VR =/= 4k

I have heard people say VR screens are roughly the same as 4k, thing is, that doesn't appear to be the case. A 4k screen is 4096x2160, where as a VR screen, the Vive for example, is reported to be 2160x1200.
Both do indeed contain the number 2160, which might be where people are getting confused, but the thing is, for 4k, that number represents the vertical pixel count, and for the Vive, it represents the horizontal pixel count.

- Pixel Count -

4k: 8,847,360

Vive: 2,592,000

Below I have attached a image showing how many pixels a Vive would take up when compared to a 4k screen. The small text, that probably just looks like dots in the image, are "4k" text & "Vive" text, both @ 12pt font size. I have overlayed larger 300pt font just so you know which is which.

PS: I like the Vive, I just don't like it when people claim VR headsets have a 4k resolution.

Yep, someone tried to say Dead Space 3 was not too bad...
Even though it did have good parts, I still find it painful to think on.. so I wrote them a bit of a response, and because I love venting about Dead Space 3, I figured I would post said response here, for posterity.



  Man... so much more is wrong than just story issues though. The pacing, I loved the slower plodding pacing you felt in the original, with a feeling of tension, that I never got bored of, which when changed into an action game, was almost completely missing.

  Also the weapons changes, instead of having classic, easy to remember weapons, you had a pile of random components, that never formed anything fun or enjoyable.

  Suspension of disbelief also became a problem, in Dead Space 2, you only had one or two minutes where the game felt like it lost the plot, and Isaac could be flung through space like a rag doll without suffering great harm, or suddenly feeling like he was something out of an Anime.

  In DS3, suddenly with the "action" focus, this often felt like it was a norm. These scenes 100% of the time felt contrived, and as if someone had paid to have them put in to attempt to garner a larger audience.

  As I mentioned before, about the feeling of tension being lost, this is also an issue caused by the actual environments themselves. While above the planet, you still get a fair few good vibes from the environments, long as you ignore the fact that the ship interiors are repeats of one another. (Even though that kinda makes sense for mass produced space ships.)

  Problem is, once you get to the planet, even though there are some truly beautiful small interiors, they are almost always forgotten when you are in bland concrete corridors, or in the shocking un-inspired outside.

  Imagine for a second that instead of the snow being a white wash, it was more of a gray, not because the snow is gray, but because it is so dense, the sun is getting blocked out. Now imagine, instead of vents being something you have to fear 100% of the time, the shadows you always see dancing around you in the snow are your true enemy. Never knowing when a shadow will actually lean forward & attempt to remove you from the living world, or if it is just a dense clump of snow drifting by. If they had done this, instead of having enemies randomly pop out of the ground, it would have been far more interesting. Give you a directed target to fear, not just "all of the ground can kill you." Let you fear the shadows in the snow.

  Back onto story, I have a billion minor complaints, but the more I think about it, the more I think it was a good story, just poorly executed- except for one aspect of the DLC. The Spheres talking to you. They had One voice.. it didn't sound like a billion souls speaking as one, but just 2-7, if that. If they were to speak to you, let every time they speak, the world around you fill with those that you have lost, or, since DS3 decided to go the idiotic rough of Isaac suddenly killing an assortment of Unitologist terrorists, have hordes of those he had sent to their maker surround him.

  Even if the Spheres do not truly hold the spirits of the diseased, why should they ever drop the charade. Why try to get Isaac to show them to Earth.. so he won't try to stop them, what could one man have done in the end anyway? The gameplay in the DLC felt far better than the rest of the game, like a return to form, but the story itself in this part did leave me feeling rather ill. Particularly the very end, which just felt too fantastical, and too standard sci-fi fair.




