IGGS Presents:

2012-01-18T07:45:00.002+01:00

Il mercato delll'usato non serve solo ad oliare gli ingranaggi degli intermediari :).
Used market can have its advantages for the device makers :)!

(MacRumors.com): Robust Market for Used iPhones Benefits Users, Carriers, and Apple: AllThingsD reports on new research from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) analyzing the impact of the secondary market for the iPhone, the portion of used iPhones that are resold or given away when users upgrade to the latest models. The survey looked at customers purchasing new iPhones beginning with the iPhone 4S launch last October, finding that 53% of those users had returned their old phones to the secondary market.
Of those old phones being put back onto the secondary market, the survey found that 49% were older iPhones, while 21% were BlackBerry smartphones and 15% were Android devices. Approximately two-thirds of those devices returned to the market were given away, with the remaining third having been sold.

Breakdown of old devices reentering secondary market following new iPhone purchases
According to the survey, 87% of those who sold or gave away their old iPhones expected the recipients to activate them for use, which CIRP estimates as representing 11% of carrier activations since last October. That number represents a boon for carriers, who do not have to pay subsidies to Apple on the used devices.

The research firm believes that, for every used iPhone that carriers activate, they save around $400. In the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, CIRP figures that secondary-market activations saved AT&T and Verizon between $400 million and $800 million in subsidy costs.

And while the strong market for used iPhones may seem like a detriment to Apple given that those users may be purchasing a used device offering no revenue for Apple rather than a new one, CIRP suggests that those low-priced used handsets are a common way to introduce new users to the iPhone ecosystem. That introduction then sets the users up for future purchases of new iPhones and other Apple products.

“It hurts Apple because it creates competition for new iPhones, which we see in the relatively modest sales of reduced-price iPhone 4 and free iPhone 3G units. But it also benefits the company because used iPhone customers aspire to own the newest and best iPhone, so they are likely future new phone customers. In fact, they are likely new entrants to the Apple ecosystem, who otherwise would not have found a way in.”

Beyond future hardware sales, the used iPhone market also increases the user base and market for apps and other iTunes Store content, with the device's able to serve more good than if they had been discarded or forgotten in a drawer.

2011 Faber contest winners announced!

2011-10-24T10:49:00.001+01:00

I am very pleased to announce that AddictiveColors is one of the winners of the 2011 Faber-meeting contest with Pocket Boy!

Thanks to everyone who helped us make it happen!

Prevalentemente Anime e Manga: Pocket Boy - C’è un omino nelle tasche

2011-10-03T16:36:00.000+01:00

Prevalentemente Anime e Manga: Pocket Boy - C’è un omino nelle tasche: Ecco l'omino delle tasche Il post di oggi esula leggermente dagli argomenti solitamente trattati su questo blog e punta a presentare un p...

AddictiveColors and Pocket Boy at the View Conference 2011

2011-09-30T13:31:00.001+01:00

You should have seen a new link on the right of this blog, it's the Pocket Boy's blog, the app from AddictiveColors (my girlfriend and talented artist Clyo Parecchini and I). Well, I guess I am late for reporting such news to this sometimes neglected page, but Pocket Boy is now also on the iPhone and iPod touch.

If you have one of the newer models with the famous Retina display, you can enjoy crisp visuals as we have properly optimized assets for that screen too.
AddictiveColors is going to be at this year's View Conference in Turin: we are scheduled to talk about our app and AddictiveColors at 4:30 P.M. on the 27th of October.

Here is the official site: http://www.viewconference.it/

Follow updates about Pocket Boy and AddictiveColors over at the official Pocket Boy's blog and the official AddictiveColors' website.

Thank you!

2011-09-27T10:32:00.002+01:00

For those still using Makefiles, we all know there's no better place than computing to see that there is no problem simple enough that does not deserve a complex solution (--Dario Roccati), I thought I'd share something that Makefile artists know all too well, that might find trivial and misleading and full of traps... but something which might fit the Makefile YOU are writing. Computing, like many problems, is a set of problems which is best dealt with if you have an ever growing bag of tricks and tools to your disposal, so... one more will not hurt :).

Say, that someone just gave you a list of .cpp and .c files and you had to generate a simple static library to use in the rest of the makefile.
To make the makefile target simple and avoid a lot of unnecessary typing you might want to collect the C and C++ files and the .o files they generate once you compile them.
Let's see an example:

L_BASELIB := $(filter %.c,$(L_BASELIB_SOURCES))
L_BASELIB_OBJ := $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(L_BASELIB))

L_BASELIB_SOURCES is defined as a list of .cpp and .c files earlier on in the makefile. In this example, we take a two steps solutions to get out list of object files only for the .c files (just to make a small example you can adapt to your needs).

