Jump to content
Please support this forum by joining the SH Patreon ×
Sturgeon's House

N-L-M

Forum Nobility
  • Posts

    732
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    19

Everything posted by N-L-M

  1. Yes. The judges are people too who do this in their free time.
  2. The judgement process is a long and arduous one. Each submission is examined at face value, details checked and verified, before being compared to the specification and its peer submissions. The judging of the current comp has however dragged on a bit longer than intended but is still most definitely happening.
  3. The game is still very alpha, and a lot of the mechanics are a bit too abstracted for my taste, but it's fun (though short).
  4. With the kind permission of Colli, I present to you the 2021 update, as well as a certain retrospective, as I fairly recently dove head-first into this topic for the first time in years. So what’s changed over the past year? In the field of GPUs, Nvidia have released their 30 series cards, to great joy and great anger, depending on who exactly you ask. There’s no question that the 30 series brings great performance gains (with the lower end currently available matching the higher end of the 20-series, for instance the 3060Ti is largely equivalent to the 2080 Super), and that the Founder’s Edition cooling solution is both affordable (being offered at MSRP and not above, unusually) and effective (the through-flow solution being fairly highly regarded). AMD, likewise, has released its 6000-series, which appears to be lagging behind Nvidia’s offerings for performance at a given cost point, excepting some of the more over-priced Nvidia cards. In terms of raw capability, Nvidia cards put more of an emphasis on ray-tracing at any given performance category over plain ol rasterization, and slightly less on shaders, and a wide array of benchmarks show a distinct advantage there, with the latest AMD offerings falling behind the last gen Nvidia ones. So where is the controversy regarding these cards? Largely in the cost, marketing, and target market. The higher end, 3090s, 6900XTs, and 3080s are marketed as gaming devices yet seem better suited to graphics workstations, and are very steeply priced. The lower end is perfectly acceptable, if you can get your hands on them. The graphics card shortage is perhaps even worse than it was last year, though that shows signs of reversing as of mid August. The extremely high demand has been driven by 2 major factors - the first, the Cryptocurrency market, which exploded over the past year, and the second being lockdown-inspired demand for high performance desktops, both for “working from home” and for lockdown entertainment. Both of those, however, are showing certain signs of abating. The Crypto market took a few major hits over the past year, after its meteoric rise. Notably, the Chinese outlawing mining both tanked the value (reducing the value of mining in the civilized world), and flooded the Asian market with used graphics cards, with knock-on effects to the rest of the world. And with the end of serious lockdowns in most of the civilized world, the demand for high end gaming-capable computers is dying off and many are available secondhand (and indeed the buyers thereof aren’t competing for the latest and greatest equipment any more). For what it’s worth, per the Steam hardware survey, the most popular of these newer cards is the 3070, followed by the 3080, then the 3060, with the 3090 falling far behind and the latest AMD cards not even making the list. The Nvidia 10 and 16 series still hold the lion’s share of the market, of course. Intel’s new foray into graphics cards, rather than just integrated graphics, may expand the market options from the current duopoly. The new line of Nvidia CPUs, if they venture into the consumer level and not just the datacenter class, will mean we’ll have 3 giants doing both CPUs and GPUs, which will hopefully only do good things on the consumer side. In the field of CPUs, Intel still holds the lead in single thread performance, but the “11th-gen” flagship performance has left much to be desired, with the i9-11900k being noticeably worse than its predecessor, the i9-10900k, in many benchmarks, as an example. Popular opinion is that they were to a certain extent rushed out to maintain Intel’s image as the market leader, even if AMD is neck to neck if not overtaking them outright by this point. In fact, the perception of being a market leader is so important, that Intel is renaming their node size technology to better compete (though as we all know the “node size” in nm doesn’t actually correspond to any actual real physical measurement, and Intel have consistently squeezed more performance out of any arbitrary self-reported number than competitors). The Ryzen 5000 series is seriously kicking Intel in the nads, with the Ryzen 