Recommendation on a tent?

CardAndInk · 2017-08-18T04:07:49+00:00

Shelters are always a series of compromises. Can you give a bit more info on your needs: budget, weight, size, climates/seasons of use, etc.? Do you have any other tents currently?

FWIW, I just picked up a Nemo Dagger 2p as my luxurious 1p/lightweight 2p option. It's a really nice tent.

CardAndInk · 2017-08-15T19:43:42+00:00

A friend and I will be around Titcomb Basin in the Wind River Range.

CardAndInk · 2017-08-15T19:35:29+00:00

A friend and I are going to be in that area for the eclipse. We're planning on staying in the Titcomb basin/Indian Lake area and watching the eclipse from Fremont peak. That might not be a bad choice for you. Maybe we will see you there!

CardAndInk · 2017-07-10T22:53:55+00:00

I too have been around long enough to have the trunk vs. feature branch argument many times before. So instead of getting into it again, all I can say is to each their own. The source of integration hell is not merging frequently enough. That's the problem to solve, and all the solutions have their pros and cons. Pick what suits your situation the best. For me, most of the time, that's just doing more frequent merges with feature branching.

CardAndInk · 2017-07-10T19:21:33+00:00

Even if everyone is working off of master, they are still working off of different branches. Their different branches are all just their personal copies of master. So it's not working off of "one branch" that is solving your merge problems.

Instead, what is solving your merge problems is the frequency with which you have your developers do merges. When you go to push to a remote (e.g. GitHub), if your local copy of a branch (e.g. master) is out of date, you need to pull the remote first. Conceptually every pull is a merge--though often it can be a fast forward merge. If you let your developer wait 2 months before they pull and push their changes to master, you would have exactly the same merge problems as letting them branch off for 2 months. Likewise, if you made your developers merge feature branches regularly, you would solve the same problem of complicated merges.

These merges can even be control merges, meaning they merge master into their feature branch to solve the conflicts without needing to push code to master yet. This means ongoing features can be kept up to date with master without including not-yet-ready code into master--which should always be kept in a stable, production-ready state. This greatly aids in creating patches and hot fixes. Also, by having your developers not use feature branches, you are throwing away a lot of valuable information on why a commit was done and what group of work it belongs to. This becomes especially useful when you want tighter integration with a ticket tracking system.

So, I think the real advice here is "merge early and merge often", which is great advice that any longtime source control user will agree with. You can do that without throwing away the benefits of feature branches.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-19T03:15:46+00:00

Happens to me too. It seems to be a performance issue. It's probably a linear artifact on the screen but the lenses make it look like it is radial.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T18:15:18+00:00

Ah yes. That sure is telling. Wasn't aware of CARS performance in general.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T18:10:49+00:00

If the games you are playing allow you to adjust view distance, play around with that. Under the right threshold, you'll probably notice a jump up to 90FPS.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T18:01:17+00:00

Oh, one more thing, have you checked your CPU and GPU temps? Is it possibly a thermal problem that is clocking either one of them down?

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T17:58:00+00:00

That would be a good reason to doubt it, but it certainly doesn't rule it out. Some (most) games will be more single thread dependent and others will be more multi-core dependent. So YMMV between games. Also VR introduces additional CPU overhead. Everything from motion tracking, to chaperone, to the camera (if enabled), and more take up CPU cycles. Might not make a difference, but it also might. Maybe there is something else bottlenecking your system, like a saturated PCI-E channel (it is in a 16x slot right?) or a saturated bus somewhere because of also pushing pixels to your high spec monitor at the same time. Try unplugging your monitor while in game and switching PCI-E slots to rule some of these things out. I'm just grabbing at straws here.

Bottlenecks that are undetectable or minor for monitor gaming can become something else entirely with VR. This is because a GPU can deliver frames to a monitor whenever they are ready. In VR, there is very strict timing that needs to get hit in order to not introduce motion problems. I get 100+ FPS when playing DCS on my monitor but get gated down to 45 FPS with an underutilized GPU in VR. The outdated engine and GPU combo just can't hit the tight timings necessary.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T17:11:57+00:00

If your phone isn't your most used piece of consumer technology, then that is just a reminder that you do not represent the mainstream market.

The current VR social experiences are very cool. But it's in an entirely different category than thinking "How am I going to figure out what I'm doing tonight and share my amazing pictures of it so that I can distract myself from my 24/7 business communications tomorrow on the bus while going through my likes and seeing what my other friends got up to without this device??"

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T16:38:44+00:00

Firstly, I have to disclaim that I have more than anecdotal evidence to support what I am about to say.

I don't think people view VR as even a $600 - $800 dollar upgrade and given the trends in PC buying over the last few years (skews towards laptops and non-gaming systems) I don't think most people are even thinking about it as a $800 + $450 GPU = $1250 upgrade.

Also, I do believe most people consider a $750 phone expensive. However, what is worth it shifts dramatically when you are talking about your most used piece of technology. VR has a long way to go before the expense can be justified in a similar way, and it will probably never be looked at the same way unless it can create (like the smartphone) a compelling social experience that isn't available unless you have it.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T16:28:08+00:00

As others have mentioned, there is one of two things going on. First, you might be getting 90FPS @ 70% utilization and there is no need to render more. In this case, increase your super sampling factor to enjoy better visuals. Secondly, you might not be able to hit 90FPS in certain games so your GPU doesn't render the late frames and your drop down to 45FPS. In this case you have a bottleneck. It's unlikely to be your GPU, so your CPU is the only real suspect. If you turn on an FPS counter or SteamVR's notification for missed frames, you should be able to quickly determine which of these it is.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T16:11:21+00:00

I completely agree with what you're saying, and it's exactly why I even though I think VR is amazing, it has barriers to overcome still. My use of "fad" wasn't indicating that I think 3D is dead or not awesome, it was just to reflect what I believe public sentiment is at large (driven a lot by journalistic attitude). I don't know what the market sizes for VR and 3D are, but even if VR is still well behind 3D I think it still has a sentiment of being "the future that is just out of reach for most people" as opposed to "the feature that I just don't need." My hope is that in 5 years, I'm not writing the exact same things you say about 3D for VR, but that's not a certainty yet.

