Don't want to see articles from a certain category? When logged in, go to your User Settings and adjust your feed in the Content Preferences section where you can block tags!
Latest Comments by slaapliedje
The first dev-diary for 'Surviving Mars' from Haemimont Games and Paradox is here, looks good
3 November 2017 at 12:13 am UTC

Quoting: MayeulC
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Philadelphus
Quoting: TheRiddickAnd if you look at Earth via a telescope you would think its blue and the surface is blue also. ;)
Which is over 70% correct. ;) But that's a terrible comparison because Mars doesn't have A) vast bodies of liquid water, B) highly-visible and reflective clouds, or C) plant life, all of which make the Earth a vastly more complicated system to analyze.

Quoting: slaapliedjeBesides, from what I'd read it wasn't the ground really that was reddened, but the sky as well. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YXyFj3wFBTY/U9WVMrJT9sI/AAAAAAAAFGU/TIIXmyIQHno/s1600/Slide84.JPG

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2013/03/20/what-color-is-the-red-planet-really/
That photo is flat-out wrong, as explained in the very article you linked, which explains it well: color balance is a pretty subjective thing. Does any digital camera actually reproduce colors as we actually see them? No. It just records photon counts on a CCD through different filters, which we process with software to try to get colors that roughly approximate what we see with our eyes. Process the resulting image and you can make it look however you like, which is what those "blue sky" images are: skewed with a white balance to make the scene look like it would on Earth to help geologists better identify geological features. The article itself points out that the first photo in it—of a reddish, ocher-ish Mars—is explicitly processed to be as close to "what a typical cell phone camera" would take from the same location.

Yes, it's true that Mars doesn't look quite as saturated red as those first Viking images did (which is what the left image in the linked photo is from). But that's entirely due to advances in digital photo color processing methods, not some shadowy coverup by NASA.

Yeah, my point in linking that article is that pretty much none of the images we've seen really show what the surface of Mars looks like and are 'best guesses' by the imaging team, because (for some inexplicable reason) they don't just get a lens from Samsung or Nokia to get correct pictures :P
Uh? Curiosity for example has a calibration target for its pictures. I guess your post was ironic, but it's sometimes hard to tell.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16798.html

:) Yeah, that picture from Curiosity looks spot on with a nice comparison of the actual craft to balance out the colors. If you see that it's more of a brownish, mucked sky. Seriously just looks like Utah during an inversion. Ground isn't overly reddish. I think, much like Earth, there are the areas that are rich in iron rust, and there are areas that look more like any desert here on Earth. Either way, where's our tickets to Mars so we can see for ourselves!

On that note, I was trying to figure out how you'd even have 100 mile per hour winds... if there was too thin of an atmosphere to properly have winds? I'm pretty sure there are large dust storms on Mars, but are they more in the upper atmosphere? I recall the first pictures before we'd landed anything on there was always showing that it had nasty weather patterns, and giant dust filled hurricanes. But it seems all the rovers aren't seeing that, except for maybe some sand dunes on the edge of craters.

The first dev-diary for 'Surviving Mars' from Haemimont Games and Paradox is here, looks good
2 November 2017 at 2:49 pm UTC

Quoting: Philadelphus
Quoting: TheRiddickAnd if you look at Earth via a telescope you would think its blue and the surface is blue also. ;)
Which is over 70% correct. ;) But that's a terrible comparison because Mars doesn't have A) vast bodies of liquid water, B) highly-visible and reflective clouds, or C) plant life, all of which make the Earth a vastly more complicated system to analyze.

