I have now finally finished my Phoenix Avatar Model, for the second time. The first time it was not printable, due to the walls being too thin in several places. This time, I am confident that it will print successfully.

I had to redo quite a lot of the mesh, and the quality did suffer as a result, since I had to reduce detail, especially around the hands. The fingers couldn’t be printed at all, I had to replace them with some “flames” that covered the hands. The hair was also a problem.

I chose to purchase the model from Shapeways (my first purchase from them) instead of Imaterialise, even though it was slightly more expensive, since Shapeways has an online automated model checking tool that makes it very easy to tell if a model has thin walls or not. Imaterialise doesn’t really have this, it seems to be up to the customer to know if their model is printable or not.

Getting the texture to show up was tricky as well, I eventually had to use .X3D format, instead of .DAE. I also reduced my texture size from 2048×2048 to 1024×1024.

The post P168: 3D Print Part 3 first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have been wanting to build a holographic pyramid for a while, and I am finally ready to attempt it.

The concept behind holopyramids is very simple, and it based on “Peppers ghost”. Basically, a glass or clear plastic 4-sides pyramid is created and placed either over or under a screen.
The light from the screen will be reflected in such a way that the image on the screen will appear to hover in mid air. The effect is supposed to be quite striking when done properly.

I have learned (From HERE) that add a light to the center of the pyramid, and adding a tinted material to the pyrmaid prevents double-reflection and improves the effect.

The only thing I am not sure of is the angle that the pyramids sides should be. I have chosen 60 degrees, this means each side is an equilateral triangle. I assumed initially that 45 degrees would have been better, but I made a few paper models, and this just didn’t seem right.

Since light bounces off of an object at the same angle that it strikes it at, this means that the light from the screen will be reflecting off of the pyramid at 60 degrees. This probably means that I will need to mount the monitor on the bottom, and place the pyramid on top, and then view it from above. This will also mean that I won’t need to build a stand for the monitor, which I would have had to do if I wanted to mount the monitor on top and put the pyramid on the bottom.

The only disadvantage with this approach is that the screen of the monitor will be visible, in addition to the reflection, which might spoil the illusion. However, if I mount the monitor on top, I would need to mount the entire assembly high off of the ground in order for the user to be able to see the reflection properly, without it being blocked by the rear of the monitor, so a bottom mounted monitor is probably going to work out easier.

The next goal is to buy the perspex glue and the tint material. Perspex glue has the same refractive index as perspex itself, so it shouldn’t show a visible seam when it hardens.

The post P-132: Holographic Pyramid first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have almost finished my next attempt at 3d printing my phoenix avatar.

I have added some flame effects to the hands to prevent the fingers from protruding too much and breaking off.

There is some more work to be done with the model, the texturing, and some more preparation for printing, but I think I am almost ready to give this another try.

The post P168: 3D Print Part 2 first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

Some time ago, I completed a model that I had planned to have 3D-printed, but there were some issues with the wall thickness which prevented it from being accepted for printing.

I am in the process of reworking this model to remove the thin walls. This is taking a long time, and I have had to reduce the detail and overall quality of the model to make it printable.

I am hoping to get this to a printable stage sometime in the next few weeks.

The post P-168: 3D Print first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I am progressing well with setting up my new machine, and I’m posting this from it.
I am still Enjoying Windows 10, despite some minor teething troubles (mostly involving me being unfamiliar with where the settings and options are).

I have installed the new version of Visual Studio Express (2015) and used it to compile the latest release of T3D. I had to install the June 2010 version of the DirectX SDK first though, since it is the latest version (The DX SDK is no longer current, but T3D still requires it).

I also isnstalled Skyrim, to see how well my machine performs in games. As expected, when starting Skyrim for the first time, I got this message:

“Skyrim will detect your video hardware and set options accordingly”

And this was the result:

If that’s not visible, it chose “ultra high quality” for the settings. Ignore the “Resolution” information, I am using a small monitor just to set up my new machine.

So far, so good. I am still figuring out how to use the new Windows 10 “Game bar” to take screenshots from in game, and on how to increase the resolution of the screenshot.

I also have a lot more software to install before I can switch to my new machine permanently.

