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Balschoiw

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About Balschoiw

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  1. Balschoiw

    "Hardcore" and Apple's new tablet

    I´m not impressed with the Ipad. It has no USB, no slot for Memory cards, no external connectors. This is what I really love with my netbook. I have it with me on all travels, can insert the SD card of my camera and instantly use the photos or use the firewire interface to transfer the videos from my videocam. The USB slot is needed to connect external drives and a mobile DVD burner or the bluetooth device to connect my mobile phone or just a stick to swap some music. There are no interfaces like that with the IPad at all and that´s really a big deficit imo. Those things need to be mobile, compact and connective. Ipad lacks big time in the last compartement and therefore will not be bought by me. Stylish or not, it´s the functionality that counts for me.
  2. Balschoiw

    Any other musicians in the community?

    I´ve learned to play the piano when I was a youth but only own a Korg M1 and a DX7 now to use them for midi-recording. You can check out some of my stuff on my myspace page: Notfallplan
  3. Balschoiw

    MoH Receipient Can't Fly A Flag

    So you´re ok with it ? If you take the time you´ll find out that the numbers are steadily rising, this is a tribute to the way wars a fought today in comparison to conflicts decades ago. Still, there´s hardly any intitiative to compensate that development and support the vets. Waving flags and vocally supporting the troops does not help them in the aftermath. Actions to change the governmental support and responsibility do. As a matter of fact this is the new generation of veterans we´re talking about here. It´s your neighbours, your friends, your schoolmates. And yes, they are left behind today. @Clavicula_nox4817: I applaud your effort and goals but there are so many vets that are simply dropping through the system as they lack your personal strength or simply have been altered by the things they experienced so much that they will never get back on track again. As long as PTSD is seen as a personal deficit among the military personel, people will go on killing themselves as they are to afraid to expose themselves and ask for proper treatment within a bureaucratic process of the VA, especially if you keep in mind that traumatized people lack the energy to "fight" through the machine. Also keep in mind that such problems do not arise instantly, they grow over time. Anyway, I hope you now can understand why I see the flag-incident the thread is about more as an anecdote than a serious problem. Totally agreed, we could extend the list for ages, still my highlighting was on the current US situation for veterans.
  4. Balschoiw

    MoH Receipient Can't Fly A Flag

    I´m sure you could find out easily by yourself but here you go: 1. One in five US soldiers returning home suffers from PTSD 2. TBI (traumatic brain injuries) make up a total of 22 percent of the injuries, that´s twice high than during/after the vietnam war. 3. A Stanford University study found that 700.000 of 2.000.000 soldiers having served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD or TBI. That´s a total of 36 percent. 4. IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) has a pretty straight opinion on the aftermath costs of war participation and the money needed to support injured or traumatized soldiers: IAVA’s Paul Rieckhoff Joined CNN to Discuss Impact of Afghan Plan on Vets 5. The suicide rate among US soldiers has doubled since 2001 according to Peter Chiarelli, Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. This doesn´t come out of nowhere. According to him at least 900 therapeuts and additional psychologists are needed to support the troops and to treat the vast amount of veterans who suffer from a palette of mental or bodily injuries. There´s no additional money for it though. 6. The unemployment rate among veterans is 2 points higher than among regular citizens. 7. The number of veterans loosing their homes is 4 times higher than among regular citizens. 8. Veterans have to wait years for compensation or proper medical treatment as the deciding authority, the VA is underfinanced and not fit to handle such big numbers of veterans who are in need of instant help and support. Families of soldiers who commited suicide do not even get the usual predidential condolences. This alone shows how their lives and deaths are valued by the government and the society. Hope that helps.
  5. Balschoiw

    MoH Receipient Can't Fly A Flag

    OMG, yes...i´ll give you the deadnock. World peace !
  6. Balschoiw

    What's the best racing sim

    Playing Shift now for about 2 weeks. With real car mod and damage mod it´s a real blast. Enemy AI is a tad to deadly imo but the look, feel, handling and general race impression is a blast. Need to install the latest patch though. With custom G25 setup from the indarneds it plays great. Still trying to beat 6.20 on Nordschleife though... Hehe...those screens are really supershrinked Maddmatt :-) Get the setups for the G25 and links to the other realistic mods at nogripracing. Cheers.
  7. Balschoiw

    LCD/LED projectors?

    Ir´s not only important what resolution the device has, even more important is the reaction time of the display used in the device. Most of them are not very fast unfortunally so playing on them or watching fast movie scenes get´s washy. Basically the regular 300-500 Euro beamers are using stripped TFT displays with all of their limitations. This means they are not good at displaying fast paced action. Picture gets washy. If I were you I´d sit back for a few more years and wait for laser beamers for gaming. They are catching up production-wide and deliver incredible great pictures, no matter what surface you project upon. Using a regular beamer will force you into either buying silver-tipped cinema paint for your wall or using a retractable screen. On regular walls the result looks shit. I have a self-built beamer for movies, gaming is not my choice with it. Last year I got my hands on one of those old beamers for concerts with 3 little TV´s in it and some monsterlenses. That one is really good for gaming and the picture is great as it is an per pixel picture. The only problem is that it weights a ton and needs some serious adjustment for every lens when relocated. Your wife will hate you for the size and love you for the picture :-) Seriously, give it some time. Else you´ll waste money without proper results.
  8. Balschoiw

    MoH Receipient Can't Fly A Flag

    Yawn... Where ist the initiative when it comes to people who suffer from traumatas caused by the latest conflicts ? You got about 40.000 US people who fail to reintegrate, who get left behind by the system, the community, their families, the govenrment and you make a big fuzz about an old man who fails to comply to a contract ? You got bigger problems to worry about. Seriously, as much as it may harm that old man, it´s a joke compared to the real problems Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have to face in the US of A today... Better put your initiative there... And not about some stupid flag thingie....
  9. Balschoiw

    The ultimate sim fan?

