Vista Impressions

Vista 64-bit:

  • Those who are waiting for the next service pack for Vista are putting in time well spent. I expected a hard time finding drivers. I did not expect how unstable Vista is. Vista is sensitive. There are many bugs in the new features added to Vista. The most frequent bug is memory access violations. I don’t know why the OS can’t just handle the violation, instead I see frequent blue screens. The only safe thing is to not do anything, and that’s not entirely safe. I’ve blue screened at every stage. The personalized login page crashes, so I couldn’t login to Vista. Upon rebooting, I got a blue screen for a “device adapter less than or equal to”; whatever than means. Explorer tends to restart a lot. The Superfetch likes to crash when renaming folders. Vista Ultimate has a nice feature that allows a video background. Unfortunately, the slightest error causes the feature to turn off. A little blame box pops up, “it was probably the video background… crash”. Some of my favorite exceptions are “PFN_LIST_CORRUPT”, “win32k.sys”, “IRQ_LESS_OR_EQUAL”, and “SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION” which all result in a blue screen. I’m ready to join the mob bleeding for Vista SP1. One positive, is each time I install a Windows update, my system gets a little more stable. And it’s nice being able to access all 4GB of ram. “Problem Reports and Solutions” is a nice tool.
  • With my ASUS P5N-E SLI it was necessary to update the BIOS to version 0608 to fix some of the constant lock-ups and blue screens.

  • One way to see if you have any driver problems is to simply go to Start > run and enter: [verifier.exe]. While verifier is active, there are way more blue screens. Collect all the data. It will help identify what hardware is causing grief. Be sure to disable verifier during normal use. That should limit the amount of blue screens.


    • Vista 32-bit:

  • This windows update fixes choppy sound when listening to music like [Pandora.com]. ===Marvell – Networking – NETGEAR WN121T Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter===

    • SUSE:

  • If Vista continues to be unstable, one alternative is to install a [SLED or BLADE].

    • Sector13 at the International Games Festival

    We sent our final IGF build to the [International Games Festival] just two hours before the deadline of Oct 1st 11:59p PST. I spent all day trying to upload, but because of DNS problems had to keep resending our 431M build. We have a really good chance this year. I spent a good three months just focusing on bug fixes, performance, and memory leaks. The game runs super fast now. The game is stable. There shouldn’t be any crash to desktop bugs. There are improvements to the installer. There are enhancements to the skybox, including animated textures on the station and other platforms. There are more ships, more explosions, and more music. Anyway, check us out at the IGF and [vote for us].

    IBUYPOWER Quad-core

    I ordered a custom-build machine from [ibuypower].

    Case ( [New !!!] Xion Dazl Gaming Tower Case w/420W Power Supply )
    Case Lighting ( Cold Cathode Neon Light Blue )
    Power Supply ( Standard Case Power Supply )
    Processor ( [=== Quad Core ===] Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (4x 2.4GHz/8MB L2 Cache/1066FSB) )
    Free Software/Game ( [Free] iBUYPOWER Aegis Case – for your Games, Accessories, Disks, Manuals … etc. — $19.99 value )
    Processor Cooling ( [=== Silent ===] Extreme-Performance INTEL CPU Cooling Fan System Kit Silent & Overclocking Proof = Maximum cooling efficiency for quietness and performance )
    Motherboard ( Asus P5N-E SLI nForce® 650i SLI Chipset w/6-channel CODEC, Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, IEEE-1394 Dual PCI-E MB )
    Memory ( 4096MB [2048MB X2] DDR2-800 PC6400 Memory Module Mushkin High Performance II (HP2) w/Heat Spreader )
    Video Card ( 2x NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS 512MB w/DVI + TV Out Video )
    Video Card Brand ( === High Performance === eVGA Brand Video Cards [SLI enabled] Powered by NVIDIA )
    Hard Drive ( [Special !!!] 200 GB HARD DRIVE [Serial-ATA-II, 3Gb, 7200 RPM, 8M Cache] )
    CD/DVD Drive ( [** Special !!! ***] 18X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive Black )
    Sound Card ( 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard )
    Network Card ( Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100) )
    Keyboard ( PS/2 104 Key Windows 98 Keyboard Beige )
    Mouse ( Logitech Optical Internet Mouse Black )
    USB 2.0 Accessories ( Build-in USB 2.0 Ports )
    Operation System ( None- Pre-formatted Hard Drive Only )

    HP a6177c-b

    [Spec] information for the [HP Pavilion a6177c Desktop PC] that we recently picked up from [Costco].

