A place for Sharepoint and rantings
Archive for December, 2006
Terragen
Dec 18th
The latest version of Terragen has a Technology preview release today.
If your interested in landscape generation take a look, but I warn you, it looks a bit hard.
Technorati tags: landscape generation 3d modelling
Email from friends (invsqrt)
Dec 15th
Don’t you just love getting email from your friends. I am sure that as you read this you may think about past jokes and humerous anecdotes received.
I don’t get many like that, this is what I got from a friend of mine today,
How bout this for a fast invsqrt…
float InvSqrt(float x){ float xhalf = 0.5f * x; int i = *(int *)&x; i = 0x5f3759df – (i >> 1); x = *(float *)&i; x = x * (1.5f – xhalf * x * x); return x;}
Explanation given here (not for the faint of heartr)
http://www.math.purdue.edu/~clomont/Math/Papers/2003/InvSqrt.pdf
You have to see the explanation and Steve’s right its not for the faint of heart.
So any XNA peeps who stumble along here might you be interested.
Viva Pinata
Dec 8th
I Finally got Viva Pinata for the 360, a week late. So me and my five year old son got to playing it last night. Its navigation is a little harder than I expected considering that its got a “U” game rating, meaning suitable for any age group, although this does refer to levels of violence and mature content of course.
Its bright and pretty, which is what you expect from Rare, but its no Kameo. It feels a little rough around the edges in parts, and the continued “cut” scenes every time you visit a shop becomes tiring very quickly, as do the mating mini games.
So what did I expect ? Well I’m not sure, I just expect so much from Rare and perhaps the game is fine and I have over anticipated its arrival. I’ve yet to play it through but I do have some advice, if you play with a child.
You start your garden and you get a Whirlm and they will like your garden and make it their home and gain pretty colours and look cute and appealing to your child. Your guide will instruct you how to check their details and how to name them. DONT NAME YOUR More >
At last No more Sonic Stage
Dec 7th
I have finally found a replacement for the piece of cr*p that is SonicStage, the very basic MP3fileManager.
I have a NW-E407, its a great portable MP3 player 50 hours of battery life on one charge, 3 hours play from 3 minutes charge, great sound great interface, even if it does look a lot like a cigarette lighter.
But the one thing that lets it down so, so much is the awful sonic stage software that transfers files across. If you haven’t seen it you cannot imagine how bad this software is. Its slow, its flaky it looks terrible. Take iTunes here is an example of software developers saying stuff the windows design guidelines we are going to do it our way, it just so happens that their way is the Mac design guidelines, not to my taste but lots of people find it very usable and they spent the time doing the ergonomic research etc, Sonic stage does the same to hell with the windows design guidelines we want something that looks different, then make a complete mess of it, god knows what guidelines they used, but the designer needs staking out for the crows.
No more. MP3FileManager to the rescue, this program More >