The filter and patsubst commands are quite powerful and to use their regular expression powered syntax the best way possible you might want to read more on regular expressions, gnu make, etc...
The way I have used them in this example is to first filter the files with a .c extension out of the list of files I have been passed by this environment variable and then produce another list of files with the extension changed to .o from .c and so on.

2011-05-26T23:56:00.001+01:00

Screen shot 2010-09-07 at 1.30.42 PM

2010-09-07T12:35:00.002+01:00

Screen shot 2010-09-06 at 5.20.53 PM

2010-09-06T16:26:00.002+01:00

Yes, it is floating :P

2010-08-27T14:14:00.002+01:00

You know whoo you are... and it is your fault :P...

2010-08-11T15:29:00.001+01:00

#define VEC3toSIMD(v1,v2) v2.fields.x=(v1).x; v2.fields.y=(v1).y; v2.fields.z=(v1).z;
#define VEC4toSIMD(v1,v2) v2.fields.x=(v1).x; v2.fields.y=(v1).y; v2.fields.z=(v1).z; v2.fields.w=(v1).w;
#define COPYVEC3(v1,v2) (v2)->x=(v1)->x; (v2)->y=(v1)->y; (v2)->z=(v1)->z;
#define COPYVEC4(v1,v2) (v2)->x=(v1)->x; (v2)->y=(v1)->y; (v2)->z=(v1).z; (v2)->w=(v1)->w;

#define PRINT_VEC(v) printf("\n(vector) x= %f, y= %f, z = %f\n", (v).x, (v).y, (v).z);
#define PRINT_SVEC(str,v) printf("\n%s x= %f, y= %f, z = %f\n", str, (v).x, (v).y, (v).z);
#define PRINT_VEC2(v) printf("\n(vector) x= %f, y= %f\n", (v).x, (v).y);
#define PRINT_SVEC2(str,v) printf("\n%s x= %f, y= %f\n", str, (v).x, (v).y);
#define PRINT_VEC4(v) printf("\n(vector) x= %f, y= %f, z = %f, w = %f\n", (v).x, (v).y, (v).z, (v).w);
#define PRINT_SVEC4(str,v) printf("\n%s x= %f, y= %f, z = %f, w = %f\n", str, (v).x, (v).y, (v).z, (v).w);
#define PRINT_BULLETVEC(str,v) printf("\n%s x= %f, y= %f, z = %f, w = %f\n", str, (v).x(), (v).y(), (v).z(), (v).w());

#define MUL_FVEC3(t,v) (v)->x *= t; (v)->y *=t; (v)->z *= t;
#define MUL_FVEC4(t,v) (v)->x *= t; (v)->y *=t; (v)->z *= t, (v)->w *= t;

#define ADD_FVEC3(t,v) (v)->x += t; (v)->y +=t; (v)->z += t;
#define ADD_FVEC4(t,v) (v)->x += t; (v)->y +=t; (v)->z += t, (v)->w += t;

#define SUB_FVEC3(t,v) (v)->x -= t; (v)->y -=t; (v)->z -= t;
#define SUB_FVEC4(t,v) (v)->x -= t; (v)->y -=t; (v)->z -= t, (v)->w -= t;

#define INIT_OBJ_ARR_NULL(arr, len) {for(int i=0; i<len; i++) {arr[i] = NULL;}}

Little rendering steps... shadow projection works (better than before) :)!

2010-08-10T14:03:00.000+01:00

Ombre disco... ma la proiezione c'è ;).

You know when pointers give you too much rope to hang yourself with when...

2010-08-09T15:55:00.001+01:00

... you see this in your console's log:

malloc: *** error for object 0xd663fb0: incorrect checksum for freed object - object was probably modified after being freed.
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

That's neat ;).

LLVM news... Xcode finally leaving Eclipse in the dust ;).

2010-08-02T11:58:00.001+01:00

I am watching a presentation on Xcode 4 and that got me thinking about the revolution that the LLVM project keeps bringing to the table as it matures. It's not the C++ support or other features per-se, but how integrating it with the IDE brings a revolution to compiled languages like Objective-C, C, and C++... kind of levelling the playing field with Interpreted and bytecode based languages (like Java) as well as languages that are supported by the .NET runtime.

