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• How do I blend 2 lightmaps for day/night cycle in Unity?

  - by Timothy Williams

  Before I say anything else: I'm using dual lightmaps, meaning I need to blend both a near and a far. So I've been working on this for a while now, I have a whole day/night cycle set up for renderers and lighting, and everything is working fine and not process intensive. The only problem I'm having is figuring out how I could blend two lightmaps together, I've figured out how to switch lightmaps, but the problem is that looks kind of abrupt and interrupts the experience. I've done hours of research on this, tried all kinds of shaders, pixel by pixel blending, and everything else to no real avail. Pixel by pixel blending in C# turned out to be a bit process intensive for my liking, though I'm still working on cleaning it up and making it run more smoothly. Shaders looked promising, but I couldn't find a shader that could properly blend two lightmaps. Does anyone have any leads on how I could accomplish this? I just need some sort of smooth transition between my daytime and nighttime lightmap. Perhaps I could overlay the two textures and use an alpha channel? Or something like that?

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• Rendering shadow sprites in cocos2d-x

  - by lukeluke

  I am writing a 2D game with cocos2d-x. I want to put a "shadow" sprite on a background sprite using the equation: MAX(0, Cd*1 - Cs*S) where Cd is the destination color (that is, a background pixel), Cs is the source color (the shadow pixel) , S is the scale factor (between 0 and 1). The MAX() function is used to avoid negative results. This is a lighting effect: when the shadow sprite pixel is 0, there is no effect on the background pixel, otherwise, the background pixel becomes darker. Now, the only way that comes to my mind is to change the blending equation to GL_FUNC_SUBTRACT, but it doesn't compile with cocos2d-x (can't found it)... I would subclass the CCSprite class in order to implement the draw() method in order to change, when needed, the blending equation, call the original draw() method and restore the blending equation to its previous state at the end of the method. So my questions are two: how to use glBlendEquation() with cocos2d-x? Keep in mind that i am writing a game for iphone/android/windows. are shadows handled this way in 2D games? Thx

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• SQLAuthority News – Happy Deepavali and Happy News Year

  - by pinaldave

  Diwali or Deepavali is popularly known as the festival of lights. It literally means “array of light” or “row of lamps“. Today we build a small clay maps and fill it with oil and light it up. The significance of lighting the lamp is the triumph of good over evil. I work every single day in a year but today I am spending my time with family and little one. I make sure that my daughter is aware of our culture and she learns to celebrate the festival with the same passion and values which I have. Every year on this day, I do not write a long blog post but rather write a small post with various SQL Tips and Tricks. After reading them you should quickly get back to your friends and family – it is the most important festival day. Here are a few tips and tricks: Take regular full backup of your database Avoid cursors if they can be replaced by set based process Keep your index maintenance script handy and execute them at intervals Consider Solid State Drive (SDD) for crucial database and tempdb placement Update statistics for OLTP transactions at intervals I guess that’s it for today. If you still have more time to learn. Here are few things you should consider. Get FREE Books by Sign up for tomorrow’s webcast by Rick Morelan Watch SQL in Sixty Seconds Series – FREE SQL Learning Read my earlier 2300+ articles Well, I am sure that will keep you busy for the rest of the day! Happy Diwali to All of You! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Wpf vs WinForms for a vb programmer? [closed]

  - by Jeroen

  I am asked by a client to develop an application that is basically a screen on which the user can choose several items to pass the time (used in holding cells in mental hospitals for example). The baisc idea is as follows: TV (choosing this will provide the user with a number of TV streams from the interweb) Radio (...) Games (serveral flash games, also from the interweb) Music (play local music or streams) Draw something (not the game) Create an email Choose lighting settings for the room etc. etc. I am torn between WinForms and WPF for this project. It seems that WPF is the way to go since there is quite a bit of rich media involved but I have a 15 year VB background. The project obviously has a dead line and certain budget that I cannot cross and if I can avoid starting from scratch with some thing that will be nice. Is WPF worth it in this particular case or can I use WinForms with the incorperation of WPF controls? I would very much like to hear your thoughts/comments/suggestions!

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• Manually writing a dx11 tessellation shader

  - by Tudor

  I am looking for resources on what are the steps of manually implementing tessellation (I'm using Unity cg). Today it seems that it is all the rage to hide most of the gpu code far away and use rather rigid simplifications such as unity's SURFace shaders. And it seems useless unless you're doing supeficial stuff. A little background: I have procedurally generated meshes (using marching cubes) which have quality normals but no UVs and no Tangents. I have successfully written a custom vertex and fragment shader to do triplanar texture and bumpmap projection as well as some custom stuff (custom lighting, procedurally warping the texture for variation etc). I am using the GPU Gems book as reference. Now I need to implement tessellation, but It seems I must calculate the tangents at runtime by swizzling normals (ctrl+f this in gems: <normal.z, normal.y, -normal.x>) before the tessellator gets them. And I also need to keep my custom vert+frag setup (with my custom parameters/textures being passed between them) - so apparently I cannot use surface shaders. Can anyone provide some guidence?

