Quoting: rkfgThis is really good. That's what real freedom of speech means. Not creating echo chambers full of people searching for a reason to be offended but a truly open place with something for everyone. Hell, I WANT to have things I hate there because that would exactly mean that something I love and somebody else hates is also welcome.

That does not necessarily follow, but in this case I'd agree chances are decent.

As a general rule, it seems quite common for authorities (government or corporate) to allow one kind of offensive content in the name of free speech while forbidding pretty comparable kinds of content without acknowledging any contradiction. For instance, near the height of the "Charlie Hebdo" thing, when everyone was waxing incredibly sanctimonious about Charlie Hebdo's free speech (which, just to be clear, is fine by me as far as it goes), some Muslim kid took a Charlie Hebdo page, substituted a few words so it seemed to be saying bad things about a different religion instead of about Islam, and put it up on the internet. The French "Free Speech R Us" authorities put him in jail. So you gotta watch people who claim to support allowing offensive stuff in the name of freedom--often turns out that some freedom is more equal than other freedom.

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Quoting: chuzzle44I wonder if the original notices were the work of a rouge employee.

You mean like a commie subversive?! ;)

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Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: tonRWarning: tonR harping about Linux/FOSS mobile devices again!

Well, nuff said. Mobile devices/Smartphone is right here and right now. It's no longer "the future". Apple shows they willing to throw away (not so) "open platform" Mac for (totally) "close platform" iOS. So, it is time for Linux/FOSS community to seriously R&D-ing on mobile devices. If not, our (not so distant) future generations might never know what is meaning of open platform.

And no, Android is NOT our viable future. I don't think "cocktail license" OS should become our future platform.

Open(ish)) platforms are a fluke of history. If the tech giants could go back and do it all over again, their platforms would be full-on lock down and lock in from day one.

I think you are mistaken. Open platforms became widespread despite tech giants determinedly creating locked-down ones from day one. Only a few such tech giants ever had sufficient monopoly muscle or clever enough ideas to allow their locked-down platforms to compete with open ones. For instance, the tech field is littered with dead Unixes once owned by proprietary tech giants who fought fiercely and stubbornly against the rise of open.
Personally, I think Apple is a bit of a fluke, and now that Steve Jobs is gone, now that it is managed by normal managers, it will eventually lose momentum; without monopoly power a walled garden run by ordinary managers will in the end be unable to compete with more open platforms run by ordinary managers.

You are clearly more optimistic than I. The biggest fluke I can point to being the IBM open PC architecture. We* are all using it today in some form because IBM made a regrettable (to them) design decision. A design decision which has taken its place as a warning to all tech companies thereafter: "Hold a tight grip on your platform or risk losing it". [/url][/i]

Well, except that if it hadn't been open we might well not all be using it. Many competitors used the IBM architecture because they could, but if they couldn't they would presumably have done something else. At the least the field would have stayed more fragmented for longer, but maybe Commodore would have won, or Apple, or HP, or someone else we never heard of because in the real world they just made clones. Not sure a failed platform would have been better for IBM than a successful platform they lost control over.

Don't get me wrong, I won't claim that completely open platforms are always destined to conquer. But I will say that there are strong pressures towards fairly open platforms, strong enough to be decisive unless a particular case has really strong counter pressures, like monopoly power backed up with significant network effects. So if you take Android, it's maybe not open enough for my tastes . . . but it is open enough for many companies to make use of it without consulting its originator--and if it were not, it would not be dominant.

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Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: tonRWarning: tonR harping about Linux/FOSS mobile devices again!

Well, nuff said. Mobile devices/Smartphone is right here and right now. It's no longer "the future". Apple shows they willing to throw away (not so) "open platform" Mac for (totally) "close platform" iOS. So, it is time for Linux/FOSS community to seriously R&D-ing on mobile devices. If not, our (not so distant) future generations might never know what is meaning of open platform.

And no, Android is NOT our viable future. I don't think "cocktail license" OS should become our future platform.

Open(ish)) platforms are a fluke of history. If the tech giants could go back and do it all over again, their platforms would be full-on lock down and lock in from day one.

