How can India use it's basic resource: Population
Indian population is very high, it's just so high that wherever you go you can see people and people and nothing else. Being part of that population makes me feel that I suck as well, since I am also contributing to it. But how about converting this curse into a gift, by converting population into resources?
Some ideas for this:
1. Indian population is 10^9 right now, height of each human being is 1.5 meters (lets assume), implying that a human ladder of length 1.5*10^9 meters can be created. Distance from the moon is only 3.6*10^8 meters meaning the ladder can reach moon. Astronauts can climb this ladder, or in fact human-ladder can keep pulling the astronaut up, by their hands one by one. Note that humans are used and not metallic resources nor engines nor any transportation mean; Work done with a cheaper resource: population.
India can send an astronaut to moon right now! As a matter of fact India can challenge NASA that seeing the growing population rate, the ladder can become as long as to reach mars up till 2010 only, before NASA's target i.e. 2014 !!! NASA sucks!
Now what about launching satellites? pulling up a heavy satellite can be tiring. Solution: We can create the satellite right at the end of ladder i.e. from were it has to start revolving, meaning only the parts of the satellite should be pulled up. But one problem! the manufacturing of satellite is to be done at top, meaning top person should be an engineer; No problem, seeing tones of engineering colleges in India, how about using engineers themselves to make the whole ladder? Engineers will be a good part of engineering work as well: pulling up the parts of a satellite! Much challenging and patriotic than what we do for Multi National Companies.
How about creating a natural satellite? Easy, ladder will pull up rocks. The last man will have fevicol with him, he will keep sticking these rocks to the previous ones and: viola, we have another moon for superstitious Indians.
2. If I have to speak to a person 100 km away, no need of tele-communication, nor wires, nor electricity! Just use population! Keep some people standing at a distance from which they can hear from the previous person, and you are done! you speak something to your mic (mic man), he will shout it to the other, then that person will shout to the other, and so on and finally the speaker (speaker man) will speak in the same tone as original. Problem is, that the speed of communication is speed of sound + human response time times no. of samples. But look how wonderful use of population!
3. Indian population can simply end some research fields namely: Object tracking, Machine learning, Natural Language processing. How?
Object tracking: Instead of writing stupid algorithms for cameras, use us Indians, there are just so many of us, that if you replace every camera with it, even then our population wont exhaust. India can export robust object trackers. This sounds like a paper in CVPR
Machine Learning: Why do you want to make a computer learn when a much easier learning system called a human is available in abundance in India?
NLP: I just don't see the point of using computers to translate languages, when there are ready made robust translators available to us in India: Indians! just accompany each human being with N Indians, where N is the number of languages in this world, each Indian knows one language and will translate it to the person when required.
4. You wont believe that India, which is not at all in gaming market, can overtake it in one shot! The idea is that instead of bots, use Indians.
A very good example is Age of Empires, where every villager, scout, knight, blah blah can be replaced by an Indian. There will be 10 Indians looking at the gamers keyboard, they will shout at the bot Indians what they have to do something according to the gamer. The whole scene can be recorded by a crappy camera and brought to gamers monitor. EA games, Ubisoft, will die but will never produce graphics more real than this.
Another example is augmented reality quake in which bots will be Indians. One problem though, quake maps are sometimes very awkward, ugly, scary, weired. wait wait, I have solution... use Bihar & MP for the maps! For playing nightmare and noise making bots, play in Harayana. For playing with lame bots, play in Rajasthan.
5. MNCs like Java sun systems are famous for creating big big servers, but the thing they fail to provide is a 'Programming box'. What India can do is put us computer engineers graduating from the tones of colleges into boxes with a computer, a toilet, and someway of feeding tube. You can tell this box vocally what kind of program you want and give it 10 minutes, it will write a program for you! This box puts out oil waste in the morning and needs electricity and whatever food you want to give it. Fantastic way of using the brainy part of population.
6. Humopedia, A straight challenge to wikipedia, each Indian can be assigned to remember one whole page about something and as soon as a query is put on humopedia.org, the specified person can start talking about it. No need to store pages on costly servers
Lets make India the best using the population in the correct ways!
(Offense meant! Indian population can take it, offense meant to me myself as well being a part of it.
