Search Results

Search found 2546 results on 102 pages for 'surface toolkit'.

Page 61/102 | < Previous Page | 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68  | Next Page >

• Huge procedurally generated 'wilderness' worlds

  - by The Communist Duck

  Hi. I'm sure you all know of games like Dwarf Fortress - massive, procedural generated wilderness and land. Something like this, taken from this very useful article. However, I was wondering how I could apply this to a much larger scale; the scale of Minecraft comes to mind (isn't that something like 8x the size of the Earth's surface?). Pseudo-infinite, I think the best term would be. The article talks about fractal perlin noise. I am no way an expert on it, but I get the general idea (it's some kind of randomly generated noise which is semi-coherent, so not just random pixel values). I could just define regions X by X in size, add some region loading type stuff, and have one bit of noise generating a region. But this would result in just huge amounts of islands. On the other extreme, I don't think I can really generate a supermassive sheet of perlin noise. And it would just be one big island, I think. I am pretty sure Perlin noise, or some noise, would be the answer in some way. I mean, the map is really nice looking. And you could replace the ascii with tiles, and get something very nice looking. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks. :D -TheCommieDuck

  Read the article

• C# XNA: Effecient mesh building algorithm for voxel based terrain ("top" outside layer only, non-destructible)

  - by Tim Hatch

  To put this bluntly, for non-destructible/non-constructible voxel style terrain, are generated meshes handled much better than instancing? Is there another method to achieve millions of visible quad faces per scene with ease? If generated meshes per chunk is the way to go, what kind of algorithm might I want to use based on only EVER needing the outer layer rendered? I'm using 3D Perlin Noise for terrain generation (for overhangs/caves/etc). The layout is fantastic, but even for around 20k visible faces, it's quite slow using instancing (whether it's one big draw call or multiple smaller chunks). I've simplified it to the point of removing non-visible cubes and only having the top faces of my cube-like terrain be rendered, but with 20k quad instances, it's still pretty sluggish (30fps on my machine). My goal is for the world to be made using quite small cubes. Where multiple games (IE: Minecraft) have the player 1x1 cube in width/length and 2 high, I'm shooting for 6x6 width/length and 9 high. With a lot of advantages as far as gameplay goes, it also means I could quite easily have a single scene with millions of truly visible quads. So, I have been trying to look into changing my method from instancing to mesh generation on a chunk by chunk basis. Do video cards handle this type of processing better than separate quads/cubes through instancing? What kind of existing algorithms should I be looking into? I've seen references to marching cubes a few times now, but I haven't spent much time investigating it since I don't know if it's the better route for my situation or not. I'm also starting to doubt my need of using 3D Perlin noise for terrain generation since I won't want the kind of depth it would seem best at. I just like the idea of overhangs and occasional cave-like structures, but could find no better 'surface only' algorithms to cover that. If anyone has any better suggestions there, feel free to throw them at me too. Thanks, Mythics

  Read the article

• Android device - C++ OpenGL 2: eglCreateWindowSurface invalid

  - by ThreaderSlash

  I am trying to debug and run OGLES on Native C++ in my Android device in order to implement a native 3D game for mobile smart phones. The point is that I got an error and see no reason for that. Here is the line from the code that the debugger complains: mSurface = eglCreateWindowSurface(mDisplay, lConfig, mApplication->window, NULL); And this is the error message: Invalid arguments ' Candidates are: void * eglCreateWindowSurface(void *, void *, unsigned long int, const int *) ' --x-- Here is the declaration: android_app* mApplication; EGLDisplay mDisplay; EGLint lFormat, lNumConfigs, lErrorResult; EGLConfig lConfig; // Defines display requirements. 16bits mode here. const EGLint lAttributes[] = { EGL_RENDERABLE_TYPE, EGL_OPENGL_ES2_BIT, EGL_BLUE_SIZE, 5, EGL_GREEN_SIZE, 6, EGL_RED_SIZE, 5, EGL_SURFACE_TYPE, EGL_WINDOW_BIT, EGL_RENDER_BUFFER, EGL_BACK_BUFFER, EGL_NONE }; // Retrieves a display connection and initializes it. packt_Log_debug("Connecting to the display."); mDisplay = eglGetDisplay(EGL_DEFAULT_DISPLAY); if (mDisplay == EGL_NO_DISPLAY) goto ERROR; if (!eglInitialize(mDisplay, NULL, NULL)) goto ERROR; // Selects the first OpenGL configuration found. packt_Log_debug("Selecting a display config."); if(!eglChooseConfig(mDisplay, lAttributes, &lConfig, 1, &lNumConfigs) || (lNumConfigs <= 0)) goto ERROR; // Reconfigures the Android window with the EGL format. packt_Log_debug("Configuring window format."); if (!eglGetConfigAttrib(mDisplay, lConfig, EGL_NATIVE_VISUAL_ID, &lFormat)) goto ERROR; ANativeWindow_setBuffersGeometry(mApplication->window, 0, 0, lFormat); // Creates the display surface. packt_Log_debug("Initializing the display."); mSurface = eglCreateWindowSurface(mDisplay, lConfig, mApplication->window, NULL); --x-- Hope someone here can shed some light on it.