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• HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Solid State Drives (SSDs) are the lighting fast new kid on the hard drive block, but are they a good match for you? Read on as we demystify SSDs. The last few years have seen a marked increase in the availability of SSDs and a decrease in price (although it certainly may not feel that way when comparing prices between SSDs and traditional HDDs). What is an SSD? In what ways do you benefit the most from paying the premium for an SSD? What, if anything, do you need to do differently with an SSD? Read on as we cut through  the new-product-haze surrounding Solid State Drives. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? Save Files Directly from Your Browser to the Cloud in Chrome and Iron The Steve Jobs Chronicles – Charlie and the Apple Factory [Video] Google Chrome Updates; Faster, Cleaner Menus, Encrypted Password Syncing, and More Glowing Chess Set Combines LEDs, Chess, and DIY Electronics Fun Peaceful Alpine River on a Sunny Day [Wallpaper] Fast Society Creates Mini and Mobile Temporary Social Networks

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• OpenGL ES 2 shaders for drawing buildings and roads like Google Maps does

  - by Pris

  I'm trying to create a shader that'll give me an effect similar to what buildings and roads look like on 3D Google Maps. You can see the effect interactively if you enable WebGL at maps.google.com, and I also found a couple of screenshots that illustrate what I'm trying to achieve: Thing I noticed: There's some kind of transparency thing going on with the roads/ground and the buildings, but not between the buildings themselves. It might be that they're rendering the ground and roads after the buildings with the right blend functions to achieve that effect. If you look closely, you'll see parts of the building profiles have an outline. The roads also have nice clean outlines. There are a lot of techniques for outlining things with shaders... but I'm curious to find out what might have been used in this case considering mobile hardware and a large number of entities with outlines (roads and buildings) I'm assuming that for the lighting, some sort of simple diffuse per-vertex shader is being used for the buildings though I could be wrong. I'm especially curious about the 'look' they achieved with buildings (clean, precise outlines/shading). It reminds me a little of what you'd see when designing stuff with CAD applications like SolidWorks: I'd appreciate any advice on achieving this kind of look with ES 2 shaders.

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• How to Get MacBook-Style Finger Gestures on Ubuntu Linux

  - by Zainul Franciscus

  Apple users have been swiping, pinching, and rotating Mac’s user interfaces to their fingers’ content. In today’s article, we’ll show you how to do groovy things like expanding and reducing windows, and changing desktops using finger gestures. To accomplish this, we’ll use a piece of software called TouchEgg, which enhances Ubuntu’s multi touch capability by allowing us to configure actions to the finger gestures that TouchEgg supports. If you’re a Windows user and like the idea of finger-gestures, we also wrote a tutorial on how to enable MacBook-Style finger gestures on Windows Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines SnapBird Supercharges Your Twitter Searches Google’s New Personal Blocklist Extension Kills Search Engine Spam KeyCounter Tracks Your Keystrokes and Mouse Clicks Add Custom LED Ambient Lighting to Your PC or Media Center The Trackor Monitors Amazon Prices; Integrates with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Four Awesome TRON Legacy Themes for Chrome and Iron

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• Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents

  - by ETC

  In January we showed you a video of Waton in a practice round against Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Last night they squared off in a real round of Jeopardy with Watson in a tie with Rutter. Watson held his own against the two champions leveraging the 90 IBM Power 750 servers, 2,880 processors, and the 16TB of memory driving him to his full advantage. It was impressive to watch the round unfold and to see where Watson shined and where he faltered. Check out the video below to footage of Watson in training and then in action on Jeopardy. Pay special attention to the things that trip him up. Watson answers cut and dry questions with absolute lighting speed but stumbles when it comes to nuances in language–like finis vs. terminus in the train question that Jennings answered correctly. Watch Part 2 of the video above here. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines MyPaint is an Open-Source Graphics App for Digital Painters Can the Birds and Pigs Really Be Friends in the End? [Angry Birds Video] Add the 2D Version of the New Unity Interface to Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 MightyMintyBoost Is a 3-in-1 Gadget Charger Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents Peaceful Tropical Cavern Wallpaper

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• Computing pixel's screen position in a vertex shader: right or wrong?

