Out of the Blue [Jun 22, 2015, 09:46 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Today is the 19th anniversary of the release of QUAKE! It's also the 15th
anniversary of the release of the original Deus Ex.
On a coincidentally related note, a question popped up in the forums about the anniversary date for this site, as it turns 20 either this year or next year. The question of which year is correct is inspired by the caption saying "Established 1995. Over three-quarters of a billion visitors since 1997," which is a little vague. The reason is that the exact answer is a little imprecise. Going back to the very beginning, the site started sometime in the second half of 1995 as Blue's 3D House of 3D Carnage (hosted on my homepage through my local ISP) as a more general site about FPS games, and the focus on news came on gradually after that. Going by that, the 20th anniversary of the site is sometime over the next few months, but I don't know that I have any way to be more precise about that. If you go by the content here, the site will turn 20 one year from now, as the oldest news stories in the archive are from July 1996. That's not very accurate, though, as before that I would delete older news as I added newer stories, and it was some time in mid-July that I realized this was regrettable and started archiving older news, and once again, I don't know if there is a more exact answer than that to be found. Finally, if you want the answer in its strictest sense, the site will turn 20 in October 2016, which is the anniversary of moving to the bluesnews.com domain, and first use of the name Blue's News. The visitor count starting in 1997 just reflects when a counter was added. As I say, it's a little imprecise, but it's safe to say we're currently in our 20th year of operation.
On a coincidentally related note, a question popped up in the forums about the anniversary date for this site, as it turns 20 either this year or next year. The question of which year is correct is inspired by the caption saying "Established 1995. Over three-quarters of a billion visitors since 1997," which is a little vague. The reason is that the exact answer is a little imprecise. Going back to the very beginning, the site started sometime in the second half of 1995 as Blue's 3D House of 3D Carnage (hosted on my homepage through my local ISP) as a more general site about FPS games, and the focus on news came on gradually after that. Going by that, the 20th anniversary of the site is sometime over the next few months, but I don't know that I have any way to be more precise about that. If you go by the content here, the site will turn 20 one year from now, as the oldest news stories in the archive are from July 1996. That's not very accurate, though, as before that I would delete older news as I added newer stories, and it was some time in mid-July that I realized this was regrettable and started archiving older news, and once again, I don't know if there is a more exact answer than that to be found. Finally, if you want the answer in its strictest sense, the site will turn 20 in October 2016, which is the anniversary of moving to the bluesnews.com domain, and first use of the name Blue's News. The visitor count starting in 1997 just reflects when a counter was added. As I say, it's a little imprecise, but it's safe to say we're currently in our 20th year of operation.
| Links: | Thanks Ant and Acleacius. |
| Play: |
Royal
Offense 2. Tower Droids. |
| Link: | Susannah Mushatt Jones shares secrets to a long life. Thanks Boing Boing. |
| Stories: |
Want to buy your own airship: Get your orders in now. Thanks
Skullguise. Former 'Star Wars' actor arrested after chase. Pod-racing skills rusty. |
| Science: | Access to electricity linked with reduced sleep. Thanks HARDOCP. |
| Images: | Brace yourselves for the Steam Summer Sale. |
| Media: |
OUTLAST:
WHISTLEBLOWER - PART 2 (React- Gaming). Best Fails of the Week 3 June 2015. Ouch. Thanks nin. Flying Kitty Surprise. Maybe scarier than yesterday's weightlifter. |
| The Funnies: | Dilbert Comic Strip. |
More From John Carmack on D3D Quake
I got an email from John Carmack that cleared up a misconception that I had (and I would guess others had too), which was that Direct3D Quake would have been an option for owners of current 3D video cards:
D3D quake is indeed canned. But this should not have any impact on current 3D card owners.
The only current card that would have been fast enough to run D3Dquake is 3dfx, and they can run glquake.
Glquake is implemented with blended lighting instead of surface caching, which gives a more level framerate at the expense of pushing twice as many pixels. The low end cards (S3, ATI, etc) have less than a third of the fill rate of 3DFX on real world data, so they would have been hard pressed to hit 15 fps running glquake/d3dquake. Anyone with one of these cards that was holding out for the D3D version would have been very dissapointed.
A custom, on-the-metal port to these cards might have been able to give performance almost as good as vquake (verite has exceptional potential for optimization if you go to the trouble, which compensates somewhat for the reletively low fill rates), but I don't think it is worth it.
The next generation of most vendors cards should be fast enough to run glquake and derivitives. Tell them they should support OpenGL.
John Carmack
Lul. Oh how far we've come.
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