WebGL superlative overload
category: code [glöplog]
Is it just me that gets more than averagely annoyed by articles that praise mediocre real-time productions just because they're WebGL? Example: http://www.netmagazine.com/features/behind-scenes-lights-latest-webgl-sensation
I've seen that production. It was sub-par, at best. All the "clever tricks" they mention in the article are old, well-known and average looking. It's phrasing like "The latest WebGL sensation!" and "mind-blowing 3D music video" that just rubs me the wrong way.
I know I'm being "cranky old man, yelling at kids on his lawn"-ish right now but I just had to check if it's just me that react to lavish praise and superlative overload directed at sub-par and dull productions, just because they use "new" technology.
I've seen that production. It was sub-par, at best. All the "clever tricks" they mention in the article are old, well-known and average looking. It's phrasing like "The latest WebGL sensation!" and "mind-blowing 3D music video" that just rubs me the wrong way.
I know I'm being "cranky old man, yelling at kids on his lawn"-ish right now but I just had to check if it's just me that react to lavish praise and superlative overload directed at sub-par and dull productions, just because they use "new" technology.
The mainstream has discovered Dutch colors!
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Wow! MORE PRECISION! Their "solution" involves blurring! MAGIC!We finally realised that the standard colour resolution of 256 levels of grey wasn't high enough for our needs. It required more precision. Our solution involves further softening of the height map values inside JavaScript, to produce gentle hills and rounded valleys.
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To fade the spheres to black and white we use a custom shader, with multiply and additive parameters. In graphics cards, RGB colour values range from 0 to 1, instead of 0 to 255. This way, if we multiply by 1 we get the same colour, but if we do it by 0 we obtain black (0,0,0). Adding works as expected, if we add 0 the colour doesn't change, but by adding 1 we get white (1,1,1) as the result is clamped.
CUSTOM SHADER I TELL YOU! AMAZING!
Oh come on, it's not that bad compared to a 64k from 10 years ago.
:)
Go make a demo about it (that kicks the living shit out of all this amateur'ish crap). Then get the attention of the media and reap huge amounts of fame and fortune.
On second thought; you're not just posting this to trick the rest of us into doing exactly that, are you?
On second thought; you're not just posting this to trick the rest of us into doing exactly that, are you?
Coming from someone who just made an Amiga-demo that would kick the ass out of anything we've seen on the WebGL-front so far... what do you think? ;)
Can't wait for your first WebGL demo gloom! Show us how lame we are! Until then, keep crying for how unfair the world is with you ;)
This is the same thing you get when people do mediocre productions on any unusual platform. This time it's WebGL. Fine. It's just a bit more mainstream than the typical unusual platforms and all the hipsters are flocking 'round :)
Hmm, tbh that WebGL thingie was worth looking at, atleast it`s nice :)
Btw, be glad that there's a new platform that hipsters care about. It's a nice new demo audience.
Gloom:
For 50% of whatever Mozilla/Khronos paid you to start this thread, we can talk. (It'll take a lot more to get me to touch javascript though ;)
But on a more serious note: seeing naive crap being hyped as pure brilliance is indeed really annoying, but this is what tends to happen with "new exciting technologies" that don't have an established market yet. The people who actually know what they're doing are busy making money elsewhere, while a bunch of jokers with nothing better to do start experimenting with the new tech.
If it turns out that there's a real opportunity there then this'll all even out as the "good guys" move in (with some of the jokers either being run out of business and others continuing to laugh all the way to the bank due to their first-mover advantage, or due to actually having learnt something in the process... :)
Note: by "business" in this case I don't necessarily mean stuff people make money from (although it's absolutely a possibility :)
For 50% of whatever Mozilla/Khronos paid you to start this thread, we can talk. (It'll take a lot more to get me to touch javascript though ;)
But on a more serious note: seeing naive crap being hyped as pure brilliance is indeed really annoying, but this is what tends to happen with "new exciting technologies" that don't have an established market yet. The people who actually know what they're doing are busy making money elsewhere, while a bunch of jokers with nothing better to do start experimenting with the new tech.