The post P-166: New Computer Build: December 2015: Part 6: Configuration first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have completed the build of my new system, and have begun the configuration phase.

I had planned, initially, to install Windows 7 on the new machine, since that is what I am using on my development machine now. However, while conducting research, I decided to give Windows 10 a try. Windows 7 is now two operating systems behind the current standard (Windows 8 and 8.1) and so it is close to being “obsolete”. There are also installation issues with Windows 7 and Intel skylake chips when installing over USB, since Microsoft have removed support for an “EHCI host controller”.  THIS site goes into much more detail. There are ways around this, such as installing from a bootable DVD, but this has it’s own problems, and optical drives themselves are becoming obsolete (on my current machine, I disconnected my Optical Drive for some reason, and didn’t realise it for over a year!).

I have heard relatively good things about Windows 10 (and some concerning things, regarding privacy) and I have decided to try it, and if I don’t like it, I can revert to Windows 7. From what I understand, Windows 7/8/8.1 users can upgrade to Windows 10 for free, so I won’t have wasted any money if I do go back to 7.

I had some issues getting a bootable USB stick working. The Microsoft “Media Creation Tool” took several hours to download the Windows 10 image, and then failed while writing that image to the USB stick (although this may have been due to issues with my antivirus, which I didn’t disable). I then tried to download the ISO manually, twice, but the download failed, likely due to the very slow download speed I was getting.

Eventually, I used the Media Creation Tool to download the ISO, and then used Rufus to burn that ISO onto a USB stick. This worked great, Windows 10 installed very quickly and with no hassle at all, and my first impressions of it are exceptionally good, it is a very slick, fast, and nice looking operating system. I have Windows 8.1 on my tablet, and I have to admit I don’t particularly like it, but Windows 10, at least from what I’ve seen so far, is a major improvement.

It seems to combine the best of Windows 8 and 8.1 with the best of Windows 7. I get my Start menu back, which is essential, but I also get a much more modern, more interactive user interface.

I have not been using it much yet, I still have to install a lot of drivers and updates, and then install and configure all of my software, so it will likely be a few days at least before I will be using it as my main machine, but so far, I am very impressed with Windows 10.

The post P-166: New Computer Build: December 2015: Part 5: Configuration first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have completed my new system build, with the exception of installing the hard disk/s and the Operating System, software, etc. This is a short account of the build.

In general, it was very fast and simple, with just one minor problem which I will mention below. The parts I chose were all correct, and were recognised correctly by the BIOS screen once the build was complete.

Some of the main parts of the system, from left to right: CPU Cooler, CPU, Power supply, case, graphics card.

I decided to install the power supply and the mother board in the case first. This would normally be ok, but I made one slight over sight, which I will come to.
After some research, I decided to mount the powersupply facing up, with the fan facing into the case, even though my case has an exhaust port at the bottom, just under the power supply. This was because modern power supplies are designed to draw air in using the fan, and extract it out of the case through the rear. This means that having the fan facing up will help to extract warm air from the case. Since my graphics cards fans are directly over the power supply, this should mean that the warm air from the graphics cards and other components are more easily extracted out of the case. In addition, this will protect the power supply from sucking up dust from the floor beneath the case, which would cause problems for it. My power supply also has a very large fan, (which I chose in order to keep the system as quiet as possible without compromising cooling efficiency) and the exhaust port is designed for a smaller fan. This means if I mounted the power supply face down, it would block a large part of the fan, which could cause dangerous overheating issues.

The motherboard. Generally, the CPU cooler should be attached to the CPU BEFORE the motherboard in installed in the case. With small stock coolers, it is usually fairly simple to install the cooler even when it is in the case, however, my Zalman CNPS14X Cooler is much bigger than a normal cooler, and I foolishly forgot to install this before the motherboard was in the case. I hadn’t installed the CPU yet, so I could have just taken out the motherboard and installed the CPU and cooler outside the case, but luckily I was able to take the top of the case off and make just enough room to install the Cooler properly without having to remove the board.
This was the only minor problem in the build.

The CPU installed.

Assembling and installing the Zalman cooler was difficult, even without my added mistake of installing the motherboard in the case first. However, it will be much more efficient, and much quieter, than a stock cooler, so it will be worth it.

