Share your Status / What's on your mind?

[nbohr1more]

5 hours ago, Xolvix said:

I haven't been following this much, but from what I can gather it's mostly been led by a couple of dudes on Linus Tech Tips trying to see how well they can go with running a Linux-only system on their regular gaming machines. It's been a mixed experience with Linus having the most trouble due to how an issue with APT on Pop!_OS caused the installation of Steam to effectively uninstall the desktop environment (https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/11/system76-patches-apt-for-pop-os-to-prevent-users-breaking-their-systems). I believe the experiences of the LTT folks are genuine and not attempting to demonstrate any FUD especially since they've talked positively about Linux in the past. But from the point of view of the end user trying Linux, when things go bad it's easy to just crawl back to Windows because despite its problems it's at least the devil you know.

If anyone else is trying to piggyback on this by pushing anti-Linux FUD then yeah I have a problem with that. But the videos of people's experiences when done in good faith (very important) are useful if only to demonstrate that there are issues and they do factor into people deciding if moving to Linux is worth it.

I think that video shows Linux Mint is reasonably user friendly but they are treating it as if it's an "Experts Only" option.

Sadly that doesn't paint a good picture either.

As much as I like LTT, I am not inclined to believe they are beyond the reach and influence of a multi-billion dollar company...

[Diego]

My building/street has some machines running and they're combining into one ominous low note. It really sounds like I'm inside a thief mission. 

[STiFU]

 

FYI: That 90% for the fist bump actually seems to be legit, according to this paper... ^^

https://safetec.com/blog/hand-hygiene/the-fist-bump-a-more-hygienic-alternative-to-the-handshake/?fbclid=IwAR3PzDEmgVEXJX8uDPR1VLvE5TJkzCeWR1rY_Il6TJx4RPAdLJPn2p76eKI

[Anderson]

8 minutes ago, STiFU said:

 

FYI: That 90% for the fist bump actually seems to be legit, according to this paper... ^^

https://safetec.com/blog/hand-hygiene/the-fist-bump-a-more-hygienic-alternative-to-the-handshake/?fbclid=IwAR3PzDEmgVEXJX8uDPR1VLvE5TJkzCeWR1rY_Il6TJx4RPAdLJPn2p76eKI

Nobody cares unfortunately in my region.

We're all going to get infected anyway because it's in the air. The virus gets in our eyes and we're done. Sisyphic efforts.

At least I was infected and had my 15 days in hospital as well as getting vaccinated when it was available. But not everyone finds out the smart thing to do until it's time.

[vozka]

This will sound weird in TDM forums, but I just finished Thief 2 for the first time. 

Took me a long time because there were some elements that I didn't enjoy that much and I got a bit tired of it in the second half, so there were pauses between play sessions, often playing new TDM missions instead when I was feeling sneaky.

Tried to find what I actually had issues with, and I think it was mostly the cameras and automatic guns. The First City Bank and Trust was the first mission where around 2/3 in I thought "well, this is just starting to be a drag". I had to be too careful, too slow, and avoiding the cameras didn't feel rewarding like avoiding people did. With robots it was a bit similar, although not as bad with a few exceptions where they seemed to have inhuman dark vision.

I appreciate the work put into the setting and the overall polish and slightly better graphics, plus some of the missions were amazing of course, but I realized that overall I simply prefer the atmosphere and themes of Thief Gold (Gold mainly for the opera mission, if only for the amazing soundscapes and the singing hermit). There's just something about the spooky atmosphere of Bonehoard, Cragscleft or the Haunted Cathedral that worked really well for me and I didn't mind the end missions either. Whereas Sabotage at Soulforge was a bit of a pain and the outro video a disappointment.

It's great how both games still hold up though. Must have been revolutionary at the time of release. And after playing them I realize why Deadly Shadows was a disappointment. I still think it's a really good game (after removing the riddiculous in-level loading screens), but it was nowhere near as innovative. 

[jaxa]

When I was a noob, I think I played T2 before T1, and First City Bank and Trust was a turning point. It's an immensely complicated tapestry of threats and confusion for the player, and you aren't able to skip as much of the mission as previous ones. Now I can visualize parts of it in my head without having played it for years, so not nearly as hard.

[duzenko]

It's interesting, I can't remember T2 being too hard and frustrating, certainly not to the extent of the many missions in TDM

IFAIR only the final mission was challenging

[datiswous]

On 11/21/2021 at 10:29 AM, STiFU said:

FYI: That 90% for the fist bump actually seems to be legit, according to this paper... ^^

Probably also better than the ellbow greeting which get you closer to the person than doing a handshake.

