Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 18th Dec 2012 23:12 UTC
"Windows XP was the last client version of Windows to include the Pinball game that had been part of Windows since Windows 95. There is apparently speculation that this was done for legal reasons. No, that's not why." I love these stories.
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Member since:2005-07-06
RE[4]: read the comments
by Alfman on Thu 20th Dec 2012 16:26
in reply to "RE[3]: read the comments"
Member since:2011-01-28
renox,
Floating point used to be far more accurate than ints when cpu registers were limited to 32bit. Now that we have 64bit registers and SSE's FP mantissa is only 52bits, fixed point integers can give us more accuracy as well.
I wonder if there are any game worlds that are big enough such that this makes an observable difference?
If each object were tracked to millimetre resolution, then SSE's 64bit FP is accurate up to half a light year in any direction. 64bit signed fixed point would cover 970 light years in any direction.
So I guess there's probably not a very compelling reason to switch unless your simulating a large universe.
Nice chart showing breakdown of FP formats.
http://www.monash.edu.au/policy/gpnumacc.htm
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
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OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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Member since:
2011-01-28
renox,
"Sigh, and people still look at me as if I was a madman when I say that floating point suck and that we should use interval arithmetic.."
Very insightful. Beyond rounding issues, it's always bugged me a bit too that the resolution of game coordinates become worse and worse the further a player gets away from the origin. Therefor if your running precise mathematical computations in a game (ie object projections), the results inherently depend on which arbitrary digits the mantissa is representing. Using integral/fixed point arithmetic would offer equal precision at all coordinates.