This shows the limited amount of room I had to work with. I had to install and tighten 4 bolts to the cooler from inside the case. In my defence, this may have had to be done anyway, since the bolts had to pass through the back panel of my computer case.

The cooler, finally, installed.

The most important component, the graphics card! This is an MSI GTX 980Ti with 6 GB’s of RAM. I was worried about fitting the graphics card into the case, especially with the added size of the huge Zalman cooler (I didn’t realise it was so big when I bought it), especially since my new case is a standard ATX case like my old one, and I had issues with fitting my old graphics card in. Luckily, I had measured properly, and, after rearranging some cabling, the card fitted in perfectly.
The reason, incidentally, why my old card had such trouble fitting, even though the case is the same size, is that my old case had a fan mounted in the side panel, and this protrudes into the case right where the power cables plug into the graphics card. My new case has all its fans mounted in the front or the back, not the side, so this wasn’t an issue. I would recommend not buying cases with side mounted fans if using an oversize graphics card, for this reason.

The system up and running! The red lights are on the mother board, and I believe they can be customised and changed by an Asus control panel, I haven’t looked into this yet. The blue lights are case lights.

The system is incredibly quiet, it is actually quieter than my laptop, it is difficult to tell that it is even on! My goal of reducing the noise of the system was a complete success. Of course, the system was running on idle, which means the power supply and graphics card card weren’t on. Under load, it will produce more noise, but even so, it will be much quieter than my current system.

Successful POST and BIOS access. All components installed correctly and ready for action. I now just need to wait until my hard disk gets here and I can install the OS and my software.

The post P-166: New Computer Build: December 2015: Part 4: Building first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have prepared three candidate builds for my new machine, with a fourth build that is a final build, it is a combination of the other three.

The first build is minimialist, and involved keeping as many of my current parts as I can. I am just upgrading the RAM, Graphics Card, and Hard Drive. This is not optimal, since my current machine is over five years old, and it is unlikely that my processor (AMD Phenom 2 X6) would be up to the standards required of today’s games, even if it met my own personal requirements. I would also be unlikely to get the full benefit of the very powerful GTX 980 ti graphics card with my current machine.

The second build is a full new system, but I had tried to keep the price down as much as possible, such as by using an i5 instead of an i7 CPU, and 16GB of RAM instead of 32 GB.

The third build is also a full new system, but I have used higher spec parts and I have not paid as much attention to price. I was surprised to note that the difference in price between the lower end build and the higher end build was relatively slight, and so I decided to create a fourth build that was a combination of the two.

This final build has an i7 processor, which does not provide a huge benefit for gaming compared to the i5, but the addition of multi-threading provides 8 logical processes, compared to the 4 oh the i5. This will greatly benefit multi-tasking, something that is very useful for development.

I am using 16 GB of RAM for several reasons.
Firstly, 16GB is going to be enough for the forseeable future. Most games and development utilities would not come close to utilising 32 GB of RAM. Even 16GB is probably excessive for most tasks.
Secondly, I was surprised to discover that the newer Skylake chips do not support quad-channel memory, only dual-channel. It is surprising that the Skylake chips, being newer, don’t support quad-channel memory, when the older Haswell-E chips do. I had thought of getting 4 sticks of RAM (Possibly 4×8, giving 32GBs), but with just dual channel support, there is not as much reason to fill all of my DIMM slots.

I have also eliminated the backup hard drive from this build, since I can reuse the one I have for the time being.

I have also selected a cheaper motherboard. I really like the ROG boards from Asus, I have a ROG Crosshair IV in my current system and it’s excellent, but I feel that the extra features that the ROG board has compared to the Asus Z170 are mainly designed for Overclocking, which is something I would never do on a development system. The ROG Maximus VIII probably has a slightly higher build quality, and it can support slightly faster memory, but other than that, it’s basically the same.

The power supply that I selected is on “Tier 1”, the highest Tier, of the power supply rating system, so it should be fine.

WD Caviar drives are also reputable, so I should be ok there too.

The post P-166: New Computer Build: December 2015: Part 3: Candidate Parts Lists first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

This is a continuation of my previous post regarding a new PC build, designed for gaming and game development. The previous post discusses the CPU, the RAM, and the Motherboard.

