Quoting: KlausI think people expecting cloud gaming to result in huge jumps in performance may be a bit naive about the business model. While it certainly enables more efficiently rendering graphics and performances computations, those can only be viable economically if the software or hardware is improved in a manner that makes them sufficiently cheap to execute.

But that essentially is the same requirement as waiting for new graphics cards, new processors, and new software implementing new algorithms.

Then again, maybe they’ll do something smart with machine learning that vastly improves the perceived fidelity and is more efficiently trained by running the games in the cloud?

One big difference is that server farms are not as limited by physical space or cooling problems or noise. That might enable to rely much more on parallelized computing which might take game technology in a previously untapped direction, with its own optimizations and advances that didn't make sense with the technology we have had thus far.

You are right, there are always the limitations of economic feasibility. But as I was explaining in my previous comment, many things might be economically more feasible with on-demand services as opposed to software and hardware that is in your room (or with you) 24/7.

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Quoting: nateAre there any totally free asset packs available anywhere for use in FOSS type projects? I've created some seamless textures for an upcoming project, but these are all lower quality images (256 by 256 pixels) that I've made from my own nature hike photos.

There might not be any 3D asset packs (yet), but one (or the(?)) place for libre game (and similar) assets is at OpenGameArt [External Link].

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyFor the record, I think "Nebuchadnezzar" is pronounced with something pretty much like a hard "k" sound, with maybe a hint of a Scottish throat-clearing "ch". Not like "Chad".

I thought so too and Wikipedia [External Link] seems to agree: /ˌnɛbjʊkədˈnɛzər/

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Quoting: javasabr

Quoting: GuestI actually think this is bad news for Linux. These textures are valuable, they look very modern and impressive, making developers use even more Unreal Engine. But please do not forget that Tim Sweeney is an nvidia fan, and that the proprietary mentality of nvidia can be added to Linux, but is not really desirable as a core Linux technology. Furthermore, it is also striking how much Tim Sweeney neglects Linux. Even the minimal things like making anti-cheat work on Linux have still not happened for Fortnite. So the CEO of Epic Games is not a person who supports Linux. First, Epic Games makes no effort to make their games work on Linux. And second, they do everything to optimize UE4 for nvidia more than for AMD. Although nvidia is a less logical choice for Linux users.

So I don't want to see this company grow. There are other engines that are just as good or better than UE4.

I use NVIDIA on linux many years, everything is good with games for me, I don't understand why AMD is better option.

Because AMD is more FLO (free-libre-open). Their hardware and firmware(?) is closed-source, but drivers are open-source. This means: slightly easier to debug stuff for gamedevs and such; possibility for third parties to fix bugs or maybe even add features (Valve, gamedevs, gamers); extending lifespan of hardware might be possible by third-parties. It might not apply at all in this case, but in general fully-FLO systems also make monopolies impossible.

Less monopolies, more competition is always better in the long term. And therefore supporting competition is also generally a good thing in the long term. Monopolies are bad because when they have come to dominate a market, they can (and will) stop innovating and cut back on maintenance of existing products and services whilst still charging the full price. They also can (and often will) raise the price, because what are you going to do - start your own GPU productions? Good luck getting the enormous capital required.

But yes, in the short term, or if you believe that an individual's actions have no impact on the world, then Nvidia might be the better option (I really don't know about the technicalities of which is the better option right now, if you only care about short term and personal gain).

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Quoting: peta77

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: peta77

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: peta77I don't like streaming stuff, requires a very good internet connection and I don't want to have screen resolution in the game restricted by any server. Also for single player games it doesn't make any sense to make an online connection a mandatory to be able to play. So I hope there's no upcoming titles which are exclusively available through cloud gaming. Would significantly throw back desktop gaming.

From Stadia, yes, google plan this. But from steam, i think and hope, they don't planing de jure exclusivity for cloud, but is there posibility for de facto time limited cloud exlusivity, because they can use better CPU, more cores,... and then nobody without today threadriper can play it localy, but in some time, it can be posible.

