demodulated

A recent Slashdot article on my favourite whipping boy, Oblivion, has gotten me thinking about the hot-off-the-presses Ageia PhysX (site down at time of posting) physics processing unit (PPU). In my comment on the topic I make the unprecedented move of defending the topic with my argument, quoting several areas in the game that are cliches of single player CRPGs that could be improved with this revolutionary new technology.

The Ageia PhysX is a CPU on a riser expansion card that is dedicated to processing 3D world physics - mass, viscosity, friction, malleability, flexibility, fragility, and all-round explodability.

But let’s back up a little first.

Lifelike physical behaviour of game worlds is something we gamers have been trained to take with a grain of salt. In most games, world physics haven’t evolved much at all since Qbert hopped onto the scene, one cube at a time. Most of the world is absolutely static and unflinching, as if every object was nailed down to the one below it, while select items have simulated but scripted lifelike properties. For instance, you might be able to push around and pick up a book on a desk, but a bookshelf is just an unmovable elongated cube with wood and books painted on for effect.

To some extent this design shortcut is the product of laziness - time is money, and it takes a lot of both to assign weight, density, and other properties to every single item in a game world. Even if this feat were feasible, modern CPUs would have a very difficult time calculating the interplay of objects while still presenting the game onscreen in a timely, smooth, playable fashion. Not every game can afford to be a newtonian masterpiece, nor do they need to be to steer the player to the end of each level. However, physics as superfluous eye candy has always been welcome.

Some games classified comfortably in the “retro” category do a great job of emulating realistic physics while keeping the CPU free for more mission-critical calculations. For instance, missile weapons and many interactive objects had weight and velocity constraints in the first-person CRPG Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (fun fact - the physics were programmed by pere du Xbox Seamus Blackley). The game’s immersion factor, which may seem laughable by today’s standards, was unparalleled due to little touches like these, drawing the player head over heels into the subterranean unknown beneath the land of Brittania (as occurs literally in the Ultima games). Make no mistake - Ultima Underworld was Oblivion before the Pentium days.

Game designers took note of gamers’ acclaim of such immersive worlds, and physics became adopted more and more into gameplay. Full blown physics simulators such as flight and driving sims became far more realistic and challenging with the introduction of dynamic wind, weather, temperature, and craft damage. Makers of games in other genres took notice as well, showcasing experiments in gameplay such as the destructable environments of Red Faction 2 and the exhilirating physics puzzles of Half Life 2.

Which brings us to today. Ageia, a company we’ve never heard of, wants to convince us that a $250 PCI or PCI-Express 4x expansion card will enrich our gaming experience beyond our wildest dreams. That’s a rather hefty price tag to peg on a technology that will only be supported by 5-15 titles on or around launch. Of course, this situation is very similar to that of a little company called 3DFX, makers of the first 3D-accelerated video cards, and we’ve all got one (or two) of those in our systems these days.

So what can PhysX bring to the table? Ageia founders Manju Hedge and Curtis Davis shed some light on this technology:

The Physics Processing Unit (PPU) is a dedicated processing unit that was built from the ground up to accelerate the algorithms required for physically based simulations. This includes things such as Rigid Body Dynamics, Collision Detection, Fluid Simulation, Soft Bodies and Fracturing of objects. It will revolutionize your CPU/GPU system by unlocking the potential of the system by allowing each of the processing components to do what is best at. The PPU makes the games move and interact! We are really bridging the gap between the visual appearances and the movement of games that should go along with the graphics of today.

A high-level summary, but it succeeds in whetting some nerdy appetites! With CPUs branching into the realm of dual and multi-core designs, dedicating processors to tasks seems to be the wave of the future. This is interesting to see, as servers have recently evolved in the opposite direction with virtualization, running multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single computer.

This idea could flourish or fizzle depending on the strength of technical and marketing muscle, and could have wide-reaching ramifications for PC design in the future. For instance, perhaps PCs of the future will forgo the powerful CPU entirely, dedicating individual tasks to RISC (reduced instruction set computer) chips that excel at one or few specific tasks. Enthusiast products like Sound Blaster’s X-fi sound card platform already take advantage of dedicated processors to offset CPU load.

