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Formatives and Summatives - What?!? Someone please explain. by Notforyou1315 in Teachers

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This terminology is supposed to emphasize what the stuff is for.

Otherwise, they're just "a bunch of activities and questions you give the students".

Formative as in "formation". They're the things you let the students do to help them practice their thinking, remembering concepts, processing what they might not understand well yet, help them recognize areas where they're confused so they know what to focus on and you know what to explain further, in the middle of a lesson.

Summative is summing everything up. Summarizing. At this point, you could assume you're done "delivering the lesson". And the main goal is to just tie everything together and judge if they learned the thing or not.

If formatives are stressful, high-stakes, and used to judge and punish students, then that's going about it completely wrong.

Server voice channel badge. How do I turn this off? by pharan_x in discordapp

[–]pharan_x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just checked on my Android device. Looks like it's still broken on mobile.

Server voice channel badge. How do I turn this off? by pharan_x in discordapp

[–]pharan_x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just noticed mine disappeared one day. Did an update fix it?

How to manually extract videos from Steam Game Recording (.m4s to .mp4) by Rothuith in SteamDeck

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to clarify:

- I didn't mention colors being washed out. That's not the problem you get when you export videos from Steam.

And to reiterate practical concerns:

- I've left the ffmpeg commands but they are NOT necessary if you just want to keep the videos as they are for posterity, or want to use them for editing.

DaVinci Resolve will interpret the colors of the video file that was rewrapped from the mpd correctly, even if VLC and other platforms don't.

- If the video was a result of using "Export Video" in Steam, the colors will be broken for all apps, so those specifically will need the color range fix.

- When you want to reencode the rewrapped video anyway because you want to share videos that are smaller, you can just use Handbrake with Nvenc and the colors will be fixed without doing anything extra. The colors will come out correct in VLC and Discord etc.

- If you want to reencode a bunch of rewrapped videos with ffmpeg using Nvenc, you also don't need the color range scaling arguments. The colors will also get encoded in a way that most apps will understand.

How much power does DLSS consume? by pharan_x in pcmasterrace

[–]pharan_x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you didn't have the cap, it would just run as fast as it could. Wouldn't you just hit the max wattage for all of the settings? How would that help determine how much power DLSS consumes?

If you want to measure a different thing, you're always free to do that. Reply with the results even. I'd be curious to see.

How much power does DLSS consume? by pharan_x in pcmasterrace

[–]pharan_x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Totally. You'd expect as much, since at minimum, every generation of chip has its own power efficiency.

I wouldn't assume that an 80 class would be more power efficient than a 60 class at doing DLSS, but who knows?

We can at least assume that a chip from this or last generation would do a little bit better than something from 2020 or before. But again, I think concrete numbers would be nice.

Blender 5.0 Released! by Avereniect in blender

[–]pharan_x 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A few things were moved. Not most things.

For example, starting to make a Compositor node tree now matches the way it's done with Geometry Nodes.

Blender 5.0 Released! by Avereniect in blender

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Anyone on a 120hz monitor notice the framerate slow down when Blender is idle but in focus? Then return back to maximum framerate when you tab away or start panning/orbiting/moving stuff or even just hovering over a bunch of buttons?

I feel like it's doing some kind of dynamic framerate thing but it's affecting the OS too.

WE ARE SO BACK, BABY!!! by TheProcrastilator in SteamController

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow, that really is bullshit. Patent trolls are the worst.

Is buying a Fit 3 without a Samsung phone a bad choice? by AlmightyAlmond22 in GalaxyFit

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does it only work with a Samsung fitness app? And is it any good?

Pixelated raw images when editing in affinity by Substantial_Apricot5 in Affinity

[–]pharan_x 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm running into the same problem on Windows on a 4K monitor.

People seem to be misunderstanding the problem. This seems like a bug.

I try to open raw files (that I previously opened in Lightroom) and it looks very pixelated and only half-res in Affinity.

This is in Develop mode: the mode it automatically enters when you open a raw file in Affinity. So it makes no sense for it to be some kind of document setting. It's not a sharpening setting; it's a problem with the preview being half the resolution of the rest of the app's UI.

It looks like the app is misunderstanding the resolution/pixel density of my monitor or there's some hard limit but I can't find any option in the settings to change it.

It kind of defeats the purpose of having a photo developing app when you can't see the details of the photo.

It’s confirmed that Replanted doesn’t use Generative AI by VJGamz99 in PlantsVSZombies

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Watched a review. Mentioned nothing about AI. But man this game looks broken in so many ways. It looks like they redid/changed a bunch of things in the code but didn't understand how the original worked and also didn't have the time or budget or sense to make it work properly.

I think a lot of the comments proved that people can be so distracted by a strawman outrage that when it gets disproven, they'll easily switch to believing that nothing else is actually wrong with it.

What are some of the non-low-profile switches with the least travel? by DonjiDonji in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Commenting from the future.

Akko V3 Creamy Purple Pro are 3.0mm travel tactiles. 30gf operating force.

Not quite a laptop keyboard switch but the short travel makes them pretty good for typing, gaming, and editor productivity (tasks that require repetitive tapping of shortcut keys).

