Getting the most out of Slow Motion video at 60i

No Motion Tracking, Strobing.

I am experimenting with different slow motion techniques. It's hard to get good looking slow motion with a stationary camera. If I track the car, I can get away with slowing things down up to 50% and using a bit of frame blending to smoothing things out. Throw on some motion tracking and a bit of down-sampling form 1080i to 720, and I actually end up with a decent result. With a stationary shot, frame blending looks like crap, but without it the cars look like they are strobing. The above video is stationary, show in Long Beach last week at the Red Bull World Championship. I am gonna be out at the track again this weekend at Willow Springs, and I plan to play around a bit more with motion tracking techniques.

The section with the Corvette drifting is motion tracked.

I don't need massive processing power to make a compelling, AAA game, or the Rising Cost of Video Game Assets

Does the increased cost of producing high resolution in-game assets payoff in player "experience," in a way that is tangible enough to justify it?

The Xbox360 and PS3 have booth created an arms war, that Nintendo has avoided with the Wii. 3rd party developers are having a hard time cracking the Wii code, but is that because they fail to realize it's not about a novel control scheme. The Wii is about placing the focus on user experience. With the computational power of modern home video game consoles, it has become a dangerous trap to stray too far from user experience. Nintendo managed to step over this trap with the Wii, and is reaping the rewards.

The Wii is not about simple games, it is about focusing on user experience. The same could be said for the strongest titles available for the 360 and PS3. What makes Halo a compelling game was not it's amazing graphics, but it's elegant control experience. Halo does an FPS well on a console, almost a successor to Golden Eye on the N64.

A well designed game can have a profound emotional impact on the player without sitting on the bleeding edge of technology. Look at RE4 as an example of this. That game hooked me in and only occasionally let me up for air. The visuals were good, but player experience is what made that title work. RE4 focused on the combined impact of sound, visuals, narrative, and control to make an experience that blows away titles built with significantly more resources and power requirements. Remember, RE4 is a GAMECUBE game. Throw it in, compare it to some of the recent 360 and PS3 titles out there. Understand why Lego Batman is so compelling. It's all about the player.

Maybe take a look at a soccer ball. Simple, but compelling player experience.

Old Apple Computer Internal Clocks

It's midnight, Jan 1, 1904. This date was selected because the original Mac's clock (which counts in seconds) can encompass a period of about 136 years. Selecting 1904 as the start date means that the 136-year period covered by the clock (1904-2040) includes the birthdate of nearly every Mac user, and extends well past the expected lifetime of the Mac OS. It also means that the simplest rule for leap-years can be used (every fourth year has an extra day), which simplifies day and date calculations. They didn't choose the year 1900 because it was not a leap year, and so would have complicated matters.

I found this while searching around for ways to get my old se/30 working again. It's the computer that I first learned to program on, and I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of my ancient work. Right now it just gives me death tones, but hopefully I will get her back up and running.

Writing about Food, Making money on the Internet

I have been resisting the urge to admit defeat for a while now, but with 12 months of data collected I can no longer deny it. Adsense ads pay significantly better on sites that discuss food and dieting. Technology and automobiles are my personally hobbies, but it seems that I should maybe re-learn my love for cooking and baking. A regularly updated site about food is probably one of the best ways to earn adsense revenue. I think that people searching for low calorie foods are more likely to click on ads then someone who is reading about cars or technology. The low acquisition cost of goodies coupled with the frequent need to nourishment, seems to make food product advertising appealing to site visitors.

Now if only I had the same passion to write about low calorie girls scout cookies as I do about the California budget.

Treck 90210

TOWER OF TUNA @ LA CANADA VALLEY SUN

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK -- TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE TOWER OF TUNA: Deliver cans of tuna (other canned foods gratefully accepted as well) to the Valley Sun, 1061 Valley Sun Lane, La Canada, CA 91011. Office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information call (818) 790-8774.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

A Glimmer of Hope?

http://www.cnbc.com//id/27772063

Looks like a couple of the guys that got us into this whole are at least not giving themselves a christmas bonus.

My foray into the Google AppEngine

The Road To Communism in the United States of America.

http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/11/14/power-point-let-your-m...

Maybe struggling homeowners should be reading Bair’s book. Today she introduced a radical plan to reduce payments to 31% of gross monthly income for homeowners who are delinquent two months or more. To urge participation, the FDIC would pay loan processors $1,000 for each reworked loan; if a borrower defaults, the FDIC would share up to 50% of losses. Of 2.2 million homeowners who would receive new loans under this plan, 1.5 million would keep their homes, the FDIC estimates.

My wife and I did not buy a house because we simply could not afford one. Now Sheila Bair is proposing to use MY MONEY to help other people who CAN'T AFFORD A HOME, buy their homes. This a a slap to the face of American's who work hard to save and live within their means. Loosing home ownership does not make you homeless, it makes you a RENTER. How does everyone not see this. Taking MY MONEY and giving it to IRRESPONSIBLE BORROWERS to keep a house that THEY CAN'T AFFORD is called SOCIALISM. I would be ok with finding a way to help distressed homeowners move out of their homes without being crippled by bankruptcy, but USING MY MONEY TO BUY THEIR HOMES IS OUTRIGHT COMMUNISM.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

Any of that starting to look a bit too real?

lincvolt

Syndicate content