  - by cubrman

  I am building a deferred rendering engine and I have a question. The article I took the sample code from suggested computing screen position of the pixel as follows: VertexShaderFunction() { ... output.Position = mul(worldViewProj, input.Position); output.ScreenPosition = output.Position; } PixelShaderFunction() { input.ScreenPosition.xy /= input.ScreenPosition.w; float2 TexCoord = 0.5f * (float2(input.ScreenPosition.x,-input.ScreenPosition.y) + 1); ... } The question is what if I compute the position in the vertex shader (which should optimize the performance as VSF is launched significantly less number of times than PSF) would I get the per-vertex lighting insted. Here is how I want to do this: VertexShaderFunction() { ... output.Position = mul(worldViewProj, input.Position); output.ScreenPosition.xy = output.Position / output.Position.w; } PixelShaderFunction() { float2 TexCoord = 0.5f * (float2(input.ScreenPosition.x,-input.ScreenPosition.y) + 1); ... } What exactly happens with the data I pass from VS to PS? How exactly is it interpolated? Will it give me the right per-pixel result in this case? I tried launching the game both ways and saw no visual difference. Is my assumption right? Thanks. P.S. I am optimizing the point light shader, so I actually pass a sphere geometry into the VS.

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• Dirt Cheap DSLR Viewfinder Improves Outdoor DSLR LCD Visibility