If it turns out that there's a real opportunity there then this'll all even out as the "good guys" move in (with some of the jokers either being run out of business and others continuing to laugh all the way to the bank due to their first-mover advantage, or due to actually having learnt something in the process... :)
Note: by "business" in this case I don't necessarily mean stuff people make money from (although it's absolutely a possibility :)
Mr.doob: I didn't know I offended everyone in the history of WebGL with that comment. :) Also, the world isn't unfair to me, not even a little, so please stop with the straw-man. :)
It's just that with things like the example above, the metric has moved to "doing something because of a platform" instead of "doing something despite of the platform", which ought to be the real goal.
Showering mediocre stuff with praise does no good at all. The "Lights"-thing had almost zero production value, especially when compared to previously released pieces (you know, like "Rome" :), so I don't understand all of the hubbub.
Korvkiosken: well-analyzed.
It's just that with things like the example above, the metric has moved to "doing something because of a platform" instead of "doing something despite of the platform", which ought to be the real goal.
Showering mediocre stuff with praise does no good at all. The "Lights"-thing had almost zero production value, especially when compared to previously released pieces (you know, like "Rome" :), so I don't understand all of the hubbub.
Korvkiosken: well-analyzed.
That article was particularly underwhelming :\ The "music video" itself is ok. I prefer the other productions of the HelloEnjoy duo.
Luckily there are some actually cool WebGL content out there. Alas, it's mostly technical demos showing one "effect", maybe with some music and a few controls. There are really few full fledged intros/demos using WebGL.
Luckily there are some actually cool WebGL content out there. Alas, it's mostly technical demos showing one "effect", maybe with some music and a few controls. There are really few full fledged intros/demos using WebGL.
Korvkiosken: (the bit about the "new exciting technologies", not so much the fat Khronos paycheck :)
gloom: Do you remember the boinboing 4k contest? Did the TBC's 1k won? No. if you understand why, then you'll be able to adjust yourself and appreciate that article a bit more. I'm surprised that you are surprised really. I had the feeling you already understood that it's not the complexity of the code what wins at parties.
Just wait till some guy "invents" z pre pass to render some more lights... and don't forget to google for that javascript powered amazing resolution marching cubes / tet metaballs.
gloom - while I broadly agree with you, I can't help but suspect that the stacks of cash these guys probably got from Interscope for this mediocre production might well offset any shame they feel from it not being particularly cutting edge ;)
Gloom, I've to tell you that I enjoyed so much Lights. Of course I thought it could be technically better from a demoscener point of view, and I also thought that the color palette could have been a bit better. But it made me feel... the result of the song with the visual were better, more emotive than any of them alone.
About the technology, color palette and the visual style, I've to say that this video is not targeted for us. It is for everybody, not only tech people, and the most of the people doesn't care at all about if the spheres have 10 or 10 million polygons, for example. And, the most of the people would look at it, with all those colors and will think that it is very beautiful and colorful, and not that they are coder colors. We are just too used to criticize things that the most of people don't care a fucking shit.
Then, about the solution of using a pre-generated texture in Photoshop, instead of their own algorithm for perlin noise, it is in fact much more smart than you think. With smart I mean the option that works good and needs less time to be developed. I guess you don't know it, but in Javascript, Math.random is not deterministic to the coder. You can't provide a seed for example. And you don't know what algorithm is being used between different browsers. There is a cryptography specific random function, but it is not yet widely available. So, the only option to make a deterministic perlin noise would be to implement their own random number generator. And then, to have total control, they would have had to spend a lot of time finding for a good seed to fit their needs. What is faster, to do all of that, or to do it with photoshop and to have total control of what you are doing?
About the technology, color palette and the visual style, I've to say that this video is not targeted for us. It is for everybody, not only tech people, and the most of the people doesn't care at all about if the spheres have 10 or 10 million polygons, for example. And, the most of the people would look at it, with all those colors and will think that it is very beautiful and colorful, and not that they are coder colors. We are just too used to criticize things that the most of people don't care a fucking shit.