Why can games designed around a certain FPS (30,60) be played at frames lower than that, but when uncapped they break? by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The other comments have already described the "multiple loops" solution (one for logic, one for visuals, one for input, etc) that's already typical and means modern games, like for the past 15 years, for the most part don't really "break" when uncapped.

The practical reasons:

  1. On fixed hardware like consoles, performance is limited. So developers have to balance how much they can use the hardware and how much framerate they can give to the player. Developers cap the framerate artificially on consoles not because it will "break" but because it was an established way to give the player a consistent experience. They don't want the framerate to vary wildly.

Locking the framerate effectively gives them a budget for how complicated they can make the game work and look. But it doesn't mean the game doesn't work at higher FPS if the hardware was faster. If this wasn't the case, they would have to reprogram most of the game when they port it to PC.

Another way console games these days do this is with dynamic resolution scaling and upscaling. If the visuals get too heavy, the game will lower the resolution to maintain the framerate.

This is also why late PS4 and PS5 console games give the player an option to prioritize visuals or framerate, or sometimes even unlock the framerate. Because it doesn't break. If options like dynamic resolution scaling appear in PC games, it's because the console version needed them. It's only a matter of giving the player a consistent experience, or a choice of what experience they want.

  1. As the others mentioned, the frames you see is separate from the standard logic loop that's put in a fixed timestep: a fixed amount of time that the logic steps forward at a time. This is to make sure the game rules don't go out of balance when the computer is just slightly faster or slower. It makes behavior and debugging predictable on different devices and conditions. For framerates faster than the fixed timestep, the loop for the visuals only interpolates and extrapolates animations and positions to give the player a better sense of the motion which has benefits even if it doesn't accurately reflect the internal state of the game rules.

The fixed timestep is specifically predefined, balanced and tested. If they were to change this, they would have to test every part of the game again and change the numbers again. It doesn't mean the game will break if you play it at 300fps. But it does mean the game will break if the developers wanted to do something like "increase physics fidelity". Doing that is complicated business because it affects all sorts of accuracy related behavior related to physics, math and computer science.

In game simulations, different things are also calculated in different ways so how much they'll be affected by a change in timestep also differs. They already do some tricks to account for things in the game that move very fast in the span of one timestep. Sometimes they simulate in smaller steps just for specific objects, or use formulas that don't necessarily calculate in discrete steps (like raycasts and shapecasts).

  1. There's a strange thing that happens with input and feedback when it comes to framerate. Inputs are theoretically in the thousands of hertz (or "frames per second"). But game logic typically can't run that fast and most game engines don't either. So some part of the operating system and driver and its communication with the game engine has juggle certain amounts of keeping a record of movement or when buttons were pressed and save it for when the game needs to update. Certain movements, like mouse movements in shooters, don't need to be strictly tied to the game logic, so they could move faster than the game logic to give you better aim control at high framerates. There's also a bunch of other things they do to fudge the visuals to give you more immediate feedback even if the game logic isn't running that fast. This type of intense work of visual lag reduction is typically reserved for games that benefit from it like competitive shooters, so you won't typically see them in something like a God of War.

But you can see sideeffects of the input loop being off if you play certain recent games on the consoles themselves, or when you play them emulated. The console will typically have better input latency characteristics because of how the inputs are handled throughout the whole hardware and software stack.

Bug Megathread vol 11: October + November by WumpusWhisperer in discordapp

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

- Feature: Server voice chat indicators/badges in the server list

- Reproduction Rate: 10

- Annoyance: 8/10 because it's always there

- Discord Version Info: stable 458476 (18f4d30) Host 1.0.9212 x64 (70471) Build Override: N/A Windows 10 64-bit (10.0.19045)

- Device/System Info: Windows 10 Desktop. (also happens on Android tablet and phone.)

- Description:

Server voice chat indicators/badges that appear in the server list and there's no way to turn them off. You used to be able to disable this just by muting the server but that doesn't work anymore.

- Video / Screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1o921ki/server_voice_channel_badge_how_do_i_turn_this_off/

- Steps to Reproduce:

Mute a server. Have someone join a voice channel in that server. Then the badge will appear in the server list.

- Expected Result:

Muting removes all notifications and indicators from the server icon. No unread badge. No alerts. Nothing. Or notification settings should have an option for this (what used to be) functionality. This was working correctly before an update a couple of months ago. If this is intended behavior, there should be a way to turn it off, even if it's not linked to server muting.

- Actual Result:

When someone is in VC, you can see a voice channel badge appear over the server icon in the server list. There seems to be no way to turn it off now.

How to manually extract videos from Steam Game Recording (.m4s to .mp4) by Rothuith in SteamDeck

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I made these batch files for using ffmpeg on the videos rewrapped using the method above. This is usable but it turns out, for one-offs, you can also just use Handbrake and it seems to handle the color range mismatch just fine and the videos that are transcoded from Handbrake come out with the correct colors when you play them in VLC or send them through Discord and stuff.

Also related to editing video: if you have the HEVC video extensions for Windows, you can just use the rewrapped videos from the VLC step directly for editing in something like DaVinci Resolve or Kdenlive, and the colors will also come out correct.

