games are out of place in a BBS, but if I wanted to serve games I would rather set a speciallized game terminal rather than a BBS with some games in it.

[#] Sun Mar 13 2022 15:44:27 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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I think it is a nostalgia thing for some of us. There *was* no Internet back then. Each online site was its own little independent walled garden that you dialed into. Games were actually disruptive for Citadel BBSes, because most of them were single line affairs, and people would call in for the games, not make any text posts, and tie up the BBS, cutting down the amount of text traffic and conversation. But they did generate a lot of traffic in call volume. 


So, the games are, like all the other retro-experiences - more about re-experiencing a moment in time. I think that the idea of having an option to load a specialized game terminal from within the Citadel BBS would be fine - feeding those games through a browser running a telnet-like browser-based front end that would serve up those classic experiences. 

It isn't really any different than Facebook being a portal for marketplaces, groups, and games as well as a timeline where people converse. 

Honestly, I think those of us most interested at this point are too small of a niche audience - especially the games we are interested in. If we wanted graphically powerful mini-games - Facebook and a billion other places serve them up. We want Tradewars and Rogue and other text based games - and - we would only want them for a minute. 

 

Sun Mar 13 2022 10:52:30 EDT from darknetuser
I suppose I always thought door games were out of place, that a BBS
and a game were among the things you could do on a hosted system,
rather than one acting as a container for the other. If I wanted to
run some retro text games I would certainly provide both terminal and

web-terminal access to them. I wouldn't put them *in* the BBS.

I don't think games are out of place in a BBS, but if I wanted to serve games I would rather set a speciallized game terminal rather than a BBS with some games in it.

 



[#] Sun Mar 13 2022 15:57:12 UTC from Nurb432

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Doesn't archive.org do that? 

Sun Mar 13 2022 11:44:27 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

feeding those games through a browser running a telnet-like browser-based front end that would serve up those classic experiences. 

 

 



[#] Sun Mar 13 2022 17:18:30 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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To some extent, yes. 

There are numerous ways to get your "Tradewars" fix through a modern browser. 


It is kind of like how no matter how good emulation is - people want the original hardware and experience. Unless I can hit .G D and get a menu that says <T>radewars 2000 on my Citadel, and know that the game is running on local storage on that same server (or one owned by the same person, if there is a redirect)... it doesn't feel quite the same. 

It is intangible and very subjective. 


Sun Mar 13 2022 11:57:12 EDT from Nurb432

Doesn't archive.org do that? 

Sun Mar 13 2022 11:44:27 AM EDT from ParanoidDelusions

feeding those games through a browser running a telnet-like browser-based front end that would serve up those classic experiences. 

 

 



 



[#] Sun Mar 13 2022 22:01:34 UTC from Nurb432

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As you know i'm against emulation too, just isn't the same as real hardware  :)  ( and im still torn about FPGA, yes, its lower level than pure software emulation, but is still not the same silicon as real )

But all that said, if it was an online game,. not sure it matters that its emulated in a different way on the back end or not.. it still is the same on 'your' side. 



[#] Tue Mar 15 2022 16:53:17 UTC from LoanShark

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2022-03-08 17:05 from IGnatius T Foobar
Yes, and door games can also be hosted in a VR world where you interact

with a perfect replica of a real VT-100 green screen, or maybe even an

ASR-33 paper teletype.

That's just the Unixy worldview. In MS-DOS, the thing that answered the modem was the BBS. Under Unix, it was `getty`

[#] Tue Mar 15 2022 17:11:11 UTC from LoanShark

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Currently playing through Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, which had been gathering dust since I bought my Ryzen 3xxxx back in 2019 or so.

Nice virtual world, interesting (and weird) story concept, and a good balance of difficulty. Although I played through Shadow of Mordor all the way, it was my first dip into the "parkour game" genre unless you count Mario Brothers, and I was dubious about the genre. I'm more of an RPG guy.

Valhalla has put those doubts to rest, largely because the combat mechanics are tolerable, not too much emphasis on crazy parkour challenges (although those are definitely in there) or the insane levels of combat adversity you get in games like Grand Theft Auto. You can generally scale your level of difficulty by choosing your power level vs the recommended power for a particular quest. There's an emphasis on exploration and mild puzzle-solving, but not so much that I need internet spoilers all the time. There's a few optional mini-games. If they're annoying, just skip 'em.

I'm often not a controller guy--I need to use mouse and keyboard for shooting-intensive games like Doom or even Cyberpunk. But Valhalla plays well on a controller, which is nice because it means I get to enjoy it on the TV from my recliner.

So, big thumbs up to that.

On the other hand, I wanted to like RE7, but the difficulty and the non-obvious nature of the challenges turned out to be infuriating. So that's been gathering dust after I completed just the first few levels only with heavy help from internet spoilers. Worst of all is that it has so much emphasis on that dark haunted house motif that it cries out to be played on a proper OLED TV, and looks badly washed out on my VA panel. But I need mouse and keyboard for this one, so I'm stuck on the VA panel.

[#] Tue Mar 15 2022 17:24:14 UTC from LoanShark

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racing--

I used to be pretty into Gran Turismo back in the PS/PS2 days. Kinda bored with the whole genre though.

I don't have any consoles (other than the PS2), so it's purely PC games for me these days.

