Well I managed to get my laptop back and dump almost everything I needed off it, its definitely the graphics card after a certain amount of time it gives out and crashes windows in a spectacular fashion messing up bits of the graphics driver as it goes. Basically the more I use it the more chance that the graphics card will end up totally destroyed and the only reason I got the thing back was because I was dammed if I was handing over the parts when its barely 2 years old. Think next time I'm going to switch to a desktop.
Problem now is with the library computers anything that is written to the portable HD before being plugged in is covered under the edit file/hard disc policy meaning that nothing can be edited without first copying the file.
Currently I haven't much idea of how to write a covering letter (far less the state of my CV isn't too good) it may come to it I need to take something like a QA position to just get some cash.
With a decent IDE again with that I can at least keep doing some programming all be it something that will have to run on a close to 6 years at least old integrated graphics hardware.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
No website yet
As currently my laptop is in getting repaired (lit waiting for stuff from Hong Kong) and the quick look I've had at web hosting has provided problems I'll start using this for now to record some bits and pieces.
Even w/o my laptop I've still got two sets of code examples that can be used both showing mathematical, networking and graphics. The main problem is if I need to upload the group project without going to some pretty questionable (and possibly unreliable) hosting sites I can't get even the compiled binary and the content up onto the net. There is the other problem that like what happened with the presentation I put up last time my hoster bandwidth could get eaten by either random people or more likely a web indexing spider. So the best I can do is get the small applications and code samples up and provide a link to them.
Before my graphics card burned out nastily (80% chance so unless I screwed up DXGI then its got to be the card) I was reworking the procedural terrain coursework from last year. One of the main things I hope to do with any of the old applications is to rip out the 2nd year OpenGL initialisation and replace it with the classed up initialisation I made for the honours project. So far this small framework needs modified so that it only initialises OpenGL and does not set any options (such as texturing or lighting) yet will still initialise things such as the screen colour and depth buffer basically the really critical stuff required for any 3D application. This does mean that the user will have to set up additional features specific to the project (and the user will have to override and control any of the critical graphics functions if needed). Anyway I managed to get the terrain converted to use the honours project graphics framework the noticeable problem was then I had somehow missed initialising some of the vertex array that describes the terrain causing problems when smoothing was applied. The other problem was that an extremely high amount of time the terrain was symmetrical.
Bets are this is either the faulting algorithm (which I attempted to minor fix and that didn't work so well) or the smoothing algorithm. If it is the smoothing algorithm then likely it is the simple manner in which it works: "find all the vertexes around you and then average all their heights by the number of vertexes". This could be fixed as suggested by one of my classmates to check the average height of all vertexes and then increment or decrement the point by a fixed amount in order to move closer to this average height.
However if it is the faulting algorithm things are quite different chances are I have to go back and rewrite it checking that it is not just how my terrain is stored that is causing the problem. I used http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/terrain/index.php?impdetails as the base.
The only other thing I really wanted to check was to move closer to a vertex buffer style rather than using OpenGL immediate mode as it currently uses, I saw this year what happens if you alter where the triangle strips start and end the performance hit can be massive.
Anyway I need to go and catch a bus home, the Internet at home is on the fritz
Even w/o my laptop I've still got two sets of code examples that can be used both showing mathematical, networking and graphics. The main problem is if I need to upload the group project without going to some pretty questionable (and possibly unreliable) hosting sites I can't get even the compiled binary and the content up onto the net. There is the other problem that like what happened with the presentation I put up last time my hoster bandwidth could get eaten by either random people or more likely a web indexing spider. So the best I can do is get the small applications and code samples up and provide a link to them.
Before my graphics card burned out nastily (80% chance so unless I screwed up DXGI then its got to be the card) I was reworking the procedural terrain coursework from last year. One of the main things I hope to do with any of the old applications is to rip out the 2nd year OpenGL initialisation and replace it with the classed up initialisation I made for the honours project. So far this small framework needs modified so that it only initialises OpenGL and does not set any options (such as texturing or lighting) yet will still initialise things such as the screen colour and depth buffer basically the really critical stuff required for any 3D application. This does mean that the user will have to set up additional features specific to the project (and the user will have to override and control any of the critical graphics functions if needed). Anyway I managed to get the terrain converted to use the honours project graphics framework the noticeable problem was then I had somehow missed initialising some of the vertex array that describes the terrain causing problems when smoothing was applied. The other problem was that an extremely high amount of time the terrain was symmetrical.
Bets are this is either the faulting algorithm (which I attempted to minor fix and that didn't work so well) or the smoothing algorithm. If it is the smoothing algorithm then likely it is the simple manner in which it works: "find all the vertexes around you and then average all their heights by the number of vertexes". This could be fixed as suggested by one of my classmates to check the average height of all vertexes and then increment or decrement the point by a fixed amount in order to move closer to this average height.
However if it is the faulting algorithm things are quite different chances are I have to go back and rewrite it checking that it is not just how my terrain is stored that is causing the problem. I used http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/terrain/index.php?impdetails as the base.
The only other thing I really wanted to check was to move closer to a vertex buffer style rather than using OpenGL immediate mode as it currently uses, I saw this year what happens if you alter where the triangle strips start and end the performance hit can be massive.
