Jess Birch @shivoa@mastodon.gamedev.place

Answering a different question but a similar theme to what I was getting at here: "VRS applied to the real-time cinematics on the Xbox Series X allowed for dynamic resolution to run an average of 10% higher" https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/gears-vrs-tier2/
[DLSS 2.1 apparently already enabled dynamic internal res support so should offer fixed frame budgets rather than assuming everyone has an nVidia G-Sync monitor - all the more reason to be as efficient as possible each frame to maximise detail.]

Still amazes me when companies pretend the EU isn't a single market & so try to offer tiered price by location (which will, as this shows, get you a fine & negative press). There are so many other pricing levers that aren't illegal to use. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_170

Can't wait for the future. "Auntie, what was it like when competitive gamers used peripherals with their hands rather than plugging directly into their brain-reader? How did they manage to play games with high skill ceilings?"
https://hexus.net/tech/news/peripherals/147305-impulse-neuro-controller-reduces-pc-gaming-reaction-times/

Sometime between the initial announcement of Google Photos' "high quality" (recompressed) unlimited storage & now, the quality of those images seems to have significantly dropped. A 13MB jpeg example uploaded today turned into only 500kB when downloaded back (it's better than just slashing the jpeg quality but there's only so much you can do when file sizes shrink that much).
And Google will do away with unlimited photo storage totally in June!

I did not expect MachineGames & Massive Entertainment to both be announcing new projects using LucasArts IP. Seems like pretty early for both projects (and there's that Avatar project at Massive we're still yet to find out more about).
Interesting studios to work with.

As far as I can work out, the Win 10 Store does not play nice with external drives. As soon as you put an app onto one, it permanently holds a file lock (making it so you can't do the safely eject drive process). But it doesn't even warn you that external drives are rarely optimal for running apps.
There is no backup option I can see to store an app (remembering this could be a 200GB game install) so moving apps [if it works] is required to avoid redownloading. Wasn't this use case tested?

Wow, that's another massive purchase (another era of big mergers & acquisitions going on). Hope all the RAD veterans are happy with the transition. Years of massive respect for the technology work done there.
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/epic-acquires-rad-game-tools

Erm, what is going on at Logitech?
Had a 2013 G400 develop a double-detect left click issue & replaced it with a 2019 MX518 (new model, shockingly expensive). 18 months later it's now starting to exhibit occasional double-detect mistakes. Never had a previous mouse fail this way.

Was playing an RPG where the mini-map contained a prominent North arrow. Unfortunately for the puzzle in the room I was trying to solve, this was not aligned with the direction the map was constructed & until I noticed a compass painted into the floor, I had become quite confused by how I'd found the apparent solution but it clearly wasn't working.

I ran through my thoughts on some of the notable games released last year as 2020 concluded. https://blog.shivoa.net/2020/12/games-of-year-2020.html

This looks interesting (I am always on the hunt for colour spaces with nice properties & this looks to give some pleasing results on my screen when using my eyes). Looking forward to future posts discussing it further. https://bottosson.github.io/posts/oklab/

In 2021 I'm going to pick up my oldest Vulkan renderer & add guaranteed scan-out scheduling + temporal reprojection without ghosting. Will adjust visual style & world complexity limits to meet those goals, if necessary.

I wonder how RT acceleration finally being desktop mainstream (both 4K consoles + all 3 GPU vendors by 2021) hits indie. Not most indie, which continues to get new toys as the big engines adopt an optional RT fidelity mode, but the weirdos. People who make new engines to see what they can do outside ever-growing AAA-friendly production. Will this attach a rocket to those niches incubating since 2018? Some stuff hasn't even waited for hardware acceleration to play around.
http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2020/12/why-raytracing-wont-simplify-aaa-real.html

This would probably have been a far more interesting curiosity before there was easy access to cheap Zen-class APUs (& where mobile Zen2 + RDNA2 with Van Gogh is right around the corner, along with LPDDR5 support). https://www.anandtech.com/show/16336/installing-windows-on-an-xbox-one-s-apu-the-chuwi-aerobox-review/

The gamified marketplace everything impulse is probably going too far when you're adding a section to your Steam Points Store where users buy upgrades to their profile showcases (the slot-in blocks to show off achievements, games, or even the free workshop content or FAQs they've been contributing to your ecosystem).
https://store.steampowered.com/points/shop/profileshowcases

Interested to see the analysis of how the Microsoft Flight Simulator update (for VR) runs because I had not been able to get to a stable 60 fps with a single viewport (on a 2700X) previously. I expect there's a lot of new optimisations coming online to hit 72-120 fps per eye without drops.

Y'know what I really miss? Easy to read window UIs rather than grey text on a darker gradient grey background (with any text highlights in a shockingly strong primary colour) that always seems to have a bit too much white space between each of the actual elements. https://store.steampowered.com/oldnews/79170

The appeal of Work from Home probably varies widely (teachers & other mixed-location workers have never been able to keep work out of the home; others really hold onto a physical separation) but I have always quite liked it & always done some WfH. Over 20 years of various jobs, how much I do at home varies but I've not been less satisfied by the last few years of being 100% WfH. Last 9 months haven't been a shift in my work life (just everything else changed).

Interesting that the major platform holders have made such a pig's ear of cloud saves that major publishers are simply sidestepping them. Sony put it behind a PS+ paywall (& didn't enable cross-title transfers, to allow PS5 games to read PS4 saves) & the less said about how Nintendo have failed the better.
So we have Ubisoft Connect coming online & many games linking PC + Switch (via the Steam backend). Good to make saves compatible & easy to transfer (means they own your game several times)!

I am clearly well behind on my competitive FPS knowledge (we all still like CS1.6, right?) so had not really drilled into what "peeker's advantage" was.
Recent nVidia video that promises latency reduction as competitive advantage: https://youtu.be/Kmh1GLLYN0g
Good [old] R6 devblog going over fundamentals: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-ca/game/rainbow-six/siege/news-updates/1su64agGqZZQWb0mBeJUem/dev-blog-ping-abuse-peekers-advantage-and-next-steps