If you have ever used Eclipse to develop Java applications, you are accustomed to how much the IDE knows about your project and how it can help you fix your mistakes as well as double check what you type in real time. This is the next step after code completion arrived. With Java you do not do a big BUILD phase after writing your code, the bytecode is produced when you save each file and the Java compiler working alongside the IDE can tap into a very information rich soup the Java bytecode provides for your whole application at any given time.

In short, having a VM based language (like you have with Java and .NET), allows you not only to get closer to the "write once, run anywhere" mantra and to have lots of info available when the app runs on the target platform, but it helps you with development as well... you have direct and real-time feedback after every change you make in the application's source code and of the implications of a change in one file can have in other files... before you debug it on a simulator or a device... and we freed ourselves from header files :P (well, going from C to Java, you will appreciate not to have to declare any function before implementing it and using it without fear of "oops, I need to use function f2 inside function f1... how do I do that?" situations). Ok... ok... there are good things about header files :). The disadvantage about those kind of languages is the same VM that helps us in other occasions, it is the thing that can keep managed languages behind purely compiled languages behind in terms of efficiency and speed. The more you do at runtime in addition to the work your app tries to do, the lesser you can do in your own app as CPU time is a fixed quantity.

In OSS implementations, Java already gained the ability to compile the code ahead of time (AOT) and the same can be done with managed languages running on the .NET platform, thus effectively giving developers better and smarter tools that can assist their development work (which should lead to less bugs in their source code). The exciting thing is doing the opposite, bringing the features of VM based languages to languages designed to be statically compiled (as opposed to dynamically compiled... JIT is a form of dynamic "just in time" compilation).

Inserting the LLVM block in the middle of the road between source code and binary form allows this "best of both world" kind of proposition to happen. Instead of compiling your code to a binary form directly, a form which might lose several information that would help you to find and fix bugs in your program, your code is analyzed, decomposed, and adapted to a form designed to run on this simpler low level universal target (the virtual machine). Here, the compiler carries on as much information on the original file and what it tries to achieve as possible as well as knowing the intricate details of this virtual machine our "intermediate" representation of the code we wrote was "compiled" for. In theory, if you developed a C++ "for Fedora Core 12 as released on launch day" runtime you might develop a very similar solution without the help of any VM, but chances are that you do not want to do this much effort every time a piece of the OS changes and that you might want to run your program on several systems... maybe just by compiling it again without porting the complex and tightly system coupled runtime to every different mix of kernel, system libraries, etc... you find. Don't get me wrong, the C++ runtime is not exactly platform agnostic now (the libc you got on your system was compiled to run on it, for example), but it is much more of a lightweight approach than what Java wants for example.

When you take advantage of LLVM in one of the supported languages you allow the compiler to do a much richer optimization and error checking work because it has a lot of information on not only each single file, but on the program as a whole as well as the source code which created it (as you can clearly see by using the Clang's static analyzer integrated into Xcode 3.x).

Example of one thing that changed in Objective-C thanks to the use of LLVM and the modern Objective-C runtime:

Instead of adding an ivar in your class declaration, then declaring the property for it, then synthesize it in the implementation file... you can simply declare a property and the other two steps will be done for you (@synthesize by default).

Now, imagine the IDE having full access to that information by using LLVM technology inside all its code completion, code checking, code editing, etc... needs and what such an integration can yield.Xcode 4's Fix-it is one of those features. I basically gave up on having smart code completion and troubleshooting tools when not dealing with Java... seeing Xcode 4's code highlighting that warned of an error and a pop-over with details about the error and a solution or a workaround to it was something that made my jaw drop :D!

I will stop now with the huge list of inaccurate comments and technical explanations I have probably built up so far and I cannot wait to be able to write more without hitting NDA issues (all I have talked about is available in the public domain).

Good afternoon everyone :)!

No more UV's?

2010-07-29T17:13:00.001+01:00

Ptex 3D texturing becomes a reality at SIGGRAPH

It is encouraging when several professional grade 3D packages add support for what seemed "magic" a few years before... one less thing that Pixar artists can mock you for not using it yet ;).

Bonus: http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/ (just how many texture painting tools are there?)

test

2010-07-29T13:46:00.001+01:00

Test

Un po' di Java

2009-11-22T15:19:00.003+01:00

Non ho mai bevuto del caffé di quella marca, ma il linguaggio di programmazione con lo stesso nome lo trovo potente e molto utile per sviluppare applicazioni in maniera veloce senza sacrificare la qualità di sviluppo e l'usabilità.

http://code.google.com/p/wap-testing-tool/source/browse/branches/0.9.3#0.9.3/src

I due programmi che si trovano su Google Code a quel indirizzo, ed i tool di aiuto a cui si appoggiano, sono stati costruiti per aiutarmi nel lavoro... devo commentarli meglio, ma la struttura del codice e l'organizzazione del programma dovrebbero renderlo facile da leggere e capire :).
Poi... licenza BSD ;).