(YT edit I made, when I decided I had more to say) Edit: As for the multiplayer, I think they failed... miserably... With a game that focuses so greatly on the Phychological effects of the Markers, they barely touched on it with characters seeing something different. The few times they did, it was simply replace X model, with Y model, and call it spooky. How about Isaac sees you in a run down bunker/facility, but you... you are back home, in a proper moon-base house, that just happens to have the same turns as the bunker, but overall, nothing you are seeing is the same. Dear lord, I remember Jesse Cox's playthrough of DS3, when Dodger sees the "bleeding walls" of the elevator, she describes them as something truly fantastical, and horrifying! So I go to watch her video.. only to discover that nothing impressive had happened, only a simple texture switch of the elevator walls. Flat textures, next to no depth.

  If they did "teleport" one person to another environment, their body would remain still, fighting unseen enemies- if you are going to do this, separate the players physically before you lock one of them "in their head" that way the player who is not experiencing anything out of the ordinary has more of a clue- or better yet, have the character move about in their environment, acting strangely,and not just shaking their head.

  In many ways, the multiplayer felt tacked on... which can often be a good thing, because it means the game is still viable to play Single Player, as one would expect you to play a Dead Space game. At the same time, they did just enough to the environments to make it painfully apparent that there were supposed to be two people there. Like the ladders to get up a 3 foot ledge, when a stairwell, or an already extended ladder would have been suitable for gameplay. Then there is of course, the multiplayer only sections of the game, which you would expect them to go all out on, which of course, as I described above, they most certainly did not.

  As for "playing it with friends" I never really wanted to get a friend involved in Dead Space, and when Dead Space 3 came out, I found I had none I could convince to come on a journey with me. Not to mention, knew of no one who would take the game as seriously as I, and hence did not want to involve them. If they like the game, let them experience it their own way, just as I would like to experience it my own way- except in an attempt to make the game open up for a new audience, they killed so much of what made Dead Space beautiful.

  If they wanted to make a Multiplayer Dead Space game, then they should have done so. Not as "Dead Space 3" but as it's own stand alone game. After Dead Space 2, for a time I actually wondered what human vs human combat looked like in their universe, I wanted a game set there, not a Dead Space game, not something to do with the Markers, with Convergence, with Unity, but something just set in that same world.

  Something I forgot to mention before, the combat; in the original two, as I did mention, the combat could feel plodding, slow, determined. In Dead Space 3, they decided to try to mix things up, not as they did in Dead Space 2 by creating new creatures for us to rest our eyes upon, but by changing the way things worked. They did indeed create a few new enemies to fight, most of which never felt like Necromorphs in the slightest.

  First, the starving bastards you find locked in their bunkers. Starving for food, emaciated, running madly! Like a zombie.. just like a zombie. Nothing interesting, or unique about them, in Dead Space 2 they had something like this, but it was horrifying, it was painful to shoot at them, because they were children. Something pure, that should be full of joy, slain, and changed, charging at you, deformed bowls, and twisted hands! Not something that starved to death, that looks like a survivor from a twisted camp. Like something a Artist would make just to pass the time, on a particularly standard day.

  Second, the pic axe wielding buggers- Very cool... in no way shape or form. Even worse than a zombie, it resembles a crazed man- bu no fear, in the end they are Necromorphs are they? Surely beneath their clothing or armor lurks something more insidious? No- of course not, this is a game designed to appear to a new audience, designed not to scare those who were too terrified to play the previous ones, even though as "horror" games go, they were not considered so terrifying.

  With so many of these, you could not even rely on tried and true method of combat, aim for the limbs! Remember, the previous games, they kept saying this one. In fact, in the second one, they repeated it quite often out of fear of the player forgetting what was one of the main draws of Dead Space 1. So much so, that some of the original advertisements, and talks to get people into the first game, pointed out their "strategic dismemberment" system. The fact that you were to aim at specific limbs to get the job done.

  With two games of "training" under ones belt, at first sight of something not right, you aim for the limbs, slow them down, arms, even Necromorph arms are not as fast a way to move as legs- until Dead Space 3 that is.