Thanks to Smr, Vidit, Paresh, Skp, Jagmohan, Visesh for discussing and adding innovation (read offense) to a few of the ideas. This was on Smr's LotD)
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Monday, December 25, 2006
nvidia 8800 gtx
CVIT just got the latest piece of hardware from nvidia. It can also be called g80 8800GTX. It has got the unified architecture (Shader Model 4.0 or Directx 10 Architecture), means that now there is no distinction between type of shaders, a single core (or more importantly a group) gets assigned the work of the one required. Thats not it, there are lot of other superb features of this new card (Eg. GL_EXT_geometry_shader4), which I cannot pen down here but I would really like to display some pics of it:
8800 is huge, longer than the bulky 7950
Since you may not know the size of these, compare it with a reynolds pen
I will now use the 7950 and will leave the 1800, btw, 1800 is same size as of 7950
8800 resides with Graphics Server 'Carmack'
8800 is huge, longer than the bulky 7950
Since you may not know the size of these, compare it with a reynolds pen
I will now use the 7950 and will leave the 1800, btw, 1800 is same size as of 7950
8800 resides with Graphics Server 'Carmack'
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Terrain Deformation Demo
This is a terrain deformation video I made as a demo of the latest OpenGL 2.1 (SM3.0 though) extensions involving Frame Buffer Objects, Vertex Buffer Objects, Pixel Buffer Objects, Multiple Render Targets, and nvidia CG shaders. With the help of these extensions, I was able to push everything on the GPU. Thing to notice here is that the performance is amazing. Imagine how wonder it will be with SM4.0!
It's recommended that you download these versions
Download [WMV]
Download [MPG]
Or just stream it:
I had 2 render targets, one the terrain, other the texture of the terrain. According to deforming points, I change the terrain and the composite the texture with some other at that place. Take the terrain texture, convert it to a VBO (with the help of PBO extension), draw the VBO with changed terrain texture. Note: No stupid vertex texture is used.
Best part: I don't have to remember what happened when those explosions took place. My terrain can keep on changing without my knowledge!
It's recommended that you download these versions
Download [WMV]
Download [MPG]
Or just stream it:
I had 2 render targets, one the terrain, other the texture of the terrain. According to deforming points, I change the terrain and the composite the texture with some other at that place. Take the terrain texture, convert it to a VBO (with the help of PBO extension), draw the VBO with changed terrain texture. Note: No stupid vertex texture is used.
Best part: I don't have to remember what happened when those explosions took place. My terrain can keep on changing without my knowledge!
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Wii ? Xbox 360 ? PS3 ? PC ?
It's a real confusion which console to take, first of all whether to ditch PC or not is a big question.
Why NOT PC gaming?
Seeing prices of graphics cards and associated hardware (RAM, CPU, MOB) building a PC for gaming is heavily costly; Don't forget your system is going to become mid level in 1 year for gaming. Either you be with your slow hardware and reduce game settings OR keep updating your system like Somu does all the time.
Now lets see if you have a PC worth 25K (believe me, which is more than enough for web browsing, office suites, email stuff, chatting, playing music, movies, screwing with TV tuning etc) and you have a gaming console which the most costly right now is PS3 (should be around 35K in India). Television you are going to have one anyway, so the total cost comes to some 60K (far less than a newly assembled system with all latest hardware). Also note that this PC is going to be your partner for atleast 5 years easily (since you are not playing games on it) and the next gen console is not coming out for another 4 years. When in the other case you have to keep updating your PC every 6 months to get the most out of games.
You must be saying that, since we are not updating our console's hardware (which anyway is not possible) the graphics are going to be reduced for newer and newer games; which is equivalent to reduced graphics in my not updated PC gaming system! Well said but: It is totally not equivalent, game developers work on a single hardware (the console) when developing for console and thus they can make it perfectly balanced between performance and appearance.
This is totally not possible for the PC version of the same game since they have to support all kinds of hardware and all combinations of those hardware. They provide you with various settings and leave it totally up to you to setup the settings according to your system. You never know whether you have selected the best settings, you probably will be reducing too much and not taking most out of your system. You have installed a 5GB game when you will be playing the game with only 700MB of the data.
Clearly the above is not so with consoles. They will make the game look good no matter what, one way or the other, since they are developing on one single hardware and it's guaranteed that the same hardware will be with everyone which is the console. Eg. Xbox (old one) was not so good for normal mapping, thus "half life 2" people totally scrapped out normal mapping and focused on improving graphics through other hacks.