    Processor & Memory:

  • Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor E6550 at 2.33GHz
  • 4MB L2 cache
  • 1333MHz Front Side Bus
  • 2GB DDR2 SDRAM memory (2 x 1024MB), expandable to 8GB

    • Drives:

  • 400GB (7,200RPM) SATA hard drive
  • LightScribe DVD±RW drive with double layer support

    • Graphics & Video:

  • HP w2408 24″ widescreen BrightView flat panel monitor with adjustable tilt
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® 7350 LE graphics card with TurboCache. 128MB dedicated graphics memory, TV-out and DVI capability. Up to 623MB total available graphics memory as allocated by Windows Vista

    • Communications:

  • 10/100/1000 network interface
  • 56K modem

    • Audio:

  • High Definition Audio, 8-speaker configurable

    • Keyboard & Mouse:

  • HP wireless keyboard
  • HP wireless optical mouse
  • HP Media Center remote control with IR receiver

    • Expandability:

  • Four DIMM (240-pin DDR2) [memory] slots (two available)
  • Expansion slots: one PCI (occupied); one PCI-Express x16 (occupied); two PCI-Express x1 (one available)
  • Drive bays: two external 5.25″ (one available); one external 3.5″ (available); two internal 3.5” (one available)

    • Ports:

  • NTSC TV tuner, over-the-air ATSC TV tuner and FM tuner (antenna included)
  • Front panel 15-in-1 media card reader supports Compact Flash I/II, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro Duo, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital, Mini Secure Digital, xD, RSMMC, MMC Mobile, MMC+ and IBM Microdrive
  • Six USB 2.0 ports (2 front, 4 rear)
  • Two IEEE 1394 (Firewire) ports (1 front, 1 rear)
  • Microphone/headphone/line-in (FRONT)
  • Two PS/2 ports; digital audio in/out; LAN; rear speaker out/side speaker out/center (subwoofer); microphone/line-in/line-out; DVI-D (REAR)

    • Operating System:

  • Microsoft® Windows Vista Home Premium

    • Warranty Information:

  • Two year limited PC warranty
  • One year limited monitor warranty

    • Netgear sucks too much

    I’m starting to notice that Netgear stuff is trouble. The Netgear wireless cards are dangerous. I’ve seen my CPU at 100% several times. My desktop started locking up after working flawlessly for ages without the Netgear card. I’ve seen Netgear usb cards overheat and disconnect. And my Netgear router has started attacking my wireless computers because somebody in the neighborhood or at Comcast has Vista. I posted some of my issues on the [Microsoft Channel 9 MSDN forums]. I think my next plan of attack is to replace all my Netgear junk with Vista certified gear. I can’t have my equipment overheating from wireless network death pings.

    Sector 13

    “ECD Systems, involved in anti-piracy and copy protection software, has announced the [top 20 semi-finalists] for its second-annual [Independent Game Developers Showcase], with the winners due [to be announced] on ECD’s stand at next month’s [Austin Game Developers Conference].

    The semi-finalists were determined by popular vote, with the list now handed over to the Indie Showcase’s judging panel for final determination of the three runners-up and the grand prize winner…”

    Sector 13 is a semi-finalist in the general category out of 140 other applicants.

    The COLLADA format

    It appears there is a lot of hype out there for the new COLLADA format. There are COLLADA plugins for Max, Maya, Blender, and Ogre. So it looks like this could be my new favorite format. The COLLADA Wiki lists products that support COLLADA along with links to plugins.
    [http://www.collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/Portal:Products_directory]

    Simply install ColladaMax and ColladaMaya to install the export plugins for Max and Maya:
    [http://www.feelingsoftware.com]

    Looks like I’ll be filling [some bugs] against ColladaBlender:

    [http://colladablender.illusoft.com/cms/]

    There appears to be a COLLADA plugin for Ogre as well:
    [http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/Ogre_COLLADA_Plugin]

    Investigation

    For the past 4 weeks, I’ve been hearing helicopters flying overhead. I finally went out to find out why. It turns out the county is logging the cliff side using helicopters. I’ll have to get a closer look when the weather turns better. I’ll snap a close-up then.

    Modo Import/Export Script (Ogre3d Mesh and Ogre3d Mesh XML)

    As far as I’m concerned the top artists tools that I have access to are Modo, ZBrush, and Blender.

    The only reason that I use Blender is that it has pretty good import and export scripts to Ogre. I’ve seen faces, normals, UVs, and bones export perfectly out of Blender. That said I can’t really model in Blender. The interface doesn’t like me. And I haven’t found very many video tutorials on Blender to describe all the things you can do with it.
    http://blender.org

    That said, ZBrush3 is coming out May 15th. I expect it’s going to be cool. However Pixologic probably won’t provide many details on their SDK, so I don’t expect an importer / exporter soon. They have awesome artists post video tutorials and they have a decent community. ZB2 only shows one viewport at a time, I don’t like that.
    http://pixologic.com

    And then there’s Modo. Probably not as well known as XSI. The Modo interface is plenty easy to pick up. Luxology has over 3GB of video tutorials on every aspect of the modeling tool and they give out the tutorials for free. Modo supports as many viewports as you want to add to your layouts.
    http://luxology.com

    I prefer viewing models in Modo, detailing in ZBrush, and exporting with Blender (only because I have to).

    Anyway, I wanted to enhance my pipeline by importing/exporting to Ogre directly from Modo. I now have an import script that runs inside Modo that can handle verteces and faces. I plan to convert it to an exporter. You can follow my progress in this thread.
    http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=16386

    http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=216011#216011