Category Archives: General Computer Stuff

NVIDIA 15 Times Faster?

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I came across a link to this article in the SL Forum: NVIDIA, AMD, Intel Explain How OpenGL Can Unlock 15x Performance Gains. That means if you are getting 20 FPS you should jump to 300 FPS.

The long version is the video and it is way techy:

[youtube -bCeNzgiJ8I]

So, what are they saying? Loosely… They are creating sides of the render process that are not locked together. This means the CPU and GPU are mostly never waiting on each other. As it is now, single note pads (large blocks of memory} are being cleared, being drawn to by a single process to build up images, then used, and erased with the process starting over. Multiple processes need multiple note pads. The next process can’t use the resources until the preceding processes release the resources/note pads. The memory that makes up the note pads has to be moved around. Continue reading →

Flickr 2014 Review

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I joined Flickr in 2009. I made use of Flickr up until March 2010. By that time I had nearly 200 images and that was the limit for a free account. That is almost 4 years ago. A lot has changed. More is changing. Yahoo is changing Flickr faster than people make tutorials for it.

I was way behind on Flickr. I didn’t know how it had changed. Many of you probably already know. For those that don’t here is some news.

Flickr 2014 - Image by: Alexander Kaiser, Flickr

Flickr 2014 – Image by: Alexander Kaiser, Flickr

With Jo Yardley adding a new group named Second Life is Looking Good I wanted to add it to my collection of contacts and groups. Wile I haven’t been adding photos I have been looking at what others post and I use it as a source of Creative Commons images I can use in my blog. I think I have some interesting images to add and wondered what it was going to cost me to with a Pro account. They don’t have ‘Pro’ accounts any more. Continue reading →

Instagram

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Instagram Permissions

Instagram Permissions

This is reportedly the fastest growing social app out there. On the Google Play Store it is described as: Share your photos and videos with friends and followers in a photo feed, or send posts directly to your friends.  Instagram is the clear leader in photos and video captured with mobile devices. There is more to it. But, that is the basic idea. It is a free service. Or is it?

Do you remember those apps that used to say free, just give us your email address? If you did, you suddenly found yourself inundated with email spam. How does Instagram pay for the servers and bandwidth to handle 150 million plus users? Why are the Facebook owners willing to pay US$1 billion to buy a company run by a dozen or so employees? (Reference)

For that matter how does Facebook make its money? There is the on-site advertising. Those ads along the right side of the page. Google does something similar. I have Google Ads on this site. They pay for the web site and most of my Internet connection cost. But, is Facebook/Instagram going to make $500+ million per year and up just displaying page ads?

In 2011 85% of their money came from selling advertising. 15% came from ‘payments’. (Reference) Some portion of those ‘payments’ come from phone service providers. AT&T and Verizon need something for you to burn up those data plans. But, how much money is there in those channels? Continue reading →

Oculus Rift Update 2014-2

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It seems there is a new prototype of the Rift out. I saw the notice on Facebook. It leads to an article about the new features. See: Oculus unveils new Rift prototype. Also, see Engadget’s: Oculus Rift’s latest prototype.

The New Crystal Cover - Oculus Rift Prototype

The New Crystal Cover – Oculus Rift Prototype

In the picture you’ll notice a Kinect-like position tracking device camera. Not noticeable in the pictures is the change in the display ‘screen’. They have changed over to an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display for less persistence to reduce motion blur.  Continue reading →

Second and Real Life Tidbits 2014

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It is early in the year and not much is happening at Linden Lab. I see the SL-blogosphere covering all sorts of things. Even the Subscrib-O-matic’s seem to be sending out old stuff. So, I’m skimming news and watching for anything interesting in between playing with Blender and Avastar. A few of the things I think are interesting:

Inara has a post up about Profile feeds direct messaging: Lab confirms “turned off”. If you have used the web site My.SecondLife.com  to send IM’s, you won’t be able to do that anymore. Peter Gray of Linden Lab confirmed to Inara the feature has been turned off due to spammers.

Honour Mcmillan has posted and article asking for volunteers to help with her primary focus in of creating and growing a corps of LEA Volunteers. For details and the type of volunteers needed see: Calling for Volunteers in Second Life.  Continue reading →

Oculus Rift in the News

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There is nothing really new in the UK paper The Telegraph, but that the article appears in the Telegraph is interesting. It is a good article for the non-techies of the world well explaining why this is such an important step forward in computer technology.

 

Oculus Rift

Oculus Rift

Check out Tim Martins article: The Oculus Rift: virtual reality is no longer a joke.

One of the interesting points in the article is how game development is driving military technology. They point out that many military research budgets are nothing when compared to some the research budgets for game technology. Continue reading →