Anyway I need to go and catch a bus home, the Internet at home is on the fritz
Monday, May 18, 2009
Drafting
I'll be getting the comments on my first draft today and then doing alterations to get it all fixed up for wed. I'd hope to be able to bind and burn all CDs required tomorrow and then hand in so its not pushing on the snarling at anyone near a printer.
Layout is mostly done just all the corrections and alterations to some of the references. CD is mostly compiled but I'm going to have to change a couple of comments, minor changes so it won't require the application to be recompiled.
The altered version of TBB and the vector class is already on the CD and ready to go along with all source and results. Apart from checking that all the pdfs I can get my hands on are on the CD and adding the poster this will be the biggest CD I've ever had to burn excluding the group project. A whole 50Mb! Not just 7Kb worth of code!
Anyway I'll also quickly need to check the formatting as if all of the appendices need to be 1.5 line spaced the whole thing is going to be more pages.
Also got to take a trip down to the copy shop today to pick up some CD sleeves and check if they can print an A2 poster on 4 A4 bits if they can then it will save me getting expensive printing somewhere else.
Last thing I'm hoping is that there isn't too many corrections or alterations I need to make.
Layout is mostly done just all the corrections and alterations to some of the references. CD is mostly compiled but I'm going to have to change a couple of comments, minor changes so it won't require the application to be recompiled.
The altered version of TBB and the vector class is already on the CD and ready to go along with all source and results. Apart from checking that all the pdfs I can get my hands on are on the CD and adding the poster this will be the biggest CD I've ever had to burn excluding the group project. A whole 50Mb! Not just 7Kb worth of code!
Anyway I'll also quickly need to check the formatting as if all of the appendices need to be 1.5 line spaced the whole thing is going to be more pages.
Also got to take a trip down to the copy shop today to pick up some CD sleeves and check if they can print an A2 poster on 4 A4 bits if they can then it will save me getting expensive printing somewhere else.
Last thing I'm hoping is that there isn't too many corrections or alterations I need to make.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Maths
I've spent thurs/fri last week attempting to do maths revision as the exam is on wed. So for the first pat of this week I'm probably not going to have much time to work on my dissertation (probably work on it when it gets late and my concentration is virtually 0). From the last list:
To Do
To Do
- Conclusion (Further work section)
- More pruning required
- Formula/Figure page numbers done on final pass
- Bibliography/References done on final pass
Which means that mostly now its tiding up and then compiling the CD, I've already got some of that done but whats going to take the most time is obtaining copies of all research papers that I used/consulted. The very last thing to do will be to grab a XML backup of this blog and sling it on the disc. As well as I'll need to reread the style guide again just to make sure all the margins are correct and the figures are used correctly.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
First Draft
Just got the conclusion to write.
But first I'm going to put together what I've got at the moment because its not the writing and rework that's going to take ages its getting MS word to format everything the way that is required. That's going to be the main problem.
I've mostly got it set up but I've no real idea on how to stop the front page getting numbered it even is ignoring the page break.
Already with the problems I had getting the table of contents to work correctly I consider it might be best to manually add and maintain the formula and figure list because of the lack of changes that will be done to them.
To Do:
But first I'm going to put together what I've got at the moment because its not the writing and rework that's going to take ages its getting MS word to format everything the way that is required. That's going to be the main problem.
I've mostly got it set up but I've no real idea on how to stop the front page getting numbered it even is ignoring the page break.
Already with the problems I had getting the table of contents to work correctly I consider it might be best to manually add and maintain the formula and figure list because of the lack of changes that will be done to them.
To Do:
- Conclusion
- Rework the rest
- List formula page numbers
- List figure page numbers
- Full bibliography
- Check how to handle multiple use age of the same reference
- Check if figures in appendices need figure numbers
- Alter the appendix numbers in the methodology section to reflect new appendix numbers
- Fix page numbering
- Tech Poster
- Discover how the hell your supposed to attach a CD to the back cover
- Compile more information for the CD
I'll do some more of the tech poster tomorrow after checking I can actually do my slides in the right amount of time.
I'd like to work directly with the first draft document the problem is making sure that things like the abstract are correctly updated.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Those const errors
Think I've just realised why I was getting such major const errors when trying to modify the objects stored within the table:
- The entirety of the body passed into the parallel_for, any of the variables that are stored locally inside the helper class are declared constant.
This is to make sure anything passed into the Body is uniform between all threads. Could have possibly fixed it in a few seconds by just passing the pointer to the concurrent hash map into a local variable of the CollisionHelper::operator ().
Oh well too late now I went and hacked up the = operator to do my dirty bidding and that fixed it.
Graphs!Graphs!Graphs!Graphs!Graphs!Graphs!
Really the number of slides I've got for the conclusive presentation is spiraling out of control. I can add more graphs showing the information with what % of the program collision detection and the overheads take. But I have to stop it, with over 20 pages for a 5-7 min presentation I'm already pushing to get all the information in.
Getting into the realm of slides full of recorded values.
Getting into the realm of slides full of recorded values.
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