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

2008-03-12T18:33:00.007+01:00

Panajev's journal, Entry #02

Day 9: Bleak Flats Cave? First she does not remember she sent him there then she gives me a fireball spell just in case?!? Is she trying to tell me something? Eathor should be there anyway: I bring him back to the Mages Guild and I get my recommendation... simple as that.

Day 10: Not too simple... that inept wizard probably managed to fill the cave with zombies with all his conjuration experiments... I fail to see how that does not classify as Necromancy, but that is the Guild's internal regulation problem...

Day 10: Saved him! Back at the Skingrad's Mages Guild. Ready to leave for Kvatch finally! I do feel stronger and better prepared.

Day 10: I should be in Kvatch by Nightfall at the latest, maybe earlier if I do not waste time exploring the surroundings, but the adventurous side of me wants to fight zombies, goblins, and daedra as well as finding new artifacts!

Day 10: WOW, what is that gate?!?

Day 10: The city is under siege! The dark lords of Oblivion are once again invading our plane of reality... this must be connected with the murder of the Emperor and of all the known heirs to the throne of Tamriel. Martin is hiding inside the city's church. The guards are courageously taking a last stand against the invading demonic forces: I need to get inside that gate and close it shut!

(Disclaimer: everything in this blog post is purely fictional: no reference to actual people or events is implied or meant.
The use of "I" refers to the "thoughts" the fictional character I play in the video game Oblivion for PS3)

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

2008-03-10T20:59:00.011+01:00

Panajev's journal, Entry #02

Day 8: Glarthir is crazy indeed! He really thinks everyone is out to get him: he means to have David Surille murdered!

Day 9: He attacked me... Glarthir is now dead: together with the captain of the guards of Skingrad I had no choice but to defend myself... I got a key from him though, does it mean I can use his house as base in Skingrad? What should I do?

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

2008-03-09T11:57:00.004+01:00

Panajev's journal, Entry #01

Day 1: still in the castle's dungeons, following the emperor Uriel Septim who just freed me.

Day 1: the Emperor was murdered by strange assassins, the Blades were unable to protect him! I have been entrusted by the Emperor with an important mission: I ought to find his illegitimate son.

Day 2: finally out of the sewers! The sun is beautiful!

Day 2: I have to reach Chorrol ASAP: Jauffre awaits.

Day 3: Martin, Uriel's son, is in Kvatch and he might be in danger. I have got to reach him, but I cannot afford to make a straight journey through the wilderness: I have to make a stop in Skingrad first and work on my skills. I do not know if I am ready for what lies ahead, but I have given my word to Uriel and to the Nines and I won't take it back.

Day 4: reached Skingrad!

Day 4: met a strange Elf... he might have gotten himself in some sort of trouble. People tell me he is sort of the town's lunatic: crazy, but harmless. He tells me that someone closely watches over every step he makes and wants him silenced because he discovered some important secret. It is kind of believable: if everyone thinks he is crazy, who will believe anything he says? The captain of the guards asks me to report any strange request I could be asked to fulfill.

Day 5-7: I am starting to suspect he might have some mental problems myself: the people he points out as conspirators against him (and on which I investigate) mean absolutely no harm to him. What's next ? Why am I not leaving for Kvatch already ?

Notes from the lands of Cyrodiil

2008-03-09T11:48:00.003+01:00

I decided to start a sort of personal diary here. I do know nobody in their right mind reads this blog so what better place to have a secret diary right in the open where everyone could see it ?

Of course, I am not going to really talk about myself: I will be live blogging as an adventurer inside the game Oblivion... in a way that is talking about something I am doing (narrating the adventures of my Olbivion character).

I will be talking, more like blogging twitter style, about adventures in Bethesda's latest masterpiece Oblivion, sometimes adding pictures to my posts, sometimes just posting a brief message. It is intended to be more of an exercise for myself, to self-impose a daily routine, and will have the form of brief notes taken a bit in a hurry by a character inside the game world. Most of the time it will be a daily message (as in game world days not real life days), but it might also become multiple messages per game day.

Original size digital photos (as shot by the camera)

2007-05-01T16:47:00.000+01:00

Dashboard at 480p:

Dashboard at 720p:

XMB at 1080i:

XMB at 720p:

But... but.... someone still knows how to make proper flashlights then !