But these technicalities are pretty dry and meaningless for the average consumer. Nobody’s going to open up their computers to plug in a $250 administrative assistant for their CPUs without some coercing in the razzle dazzle department. This is the area of debate, as it was with 3DFX, and will make or break this venture.

As physics enhance moving demos but don’t do much for static screenshots, the onus is on Ageia to provide many high quality video demos such as this one in order to entice prospective customers. Cell Factor is a multiplayer deathmatch shooter akin to Quake 3 whose environments are littered with movable and destructable objects. Smacking these objects around with gunfire and flailing corpses will constantly reshape the arena, forcing players to adjust strategies on the fly and bend the landscape to their advantage. Strategy isn’t illustrated very will in this video clip, but the eyecandy certainly causes some sugary pupil caveties!

Cell Factor is definitely how I pictured launch titles for this technology - zillions of cubes and pyramids flying all over the place like a commercial for the new Batmobile shooting its missiles at those uber-cool pyramids of icecubey blocks. I don’t find this implementation particularly interesting. I want to see this processor chugging subtley behind the scenes.

I started thinking about PhysX while watching a Stanley Cup game the other day. One burly gentleman gave an opponent a nasty lesson in physics with his shoulder and hip, sending his adversary to the ice barely in one piece. The commentators remarked at how this crushing hit could have been absorbed by the larger recipient if he had kept his head up and compensated by shifting his weight. “YES,” I thought to myself, “this is precisely what I want to see in PC hockey games!” Animating 12 players and a few refs on a static playfield must be child’s play for a powerful PPU. The same goes for a basketball game, cars on a track, planes in the sky, or the rippling gelatinous masses of two sumo wrestlers! I’m not much of a sports fan, but this technology makes me excited about the very fundamentals that make these sports challenging in the real world.

I’m also interested in the prospect of objects decomposing and splitting realistically. Half Life 2 did a lovely job of simulating this, as acquiring my crowbar and going to town on some wooden planks near the start of the game was a giddy and gorgeous prelude of things to come! Just imagine HL2’s gravity gun in a physics-enhanced environment! Firing a cement brick at a car would result in the front 2/3 of the brick pulverizing into powder, denting the thin car exterior and wrapping the roof around the internal roll cage, causing the vehicle to sway slightly and displace the sand beneath in a concave divet.

Of course, the game will have to be written to specifically take advantage of this hardware. Some developers are enthusiastic about this technology, but others are pessimistic. Says Kevin Stephens of Monolith Studios, makers of horror shooter and physics playground F.E.A.R.:

I reiterate; the success of this evolutionary and powerful technology is dependent almost entirely on the strength of its launch lineup, the silverness of its PR tongue, and of course the body count of its first killer app. Ageia will really have to hit the pavement to prove the worth of their little miracle, as its benefits are entirely unapparent in static screenshots.

Will the PhysX card usher in a new era of realism in realtime computer animation? Is Ageia the next 3DFX or is it doomed to be the next Virtual Boy? Please leave a comment and share your opinions!

A happy and safe 4/20 to everyone! Let us all take a moment to cherish our freedom to celebrate such a holiday, and to consider those who are unfortunate enough to be deprived of this privilege.

I’d like to expand on my previous article by discussing the history of sampling.

By sampling, I mean the act of copying a snippet of content from an artistic work and juxtaposing it into a new, original artistic work. Though the term usually refers to the practice of injecting audio excerpts into a new song, culture has in fact embraced this practice in more abstract applications for centuries. I’d like to delve deep into the culture of sampling, but y (ever so busy) work day is almost over so I’ll get the ball rolling today with an essay on the most common definition of the phrase.

Sampling in its most literal form began in the late 70’s and early 80’s with the hip hop revolution which reinvented the previously one-dimensional turntable as a dynamic musical instrument. Rap MCs would spout their original lyrical compositions alongside their indispensable partner in crime, the DJ, who would accentuate the rhythm and poetic theme by playing and manipulating musical and spoken-word record albums to the beat. Though ancillary sidekicks, DJs like Jam Master Jay, Doug E. Fresh, and Jazzy Jeff became integral to the headliner’s presentation.