I think you are mistaken. Open platforms became widespread despite tech giants determinedly creating locked-down ones from day one. Only a few such tech giants ever had sufficient monopoly muscle or clever enough ideas to allow their locked-down platforms to compete with open ones. For instance, the tech field is littered with dead Unixes once owned by proprietary tech giants who fought fiercely and stubbornly against the rise of open.
Personally, I think Apple is a bit of a fluke, and now that Steve Jobs is gone, now that it is managed by normal managers, it will eventually lose momentum; without monopoly power a walled garden run by ordinary managers will in the end be unable to compete with more open platforms run by ordinary managers.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: LeonardKThis can also mean that less games come to Linux, unfortunately. On mac OS they'd need Metal (Vulkan via Molten *might* be an option), on Windows they usually rely on DirectX12 often enough, unfortunately. Then only Linux is the reason for OGL and Vulkan, so basically the market share of OGL/Vulkan just dropped by quite some percentage. Sad.

Also I wonder about WebGL.

Development has been moving away from OpenGL since the new generation of APIs was announced, so I don't think this news will impact GNU/Linux desktop gaming much. Don't forget about the mobile sector, which has been OpenGL ES dominated in the past, but is really shifting to Vulkan and Metal anyway. So there are big reasons to be using Vulkan anyway - the real question is if it's enough to convince developers to go all-in on a cross-platform API, or if they'll maintain a DX12 version first & foremost. That will really depend on the developer and how much they want a mobile version of their game.

Don't forget "how much they want a Windows pre-10 version of their game". There's still a lot of those out there and DX12 I believe doesn't run on them, while Vulkan does.

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There's something ironic about this. Evidently the designers are not plutocrats.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: BTRESince we had opposite experiences it looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree :)

I guess it would be a bit silly to expect everyone to have the same taste in entertainment. It's not like we're talking about hard facts here so it's perfectly natural to have different experiences. In matters of taste there are only opinions. Professional art experts and critics can go cry in a corner. :P

My degree is in litcrit, so . . . waaahhh!!! :'(

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Quoting: EhvisI actually find the $7.5B figure worrying. Companies don't spend that much money to not get something out of it. I have a hard time believing that this can be earned by selling pro-accounts, so there must be some other vision for how this could be made profitable. I don't think I want to be around to find out what it is.

This. They must have some reason to spend $7.5 billion. "Pocket change" it may be, but certainly on one of those days when you've been gradually accumulating the stuff for weeks and suddenly realize you've got a couple dozen (pounds, euros, dollars) in coin weighing your pocket down. $7.5 billion is more than the Canadian government just paid for an oil pipeline (and they got rooked, at that--ex-Enron dudes totally fleeced them).

So either they have a plan to make a profit from Github, a big enough one to make $7.5 billion worth it. And it seems to me there's a good chance whatever way they plan to make that money isn't going to be something we'll love. Or they have a strategic purpose in owning it that they think is worth shelling out $7.5 billion without getting a profit back. I would expect to like that even less.
Or both.

So, well . . . keep backups, folks.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: slaapliedjeI agree, but the console needs to be standardized in it's hardware. Otherwise it's just a bunch of parts in a box. Developers like a target for performance, etc.

Not really. Mobile and PC markets work fine with variety of hardware available. They are essentially "parts in a box". That doesn't stop developers and users. I don't see why consoles need to be any different in that regard. What's useful are common APIs and system stack. That's where above things I mentioned come in.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI know I'm already annoyed that a lot of games I have that I can't see in their full potential because I don't have an HDR TV or a Pro.

That's why well designed games adapt to different resolutions and hardware capabilities. That's more work, sure, but it's the right thing to do. If you can't see something in full potential because of your hardware, you'll get better hardware. Wasn't it always the case?

Well I guess it depends. Back in the 8bit era of computing, pretty much there werne't outlandish upgrades for the computers being made, you pretty much had memory differences and that was it, but soon there were games that required 48k or 64k.. then eventually 128k. Then the 16bit era came where developers would end up mostly developing for the lowest common denominator, like the ST instead of the STe, or the OCS instead of ECS and then AGA in Amiga land.