2007-04-30T11:50:00.000+01:00

Enjoy some quite noisy pics hehe:

IGGS lives on!

2007-04-14T22:46:00.000+01:00

Yes, this blog will be finally put to use.

Yes, a new gaming project is in the minds and hearts of a new team over at IGGS.

Yes, I am a bit over-hyping it as usual.

No, it will not end as bad as usual :D.

Kiriku, Panajev, and Vash... + ?

more news to come soon stay tuned (*sound of a fly buzzing through the empty air* ;)) !

P.S.: keep your eyes on our newly found lead Game Designer Vash over here:

http://mentald.blogspot.com/

SIXAXIS + Eye Toy = successful absolute motion sensing ? Follow-up with pictures :)

2006-11-27T12:18:00.000+01:00

SIXAXIS + Eye Toy = successful absolute motion sensing ?

2006-11-27T11:37:00.000+01:00

This patents was originally filed in May 2006, but the published date (it has not been granted yet) is November 2006 (it is the 2nd newest one that has appeared in the U.S.P.T.O.'s web-site assigned to Sony Computer [Ent.]):

Here it is

I'll quickly summarize what I understood after a very quick read over the patent (and I mean quick ;)):

1.) It is obviously PLAYSTATION 3 related and that controller IS the SIXAXIS IMHO.

2.) The patent talks about using a camera to capture the shape of the controller (edit: to capture the shape and appearance of some 4 rectangular LED's... uhm... I wonder what kind of rectangular LED's you could be thinking about ;)) and constantly update it and control how the captured image(s) morphs geometrically to help the system understand its movement and its position relative to the camera.

3.) Those rectangular LED's are an interesting choice as they are NOT covered by the user's fingers and should be easily kept visible to camera. This system + the SIXAXIS's motion sensors should make for a pretty kick-ass combination :).

Let's swim through the patent a little, shall we ? (it was not really a question :P)

Claims

1. A controller, comprising: a body; one or more buttons disposed on the body; and one or more light-emitting diodes (LEDs) disposed on the body that are arranged in a geometric shape.

2. A controller in accordance with claim 1, wherein the one or more LEDs comprises four LEDs.

3. A controller in accordance with claim 1, wherein the geometric shape comprises a rectangle.

4. A controller in accordance with claim 1, wherein the one or more LEDs are attached to a front portion of the body that faces away from a user when the controller is properly held by the user.

5. A controller in accordance with claim 1, wherein the one or more LEDs are configured to be strobed.

6. A controller in accordance with claim 1, wherein the one or more LEDs are configured to be modulated.

7. A controller in accordance with claim 1, wherein the one or more LEDs are each configured to operate at a different frequency.

[...]

[0059] In step 304 the movements and deformities in the projection of the geometric shape are analyzed. Namely, the four dots of the bounding box are tracked and analyzed. Field and frame analysis is performed on the image plane of the camera output to analyze the manipulation of the four reference points to determine position orientation, tilt, yaw, roll, etc. of the controller. In addition, acceleration of the controller can be tracked in any direction. Analysis of the frames of the image can give the acceleration along any axis. Telemetry points of the controller can also be computed. It can also be determined whether or not the controller is in a resting position or resting state, such as for example when the controller is in a neutral or steady state near the user's waist.

[0060] As the controller rolls the image translates in the plane. Changes in the width of the rectangle of the bounding box indicate the controller is rolling. As the yaw of the controller is adjusted, the width of the rectangle changes. Yaw maps to the width of the rectangle. Tilt of the controller influences the height of the rectangle.

[0052] While the illustrated embodiment of the controller utilizes four LEDs, it should be well understood that other embodiments may utilize more than four LEDs or less than four LEDs. For example, three LEDs will work, and two LEDs will also work to provide tracking information. Even one LED can provide position information.

[0052] While the illustrated embodiment of the controller utilizes four LEDs, it should be well understood that other embodiments may utilize more than four LEDs or less than four LEDs. For example, three LEDs will work, and two LEDs will also work to provide tracking information. Even one LED can provide position information.

The SIXAXIS's motion sensors can help the Camera providing additional information on the controller's acceleration, tilt, yaw and pitch informations which are sampled by the controller itself too and not only by the camera.