  Read the article

• Rotating a view of a chunked 2d tilemap

  - by Danie Clawson

  I'm working on a top-down (oblique) tile-based engine. I would like for the tiles to have a definable height in the world, with Characters being occluded by them, etc. This has led to a desire to be able to "rotate" the view of the world, even though I'm using all hand-drawn graphics and blitting. Therefor, I need to rotate the actual world itself, or change how the Camera traverses these arrays. How can, or should, I create individual rotations of 90 degrees, when I have multi-dimensional arrays? Is it faster to actually rotate the array, to access it differently, or to create pre-computed accessor(?) arrays, something like how my chunks work? How can I rotate an individual chunk, or set of chunks? Currently I establish my tile grid like this (tile height not included): function Surface(WIDTH, HEIGHT) { WIDTH = Math.max(WIDTH-(WIDTH%TPC), TPC); HEIGHT = Math.max(HEIGHT-(HEIGHT%TPC), TPC); this.tiles = []; this.chunks = []; //Establish tiles for(var x = 0; x < WIDTH; x++) { var col = [], ch_x = Math.floor(x/TPC); if(!this.chunks[ch_x]) this.chunks.push([]); for(var y = 0; y < HEIGHT; y++) { var tile = new Tile(x, y), ch_y = Math.floor(y/TPC); if(!this.chunks[ch_x][ch_y]) this.chunks[ch_x].push([]); this.chunks[ch_x][ch_y].push(tile); col.push(tile); } this.tiles.push(col); } }; Even some basic advice on my data struct would be much appreciated.

  Read the article

• "VLC could not read the file" error when trying to play DVDs

  - by stephenmurdoch

  I can watch most DVD's on my machine using VLC but today, I went to watch Thor, and it won't play. libdvdread4 and libdvdcss2 are at the latest versions. vlc -v returns 1.1.4 w32codecs are installed and reinstalled ubuntu-restricted-extras are same as above My machine recognises the disc and I can open the folder and browse the assorted .vob files, of which there are many. None of them will open in VLC, or in MPlayer etc. When I run vlc -vvv /media/THOR/VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_1.VOB I get: File Reading Failed VLC could not read the file I also see command line output like this: [0x963f47c] main filter debug: removing module "swscale" [0x963a4b4] main generic debug: A filter to adapt decoder to display is needed [0x964be84] main filter debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates [0x964be84] swscale filter debug: 720x576 chroma: I420 -> 979x551 chroma: RV32 with scaling using Bicubic (good quality) [0x964be84] main filter debug: using video filter2 module "swscale" ..... [0x959f4e4] main video output warning: late picture skipped (-10038 > -15327) [0x963a4b4] main generic debug: auto hidding mouse [0x93ca094] main input warning: clock gap, unexpected stream discontinuity [0x93ca094] main input warning: feeding synchro with a new reference point trying to recover from clock gap [0x959f4e4] main video output warning: early picture skipped ...... ac-tex damaged at 0 12 ac-tex damaged at 6 20 ac-tex damaged at 12 28 This happens with onboard and Known Good USB DVD player I don't have standalone DVD player to try with TV I am going to watch another film instead for now, because I can do that. I just can't watch THOR, and I'm pretty confident that the disc is ok. It is a rental, but it's clean and there are no surface abrasions. I even cleaned it with Christian Dior aftershave to make sure.

  Read the article

• What is the evidence that an API has exceeded its orthogonality in the context of types?

  - by hawkeye

  Wikipedia defines software orthogonality as: orthogonality in a programming language means that a relatively small set of primitive constructs can be combined in a relatively small number of ways to build the control and data structures of the language. The term is most-frequently used regarding assembly instruction sets, as orthogonal instruction set. Jason Coffin has defined software orthogonality as Highly cohesive components that are loosely coupled to each other produce an orthogonal system. C.Ross has defined software orthogonality as: the property that means "Changing A does not change B". An example of an orthogonal system would be a radio, where changing the station does not change the volume and vice-versa. Now there is a hypothesis published in the the ACM Queue by Tim Bray - that some have called the Bánffy Bray Type System Criteria - which he summarises as: Static typings attractiveness is a direct function (and dynamic typings an inverse function) of API surface size. Dynamic typings attractiveness is a direct function (and static typings an inverse function) of unit testing workability. Now Stuart Halloway has reformulated Banfy Bray as: the more your APIs exceed orthogonality, the better you will like static typing My question is: What is the evidence that an API has exceeded its orthogonality in the context of types? Clarification Tim Bray introduces the idea of orthogonality and APIs. Where you have one API and it is mainly dealing with Strings (ie a web server serving requests and responses), then a uni-typed language (python, ruby) is 'aligned' to that API - because the the type system of these languages isn't sophisticated, but it doesn't matter since you're dealing with Strings anyway. He then moves on to Android programming, which has a whole bunch of sensor APIs, which are all 'different' to the web server API that he was working on previously. Because you're not just dealing with Strings, but with different types, the API is non-orthogonal. Tim's point is that there is a empirical relationship between your 'liking' of types and the API you're programming against. (ie a subjective point is actually objective depending on your context).

