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kastein posted:It actually seemed pretty good to me, there were a lot of small details in the spokes of the wheels that took a long time. This is a plotter we're talking about, so it's most likely an ACAD *.dwg file, and the interface will use HPGL. The HPGL language is simple, like what Ron Burgundy posted. ACAD has multiple levels of pen path optimization techniques, but you have to turn them on. Guy Axlerod has a new favorite as of 03:05 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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WebDog posted:My IT classes were mostly the same. In the Mac years (grades 1 - 6) you were taught how to use HyperCard and Claris programs to do simple documents and games. Or we just messed about in KidsPix, editing all of the owls to have blood gushing out as they rotated their heads. Man, this post takes me back. When I was a kid in the 90s, my school had some horrid computers from the early 90s which ran 3.1 as late as 1999. We used that drat touch typing program, as it was the only thing we were allowed to run. Most of the kids didn't even care about learning touch. We usually just went to the library where they had a computer with Win 98 which we could surf the web on for 10 minutes before we had to give it up to the next person in line. In other words, if the computer was turned off, it'd be the next guy's turn before you had managed to get into Windows it self. I do remember having loads of fun with KidPix, though. So much fun that when I found my old floppies with it when I cleaned some shelves last Summer, I reinstalled it. Still fun.
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Jan 27, 2014 14:27
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kastein posted:
EMF files are in fact still the only "good" way I know of to insert vector graphics in Word documents, unless someone knows of some other common format that will actually work with colour? It doesn't support vector overlays over bitmaps, something I literally wanted to do this morning and ended up just exporting it to giant PNGs instead. This is also no joke a big reason why I use Latex for larger documents, it can accept both EPS files from ancient software and SVG files from modern software by silently converting them to PDF and including them directly. This also means that with a PDF printer almost any piece of software that prints can generate graphics for my documents. Latex is something that should have been obsoleted by WYSIWYG software but to this day I still run into weird formatting issues in Word, so I have to keep using it.
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Jan 28, 2014 19:16
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Back in the 90s (I think 1992) American Greetings rolled out their CreataCard machines to retailers that let you create customized cards via a touchscreen and then it printed them on the spot with a built-in plotter. They were really kind of neat, but it took a long time to select and customize a card via the touchscreen (it was rendering vector graphics on 1992 hardware) and an even longer time for the plotter to print it. They hit a peak of roughly 10000 kiosks in stores in 1995, but usage was falling rapidly by 1996 and in 1997 they pulled almost all of the kiosks from stores. People probably got tired of waiting for the cards to print once the novelty wore off coupled with formerly expensive color printers starting to plummet in price. Unfortunately, I can't find any pictures or video of an actual machine, just a lot of patent application scans for it.
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Jan 29, 2014 05:20
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The_Franz posted:Back in the 90s (I think 1992) American Greetings rolled out their CreataCard machines to retailers that let you create customized cards via a touchscreen and then it printed them on the spot with a built-in plotter. They were really kind of neat, but it took a long time to select and customize a card via the touchscreen (it was rendering vector graphics on 1992 hardware) and an even longer time for the plotter to print it. They hit a peak of roughly 10000 kiosks in stores in 1995, but usage was falling rapidly by 1996 and in 1997 they pulled almost all of the kiosks from stores. People probably got tired of waiting for the cards to print once the novelty wore off coupled with formerly expensive color printers starting to plummet in price. I remember those. I also remember getting reaaaaaaaaaaally far through the creation process. Like, literally up to "Click here to print" and it not asking me for any kind of payment. I was also a kid messing around so unless there was some sort of check before it starts printing, I bet a lot of paper and ink got wasted.
