It's a great technical innovation, really!

[frankymail]

Headcasting, the way Matrox advertises it, sounds lame... VERY lame. However, think about the possibilities of this OUTSIDE simili-videoconferencing: Imagine you are playing a mid-future game (say Doom 3 V1.2 or Quake 4: The return of the Hundry Papa Bear); would you like hearing what your friends and enemies say (in realtime) and see the way they say it? that would be VERY cool indeed. 3D games are evolving at an astounding rate, but in most of them, the face (and more precisely the facial movements) looks just... dull.

Any way, you guys should not bash on the Millennium G550, because you were warned a lot in these forums... How many times did we hear "If you looking for great 3D performance in the G550, you should start looking elsewhere..." blahblahblah. Even "rumors" MORE THAN ONE YEAR AGO were saying that the Condor 2 (G550) would use the same 64-bits memory bus as the G450. So, IMO, anyone bashing on the G550 is either stupid, or uniformed.


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What was necessary was done yesterday;
We're currently working on the impossible;
For miracles, we ask for a 24 hours notice ...

[This message has been edited by frankymail (edited 20 June 2001).]

[Nuno]

Sure. I´m sure it´ll come the day when all the hardcore gaming comunity will be using G550´s (you need G550 in both ends, remember?) and someone finds a nice hack into it, beacause Matrox is disabling the feature on everything but Headcasting and Powerpoint.

[Blake]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by frankymail:
would you like hearing what your friends and enemies say (in realtime) and see the way they say it? that would be VERY cool indeed.</font>

Would it? I can just see myself standing still in awe, exclaming "look, I can see the enemy flag carrier's lips move!", only to die from a point-blank blast from a flak cannon

And does anybody really want to hear the other people? It's going to flood a 56Kpbs connection (don't say get broadband, it is not in my area). I'd rather have the bandwidth for replicating the environment

Not to mention when someone connects to a server, they have to download everybody else's head-map model and textures, and the model+textures of the new player would need to be sent to everyone else too. Creating lag and extra delay when someone joins.

We also don't know how much detail these head models are - could have 100's of vertices! When you get a few people on-screen, it would start to bite.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by frankymail:
3D games are evolving at an astounding rate, but in most of them, the face (and more precisely the facial movements) looks just... dull.
</font>

Can't say I get that close to notice it really...not unless I'm charging with the Impact Hammer

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by frankymail:
How many times did we hear "If you looking for great 3D performance in the G550, you should start looking elsewhere..."
</font>

True. I don't mind the poor 3D perfornamce of the G550, really (although you won't see me buying one...).

I think it's this HeadCasting thing that's honking ppl off. 'They added new hardware for that?!?!?!'

I think people would have laughed it off if the same silicon could be used for other vertex processing related applications. As it stands, it is a HeadCasting only unit

bibi.

[DuRaNgO]

Actually no, you don't need one on each end

[frankymail]

Durango is right: if you don't have a G550, you will get the low-quality face (see G550 presentation).

About Headcasting: I wanted to refer to the fact that 3D models are, most of the time, poorly detailed: any one played NOLF? When you see characters talking to each other during the cutscenes, their facial animation looks . . . bad. Aquick use of a 32 reg Vertex engine and you got yourself a much more life-like conversation. BUt, keep in mind that the vertex engine use is not restricted only to facial use: i can be put to ggod use with any 3d obkect or model...


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What was necessary was done yesterday;
We're currently working on the impossible;
For miracles, we ask for a 24 hours notice ...

[labrador]

Ya sure, we heard the warnings. We were not expecting something that would be in the Geforce 3 range. However, Geforce 1 range would have been nice.

We also heard that Matrox was coming out with something new that no one else had thought of doing with a graphics card. It sounded intriguing. That turned out to be the lame feature of "headcasting".

Another disappointment was that Direct X 8 features like T&L were limited to headcasting 3D needs.

All in all it strikes me the same way as if Toyota only added a trailer ball to the Echo and then announced "this year's model is equipped for towing". Sure, if you want to
tow something like a tiny trailer with three plants in it.

The real reason Matrox has pulled resources on competing in 3D is purely economic. They don't want to put in the heavy costs of R&D to gain the rewards of a small section of the pie - the pure 3D gamer. On one level this makes sense to do at a time when PC sales are leveling off. But on the other hand, like the money car companies put into racing teams, this effort is essential to stay at the cutting edge of performance and sustain the interest of press coverage and reviews.

I believe there is more overlap of 3D gamers and office users than they may realize. The guys where I work will put in a full day with code development and at 5PM they want to blow off the tension with some Quake III. Ensuring your graphics card is up to the task is a priority, even though the person who might answer a questionaire for the company might not realize or think about it.

For me the G400 has provided sufficient 3D power for my 3D games, up to now. But that has been a few years in use, and games are now beginning to appear that will tax my G400 and force me to play at 800x600 or less.
I am anticipating Flight Simulator 2002 will be the first app I install that can't sustain a playable framerate with this card, and I will then look for a solution, not wait for whatever Matrox might have in store in 2002/2003/2004 or whatever.

[rugger]

labrador, I couldn't have put it any better myself. I would kill to have expression skills like yours :-)

Now, where did I put that knife . . . .