Random Gaming Thoughts

[alienjesus]

My wife isn't super comfortable with dual analogue controls, but she has played a few games with them in now. The games that got her started were Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil 5, and I think having someone else in game to take some of the pressure off helped quite a bit.

She moved on to Fallout 3 after that and that's where most of her first person gaming goes now. She seems to manage Outer Worlds pretty well, even though the one time she tried to play Overwatch she could barely figure out how to look forward. I think something slower paced is more beginner friendly.

[isiolia]

I can't really think of any first person games that are simple enough for someone that's completely new to them. Any recommendations? They mostly wanna eventually play Outer Worlds and the upcoming Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines sequel but I think it's best to wait for those (well we gotta wait for one of them anyways).

Personally, I'd say it's better to look at a progression versus just simplicity. The Portal games might be a place to start, for instance, because the initial parts of the first game especially are very rudimentary, but they'll work up to needing to flip around mid-air to place a shot well, all while not really being put in a high pressure situation. If you're slow on the controls, that's fine, you can try again. Other 3D puzzler types might also be a good place to start if they really need a slow, low pressure setup.

Otherwise, either follow the interest and just play some earlier titles on Easy. Or run some multiplayer against bots on a low setting.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Dual analogue is completely unacceptable. This is why the Dreamcast had the final "good" controller.

Also, a first-person game that's easy to comprehend? Boy do I have a solution.

[Ack]

Yeah, Battlezone isn't a bad choice at all. I used to play it when I was a kid, and it helped me get a handle on basic first person POV before Doom came out.

[RCBH928]

So Apple announced a move from their x86 architecture to RISC(ARM) based one and demoed it by showing that it can run Maya 3D(x86) in emulation and one of the modern Tomb Raiders in full FPS 1080P(x86) emulation. If RISC/ARM can be so powerful to run a modern game in emulation, I can see Nintendo executives huge grin as they plan their upcoming handheld console...

On a side note, I read that current iPad Pro specs is more powerful than the switch technically meaning it can run triple A games like Doom and Skyrim like the Switch.. I would love to hear anyone's input on how true is this? To those who do not know iPads/iPhone now support Sony and microsoft controllers and mouse/keyboard inputs AFAIK.

[marurun]

Apple had been considering this shift for some time, but I read recently that Intel royally screwing up Skylake cemented it. Apple was finding more bugs in the silicon than Intel’s own engineers, reportedly.

As to the raw power of Arm, by most accounts the Arm ISA is not quite as capable as the x86/x64 combined ISA. However, everything varies at implementation. Apple has demonstrated the ability to push the Arm ISA hard, and with custom extensions seems to be able to quite a lot. Various extensions are littered throughout the Intel and AMD architecture as well.

Apple’s weakest point for games will be graphics. After relying on licensing Imagination’s PowerVR tech for years they went their own way for a while. But just this year they licensed PowerVR again. Nvidia typically takes the performance crown in Mobile graphics, with a high power draw penalty, but Apple was, for a time, a close second. Basically, Apple can do with PowerVR what it does with ARM: transform it from a flexible and adaptable platform into a raging powerhouse.

Apple is no stranger to hardware translation layers, but I’m damn certain they will not be able to produce comparable performance to native x64. And nobody else can do with ARM what Apple can, so don’t count on Nintendo seeing any side benefit. If it were that easy Samsung and Qualcomm wouldn’t be stuck playing distant runner up in the mobile CPU wars.

[RCBH928]

As to the raw power of Arm, by most accounts the Arm ISA is not quite as capable as the x86/x64 combined ISA. However, everything varies at implementation. Apple has demonstrated the ability to push the Arm ISA hard, and with custom extensions seems to be able to quite a lot. Various extensions are littered throughout the Intel and AMD architecture as well.