[0068] The image analyzer monitors the bounding box formed by the reference LEDs as captured in the image plane of the camera. The image analyzer analyzes the position, rotation, horizontal and vertical deformation of the bounding box to determine the physical user manipulation of the controller, its position, roll, tilt and yaw coordinates. At the end of the image analysis the data may be output in the form of an output ID or the like. Such output IDs from the image analysis may include data such as the x, y, z coordinates, acceleration and velocity along any axis, that the controller is in a resting position or state, etc. Thus, at the end of image analysis the image analyzer can indicate where the controller is and whether a command is issued. And the image analyzer may be pinged at any instant of time and it may provide position, orientation, last command, etc.

[0069] By way of example, the image analyzer may provide, but shall not be limited to providing the following outputs:

[0070] CONTROLLER POSITION (X, Y, Z coordinates);

[0071] CONTROLLER ORIENTATION alpha, beta, gamma (radians);

[0072] CONTROLLER X-AXIS VELOCITY;

[0073] CONTROLLER Y-AXIS VELOCITY;

[0074] CONTROLLER Z-AXIS VELOCITY;

[0075] CONTROLLER X-AXIS ACCELERATION;

[0076] CONTROLLER Y-AXIS ACCELERATION;

[0077] CONTROLLER Z-AXIS ACCELERATION;

[0078] RESTING POSITION OF STEADY STATE Y/N (at waist as described, but may be defined as any position);

[0079] TIME SINCE LAST STEADY STATE;

[0080] LAST GESTURE RECOGNIZED;

[0081] TIME LAST GESTURE RECOGNIZED; and

[0082] INTERRUPT ZERO-ACCELERATION POINT REACHED.

Ok, so you are wondering... "how sure are you that the patent is talking about the SIXAXIS (besides the console used in the example having also a slot-loading drive... curious ;)) ?".

Well, let's read these quoted lines together:

[0113] In addition to conventional features, the joystick controller 430 may include one or more inertial sensors 432, which may provide position and/or orientation information to the processor 401 via an inertial signal. Orientation information may include angular information such as a tilt, roll or yaw of the joystick controller 430. By way of example, the inertial sensors 432 may include any number and/or combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes or tilt sensors. In a preferred embodiment, the inertial sensors 432 include tilt sensors adapted to sense orientation of the joystick controller with respect to tilt and roll axes, a first accelerometer adapted to sense acceleration along a yaw axis and a second accelerometer adapted to sense angular acceleration with respect to the yaw axis. An accelerometer may be implemented, e.g., as a MEMS device including a mass mounted by one or more springs with sensors for sensing displacement of the mass relative to one or more directions. Signals from the sensors that are dependent on the displacement of the mass may be used to determine an acceleration of the joystick controller 430. Such techniques may be implemented by program code instructions 404 which may be stored in the memory 402 and executed by the processor 401.

[0114] By way of example an accelerometer suitable as the inertial sensor 432 may be a simple mass elastically coupled at three or four points to a frame, e.g., by springs. Pitch and roll axes lie in a plane that intersects the frame, which is mounted to the joystick controller 430. As the frame (and the joystick controller 430) rotates about pitch and roll axes the mass will displace under the influence of gravity and the springs will elongate or compress in a way that depends on the angle of pitch and/or roll. The displacement and of the mass can be sensed and converted to a signal that is dependent on the amount of pitch and/or roll. Angular acceleration about the yaw axis or linear acceleration along the yaw axis may also produce characteristic patterns of compression and/or elongation of the springs or motion of the mass that can be sensed and converted to signals that are dependent on the amount of angular or linear acceleration. Such an accelerometer device can measure tilt, roll angular acceleration about the yaw axis and linear acceleration along the yaw axis by tracking movement of the mass or compression and expansion forces of the springs. There are a number of different ways to track the position of the mass and/or or the forces exerted on it, including resistive strain gauge material, photonic sensors, magnetic sensors, hall-effect devices, piezoelectric devices, capacitive sensors, and the like.

[0115] In addition, the joystick controller 430 may include one or more light sources 434, such as light emitting diodes (LEDs). The light sources 434 may be used to distinguish one controller from the other. For example one or more LEDs can accomplish this by flashing or holding an LED pattern code. By way of example, 5 LEDs can be provided on the joystick controller 430 in a linear or two-dimensional pattern. Although a linear array of LEDs is preferred, the LEDs may alternatively, be arranged in a rectangular pattern or an arcuate pattern to facilitate determination of an image plane of the LED array when analyzing an image of the LED pattern obtained by the image capture unit 423. Furthermore, the LED pattern codes may also be used to determine the positioning of the joystick controller 430 during game play. For instance, the LEDs can assist in identifying tilt, yaw and roll of the controllers. This detection pattern can assist in providing a better user/feel in games, such as aircraft flying games, etc. The image capture unit 423 may capture images containing the joystick controller 430 and light sources 434. Analysis of such images can determine the location and/or orientation of the joystick controller. Such analysis may be implemented by program code instructions 404 stored in the memory 402 and executed by the processor 401. To facilitate capture of images of the light sources 434 by the image capture unit 423, the light sources 434 may be placed on two or more different sides of the joystick controller 430, e.g., on the front and on the back (as shown in phantom). Such placement allows the image capture unit 423 to obtain images of the light sources 434 for different orientations of the joystick controller 430 depending on how the joystick controller 430 is held by a user.