    It´s actually the same rig ;-)
  10. Balschoiw

    The ultimate sim fan?

    No..not at all :-) The cabin movement is there to simulate g-force. It works pretty well this way . If you step on the gas the cockpit is tilted back to simulate positive g as in a real car. When applying brake forces it tilts to the front to simulate negative g as it is in real life aswell. It´s not meant to simulate the actual movemt of the car..ok it does additionally , but the big movements are there for the g-forces. Imagine sitting in a dark cabin with this simulator and only the monitor is visible. The illusion will be perfect :)
  11. Balschoiw

    The ultimate sim fan?

    I love DIY cockpits and simulators. I love to build stuff on my own and a full motion g-simulating setup is something I really like to build on my own. As I´m more into racesims something like this is very tempting for me: You can check out a lot of impressive DIY projects over at Racesimcentral If you got enough money you can always go for a Force Dynamics rig:
  12. Balschoiw

    Unity 3D - Free Indie version

    It is an SDK :-) Large scale streaming terrains will hardly be possible with Unity. You can create fractal rendered terrain but this comes with logical limitations. Whoopie...2.6 is out. Iphone Unity is not included with Unity Pro Version afaik and has to be licensed separately. Still I´ve done 3 projects so far with Untiy 2.5 Pro and it really rocks for the price you have to pay. Compared to other 3d engines the workflow is much, much faster and the bang for the buck you get is incredible...if you are aware of the limitations. I´m off to check the new version :)
  13. Balschoiw

    How easy is it to take out ppl in a pillbox?

    I usually embedd a large trigger around defensive positions to communicate players or ai´s position to defenders and enable them to engage much, much earlier. This includes small caliber stationary weapons but also fieldguns, etc. The players are not used to that as the AI normally doesn´t engage at ranges beyond 400 m´s but with this trick gameplay becomes much more challenging and demanding. I also use forwarded observers in trees or buildings to direct artillery on enemies. Works like a charm and has a fairness factor as the observer can be killed and the source of enemy information is gone :-)
  14. Balschoiw

    Torque vs. OGRE

    Yes, there´s a script you can just drag/drop onto your character to make this work. It´s really that simple. There is some AI code embedded with the downloadable tutorials but there are also user-created modules that are more sophisticated in terms of defining areas where AI can move upon and pathfinding in general. I used a pathfinding system with waypoints for a realtime architectural visualizations where I have live traffic going on. It is basic though but it does the job for me. Advanced AI like taking cover, leaning and things like that are possible with scripting I guess but up to now I haven´t seen examples. Right now the AI just works like this: - enemy freely moves in it´s predefined sector or scans for targets within given range - If player-tagged object moves into sensor range of enemy he will switch to his combat routines wich means that he either calculates a path towards the player to reach his maximum shooting distance or for stationary weapons waits until the players gets in range moves the gun into the player´s direction and fires. Projectiles can be fired by particle emitters that actually emit physics objects that interact with the surrounding. Each projectile can have weight, mass, speed and affects the environment. Shooting boxes moves them if the projectiles are strong enough, barrels can explode if there damage points are exceeded. It´s just a matter of what you embedd. I´m curious what the new Unity version will offer in the AI compartement but we´ll see soon. :pet7:
  15. Balschoiw

    Torque vs. OGRE

    The engine only exports things to a standalone that are actually used in your project, so yes, it´s up to you to decide what you want to have in it or not. Concept - creation of objects in external application - texturing/animation - import into Unity by Drag/Drop with latest FBX importer - embedding into your scene by drag/drop. Unity also checks your project folder automatically for updated models, textures, scripts, whatever and automatically imports the latest version directly into your scenery which is helpful as you don´t have to import and embedd the updated things over and over again with going through all the material, scripting, behaviour or shader settings. Shading is the biggest visual part of a game. It either makes your objects look tasty, with structure, per pixel shadowing, shiny, reflective, etc, etc or when using very basic shaders it makes your objects just look plain coloured with no depth. In unity you can apply several materials consisting of different shaders to one object in a row. For example you have a base texture a shiny layer above the base texture and a reflecting shader on top of it all to reflect the environmet or a cubemap that is generated to represent environmetal reflection. There are programs to create shaders, or plugins for the common modelling programs like 3dsmax or Maya. In Unity you can program your own shaders for best results but it takes time to get into CG shader programming as it directly addresses the funtions of gfx-cards and therefore there are limits to it. It´s not directly linked to lighting as the light emitters only emit lights and draw soft or hard shadows, the calculations on what happens with an object that is lighted is a shader thing as the material of an object defines how it looks when light is applied to it.
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