Graphics Card

The graphics card is the single most important component for gaming. I have left it until the end because it is independent of all other components, all modern graphics cards are compatible with and kind of CPU, RAM, and motherboard.
There is a difficult decision to make here, too. Due to the importance of the graphics card, I really should be spending as much money here as I can afford (which is why buying a lower-spec CPU or a cheaper motherboard might be a good idea). When I first started building my own machines, the choice was much easier, you would go for the most powerful Nvida or ATI(as it was then, they have now been bought by AMD) card that you could afford, so you really only had to compare the current best card from each company. What complicates this decision now is that both AMD and Nvidia make a number of excellent quality graphics cards, and third-party vendors sell these cards at quite variable prices, sometimes with aftermarket cooling solutions, factory overclocks, and modified specs. It can be very difficult to choose a card from this myriad of options, especially when all of them advertise themselves as being the best!

The single most powerful graphics card on the planet is, hands down, the Nvidia Geforce GTX Titan Z. This is a beast of a card, but it costs over €2000 just for the card! I don’t think there are too many enthusiasts who would be prepared to spend that much, even given the sheer power that you get for that money.

Assuming a more reasonable budget, the cards that I would be looking at would the the Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti, and the AMD Radeon R9 Fury and R9 Fury X. All of these cards are powerful, and should provide more than enough punch for a number of years at least. I do not intend to purchase an SLI/Crossfire solution, even though all of these cards support it, because it is just not cost efficient. You are buying two graphics cards, but the second card is usually only producing a moderate performance boost at best, because the vast majority of games are just not optimised for multiple cards, in the same way that they aren’t optimised for multiple cores.

I can afford to go with a higher end card, such as the GTX 980 Ti or R9 Fury X, so I can narrow my choices down to these two cards. Having read some benchmarks and reviews, it seems that the GTX 980 Ti is more powerful than the Fury X, and yet it doesn’t cost all that much more. In addition, the GTX 980 Ti doesn’t have that odd two-piece water cooling solution that the Fury X has, which is an advantage.

Hard Drive

Hard drives and storage solutions are vital for any machine, but are particularly important for a machine which will be used for important development work in addition to gaming. A reliable hard drive is most important, with speed coming second.
I used to use Western Digital Raptor disks, which are 10,000 RPM high-speed drives. It is also possible to get 15,000 RPM drives. However, the higher rotation speed causes additional stress to the components, and therefore must decrease reliability. A standard 7,200 RPM disk is most reliable, and my personal (current) favourite is the excellent Western Digital Caviar line of desktop drives. I use both the High-Performance “Black” Edition and the Economical “Green” edition. I will likely aim for a 1TB drive. I don’t want to go any higher, since I don’t want to store all of my data in one place, I would rather keep my main disk relatively small, and use external drives and storage media for archiving. Of course, I will also be doing regular backups to an eSata or USB 3.0 external disk. I may also choose to use RAID 1 on my main disk or backup disks or both to provide additional protection.

Notice that I have not yet mentioned SSD’s yet. There is a very important reason for this. Even though SSD’s are faster than HDD’s, particularly with random reads, and this would make a big difference in gaming, their reliability is just not up to HDD standards yet, and it may never be. SSD manufacturers have only recently begun offering 5 year warranties on SSD’s, and many companies still only offer a 3 year warranty. HDD’s have at least 5 years warranties.

The other frightening thing I learned about SSD drives is how quickly and seriously the data decays if the drive is left unpowered. THIS article states that leaving an SSD unpowered for just a week in a warm room can completely erase the disk!! Now, normally I would not leave a drive completely without power for a week, but it could conceivably happen (a power cut, power supply failure, etc). It also means that the drive can’t be used as standalone (outside of PC) storage. Combined with the shorter lifetime of SSD’s (due to the way the flash memory on board has a limited number of reads/writes), and far greater sensitivity to temperature, a HDD is the way to go.

I have decided on just one moderate-capacity HDD, instead of the common strategy of using two drives, one for the OS and software, and one for data storage. This is because a split setup require twice as many virus scans to be conducted at once, twice as many defragmentation tools, disk scanning tools, backup programs etc etc, so it is more of a drain on resources. In addition, it is possible that splitting the OS and software and the Data may cause issues for some programs, the program may expect the data to be on the same disk as the program. This is unlikely in the modern world, where programs can be expected to work with Network and Cloud storage, but it is possible.