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If the excitement you felt about having a DSLR capable of shooting video wore off the second you took it outside and realized you needed an expensive add-on viewfinder to use it in sunlight, this cheap DIY viewfinder is for you. The digital video capabilities of new DSLR cameras are amazing and changing the way people interact with movie production. What’s not awesome, however, is how the LCD screen gets completely washed out in bright conditions and you almost always have to buy a $50+ aftermarket accessory to make the LCD functional under those conditions. Courtesty of the Frugal Film Maker we have the following video tutorial showing us how to turn a plastic container, a cheap dollar-store magnifying glass, a headphone ear cover, and some glue and hair ties into a dirt cheap LCD viewfinder. You’ll never have to squint or miss a shot because of bright lighting conditions again–even better yet, you’ll only spend a few bucks for the whole project. For step by step instructions in print form, hit up the link below. Homemade DSLR Viewfinder [Instructables via Make] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Disposable Sleeves for Your In-Ear Monitors Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Bring the Grid to Your Desktop with the TRON Legacy Theme for Windows 7 The Dark Knight and Team Fortress 2 Mashup Movie Trailer [Video] Dirt Cheap DSLR Viewfinder Improves Outdoor DSLR LCD Visibility Lakeside Sunset in the Mountains [Wallpaper] Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 19, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 19, 2012Popular ReleasesToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (1.0.0.0): Initial Release Contains following tools: Attribute Bulk Updater Iconator Role Updater Scripts Finder SiteMap Editor Solution Import View Layout Replicator WebResources Manager Also include the sample tool described in the documentation "How to develop your own tool" More tools to come later...NB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module: NB_Store v2.3.3 Rel0: DNN 5.3.2 and above, and DNN 6 Compatible - Some release notes are discussed here. Important : v2.3.3 requires the Back Office module to be placed onto a seperate page to the productlist. During the upgrade process, this module retains your existing configuration by not overwriting any existing settings and templates. If you wish to reset your configuration to gain all new settings and templates, please review this KB article. Please view the following documentation if you are installing ...F# PowerPack with F# Compiler Source Drops: PowerPack for FSharp 3.0 + .NET 4.x + VS2010: This is a release of the old FSharp Power Pack binaries recompiled for F# 3.0, .NET 4.0/4.5 and Silveright 5. NOTE: This is for F# 3.0 & .NET 4.0 or F# 3.0 & Silverlight 5 NOTE: The assemblies are no longer strong named NOTE: The assemblies are not added to the GAC NOTE: In some cases functionality overlaps with F# 3.0, e.g. SI Units of measurecodeSHOW: codeSHOW AppPackage Release 16: This release is a package file built out of Visual Studio that you can side load onto your machine if for some reason you don't have access to the Windows Store. To install it, just unzip and run the .ps1 file using PowerShell (right click | run with PowerShell). Attention: if you want to download the source code for codeSHOW, you're in the wrong place. You need to go to the SOURCE CODE tab.Move Mouse: Move Mouse 2.5.3: FIXED - Issue where it errors on load if the screen saver interval is over 333 minutes.LINUX????????: LINUX????????: LINUX????????cnbeta: cnbeta: cnbetaCSDN ??: CSDN??????: CSDN??????PowerShell Community Extensions: 2.1.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.1.1 Release NotesDec 16, 2012 This version of PSCX supports both Windows PowerShell 2.0 and 3.0. Bug fix for HelpUri error with the Get-Help proxy command. See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.VidCoder: 1.4.11 Beta: Added Hungarian translation, thanks to Brechler Zsolt. Update HandBrake core to SVN 5098. This update should fix crashes on some files. Updated the enqueue split button to fit in better with the active Windows theme. Updated presets to use x264 preset/profile/level.???: Cnblogs: CNBLOGSSandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.6.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...Electricity, Gas and Temperature Monitoring with Netduino Plus: V1.0.1 Netduino Plus Monitoring: This is the first stable release from the Netduino Plus Monitoring program. Bugfixing The code is enhanced at some places in respect to the V0.6.1 version There is a possibility to add multiple S0 meters Website for realtime display of data Website for configuring the Netduino Comments are welcome! Additions will not be made to this version. This is the first and last major Netduino Plus V1 release. The new development will take place with the Netduino Plus V2 development board in mi...Windows Store Application Library: Windows Store Application Library - 1.1.1.0: Windows Store Application Library StoreAppLib can be installed from Visual Studio "Manage NuGet Packages" tool. This release of Windows Store Application Library contains following controls and utilities. DatePicker control TimePicker control PageHeaderTextBlock control with Global Navigation Menu Popup manager AppBarButton control TapEffect animation DateTimeConverter ConcatenationConverter CountConverterCRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1116.8): [FIX] Fixed issue not displaying CRM system button images correctly (incorrect path in file VisualRibbonEditor.exe.config)My Expenses Windows Store LOB App Demo: My Expenses Version 1: This is version 1 of the MyExpenses Windows 8 line of business demo app. The app is written in XAML and C#. It calls a WCF service that works with a SQL Server database. The app uses the Callisto toolkit. You can get it at https://github.com/timheuer/callisto. The Expenses.sql file contains the SQL to create the Expenses database. The ExpensesWCFService.zip file contains the WCF service, also written in C#. You should create a WCF service. Create an Entity Framework model and point it to...Manage upload files for SP 2010: Manage upload files (SP 2010) 1.0.0: Version 1.0.0: Manage upload file size on specific application page Simple in use Simple installation Work on: SharePoint Foundation 2010 Sharepoint Server 2010 (Standard, Enterprise) Localized: English RussianMCEBuddy Viewer: MCEBuddy Viewer 1.0.0 Beta: MCEBuddy Viewer for MCEBuddy 2.x Windows Media Center Add-On to view the current job status of MCEbuddy. Requirements: 1. Installed MCEBuddy 2.x (tested on release 2.3.7-2.3.10) http://mcebuddy2x.codeplex.com 2. Windows Media Center (tested on Windows 7 Pro 32-bit&64-bit, Windows 8 Pro with WMC 64-bit) Before installing the new version of Plug-in uninstall old version through windows control panelBlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.4: 2012.12.13 Ver5.7.4 (1)Web???????、???????????????????????????????????????????VFPX: ssClasses A1.0: My initial release. See https://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=ssClasses&referringTitle=Home for a brief description of what is inside this releaseNew ProjectsAutonomic Middleware: Reflective middleware using workflow that makes the middleware autonomic.Battleforge: Assault: A card battle game. This project is being built using Silverlight 4 in C#.ChurajPatterns: Design patterns testing and overview console application.FimExplorer: Tool for executing XPath queries against FIM without going through it's web portal.Financial Management Studio: This is a WPF application for the financial management. Will use bunch of technologies such as: MVVM, Microsoft Extension Framework and Entities Framework.iJob: Do u no what is this?Developed with C#.net3.5 MSSQL2008Interaction Production Server: A software based networked lighting controller. It brokers many protocols together to allow easy setup and development of new stage lighting controllers.Interface weaver Custom Tool: A CustomTool for vs auto implementing interface based on aspects (auto INotifyPropertychanged data context implementation, auto command mapping...).IntroductionWeb: This is the second time for us to build something extraordinaryiSteam: iSteam is a product being developed focusing on the Steamworks platform, to advertise and centralize everything about steam in one application.iSun_PLS: iSun PLS is a Photo libary System, to help you manager your pictures on your server!LSharp: A Scripting Language Interpreter for .NETMassive Dangerzone: Don't try this at home.MinGuid: An alternative / replacement for those long Guid strings, simply call the function in the library which generates the Unique 16 character string.Nx Portable Framework: Framework aiming to speed up cross platform movile developement.Orchard Training Demo module: Demo Orchard module for training purposes. This module completes the training materials at http://english.orchardproject.hu/Training/Oriol ASAP: ASAPPanopticonize API: This project provides code samples for the panopticonize.com video thumbnailing API.Registry Editor Navigator: The small utility that takes a path and makes Regedit open to that path. Similar to RegJump but it has UI, uses clipboard and has a global keyboard hook. SafetyExam: ??????????????Simple Queuing System: This project is created to show you how queuing system can be implemented in MSMQ in C#. The sample is implemented from real life queuing system. TypeScript plugin enhancements for VS 2010 add-in: This add-in allows to - Compile .ts files by saveVisual Studio Help Downloader 2012: Tool for downloading the Visual Studio 2012 help packages for offline useWebGoat.NET test repository: THis is a clone of the WebGoat.NET project hosted at GitHub, provided here for those who need to be able to have a TFS-accessible copy of WebGoat.WebPythonHost: A .NET application hosting web python environment.Wpf Sqlite Management: about 1 month i publish this project and use avalon edit and avalon doc in my project WPFSchematics: The WPFSchematics is a vector graphic interactive system,and based on WPF graphics technology.XEasyFileSearch: easy and quick file searcherZweiBooks: Plugin for a Bukkit-Server.

