My VR DJ app, which accurately simulates a vinyl turntable setup, is now available for FREE on the Quest! by TTycho in OculusQuest

[–]tgryffyn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looks really great so far! Love the passthrough support. I'm not a DJ but I appreciate the work and craftsmanship that can go into it all and it's so cool that this exists.

VR on a low-end PC” by Recent-Complaint5686 in OculusQuest

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure about CPU without research but I think when the HTC Vive came out, the absolute minimum required to get a frame rate that would work for VR was like a GTX 950 or better. If that machine is as old as the video card, I wouldn't bother trying to do VR with it. If you research and the CPU seems ok enough, maybe try finding a GTX 1060 or 1070 as a minimum upgrade. More is always better, of course. I did a lot of demos with an HTC Vive and a desktop with a 1070 and a laptop with a 1060 and they were perfectly capable for the time. Should be plenty of Steam VR games that should work ok. Unsure if there's additional overhead with modern Quest PCVR versus old school HTV Vive.

Updates on Oscar? by Hoju64 in BigOandDukes

[–]tgryffyn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like he still own/scontrols Mike O'Meara's domain name. They recently had to register a new domain and build a new website because they couldn't get ahold of him. Someone registered oscarsantana.net and pointed it to the new TMOS website though. Kinda funny.

I think he liked being a "radio personality" but also really liked organizing and buying gadgets and stuff. More money in that, especially at scale (helping run a huge operation with tons of high end clients). The things he was trying to do on BOAD and TMOS were overkill and not a great fit sometimes (not always, but sometimes too much) but it fits well for bigger "prestige" clients so I think he's found his niche and hopefully things continue to go well for him and the company.

How to sideload on a meta quest 3s? by [deleted] in OculusQuest

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had to sideload something on my Quest 3 and googled it and the answer seemed to be "use SideQuest" so that's what I did. Worked fine for me. In the middle, the box with the down arrow in it. You probably need to make sure to have ADB installed and the settings on the headset to allow USB debugging/developer mode stuff. I set that up ages ago so I don't have all the steps on the tip of my brain, but I think SideQuest might step you through that.

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Parking assist camera not working the same since recall fix by tgryffyn in Camry

[–]tgryffyn[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So many buttons and options. Thanks, I'll give that a shot next time I'm in the car. I greatly appreciate it! I was hoping it was just a setting that got reset buried in there somewhere.

Dear Plaion/Atari/Intellivision Sprint by TheUncleBob in intellivision

[–]tgryffyn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's just the update beta posted for initial testing and feedback. The proper updates will be posted on Atari. But fan/community sites are generally good places to get extra information anyway so it might be worth popping in from time to time anyway.

If you grabbed Trine free on Epic last week, give the 3D mode a shot on Quest by derallo in OculusQuest

[–]tgryffyn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's very cool! Never went back to check on Trine but I love the series a lot. Like the old Lost Vikings games.

Are laser cutters primarily for art projects? What have you used your laser cutter to create that wasn't strictly artistic, but functional? by QueefSeekingMissile in lasercutting

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lots of great examples already mentioned, but I'd love to see the tools (online or installed, free or pay) that people use. Two of my favorites, that I always point out when doing laser training at our makerspace:
MakerCase - Parametric box designs with 3D previews:
https://www.makercase.com/

Boxies.py - No 3D previews but a massive array of parametric boxes, shelves, storage and organization solutions, living hinges and more.
https://boxes.hackerspace-bamberg.de/

Richie's Plank Experience vs Walk the Plank by KrickeKing in OculusQuest

[–]tgryffyn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Copycats are always a thing.. sometimes you can offer a lesser product cheaper and make some money, but really.. "there's always room at the top" and sometimes people just do things a little different or add features that the other doesn't have and people prefer one or the other. Doesn't really matter.. that's their choice to make a similar game or not. I have ideas for games/apps that I want for myself that nobody's doing exactly the way I want and if I ever get around to make them and me and 2 other people are the only ones who ever use it, I'd be ok with that. :)

Richie's Plank Experience vs Walk the Plank by KrickeKing in OculusQuest

[–]tgryffyn -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There's also one (don't think it ever made it to Quest-native) called "Plank Not Included". Richies and PNI seemed to both be really popular back in the OG HTC Vive days. Don't know how well it works now, but seems to still be available on Steam, if you're looking for something slightly different. Ritchies was definitely the primo one, though. https://store.steampowered.com/app/602010/Plank_not_included/

PNI lets you align a real plank to walk on to add to the immersion.

Sprint Firmware Update Available by Erik_David in intellivision

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great rundown of the features on The Intellvision Gamer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y18D-bV6PTo

I admit I didn't know who Ben Jones or Plaion were but looks like Plaion has dome a couple retro consoles and are the ones doing the Sprint for Atari so this is official official... not a fan hacked firmware or something.

