From: patrick
Location:
Date: 03/17/2008
I love the cover picture of this book. Something from the Way, though I think there are no stories of that universe in the book. Even better is this is a different, newer copy - of perhaps the library replaced the other.
Sisters is an interesting social (and especially linguistic) speculation. Similar to MOVING MARS in that sense. I couldn't stand it, though, cos for all some of the characters' advancements, let alone the NG's, the people were just like today. Insecure, and distracted with morality and 'fitness through challenge'. Blech.
On The Machineries of Joy: '83....you know, during that time, it WAS like that in the creation of The Last Starfighter. (Perhaps you encountred the folk working on this?) Even though Tron was almost two years old, and relatively successful, the terrain was still shaky. In the anniversay version DVD, I found most fascinating that one of the digital artists said, more or less: 'we had all this 'footage', it was phenomenal, but had run into a bottleneck, and, unless we scrapped the project, had to completely redo, at a severly reduced level of quality, the entire digital set of scenes.' That is, I really wonder what they originally had!
From: Greg Bear
Date: 03/19/2008
The cover on the Warner edition of TANGENTS is indeed Jim Burns's UK cover for EON, one of my favorites. As for "Machineries," I did drop by Digital Productions while they were preparing THE LAST STARFIGHTER. They had gigantic Crays and their 100-ton air conditioners going full blast to crunch their frames. Today, a good video card on a PC or game console renders at a much higher rate, and in full three-D and color!
From: patrick
Location:
Date: 03/19/2008
Yeah, it seemed like you had from how it read. I'd forgotten who produced TLS. Yes, a modern video card can outperform what they had back then, but it'll only show what it's given. Though the footage in TLS doesn't really hold up anymore, since the guy said it was almost nothing compared to the quality they originally had - meaning, they must've really gone whole-hog, and obviously to their disadvantage - I wonder what it looked like.
From: Greg Bear
Date: 04/02/2008
What I remember is that the only "live" version they could output to their displays involved raster or vector graphics. No color! The movie is still fun, but the graphics looked a little "smooth" even then. Seeing "Surf's Up" showed how far water graphics has grown in just the last few years--amazing oceans and waves! I'm not sure whether I'll be able to spot the difference in a couple of more years between real and CGI water. Characters--very good, but still need work.
From: patrick
Location:
Date: 04/02/2008
Um, that may've been. 'Live' wasn't the important part. I haven't seen any movies in a bit, though I have, somehow, seen some footage for "Surf's Up". Yeah, it looked pretty good.
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