  A "pick axe" bastard, for instance, if you were to shoot off his leg, he would fall to the ground, and begin moving at the same speed, or faster. So, let's improvise them, aim for the arms, or even for some silly reason, maybe the head. No? What has this done? Disabled it, no arms, no head? Oh, good, it has changed, this feels unique. But wait! How is it changing?

  Once it's upper limbs are gone, does its chest burst open, to attempt in a last ditch effort to impale you with it's ribs, now twisted & pushed outwards? Maybe possibly burst two smaller limbs from it's abdomen, as Necromorphs of the past have been seen to have, then try to grab you?

  No? None of that, well, what does it do? Oh.. it splits in two- a necromorph, a being which uses necrotic flesh to form new shapes, or at least the very least refit existing shapes, now throws away 50% of it's biomass, 50% that still has back muscles a spine, and assortment of other things- to have 3 small spines all of a sudden, and to try to stab you with them.... wonderful. Very original, not an instant reminder of another series that had undead creatures attempting to kill you.

  Luckily, the devs did create a few new creatures. Bosses, something Dead Space 2 was missing, saw their return in Dead Space 3. The devs also added "aliens" to their list of creatures.

  Now as much as this seems like it should be a boon to the game, it is not. It would have been a boon, if the creatures that attacked you in the depths of that planet, had not looked like the statues surrounding you. If they were Necromorphs, similar to the Axe buggers above, why had they not been changed? Laying down in those forgotten tunnels, should they not have decomposed, leaving only twisted wretches to be re-animated. Why did they still hold so much of their shape, when on the Ishimura, these freshly killed beings found themselves distorted & twisted so quickly.

  Then we have those quick buggers, which again, looked so very much like a man in a suit, or standard zombie. Remember in Dead Space 1, when you ran into the military troops who had been changed? Their armor split, their body forced in an unnatural way, it looked like something was wrong with them, and their suit.... since it was the suit, and it's stasis module that allowed them to move so quickly... but on that frozen planet, suddenly you have beings that barely look like they have been through a rough winter, maybe with a few tears to their back.

  So many others felt like re-skins, such as the dogs, and frankly so did the aliens down below much of the time. While they replaced these old necromorphs, I still found myself missing some of the other types we once saw. The fat ones, the charging ones, luckily the "raptors" still returned, but overall, the game felt like it was made by a different studio almost.

  I long for the days of walking through a Dark ship or station, listening to the sounds in the walls, wondering what amalgamation might show itself next. Not a love triangle, set on a painfully bright world, full of bog standard undead creatures.

Video Sage - Computer Specs

----------4k Tower----------
Capable of viewing, and playing @4k

-Case-
Cool Master, HAF Stacker, 935 ATX, Full Tower

-Power Supply-
EVGA SuperNOVA 1000G2, 1000W, Modular ATX

-Hard Drives-
Samsung 840 EVO, 500GB (SSD) (OS)
Samsung 840 EVO, 250GB (SSD) (Scratch)
Hitachi 4TB, 7200RPM (HDD) (Apps)
Hitachi 4TB, 7200RPM (HDD) (Storage)

-Motherboard-
Asus X99-Deluxe, ATX LGA2011-3

-CPU-
Intel i7-5960X, Eight-Core 3.0GHz

CPU Cooler:
Corsair H100i 77.0, CFM Liquid Cooler

-Ram-
G.Skill Ripjaw 4 Series, DDR4 3200, 4x4GB (16GB)

-GPU-
EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Superclocked

----------Original Tower----------
Now used for Second Sage footage.

