BF2S Forums Tech: Open thread

yeah 'mobile gaming' is a bit of a misnomer. playing games actually 'mobile' is relatively rare. long coach journeys or flights are a neat exception.

obviously sitting at a desk to play is ideal. it's just nice to be able to take it all with you when you're on the move. even when it comes to moving from room to room, or going to play at a friend's. moving a desktop isn't really fun.

gaming is like 10% of why i wanted the MBP, in any case. i'd say the revamped speakers and keyboard are a much bigger bonus, for me. those have everyday benefits. i'm not going to say any laptop manufacturer should prioritise or focus on gaming. it should only ever be a secondary convenience. hence my point that it's great the new MBPs have so much performance increase for the exact same price.

i really do think this is the biggest win from apple in 5-6 years. it's a suspiciously good upgrade, considering their track record.

Last edited by uziq (2019-11-28 16:27:47)

uziq wrote:

you're very hung up on one guy's benchmark of a tomb raider game, despite the fact that every other popular game he demo'd was comfortably in excess of 60 fps.

you also say '60fps on 60hz is quite playable'. well that is literally the MacBook pro in that example? lol wtf.

no. please look up the difference between maximum 60 fps and minimum 60 fps.

also,

Finray wrote:

Knew you'd come back with this. Why are you using the term "current title?" why is a laptop running current titles impressive? Because it implies that's the most demanding game you can run on it. That's what "current title" is used for, and if you didn't know that you're ignorant and if you did you're dishonest.

uziq wrote:

i'm aware CRTs have great refresh rates, among other benefits. but i don't fetishise gaming on a 21" square cube, just like i'm not going to throw something in the trash because it doesn't offer 120 Hz for *checks notes* smoother mouse scrolling on the desktop. the colour reproduction, detail, brightness etc. on the MBP screen is absolutely top-notch for a laptop. it's made for design professionals ffs. no i do not miss a high refresh rate.

I'm not asking you to wtf lol, I'm not ragging on the mbp for not including one, I'm not ragging on a 60Hz gaming system, they're very playable, refresh rate is one of the last things you should spec into your build, but  120+ is SO NICE, it's a shame Apple haven't got them going yet

Last edited by Finray (2019-11-28 16:39:36)

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Going to chime in at this point and say that I'm fine with my 60Hz screen for any number of games that I'm playing. I don't really notice any skips, stutters, or tearing. It's good enough for many applications. I've played games capped at 30 fps that still looked reasonably smooth. Maybe it helps that I sit at a distance and don't have my nose pressed up against the screen.

I tend to look more for response time, panel type, color-precision (something that sites like Newegg doesn't list), and (ideally) zero-pixel guarantees when browsing monitors. You can plug a laptop into a monitor anyway. With a Macbook Pro, I'd probably spring for a 30" IPS external. FreeSync if it has it, but not critical.

When a laptop was my main PC, I had it plugged into external peripherals constantly when at home. Helped keep it in good condition.

Looking forward to your 8-bit indie project, Finray.


e:

Going to add that 16:10 was nice when I was heavily editing videos. Let me view more of a program's controls and timeline during playback. Some of the 5k IPS I've checked out seem attractive for similar purposes. Whoops, 60Hz. Better throw that notion out the window …

for video/photo editing, yeah a high refresh isn't gonna help you, totally agree, get panel and colour accuracy. But you should really try out a high refresh monitor.. everyone should. Or maybe don't, because it'll make you wanna spend money. Honestly, I couldn't go back to 60hz, even if I gave up gaming today.

(ps we start our graded unit after lunch today D: )

Last edited by Finray (2019-11-29 04:18:15)

genuinely the first person I've come across to no be that fussed, fair enough

Finray wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Going to chime in at this point and say that I'm fine with my 60Hz screen for any number of games that I'm playing. I don't really notice any skips, stutters, or tearing. It's good enough for many applications. I've played games capped at 30 fps that still looked reasonably smooth. Maybe it helps that I sit at a distance and don't have my nose pressed up against the screen.

I tend to look more for response time, panel type, color-precision (something that sites like Newegg doesn't list), and (ideally) zero-pixel guarantees when browsing monitors. You can plug a laptop into a monitor anyway. With a Macbook Pro, I'd probably spring for a 30" IPS external. FreeSync if it has it, but not critical.

