What grinds my gears

Adaptive vsync is the idea that rather than the monitor having a fixed vertical refresh rate and the graphics card synchronizing to it (if you want to avoid screen tearing), ie. the monitor deciding what the refresh rate is, and the graphics card obeying it, we do it the other way around: The graphics card decides what the refresh rate is, and the monitor synchronizes to it. Which means that the refresh rate can be variable. This means in practice that if at some points the game you are playing drops its rendering speed to eg. 53 frames per second, rather than dropping to 30 FPS because the monitor can't handle anything else, the monitor will now use 53 FPS. Or, in other words, the next rendered frame is always shown as soon as it's ready, rather than the system having to wait for the next monitor vsync to show it. The rendering speed can vary from frame to frame, and it doesn't matter: The image will be shown immediately when it's ready (up to the maximum refresh capac...

I have been writing blog post after blog post about why I have been so utterly disappointed with VR, especially due to how "room-scale VR"-centric it has turned out to be in practice, and why I think that room-scale VR is not the way to go and has no future. The fundamental core problem that I have been repeating is movement, movement, movement. The most fundamental core mechanic of the vast majority of video games since they first began existing. In "room-scale VR" your movement is only limited to a few steps, and that's it. (It's also limited to walking those few steps at a slow pace, with no possibility of any other kind of movement that's so ubiquitous to most games, such as jumping, climbing, running and so on and so forth.) The kludge that room-scale VR implements around this limitation is "teleporting". In other words, because the control system necessarily limits your movement to an extremely small area, without being able to move ...

If I were living in the United States, I would have really hard time deciding whether I'm a "liberal" or a "conservative". (I understand that there are other options as well, the so called "independent" parties, but in practice supporting them is rather inconsequential because the United States is a heavily, heavily bipartite system, with only two real choices that matter. The third option is effectively, for all intents and purposes, the same thing as not voting at all.) Sometimes it's actually hard to know what the exact differences are between liberalism and conservatism (at least when talking about American politics). There are quite many things that one would ascribe to liberalism which a conservative would most probably say "we support that too!" Well, Google is a great tool for this too, and after some quick research, here are a few things that demonstrate that I couldn't in good conscience subscribe solely to either politi...

I wrote earlier why I think room-scale VR cripples games . I alluded to gameplay mechanics that become completely infeasible in room-scale VR, and need to either be heavily dumbed down, or can't be used at all. I think that the new Doom (2016) demonstrates extremely well the type of game mechanics, and gameplay design, that's completely unsuitable for room-scale VR. The new Doom is a real homage to the original Doom from 1993. While it's a heavily modern game, in terms of visuals, gameplay, monster design, difficulty balancing and so on, it still retains that hectic brainless pure shooting action and over the top violence that was so prevalent in first-person shooters of the mid-90's. Although that's not completely correct: It's not completely brainless. In fact, it has quite some tactical depth to it. Most fights, especially against large hordes of monsters, are really difficult. But it's not fake difficulty just for the sake of it. Instead, you need ...

For a decade or two now, the ideology of multiculturalism has become almost cult-like especially in Europe. The media at large just can't shut up about it and everything related to it, politicians can't shut up about it, and it drives immigration policies, often to the detriment of the country and its people. Multiculturalism is taught in schools and in the media. It's always depicted as a good thing, this is basically always done in very vague, non-descript ways, without giving actual concrete reasons why it would be a good thing. Curiously, and somewhat hypocritically, European multiculturalism seems to favor only immigrants of certain areas of the world, while completely ignoring, sometimes even shunning, people from other areas. The preferred areas are mostly Africa and the middle-East. Ignored and shunned areas consist mostly of rich western countries, Japan, as well as basically any country that is predominantly white, or that is predominantly westernized (such as ...

For a reason that I cannot really comprehend, Valve Corporation has a really good reputation among the vast majority of gamers. They seem to consider it a "cool" company, a company to like and root for, and to be a fan of. I really can't understand where this reputation is coming from. It's completely undeserved, and quite false. Hardly a month goes by without yet another controversy surrounding Valve. Famous internet critics semi-regularly criticize Valve for yet another antic of theirs, and how they fail their customers, or engage in dubious activity. In some cases this even results in a big customer revolt. The latest case, which is by far not the only one, is the CS-Go gambling debacle. I'm not going to repeat it here because it's easy to google for it, but long story short, from the perspective of Valve: Valve knew perfectly well, for several years, that illegal (or at the very least legally dubious) gambling was being performed by third-parties usi...

The modern regressive feminist cult needs an original sin. In other words, a very bad, destructive flaw that's inherent and innate to everybody (that's to say: men), a flaw they have even if they don't present any symptoms of it. All men are sexist (and racist, and homophobic.) Because of course they are. Even if they don't behave like it, they still are sexist. Because reasons. (It's curious how adamant feminists are that feminism is not about hating men, yet all of the inherent flaws that they come up with are always about men. Everything that's wrong is always because of men. Only men can be sexist, never women. Men are sexist even if they don't exhibit it; women can't be sexist at all.) But how to justify that? After all, the vast majority of men do not behave in a sexist way. Well, the solution is simple: Expand the definition of "sexism" to encompass all men. Take this article, for example: Are you sexist? Take this quiz If you ar...

Feminism and social justice is fighting for "equality", which in vernacular means that white men are treated like second-class citizens, lower than cocroaches who have no rights and can be freely oppressed and abused. All of the rest of "marginalized" groups are above them and in need of special protection and special treatment. But, you see, not all "marginalized" groups are equal. Some are more protected than others. (This is what "equality" means, after all.) There is a de facto privilege stack in the SJW ideology, where some groups are more protected than others. This means, among other things, that groups higher up on the stack are free to abuse, oppress and take advantage of every other group below them, but must placate to every group above them. And the social justice warriors will impose that privilege and that responsibility onto those groups. As said, white men are at the very bottom of the stack, and pretty much below cockroaches...

Elite K-8 school teaches white students they’re born racist Just read the article. It's absolutely horrendous to read. This school is segregating children based on race, and shaming children of one race and brainwashing them into believing that they are bad people, and to feel guilt. Many of these children have gone home crying because they have been told they are bad people. And it's not the only school engaging in this kind of segregation. This is psychological child abuse, pure and simple. These children are being brainwashed, and taught that they should feel shame and guilt, and that they are bad people because of their race, and they are shunned, while children of other races are being adulated and rewarded, in front of them. This is what social justice has come down to. Psychological torture of children. Destroying their self-confidence, and their future. Many of these children will need psychotherapy to recover from this. Social justice is a dangerous cult, and...