  Read the article

• Drawing particles as a smooth blob

  - by Nömmik

  I'm new to game/graphics development and I'm playing around with particles (in 2D). I want to draw particles close to each other as a blob, just as liquid/water. I do not want to draw big circles overlapping as the blob won't be smooth (and too big). I don't really know physics but I assume what I want is something looking similar to surface tension. I haven't been able to find anything on stackexchange or on Google (maybe I do not know the correct keywords?). So far I have found two possible solutions, but I am unable to find any concrete information about algorithms. One of them is to calculate the concave hull of particles I consider being a blob. I can calculate the blob by creating an equivalence class (on the relation "close to each other"). Strangely enough I haven't been able to find any algorithm explaining how to calculate the concave hull. Many posts (and among stackexchange) links to libraries or commercial products that do this (I need libraries to work in C#), but never any algorithm. Also this solution might have a problem with a circle of particles, which would not detect the empty space in the middle. While researching concave hull I stumbled upon something called alpha shapes. Which seems to be exactly what I want to do, however just as with concave hull I haven't found any source explaining how they actually work. I have found some presentation materials but not enough to go on. It's like a big secret everyone knows except me :-/ After calculating the concave hull or alpha shape I want to make it a Bézier curve to make it smooth and nice. Although I do find my approach a bit too complex, maybe I am trying to solve this the wrong way? If you can either suggest any other solution to my problem, or explain the pieces I am missing I would be very happy and grateful :-) Thanks.

  Read the article

• What is a simple deformer in which vertices deform linearly with control points?

  - by sebf

  In my project I want to deform a complex mesh, using a simpler 'proxy' mesh. In effect, each vertex of the proxy/collision mesh will be a control point/bone, which should deform the vertices of the main mesh attached to it depending on weight, but where the weight is not dependant on the absolute distance from the control point but rather distance relative to the other affecting control points. The point of this is to preserve complex three dimensional features of the main mesh while using physics implementations which expect something far simpler, low resolution, single surface, etc. Therefore, the vertices must deform linearly with their respective weighted control points (i.e. no falloff fields or all the mesh features will end up collapsed) - as if each vertex was linked to a point on the plane created by the attached control points and deformed with it. I have tried implementing the weight computation algorithm in this paper (page 4) but it is not working as expected and I am wondering if it is really the best way to do what I want. What is the simplest way to 'skin'* an arbitrary mesh, to another arbitrary mesh? *By skin I mean I need an algorithm to determine the best control points for a vertex, and their weights.

  Read the article

• SQL – Crossword Puzzle Based on Course Building Successful High Traffic Profitable Blog

  - by Pinal Dave

  Do you like Crossword Puzzles? I personally love it. Everytime I open the newspaper, I try to resolve at least one crossword or sudoku. It is just fun to tease a brain little and stretch its limits. Regular readers of the blogs are aware that I have recently published two courses on how to build successful high traffic profitable blog. Here are the links to watch both the courses: Course 1, Course 2. Do watch them in order as both the courses have unique content, which can help you build a better blog. On my birthday July 30th, there was an interesting blog post posted on Pluralsight blog. It was a crossword build from my two courses. I encourage you try to solve the crossword which I have built. Giveaway: There is a cool gift for the winner – it is melting clock. Do not confuse this as a dummy or not working clock. This looks like melting but it always shows accurate time and it is perfectly balanced to hang off of any flat surface. How to Participate: Well, it is very simple, you just have to complete the crossword and send it to me at pinal at sqlauthority.com with all valid answers. The deadline is that you must send it before Monday August 5, 2013 or before the valid answer keys are posted on Pluralsight blog. Hints: Though the crossword is very easy and intuitive, if you ever get stuck anywhere here are two hints: Hint 1, Hint 2. Login to Pluralsight courses and watch both the courses. Watching the course will not only help you to easily complete crossword but there are hidden gems and secrets to build a high traffic profitable blog. Here is the link to download the crossword: Download Crossword. Alternatively you can download the image displayed below and print it as well.   Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Blogging