When a laptop was my main PC, I had it plugged into external peripherals constantly when at home. Helped keep it in good condition.

Looking forward to your 8-bit indie project, Finray.


e:

Going to add that 16:10 was nice when I was heavily editing videos. Let me view more of a program's controls and timeline during playback. Some of the 5k IPS I've checked out seem attractive for similar purposes. Whoops, 60Hz. Better throw that notion out the window …

for video/photo editing, yeah a high refresh isn't gonna help you, totally agree, get panel and colour accuracy. But you should really try out a high refresh monitor.. everyone should. Or maybe don't, because it'll make you wanna spend money. Honestly, I couldn't go back to 60hz, even if I gave up gaming today.

(ps we start our graded unit after lunch today D: )

i can easily afford it, i just don’t feel the need to have it. nor do most consumers or media professionals. high refresh rates are for gamers. why would i want to put a display on my laptop that might have worse colour reproduction? it’s been a few years since i’ve been monitor shopping but this reminds me of the early difference between TN/IPS panels. gamers were nuts for low response times and high refresh rates, but everything under about £500 looked like trash in terms of brightness, contrast, colour repro. yeah i really don’t think your average MBP user wants a 144 Hz display.

maybe the technology has come along and now you can easily have an affordable high-refresh display that also looks top notch. honestly, i don’t know. similarly to why i don’t know about apple’s choice to not use OLED in their monitors. my only cavil there is that going to 144 Hz necessitates a whole other level of GPU expense. i don’t really want to spend £1000 on a monitor and GPU because of the ‘improvements’ of a high refresh rate. it just commits you to a certain level of investment for a very narrow, specific benefit. there are no games in the world that are worth that investment to me. at least the hardware commitment involved in 4k/5k resolutions has a general benefit. i’d rather have a beautiful 5k display like on the iMac than a 240 Hz epilepsy factory that guzzles 120W from a top-end GPU every time you open a full screen video app.

again, in this whole discussion i’ve very much voiced the joe bloggs ‘average consumer’ take on the current state of laptop gaming, and you keep coming back saying it’s ‘unplayable at 60fps’ or under 120 Hz at ‘60 Hz trash tier’. i don’t think you really get what most laptop users want. having a 3x as powerful GPU that can play games perfectly capably, at the same basic entry price as last year’s model, is a huge win for your all-round MBP-type consumer. even with games like your overwatches or your grand theft autos, to be able to crank them up to high settings and play at 100-120fps steady was not a convenience that was imaginable on the last generation. and i am very careful here to distinguish between ‘all round laptops’ which are highly desirable for consumers/creatives/gamers alike, and ‘gaming laptops’ which have obviously been able to do that for years. you don’t have to think very hard about why most people don’t want those giant lenovo laptops.

and yeah, warcraft looks beautiful on this screen. it looks beautiful on my 60Hz, design-oriented dell external monitor. for a game with such vivid colours, contrasts, etc, i really appreciate the top quality panel. why do i need 144 Hz refresh rate when i’m playing a game with minimal fast camera movement? i dont get any ghosting and that’s always been a fine basic requisite for me.

Last edited by uziq (2019-11-29 05:52:50)

yeah instead you just get people piling on suspiciously cheap OEMs or brands from the far east that crop-up every now and then, taking the panel and RMA lottery with horrendous quality hardware. i swear there's been 2-3 instances of gamers jumping on one 'monitor deal' with a too-good-to-be-true price by a nameless brand and then lots complaining about dead pixels, burnt out screens, etc.

i am immediately suspicious of any hardware marketed specifically at gamers because they are a bunch of fucking goons, if not teenagers with their parents' credit cards. even on the rare occasion that the quality is fine, 'gamer' is still is still synonym for 'full of bulky plastic and flashing lights'.

Last edited by uziq (2019-11-29 08:29:54)

obviously. my point being that corner of the tech industry is still full of fads, bad deals and shitty quality.

yo i heard you like quality mice/keyboards, computer cases and motherboards.



let me just put that inside a polygonal form factor for you with lots of acute angles, and give you a rainbow of LEDs that respond to your every twitch donation.

