jason_watkins

Eh, the epic marketing dude was either mistaken or simply lied in his presentation. See http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/DynamicLight.jpg and notice the shadows generated by the archway. It appears to me light sources do project a soft shadow "cookie", (by doing a blend between cube maps). True shadows generated by the level geometry are as hard edged as anything else. It looks like stencil shadowing to me, same as doom3 and many others. See http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/RagDoll.jpg for an even better example. The lantern laying sideways on the table projects a fuzzy circle shadow, approximating the penumbra from the open end of the lantern's casing. That's the cookie. The horizontal shadow it generates by being obscured by the edge of the table has no penumbra at all though. That's good ole stencil buffer shadow volumes. And _everything_ is going to have normal mapping in the next 2 years. The current hardware essencially makes it free. Does look like it'll be a goofy cool game tho:D. You really wanna get goosebumps... think about how many ray-triangle intersections a gpu can do right now (about 100mil/sec). Once that's up to ~400mil/sec and the software is slightly more flexible, in maybe 5 years, the numbers will be high enough to use photon mapping real time. And then all bets are off since rendering time will finally be decoupled from the number of shadow generating light sources, as well as stuff like global illumination, caustics, scatter, etc being realizable real time. I don't think people are really prepared for how real-time digital imaging is going to get over the next decade. Let alone the kind of stuff you renderman folks are going to be doing.

Ahh CS... I remember the days... hanging out at a buddy's, 3 of us playing CS until 4 in the morning living on taco bell and beer. That was a great summer. Dan: www.anandtech.com has pretty reliable advice imho. Their price guides are handy. Newegg.com is a reliable, reputable retailer that often has the rock bottom price to boot. Unfortunately I play games quite rarely now, aside from a little Go online. Nothing has really grabbed my interested unfortunately. I passed over a chance to work on medal of honor as I didn't wish to move to oklahoma. Now I wish I had. Grrr.

Check out the photos at: http://gallery.ad3pt.net/album16 These excelent photos are brought to you by Bryan of www.oldsnowboards.com. I'm amazed he stopped riding enough to snap so many. Thanks! We have a nicely edited video clip thanks to Art: http://www.ad3pt.net/~jwatkins/Mt%20Hood.wmv A clip of Jim carving some out of bounds goodness on the glacier: http://www.ad3pt.net/~jwatkins/ZigZag.mov Tim doing the same: http://www.ad3pt.net/~jwatkins/ZigZag2.mov And the clip Jim probibly wishes would just go away: http://www.ad3pt.net/~jwatkins/flip.mov

Here's a short video filmed and edited together by Art: http://www.ad3pt.net/~jwatkins/Mt%20Hood.wmv Thanks Art!. Next year I'll have to remember to bring a camera and camcorder and do a bit of filming... to many people were enjoying riding to stop and take pretty pictures :D

email me if you would like any video or pictures hosted on the web: jason_watkins@pobox.com I'm planning to ride next weekend. Windsurfing sounds excelent, but I lack a setup and haven't learned waterstarts (yet):D

Well this was a great weekend riding. Friday was great... That buttery goodness past the gate on the glacier made for some fantastic riding and great scenery. The weather was against us Saterday and Sunday, but that didn't stop anyone I could see from having a good time. I was very impressed by everyone's riding. Kenny nailing aggressive laid out carves on the first run refrozen cord with bad visability... I can only hope I can ride close to that (if) when I grow up. Then of course there's Sean making even switch carves look so easy... and Mark, well, what else can you say about that besides "wow." And now we have photographic evidence that Jim can in fact fall off a snowboard every once in a while. Big thanks to Sean, Donek and Bomber for the demos. Mike may have even gotten a Donek board on tv :p. Big thanks to MikeT for organizing everything and having us all over to share a beer. Thanks to Nick for providing us all with entertainment. Hope this happens again next year... better weather! more riders!

weather forecast is looking very good... a couple inches of new snow still due to start the week, then sunny skies through to the weekend.

respect the kite, take a lesson. this lucky guy actually surived this incident.

I'd be interested in that Jim. Since I've not done any climbing like that, I'd be relying on your judgement for weither I'd be in over my head on the way up or down. I'd be equally interested in heading to bachelor as Mike suggested.

zach: Hood river is just to the NE of Mt Hood, and timberline is on the south slope. It's probibly a 45 minute drive or so, fairly reasonable. Hood river is a pretty swell town to hang out in. MikeT's place is around 45 minutes from Timberline to the East, so at worst you might have an hour and a half drive back to your hotel if you go to his BBQ. This photo is a month old now, but it shows the silcox hut was burried... they got some good snow this year. Still 140+ inches claimed at the lodge.

It might be worthwhile for some of us to email/phone t-line and let them know that we think it blows...

Mmmmm... massive attack. Back in the day you could just find a hobbiest group on mp3.com and have a pretty good chance of negociating a royalty free use or one time payment by email. You can still surf artist information for them via archive.org's old copies of the site and find someone, but I'm afraid I don't know anything new that's come up with as many good artists. Depending on how much revenue you have to work with you may actually be better off liscensing a real tune by a b string band than overpaying for a poor royalty free tune. There are a few good short tracks on www.open-songs.com in a few genres I found the other day for something I'm working on. I suspect that if someone had the time to do a lot of google hunting, they could put together an "ok" selection of free tracks. Nothing like the quality of liscensing a massive attack tune though :( If you were willing to release the ECES dvd under the creative commons liscense, you could use tracks off magnatune.com and a few other sites for free legally. That doesn't preclude selling DVD's by the way, if you read into the liscense specifics. But it would be a bit of a pain. BMI liscenses everything under the planet for public performance, but AFAIK, you have to go to each label individually to negociate a liscense for a DVD. The only band I know of that's especially receptive to licensing for very small projects is Fear Factory. Their song ressurection is one of my favorites. Good luck :rolleyes:

I'll be up there with the gf. I may be up there again on sunday as well.