GRID Autosport did not play well on an Xbox 360 controller the way GT did on the DualShock. I had a weird way of playing GT - I avoided the analog thumbsticks because they were too imprecise for me, and I would actually use the D-pad and vary the rate that I tapped the left/right buttons.

Recently I bought DIRT 5, which is nice enough. Arcade-style driving mechanics with forgiving dirt surfaces are probably where it's at for me. I'm just not all that interested in racing games, but it might be nice to try to find a sim with modern graphics that I could enjoy the way I used to enjoy Gran Turismo 1 thru 3. Maybe the only remaining option is Forza, but MS keeps discontinuing games in that series. I hadn't heard of

[#] Tue Mar 15 2022 22:47:56 UTC from Nurb432

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Does dodging spring potholes qualify as a game?

 



[#] Tue Mar 15 2022 23:41:33 UTC from LoanShark

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2022-03-15 18:47 from Nurb432
Does dodging spring potholes qualify as a game?

It certainly gets more interesting when your tires are inflated to track pressures... >:-)

[#] Tue Mar 15 2022 23:51:19 UTC from Nurb432

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So bad today in one area several of us just drove thru the grass yard of a business. 

At least i was driving the jeep and not the Fiero, or id have never made it thru the grass or over the potholes. Would have had to figure out how to turn around and go back where i came..

Tue Mar 15 2022 07:41:33 PM EDT from LoanShark
2022-03-15 18:47 from Nurb432
Does dodging spring potholes qualify as a game?

It certainly gets more interesting when your tires are inflated to track pressures... >:-)

 



[#] Sat Mar 19 2022 13:13:40 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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So, I've got probably $30,000 worth of retro hardware. Several accelerated Amiga 500s, pretty much everything short of a Magnavox Odysee 2 going back to many of the earliest Pong variants, an arcade cab... I've got a Vectrex - and a bunch of custom DIY hardware... 

I hardly turn any of it on anymore since getting the MiSTer. It is a misnomer to call it emulation. It is more like a dynamic, non-persistent hardware clone/compatible. A lot of the architecture has been reverse engineered, sometimes by shaving the actual original CPUs in order to examine the physical gate structure of the original circuits. It has no abstraction layers between the native code and the hardware layer - it tends to be cycle accurate and runs subsystems in parallel (something that software emulation struggles with regardless of how much horsepower you run it on. Too many levels of abstraction/translation between native and emulated, and subsystem calls execute sequentially - just REALLY fast...) 

Running an Apple II core on FPGA is more like running a Franklin or Laser 128 than running a software Apple II emulator. 

 



[#] Sat Mar 19 2022 13:29:03 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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On driving games, I've recently gotten very into Assetto Corsa. I built out a rig, driving seat, steering wheel, pedals, manual shifter, and VR kit - for a bit under $4000 that is awesome. Some people seem to really struggle with motion sickness - but if you can cope, it is the best driving experience you can possibly get. You feel the speed. Dropped my lap times on the Nurmburgring in an M4 Competition from about 9:20 to 8:10... which is approaching the real world M4 Comp time on the ring. It is also originally a driving sim - not a game. It is available for PS/2 and Xbox - but the PC version has the most power. Tracks are laser mapped to a mind boggling degree of accuracy, and cars are modeled on a hyper realistic physics model. Official ones, anyhow. What sold me on it was that I was driving, in non VR, and felt the rear end break loose in a corner. I modulated the gas and brakes and steered into a drift, then snapped it back and continued on my way - but I was so caught up in the game I didn't think about it until AFTER the session - and then realized I could feel the weight, could feel the wheels and the throttle and the brakes, so accurately that I was tricked into believing there was 1500 pounds of metal behind me over a rear axle - when - you know, it was just a plaster wall behind the seat. 

This was on Xbox, *before* I got VR. The last time I really felt this much connection with a racing simulator was GT 1 on PS/1 


I love most of Rockstar Games, up to RDR 1. RDR 2 was a lemon for me. Just never caught me with the story. But I've played most of their GTA titles. I am a purist about FRPs. I like overhead, turn based, tile style games that run on the basic idea of an Ultima engine. Wasteland, the original, was an excellent game. Bards Tale type pseudo 3D games with turn based combat can be good. I've played a number of more modern FRPs, mostly the Fallout series - that tend to be more real time, open world. I played The Last of Us, which is sort of a FRP, and Skyrim. 

I prefer these games on console, all of them, because of the consistency of controller mapping defaults. This goes back to our conversations about "People who want to DO the thing, and people who want to perfectly CUSTOMIZE the thing" with Linux/Windows debates. I want to PLAY the game, not spend hours figuring out the perfect controller/keyboard layout personalized to me. Console games tend to be highly playtested to find the BEST AVERAGE controller layout for the mean audience. So they're ready to go out of the box, and you just learn the default button mapping. PC games, because of the wide variety of controllers out there - often have terrible default button layouts and FORCE you to figure out a mapping that works for you. 

I'm playing Alyx Half Life which came for free with my Valve Knuckles VR controllers... and one good thing about VR is it seems to be developing a STANDARD expectation in PC gaming layout and mapping... HTC Vive Wand/Valve Steam Knuckles/Occulus Controllers - that is pretty consistent despite minor design differences... which is making it easier for developers to make default mapping for PC controllers that is consistent and well play tested. That could end up being a huge advantage in PC gaming - making it more console like. 



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