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• php soapclient responds as 'null' but xml response is ok using __getLastResponse

  - by Roger S

  I'm looking for help with a php soapclient call: The call is to a remote panel and I want to pull off the log data. There are various services published via the WSDL and I am able to use several with no issues. Here's the list: array(12) { [0]=> string(77) "GetGPTimerChannelsResponse GetGPTimerChannels(GetGPTimerChannels $parameters)" [1]=> string(74) "GetGPTimerChannelResponse GetGPTimerChannel(GetGPTimerChannel $parameters)" [2]=> string(74) "SetGPTimerChannelResponse SetGPTimerChannel(SetGPTimerChannel $parameters)" [3]=> string(47) "GetSlaveResponse GetSlave(GetSlave $parameters)" [4]=> string(71) "GetLogDataInlineResponse GetLogDataInline(GetLogDataInline $parameters)" [5]=> string(71) "GetLogItemInlineResponse GetLogItemInline(GetLogItemInline $parameters)" [6]=> string(59) "GetAlarmListResponse GetAlarmList(GetAlarmList $parameters)" [7]=> string(50) "GetSyslogResponse GetSyslog(GetSyslog $parameters)" [8]=> string(47) "SetSlaveResponse SetSlave(SetSlave $parameters)" [9]=> string(53) "GetVersionResponse GetVersion(GetVersion $parameters)" [10]=> string(53) "GetTDBInfoResponse GetTDBInfo(GetTDBInfo $parameters)" [11]=> string(53) "GetLogItemResponse GetLogItem(GetLogItem $parameters)" } I am trying to use the GetLogDataInline service which requires four parameters - these I'm passing as an array and all seems OK when doing the connection (the request/response takes around 30 seconds to process). When I look at a var_dump / print_r of the result, it returns NULL, whereas when I do a call to the __getLastResponse all of the data I need to populate my local database is there. Below is the code for the soapclient call: $client = new soapclient ("http://192.168.1.126/cgi-bin/cgi.cgi?WSDL", array("trace" => 1, "exceptions" => true, "cache_wsdl" => WSDL_CACHE_NONE, "features" => SOAP_SINGLE_ELEMENT_ARRAYS )); $params = array ( "ResponseType" => "Xml", "Step" => 15, "Start" => "2012-06-14T12:00:00+01:00", "End" => "2012-06-14T23:59:45+01:00" ); $result = $client -> GetLogDataInline ($params); An extract from the var_dump / __getLastResponse is: var_dump($client) object(SoapClient)#1 (4) { ["trace"]= int(1) ["_features"]= int(1) ["_soap_version"]= int(1) ["sdl"]= resource(4) of type (Unknown) } var_dump($result) NULL __getLastResponse 15 2012-06-14T12:00:00+01:00 2012-06-14T23:59:45+01:00 External Temperature Workshop Lux Level Electricity Pulse 100wh Workshop PIR Active Boiler Flow Temp Outside Lux Workshop_Light_Override_Hours Water Consumption (Litres) Electricity kWh Consumption Water Consumption M3 Gas kWh Consumption Outside Lighting Heating Effective Setpoint Router Reset Workshop Lighting State Heating Run Hours Heating On Receptin Percent RH Reception Temp Reception RH Reception Temp 2012-06-14T12:00:00+01:00 -85.6 2.1 -1.0 Off -91.5 13.8 0.0 -1.0 0.0 0.0 -0.1 Off 21.0 Off Off 0.0 Off 53.0 22.0 53.0 22.0 2012-06-14T12:00:15+01:00 -85.4 2.1 -1.0 Off -91.8 13.8 0.0 -1.0 0.0 0.0 -0.1 Off 21.0 Off Off 0.0 Off 53.0 22.0 53.0 22.0 2012-06-14T12:00:30+01:00 -85.4 2.1 -1.0 Off -91.8 13.8 0.0 -1.0 0.0 0.0 -0.1 Off 21.0 Off Off 0.0 Off 53.0 22.0 53.0 22.0 2012-06-14T12:00:45+01:00 -85.4 2.1 -1.0 Off -91.5 13.7 0.0 -1.0 0.0 0.0 -0.1 Off 21.0 Off Off 0.0 Off 54.0 22.0 54.0 22.0 (this should be xml but doesn't appear to have copied correctly) If you've got this far, thanks for taking the time. Any help would be much appreciated.

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• How to manually set color of Unity Panel?