Apple is no stranger to hardware translation layers, but I’m damn certain they will not be able to produce comparable performance to native x64. And nobody else can do with ARM what Apple can, so don’t count on Nintendo seeing any side benefit. If it were that easy Samsung and Qualcomm wouldn’t be stuck playing distant runner up in the mobile CPU wars.

If future RISC processors will not be as powerful or more than x86 for the next decade at least, they should crown Apple executive team as the idiots of silicon valley. Switching processors is a suicidal move that takes a lot of effort and time. In fact, I don't know of any tech. company that switched architecture except Apple. Some might have put their toes in the water like Microsoft, but none succeeded AFAIK.

While I am not sure why Apple can create a more powerful CPU than Samsung-Qualcomm since each company has all the billion dollars of the world to do so, Nintendo might not build as powerful RISC cpu, but if Apple can make it to emulate x86 ps4 like games, imagine what it can do in native processing! My impressions were that ARM was a smartphone CPU that you just might be able to squeeze more of it for a tablet.

[MrPopo]

Microsoft has never tried to shift architectures; they just expand to support other architectures. One of Windows's competitive advantages is the backwards compatibility going back decades. Removing 16-bit support was a major point of contention internally before they finally pulled the trigger on it. Shifting away from x86/64 is not something they are prepared to do.

Also, I'm not terribly surprised the emulation layer is doing fine; x86 chips fundamentally are very similar to RISC chips at their core, with a translation layer between the CISC x86 ISA to smaller RISC-y opcodes. So the emulation layer basically just has to duplicate that work (with some tweaks depending on specific differences between the underlying opcodes).

[Anapan]

Sorry, I have nothing to contribute to the conversation, but I had to make a posterized GIF

[isiolia]

If future RISC processors will not be as powerful or more than x86 for the next decade at least, they should crown Apple executive team as the idiots of silicon valley. Switching processors is a suicidal move that takes a lot of effort and time. In fact, I don't know of any tech. company that switched architecture except Apple. Some might have put their toes in the water like Microsoft, but none succeeded AFAIK.

While I am not sure why Apple can create a more powerful CPU than Samsung-Qualcomm since each company has all the billion dollars of the world to do so, Nintendo might not build as powerful RISC cpu, but if Apple can make it to emulate x86 ps4 like games, imagine what it can do in native processing! My impressions were that ARM was a smartphone CPU that you just might be able to squeeze more of it for a tablet.

First, it's not necessarily a matter of ARM, RISC, or whatever else versus x86/AMD64. There are different configurations and different applications. ARM has showings at both the lowest of the low end, like the Pi Zero, up to the top supercomputer in the world right now. They may not yet have an offering that'd be competitive for typical consumer PC use, but Apple isn't trying to ship these tomorrow. Their dev machine basically has an iPad Pro CPU in it, which is good, but not a high end workstation.
They will likely start out offering them in products that are already focused on low power. The Macbook Air, for instance, already offers meager, possibly deliberately limited performance for the sake of a thin and light machine with stellar battery life. Swapping that over to ARM would make sense, as they can probably do as well or better anyway, and those users will likely be predominately running apps ported to ARM most of the time.

I wouldn't be surprised if the higher end will lean more heavily on high core counts than per-thread performance.


Setting aside that Nintendo doesn't really build their own ARM solutions anyway... it seems like you're assuming a lot about "emulation" there. This is not the same as, say, running PS2 emulation on a Windows PC where every last aspect of the system has to be simulated. It's emulation in form of command interpreter for CPU calls, something Apple did for 68k to PPC, and PPC to Intel before. For as much as the games they showed not being at high end settings anyway, they're also things that run fine on 7-8 year old desktop CPUs or the weak Jaguar cores in 8th gen consoles. Performance is a lot more reliant on the GPU, which will be the same either way.

If it's like previous transitions, the emulation will only be there as a stopgap, and developers will be encouraged to compile an ARM native version of the executable for applicable machines. Then once Apple is done shifting their product line over, they'll dump support for Intel and remove the emulation At least, based on previous transitions.