[0116] In addition the light sources 434 may provide telemetry signals to the processor 401, e.g., in pulse code, amplitude modulation or frequency modulation format. Such telemetry signals may indicate which joystick buttons are being pressed and/or how hard such buttons are being pressed.

Interesting :).

Nintendo, tu quoque ?!?

2006-11-16T16:12:00.000+01:00

From 249.90 Euros to 259.90 Euros.

Source: QueenComputer.it

Another delay for PLAYSTATION 3 in Europe ?!?

2006-11-16T15:18:00.000+01:00

It seems, as you can read over at NeoGaf, that the console might be delayed again.

Of course, as Sony's own Jamie MacDonald put it, "European consumers have shown that historically they don't mind [the delays]".

Our answer if another delay is pushed down our throats (remember people, we are NOT stock-holders, we are CUSTOMERS) should simply be:

We are importing!

Would we be doing a baaaaaad thing ?

No, because:

Uh-oh...

2006-11-14T19:45:00.000+01:00

Well, this was the result of about 88,000 PLAYSTATION 3 consoles at its Japanese launch.

According to a Gamasutra.com news article, analysts believe Sony will ship about 150,000-200,000 PLAYSTATION 3 consoles for its North American launch.

Pure... madness... BEWARE!

What a clean motherboard: an Xbox 360 follow-up

2006-11-14T19:25:00.000+01:00

This, so that we can properly compare the two consoles, is the naked motherboard of the Xbox 360 console (again from PC WATCH IMPRESS):

On the left you can see Xbox 360's CPU called Xenon (or Waternoose) and on its right you can see Xbox 360's GPU called Xenos (or C1) with its attached E-DRAM module (this daughter die is on the same package as Xenos, but on a different die).
Another thing we should notice is how the central piece of the equation in Xbox 360 is not the Xenon CPU, but Xenos. Xenos is both the GPU and the system's North-bridge, it is where the main memory controller is located and if you look around it you can see it being surrounded by the 4x1024 Mbits GDDR3 memory chips with a 128 bits bus clocked at 700 MHz delivering about 22.4 GB/s of transfer speed. The high speed link that connects CPU and GPU manages a peak of almost 22 GB/s and we ought to remember that Xenos can ask Xenon to lock a portion of its L2 cache to read/write from/to it. Looking more on the lower-right side of the motherboard we can see the Xbox 360's South-bridge, its I/O processor which was designed by VIA and you can spot it by that silver filled circle on its surface (trivia: the Video Scaler chip inside the Xbox 360 was designed internally at Microsoft by a group of talented engineers which, one upon a time, got its hands dirty with another famous project.... the M2).

What a clean motherboard :).

2006-11-14T12:25:00.000+01:00

Nice and tidy.

I think that clean motherboard designs are something to be really appreciated given how much work goes into them and how easy it is to rush the design late in the manufacturing process to meet a deadline.
The main four chips you see on the first picture on the right (which is a shot of PLAYSTATION 3's mother-board taken by the chaps at PC WATCH) are from up-right to bottom-left:

1.) It is the I/O Bridge chip or I/O Processor: as you can see it has a quite fat connection with the CELL processor which sits right below. As this next diagram (taken from a Sony Computer Entertainment presentation) shows the I/O Bridge is in charge of the Ethernet link, of the USB 2.0 ports, of the Blu-Ray disc drive as well as the Memory Card slots, management of the Wireless LAN chip (provided by Marvell), HDD controller management, etc... it is basically PLAYSTATION 3's South-bridge chip. The chip's code is CXD2973GB.

2.) The second chip, in order, sitting below the I/O processor is the now very famous CELL Broadband Engine processor, the CPU, the heart of the console: to its right we can see the four 512 Mbits XDR memory modules delivering a whopping 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth and to its left we can see the 35 GB/s connection (a 20 GB/s channel delivering data to RSX from CELL and a 15 GB/s channel delivering data from RSX to CELL) to the system Graphics Processor code-named RSX. You can see how Rambus's patented FlexPhase technology allows the data and multiplexed command+address traces to be laid out in a flexible and simple way (rest of PR speech is here ;)). The CPU code is CXD2964GB.