  Read the article

• As an indie game dev, what processes are the best for soliciting feedback on my design/spec/idea? [closed]

  - by Jess Telford

  Background I have worked in a professional environment where the process usually goes like the following: Brain storm idea Solidify the game mechanics / design Iterate on design/idea to create a more solid experience Spec out the details of the design/idea Build it Step 3. is generally done with the stakeholders of the game (developers, designers, investors, publishers, etc) to reach an 'agreement' which meets the goals of all involved. Due to this process involving a series of often opposing and unique view points, creative solutions can surface through discussion / iteration. This is backed up by a process for collating the changes / new ideas, as well as structured time for discussion. As a (now) indie developer, I have to play the role of all the stakeholders (developers, designers, investors, publishers, etc), and often find myself too close to the idea / design to do more than minor changes, which I feel to be local maxima when it comes to the best result (I'm looking for the global maxima, of course). I have read that ideas / game designs / unique mechanics are merely multipliers of execution, and that keeping them secret is just silly. In sharing the idea with others outside the realm of my own thinking, I hope to replicate the influence other stakeholders have. I am struggling with the collation of changes / new ideas, and any kind of structured method of receiving feedback. My question: As an indie game developer, how and where can I share my ideas/designs to receive meaningful / constructive feedback? How can I successfully collate the feedback into a new iteration of the design? Are there any specialized websites, etc?

  Read the article

• BRE (Business Rules Engine) Data Services is out...!!!

  - by Vishal

  A few months ago we at Tellago had open sourced the BizTalk Data Services. We were meanwhile working on other artifacts which comes along with BizTalk Server like the “Business Rules Engine”.  We are happy to announce the first version of BRE Data Services. BRE Data Services is a same concept which we covered through BTS Data Services, providing a RESTFul OData – based API to interact with the Business Rules Engine via HTTP using ATOM Publishing Protocol or JSON as the encoding mechanism.   In the first version release, we mainly focused on the browsing, querying and searching BRE artifacts via a RESTFul interface. Also along with that we provide the functionality to execute Business Rules by inserting the Facts for policies via the IUpdatable implementation of WCF Data Services.   The BRE Data Services API provides a lightweight interface for managing Business Rules Engine artifacts such as Policies, Rules, Vocabularies, Conditions, Actions, Facts etc. The following are some examples which details some of the available features in the current version of the API.   Basic Querying: Querying BRE Policies http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies Querying BRE Rules http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules Querying BRE Vocabularies http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Vocabularies   Navigation: The BRE Data Services API also leverages WCF Data Services to enable navigation across related different BRE objects. Querying a specific Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies(‘PolicyName’) Querying a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules(‘RuleName’) Querying all Rules under a Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies('PolicyName')/Rules Querying all Facts under a Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies('PolicyName')/Facts Querying all Actions for a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules('RuleName')/Actions Querying all Conditions for a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules('RuleName')/Actions Querying a specific Vocabulary: http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Vocabularies('VocabName')   Implementation: With the BRE Data Services, we also provide the functionality of executing a particular policy via HTTP. There are couple of ways you can do that though the API.   Ø First is though Service Operations feature of WCF Data Services in which you can execute the Facts by passing them in the URL itself. This is a very simple implementations of the executing the policies due to the limitations & restrictions (only primitive types of input parameters which can be passed) currently of the Service Operations of the WCF Data Services. Below is a code sample.                Below is a traced Request/Response message.                                 Ø Second is through the IUpdatable Interface of WCF Data Services. In this method, you can first query the rule which you want to execute and then inserts Facts for that particular Rules and finally when you perform the SaveChanges() call for the IUpdatable Interface API, it executes the policy with the facts which you inserted at runtime. Below is a sample of client side code. Due to the limitations of current version of WCF Data Services where there is no way you can return back the updates happening on the service side back to the client via the SaveChanges() method. Here we are executing the rule passing a serialized XML as Facts and there is no changes made to any data where we can query back to fetch the changes. This is overcome though the first way to executing the policies which is by executing it as a Service Operation call.     This actually generates a AtomPub message shown as below:   POST /Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/$batch HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Microsoft ADO.NET Data Services DataServiceVersion: 1.0;NetFx MaxDataServiceVersion: 2.0;NetFx Accept: application/atom+xml,application/xml Accept-Charset: UTF-8 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7 Host: localhost:8080 Content-Length: 1481 Expect: 100-continue   --batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf   --changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf Content-Type: application/http Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary   MERGE http://localhost:8080/Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/Facts('TestPolicy') HTTP/1.1 Content-ID: 4 Content-Type: application/atom+xml;type=entry Content-Length: 927   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?> <entry xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" font-size: x-small"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">   <category scheme="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/scheme" term="Tellago.BRE.REST.Resources.Fact" />   <title />   <author>     <name />   </author>   <updated>2011-01-31T20:09:15.0023982Z</updated>   <id>http://localhost:8080/Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/Facts('TestPolicy')</id>   <content type="application/xml">     <m:properties>       <d:FactInstance>&lt;ns0:LoanStatus xmlns:ns0="http://tellago.com"&gt;&lt;Age&gt;10&lt;/Age&gt;&lt;Status&gt;true&lt;/Status&gt;&lt;/ns0:LoanStatus&gt;</d:FactInstance>       <d:FactType>TestSchema</d:FactType>       <d:ID>TestPolicy</d:ID>     </m:properties>   </content> </entry> --changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf-- --batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7—     Installation: The installation of the BRE Data Services is pretty straight forward. ·         Create a new IIS website say BREDataServices. ·         Download the SourceCode from TellagoCodeplex and copy the content from Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost to the physical location of the above created website.     ·         The appPool account running the website should have admin access to the BizTalkRuleEngineDb database. ·         TheRight click the BREManagementService.svc in the IIS ContentView for the website and wala..     Conclusion: The BRE Data Services API is an experiment intended to bring the capabilities of RESTful/OData based services to the Traditional BTS/BRE Solutions. The future releases will target on technologies like BAM, ESB Toolkit. This version has been tested with various version of BizTalk Server and we have uploaded the source code to our Tellago's DevLabs workspace at Codeplex. I hope you guys enjoy this release. Keep an eye on our new releases @ Tellago Codeplex. We are working on various other Biztalk Artifacts like BAM, ESB Toolkit.     Till than happy BizzRuling…!!!     Thanks,   Vishal Mody