Just 3 MCs and one DJ /
We be gettin’ down with no delay /
So Mixmaster Mike whatchoo got to say?
(sampled) “God damn that DJ made my day!”
3 MCs and One DJ - Beastie Boys

The art of musically manipulating records went on to be known as turntablism, and became a popular genre of music in and of itself. LPs containing nothing but consecutive wacky quotations and sound effects were mass produced, while bidirectional needles were engineered to make turntables more gentle on malleable vinyl. Many DJs from hip hop acts (e.g., Mix Master Mike of the Beastie Boys), as well as new solo DJs (e.g., Vancouver’s Kid Koala) went on record their own albums composed of original songs made up entirely of sampled sounds. Acquiring copyright licenses for such productions can be a legal nightmare, to be sure!

Countless turntablist competitions such as the DMC World DJ Championships are held around the world today, celebrating this player-turned-instrument phenomenon which has begun outselling guitars annually. A written scratch notation is even being developed, similar to the classic treble staff, to assist turntablists in transcribing and replicating complex scratch combinations.

Curiously, contemporary philosophers and poets have compared the act of scratching records to a superhuman or godlike state, contrasting the “human” linear perception of reality with the 4-dimensional transitive manipulation of time.

Branching off from hip hop and disco and meeting somewhere in the middle, techno music was born. Though originally consisting of synthesized instruments (Detroit techno) and somtimes accompanied by original lyrics (acid house), sampling found a very comfortable home in electronic music. As the technology of synthesizers and computers became more robust, electronic samplers and digital audio processors added yet another dimension to hip hop’s creative interpretation of the turntable. Classic house songs such as House Master Boyz’ “House Nation” utilized a single two-word sample to fill out the bulk of the song, forcing a new way of thinking on its listeners - letting go of the literal meaning of the words in lieu of the sample’s purely rhythmic properties.

As techno evolved it split into myriads of subgenres including breakbeat and jungle. These genres in particular often featured a single percussive sample, usually between 1 and 4 bars in length, edited extensively throughout any given song. These songs often varied more in percussion than in melody, leading to jungle’s descriptive synonym “drum and bass”. Incredibly, a very large number of songs were underlayed with a single short drum loop, the so-called “amen break“, sampled from The Winstons’ 70’s funk song “Amen Brother”. Though the elements of this clear and distinctive drum excerpt were a signature of the genre, creative editing made it difficult to find the same cut-up arrangement of beats in any two jungle songs.

More recently, innovators of drum and bass have surfaced, culminating sampling and editing into an incredibly complex and staccato mosaic of percussion. Artists µ-Ziq, Squarepusher, and Venetian Snares collectively helped re-reinvent breakbeat into the spastic genre of “breakcore” - a genre with such variable percussion that drums are considered to be the lead instrument.

Sampling has risen up from its underground roots into the mainstream, and is commonly featured in top-40 records as well as television and radio adverts. Proliferation of multimedia home computers have put the power of sampling into the hands of the public which has resulted in entire cultures and movements born from the creative interpretations of aural snippets. While organizations such as the RIAA and CRIA fight to tax and quash such innovators, others such as the Creative Commons work with commercial artists to make their songs, instruments, and acabellas available to the public for use as creative building blocks.

Whether percieved as theft, borrowing, or social interpretation, audio sampling is a pillar of modern culture.

News site Slyck reported yesterday that 6 major-ish Canadian recording labels have abandoned the CRIA for their incongruent philosophies of fair use and piracy. Unlike CRIA, these labels are proponents of DRM-free digital music and argue in favour of peer-to-peer file sharing as a vehicle for marketing and try-before-you-buy. While the CRIA spreads its greedy gospel of illegal file swapping, Nettwerk Records has conversely opted to foot the legal bill in defence of an American file swapper who “stole” one of the label’s songs.

A recent hubbub ensued between CRIA and Ottawa law professor Michael Geist over the true meaning of the numbers published by a research agency allegedly in cahoots with the recording industry. In summary, CRIA argues that immeasurable losses in music sales can be attributed to theft by Canadians aged 18 to 29, while Geist retorts that this same demographic is the second largest purchaser of music. (thereby strengthening the argument that music downloads result in sales)

There are obvious arguments supporting both sides of this issue, but as a hobbyist musician I have unique take on this whole situation.

I produce techno DJ mixes, and once upon a time I composed original music. From the get-go I’ve offered my compositions to the world for free, at my expense. Sometimes I deem my composition unfit for publication, or I record a practice session; otherwise I upload the file to my high speed web host or burn copies for friends.