Last edited by uziq (2019-11-29 08:42:55)

uziq wrote:

yeah instead you just get people piling on suspiciously cheap OEMs or brands from the far east that crop-up every now and then, taking the panel and RMA lottery with horrendous quality hardware. i swear there's been 2-3 instances of gamers jumping on one 'monitor deal' with a too-good-to-be-true price by a nameless brand and then lots complaining about dead pixels, burnt out screens, etc.

i am immediately suspicious of any hardware marketed specifically at gamers because they are a bunch of fucking goons, if not teenagers with their parents' credit cards. even on the rare occasion that the quality is fine, 'gamer' is still is still synonym for 'full of bulky plastic and flashing lights'.

I had a top-end ASUS "gaming" monitor that ended up with frozen pixels, dead pixels, and horrendous bleed within months. Was recommended by a number of enthusiast sites by people who aren't just spec monkeys, but who actually know what they're doing. As with RAM, it's all pretty much a hardware lottery. Pixel-perfect guarantees and companies with smooth and non-combative RMA procedures are something I pay a lot of attention to.

Finray wrote:

eh, not entirely, yeah there are definitely really bad products out there as you described full of plastic and LEDs aimed at 12 year olds but to get some of the latest tech you sometimes have to go with a "gamer" option, and obviously if you're buying flagship stuff from reputable vendors you get some really good stuff you can't get elsewhere

To be fair, products aimed at adults are also saturated with LEDs. Good for the electrical tape business when people want a dark room. Not so good for overall aesthetics. I wish it would become an industry standard to have an off-switch for device displays and indicators. It's not desirable to be kept awake by blue dawn when your air cleaner flicks on, and gadgets covered in a patchwork of tape and cardboard don't look very good.

uziq wrote:

let me just put that inside a polygonal form factor for you with lots of acute angles, and give you a rainbow of LEDs that respond to your every twitch donation.

Ugh. Some of the mice look like they were commissioned by the underworld to reap the suffering of the living.

one thing i haven't noticed before is that now everyone on youtube hides endorsements and sponsorships in their actual video content, lol. when did this start to happen? it's been a few years since i've gone down the rabbit hole of tech/gadget/instrument reviews on youtube, and literally every single content creator is doing it. did youtube change their adsense policy or something to stiff content creators? it's almost like a sport, trying to guess when they're going to work in their plug.

Last edited by uziq (2019-11-30 03:55:48)

yeah, i know all about that part. about 3 of the UK's biggest gaming channels are located across the street from my apartment in bristol. they are always filming in the square and being loud and obnoxious. bunch of 30-somethings acting like hyperactive kids after their third tube of smarties. dressed like comic book goobers. christ.

At least with the plugs and stuff they don't try to make you feel guilty about having an adblocker enabled. I won't turn it off because I feel bad about watching something "for free." My monitors have smacked down malware from ad services used by supposedly reputable sites, youtube included. Granted, some of them were likely false positives, but others for sure were not.

It's usually predictable how long a plug will last and you can mouseover the progress bar to find the rest of the content if you're not interested.

However, upon reviewing the monetization status of The Great War’s videos, he was presented with a huge list of videos with the infamous yellow dollar sign which means the video is “Not suitable for most advertisers.” Flo said that videos from 2018 and 2019 were “mostly fine” but “over 250 of our videos have been demonetized now.” Many of the demonetized videos were originally published and approved for monetization in 2016.

Flo described YouTube’s lack of transparency during the process and said he received no notification from YouTube about this demonetization. According to Flo, most people who find The Great War, want to watch the videos chronologically so demonetizing these older videos is “really hurting the channel.”

One of the most concerning aspects of this decision for Flo is that “YouTube can change their mind any minute and if they do, they’re also going to apply all their new rules and terms of service retroactively to all the existing content out there.”

Flo’s story is reflective of many other YouTubers in 2019 who have found, often without any advanced warning from YouTube, that their videos or channels are either no longer monetized or even removed outright. As Flo puts it: “They don’t seem to have an interest in supporting creators like us via their monetization system.”

YouTube mass demonetizes World War 1 history channel The Great War
https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-demon … -great-war
2019 10

That's pretty much the sentiment I've seen from other content creators on the subject. It's not predictable, so people who use youtube as a source of income have to find other ways to secure their income.

YouTube Is Demonetizing Small Channels, And That's A Good Thing
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2 … 3b99053d8e
2018 jan

" … ensure that (your) content is up to YouTube's community standards." lol