  Read the article

• TechEd 2010 Day Two – No SQL Server in Sight

  - by BuckWoody

  Today I worked the booth at TechEd 2010, manning the new “Surface” computer, which is just the coolest object on the planet. After that I didn’t attend a single SQL Server session – instead I’ve been frequenting SharePoint, Microsoft Office, and even the High-Performance Computing sessions. The reason is that I get really high quality SQL Server presentations at PASS, SQL Saturdays, and online from Microsoft and other vendors. While there are SQL Server sessions here (after all, I’m giving one of them!) I tend to try and see things that I don’t normally get to learn about. And the cross-pollination between those technologies and mine is fantastic.     I’ve even managed to go to an Entity Framework presentation for the developers. I actually have (a little) more respect for that technology – and I’ve modified my presentation to encompass more of that information. So whenever you have the chance, take a walk outside your comfort zone. Even at PASS and SQL Saturdays (and certainly online) you can investigate technologies other than the ones you know best.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• SQL Saturday Atlanta: Intro To Performance Tuning

  - by Mike Femenella

  I'm looking forward to speaking in Atlanta on the 24th, will be fun to get back down that way to visit with some friends and present two topics that I really enjoy. First, an introduction to performance tuning. Performance tuning is a very wide and deep topic and we're staying close to the surface. I direct this class for newbie sql users who have less than 2 years of experience. It's all the things I wish someone would have told me in my first 2 years about what to look for when the database was slow...or allegedly slow I should say. We'll cover using profiler to find slow performing queries and how to save the data off to a table as well as a tour of other features. The difference between clustered, non clustered and covering indexes. How to look at and understand an execution plan (at a high level) and finally the difference between a temp table and a table variable and what the implications are of using either one in your code. That pretty much takes up a full hour. Second presentation, Loading Data in Real Time. It's really a presentation about partitioning but with a twist that we used at work recently to solve a need to load some data quickly and put it into production with minimal downtime. We'll cover partition functions, schemes,$partition, merge, sys.partitions and show some examples of building a set of partitioned tables and using the switch statement to move it from one table to another. Finally we'll cover the differences in partitioning between 2005 and 2008. Hope to see you there! And if you read my blog please introduce yourself!

  Read the article

• Spotlight on an Office – Reading TVP offices

  - by Maria Sandu

  This month we’re in the UK at the Reading offices, for ‘Spotlight on an office’. The Reading Office, which is Oracle’s UK Headquarters, is based in Thames Valley Park (TVP), which is a bustling hive of activity that houses many different companies, a gym, and even a nursery. Overlooking the Thames and some of England’s beautiful countryside, this office, just a short free bus ride from Reading Town Centre is in a fantastic location. The offices themselves are made up of 5 different buildings, each with their own car park, restaurant, and design. The main building or TVP 510 as it is referred to, sits resplendent next to an extremely blue (for the UK) pond, filled with large koi-carp that on a sunny day like to come to the surface of the lake and bask. As the main hub of activity, TVP 510 is where you will find our Dry Cleaning service, the Ozone Gym, the main restaurant (which never fails to have someone in it), and the Marquee which sits outside the back amongst the picnic benches, and is where we have Barbeques in the summer time. Another highlight of the Reading Offices is tucked away in TVP530; the home of H20, and our sports and social club. This is the building that can be best be described as having the ‘cool’ vibe, where you can relax and unwind, all whilst sipping a Starbucks (or Costa if you prefer, located in TVP550), and playing a game of Pool in the cafeteria, or alternatively you can sit back and enjoy a seat in one of the luxury massage chairs! If you feel so inclined, you can also hire out an OraBike from any of the TVP offices, and if you are anything like some of my team, cycle from Reading to Bath using the towpath starting in Thames Valley Park. Oracle’s Reading Offices are a great place to work, they are home to a diverse range of people and have great atmosphere which would suit a graduate, intern, or anyone who is looking to come and work for Oracle in the UK.

