We implemented a bit of a automation over xplsv.tv some weeks ago. Until then I was daily picking the video of the day. Now I "map" the month with a selection (still handpicked) of the videos, and then our php system does all the mailings at 00:00 every day. You wouldn't believe what a relief it was after doing the hand picking of a video every day during 4 years :S!

When we were thinking about how to implement the feature we considered setting up a Cron on the hosting, however, we quickly guessed that if the site had about 207,045 hits per day (207,045/24/60/60 = 2.39), so 2 hits per second, these are enough visits as to make the user launch these actions indirectly when visiting the site I would say ;)

The funny thing is that after checking the logs, most of the times the user agent of who launched the action happens to be a bot. So, who needs a Cron when we have Google bot? ;)

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No question about it, these guys are really pushing the limits with his Alternativa3D engine. The rendering is amazing, no Z depth issues at all, and if you press "T" you can see how are they achieving it. The work of the artists also increases the wow factor, really nice textures.

Russia 1, rest of the world 0 ;)

More demos here.

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Took a little bit but managed to make it run.

Steps:

1. Download the Linux version
2. If you don't have it, install Java Runtime (from Add/Remove Applications)
3. Go to System / Synaptic Package Manager, search for the libstdc++5 package and install it.
4. Unpack the .tgz that you just downloaded and execute the file 'processing'.
5. Enjoy.

With these packages installed shouldn't give any errors.

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Firefox 3 crashes when trying to load the actual index.php. Is not entirely my fault tho, but anyway, I decided to put a redirection to the blog by now as it was starting to be very embarrassing. Whenever I get some free time I'll take care of it.

At the moment some experiments may be inaccessible. But if you really need to get a link of any of them... you can get all of them here. Sorry about that.

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As promised, April 4, new track. It's a bit more weird than the previous one this time ;) Seems like the collisions doesn't behave too well on replays tho, won't detail much on what's the problem, long story... However, on play time behaves pretty well.

Have fun!

http://www.sprintenterprise.com /burnandbrag/383080404145134

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It's a bit off-topic in this blog but Rachel sent a very interesting article about Facebook to Hi-ReS! list the other day. It gives some logic to Facebook and, specially, to Zuckerberg robotic words/behaviour.

Read it on your lunch time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/ 14/facebook

In other news, yesterday I finally managed to understand how displacementMapFilter really works and how to use it properly, which means that in some days I will post some explanation of how you can do this, and, with a bit of luck, also this. Which, by extension, means that my refraction example is not right :(

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Ok, sorry about the joke. No, unfortunately flash can't handle 1million particles at 30fps in a G4...

Anyways... here is the real explanation... There isn't much to explain really, the effect is very simple, in fact, it's about 1kbyte in size...

Basicaly, you use anything as input, copy it to a bitmapData that you're blurring and offseting verticaly, and on top of that you have to put a greyscale Perlin Noise texture, also scrolling verticaling in BlendMode.OVERLAY.



Take a loot at the Source file

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Some people have asked about how the loading/fire effect was done on the Sprint Nascar Monster Burnout site.

Well, it's quite easy. Every vertical line on the loading bar is a emitter of 10,000 pixel particles that travel up in a sinusoidal pattern with a random phase each. All of them leaves a trail on the bitmapData which a colorTransform fades to black, on top of that there is a blurFilter on the bitmapData too. In total, when the loading is at 100%, there are 100 x 10,000 = 1,000,000 pixel particles moving, leaving trails, changing colours and the blur on top. Quite simple and I think it looks good, if you wonder how come the effect also runs fast on a G4, well... think a bit more ;)

UPDATE: Well, this was clearly (or maybe not) a April fools geek-joke. Click here to see real explanation of the effect.

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Well well, seems like it's finally live. So, that's the site I've been doing a this little game for during the last months at Hi-ReS!. We should be activating a room next week and another room the week after. Probably improving some bits here and there in each release. Click here to see a replay from myself, otherwise click here to have the complete experience.

Used the ubercool (and free) FlashDevelop 3.0.0 Beta 6 and it features box2dflash for the car 2Dto3D physics, a modified version of Papervision3D 2.0 (Effects branch) and, believe it or not, Tweener for the replay. Oh! it also features loud and annoying sounds, you've been warned ;)

After working on it for that long I don't know if it's fun or not. Hope you like it.

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I'm following a little bit Breakpoint's TV this weekend. While I was at it I was wondering how come the stream and image quality was that good. After Charles'ing a little bit I found out that the stream was rtmpsomething... googled a bit more and found out that was nothing else than the recently anounced Flash Media Server 3 RTMP protocol.

So, somehow, Breakpoint organisers managed to get Adobe to let them test their new technology. Nice one guys! So, if you want to see the future of video streaming with Flash, take a look at that videostream, and while you're at it, take a look at the content too specially try to watch Sunday's evening demo show ;D

UPDATE: Obviously, as the event is now over, the stream is now down, if you missed it, I'm sorry.

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