9 5900X, at comparable price to the i9-11900k, offering many more cores, lower TDP, and only slightly lower clock speed, for what is a very spicy package Intel has a hard time matching. Intel’s 12th gen, which should be out any day now, may offer a worthwhile response, but then again may not. Other than for compatibility and stability reasons, it’s getting ever harder to recommend Intel, so they’ll have to step up if they want to not become the underdog themselves. Unusually, this year also brings RAM news - DDR5 is right around the corner, once again offering increased capacities at higher speeds. Available likely in late Q4 2021, along with the Intel 12th gen CPUs which are reportedly the first which will be compatible. In conclusion, it’s been quite a year, and competition is running hot. Hopefully the following year will bring more fancy new products. So, where do I see this going? Looking back 7 years, to when I was last really paying attention, we see a few interesting developments reaching their ends, and a few new ones opening up. One development which appears to be reaching its end is screen technology. We now have screens which refresh faster than the brain can actually usefully recognize (240 Hz), and screens at resolutions greater than that of the human eye (4k, 27” monitors at reasonable distance from your face). Clearly, once those two factors are combined, perhaps even in a curved wide monitor which are ever more the rage these days, there won’t be much more to be done in that field, which also implies a limit to target performance for GPUs, at least for gaming applications. Doubly so, when one considers the various “AI” techniques being introduced such as DLSS, which reduce the workload of rasterization. Unless something major comes along which requires much more processing power, while the end is far away it definitely appears to be within sight. RAM, on the other hand, appears to be getting ever faster and ever larger, with the most interesting development being, in my opinion, Intel’s Optane, which is a kind of middle ground between SSDs and RAM, with most of the attendant advantages of either. Current programs do very much like their RAM, and that’s not a trend that’s showing any signs of stopping, either. Another interesting development is the gradual reduction in number and types of cables, both from wireless communication and inductive power delivery, and by the USB standards slowly displacing everything else (other than graphics, though that too may change soon with USB4 allowing DisplayPort tunneling). This convergence has done much to address the e-waste problem, as well as the “rat’s nest” of cables of the computers of yore. Along with the cables disappearing, so too have physical data storage media, to a very large extent. Internet-based “cloud” data storage, streaming services, and the like have entirely displaced such things as the CD, to the point where not only do many computers come without, they don’t even come with the bays required to install one. This has of course resulted in external, USB-powered ones, for those occasions where you do need to read one, which do unfortunately add clutter rather than remove it. And now, whither cloud storage? Over the past few years, and the last year in particular, we’ve seen a rush to both get into the cloud business via an absurd explosion of streaming services all requiring a subscription to access their exclusive content, and to monetize existing formerly free internet services. Beyond the usual “freemium”, “free but tons of adds”, and “free but we steal all your data”, we’ve seen free services cut down significantly in favor of the paid versions, “software as a service”, and increased executive meddling in what you do on said platforms. While highly unpleasant if you are on the wrong end of things, it does once and for all answer the question of “who’s paying for all these free internet things”. But bottom line, if you’re one of those people who keeps all their data on the cloud, best ask yourself what happens when your data host decides to unperson you for wrongthink of whatever flavor, real or imagined. Doubly so if your data is also a source of income. So, how should you store your data on your own PC? The conventional wisdom of past years has been to have at least a small SSD for your OS and commonly used programs, and an HDD for the heavy lifting. In the current year, and doubly so in the near future, it appears that if you only intend on keeping around a small quantity of data, you can get away with only having an SSD, and no HDD at all. Of course, this approach isn’t fault-tolerable, and recovering data from a damaged SSD is not really possible in the same way it is from a damaged HDD. So it seems an HDD is still desirable for the near future, at least, and perhaps onwards. External HDDs are pretty cheap nowadays, and you likely have some digital media you really don’t want to lose, so getting a couple and storing one in a different building is not a bad idea. And if you’re into really long term read-only storage, for things like family photos, DVDs or Blu-Rays are pretty cheap and last basically forever, and are likely more forgiving of rough storage than the HDDs. That more or less wraps up my opinions on the topic, yours may of course vary.