Now there are APIs that help with a lot of this and detect the hardware you're running on, though a lot of times you still have to tweak graphic settings when you first start something up for computer games. Consoles are nice because you don't have to do that ever. You pop the game into your system (or download it digitally) and it works. You don't have to mess with drivers, configurations, etc.

Something like the Steam Machine, which was mostly geared toward being a console and not a computer, didn't have that 'turn it on, it works, all your controls are configured, and you just sit down to play' feel that something like a PS4 has. Hell, even this box is going to support different controllers, keyboards, mice, etc. Wonder if it'll support the Steam Controller?

That's the thing, with Console games, you can't just go buy better hardware, it's more like a laptop, where you have to get a whole new laptop. There's a reason why it's referred to as 'The PC master race' because a lot of console gamers just stay away from it because in a lot of ways it's too hard to keep a game library running (with ever evolving operating systems and hardware).

The funny thing is, we all cry for an open platform in a console, but when it comes down to it, that's from a 'PC user's point of view. Console users are of a different mentality usually and just want a box they can press power on to play a game (though that's evolved too into streaming media as well.)

At least with this Atari VCS there will be standard APIs like OpenGL and Vulkan supported, rather than having to use some weird devkit.

In this particular case (and really the Steam Machine case) it's a bit different from normal consoles when it comes to hardware though. Your original point was about developers preferring a fixed target--but nobody's going to be developing games for this thing or Steam Machines, they're going to be running PC games which are already developed to run on very variable hardware. From a developer's point of view, these things are just a few specific PC configurations--they don't really change the target at all. Actually with this thing for the most part there are no developers at all--they're intended to run old games mainly.
The important thing, then, is not that they all be the same, or that they be impossible to modify or attach different controllers to. The important thing is that whatever configurations are sold, are good to go out of the box, with sane defaults and solid integration. Technically, an individual purchaser can't even tell if other purchasers have the same hardware and an identical experience--they can only tell if their purchase works. It is no doubt slightly easier to ensure that smooth experience with just one hardware configuration--but it shouldn't be a huge deal to effectively support a few variants.

I don't think the problem with Steam Machines had anything to do with them coming in multiple configurations as such. Most of the problems weren't even related to that, although one or two were about them coming from multiple vendors, none of whom were even the central one. I think maybe Valve wanted to imitate the success of the old IBM PC itself, with its relative openness and tolerance of clones which arguably led to its dominance over competitors like pre-Mac Apple computers and so on. But if the IBM PC itself had just been a reference design, not a real thing sold relentlessly to businesses by the massive marketing muscle and supergargantuan sales channel that was International Business Machines, the clones on their own would not have been able to dominate the market--mostly wouldn't have come into existence because there would have been no ecosystem for them to join. Valve and Steam Machines was like IBM launching the PC without making any PCs. They were probably doomed even without the various user experience gaps compared to the competition, or the generally lousy price points.

I sometimes think that Valve already realized the things were doomed (or at least would need years to be truly ready) by the time they launched, but they'd kind of promised they would and already put it off a year from the announcement so they just didn't put much energy in, minimized losses and chalked it up to experience. Hopefully one of these days when the graphics stack is all ready and MS app stores start breathing down their necks they will polish the software, team up with some content providers (eg Netflix), put their experience gained from past mistakes to use, mount a big push this time and hit Steam Machines out of the park.

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Quoting: bubexel

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: lucifertdarkVR of all sorts is still way out of most people budgets, the price will HAVE to come WAY down to have any hopes of real success.

I wonder which prices people expect, considering that every VR headset contains two gaming "monitors".

And tracking system and controllers. And everything in the smallest size and weight possible.

It's not about whether the price is reasonable. There are lots of things for which a reasonable price is too expensive for most people to want to buy it. On the internet one can find pictures of this incredibly gorgeous golden gown made from the silk of the golden orb weaver spider. It's really cool and awesome, but it is unlikely to become a mass market item because what with needing silk from a million spiders and stuff it's kind of expensive.
People don't owe it to the VR industry to buy something whose utility to them is not worth what they have to pay for it.

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