Mark, Jim, great to get some runs in with you. What a great day.

Having gone a bit down the road of constant ankle pain I gotta say I'd break the board anytime. If it wasn't for hardboots I might not have even been able to finish out this season. As it stands, there were way to many days this season I had to snowboard on eggshells.

woot! I have wiggled out of work, I'll be up there. :D Jim: hope to see you up there. Lets home Meadows continues its recent trend of using their brains and has cascade and upper heather open.

Can't ditch work :( My girlfriend was up today. She said there was about 6 inches of soft and loose on lower heather, and it was snowing pretty good throughout the day. Tomorrow is probibly going to be very nice.

Speed: hey, whatever works for you :). For other data points, my girlfriend is 95 lbs, and just spent her first day on hardboots on something I'm guessing is around 154 and quite soft in flex. I'm 145 lbs, and have about 9 days on hardboots now. I've tried a stiff 163, and two 167's, one I'd call "medium" and one I'd call "too soft". Based on that, I'm guessing my all mountain duty board is going to be medium flex and around 170cm. I don't know anything about that proton, but I'd guess if it's stiffness is right for your 125 lbs it's probibly a lot of fun... but once you get used to the hardboots, you might want to beg/borrow your way onto a longer ride for an afternoon, especially if you're after speed.

Ohh sorry, I got rambling on there and forgot about the liners. I first tried a day in hardboots using some cheap shells and my softboot liners. I was able to get some of the feeling of carving a turn with hardboots... but, it was not comfortable. Now that I've tried them again with a good pair of boots and thermoflex liners, I'm quite comfortable.

If you think you might be able to stuff your foot into a mens 6, there's a chance you might fit in the boots my girlfriend has been trying. It probibly wouldn't be comfortable (toes all mashed up), but you're welcome to try. Otherwise, ski boots are a little to stiff to be ideal, but that sounds like the best way to give things a try without spending any cash. I plan to ride at meadows this weekend. I can bring up the board and bindings my girlfriends been trying. It's a quite soft nidecker carving board, I think around 154. Last saterday was the first time she tried hardboots. She normally rides duck, so was a little concerned she'd have trouble with the lift or linking turns. Ends up she jumped on the gear and had no problem at all. Actually, she liked it a lot... if she was off work this weekend there'd be no way to pry that board outta her fingers for you to try :p. Unfortunately, there's no place to rent apline equipment in Portland... or prettymuch anywhere. But, thee is a coach up in Tacoma that has a small stash of equipment: Sean Cassidy . He may be able to put together something for you to try and buy. I've just started on hardboots myself, and got some coaching from him durring a multi-day camp (www.snowperformance.com). I don't know what his private lesson arrangments are, but I'd definately reccomend him. It would have taken me a whole season or longer to figure out what he taught me in just a couple drills. Some of us are getting together for a few days riding and some informal tip sharing at Timberline in May (13th through 16th). Sean should be there, along with other great riders, and I'm sure everyone would be stoked to share some knowledge.

I'm also a hardboot beginner. I recently spent a few days on a 19.5 wide donek. Sean from snowperformance suggested a 18.5 inch stance width, with angles 55/50. This stance works great for me so far. I have size 27 boots, and had a touch of overhang... but was able to get the board high enough on edge toeside for my knees to be scraping the slush. Now I'm riding a wider freeride board (24cm) with my hardboots, and I've found I had to lower my angles to 50/45. At least in my beginner experience, if your front toe is not close to the edge of the board, it's very awkward and tiring to balance on the toeside edge. Underhang is evil. How big are you? 149 sounds pretty short, especially for high speed bombing :D

Yeah. I've gotten in 9 days or so now on hardboots, and am still very inconsistant. Sometimes everythings working and I actually feel more confident than on my usual setup. But much of the day I'm floundering around trying to get back in the groove. I had your crash experience this weekend at hood. Was working on carving, and was getting way to much speed over a bunch of choppy stuff. Got thrown off my heelside by a bump I didn't soak up. By the time I stopped skipping and sliding, I had snow packed all the way down my back, the backs of my pants legs, and even into my boots. Yeah, hope to see you guys at hood in May. I'm stoked that it looks like there will be a couple of us that are just starting out on plates... we can compare notes.

If it was someone with hardboots on an incline, that'd be me. I'm still getting used to even just cruising around in hardboots... the one medium steep section of mush moguls around there was really schooling me. I had a good time. I'm going to plan on getting up there a few times next season.

I was on Forest Express most of the day. I do remember seeing some carved tracks on queens that I wasn't sure were mine... I probibly just missed you guys several times :P. I radio'd on 4-11 a couple times as well. No biggie, it would have been nice to meet some people but I enjoyed riding your hill. Did you guys see the skiier chick that did her last run topless? :D

hey, where were you guys? Only saw one hardbooter all day. Anyhow, that was my first time at crystal... you guys have a nice mountain. I bet that place is fantastic on a powder day.