Let’s first take a look at how my music is put together.

My original compositions are, in essence, original in arrangement only. Although I created many audio samples and instruments with my own 2 hands (also my voice, a recording, a MIDI keyboard, and\or some software), the majority of my instruments are sampled directly from commercial CDs or from other homemade open-source music. Basically, each of my songs potentially constitutes tens of thousands of dollars in copyright infringement in its raw elements alone (not even to mention my unauthorized and misnamed remix of Send Me An Angel). I like to think its my generous distribution more than my insignificant obscurity that has saved me from litigation.

Is what I’ve done really illegal? Yeah, almost definitely. Would any court convict me? Unlikely. Although I’ve made something irrefutably unique and personal with tools, regardless of their suspicious origins, artists (like DJ Jazzy Jeff) have been convicted for doing the same. No, my body remains on the free side of bars because I don’t make money from my music.

But is the same argument true of my DJ mixes? I take a bunch of songs and play them in order, overlapping the beginnings and ends to make a nonstop cohesive realtime composition. Many of my tracks are ripped from CD, many are downloaded from my peers. I’ve practised for years to be a good DJ and my mixing style, track selection, samples, effects, and edits are all examples my own personal flare. Yet, the basic building block of a DJ mix is a bunch of commercial songs.

Do I put myself at greater risk by hosting an 80-minute MP3 containing many commercial songs than I do by hosting a 3-minute song made of commercial samples? Is my DJ mix really mine? Is this situation any different from composing music with commercial samples? After all, the original songs can’t be extracted from a DJ mix any more than an entire song can be reconstructed from a few samples.

Whatever the answer, I pay for it. And so do you, fellow Canadians. For 15 years the CRIA fought to enact a levy on recordable media to compensate the industry for piracy. It’s surprising that it happened at all, so therefore not as much of a shock that it took 15 years to convince the Canadian government that every citizen with a dual-tape recorder or CD burner was a criminal. After all, after a decade and a half even I might be convinced that blank CDs have no use but duplicating music. Hell, I might even be persuaded, as was the government, that this insane tariff should be in the ballpark of 50% the sale price.

Of course, it’s not so cut-and-dry. How many Canadians burn data backups, photographs, documents, lectures, audio books, and home videos onto CDs every single day? Is it appropriate for these people to admit their criminal guilt by paying recording artists? How many CD burns fail, rendering the disc useless? Do we get our tariff back in these cases?

Better yet, a question with a less obvious answer - is it fair for me to pay this levy when I burn one of my own DJ mixes or songs? Does this arrangement sway in favour of one party or another? Do the Canadian artists (if any) that I’ve “ripped off” see much or any of the tariff I pay?

Apparently the aforementioned 6 record labels side with Canadians in finding this scheme unfair. Nobody trusts an organization that taxes us for theft and then criticizes the taxed service for being a sink hole.

So, mysteriously, the CRIA been lobbying for the past 7 years to renege on this tariff in favour of more restrictive distribution. This is good news for legitimate users of recordable media and bad news for consumers. If (and when) CRIA’s proposals pass you can expect DRM-heavy content from coast to coast, restricting purchasers from making legal backups and quashing the very Canadian ideal of sharing culture with friends. For now the CRIA fights an uphill battle to convince judges that peer-to-peer file swapping is different from library lending (the main argument defending our right to trade music), but with noisy southern neighbours and especially with a Conservative government we can expect the winds to change sooner or later.

When I find the right office to complain to I’ll share it. Until then, vote with your bucks. Support your local artists, but REALLY support them. Support them by seeing their shows. Support them by telling your friends about them. Support them by trading their music. Most of all, support them by enjoying and appreciating their compositions. Support the art, boycott the business, sez I.

And in the mean time, please support me by enjoying my music and sharing it with your friends, free of charge.

My original music:
http://www.demodulated.com/music.html

My techno DJ mixes:
http://djbriandamage.blogspot.com/

Naysayers of Microsoft’s operating system, you gotta admit this is pretty impressive - especially for a power user.

You can check out your uptime with this handy dandy little batch file:

@echo off
c:\windows\system32\systeminfo | find “Up Time”
pause