-Case-
Cool Master Storm Stryker, Full Tower

-Power Supply-
COUGAR CMX 1000, 1000W, ATX12V

-Hard Drives-
512GB Crucial CT512MX100SSD1 (SSD) (OS)
128GB Samsung SSD 840 (SSD) (Scratch)
1TB ST1000DM003-1CH162 (HDD) (Apps)
1TB ST1000DM003-1CH162 (HDD) (Storage)

-Motherboard-
Asus P8Z77-V, ATX LGA 1155

-CPU-
Intel i7-3770 Ivy Bridge, Quad-Core 3.4GHz (3.9GHz Turbo)

CPU Cooler:
Cool Master Hyper 212 EVO

-Ram-
G.SKILL Ripjaw X Series, DDR3 1600, 2x8GB (16GB)
G.SKILL Ripjaw X Series, DDR3 1600, 2x4GB (8GB)

-GPU-
EVGA GTX 690, 4gb 512-bit

Joint Survival, Video Catch up (Why I am behind)

I'm trying to get a video out every day to catch up to Arron & Scot, but it's allot of work.


   If we recorded for 4 hours, that means at absolute least I would need to edit for 4 hours to get through that footage and that's not counting the time it takes to cut out silent bits, bits that luckily are no longer relevant, putting in music in the background, text on screen if I feel it's needed, or would add something more. Even if I'm cutting something out, I usually watch/listen to it first to insure there isn't something worth keeping in it. Then comes the exporting of the file, which usually takes around an hour or so for a 30-40 minute video.... then the nightmare that is uploading. On average it takes 3-4 hours to upload a 30 minute video, 2 if I'm really lucky.

   I could edit more out, I could cut out anything that doesn't directly affect me, or if Scot dies, just skip ahead, but sometimes knowing what they are working on explains why when I go over to them later, I'm confused at a lack of progress, or vise versa. If i'm working on a ship, it's suddenly done, and I fly over to them and ask "Did you get it working?" You would have no idea what I am talking about, no idea why I might be grumpy, or on the brink of laughter, if I just edited out the silly conversations of people failing, or getting killed by doors.

   With that explained, continuing on with the editing, if I start working on a video in the morning, to make a 30~ minute video, that's probably going to be about 45-60 minutes of footage I edit through, with extra time taken to edit in the things I mentioned before. So if I start working at 9:30 am, it's going to be at least 11:00 am by the time I'm done editing, and that's if I don't take a break like I am right now to type this & let some stress off, so really around 11:30-12:00 before I'm done editing. Then I que the video up to render, and that takes about an hour, so by now it's going to be 1:00 pm, provided the render doesn't fail, or I don't see a problem with the finished file. I usually get lunch, or take a break while it renders, since it's an hour of my computer working fairly hard to generate the file. Then I start the upload, which on average takes 3-4 hours as I said above... for a 30-35 minute video. I could edit another video, or do something "productive" with this time, but frequently I don't, I go for a walk with my Dog, or something of that sort, or play a offline/solo game. Once the video is done uploading, I check it for monetization woes, enter the description if I didn't do that already, make sure the thumb nail took, and set up the ever annoying Annotations, by then, it's probably 5:00 pm.

   Anyhow, point is, if all I do in a day is work on Joint Survival, it's a full day just to get one video out.... and that is if nothing goes wrong along the way, or my OCD or Depression/Anxiety don't cause me to lock up. I figure it's killing my channel putting out next to nothing but Survival... but, I still enjoy the actual playing of the survival 7/10 times, and I want my side of the story to get out there when things go oh so wrong. It just eats up so much time, and leaves me so drained I don't want to do anything else. If DX11/DX12 ever get into SE, I'll get a motivation boost to mod, but I really want bloody blocks inside blocks so I can make tight hallways/rooms, and put furniture inside them.


   Well, that's that, just felt like I needed to share... since so many people keep asking "Why are you so far behind Arron & Scot?" Now you know for the most part. If something goes wrong making the video, or like yesterday I was working on something for Joint Survival with the group, that we were not recording currently, then I probably won't get the video done till the evening, which means I won't start my upload till 8:00 or so, in which case I go to bed before the video is done uploading/processing to HD. I could schedule the video to release, but then it might have a monetization issue, or something else I won't catch.