The only thing that would make sense regarding hardware capacity would real-time-raytracing, like that old remote-rendering i.e. SGI did long ago, where your render CPUs/GPUs would be somewhere in the basement and bigger than your appartment. But other than that, for gamers with high-end hardware it would just be a giant step back. I understand that such things are good for tablet or smartphone gaming, but not for the desktop. I don't want to go back to dumb terminals that rely on tons of external hardware and a hyper reliable high bandwith network. I'm pretty happy with having a "supercomputer" under my desk, even if it costs a bit more.

I don’t think so. You thinking only on graphics, but there is more. Your high-end gaming rig can have bottle neck on RAM, CPU or both. There are games with coplex physical simulation, like kerbal space program, where more compute power can be great benefit for developers and players. In KSP, you have physical time warp with all physic calculated and High-speed time warp, which stops all physical calculation except gravity and collisions. With epyc CPU with enaught cores (and multithread physical engine) you can have Physical time warp for higher warp. Yes, if you have high-end PC, but you can buy Epyc/threadripper with 128GB RAM or more and use it at home for gaming and call it gaming high-end...

Sure you can do more complex/extensive simulation with such an amount of computing power in the background. But also think about the target audience size! Real physical simulation is very complex and takes a lot of time, especially if you want to have results (somewhat) comparable with reality. Then it may take i.e. 50 CPU-hours to simulate a quarter of a second (in non-linear industrial quality simulation). So don't set your hopes too high to gain more or even as much as you can get when have a pretty recent ryzen or i7/9. That would require some pretty powerful HPC-cluster (or something similar) which you wouldn't want to pay for. Also, while most simulation problems are quite good parallelizable, it has its limits (due to communication of boundary regions, etc.; it's a science by itself...). Running a simulation on 100 CPUs/cores can actually be slower than running it on eight. The more so if the cores aren't on the same node, even if you use high-bandwith, low stack network protocols.
So, as mentioned before, it surely will increase the quality for mobile devices, but I wouldn't expect any improvement for the desktop. I guess, only effect for the desktop will be that you can significantly downgrade your hardware if you are willing to rely on cloud services only.

I think hypothetically, if there is enough market demand for cloud gaming, game engineers can focus on the gains that can be had. Pulling the whole game scene towards technologies that can be effectively parallelized on the cloud. Expect clever hacks that simplify the physics to trick the audience to perceive more simulation-awesome and less simulations that are actually accurate.
If there is enough demand the cost can be spread out very efficiently. Most players won't be playing 24/7. And if no-lifeing is too prevalent for the service-providers economic good, they will just introduce tiered subscriptions or pay-as-you-go. I would bet most users would not be using the awesome cloud hardware that much - only playing during their commute or after a workday or on weekends.

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Quoting: peta77Sounds pretty much like the sandboxes in Solaris or side-by-side-installations on MS(-xerox-apple...)-Windows. Actually a good way to keep applications running without interfering with each other, especially if you have common lib-dependencies but need different versions in order for the app to operate correctly / not to crash.
But long term it can still be a problem, i.e. when a special soundsystem isn't sound supported anymore at all, but only through wrappers (think about OSS). The same might apply to graphics, input devices and other stuff at some time. So I hope they understand that for this to work they will in the end need to write and maintain some wrappers to keep the old games going. Unfortunately OpenSource doesn't help here very much as some system stuff surely does change significantly over time and you won't be able to simply recompile without touching source code. But lets be optimistic and keep fingers crossed that it works out somehow.
Sure this can be also used for efficient/save cloud services. But it also will help you a lot the more apps/games you own that quickly aren't updated anymore for newer OS versions. It can significantly increase the amount of time you're able to use your stuff, hopefully until a point in time where you're actually not interested at all anymore in those games/apps.
Conclusion: as long as the steam desktop client stays alive, with local installation and hardware use, I think this is a very nice step forward.

Emphasis mine

I think this is a great thing. It gives some extra life to old games. And since the wrappers are FLO (free-libre-open), if there is enough demand for it, it can be maintained by volunteers or paid for by volunteer donations (think some person on Patreon maintaining a small number of wrappers or a kickstarter to update wrappers for old-game-we-all-liked). Hypothetically some art organizations might want to pay some dev to update the wrappers as well to preserve some significant game. So I think FLO helps quite a lot in this. It opens many potential doors. I'm starting to like Valve more and more.

Quoting: 14For some reason, they are still too scared to boot into a flash drive to play the Linux version of a game. I even told them I'd buy a dedicated hard drive for them to isolate Linux stuff and they could dual boot. :'( Being the 1% sucks sometimes.