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Jan 29, 2014 06:17
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That's weird that you can't find pictures of the Creatacard machines online. I did find the patent, which has nice nostalgic drawings of the user interface. http://www.google.com/patents/US5615123  The only actual photo I could find is of a gutted kiosk in an abandoned mall 
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Jan 29, 2014 08:08
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semiavrage posted:I actually no-joke owned an N-Gage, and I loved it. Being able to play Tony Hawk on the go was 100% worth all of the issues that existed with that phone. 100%. I have a couple sitting on the shelf at home. I need to finder a charger and see if they start up.
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Jan 29, 2014 20:17
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The_Franz posted:Back in the 90s (I think 1992) American Greetings rolled out their CreataCard machines to retailers that let you create customized cards via a touchscreen and then it printed them on the spot with a built-in plotter. They were really kind of neat, but it took a long time to select and customize a card via the touchscreen (it was rendering vector graphics on 1992 hardware) and an even longer time for the plotter to print it. They hit a peak of roughly 10000 kiosks in stores in 1995, but usage was falling rapidly by 1996 and in 1997 they pulled almost all of the kiosks from stores. People probably got tired of waiting for the cards to print once the novelty wore off coupled with formerly expensive color printers starting to plummet in price.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:35
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mystes posted:Didn't someone just post this on the previous page? Yes, we've gone from Creatacard -> Plotters -> Creatacard. lazydog posted:That's weird that you can't find pictures of the Creatacard machines online. Thanks for this picture. It was bothering me to not find any photos.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:51
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More plotter porn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLhT-h55fxA Also:
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Feb 6, 2014 23:25
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Guy Axlerod posted:More plotter porn: This is really cool because it lets you use any pen that yields itself to the threading tool. I would have liked to see how it looks with a cheapo ball point. With the nice drafting markers and premium paper, the output looked great.
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Feb 6, 2014 23:38
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DNova posted:This is really cool because it lets you use any pen that yields itself to the threading tool. I would have liked to see how it looks with a cheapo ball point. With the nice drafting markers and premium paper, the output looked great. This should give you an idea - someone repurposed their vinyl cutter with a bic ballpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP9Ij7Vnc5c
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Feb 7, 2014 13:08
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Guy Axlerod posted:
The worst part is that we would do presentations that involved hauling a portable overhead and this projection panel. This was in 1998, so it's not like projectors weren't around, just pretty expensive.
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Feb 7, 2014 13:19
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stealie72 posted:This reminds me, at my first job we had a worst of both worlds item. It was a "projector" for a computer that was basically a transparency sheet for an overhead projector. Picture a really crappy LCD monitor (I think the resolution was like 800x600) that you can shine light through with a refresh rate that was so slow as to be visible. Basically a game boy color screen. We had one of those in Highschool at the same time as you. It was more or less just an LCD monitor, but with out a back on it and no built in light. As a mater of fact, I had seen instructions on line on how to make an overhead projector in to a video projector using an old LCD monitor and it looked pretty much like a DIY version of this thing. We also had one that was specifically for a TI-83 calculator.
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Feb 7, 2014 15:12
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Lowen SoDium posted:We had one of those in Highschool at the same time as you. It was more or less just an LCD monitor, but with out a back on it and no built in light. As a mater of fact, I had seen instructions on line on how to make an overhead projector in to a video projector using an old LCD monitor and it looked pretty much like a DIY version of this thing. Ha - my TI-83 had the connector for that (I got it from a teacher we knew who had some spares). I did get to test it, and tetris on the thing was fun. Horrible refresh rate and pixel transition time, but it's not like the normal screen was much better.
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Feb 7, 2014 15:33
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Lowen SoDium posted:We had one of those in Highschool at the same time as you. It was more or less just an LCD monitor, but with out a back on it and no built in light. As a mater of fact, I had seen instructions on line on how to make an overhead projector in to a video projector using an old LCD monitor and it looked pretty much like a DIY version of this thing. We built one of those in college because we were broke and wanted to watch movies. It was made out of a stolen grocery shopping cart, a broken 15" LCD, an overhead projector pilfered from a dumpster, a significant quantity of gaffer tape, an old cooling fan out of a PC, and several coke bottle caps. Why coke bottle caps? Because the LCD kept overheating and needed to be spaced off the projector so the cooling fan could blow under it. Actually I just checked and one of my roommates had a photo of this contraption on his Facebook. Here it is in all its glory:  For the pile of broken poo poo and case of beer (for inspiration) it cost us to make it, it worked quite nicely. Until we managed to get a lovely projector for free because it needed a new bulb soon, then it all got shitcanned post haste.