  - by JamesTheAwesomeDude

  I was just wondering if there's a way to set the color of the Unity panel manually, as opposed to having it derived from smooshing all the colors of the wallpaper together. (the launcher on the left side of the screen that comes default in Ubuntu is the Unity Panel, right? If not, please correct me on my terminology.) The reason I want this is because I have this cool wallpaper I found on DeviantArt, and I used GIMP to make Dawn, Dusk, and Midnight versions of it. Then, I set them with a transition effect, so that the lighting changes over the course of the day. Unfortunately, the Unity Panel turns a sickly sewer green at night (it could also be said to look like radioactive barf.) Either way, I don't like my launcher thingy looking like that. I'd prefer to stay away from programs that let you customise the Unity Panel (I'm fine with using sudo nano to edit system config files,) but I would if it were the only option. Here are some screenshots, one with a grey-themed wallpaper, one with lots of red, and the hill at night, (the one that makes the unity panel look like radioactive barf.): http://imgur.com/a/0Gqcd

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• Understanding normal maps on terrain

  - by JohnB

  I'm having trouble understanding some of the math behind normal map textures even though I've got it to work using borrowed code, I want to understand it. I have a terrain based on a heightmap. I'm generating a mesh of triangles at load time and rendering that mesh. Now for each vertex I need to calculate a normal, a tangent, and a bitangent. My understanding is as follows, have I got this right? normal is a unit vector facing outwards from the surface of the triangle. For a vertex I take the average of the normals of the triangles using that vertex. tangent is a unit vector in the direction of the 'u' coordinates of the texture map. As my texture u,v coordinates follow the x and y coordinates of the terrain, then my understanding is that this vector is simply the vector along the surface in the x direction. So should be able to calculate this as simply the difference between vertices in the x direction to get a vector, (and normalize it). bitangent is a unit vector in the direction of the 'v' coordinates of the texture map. As my texture u,v coordinates follow the x and y coordinates of the terrain, then my understanding is that this vector is simply the vector along the surface in the y direction. So should be able to calculate this as simply the difference between vertices in the y direction to get a vector, (and normalize it). However the code I have borrowed seems much more complicated than this and takes into account the actual values of u, and v at each vertex which I don't understand the need for as they increase in exactly the same direction as x, and y. I implemented what I thought from above, and it simply doesn't work, the normals are clearly not working for lighting. Have I misunderstood something? Or can someone explain to me the physical meaning of the tangent and bitangent vectors when applied to a mesh generated from a hightmap like this, when u and v texture coordinates map along the x and y directions. Thanks for any help understanding this.

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• Fiber-Optic Cable Trick Brings Remote Triggering to Older Flashes

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Many older flashes lack for a jack to input a sync cable and rely exclusively on a simple slave mode triggered by the primary flash. This hack uses a piece of scrap fiber optic cable to trigger the flash in bright conditions. Using a flash as an optical slave indoors isn’t much of a problem, but if you introduce bright light (such as outdoor lighting conditions), the ambient light can overpower the small on-camera flash and render the optical slave function useless. To overcome this, Marcell over at Fiber Strobe (a blog dedicated to cataloging experiments in incorporating fiber optics into photography) came up with a simple work around. By using some foam crafting materials and tape, he whipped up a simple mount for a strand of scrap fiber optic cable to connect between the on-camera flash and the sensor on the slave flash. Once attached it works exactly like as sync cable would, except it’s transmitting a pulse of light instead of a pulse of electricity. Hit up the link below for more pictures and a build guide. DIY Fiber Sync Cord [via DIY Photography] HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me? HTG Explains: How Windows 8′s Secure Boot Feature Works & What It Means for Linux Hack Your Kindle for Easy Font Customization

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• Future Trends and Challenges for Aircraft Cabins

  - by Bill Evjen

  Ingo Wuggetzer The aircraft cabin changes from the 60s till now has worsened. First class is actually premium / economy is still moving down in quality The challenge is to do efficiency and comfort Graying population is a challenge will be 14% of the world’s population soon Obesity increasingly becoming an all-milieu core societal problem Will have impact on seat sizes Female forces – women will increasingly influence business and lifestyle There are now more women in college than men People want to be green and this reflects into aircrafts. You can now buy carbon-offsets when you buy a ticket in some airlines 20% are willing to pay for green products 13% would like to but are not doing it yet Seamless Connectivity Internet is obviously mainstream and the influence of our daily lives 2 billion users in 2010 One direction is going mobile Another direction is going social computing We have to explore this to use more with our products Convergence of products iPad usage on Finair , Virgin, Jetstar iPhone share 2% Other smartphones – 11% Feature Phone – 87% Plans to invest in technology trends within the next 3 years connectivity to/from aircraft – 21% major investment / 47% R&D nominal investment Web 2.0 – 22% major investment / 57% R&D nominal investment Cabin technical investments Lighting Wireless Sensors Displays People want to use technologies on the plane that they can use on the ground Planes have moved to digital in the last decade – now they are moving to wireless Data volumes are going through the roof – (Moore’s Law)