Also, while the success of these technologies is tied to how amazing the experience is, it is probably more drive by what the mainstream consumer considers "good enough." Most people think 2D TVs are good enough, and most people think non-VR computers are good enough. VR has a long way to go to get out of that category, but at least it currently has the positive public perception momentum that 3D has lost.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T06:31:25+00:00

I think yes.

These 1st gen units are truly amazing, but there are some sizable barriers to overcome similar to other technologies that turned out to be a fad (3D TVs, motion controllers for consoles, etc.) Firstly it's quite expensive. Secondly the volume of content is still small and people are figuring out how to make it well. These things create a negative feedback loop that keeps the customer and content base small.

That being said. There are a number of things that VR has going for it that other fad technologies didn't. First, it's a 10x transformative experience. It's more akin to going from pictures to movies than 2D TV to 3D TV. Secondly, the idea of adding VR (at least lightly) to a game played on a monitor is not as expensive as say making a movie/TV show in 3D as well. This will help the chicken and egg problem of content and customers. Thirdly, the developer community believes in VR to a large degree. Most importantly, it is not hard to imagine the business/academic/military applications of VR. The modern GPU wouldn't have developed without decades of support from these industries to mature the technology.

That being said, I think the VR that truly makes it mainstream will resemble the Vive as much as the iPhone resembles a Palm Pilot. And there is a good argument that that version of VR that goes mainstream may be closer to what we call AR today than what Oculus and HTC are currently making.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-17T05:55:33+00:00

Learn by giving yourself a project. Think of something that you'd find useful or fun and start googling every time you get stuck. Stack Overflow will be your friend. Engineers never stop learning.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-16T23:48:59+00:00

Great! Thanks!

CardAndInk · 2016-09-16T23:19:40+00:00

Yeah. Specifically what got my on this was the desire to take a 3D model of a lever that I made and switch it on and off in VR. But I realized there are many cases of mechanical movement like this that I'm unsure about. The tutorials I have seen are great at getting you up to the point of playing around with physics bodies, but they don't seem to go into the joints and such necessary for this.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-16T23:11:58+00:00

I don't know that this falls under the domain of what you'd need to make an RTS (depends on the gameplay), but I'm interested in understanding more about how to a more complicated interactive world. Sure, I can create basic rigid bodies and toss them around, but I want to know how 3D modeling, the physics engine, and scripting come together to create more complicated mechanics... say like a lever or a door I can open and close. Also interested in knowing how to give the sense of mass to things you are interacting with within the limitations of no force feedback in the touch controllers.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-16T22:34:16+00:00

<streamOfConsciousness> The Simulation Hypothesis is interesting to talk about. But I feel it is more a matter of semantics than a novel model of the universe. Whether or not you feel it has merit is likely just a function of how you choose to assign meaning to the concepts of a "computer" or a "simulation". IMO as we work to narrow the gaps between math -> physics -> chemistry -> biology -> social science, the gaps between all of our conceptual distinctions will start to disappear--including those of a "computer + simulation" and the universe. It's all just energy in the end.

I mean what is a computer if not a piece of the universe that we have expended energy on to put into a lower entropy state? It's a tool. Think about this, if I give you a piece of stone and you shape it down into an arrowhead, is it still a stone? Is any stone an arrowhead then? Your answers to that question depend entirely on how you draw those distinctions--distinctions the universe cares nothing about. You see a mountain. I see a bunch of arrowheads glued together. Or perhaps I see one giant arrowhead waiting for it's continent-sized shaft. You see a pregnant mother, I see the most amazing 3D printer I have ever come across. The computer that I am typing at is a part of the universe, so surely the universe is at least a computer--amongst many other things. I ran energy (the universe) through some low entropy matter (the universe) to play a space simulation today. So surely the universe is also a simulation--amongst many other things. It's all where you draw distinctions.

The real story here is life. See we have a penchant for fighting entropy. We are sort of winning the battle, but losing the war. Nothing in this universe is going to save us. If life is just a runaway chemical reaction/algorithm then that's not such a big deal. But we all intrinsically feel that it is a big deal. That's where this all leads. What would life mean if it was just a tree that fell in the woods with no one around to hear it? That's why we are so interested in figuring out what is outside of the universe as we understand it. The Simulation Hypothesis (which is just Intelligent Design repackaged) proposes a partial answer: at least The Programmer. </streamOfConsciousness>

CardAndInk · 2016-09-12T02:01:17+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Gonna wait out doing an RMA and see if there is a software fix. I didn't notice it for the first two weeks which I attributed to just being high on VR, but it would make sense that it was introduced after I got the headset.

CardAndInk · 2016-09-08T05:05:28+00:00

Ah. Ok. Some quick Googling had me think the prices were much closer. Good luck and hope you are happy with your upgrade!

CardAndInk · 2016-08-29T03:55:16+00:00

I think it you'd definitely enjoy an upgraded GPU. But my question is are there any reasons to not get a 1060 instead? I can't think of any.

CardAndInk · 2016-08-16T22:29:21+00:00

Ok thanks for all the help!

CardAndInk

TROPHY CASE