If console, Which one?
A question whose answer even I am searching for. One thing for sure is that as soon as the console is released it should be bought so that it's their with you for the time its hip and happening and you keep getting latest games. BUT WHICH ONE DAMMIT!?
Nintendo Wii
This is the one I have on my mind, it has got the latest style of controllers; Or lets say a revolutionary console when other consoles have the same old-school controllers, clearly a cliche. Wii hasn't got that good of a hardware but it's controller is a needo! its a motion sensed controller by which you will be actually making the moves which your character will be making on the screen. Lets just see the points:
Advantages:
1. New style of controller
2. Less hardware, clearly cheap (should be around 13k in India)
3. Less hardware, less power consumption, less noise, less electric bill
4. New style of controller giving workouts to people, finally gamers will get to move around.
5. Going to get super famous because of its controller, and being cheap, means good and latest games guaranteed on Wii!
Disadvantages:
1. Less hardware, clearly not so good graphics
2. Supported only up to 720p HDTV (display resolution)
3. For doing other things than gaming, should have PC
4. Though provided more freedom with 2 controllers (nunchuck and pad) gaming engrossement can damage the controller since theres a stupid wire between the two controllers.
Microsoft Xbox 360
Don't forget xbox is Microsoft's, when M$ does something it does it good. Its nothing new just that it has good hardware. Otherwise it's a same old gaming console with same old controller. I quite think it should have been named Xbox 2.
Advantages:
1. Good hardware, good graphics
2. Supports 1080p HDTV (display resolution)
3. Media Center, maintain your music and multimedia on your console.
4. Already famous, good games already arriving
Disadvantages:
1. More hardware, more power consumption, more electric bill.
2. More hardware, costlier than Wii. (Its 20K in India)
3. For doing other things than gaming, multimedia etc. should have PC
Sony Playstation 3
Playstation 3 is a bulky system released by Sony with a lot of hardware packed up. Same problem that the controller is the same old PS2 style, nothing new.
Advantages:
1. Best hardware, best graphics
2. Supports 1080p HDTV (display resolution)
3. Blue ray disk drive, not available for so cheap anywhere except on PS3
4. Install Linux, run windows on VMware, (probably) no need of PC
5. Media Center, maintain your music and multimedia on your console.
6. Sony is a giant, will make it famous one way or other, games will arrive whether they like it or not
Disadvantages:
1. Very high power consumption, even more electric bill
2. Even more hardware, very costly (should be around 35K in India)
So is PS3 the best since its having most advantages?
Sounds true from above analysis. But look closely and see if the advantage/disadvantage is something which really matters?
Points to ponder upon
Graphics: PS3 wins but then you should know that for a good game, graphics is not the only thing, its the gameplay. A very good example is that Xbox360 live is giving away OLD school games like UMK3 (mortal kombat etc.) for 360 when they can be run on 0.001 times less powerful systems. Also, I have seen common people, never even noticing the graphical improvements which we (graphics people) keep boasting about. So end result, graphics, not so strong point to ponder upon.
Controller: When playing Xbox 360 or PS3, you will be playing the same old style controller. But when playing Wii, you wont even feel as if you are playing Video Game, it will be amazingly something totally different! Its totally a new thing! So controller: when difference is there, its a strong point to look for.
Multimedia: Even if you can maintain your multimedia on your console, for doing other things (office stuff, email business etc.) you gonna need a PC anyway; Whats the point of maintaining your multimedia on console then? so Multimedia/Media-Center: Not at all an important point!
Cost: I wont say anything. Its in front of you: For Indians, difference between 13K, 20K & 35K is huge!
HDTV support: Well yes, true, but honestly, it should be PC which is winner in this, since it even lets you play on 3Mpixels display forget about HDTV! But coming back to consoles, which common man is gonna afford HDTV in India? Still I suppose HDTV is a strong point since anyway later they are going to become cheap.
Electric Bill: Well, a console runs for hours since games run for hours! Does your pump run for that much time? your music system for that much time? I dont think so, but a console is gonna run for 12 hours straight most of the time, clearly making 'Electric Bill' is big issue.
Blue Ray Disc: Well, a blue ray disk drive is 1000$ right now, dont know whether it will come in India at all or not. A person if really needs Blue ray disk drive right now (I dont know for what), its a good point. For a normal man, I dont see the point of getting one right now.