Then, about the solution of using a pre-generated texture in Photoshop, instead of their own algorithm for perlin noise, it is in fact much more smart than you think. With smart I mean the option that works good and needs less time to be developed. I guess you don't know it, but in Javascript, Math.random is not deterministic to the coder. You can't provide a seed for example. And you don't know what algorithm is being used between different browsers. There is a cryptography specific random function, but it is not yet widely available. So, the only option to make a deterministic perlin noise would be to implement their own random number generator. And then, to have total control, they would have had to spend a lot of time finding for a good seed to fit their needs. What is faster, to do all of that, or to do it with photoshop and to have total control of what you are doing?
For me, this sort of thing emphasises why we shouldn't be sneering at sceners who engage in rockstar-style self-promotion. Relative to the rest of the world, the scene has traditionally sucked at telling the world how fucking awesome we are. We need MORE rockstar posturing, because if we don't then someone less deserving is going to claim the plaudits.
Incidentally, a little secret that probably shouldn't surprise anyone: .net magazine don't pay for those "how we made X" articles when they're about an agency's work. (I'm informed that they do pay individual designers/developers for their articles, though.) The mechanism is "you provide us with a free article, and in return you get a nice bit of PR value", so it's more or less expected that they'll be full of "WE ARE SUPER GREAT AND AWESOME". On the flipside, it definitely isn't a closed media hipster circle-wank society, and I'm sure that if someone approached them with a pitch for an article about something supremely cool and web-related that they made on the demoscene, they'd leap at the opportunity. And quite probably pay you for your trouble as well, being a not-an-agency.
...And for people who would rather steer clear of web dev, there are other opportunities out there, if you look for them. OH LOOK THE BBC ARE LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO DO COOL INTERACTIVE SHIT ON BIG SCREENS IN PUBLIC PLACES AROUND THE UK, GEE I WONDER WHO COULD DO THAT SORT OF THING
Incidentally, a little secret that probably shouldn't surprise anyone: .net magazine don't pay for those "how we made X" articles when they're about an agency's work. (I'm informed that they do pay individual designers/developers for their articles, though.) The mechanism is "you provide us with a free article, and in return you get a nice bit of PR value", so it's more or less expected that they'll be full of "WE ARE SUPER GREAT AND AWESOME". On the flipside, it definitely isn't a closed media hipster circle-wank society, and I'm sure that if someone approached them with a pitch for an article about something supremely cool and web-related that they made on the demoscene, they'd leap at the opportunity. And quite probably pay you for your trouble as well, being a not-an-agency.
...And for people who would rather steer clear of web dev, there are other opportunities out there, if you look for them. OH LOOK THE BBC ARE LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO DO COOL INTERACTIVE SHIT ON BIG SCREENS IN PUBLIC PLACES AROUND THE UK, GEE I WONDER WHO COULD DO THAT SORT OF THING
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What is faster, to do all of that, or to do it with photoshop and to have total control of what you are doing?
Writing it in C. Or rendering to AVI.
I just want to make it clear that I have nothing against web content, WebGL or otherwise (in fact, I founded a site to support such things :), and as I opened this thread I made a point of recognizing exactly how "old man, kids on lawn" it would sound, but I just had to get it out there: it just annoys me when sub-par stuff is hailed as the next coming of Jesus. I know that the studio/agency wrote the piece and that the websites love to write about anything shiny, but still.. annoys me. :) It's not that I feel that "the demoscene can do better!!!111" either, because I know perfectly well that this is in almost all cases not even close to being true.
In the case of "Lights", it just strikes me as left-handed "whatever"-work by the authors, mostly based on the "How we did this MAGICAL THING!"-article above.
In the case of "Lights", it just strikes me as left-handed "whatever"-work by the authors, mostly based on the "How we did this MAGICAL THING!"-article above.
does WebGL really suck this much? ;)
Gloom: That "magical thing" is made by a demoscener.