Quoting: slaapliedjeBesides, from what I'd read it wasn't the ground really that was reddened, but the sky as well. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YXyFj3wFBTY/U9WVMrJT9sI/AAAAAAAAFGU/TIIXmyIQHno/s1600/Slide84.JPG

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2013/03/20/what-color-is-the-red-planet-really/
That photo is flat-out wrong, as explained in the very article you linked, which explains it well: color balance is a pretty subjective thing. Does any digital camera actually reproduce colors as we actually see them? No. It just records photon counts on a CCD through different filters, which we process with software to try to get colors that roughly approximate what we see with our eyes. Process the resulting image and you can make it look however you like, which is what those "blue sky" images are: skewed with a white balance to make the scene look like it would on Earth to help geologists better identify geological features. The article itself points out that the first photo in it—of a reddish, ocher-ish Mars—is explicitly processed to be as close to "what a typical cell phone camera" would take from the same location.

Yes, it's true that Mars doesn't look quite as saturated red as those first Viking images did (which is what the left image in the linked photo is from). But that's entirely due to advances in digital photo color processing methods, not some shadowy coverup by NASA.

Yeah, my point in linking that article is that pretty much none of the images we've seen really show what the surface of Mars looks like and are 'best guesses' by the imaging team, because (for some inexplicable reason) they don't just get a lens from Samsung or Nokia to get correct pictures :P

The first dev-diary for 'Surviving Mars' from Haemimont Games and Paradox is here, looks good
2 November 2017 at 7:44 am UTC

Quoting: TheRiddick
Quoting: PhiladelphusAnyone with a telescope can look at Mars by eye (as I've done, as an astronomer) and verify that it actually is that color. No conspiracy theories needed. :)

And if you look at Earth via a telescope you would think its blue and the surface is blue also. ;)

Besides, from what I'd read it wasn't the ground really that was reddened, but the sky as well. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YXyFj3wFBTY/U9WVMrJT9sI/AAAAAAAAFGU/TIIXmyIQHno/s1600/Slide84.JPG

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2013/03/20/what-color-is-the-red-planet-really/

Spaceship survival sim 'Shortest Trip to Earth' inspired by FTL and Firefly needs funding, demo available
2 November 2017 at 12:34 am UTC

I need to learn how to make games, and then just say with every one (doesn't matter if it's western or sci-fi themed) just say it was 'inspired by Firefly' and I bet it'd sell.

Which is amazing since the Firefly Online game has been in development hell for YEARS. I think it's been almost as long coming as Star Trek Online was. It finally got released, I don't think Firefly Online ever will. They should release more comic books though... please?

F1 2017 system requirements for the Linux port have been revealed, NVIDIA & AMD supported
1 November 2017 at 8:40 am UTC

Quoting: Eike
Quote
Quoting: scaineI would strongly recommend installing newer drivers (384.90), using NVIDIA's own installer if necessary. We have known issues on older drivers.

You've got to be joking, right? Installing drivers... from a website? Not having to deal with that, ever, is one of Linux's greatest joys.

I share this view, and in your situation, I wouls install driver 384.90.2 from Debian experimental.

That's what I do. I rarely have to fight with bugs, though I've found a few in Gnome 3.26. I almost have to record a video of how odd it is.

So at home, I have three monitors. An old 1600x1200 Dell 2001FP (I use this for retro systems, but it mostly is connected via DVI to my main system when I'm not using any of the retro systems), and two Dell s2716dg which are pretty glorious. In the new gnome display settings dialog, I can move these around and align them correctly. Then we move to my laptop...

At work I had a 2560x1440 and 1920x1080 monitors, plus the 3840x2160 laptop screen. I usually disable this because the scaling is crazy small. But for some reason the display dialog is locked, I can't move any of the screens around to align things. the 1920x1080 doesn't have an adjustable stand, so I couldn't raise it up to the top where it was locked in Gnome. arandr to the rescue, right? Well, the funny thing is even if the laptop panel is disabled but open, it works, and I can adjust it. If it's closed, I can't. It was completely re-producible. No idea why it acts this way. I ended up replacing the 1920x1080 monitor with a 3840x2160 monitor (27" being much more readable than a 15" at that resolution) and it looks amazing, but still has that weird locking issue, except now I'm trying to align the 27" monitor to the middle.