Ability to run Operating systems: For a real techie it can be a good point, since he probably dont need to buy a system at all! He will save quite a lot of money! so this can be a good point. PS3 clearly wins at this issue 'but' only for geeks/techies.
Famous: Well all 3 going to be equally famous and games will supposedly will come for all 3. Point is, which is going to get more famous in India? I would say Wii! since it will be cheap! And fame clearly meaning more success for that product, clearly meaning better service in that country!
Seeing the above weight of various advantages, the consoles can be divided between 3 classes of people:
1. Wii: Good for normal common people who use simple PCs and who want to enjoy different style of games as well.
2. PS3: Good for rich Geeks, techies, they can play hacks on it etc. and best part they need not buy a PC at all. But play with old style controller!
3. Xbox360: Dont know to whom its good for particularly, may be for people who dont use PC but surely want to use a multimedia system. But play with old style controller!
As for me...
I consider myself a common man, and I am not that of a techie/Linux-Geek to will find hacking a PS3 worth; neither am I rich. So no PS3 for me.
Xbox 360 can be a good choice but again when Wii stands in front of it, something which is completely innovative and cheap, I suppose 360 fades away as well.
Thus its clear: Wii is for me!!!
Why NOT PC gaming?
Seeing prices of graphics cards and associated hardware (RAM, CPU, MOB) building a PC for gaming is heavily costly; Don't forget your system is going to become mid level in 1 year for gaming. Either you be with your slow hardware and reduce game settings OR keep updating your system like Somu does all the time.
Now lets see if you have a PC worth 25K (believe me, which is more than enough for web browsing, office suites, email stuff, chatting, playing music, movies, screwing with TV tuning etc) and you have a gaming console which the most costly right now is PS3 (should be around 35K in India). Television you are going to have one anyway, so the total cost comes to some 60K (far less than a newly assembled system with all latest hardware). Also note that this PC is going to be your partner for atleast 5 years easily (since you are not playing games on it) and the next gen console is not coming out for another 4 years. When in the other case you have to keep updating your PC every 6 months to get the most out of games.
You must be saying that, since we are not updating our console's hardware (which anyway is not possible) the graphics are going to be reduced for newer and newer games; which is equivalent to reduced graphics in my not updated PC gaming system! Well said but: It is totally not equivalent, game developers work on a single hardware (the console) when developing for console and thus they can make it perfectly balanced between performance and appearance.
This is totally not possible for the PC version of the same game since they have to support all kinds of hardware and all combinations of those hardware. They provide you with various settings and leave it totally up to you to setup the settings according to your system. You never know whether you have selected the best settings, you probably will be reducing too much and not taking most out of your system. You have installed a 5GB game when you will be playing the game with only 700MB of the data.
Clearly the above is not so with consoles. They will make the game look good no matter what, one way or the other, since they are developing on one single hardware and it's guaranteed that the same hardware will be with everyone which is the console. Eg. Xbox (old one) was not so good for normal mapping, thus "half life 2" people totally scrapped out normal mapping and focused on improving graphics through other hacks.
If console, Which one?
A question whose answer even I am searching for. One thing for sure is that as soon as the console is released it should be bought so that it's their with you for the time its hip and happening and you keep getting latest games. BUT WHICH ONE DAMMIT!?
Nintendo Wii
This is the one I have on my mind, it has got the latest style of controllers; Or lets say a revolutionary console when other consoles have the same old-school controllers, clearly a cliche. Wii hasn't got that good of a hardware but it's controller is a needo! its a motion sensed controller by which you will be actually making the moves which your character will be making on the screen. Lets just see the points:Advantages:
1. New style of controller
2. Less hardware, clearly cheap (should be around 13k in India)
3. Less hardware, less power consumption, less noise, less electric bill
4. New style of controller giving workouts to people, finally gamers will get to move around.
5. Going to get super famous because of its controller, and being cheap, means good and latest games guaranteed on Wii!
Disadvantages:
1. Less hardware, clearly not so good graphics
2. Supported only up to 720p HDTV (display resolution)
3. For doing other things than gaming, should have PC
4. Though provided more freedom with 2 controllers (nunchuck and pad) gaming engrossement can damage the controller since theres a stupid wire between the two controllers.