[Frost_Salamander]

I stumbled onto this video: https://youtu.be/-oTfH90psC4. I'm a huge fan of SWAT 4, and was greatly looking forward to its spiritual successor, Ready or Not: https://voidinteractive.net/. Anyways, the video is really good,it points out all the details, which we all know really makes the difference when mapping!

Edited December 30, 2021 by Frost_Salamander

[STiFU]

5 hours ago, Frost_Salamander said:

I stumbled onto this video: https://youtu.be/-oTfH90psC4. I'm a huge fan of SWAT 4, and was greatly looking forward to its spiritual successor, Ready or Not: https://voidinteractive.net/. Anyways, the video is really good,it points out all the details, which we all know really makes the difference when mapping!

I am excited for that game as well. Let's hope the recent controversy regarding a school shooting level will be resolved.

[Anderson]

Lately I became obsessed with Open source apps which are kept up to date and to customize them to my use. To this end I thought it was long time overdue to replace MS word with Libre Office Writer because I just can't keep up with the new versions and I'm tired of looking for cracks. A big advantage is how compatible Libre Office is with usual MS files.

However, I really wanted to make a proper dark theme work. Atm can't seem to find how to make the toolbars in proper contrast mode. Right now they seem to be in this ugly color where you have the toolbars at the top to be of almost the same gray color as the font they are written in. Is anyone tech savvy enough to figure it out? Nobody on Google doesn't seem to have the same problem as me.

 

Update: Found the solution. Just undo this https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-set-up-libreoffice-writer-like-microsoft-word/

 

It can be uncomfortable to switch to a standard Toolbar after gettingused to Microsoft's sleek Ribbon menus. But you can use ribbons inOffice Writer, too! Go to View > User Interface and select Tabbed. Then click Apply to Writer.

 

So basically revert back to standard toolbar.

Problem fixed.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Anderson

[Filizitas]

I want to play written in stone and iris so badly but i dont have alot time haha.
And i also want to make more cake and food items.

[jaxa]

2 hours ago, Filizitas said:

And i also want to make more cake and food items.

Took me a minute to realize you meant in Blender or whatever.

[revelator]

heh so i was not the only one who had a hard time with T2 was starting to belive i sucked at gaming back then but maybe its the style of gameplay that doesnt agree with me ( i was a monster in games like TF and Q3 which eventually got me banned because hey you cant be this good cheat hacks omg xD ).  But certain other game types like T2 and SS2 handed me my ass every single time. Only just recently managed to complete SS2 which should tell you something about the problems i had with this kinda gameplay hehe.

[Anderson]

Does anyone know why is Arial lawful neutral and Cambria is true neutral? Other alignment chart memes put Times New Roman as true neutral.

The problem with Times New Roman is that it was made for typewriters and it doesn't look that great on digital monitors. The least one could do is write in Times New Roman at font 14.

[peter_spy]

On 10/8/2021 at 10:59 AM, STiFU said:

I just watched this interesting talk on how an indie studio implemented DevOps processes to increase their software quality and productivity. There's some really good advice in there, so I wanted to share it with whomever interested.

 

It's nice to see that gamedev is finally adopting common software development practices, adding this one to my fav GDC vids list

[AluminumHaste]

On 2/17/2022 at 7:28 AM, Anderson said:

Does anyone know why is Arial lawful neutral and Cambria is true neutral? Other alignment chart memes put Times New Roman as true neutral.

The problem with Times New Roman is that it was made for typewriters and it doesn't look that great on digital monitors. The least one could do is write in Times New Roman at font 14.

I dislike any font that isn't serif'ed. IlliIll like, which of those are L's or i's??

[woah]

@STiFUBeen a while but hoping you don't mind I bug you again on this topic.  I lurk in a certain VR discord and saw this paper mentioned https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2613346.  And it was hypothesized that the conclusions of this research may have significant implications for dynamic focus VR displays, and now I'm kind of wondering about this as well.  The general assumption of the, I guess, "XR community" is that you can solely use various forms of artificial defocus (and not optical vergence) as feedback to guide the eye's accommodation to a desired focus depth, and thus even VR displays capable of displaying only a single varying focus depth (as opposed to a multi-focal display) can actually function: as the user's eyes move from the in focus part of the image to an out of focus part of the image, the artificial defocus blur generated in that out of focus part of the image is considered to be sufficient feedback to trigger the eyes to accommodate to the new focus depth (even though the optical vergence of that part of the image is still incorrect).

