[extropy-chat] more moore

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

On Wed, 2004-09-01 at 14:09 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 08:02:21PM +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote:
> 
> > > Current machines are too slow for even current HDTV codecs.
> > 
> > Well, something's encoding them in real time, otherwise there would be
> 
> No, coding/decoding resources are asymmetrical.

I understand.  That's why i mentioned encoding assuming decoding would
be trivial.

>  H.264 realtime HDTV
> encoding in studio can take 100 k$ of hardware (if there is such a thing yet,
> haven't looked), it doesn't matter.

visiblelight seems to think that $325 will do.  And if you don't like
them, there seem to be many other companies offering alternatives.  or
am i missing something big here?

>  What matters is that how much
> hardware I need to replay H.264 off vanilla DVD or broadband video stream at
> the user end, codec's/container's sundry bells and whistles included, of course.
> 
Both end matter i'd think.  Encoding capabilities everywhere would be
nice to have.  Decoding seems to be available without any special
hardware needed.  

> > no live transmission.  Too slow for PC encoding maybe (but only if you
> > don't have a suitable card i assume)
> 
> By the time you can buy a card for H.264 realtime encoding the codec will be
> thoroughly obsolete.

As i mentioned above, it seems you can already do that.

>  Synthesizing fully immersive realtime 3d environments
> for each viewer will be required, then. With current CPU you'd be hard
> pressed to render immersive audio (not even with physical modelling) aspect
> of that. Video? Oooh boy...
>  
Immersive audio has been available for a while (depending on your
definition of the term), mostly brought on by the soundblaster live and
whatever its competitor was at the time (i forget).  What happened i
think is that they realised that noone cared, and few can even tell on
how accurate the modelling is, so why waste cycles, or more importantly,
coding time.  
video is a different story.

> > > Current machines are too slow for even X at speed of Windows XP desktop
> > > . 
> > 
> > This is independent of machine speed (but not independent of setup.  my
> > X runs fine)
> 
> I meant unmodified (no xfce) default Fedora Core 2 Gnome end user reaction
> times. It will take at least an order of magnitude faster CPU to render that
> at XP desktop speed, all other things being equal.
>  

I don't run xfce.  Why the focus on fc2?  If the software's properly
screwed (ie waiting for a timeout somewhere), then no amount of hardware
will help you. Try some others.  My experience with XP has been brief,
but it didn't feel any faster to me than my usual X/gnome running on a
dinky 1 gig duron.

> > > Current machines are too slow for even current crude FPS. (Why do you think
> > > Sony PS3 needs 1000x the speed of PS2 to succeed?)
> > 
> > Current crude FPSs run perfectly fine in current top of the line
> > computers (saw it demonstrated nicely a couple of weeks ago.  i've been
> 
> Haven't checked, I presume you'll drop below 50-60 fps if you enable every
> bell and whistle.
> 
Yes.  Much.  Agreed.  Even disabling bells and whistles in fact.

(Agreed with rest too)