141–150 of 159 posts
Without wishing to appear negative, I do find it odd the way that a technical crowd react to these online demos. Would you have found this impressive if it was a compiled executable? Because this is just the same thing, just running slower because it's on the web. It's not technically novel in any way. If you're curious about the algorithm, then take a look at the presentation 'Advanced Character Physics' by Jacobson…
Can anyone speak to what's going on in these algorithms? I'm interested in the physics/math behind them. For example, how much about partial differential equations do I need to know to understand them?
It's very simple really. It's a grid of point masses with constraints between them (the lines you see) that says to keep the points at a constant distance from each other. Think of the constraints as springs that follow Hooks law[1], only infinitely stiff. You iterate through all the constraints and move the two points of each constraint apart if they are too close, or closer if they are too far apart. You need some…
Thanks for posting comments like this. It opens my eyes to questions I didn't even know I had. ("What's a verlet?" "Oh man, I need to re-learn my linear algebra someday...")
Without wishing to appear negative, I do find it odd the way that a technical crowd react to these online demos. Would you have found this impressive if it was a compiled executable? Because this is just the same thing, just running slower because it's on the web. It's not technically novel in any way. If you're curious about the algorithm, then take a look at the presentation 'Advanced Character Physics' by Jacobson…
Imagine if HN and comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos really would have the same audience. So everybody'd be like "oh, cloth simulation. we did that in the 90s", as well as, "... in javascript, even! ... just like scenerdude303 did 8 years ago, except he didn't have a canvas-element back then, web browsers were still make of wood and he had to get up at 5am to write the code in the snow when it was still fresh, type with his bare…
When making art, there is tremendous value
in doing what has been done before.
It's called practice, and the value is having
the experience of having done something yourself.
Without wishing to appear negative, I do find it odd the way that a technical crowd react to these online demos. Would you have found this impressive if it was a compiled executable? Because this is just the same thing, just running slower because it's on the web. It's not technically novel in any way. If you're curious about the algorithm, then take a look at the presentation 'Advanced Character Physics' by Jacobson…
It's like this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A
Where a guy builds a binary adding machine out of wood and marbles. I've seen them before. I've even seen nicer ones (more expertly constructed). His little counter / adder isn't really a feat in any way. I could even show you how to build a vastly better one with a CPLD. Yet, I am still impressed, and amused when I see that someone has built one. Wood, Minecraft, Little Big Planet, anything else.
But, don't stop being a hater. I even got something useful from your post 'Advanced Character Physics' by Jacobson. which is interesting, and which I probably wouldn't stumble across on my own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I would find it impressive. Problem is, there's about a 5% chance I'd ever get to downloading and running it. Especially since it very likely wouldn't be compiled for mac or linux (the only systems I have) and I very very likely wouldn't feel inclined to compile it myself. That's why we love javascript demos. We're lazy sods.
In which case the impressiveness must be coming from the lack of domain familiarity. It's basically getting excited about a game physics 'Hello World'. I remember a good few years ago a colleague writing a fully textured 3D cloth sim that would remotely unfurl on your screen, displaying a given message on the cloth. He used it to display goatse.cx to me, which I wasn't very pleased about. This was developed in python…
OTOH, realize that many readers here were probably not programming then.
Programming is the archetypal field where everything old is new again. The antidote -- dig up all those 1-2 day projects you did 10 years ago that you think are stupid / too simple, and re-package them for the kids.
Without wishing to appear negative, I do find it odd the way that a technical crowd react to these online demos. Would you have found this impressive if it was a compiled executable? Because this is just the same thing, just running slower because it's on the web. It's not technically novel in any way. If you're curious about the algorithm, then take a look at the presentation 'Advanced Character Physics' by Jacobson…
But it is a scripting language! And it can draw in 2D in real time. And it is deployed to a very popular fat-client over the network. And it even looks like decent frame rate. On my quad-core machine. What is there not to be impressed with in 2013?
Without wishing to appear negative, I do find it odd the way that a technical crowd react to these online demos. Would you have found this impressive if it was a compiled executable? Because this is just the same thing, just running slower because it's on the web. It's not technically novel in any way. If you're curious about the algorithm, then take a look at the presentation 'Advanced Character Physics' by Jacobson…
Imagine if HN and comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos really would have the same audience. So everybody'd be like "oh, cloth simulation. we did that in the 90s", as well as, "... in javascript, even! ... just like scenerdude303 did 8 years ago, except he didn't have a canvas-element back then, web browsers were still make of wood and he had to get up at 5am to write the code in the snow when it was still fresh, type with his bare…