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• Xubuntu 12.04 : Random boot to black screen

  - by Thibaud Ruelle

  My xubuntu 12.04 has worked flawlessly since install in September. However, lately I randomly have the following boot issue : The computer boots to grub, and after choosing xubuntu either boots normally or boots to a black screen. Here are some observations I have made : The black screen seems to happen randomly. The black screen does not seem to happen in safe mode (- nomodeset in grub). The black screen does not allow me to ctrl + alt + F1-6 into a terminal. The black screen allows me to use SysRq keys (Alt + SysRq + K does not work though). The black screen often happens on first boot in several hours and the computer usually boots normally after a RSEINUB. When the computer boots I get "SP5100 TCO timer: mmio address 0xfec000f0 already in use" at startup and "Could not write bytes: broken pipe" at shutdown. However research on these errors did not yield answers to my particular issue. Comparing Xorg.0.log (successful boot) and Xorg.0.log.old (black screen), and reading the answers to similar problem, it seems that I might have a X driver issue. However the system worked flawlessly since lately. Additional info on my system : ACER AO722 C62kk Operating system : 3.2.0-31-generic ubuntu Edit : I made a fresh install of Xubuntu 12.04 x64, the issue is still there ... (I have a separate /home so config. files were not erased). Edit 2 : I followed troubleshooting blank screen, so my new observations are without quiet and splash in grub : When the system boots normally, the screen goes black after grub then lights up and displays text information then goes to login screen. (After that the desktop starting time vary substantially, which is new and may be a separate issue ?). When the boot fails, after grub the screen goes black, lights up, goes black, lights up again and most times goes black again. At this point it responds to Alt+SysReq K by lighting up but no more, and has to be rebooted through Alt+SysReq+ RSEINUB. Thank you for your time and attention in advance ! Thibaud Ruelle

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• Early Z culling - Ogre

  - by teodron

  This question is concerned with how one can enable this "pixel filter" to work within an Ogre based app. Simply put, one can write two passes, the first without writing any colour values to the frame buffer lighting off colour_write off shading flat The second pass is the one that employs heavy pixel shader computations, hence it would be really nice to get rid of those hidden surface patches and not process them pixel-wise. This approach works, except for one thing: objects with alpha, such as billboard trees suffer in a peculiar way - from one side, they seem to capture the sky/background within their alpha region and ignore other trees/houses behind them, while viewed from the other side, they exhibit the desired behavior. To tackle the issue, I thought I could write a custom vertex shader in the first pass and offset the projected Z component of the vertex a little further away from its actual position, so that in the second pass there is a need to recompute correctly the pixels of the objects closest to the camera. This doesn't work at all, all surfaces are processed in the pixel shader and there is no performance gain. So, if anyone has done a similar trick with Ogre and alpha objects, kindly please help.

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• Ubuntu impossible to install: "unable to find a medium containing a live filesystem"

  - by Lorenzo

  Yes, I have read questions and answers with similar titles for this issue, which prevented me from installing Ubuntu for several MONTHS now, trying to figure it out. I have a MacBookPro with triple partition (one for Mac Snow Leopard, one for Windows 7, one for Linux) created with reFIT firmware (not BootCamp). I set up the system according to these instructions for reFIT: http://lifehacker.com/5531037/how-to-triple+boot-your-mac-with-windows-and-linux-no-boot-camp-required Now. There is a free partition ready to accept Linux into its arms, but Linux does not want to participate. Most answers to the issue "unable to find a medium containing a live filesystem" point to changing the BIOS booting system (which I don't know how to do, especially using this reFIT booting system), and to changing the socket of the USB (which does not concern me, since I am using a CD, actually I tried with a CD, then with a DVD, since a blank CD is only 700MB while the iso image file of Ubuntu is about 731MB). Anyway. This is what happens: I am in the Mac system (using the Mac partition) I insert the DVD with the burned image of Ubuntu (yes I have tried burning it again and agin on both CD and DVD blank discs). I restart the computer. When reFIT loads, I hold down the ALT key until the CD image appears. I select it, and hit Enter. A small Ubuntu icon appears at the bottom of the screen. Then a Ubuntu sign appears in the middle of the screen with small dots underneath, lighting up progressively over and over to indicate it's loading. Then everything turns black and the following message appears, at the end of a few lines of text: "unable to find medium with live file system". Please provide very practical suggestions on what to do to an unexperienced wannabe Ubuntu very patient user. Please start by saying how do I access the BIOS setup from reFIT bootup, and exactly what and why I need to try and change. (Will this mess up my reFIT bootup?) And anything else I need to do to finally be able to install Ubuntu. Thanks