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Feb 7, 2014 17:18
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Speaking of overhead projectors, my kid's school has digital overheads and the video lag is ridiculous. Every time I see them I stupidly wish they would just use oldschool overhead projectors like I had in school.
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Feb 7, 2014 18:29
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Mike-o posted:Speaking of overhead projectors, my kid's school has digital overheads and the video lag is ridiculous. Every time I see them I stupidly wish they would just use oldschool overhead projectors like I had in school. Obsolete or not, overhead projectors will always be a sought commodity in grade schools. It's one of the few ways to demonstrate work while watching the class. Many schools don't have proper funding or expertise to buy properly functional digital alternatives, nor enough time and money to properly train aging teachers how to use them when they won't turn on and you're facing a room full of 30+ antsy 10-year-olds.
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Feb 8, 2014 00:24
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My strongest memory from overhead projectors is teachers who could never understand why the picture came up trapezoid instead of square, because they never figured out what the hook under the chalkboard was for. It's for hooking the overhead screen to so it's parallell to the projector's lens thus making the image square.
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Feb 8, 2014 01:18
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Mister Kingdom posted:Wasn't Print Shop the program that, whenever a new version came out, you couldn't just upgrade, but had to buy the whole program again? The problem I had with it was that it didn't support the exact brand of printer I was using. Tech support told me to use trial and error on all the Epson printers in the list (my printer wasn't an Epson). Kids these days with their plug and play etc.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:04
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slomomofo posted:Obsolete or not, overhead projectors will always be a sought commodity in grade schools. It's one of the few ways to demonstrate work while watching the class. Many schools don't have proper funding or expertise to buy properly functional digital alternatives, nor enough time and money to properly train aging teachers how to use them when they won't turn on and you're facing a room full of 30+ antsy 10-year-olds. We had an Elmo "document camera" in several classes in college and they were amazing. It looks like an old school overhead projector but with a camera at the top instead of a lens. I think it had VGA out, so you just plugged into a VGA-capable projector. Really one of the best tools I've seen for that sort of thing, because you just write like normal with a regular pen on plain white paper.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:20
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Not really a technology, but along the lines of software: The space/flight sim genre. In the 80s and 90s it seemed like these were extremely popular genres that had titles shipped several companies: Microprose, subLogic, Spectrum Holobyte, Dynamix, LucasArts, Origin, etc. Complete with massive, binder-filling instruction manuals, keyboard overlays and, on lower-end computers, slow frame rates. Then it seems like the moment PC technology started to get really powerful and more widespread to the point that these sort of games could finally be done extremely well, the interest in the genre really dropped off. I know there's still games out there being made, but there just doesn't seem to be the output, passion or interest like there was a generation ago.
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Feb 8, 2014 07:24
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JediTalentAgent posted:Not really a technology, but along the lines of software: The space/flight sim genre. I think a large part is that the more arcadey games were, with the increase in computer power and such, able to implement enough "realistic" things to their games that the divide between arcade and sim was narrowed significantly. At that point, anyone who wanted to fly a real-ish plane while shooting suckers was going to pick the arcade side of the divide because the flying was "good enough" and they could shoot suckers. The hardcore dudes stuck with the sims, because while the arcadey games did get better for flight feel, the sims used the entirety of computing power increases to make the experience more authentic. I have a buddy who does sim stuff and flys real aircraft on real flight paths and there's realtime air traffic control from some other dude a thousand miles away who decided he wanted to be ATC for the greater western seaboard and thus installed all the poo poo to monitor all the other hardcore dudes doing fake flights along the west coast. The passion seems to have focused into one or two really popular sim games (and associated air traffic control programs) which makes sense because the games have basically become gigantic MMOs.