-Sage

Technological Computer Hell

As some may know, I have a fairly powerful second computer that I purchased back in November so I could create higher quality content, ideally in an even shorter time frame. . . it has not gone as such. Below you will see my error report that I sent into Asus this morning, which explains some of the wonderful issues I have been getting over the last few months, and have been trying to solve on my own, or with a little help from my father, over said time.

Apply date : 2015/01/27 14:36:19(UTC Time)


[Contact Information]
Name : Joseph ******* (EctoSage)
Email Address : ********@*****.com
Phone Number : ***-***-****
City : **** *********
Country : United States

[Product Information]
Product Type : Motherboard
Product Model : X99-DELUXE
Product S/N : ************
Place of Purchase : Amazon.com
Date of Purchase : 2014/11/17

[Motherboard Specification]
Motherboard Revision : What the hell is this? Your "How to find Motherboard Revision?" button just opens a blank Asus page.
Motherboard BIOS Revision : Version 1103

[VGA Card Specification]
VGA Card Vendor : EVGA
VGA Card Model : 04G-2982-KR GeForce GTX 980 Super Clocked
VGA Card Chipset : ???
VGA Card Driver : Version 347.25

[CPU Specification]
CPU Vendor : Intel
CPU Type : Intel Core i7-5960X Haswell-E 8-Core 2011-v3
CPU Speed : 3.0GHz

[Memory Specification]
Memory Vendor : G.Skill
Memory Model : Memory Model F4-3200C16Q-16GRKD
Memory Capacity : 16GB (4 x 4GB)

[HDD Specification]
HDD Vendor : Samsung
HDD Model : 840 EVO (MZ-7TE500BW)
HDD Capacity : 500GB

[Add-on Card Specificatio]
Operating System : Windows 7 64bit 

[Problem Description]
BSOD, BCCode: 1000007e
Link to Twitter picture of BSOD recover message: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8UbHbxCQAAHC79.jpg:large

Nvidia Kernel has stopped working & recovered. Link to Error message: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8JtIekCMAID2kW.jpg:large

This happens when playing Warframe, and have had it happen at least once when playing another high system usage game.

Almost more annoying, is an issue I have had for- ages. Upon starting the system from a completely powered down state, and if it has been in this state for at least 30 minutes the computer will freeze at "Starting Windows" - forcing me to push the power button to restart it. I will have to restart 2-5 times before it finally doesn't freeze, even though it will still have a half a second hickup where the spinning orbs that form the windows Icon freeze for said half a second before continuing. (They usually just freeze, or don't show up at all, leaving the Starting Windows message sitting on screen all alone.)

I also cannot boot from the Windows Install disk any more, if I attempt to do so, it freezes at the "Starting Windows" screen for that. The error code for these freezes on the mother board is AE.

System tests, diagnostics, fix attempts. In order as best I can remember them.

-Windows Memtest, no errors
-Checked all power/SATA connections, at least twice.
-Re-installed Windows, was able to get it to boot from the windows install disk & re-installed windows. Problems obviously returned.
-Updated Bios to v1103- will update to v1203 after I am done sending this. (Had been updating before & after the RMA of the video Card, neither that nor the video card replacement made much difference.)
-Fiddled with the Bios, turned off legacy systems because the computer wouldn't boot at all with them on. 90% failure rate at windows loading, or it would just sit with a blinking _ at the top left of the screen. This was done not just here, but bit by bit throughout all of our testing/troubleshooting of the system.
-Startup Repair, "Startup Repair cannot repair this computer automatically" "Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline" . . . incredibly confused at all of this. "Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385"
-System Restore, no changes, two successful restarts just to see if my issues were gone, third one once again failed to get past "Starting Windows"
-Checked PSU output in BIOS to see if it was fluctuating, it was not, very stable, at correct power output. PSU is "EVGA SuperNOVA 1000G2 1000W ATX12V/EPS12V 80Plus Gold Power Supply 120-G2-1000-XR" btw.
-RMAed & replaced video card.
-Downloaded as many of the correct drivers I could find from, The Intel Website, Asus Support Website, and even installed drives off of the Asus Install Disk that the computer had come with, that I had already done before, but more selectively. (This time I just told it to install "recommended")
-Disabled non-windows startup programs to try to prevent BSOD, didn't fix BSOD, didn't fix Startup issue. (Had to turn a few on obviously to be able to run Warframe, Adobe CC programs.)
-Windows Performance rating test failed, found a hotfix to fix this- issue was something to do with Intel Chipset having a high buffer, or whatever you call it, my mind is mush, too much stress from all of this over the last months.
-Virus Scans, not that such a thing should be needed, when the only things I had done on this computer the first time these issues appeared was install Google chrome, steam, & start installing Adobe CC programs. After the clean install, the problems came back before I installed anything if I'm remembering correctly, as I wanted to rule out as much as I could.
-MemTest86, no errors, passed.