One way out is to offer to do the whole process for them. Possibly so they can see how easy/hard it is.

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Sorry didn't read all the comments before posting this time, but I simply wanted to express appreciation for the aesthetic of this article's image. Steam logo + that cloud. /clap

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Quoting: KimyrielleBut yes, I do really not think that racism, misogyny, sexism, homophobia and bigotry qualify as "civil dissent" by any stretch of imagination, and neither are any of these things an "opinion". Being a pathetic moron isn't an "opinion". I guess that's really the thing where we don't agree on.

I too want to express my dissatisfaction about name-calling here. Secondly, I feel that if I apply principle of charity [External Link] I could see that there might be some underlying valid concerns about the format or methods of the very welcome push for anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-misandry (which is so much less prevalent that I understand why people might even be offended for seeing them on a list together, but technically it does exist in very rare cases), anti-sexism (better to use this word than the previous two, eh?), anti-homophobia and anti-bigotry in general. Having issues with implementation details, so to say, and feeling dread and anxiety about a perceived wave of change they have no input to or influence over all the while hearing many scary conspiracy theories passed on around them. Yes, for some it is about not relinquishing power to be spread more evenly, but not for everyone. BUT I completely get your sentiment as well and also agree.

Quoting: psyminHowever, some of the folks in this thread have wanted to take things above and beyond what the CoC states. You're responding to my response to those folks.

Quoting: psyminIf Kimyrielle or scaine were to have written the CoC, based on their comments here, I assume it would contain more lopsided and biased language.

If they were on the committee that determines who to punish for violations, I'd have strong concerns, unless there were other extremists on the board to provide counterbalance their wishes.

I might completely be wrong, but I didn't get this impression and therefore feel that this is an unfair conclusion.

Quoting: psyminCorrect. Aside from the fact that "power" is subjective, let's look at the folks who do have power in this realm.

https://godotengine.org/code-of-conduct [External Link]

Akien, QbieShay, TMM, and vnen

This isn't a closed system existing in vacuum. They are affected by people around them. Power relations outside project sphere carry over to project sphere. Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have unimaginably more power over Godot than even the project leaders, even if they never exercise it (or specifically realize they have it).

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWell, just for the record in case anyone wants to call anyone that, I am an extremist. :D

For the record, I too am an extremist, but it isn't relevant to this discussion and extreme views are no reason for uncivil behavior generally. Not meaning anyone here specifically, just being a smartass.

Btw I think calling someone an extremist is maybe also a form of name-calling, as in addition to the descriptive meaning (someone who is extreme in their views) a judging aspect was also present ("those people are bad/invalid"), I feel. Compare with the word "faggot" - descriptive meaning + strong negative evaluative meaning. More on the topic here [External Link].

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: KimyrielleWould I want to have a misogynist in a project I am leading? Absolutely NOT!!! Not even if their code was the best thing since sliced bread. I haul their sorry butt out of the door, period. And I find this the most natural thing on Earth, really.

If that misogynist in your project behaves just fine towards everyone in the project and the users and does a good job - what does it matter what views he holds privately?

Wouldn't you agree that "misogynist who behaves fine towards everyone in the project" is either an undetectable misogynist to the project members (nobody knows) or, when observed performing discriminatory actions or speech towards someone outside the project, will indirectly make some project members feel unwelcome and uncomfortable. (I acknowledge that perceived witch hunts against valid/nearly_innocent people would make you feel uncomfortable as well, but probably not as unwelcome).

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou don't want to convince him of anything other than your power to get him offed, you don't want to understand why he thinks what he thinks, how he came to the wrong conclusions. You want to get someone fired for simply not agreeing with you on topics that are for one reason or another dear to you - and you think it to be the most natural thing on Earth.

I'm not certain, but I think you are interpreting things here that were not said. I mean being overly stuck in other peoples' wording is also bad, but reading things that were not said is maybe worse? I like the principle of charity [External Link] when it comes to ambiguity.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYes, and that is nonsensical collective punishment that I do not support.
"Someone of you did something I do not agree with, unrelated to the project, so now I hate all of you, and the project, especially if that person's head doesn't roll".
If that screeching is the best people can do, I can't wait for the next meteorite...