  Read the article

• Early Z culling - Ogre

  - by teodron

  This question is concerned with how one can enable this "pixel filter" to work within an Ogre based app. Simply put, one can write two passes, the first without writing any colour values to the frame buffer lighting off colour_write off shading flat The second pass is the one that employs heavy pixel shader computations, hence it would be really nice to get rid of those hidden surface patches and not process them pixel-wise. This approach works, except for one thing: objects with alpha, such as billboard trees suffer in a peculiar way - from one side, they seem to capture the sky/background within their alpha region and ignore other trees/houses behind them, while viewed from the other side, they exhibit the desired behavior. To tackle the issue, I thought I could write a custom vertex shader in the first pass and offset the projected Z component of the vertex a little further away from its actual position, so that in the second pass there is a need to recompute correctly the pixels of the objects closest to the camera. This doesn't work at all, all surfaces are processed in the pixel shader and there is no performance gain. So, if anyone has done a similar trick with Ogre and alpha objects, kindly please help.

  Read the article

• What is the best way to "carve" a terrain created from a heightmap?

  - by tigrou

  I have a 3d landscape created from a heightmap. I'd like to "carve" some holes in that terrain. That will allow me to create bridges, caverns and tunnels inside it. That operation will be done in the game editor so it doesn't need to be realtime. In the end, rendering is done using traditional polygons. What would be the best/easiest way to do that ? I already think about several solutions : Solution 1 1) Create voxels from the heightmap (very easy). In other words, fill a 3D array like this : voxels[32][32][32] from the heightmap values. 2) Carve holes in the voxels as i want (easy too). 3) Convert voxels to polygons using some iso-surface extraction technique (like marching cubes). 4) Reduce (decimate) polygons created in 3). This technique seems to be the most promising for giving good results (untested). However the problem with marching cubes is that they tends to produce lots of polygons thus reducing them is mandatory. Implementing 4) also seems not trivial, i have read several papers on the web and it seems pretty complex. I was also unable to find an example, code snippet or something to start writing an algorithm for triangle mesh decimation. Maybe there is a special decimation algorithm (simpler) for meshes created from marching cubes ? Solution 2 1) Create some triangle mesh from the heighmap (easy). 2) Apply severals 3D boolean operation (eg: subtraction with a sphere) to carve the mesh. 3) apply some procedure to reduce polygons (optional). Operation 2) seems to be very complex and to be honest i have no idea how to do that. Also applying many boolean operation seems to be slow and will maybe degrade the triangle mesh every time a boolean operation is applied.

  Read the article

• My boss is feuding with his boss. My workload is expanding What should I do?

  - by steve

  These two have always had a somewhat shaky relationship when they were on the same level. The other guy was recently promoted to director and now my boss reports to him. On the surface, they appear to get along when they get together, but my boss despises the man and badmouths him every chance that he gets (to peers, subordinates, etc). He believe that the director is setting him up to fail. The Director and upper management is holding my boss responsible for the not-so-great performance by the team as of late. He's been playing games to make my boss look bad. Due to lay offs, we don't have the manpower to deliever the results that we did before...but expectations have not lowered...and my boss is taking the heat for it. Now he's on the warpath and starting to micromanage. He's giving everyone more work. He's forcing us midlevel guys to take responsibility for the level one techs' performance. I'm spending less and less time coding....and more time babysitting vendors, techs, etc. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing because I'm sorta burnt out on coding, but I don't really care for the idea of having to be responsible for others poor performance....isn't that the manager's job? Anyway, do you guys have any suggestions on dealing with the situation?