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• How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  Color in digital photos doesn’t always end up the way you want, or even the way you see it. Thankfully, Photoshop, GIMP and Paint.NET all have excellent color correction tools, which you’ll find can solve your various color woes. It can be a pain to take a photograph and find that the color is oddly affected by the environment, lighting, or perhaps the choices you made when you shot the image in the first place. All of these problems are changeable, and in fact, you’ll be surprised how easy they can be to adjust. Read on to see what tools can help adjust your image in each of these three major graphics programs. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Hacker Proofing Your PC Sync Your Windows Computer with Your Ubuntu One Account [Desktop Client] Awesome 10 Meter Curved Touchscreen at the University of Groningen [Video] TV Antenna Helper Makes HDTV Antenna Calibration a Snap Turn a Green Laser into a Microscope Projector [Science] The Open Road Awaits [Wallpaper]

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• RPi and Java Embedded GPIO: Using Java to read input

  - by hinkmond

  Now that we've learned about using Java code to control the output of the Raspberry Pi GPIO ports (by lighting up LEDs from a Java app on the RPi for now and noting in the future the same Java code can be used to drive industrial automation or medical equipment, etc.), let's move on to learn about reading input from the RPi GPIO using Java code. As before, we need to start out with the necessary hardware. For this exercise we will connect a Static Electricity Detector to the RPi GPIO port and read the value of that sensor using Java code. The circuit we'll use is from William J. Beaty and is described at this Web link. See: Static Electricity Detector He calls it an "Electric Charge" detector, which is a bit misleading. A Field Effect Transistor is subject to nearby electro-magnetic fields, such as a static charge on a nearby object, not really an electric charge. So, this sensor will detect static electricity (or ghosts if you are into paranormal activity ). Take a look at the circuit and in the next blog posts we'll step through how to connect it to the GPIO port of your RPi and then how to write Java code to access this fun sensor. Hinkmond

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• How can I unit test rendering output?

  - by stephelton

  I've been embracing Test-Driven Development (TDD) recently and it's had wonderful impacts on my development output and the resiliency of my codebase. I would like to extend this approach to some of the rendering work that I do in OpenGL, but I've been unable to find any good approaches to this. I'll start with a concrete example so we know what kinds of things I want to test; lets say I want to create a unit cube that rotates about some axis, and that I want to ensure that, for some number of frames, each frame is rendered correctly. How can I create an automated test case for this? Preferably, I'd even be able to write a test case before writing any code to render the cube (per usual TDD practices.) Among many other things, I'd want to make sure that the cube's size, location, and orientation are correct in each rendered frame. I may even want to make sure that the lighting equations in my shaders are correct in each frame. The only remotely useful approach to this that I've come across involves comparing rendered output to a reference output, which generally precludes TDD practice, and is very cumbersome. I could go on about other desired requirements, but I'm afraid the ones I've listed already are out of reach.

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• XNA calculate normals for linesegment

  - by Gerhman

  I am quite new to 3D graphical programming and thus far only understand that normal somehow define the direction in which a vertex faces and therefore the direction in which light is reflected. I have now idea how they are calculated though, only that they are defined by a Vector3. For a visualizer that I am creating I am importing a bunch of coordinate which represent layer upon layer of line segments. At the moment I am only using a vertex buffer and adding the start and end point of each line and then rendering a linelist. The thing is now that I need to calculate the normal for the vertices of these line segments so that I can get some realistic lighting. I have no idea how to calculate these normal but I know they all face sideways and not up or down. To calculate them all I have are the start and end positions of each line segment. The below image is a representation of what I think I need to do in the case of an example layer: The red arrows represent the normal that should be calculates, the blue text represent the coordinates of the vertices and the green numbers represent their indices. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could please explain to me how I should calculate these normal.

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• Non-Obvious Topics to Learn for Game Development

  - by ashes999

  I've been writing games for around 10 years now (from QBasic to C# and everything in-between). I need to start stretching my skills into different areas. What are other, surprising topics I should read up on? Expected topics would include the usual suspects: Programming language of your choice Scripting language Source control Project management (or Agile) Graphics API Maybe some AI (A* path-finding?) Physics (projectile physics) Unit testing (automated testing) I'm looking for more esoteric topics; things that you don't expect to need to know, but if you do know them, they make a difference. This could include things like: Art skills (drawing, lighting, colouring, layout, etc.) Natural language processing The physics of sound (sound-waves, doppler effect, etc.) Personally, I feel that having technical art skills (eg. can make decent art-work if you can only come up with ideas; or, following Photoshop/GIMP tutorials) was the most beneficial for me. This is not intended to be an open-ended question; I'm looking for specific skills that helped you and you expect will continue to benefit you in the short- and long-term.

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