Collective responsibility is a complicated topic. We can try to discuss it if you've for example watched this video [External Link] on it. (I will also rewatch it if you do, so we both have to invest effort, but we will have a lot of discussing done for us). If you don't feel like watching that (or discussing it), then I don't want to discussing it either (too much off-topic effort), but tl;dr of my opinion: I think collective responsibility is a real everyday not-bad-for-us(the society) thing. It is how people function and it isn't bad.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd even if it was something really serious: Maybe that person was drunk, or maybe just in a really bad space, or, or, or... Those are not excuses, but there are a lot of reasons to give second chances and not just pre-emptively exclude everyone who might disagree on something.

I wholeheartedly agree that we shouldn't exclude and ban people with little thought and consideration and empathy. BUT it all depends on the degree and frequency. You can imagine feeling threatened or unwelcome to exist as a result of someone's drunk comments or such. And sometimes (presumably rarely) people with the most horrible, toxic, hateful behavior demand their second chance in order to hurt even more people. That's why it is difficult to put "giving second chances" directly into the rules of the CoC.

We as a society are not very good at codifying empathy - at making that part of the written CoC. But I believe it is part of the implied one. The one intended. I wonder if anti-CoC and anti-tolerance behavior would be less bad if we made attempts at putting more empathy towards real or perceived perpetrators into the written CoCs?

Quoting: TheSHEEEPBut you will have to live with people not understanding how a persons views on unrelated topics affect their ability to be a GSoC mentor, for example.

Analogously, in the alternative, they would have to live with people not understanding how such an extremely offensive, inconsiderate person (expressed outside project) could become a GSoC mentor. Both crowds applying pressure exist, and whichever is the bigger one is more likely to get what they want whether they are right or not.

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf that misogynist in your project behaves just fine towards everyone in the project and the users and does a good job - what does it matter what views he holds privately?

I have never met a misogynist who was able to hide their crappy personality for long when there was a female around, but even IF they somehow could hold back in my project, I -still- don't want to work with a person who I know beyond reasonable doubt, is a douchebag. It's my right to chose who I work with. Again, you're more or less saying that voicing douchebag opinions is fine, but not wanting to be exposed to douchebags, is not. It's hypocrisy, because by doing that, you implicitly rank one side's freedom higher than the other.

I think TheSHEEEP was saying that douchebag behavior outside the project/community is fine AND not wanting to be exposed to douchebag behavior at the project/community is fine. I think you are perhaps reading something that was not written.

Quoting: Guest@Scaine and Kimryelle, you have both taken some effort to explain us you would exclude people for what they are regardless of what they do. Or do not in that specific case. :wink:

(Not that i think you are not free to do so) :D

Your comment feels snarky, but is there really that big of a difference between being a racist and behaving in a racist way or being smart and behaving smart or being Christian and behaving Christian? In practice it is just faster to say the shorter version. (tangent: I have learned in practical psychology that it is generally more constructive to use "do" verbs than "be" verbs). I guess ideally people shouldn't be defined by their behavior (partially in order to facilitate change of said behavior) and people absolutely should be given a few second chances if their behavior hasn't been too outrageous or if they haven't been intentionally uncooperative. But there is risk of abusing these second chances. Also most people lack the resources (patience, time, energy...) to properly give (seemingly) misbehaving people second chances. Especially since there are some people who are just trolls (defined in my previous comment on this thread) and even some who are paid trolls.

All of our (me+you) examples are behaviors - that is things one does, which might or might not be a part of an identity, but all can be changed throughout a person's life. That is unlike sexuality, disability (most of the time), sex and gender (that you are most comfortable with), ethnicity, age, species, cultural origin. We want to limit the exclusion of people based on any unchangeable aspects of a person. And I feel there is no middle ground between accepting all people based on their unchangeable aspects of person AND accepting people who via their actions/speech exclude other people based on their unchangeable aspects of their person. You can either tolerate one or the other, not both.

Quoting: psyminBut I prefer to put my energies into communities that are welcoming of civil dissent and diversity of opinion.

Please be so kind as to check my last passage before this quote.

Thanks to everyone for being as reasonable and calm as you have been! <3

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Everyone is biased. Every AI we would make would inherit any biases of the pre-existing programmer/company/society/culture.