3.) To the left of the CELL processor we have the graphical powerhouse of PLAYSTATION 3, the nVIDIA co-developed Reality Synthesizer or RSX (an enhanced version of the nVIDIA GeForce 7 architecture shrunk using 90 nm technology and optimized for use with the CELL processor in PLAYSTATION 3). If you wonder "well, where has the Video RAM or VRAM run off to ?" do not worry as it is embedded in the same package as RSX's die as shown by further photos you can find here and here, where they flip the RSX package and show you its belly :). The RSX code is CXD2971GB.

4.) The last, but not least of the four major chips present in the PLAYSTATION 3's mother-board: it is the integrated EE+GS chip. This Integrated Circuit or IC combines in one single silicon surface (or die) the Emotion Engine (or EE, the CPU of PlayStation 2) and the Graphics Synthesizer (or GS, the GPU of PlayStation 2) using 90 nm technology: the chip has always been known as EE+GS@90 nm. From what I hear, this is not exactly the same EE+GS chips produced initially for the PSX device (only released in Japan) and used also in the slim-line PSTwo consoles, but a newer and modified incarnation. The code of this EE+GS chip is CXD2953AGB.

Not just the EE+GS chip made it in PLAYSTATION 3, look above it and compare those two very little chips with what you see in the following photo (again from PC WATCH IMPRESS, a slim-line PSTwo's motherboard photo):

That's right folks, SCE included 32 MB of Direct Rambus DRAM along with the EE+GS combo chip thus bringing over also the system RAM used by PlayStation 2. PlayStation 2's memory layout was roughly: 32 MB of Direct Rambus DRAM (system RAM), 4 MB of embedded DRAM (VRAM), 2 MB of RAM for the SPU2 sound processor and 2 MB of RAM for the I/O CPU.

Sony Computer Entertainment (or SCE) was not able to complete a PlayStation 2 software emulator solution that satisfied their backward-compatibility needs as there are quite a few challenges emulating the characteristics of PlayStation 2's powerful Graphics processor (the GS). PlayStation/PSOne backward-compatibility quite likely is not the headache-inducing problem for SCE as PlayStation 2/PSTwo backward-compatibility is: in PlayStation 2 the original PlayStation 's GPU was already emulated through the GS (display lists were pre-processed by the EE before they were forwarded to the GS which included some hardware features to ease the emulation process).
It should be noticed that since PSTwo's latest revisions (series SCPH-7500x IIRC) the former PlayStation/PSOne CPU, which had been used as PlayStation 2's I/O processor (also known as IOP), was substituted by a newer (and PowerPC based according to an interview with an IBM executive a while ago) processor which took the duty of emulating the IOP and the PlayStation 2 Sound Processor (which is called SPU2).
I do not think that it would surprise many people to hear that the problems some PSOne and PSTwo games experience running on these latest model PSTwo's are I/O and Sound ones ;).
Sony has enough knowledge of every little detail concerning PSOne architecture and its quirks as well as all the processing power they need to efficiently emulate PSOne titles purely in software: it is not rocket science any longer even on PC's quite less powerful than PLAYSTATION 3.

Well, some more short-changing for us consumers...

2006-11-13T12:34:00.000+01:00

Sad to start this blog with whining, but... sometimes i just get mad.

I get this sequence of news:

Nintendo to Spend $200 Million on Wii Marketing to Battle Sony
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aHmN0wRpsctw

Sonic CinePlayer chosen to power DVD-playing version of Nintendo's Wii (late 2007)

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...75&newsLang=en

Now, we know Wii has a fully functional DVD drive, we have seen how the Wii, even though it abandoned the high-performance CPU+GPU technology race and chose an evolutionary path from GameCube with the innovation relying in its unique control method, has raised the price of admission for Nintendo home consoles again (from $199 of GameCube to $249 of Wii), we suspected that Software Playback for DVD movies was the only missing piece of the equation and there we go...

You COULD watch DVD movies on Wii, even though Nintendo cheapened out from providing optical out for surround sound, but it seems that Nintendo will not let you even pay for an DVD-movie playback enabling add-on (so that you can pay the DVD-forum fees for them) for your Wii.

Nintendo's solution ? Double dipping their customers with a new revision of the Wii to be launched one year from now.

The Wii is not even out yet and they are already preparing to launch the Wii SP ;).

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo: finding a way to irritate their customers... I hope they can get their feet back on the ground.