  5. I have been summoned. Please keep it civil, guys. We like high quality posters spreading their knowledge, and there's a difference between disagreeing and being an ass about it, so please everyone take a moment to read through your posts before pressing that button, k? We've had enough friction here over the years.
  6. I see Sturgeon is on the case. I was going to ban you outright for failing basic reading comprehension but it appears our overlord is slightly more forgiving than I. Also, not arguing with the owner of the forum should be a no-brainer.
  7. >animea pfp >Shit opinions It's like pottery. @unreason you have around 12 hours to change that PFP to something that isn't animea. For so it is written:
  8. You have text which is unclear. Dimensioned sketches of the arrays are requested, along with an explanation of how the "citadel" portion interacts with the rest of the armor. Important information for the sketches: Layer types, angles, air gaps, overall package dimensions. Without this, the judges cannot verify that your armor packages meet the requirements or the stated weight.
  9. A detailed section sketch including layer types (light ERA, heavy NERA, or what have you) and angles for each array type (hull front, turret side, skirts...) is requested if you do not have them fully modelled.
  10. If you can sensibly arrange your arrays to make sense without detailing them. I strongly suggest at least sketching out the section of how you want your arrays to look to make sure you have enough space and weight.
  11. Note that the bottom-most row has twice the fittings for holding rounds. This is because once filled, those tubes tilt down and 5 more are placed between them and the rest of the rack. This allows better use of the space which would otherwise be inaccessible because of the torsion bars and other crap on the floor. A similar solution is used in the turret rack: Note that the edge rounds cannot be accessed until the center ones are removed. The same solution is used in the Abrams: Perhaps best illustrated by this pic of the 105mm Abrams rack:
  12. "Generic AFV platform". A name as gormless as the vehicle itself.
  13. The only way a multi-national design can shake out properly (that is, be cheaper than 2 individual designs), is if there is a clear demarcation of fields of responsibility, and each component only gets designed once. When your participants are both capable of designing a full vehicle, and both want to keep their industries alive by keeping the design and manufacturing in-house, well then the business relationship they're looking for is a manufacturer-client one, not a partnership. Which won't work out well.
  14. Drummond is notable for being very bad at the technical side of design of armored vehicles, which contrasts strongly with how vocal he is with his opinions on the topic.
  15. I for one look forwards to both of you sharing what you can, when you can.
  16. As long as you don't go looking around where the 20mm belly comes up in a U shape, yeah.
  17. Appears that all the usual caveats to successful laser tests apply: At altitude, crystal clear weather, with a long dwell time on the target. Still very niche IMO.
  18. N-L-M

    UAV thread

    Looks more like a PG-7M warhead to me.
  19. To my knowledge, not in active service yet anywhere. The more cynical amongst us would say that means it's still vaporware.
  20. As I recall that armor array left much to be desired in terms of coverage, as the cassettes weren't properly overlapped.
  21. The Dutch and IDF signed contracts for series production (for cv90, Eitan, and D9 bulldozers), but none have reached FUE or IOC milestones yet.
  22. Very nice pics, we can see the primary attraction of the 40CT in that first pic
  23. So does MIL-DTL-12560, except for class 3 (intended for weapons testing). The idea, of course, being that you wouldn't disqualify a batch of armor steel for being better than you wanted. It's also worth noting that just like MIL-DTL-12560, DEF STAN 95 in its various updates defines several classes of armor steel, where the softer ones are required to have a higher Charpy impact energy than the harder ones, typically to better function in structural and blast loading. One must be careful to not compare apples to oranges. Also, for US cast armor, the relevant spec is MIL-A-11356, which also defines 2 classes.
  24. Gluing a German dildo mat onto the roof shouldn't be difficult.
×
×
  • Create New...