I think in general there are some valid good-faith (honest intentions) fears and arguments that stem from them on both sides (I'm not saying that both sides are equal and the Truth lies exactly in the middle). The problem arises from the fact that there are probably some bad-faith (malicious intentions) actors mixed in. People who pretend to fight for valid, honest reasons, but actually just want to harm or destroy the other side. And we need to speak out about those who on our side of the argument step out of line. Who seem to fight to harm others, rather than for fairness. Because as we know full well from US politics, this behavior - of excusing any behavior as long as it is on your side and condemning any slightest misstep on the other side - will take us nowhere.

Quoting: PatolaToxic is not an informative world. Usually it is just meant to convey "bad" but is lacks any descriptive power. What is toxic? Histrionic words? Extreme points of view? Right-in-your face insults like "idiot"? Acid sarcasm? Left-wing views? Right-wing views? Victorian moralism? I've seen this word used with all these diverse meanings. Which depends heavily on the reader. So in fairness you should not use that word as a criteria to exclude people.

I would say perhaps:
Toxic - One who is (assumed to intentionally be) uncaring and hurtful towards others without any provocation or justification.
Privilege - A speck of (additional) personal power and prestige and identity transferred to a person due to their background (perceived ethnicity, perceived gender, perceived sexuality). A source of ever so tiny benefits from natural biases of others stemming from our shared cultural background.
Trolling - Bad-faith discussion disguised as good-faith discussion. Not actually engaging the other person, but pretending to for the sake of personal amusement at the expense of that other person.

I think people with some privilege are unintentionally blind to how much harm they might do to others who have a more fragile position and identity in the world than others (Giorgio Armani probably has more power than any straight white males here). Also generally anyone with any smidgen of power will want to keep it. It is always a problem maintaining power calls for attacks on others. Some white people (metaphorically) punching down on the (statistically speaking) relatively powerless ethnic minorities might often be doing this to protect their advantageous position in society. To defend the "natural order of things". Those who happen to be on the top are assumed to be there because of merit not because of historical happenstance. Since this defends one's own position as the rightful ruling class. Practically anyone would have that bias in such a situation.

And some people on the right are legitimately offended that people step out to defend these minorities from attacks on their identity and personhood while some of the same "privileged" people also suffer in poverty and e.g. poor mental health.

But some people on the left feel this doesn't invalidate neither the suffering or marginalized people of color nor marginalized people who are white. Both suffer. Statistically speaking marginalized people of color probably have some extra suffering sprinkled on top due to the cultural biases against them. In any case, all marginalized people should be defended, not attacked.

[not patronizing!] I think again, the solution (for all of us) is remembering to breathe deeply and slowly to be less fearful (whether the reason for fear is takeover of society and retribution by toxic persons who care about social justice or by toxic persons who are reacting to the persons who care about social justice), since fear shuts down higher thinking. Also if we were to have a culture of consideration of the other person's viewpoint and their personhood, then I believe hate crimes, doxxing and trolling become impossible for the majority of people. Cultivate the culture you wish for.

Quoting: Baemir

Quoting: slapinWell, there is very big difference between receiving negative comments and being banned - when people have a chance to talk out of the problem they eventually solve it or agree to disagree, but when one side is constantly banned for what they say you remove all the discussion and all chances for a problem to be resolved.

Oh, the problem is definitely resolved on their end. I call it the Genghis Khan method.

There are people who intentionally abuse this right to discussion. People who pretend to be discussing the problem, whilst actually sneaking in more personal attacks like with a trojan horse. It is because of such people that we cannot have nice things. Very similar process can also happen unintentionally, but does not change much. If the person is unintentionally hurting others, but fails to communicate within a limited time frame (or to a moderator later) how their intentions were good, but they actually have social ineptitude. You generally turn to CoC when people are way out of line. When normal talking no longer works.

Also on the topic of the effects of proper CoC vs DBAJ ("Don't be a jerk"). I would argue that a CoC is less useful for blanket bans. Implied or real DBAJ meanwhile will allow moderators to ban people based on political preferences or attractiveness of their face or the naming scheme of their commits - they don't need to give a reason or justify their ban. With CoC there is some oversight. And there is always some trust needed.

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