At this point, I think it goes without saying that I have tried Googling Error codes to no avail, and done anything I could do when I did find someone with a slightly similar problem. I still don't know if the BSOD is mainly just a Warframe issue, but I do know that the startup issues, and the fact that it doesn't want to boot into a startup disk so I can run Windows Repair is incredibly disconcerting. Now that I'm done with this, I'm thinking of sending it to Intel Support as well, but not sure. I'm for sure going to update the bios again, then probably go check to see if there are any Hard Drive specific drivers that possibly did not download automatically, even though I'm not getting any errors that I can see, I still feel like double checking this, even though it seems like it shouldn't be an issue. After that, well.. I guess I will try to get some work done, and hope that if I find myself in need of a system restart, or taking a break, playing a game, my computer doesn't decide to lock me in a wonderful "Start Windows" loop.

Since sending this to them, I have installed the new bios update, found it unhelpful, even though I did get into the StartUp Repair on the install disc once, but because I had yet to have tried just booting at that point, I closed it out, went to bios, booted from there into my OS, all went well. Attempted to restart, changed fans in bios, suddenly same issue. Reset bios to what it was before I tweaked the fans, issue persisted, meaning it was a fluke that I was able to boot/run the StartUp Repair tools on the disk at all.

Disabled all legacy systems in the Bios, as everything in the bios had been reset when I flashed/updated the bios, unfortunately disabling all of the legacy stuffs seems to have caused the computer to just black screen with a few white lines... and a bit of static before that. Since then I have re-flashed/re-updated the bios in an attempt to reset it, and that's where I am now.... Writing error messages on here- because I can't send them to Intel because there "Service Request" page won't actually submit my form when I click "Submit" . . . been poking at that for a good 30+ minutes.

Anyhow, that's that, going to send a link to this page to Intel's Twitter, since it looks like Twitter is the only way to actually get a hold of any of these bloody companies now & days. I have little hope for any solutions any more... and frankly am just about ready to roll over & puke my brains out from depression that has been rekindled by this mess. Yesterday my computer might have blue screened, and refused to restart one or two times, but at least it usually started on the third attempt.... This is what I get for trying to fix things. . . even more issues.

Edit: 1/18/2015
Last night after some folks at Microsoft Windows ran a registry fixer, and cleaned up some of my systems, Intel got back to me. They linked me here, to a program which checks your processor for faults, and I can report, my CPU is not the problem with my system, everything that was supported by the CPU passed, so back to Microsoft Windows Support to see if they have anything else they can do to fix this issue. They were pretty sure yesterday that they would be able to sort it out, and the registry fixer didn't fix it apparently, even though the computer restarted once without trouble, after that it's failed 4/5 times. Either freezing on "Starting Windows" or even once with just a _ blinking in the top left corner. Microsoft Windows Support is supposed to call me around 10:00 AM EST today, so waiting for their call now.