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Feb 8, 2014 08:16
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JediTalentAgent posted:I know there's still games out there being made, but there just doesn't seem to be the output, passion or interest like there was a generation ago. But once that thrill tapered off, all that was left was a steep learning curve at a time when computer games were becoming an entertainment medium. People just want to get in and play, not sit through hours and hours of tutorials just to know how to start up a helicopter without the engine exploding. Sure the payoff is fantastic, but most just don't have that time to sink. Later games also came with the fact you had to have a joystick with a rudder control to play effectively. X-Wing Alliance would kick you out if you didn't have one plugged in for instance. Other games allowed the use of a mouse or keyboard, but never really accommodated for alternate controls, making games harder as you lacked precision. And idea of having to spend $200 on a decent wheel or specialized control consoles, just to really "experience" the game, tended to move the simulation genre away into a specialist field. And you had to store these things somewhere. Also many of these games were PC only, leading to a smaller market to sell in and while there was some crossover, concessions had to be made to compensate for the hard limits consoles had. So it was a mixture of elements that slowly sunk the genre. It's still big in Europe where you have the majority of simulation games get developed. The market today is pretty much akin to model railroaders who want to experience an impressionistic view of running something expensive, without the cost or training involved. Stuff like War Thunder is where the accessible level of the genre goes. There's enough of a "feel" that you're flying a plane, but you don't have to worry about prop pitch or fuel mixes to enjoy it - but the option is there. X:Rebirth is a prime example of the quandary the genre is stuck in. It wants to move into a more accessible mass market, but gets hung up on it's existing audience and subsequently turns into an utter mess trying to please everyone.
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Feb 8, 2014 08:27
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Pleads posted:I have a buddy who does sim stuff and flys real aircraft on real flight paths and there's realtime air traffic control from some other dude a thousand miles away who decided he wanted to be ATC for the greater western seaboard and thus installed all the poo poo to monitor all the other hardcore dudes doing fake flights along the west coast. This is incredible. Why do people do this? I mean, I get why they do it, but why the gently caress would they do it? Third question: why would a person do this, when flying an aircraft that isn't a fighter or a UFO is very dull?
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Feb 8, 2014 08:43
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Mescal posted:This is incredible. Why do people do this? I mean, I get why they do it, but why the gently caress would they do it? Third question: why would a person do this, when flying an aircraft that isn't a fighter or a UFO is very dull? It's kinda neat and adds an element to keep you in line. It's still loving boring though, and you get kicked if you just start trying to put your plane into a flatspin and then fail to respond to ATC 
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Feb 8, 2014 08:47
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Bondematt posted:It's kinda neat and adds an element to keep you in line. But if you put your plain into a flatspin and do respond to ATC…
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Feb 8, 2014 09:33
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I wonder if there are people who always simulate some major error every time they fly, but are always able to save the day. The Mary-Sues of the flightsim world.
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Feb 8, 2014 09:35
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Actually, that seems sort of cool if a sim would randomly throw you a major error that may or may not be a no-win and you got graded/rated on your handling of it.
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Feb 8, 2014 09:40
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JediTalentAgent posted:Actually, that seems sort of cool if a sim would randomly throw you a major error that may or may not be a no-win and you got graded/rated on your handling of it. That's literally what they do to train pilots in flight sims.
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Feb 8, 2014 13:34
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I figured that'd be a thing in a professional simulator, but I almost would have assumed such things would have been too much or too unpopular for a consumer or hobbyist sim.
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Feb 8, 2014 13:43
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Falcon 1.0 on a Mac SE. Brought to me by Gilman "Chopstick" Louie. I still have the mini binder that served as the instruction manual for 4.0, it's incredible.