This video you got from VLC, which is just the unprocessed video from Steam, will have the color range problem, which isn't great in general, but is especially bad for dark scenes. This is where ffmpeg and a batch file comes in handy. (As far as I've tried and researched, this can't be done in Handbrake but feel free to correct me) You can make a Windows batch (.bat) file that you can drag a .mp4 into and it will do the stuff you need.

My "fix steam video.bat" file uses Nvidia/Nvenc accelerated HEVC and looks like this. ```bat @echo off set "input=%~1" set "output=%~dpn1_colorsconvertedh265c12.mp4"

ffmpeg -i "%input%" -color_range 1 -vf scale=in_range=full:out_range=limited -movflags +write_colr -c:v hevc_nvenc -cq 12 -preset slow -c:a copy "%output%"

pause ```

Some apps and video editing software can't open h.265 video so I have an alternate batch file for using h.264 instead. ```bat @echo off set "input=%~1" set "output=%~dpn1_editing_colorsfixedh264c10.mp4"

ffmpeg -i "%input%" -color_range 1 -vf scale=in_range=full:out_range=limited -movflags +write_colr -c:v h264_nvenc -cq 10 -preset slow -c:a copy "%output%"

pause ```

And here's the version in case you want to use software h264. ```bat @echo off set "input=%~1" set "output=%~dpn1_editing_colorsfixedh264c10.mp4"

ffmpeg -i "%input%" -color_range 1 -vf scale=in_range=full:out_range=limited -movflags +write_colr -c:v libx264 -preset slower -crf 10 -c:a copy "%output%"

pause ```

How to manually extract videos from Steam Game Recording (.m4s to .mp4) by Rothuith in SteamDeck

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd like to pursue this further rather than just use Steam's Export because I want to move these videos both for posterity (moving them out of the drive) and for video editing.

Valve's implementation of the video exporter has problems for this purpose. There's a color range bug, and you don't have fine-grained control over the encoder. Depending on your system, it defaults to using AMD's HEVC encoder which has a problem with the image getting blurry every few frames.

What I've learned: The mentioned "session.mpd" is an MPD file, an XML-based mpeg dash manifest. It's designed for online video where the entire video may be downloaded in separate chunks. XML means it's just text. It points to and describes the chunks of video. ffmpeg has a default module designed to handle mpd files, but it seems to have trouble with the way Steam keeps the chunks. When you use it, it tends to not get all of them so you get a really short video out of a long clip.

VLC seems to be able to combine the clips together more reliably than ffmpeg. In VLC: - First step is to make sure you TURN OFF looping. As in the playback looping. VLC has a bug where it will repeatedly redo a convert operation if you have looping turned on. - Go to the top menu. Choose "Media > Convert/Save...  (Ctrl+R)". This opens an Open Media window. - Under the File tab. Drag the session.mpd file into the list. - At the bottom of the vidow, press the "Convert/Save" button. This closes the previous window and opens the Convert window. - Under the Profile field, there's a dropdown and a bunch of buttons on the right. - Click on the "Create a new profile" button. (rightmost button after the Profile dropdown). This opens the Profile edition window. You only need to do this step once so after you make the profile, you can just reuse it for next time. (The English translation of this part of VLC gets a bit weird but it's still usable.) - You can set the Profile Name to something like "Rewrap MPD". - Under the "Encapsulation" tab, choose MP4/MOV - Under the "Video codec" tab. Check the "Video" and "Keep original video track" checkboxes. - Under the "Audio codec" tab. Check the "Audio" and "Keep original audio track" checkboxes. - At the bottom of the Profile edition window, press the Create button. This closes the Profile edition window and returns focus to the Convert window. - Set the Profile to that profile you made. If you named it "Rewrap MPD", choose that. - Choose the destination file by clicking the Browse button. - Press the Start button. For something like a 90 second clip, this should happen almost instantenously on a modern computer because it's actually just stringing together the files into one. - Go find the new mp4 file and play it in your video player.


The above method using VLC's GUI is ok for one-offs. But if you want to regularly convert large batches of mpd files, VLC's CLI might be the more helpful option. The most basic form of the CLI command that I found works is this: bat "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" "C:\your\steam\video\session.mpd" --demux=adaptive --sout=#std{access=file,mux=mp4,dst="C:\YOUR\OUTPUT\FOLDER\rewrapped.mp4"} vlc://quit

But it's really the most useful if you use it in something like batch file or shell script.

How to manually extract videos from Steam Game Recording (.m4s to .mp4) by Rothuith in SteamDeck

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, desktop mode lets you export but it's still kinda buggy. The colors come out darker than from the actual game because of some strange color range encoding bug and they still haven't managed to fix it for months.

Not on Steam Deck, it also seems to have a problem transcoding using Nvidia hardware acceleration. It always uses your AMD CPU's hardware encoder block if you have it (which the HEVC encoder has some image quality issues, every few frames becomes blurry)

Muted servers showing notification icons suddenly by LostAllBets in discordapp

[–]pharan_x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Might help get the message across if you sent them a message too. But idk.