  Read the article

• Automated texture mapping

  - by brandon

  I have a set of seamless tiling textures. I want to be able to take an arbitrary model and create a UV map with these properties: No stretching (all textures tile appropriately so there is no stretching and sheering of the texture) The textures display on the correct axis relative to the model it's mapping to (if you look at the example, you can see some of the letters on the front are tilted, the y axis of the texture should be matching up with the y axis of the object. Some other faces have upside down letters too) the texture is as continuous as possible on the surface of the model (if two faces are adjacent, the texture continues on the adjacent face where it left off) the model is closed (all faces are completely enclosed by other faces) A few notes. This mapping will occur before triangulation. I realize there are ways to do this by hand and it's probably a hard problem to automatically map textures in general, but since these textures are seamless and I just need uniform coverage it seems like an easier problem. I'm looking for an algorithmic approach to this that I can apply in general, not a tool that does it. What approach would work for this, is there an existing one? (I assume so)

  Read the article

• Deferred rendering with both Clockwise and CounterClockwise culling

  - by user1423893

  I have a deferred rendering system that works well with objects that appear solid and drawn using CounterClockwise culling. I have a problem with Clockwise culled objects that are supposed to represent hollow that display their inside faces only. The image below shows a CounterClockwise culled object (left) Clockwise culled object (right). The Clockwise culled object faces display what would be displayed on the CounterClockwise face. How can I get the lighting to light the inner faces for Clockwise culled objects and continue lighting the outer CounterClockwise faces as normal? My lighting method is below private void DeferredLighting(GameTime gameTime) { // Set the render target for the lights game.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(lightMap); // Clear the render target to (0, 0, 0, 0) game.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); // Set the render states game.GraphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Additive; game.GraphicsDevice.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.None; game.GraphicsDevice.RasterizerState = RasterizerState.CullCounterClockwise; // Set sampler state to Point as the Surface type requires it in XNA 4.0 game.GraphicsDevice.SamplerStates[0] = SamplerState.PointClamp; // Set the camera properties for all lights BaseLight.SetCameraProperties(game.ActiveCamera); // Draw the lights int numLights = lights.Count; for (int i = 0; i < numLights; ++i) { if (lights[i].Diffuse.W > 0f) { lights[i].Render(gameTime, ref normalMap, ref depthMap, ref sgrMap); } } // Resolve the render target game.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null); } I have tried adjusting the render states but no combination works for both objects.

  Read the article

• Attend my Tech Ed 2014 session: Debugging Tips and Tricks

  - by Daniel Moth

  Just a week away, at Tech Ed 2014 NA in Houston Texas, I will be giving a demo presentation that you will not want to miss (assuming you code in Visual Studio). Add it to your calendar now: DEV-B352 Debugging Tips and Tricks in Visual Studio 2013 (link) Monday, May 12 1:15-2:30 PM, Room: General Assembly C As a developer, regardless of your programming language or the platform that you target, you use the debugger on a daily basis. Come to this all-demo session to learn how to make the most of the Visual Studio debugger, and hence be more productive and effective in your everyday development. We tour almost all of the debugger surface and many of its commands, throwing in tips and tricks as we go along, and also calling out what is brand new in the latest version of the debugger in Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Whatever your experience level, you are guaranteed to leave with new knowledge of debugger features that you will want to use immediately when you are back at your computer!   I am also co-presenting another session later in the week. DEV-B313 Diagnosing Issues in Windows Phone 8.1 XAML Applications Using Visual Studio 2013 (link) Thursday, May 15 10:15-11:30 AM, Room: 340 Come to this demo-driven session to learn how to use the latest diagnostic tools in Visual Studio 2013 to make your Windows Phone 8.1 XAML apps reliable, fast, and efficient. Learn how to make the most of existing capabilities in the debugger as well as new debugging features for diagnosing correctness issues. Also, see the Visual Studio Performance and Diagnostics hub in action with its performance analysis tools for diagnosing CPU usage, memory usage, and energy consumption. The techniques covered in this session apply equally well for Windows Store apps as well as Windows Phone Store apps, so all your device development needs will be covered.   Links to both sessions from my Tech Ed speaker page. See you there! Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

  Read the article

• Exploring various SharePoint blogs

  Quick summary on the activities I did yesterday - aka Day 4. Actually, it wasn't too much but I went through a number of articles on various blogs and online forums. Just for general purpose and to see whether my collection is going to have more entries. Well, so far I have to admit that the resources are good. Unfortunately, the blog of Doerfler is a little bit scarce. I went through it completely and there wasn't too much interesting information (yet) but this particular entry is worth mentioning: Wiederherstellen einer gelöschten Websitesammlung (How to restore a deleted site collection) Taking into consideration that there haven't been any new entries since November 2012 I would say that the blog is dormant. It would be great to have new entries in the future... My first (baby) steps in the following SharePoint communities are only scratching the surface, and I'm really looking forward to dig deeper. There seems to be a lot of valuable information available: SharePoint Community SharePointCommunity I think that I already found a true gem over there which is going to give me some extra time: How to begin learning SharePoint (for beginners) - Great overview and link collection Mark Jones. Interestingly, I already discovered a couple of his entries, like the video tutorials by Andrew Connell.