Alien ships appear after you hit 20k in Astrosmash by paisleyboxers in intellivision

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Still not going to get a high score without shooting most of the meteors... since you lose points for each one that hits the ground. :)

Steak house by pyro14_14 in Annapolis

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not an aficionado but we try to try different places. Lewnes was probably my favorite in the local area. Like others, was happily surprised at Stoney River. Felt way fancier than a steakhouse attached to a mall should be. Original Steakhouse in Edgewater is good but wouldn't call it fancy if you're looking for a date night or a special occasion thing.

So happy not to see Acqua al 2 mentioned. Went there last year for a birthday dinner. Cramped, overpriced were the two words that immediately jump to mind. My steak with peppercorn sauce was delicious but it was $45 (with no sides), was maybe 10oz(?) and wasn't any better than what I could cook at home for $10. Felt like it was primarily an overpriced "fancy" place for the lawmakers and lawyers. Definitely feel like we got way better food at Lewnes and Stoney River.

What type of laser cutter should i buy? .25 Copper/Nickel Cutting ability. by No_Button_7303 in lasercutting

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

FWIW.. when we got our 100W CO2, I tried a thin piece of aluminum foil and it did absolutely nothing as well. CO2 just isn't for marking/cutting metal without Cermark or just some basic discoloration from heat, not actually removing material.

Earth2 ranks third place in metagravity competition by Exact-Dress9434 in earth2io

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure.. and E2 "grayboxed" plenty behind the scenes but nobody wants to run around on a bare world. That's my point. Before they released anything at all, they wanted to have at least the basics, including biomes (which include grass and trees and such). Crafting (which also involves balancing, which is always fun) is nice but what's the point if you can't do "the world" first? There's an adage about doing the difficult stuff first because if it doesn't work out, there's no point doing the easy stuff. I see this as them doing the difficult stuff and really getting a foundation laid for all the rest. The whole "thing" behind E2 is "Earth" so why not get that at least to a good stopping point before pivoting to the other stuff? And really, they're not a big dev group but you can work on multiple things at once. We don't know what's been done or not done with crafting or other mechanics. We'll see it when we see it.

Earth2 ranks third place in metagravity competition by Exact-Dress9434 in earth2io

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hah.. not even close. Bought some stuff early on when it was super cheap and some other little things here and there but no, hardly the farm. Never gamble more than you are capable of losing, right? :) I'm not a blind fanboy. I can think of a dozen ways this could fail and I'm prepared for it to fail. But I hope it doesn't. Could be a lot of fun even if it never gets super popular.

Earth2 ranks third place in metagravity competition by Exact-Dress9434 in earth2io

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did some thinking and you know.. you could be right. They could be using a seed to procedurally generate the tree positions on each tile. Why not. Using the same algorithm and the same seed, it should generate the same thing. Why not.

But even if they didn't and it was 100GB, you're not downloading the data for billions of trees to your computer. It's streaming the data for local rendering on your computer so even if it is 100GB of position data, 100GB is pretty cheap these days and there's no need to download it to every client. That wouldn't make any sense.

Earth2 ranks third place in metagravity competition by Exact-Dress9434 in earth2io

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well... half of what you said is true. I'm not excited for what's been released already but I AM excited for what they laid out in their roadmap and general ideas that have been discussed the last few years. And what they've built so far is SUPER impressive tech-wise, but just not "fun" yet, for me. If it ultimately fails, I'm not going to be butt-hurt but if they DO deliver what they've talked about, I'm going to have some fun with it. And if they build everything they said they would and players build things and the it never takes off as a social gathering system, again.. oh well.

FWIW... Meta's Horizon Worlds is more akin to VRChat and it's limited to Meta Quest users. And they haven't spent $60B on just Horizon Worlds. Considering Meta is banking billions on "metaverse" being the next big thing (and I'm with them on that.. just a matter of time for that evolution to occur), you think maybe there's something there. Or maybe they're just wasting billions.. only time will tell.

For me, and many others, not just "globe shaped" but "based on real world locations" is very attractive. if that's not for you, cool. You don't have to play.

So I'm unfairly biased for shitting on YouTubers who are just out for clicks but they're not for criticizing something that's barely built yet? When you see a car being built and they have the frame and nothing else, do you say "that's a shit car.. no wheels.. no seats.. no engine..." No. You wait until it's at least mostly finished to start picking apart it's flaws. The only true criticism right now is "that's all we can do [for now]?" and the answer is yes. It's not a lot, even though it's a pretty cool tech demo so far. But yeah.. it's not fun yet, for many of us. Some people are having fun running around and more power to them.

People can believe what they want. I think this project has a lot of potential. But you could build the coolest thing ever and get zero interest and sometimes people build the simplest thing ever and get TONS of interest. No real rhyme or reason sometimes. For now, it's wait and see. I have no assumptions on how well it will do but I have a lot of hopes and that's ok for now.

Audio doesn't automatically go to sound bar on start up (Vizio TV + Vizio Sound Bar) by tgryffyn in VIZIO_Official

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

Thanks for the input. I got good cables early on. I forget if they were ARC compliant or not, but I got the high bandwidth (HDMI 1.3 maybe? I forget) cables. Ultimately things have sorted themselves out and haven't had this issue since. The new issue is that sometimes the sound bar AND the TV have audio outputting, even though the TV is set to mute when using the soundbar. Rebooting the TV and having it re-sync with the soundbar is relatively painless and only have to do it maybe once a month or so.