But, assuming I'm understanding the paper correctly, without the presence of "genuine" optical vergence corresponding to each potential focus depth in the scene, there wouldn't be sufficient feedback for the eye to accommodate to that depth correctly.  There are apparently many accommodation cues for the human eye, but the claim here seems to be that true optical vergence is necessary.  And wouldn't that mean a multifocal display is necessary?

It seems interesting to me because from what I've gathered over the past few years the varifocal prototypes in various labs are said to "kind of" work for certain people and not work at all for others.  So, even assuming eyetracking were perfect, if they are nonetheless unable to provide the required feedback to guide accommodation, then the very kind of dynamic focus display that everyone is banking on (for the near term) to address the major optical issue with modern VR headsets would seem to be a dead end.  You would instead need something like the CREAL lightfield headset I mentioned a while back.  And facebook recently pushed their timeline for varifocal headsets out from 2022 to ~2030.

(again, assuming I'm even understanding this correctly)

[STiFU]

1 hour ago, woah said:

@STiFUBeen a while but hoping you don't mind I bug you again on this topic.  I lurk in a certain VR discord and saw this paper mentioned https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2613346.  And it was hypothesized that the conclusions of this research may have significant implications for dynamic focus VR displays, and now I'm kind of wondering about this as well.  The general assumption of the, I guess, "XR community" is that you can solely use various forms of artificial defocus (and not optical vergence) as feedback to guide the eye's accommodation to a desired focus depth, and thus even VR displays capable of displaying only a single varying focus depth (as opposed to a multi-focal display) can actually function: as the user's eyes move from the in focus part of the image to an out of focus part of the image, the artificial defocus blur generated in that out of focus part of the image is considered to be sufficient feedback to trigger the eyes to accommodate to the new focus depth (even though the optical vergence of that part of the image is still incorrect).

But, assuming I'm understanding the paper correctly, without the presence of "genuine" optical vergence corresponding to each potential focus depth in the scene, there wouldn't be sufficient feedback for the eye to accommodate to that depth correctly.  There are apparently many accommodation cues for the human eye, but the claim here seems to be that true optical vergence is necessary.  And wouldn't that mean a multifocal display is necessary?

It seems interesting to me because from what I've gathered over the past few years the varifocal prototypes in various labs are said to "kind of" work for certain people and not work at all for others.  So, even assuming eyetracking were perfect, if they are nonetheless unable to provide the required feedback to guide accommodation, then the very kind of dynamic focus display that everyone is banking on (for the near term) to address the major optical issue with modern VR headsets would seem to be a dead end.  You would instead need something like the CREAL lightfield headset I mentioned a while back.  And facebook recently pushed their timeline for varifocal headsets out from 2022 to ~2030.

(again, assuming I'm even understanding this correctly)

I've been out of that area of research for quite some time now, but to me, the findings of that paper are no news. It was always known that vergence is the primary factor to drive accomodation, but that defocus also drives accomodation. It was never stated that defocus alone drives accomodation. So, that XR community was wrong right from the start.

Every stereoscopic content drives vergence. If your stereoscopic stimulus is located 1m behind the display, your eyes will perfectly converge on that point, and they will try to accomodate to that distance. Then your brain realizes "wait a minute?! when I try to accomodate to that distance, everything becomes blurry? What is going on?", and there you have that darned unstable sytem again. How can you solve it? You pretty much mentioned all possible solutions already, except the first one in this list:

1. Move the focal distance so far away that you don't get defocus cues. --> This is the hyperfocal distance and at that distance, we sadly do not perceive any vergence cues anymore, i.e., you see a 2d display!
2. Varifocal distance with perfect eyetracking. --> Make vergence distance and focus distance match and combine that with artifical defocus.
3. Multifocal or lightfield / holographic displays.

[woah]

On 9/9/2022 at 12:44 PM, STiFU said:

I've been out of that area of research for quite some time now, but to me, the findings of that paper are no news. It was always known that vergence is the primary factor to drive accomodation, but that defocus also drives accomodation. It was never stated that defocus alone drives accomodation. So, that XR community was wrong right from the start.