Problem is, I think randr doesn't support monitor SIZE rather than resolution. Realistically there should be a nice way to tell it "I have two 27" screens at separate resolutions, please scale monitor 1 to bar, and 2 to foo. The scale buttons on the gnome-shell dialog also seem to do nothing.

Maybe randr does have that option, and I just need to find it.

Anyhow, maybe I proved my point why some may want to use LTS. Though to be honest, I think Arch Linux is probably as stable as any LTS and you get rolling updates. There definitely is the occasional breakage, but I've seen LTS releases blow up from a simple kernel update.

F1 2017 system requirements for the Linux port have been revealed, NVIDIA & AMD supported
31 October 2017 at 11:17 pm UTC

Quoting: scaineI wonder if Ubuntu 17.04 is a typo? Unusual to state a non-LTS release as a minimum spec, isn't it? Genuinely don't know, but I only run LTS releases on my gaming machine, so I guess I'll find out when I get this.

Why would you only use LTS releases for gaming machines? Gaming machines should be more bleeding edge than servers, which is really what LTS is for.

Quoting: gojulA bit scared about Vulkan, as Debian only features driver 375.82. Anyway bought the game from Feral Store as their other ports were awesome.


I actually run Debian Sid with the 'experimental' nvidia drivers at home on my desktop, and they work great. Even got SteamVR and Serious Sam VR working in it.

I think most people running Debian as a desktop should probably be running 'Testing' which is currently 'buster'. It's usually more stable than Ubuntu is. I don't know about anyone else, but Ubuntu tends to start having all these PPA repos installed, which add more to an already somewhat unstable mess. While it's based on Debian and they've made some choices to make it a bit more user friendly, in the end some of those choices and tweaks make it less stable, one for sure is that enable a lot of experimental drivers in their kernel.

Get ready to become a neural detective as 'Observer' is now on Linux, AMD not supported
27 October 2017 at 2:30 pm UTC

The problem for me in the past when I have had ATI/AMD cards is not just their Linux support was bad, but their Windows support too. I would love a fully open-source gpu. Lady ones I seem to have had that worked great were the Matrox cards before the Parhelia. They worked wonderfully. Then they started going the binary route...

I still remember using the computer of a friend of mine where the Catalyst control pabel would crash every time when I would click on a specific button.

Minecraft 1.13 will feature LWJGL 3 with improved Linux support
27 October 2017 at 12:22 am UTC

Quoting: roothorickAs I said, Java Edition will be around more or less indefinitely, because of modders. Minecraft has one of the biggest modding communities out there, rivaling even Bethesda games. MS knows better than to anger that crowd, and we can comfortably ride on their coattails.

Exactly. By the way, I don't know what the big deal is with including this library. I had to swap it out with the system library several times in the past anyhow. Much like any other libraries that are stashed within third party software, a lot of times linking it to the system library is not only better, but required.

A good example of this is HipChat on Debian. Newer versions of Debian broke it, because it uses old versions of the Qt SSL libraries. After swapping around some links, it now works perfectly.

Get ready to become a neural detective as 'Observer' is now on Linux, AMD not supported
26 October 2017 at 6:27 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Arehandoro
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: ArehandoroNot too keen in shitting my pants with scary games but this one does look cool... Maybe I get it once is released on GOG :)

WARNING: Must play while constipated! Or keep squeegee nearby.

Hahahaha is it that scary? Should I get a defibrillator as well? I'm easily startled...

I'm not sure, I haven't had time to play it yet. Wanted to last night, but had overflow work that needed to be done, and then of course had to re-program a PLCC chip that I made a bad decision on and flashed with useless firmware, bricking my Atari 130XE. You know, priorities.

This looks like it'd be pants-ruining in VR.

Minecraft 1.13 will feature LWJGL 3 with improved Linux support
26 October 2017 at 5:43 pm UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEPWhat problems? I cannot remember ever having problems running Minecraft on linux.
I mean, it's Java. Isn't that kind of the point?

The actual library they're talking about handles a lot of the support for Joystick input, if I recall. I had to update it to get a gamepad to work with Minecraft in Linux.