The idea behind using two drives is quite simple. If a virus or operating system glitch or error causes the boot drive to become corrupt, you can easily wipe it and reinstall it without worrying about losing data. Howver, I believe that splitting the OS and Data does not really provide an advantage. If either drive ever fails, it will be much simpler and faster to restore a recent backup that it will be to reinstall the OS and the Software programs. Having two drives just means you need to store and restore two backups, while providing no real benefit. It may be faster, if you were to use an SSD for the OS disk, and install Games on that disk, while keeping data on a more reliable HDD, however using a good quality HDD for both OS, Games, and Programs is the best solution, I feel.

Power Supply

There is not a whole lot to be said about power supplies, really. As long as there is enough power (for a single GPU high end system, with few peripheral devices, 750 Watts should be enough. 1000 W plus systems are really only needed for SLI/Crossfire Configurations) and the power supply is reliable, there shouldn’t be an problems. My current Antec TruePower 750W power supply has served me well, but I think for reliability purposes it really should be replaced. I will probably get another 750W power supply, possibly a Corsair model.
Case
This is quite important. My current case is a completely transparent ATX case. It works very well, and I really love to be able to see my components at work, however, there are some issues. The main issue is that my current case mounts a fan on the side panel, directly over the power input to my graphics card. This means that I have to bend the cables of the graphics card’s power supply more than I would like to get them to fit. I have had some issues already with the cables moving and rattling against the fan. Obviously, I want to avoid this in the future.

Additionally, my case is quite noisy, with 4 80mm fans at work (in addition to the graphics card, power supply, and CPU fans). I would like to switch to 120mm fans, or even bigger, since these are just as effective as smaller fans at cooling, but rotate slower, so they produce less noise.

I had considered upgrading to an Extended ATX case (EATX) or BTX, but I no longer thing this is necessary. I have found a number of inexpensive cases that offer both unobstructed side panels (front, rear, and top mounted fans only) and 120mm or bigger fans. The one I am leaning towards at the moment is the Kolink Aviator, in white. It’s a stylish case with a futuristic look and good specs, as well as support for up to 5 120mm fans.

I have now completed the vast majority of my research, and I just need to prepare a parts list and full price list before I start ordering components.

The post P-166: New Computer Build: December 2015: Part 2: Graphics Card, Hard Drive/s, Power Supply, Case first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I had planned to wait until the release of the Oculus Rift Consumer Version (CV1) before upgrading my computer, but I have had some issues lately with my machine which indicated that my graphics card, at least, is dying, and my RAM may be about to fail as well. I already had to replace on stick due to faulty RAM, leaving me with 6GB’s out of my original 8GB’s. My machine is now almost six years old, and has been used extensively for heavy-duty tasks for the entire time, so it has done very well to last this long. This was the first machine that I build completely from scratch (instead of upgrading or buying a prebuilt machine) and it has been my most reliable and longest lasting machine.

However, I now feel that I should upgrade immediately, instead of waiting until Quarter 1 2016, since, number 1, the Oculus Rift could be four months away (If it releases in late March, or is delayed), and I don’t know if my current machine will last that long, especially if I use it extensively. Secondly, it is unlikely that there will be any major hardware releases in the next few months.
So, on to the build.

Initially, I had hoped to replace only my graphics card and RAM, and buy a new Hard disk. However, my CPU is an AMD Phenom II X6, and may not be up to the challenge of the Oculus Rift, or modern Games or Software Programs. If I replace my chip, I will also need to replace my Motherboard, since the AMD AM3 Socket is now obsolete.

The primary purpose of the machine will be, obviously, game development and software development, with gaming being of secondary importance. This means that it will need to be powerful enough to run my own code (which can be quite demanding, depending on what I am doing) as well as the latest games, while also being able to multi-task and handle the many programs that I would typically be working with at once.

CPU

The first major change that I intend to make is to switch from AMD to Intel for my CPU needs.