Every stereoscopic content drives vergence. If your stereoscopic stimulus is located 1m behind the display, your eyes will perfectly converge on that point, and they will try to accomodate to that distance. Then your brain realizes "wait a minute?! when I try to accomodate to that distance, everything becomes blurry? What is going on?", and there you have that darned unstable sytem again. How can you solve it? You pretty much mentioned all possible solutions already, except the first one in this list:

1. Move the focal distance so far away that you don't get defocus cues. --> This is the hyperfocal distance and at that distance, we sadly do not perceive any vergence cues anymore, i.e., you see a 2d display!
2. Varifocal distance with perfect eyetracking. --> Make vergence distance and focus distance match and combine that with artifical defocus.
3. Multifocal or lightfield / holographic displays.

 

Hmm I see, I guess #2 is what I'm wondering about then.  If the artificial defocus ends up being insufficient for robustly driving accommodation and you need the actual wavefront curvature (optical vergence) to be correct, wouldn't that mean varifocal headsets can't work reliably?  Like, I'm imagining some object in the periphery with an unknown focus depth and the combination of focus cues being insufficient to reliably ascertain the sign of defocus.  Or perhaps being able to eventually ascertain the sign of defocus but having to sort of find it by trial and error, or perhaps being able to determine the sign of defocus in 95% of circumstances but that last 5% presenting some difficulties, or perhaps you have some people that are more reliant on certain focus cues vs others--ultimately leading to a technology that "works" but that still provides a bad consumer experience.  I can imagine anything unexpected happening with dynamic focus being worse than a fixed focus (actually, this is something Carmack mentioned in a Q&A session last year).

Just bringing this up as I try to untangle where the challenge and uncertainty is for varifocal headsets (again, the primary hypothesis of XR folks being that wavefront curvature is entirely unnecessary as a focus cue, artificial defocus is sufficient as a focus cue, and eyetracking just needs to be more accurate).  If eyetracking really is the only barrier, then I would assume that at some point you'd have more niche VR hardware companies release something even if it only works for some people and not others--because the lack of dynamic focus is just so vexing of a problem.  I mean, for example you have VR hardware companies like Pimax releasing high cost ultra wide FOV headsets despite those headsets making most people sick with their peripheral distortion.

Moreover, I was really surprised to read in that paper and others (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6911823/ ) how there are still many questions on the mechanisms of accommodation.  For example, one theory on the mechanism of detecting optical vergence is that different shadows are cast by blood vessels in the retina when light is focused in front of or behind them, and that this is a sort of subconscious cue for accommodation.

Of course I don't expect you to give me a concrete answer about any of this.  I guess it's just helpful to hear from someone knowledgeable that has some distance from the industry.

[taffernicus]

A  new "trick" to cover up a security camera using moss arrow and broadhead arrow :

 

 

This is a huge leap forward from previous old tricks :

- using rope arrow and pickable book bug:

- the other random bug:

 

But carrying all of these things throughout the mission will weigh down your time....

Edited May 13, 2024 by taffernicus
minor edit

[taffernicus]

alcoholic beverages seemed to be prevalent in the 15-18th century. in TDM and Thief, tavern and bar are a dime a dozen. The barmaid murmuring about a good strong ale really sets the vibe. I'm curious about the rate of liver and kidney disease in that century

I had my first wine when I was 9 years old. My dad offered it to me(was it a good idea for kids to drink wine? lol). He poured it into a rocks glass. I asked for more shots after drinking 1 glass.

8 months ago I had the opportunity to tour the winery twice (in different countries) and got the chance to wine test as well (still miss the taste of those wines, i finished 2-3 glasses lol).

Strangely, so far the wine is not addictive but the coffee is badly addictive but ngl alcoholic beverages gives you a calming and relaxing sensation. ohh really why long black and dark roast coffee is so good.

Edited October 21, 2024 by taffernicus

[taffernicus]

it's understandable why some people drink alcohol as a form of escape

There is an interesting thing called nomikai in japanese that is worth reading

[AluminumHaste]

15 hours ago, taffernicus said:

it's understandable why some people drink alcohol as a form of escape

There is an interesting thing called nomikai in japanese that is worth reading

Are you reaching out? Alcohol is a poison and destroys lives.

[Diego]

Something about clean water too. Put a little alcohol in your water and it's safer. I don't know if they knew what was happening. Surely they didn't know about microbes but they might have noticed the correlation of getting sick less often when they put a bit of alcohol in the water.