Microsoft Xbox 360
Don't forget xbox is Microsoft's, when M$ does something it does it good. Its nothing new just that it has good hardware. Otherwise it's a same old gaming console with same old controller. I quite think it should have been named Xbox 2.
Advantages:
1. Good hardware, good graphics
2. Supports 1080p HDTV (display resolution)
3. Media Center, maintain your music and multimedia on your console.
4. Already famous, good games already arriving
Disadvantages:
1. More hardware, more power consumption, more electric bill.
2. More hardware, costlier than Wii. (Its 20K in India)
3. For doing other things than gaming, multimedia etc. should have PC
Sony Playstation 3
Playstation 3 is a bulky system released by Sony with a lot of hardware packed up. Same problem that the controller is the same old PS2 style, nothing new.
Advantages:
1. Best hardware, best graphics
2. Supports 1080p HDTV (display resolution)
3. Blue ray disk drive, not available for so cheap anywhere except on PS3
4. Install Linux, run windows on VMware, (probably) no need of PC
5. Media Center, maintain your music and multimedia on your console.
6. Sony is a giant, will make it famous one way or other, games will arrive whether they like it or not
Disadvantages:
1. Very high power consumption, even more electric bill
2. Even more hardware, very costly (should be around 35K in India)
So is PS3 the best since its having most advantages?
Sounds true from above analysis. But look closely and see if the advantage/disadvantage is something which really matters?
Points to ponder upon
Graphics: PS3 wins but then you should know that for a good game, graphics is not the only thing, its the gameplay. A very good example is that Xbox360 live is giving away OLD school games like UMK3 (mortal kombat etc.) for 360 when they can be run on 0.001 times less powerful systems. Also, I have seen common people, never even noticing the graphical improvements which we (graphics people) keep boasting about. So end result, graphics, not so strong point to ponder upon.
Controller: When playing Xbox 360 or PS3, you will be playing the same old style controller. But when playing Wii, you wont even feel as if you are playing Video Game, it will be amazingly something totally different! Its totally a new thing! So controller: when difference is there, its a strong point to look for.
Multimedia: Even if you can maintain your multimedia on your console, for doing other things (office stuff, email business etc.) you gonna need a PC anyway; Whats the point of maintaining your multimedia on console then? so Multimedia/Media-Center: Not at all an important point!
Cost: I wont say anything. Its in front of you: For Indians, difference between 13K, 20K & 35K is huge!
HDTV support: Well yes, true, but honestly, it should be PC which is winner in this, since it even lets you play on 3Mpixels display forget about HDTV! But coming back to consoles, which common man is gonna afford HDTV in India? Still I suppose HDTV is a strong point since anyway later they are going to become cheap.
Electric Bill: Well, a console runs for hours since games run for hours! Does your pump run for that much time? your music system for that much time? I dont think so, but a console is gonna run for 12 hours straight most of the time, clearly making 'Electric Bill' is big issue.
Blue Ray Disc: Well, a blue ray disk drive is 1000$ right now, dont know whether it will come in India at all or not. A person if really needs Blue ray disk drive right now (I dont know for what), its a good point. For a normal man, I dont see the point of getting one right now.
Ability to run Operating systems: For a real techie it can be a good point, since he probably dont need to buy a system at all! He will save quite a lot of money! so this can be a good point. PS3 clearly wins at this issue 'but' only for geeks/techies.
Famous: Well all 3 going to be equally famous and games will supposedly will come for all 3. Point is, which is going to get more famous in India? I would say Wii! since it will be cheap! And fame clearly meaning more success for that product, clearly meaning better service in that country!
Seeing the above weight of various advantages, the consoles can be divided between 3 classes of people:
1. Wii: Good for normal common people who use simple PCs and who want to enjoy different style of games as well.
2. PS3: Good for rich Geeks, techies, they can play hacks on it etc. and best part they need not buy a PC at all. But play with old style controller!
3. Xbox360: Dont know to whom its good for particularly, may be for people who dont use PC but surely want to use a multimedia system. But play with old style controller!
As for me...
I consider myself a common man, and I am not that of a techie/Linux-Geek to will find hacking a PS3 worth; neither am I rich. So no PS3 for me.
Xbox 360 can be a good choice but again when Wii stands in front of it, something which is completely innovative and cheap, I suppose 360 fades away as well.
Thus its clear: Wii is for me!!!
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