I have actually never bought an Intel CPU for a machine that I built myself, I have always used AMD. This is because AMD used to have comparable or better performance to Intel for gaming at a lower price. This is no longer true. Current AMD chips such as the AMD FX 8 and 9 series are generally known to be poor or very poor for gaming. AMD seem to have almost withdrawn from the desktop enthusiast market to focus on APU development (Combined CPU and GPU, used for lower-spec machines or mobile devices) and Graphics Cards.

This leaves Intel the clear choice, with one slight exception. AMD currently favours more cores, (up to 8, usually) with less performance per core. Intel generally favours fewer cores (usually 4 to 6) with significantly greater performance per core. Since the majority of games still do not effectively use multiple cores, Intel Chips almost always perform better. However, for a machine that will be used extensively for game development, multitasking performance is a vital consideration. I would always have many programs open at once, from compilers to image editing programs, to 3D visualisation software, games that I am have created, and all kind of other software and web browsers.
In addition to this, some games, such as multiplayer games, use the CPU much more extensively, due to the their nature. I spend a lot of time developing virtual worlds and multiplayer games, so this is something to consider. AMD FX chips, with their greater number of cores, could perform better here.

The i5 line of CPU’s from Intel however, have just 4 cores, with no hyperthreading, which means, basically, that 4 physical cores is all you get. This is a shame, because otherwise, the i5 is an excellent choice for a gaming CPU. It is powerful, and relatively inexpensive, while also having good power consumption stats. However,  with the i7, while it’s greater cost may not justify it’s moderate increase in gaming performance, it does have 4 (or 6, for the extreme high end models) cores, with hyperthreading, giving 4 physical cores and 8 logical cores. This would provide greater multitasking performance.

The question then becomes one of function.
For a machine being built on a budget, or being designed more for multi-tasking than gaming, an AMD FX might be a good choice.
For a strict gaming PC, the i5 wins.  The CPU is of lesser importance to the GPU for gaming, so a smart move would be to buy a high-spec i5 instead of an i7 and spend the money saved on a better GPU.
However, for a machine that will also be used heavily for multitasking, it may be better to get a mid-spec i7, and still get a high-spec GPU. This will work out more expensive, but unfortunately, the only way to get the best of both worlds, is to pay for it.

I have decided on an Intel chip, and their newer Socket 1151 architecture. I am not certain whether I will get an i5 or i7 yet, it will depend on the best prices that I can get from suppliers.

RAM

The next piece of the puzzle is RAM. DDR3 is now on the way out, so purchasing the new DDR4 RAM is the only sensible choice. DDR4 RAM, while obviously more expensive than DDR3, is still very reasonable. I had planned to get 16GB of RAM, but I have seen 32GB’s of Corsair RAM for sale for about €300, which is an excellent price. RAM is often overlooked for gaming and general computing. Games use RAM extensively, as do applications. Ever wonder where the data from all those programs you have open is stored? Or from all those tabs that you have open in your browser? Insufficient RAM is a big cause of system slowdowns and poor performance, and there is certainly no such thing as having “too much” RAM. I like Corsair, the Dominator RAM that I have in my current system has served me very well, so I will likely pick up some DDR 4 Vengeance RAM.

Motherboard

Choosing the CPU (and Socket) and RAM first makes the motherboard selection quite a bit easier. I need something that is Socket 1151 compatible, with support for DDR4 RAM, and is aimed at the performance market. I am a fan of Asus, two of my development/gaming machines have used Asus boards (My current one uses a Crosshair IV formula, which I love. I would get a Crosshair V formula, but it only supports the AMD platform). I am looking at an Asus Maximus HERO at the moment, but I don’t know if I want to spend €200 plus on a board. There are several other cheaper options that I might go with, but saving money on the board might not be the best idea, since a cheap motherboard will hurt the performance of their entire build, and maybe even affect the reliability of components.

These are the three components for which compatibility is key. The CPU, RAM, and Motherboard all need be chosen carefully to make sure they work properly together.

My next posts will deal with the single most important part of a gaming machine, the graphics card, as well as the hard drives (SSD or HDD?) and some discussion of the case and cooling options (Water or air?) and power supply. When I get closer to a solution, I will also post a final parts list.

The post P-166: New Computer Build: December 2015: Part 1: CPU, RAM, and Motherboard first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.