  Read the article

• A good news for China and Japan developers: Sample Browser is localized to Chinese and Japanese

  - by Jialiang

  Translate this pageArabicBulgarianCatalanChinese SimplifiedChinese TraditionalCzechDanishDutchEstonianFinnishFrenchGermanGreekHaitian CreoleHebrewHindiHmong DawHungarianIndonesianItalianJapaneseKoreanLatvianLithuanianNorwegianPersianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSlovakSlovenianSpanishSwedishThaiTurkishUkrainianVietnamese Microsoft® Translator Check out this page in {0} translated from {1}translated fromOriginal:Translated:Automatic translation powered by Microsoft® TranslatorStart translatingStop translatingCloseClose and show original pageSelect The Sample Browser Local Language Support feature is released today!  It is supporting Simplified Chinese and Japanese UI, and is optimized for Chinese and Japanese sample searches.  This should be a good news for China and Japan developers :)  We will add more languages in the near future. Install:  http://aka.ms/samplebrowser If you have already installed the previous version of Sample Browser, you can simply reopen it to get the auto-update. For example, in the Chinese UI, you can directly search samples in Chinese.  The Sample Browser is optimized to surface Chinese samples that match your query first.  This gives China and Japan developers a completely localized experience with code samples!   Particularly thanks to Japan MVPs and Satoru Kitabata – Japan MVP Lead.  Our team leant the strong need of localized Sample Browser from them.  They also devoted much time to translating the UI elements to Japanese, and making it available to Japan developers.

  Read the article

• Transform coordinates from 3d to 2d without matrix or built in methods

  - by Thomas

  Not to long ago i started to create a small 3D engine in javascript to combine this with an html5 canvas. One of the issues I run into is how can you transform 3d to 2d coords. Since I cannot use matrices or built in transformation methods I need another way. I've tried implementing the next explanation + pseudo code: http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/routines/3d_to_2d.htm Unfortunately no luck there. I've replace all the input variables with data from my own camera and object classes. I have the following data: An object with a rotation, position vector and an array of 4 3d coords (its just a plane) a camera with a position and rotation vector the viewport - a square 600 x 600 surface. The example uses a zoom factor which I've set as 1 Most hits on google use either matrix calculations or don't implement camera rotation. Basic transformation should be like this: screen.x = x / z * zoom screen.y = y / z * zoom Can anyone point me in the right direction or explain to me howto achieve this? edit: Thanks for all your posts, I haven't been able to apply all this to my project yet but I hope to do this soon.

  Read the article

• Huge procedurally generated 'wilderness' worlds

  - by The Communist Duck

  I'm sure you all know of games like Dwarf Fortress - massive, procedural generated wilderness and land. Something like this, taken from this very useful article. However, I was wondering how I could apply this to a much larger scale; the scale of Minecraft comes to mind (isn't that something like 8x the size of the Earth's surface?). Pseudo-infinite, I think the best term would be. The article talks about fractal perlin noise. I am no way an expert on it, but I get the general idea (it's some kind of randomly generated noise which is semi-coherent, so not just random pixel values). I could just define regions X by X in size, add some region loading type stuff, and have one bit of noise generating a region. But this would result in just huge amounts of islands. On the other extreme, I don't think I can really generate a supermassive sheet of perlin noise. And it would just be one big island, I think. I am pretty sure Perlin noise, or some noise, would be the answer in some way. I mean, the map is really nice looking. And you could replace the ascii with tiles, and get something very nice looking. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks. :D

  Read the article

• Windows Store now open to ALL developers

  - by CSharpZealot

  A little late, but it should be announced here too... Today’s an especially great day to be a developer. We’re very excited to announce the last significant milestone in the rollout of the Windows Store before the general availability of Windows 8 on October 26. The Store is now open for app submissions from all developers – individuals and companies – in our supported markets, and we’ve added 82 more app submission markets! Now, developers from 120 markets can publish Windows Store apps. Ted Dworkin, Partner Program Manager for the Store, authored this post. --Antoine Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/09/11/windows-store-now-open-to-all-developers.aspx About two weeks ago the Windows Store was opened and with the upcoming general availability of Windows 8 in October, it seems that it was good timing. In addition to the store being opened, Microsoft also announced that the MSDN, BizSpark and DreamSpark will get a 1-year Windows Store developer account. That's a different tact than what we saw for the Windows Phone 7, where we didn't get that subscription included. We're already seeing new apps showing up faster and faster, so with the addition of 86 more markets we're only going to see more apps than ever available. Since i'm now back on a Windows 8 platform (was out for about a month) I'm going to start blogging more content around the Windows 8 developer experience. Next stop for me...get my hands on a Windows 8 surface device as quickly as possible :) Keep coding!

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68  | Next Page >