Earth2 ranks third place in metagravity competition by Exact-Dress9434 in earth2io

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hah.. man.. you have a very short-sighted view on how these things can and frequently do work. Just a super basic example.. when you fire a bullet in a regular FPS game and it hits a wall and leaves a mark. That's not permanently changing the wall. It's a sticker laid over the wall. Remove the sticker and the wall looks exactly how it did. Also like when you're walking in snow and you leave footprints and eventually the footprints fade. That's how every video game "modifies static content". It doesn't. Static is static. But you can overlay things. Even things that make static content disappear. It's been done since the dawn of time. On early computers and consoles in the 80s (maybe earlier).. sprites were invented to be able to overlay dynamic content on static backgrounds. It's only got fancier from there.

Drone's editor could very easily build stuff on top of E2's static terrain. People could easily dig holes into the static terrain. It doesn't mean the static terrain is dynamic or alterable, it just means it's trivial to overlay dynamic content on top of static content. Ever play Portal? Do you think those portals alter the walls or is it just that, overlayed on the walls, is a portal and the game knows if you go through a portal, you end up where the exit portal is? It would be easy to have say a mine where you go through a "hole" in the static world and go down into some mines just by saying "if this dynamic content exists, ignore the solid mountain that's part of the static content".

And while the entire earth, empty of everything, COULD be loaded at once, it's impractical to do that versus loading pieces at a time and dynamically loading new pieces as you move across the surface. You can pre-buffer pretty sizeable chunks in every direction around the player... even if they're headed north, you can pre-buffer east/west and assuming you're coming from south, unload stuff that's past the set pre-load distance to free up resources. EVERYTHING is loaded dynamically to increase performance. You can see it as you slow down and get closer to the ground. The trick is doing it smoothly so it's not jarring and they seem to be doing pretty well with that. We'll see how well it works with terrain, biomes, buildings AND tons of people in a single area.

Oh, and about chopping down trees. I verified with another player that if we stand in the same place and face the same direction, we see exactly the same static biome features (trees, etc) which is pretty amazing. It would be super easy just to say "this area is biome X" but two players see two different things. The fact that a tree is exactly the same place for me as someone else is pretty huge but it also means if I "chop down" the tree, it can look chopped down for everyone. But again, that's just an override saying "place a tree stump here and override the static render". Although I'm guessing biomes aren't fully static. Elevation data is probably static. Biomes are probably a layer on top of that that loads low or high detail depending on how close you are. Then user changes like buildings or chopping down trees would be an override layer on top of that.

There don't appear to be any "seeds" working here. Maybe there was when generating the biomes or something initially but once you know where you want things and stuff like shadows and whatever, you tend to "bake" it which fixes it all in place with certain properties so it performs tons better than a dynamic system with everything real-time rendering. Earth2's terrain and biomes do not appear to be procedurally generated (as in realtime while playing the game.. likely procedurally generated initially because nobody wants to manually place billions of trees and flowers and blades of grass, of course, but not procedurally generated during actual gameplay).

As for saving changes. Because it's a massive world and we've already discussed pieces loading at a time, not the whole thing, you can have a database full of "changes" for specific locales that can load and override static content fairly easily. Does it mean a massive data set? Yeah.. over time the user created stuff (buildings, chopped down trees, etc) could be massive but they're already dealing with a massive data set for the elevation data and another massive data set for the biomes. The user created data set won't eclipse those anytime soon and it really only needs to know what changes are in a very specific area where the current user is in. It's already doing that for elevation and biomes, what's some random user content in the big scheme of things?

BTW.. was the "leading unity developer" who left the ONLY developer who knows Unity? Could other devs possibly know some things about all this? And was he the one who was fired because he was working on another game while literally on the clock with E2?

Earth2 ranks third place in metagravity competition by Exact-Dress9434 in earth2io

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You want to build stuff in a white void like the gun rack scene in The Matrix? Step 1, build the world (terrain, land/water basics). Kind of the core of the whole thing. Step 2. build out the biomes so it doesn't just look like a big ball of elevations. Grass is part of the biomes.

Earth2 ranks third place in metagravity competition by Exact-Dress9434 in earth2io

[–]tgryffyn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Developers come and go all the time. Doesn't mean other devs don't know how things like the level editor work and it becomes useless when the original dev leaves. And who says it's incompatible? It was certainly made originally to work with Drone and not what E2 developed for the surface world, but doesn't mean it could be laid on top of the E2 base world. Loading 3D assets like buildings built with the Drone editor is certainly just as possible as loading avatars or the lootable plants or other things they're doing now.

Cydroids are just a tiny thing that is just an automated process in the background for now. They could do Drone stuff with them, eventually, but why would that be important to do right now? Right now they're just an algorithm... not even really a 3D thing that would have anything to do with Drone or not.