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Feb 8, 2014 14:17
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JediTalentAgent posted:I figured that'd be a thing in a professional simulator, but I almost would have assumed such things would have been too much or too unpopular for a consumer or hobbyist sim.
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Feb 8, 2014 15:46
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uwaeve posted:Falcon 1.0 on a Mac SE. I have one of Gilman's earlier games, Starship Commander. It ran on Apple II's and it was a joystick/paddle driven turn-based space combat simulator. Not only did you have to fight a enemy warship flying around in 3-D space (I still think of Distance / Angle / Bearing when driving) but you also had to do crew management, where the crew efficiency was displayed in a big symbolic chart. Pretty amazing back in 1981! Craziest thing is that it was all written in AppleSoft Basic! With calls to machine language routines to draw the graphics.. Another old and beloved game of mine also on the Apple II was SubLogic's Space Vikings. It was kind of like Elite but it had space and atmospheric flight as well. Binary Badger has a new favorite as of 19:17 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 19:15
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Speaking of the flight sim talk there is a more recent A10 simulator whee all of the switches and controls in the cockpit are modeled. Someone started a game without reading the manual and tried to fly the plane. Recorded the whole thing. It's several hours of ranting and frustration.
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Feb 8, 2014 19:46
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I only liked that one A-10 sim on the Mac where you could arm yourself with multiple sidewinders and nukes. Even then all I did was start my engines, keep my gear down, and drop the nuke just to see how far downrange the cockpit would fall after the blast.
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Feb 8, 2014 19:55
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All the sim talk got me to break out my Logitech wheel and play some Gran Turismo 5 last night. I didn't even participate in any races, I just went to the used car lot, bought an '88 Celica GT-FOUR and just kind of drove around some of the easier tracks with it. It's weird that I enjoy doing that that much, considering I have a god awful commute and drive way too much as it is. I think it's just fun being able to drive however I want, and if I smash into a wall or something, I don't have to pay the repair bills. :P I definitely get the argument that the price of the specialized peripherals puts most people off of playing simulators - the cost of flight sim gear is insane, last I checked, and my wheel was definitely not cheap [it's the one with the 6-speed shifter/clutch], but holy poo poo is it better than playing GT5 with a gamepad.
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Feb 9, 2014 06:50
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Binary Badger posted:I only liked that one A-10 sim on the Mac where you could arm yourself with multiple sidewinders and nukes. Even then all I did was start my engines, keep my gear down, and drop the nuke just to see how far downrange the cockpit would fall after the blast.  A-10: Cuba on the Mac is still my all-time favorite flight simulator. I know the big titles like X-Plane are still making new releases, but they're trying to have the best of both worlds by making it simple for casual gamers, but allowing for all the crazy tiny details for the spergiest players
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Feb 9, 2014 07:49
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Code Jockey posted:All the sim talk got me to break out my Logitech wheel and play some Gran Turismo 5 last night. I didn't even participate in any races, I just went to the used car lot, bought an '88 Celica GT-FOUR and just kind of drove around some of the easier tracks with it. If you like just driving around, check out BeamNG Drive; it's a car simulator, meaning it physically simulates the entire car; total physically simulated deformation when it crashes, chassis flex, break the suspension by driving over a bump, remove the suspension and drive it over bumps, drive a hatchback into the back of a panel van, then drive the panel van into the back of a box truck, then drive the box truck around, et cetera. It's definitely best with a wheel. atomicthumbs has a new favorite as of 09:05 on Feb 9, 2014 |
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Feb 9, 2014 09:03
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Christ, I forget which sin it was but there was an option to output the radar display to a second monitor for people who liked to build their own cockpits. The golden age of sims was the mid to late 1990s. Falcon 3.0 with add one, M1TP2, F-14 Fleet Defender Gold, European Air War.
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