Well, it's been quite a day. I got the bloody thing finally... it took ages for it to arrive for pickup, but we went and got it today.
I talked a bit about it here: Finally getting a new PC which has the specs and such for anyone interested.
I was thinking though about how different all this is now.
Like, way back when, you'd buy a machine, get it into the house, get it onto the desk... where it would often lie flat with the monitor actually sitting on top of it... and once plugged in, ya turned it on, it made a variety of jet-engine noises, and BAM, you were just in. That's it, that's the initial setup. Either DOS or Windows (depending on the exact era) would be loaded pretty much immediately. From there you could do any installations.... very, very, very, very, very slowly. With disks. Lots of disks. So many disks. The quality of the resulting programs... well, the experience of using them... would vary wildly, even among the same sorts. Like, I remember playing a lot of CGA games back then, and they didnt get along with the general speed of the machine very well. On a more powerful PC (well, powerful back then) a game might run at a ridiculous rate, becoming this unplayable blur. So you'd have to manually set the speed of the game and fiddle with it until it went the way it should. And that's just the games... there was cryptic weirdness with everything else. But at the same time, it was all super fast to do.
And that was it, really. Simple, but at the same time not at all user friendly... you still needed to know enough about how to use the thing, particularly for the old DOS machines, which were a cryptic mess to many people at the time.
Now though, boy is it different. In the process of setting this thing up today, there was a lot to do. First, gotta get it physically set up. It's this giant freaking brick, even bigger than my previous machine. I definitely needed help getting it in here at all (I cant really lift things), and then once that's done, and once the "stuffing" is pulled out of it, it was time to attach like a bazillion wires. I keep the back of the machine facing me, like I did with the previous one, as I'm frequently switching stuff out. But already it's a wiry mess, particularly with the VR headset in there (has multiple wires of its own) and the keyboard (very screwy connector that splits into multiple wires, no I dont know why).
From there, turn it on. Wait awhile. It needs to load. Initializing stuff. Then, the Windows setup and such. A million questions, a million little bits, including having to do the accursed Google account sign in (I dont even want to talk about that, I had to do it 5 times today and it was the worst part), getting the Microsoft account going, preferences, blah blah blah. And some other stuff I didnt expect. Decided to give the Xbox game pass a try, because why the heck not. And then... er... something else, I forget what.
Once that's done, time to get the antivirus setup. Not too hard, but there's account stuff to deal with that (I use Norton). Okay, that takes a bit of time, now Chrome (I'll eventually switch to Firefox). Okay, Chrome is in, let's start Youtu- oh. Oh. Right. Ads. That's a no-no here. We dont allow ads here. Time for extensions! As expected, just one adblocker isnt enough. The previous machine had multiple layers of the things, and that's already the case here. Various adblockers, and also Sponsorblock (since I want *every* type of ad on Youtube GONE, period). There's still more to do there, but I'll do that tomorrow.
Next: Steam. Okay, gotta download that... get it going... oh, did I mention a lot of things want authentication when logging into accounts? Like, good grief. Had to keep bringing out the ol' phone or going to email (or both). Steam wants email, so there's a code to put in to get that working. From there, it's install time. What I really wanted to do first here was get the VR (index) set up, FINALLY. I havent been able to use it in weeks, and it has a variety of major uses for me, including sensory aspects. So, need to get that set up. Gotta download SteamVR to get it functional, get the tangled mess of the headset and the trackers going, get the rear tracker to DO ITS FREAKING JOB (I dont know why I have to fight that one so often). And then OH BOY time to set up the boundaries AGAIN. This involves doing frankly silly things like putting the headset on the floor while waving the controllers around, and other stuff. But then it's done, finally.
Into VR, let's try it out... ahhh, FINALLY, I have functionality. On the previous machine, well... when it was nearing collapse it just kept getting more and more corrupted. It's hard to explain what that means, really. It's one thing to be, like, playing a game or something, and you see a glitch happen on the screen. It's a visual effect on a flat surface in front of you. But that's not what a glitch looks like in VR (and to be clear, by "glitch" I mean not just bugs, but also things like framerate drops and processing problems). I mean really, you get to BE the glitch in there, which is... not a good experience. Never expose a new user to that, it doesnt end well. Fortunately I'm immune to all VR side effects at this point, so it didnt do anything other than irritate me. But on the new machine here... finally, none of that nonsense, we're back up to the proper 90 FPS at all times. Even in things that the previous machine wasnt *quite* up to even at its best. Given the graphics card on this thing, I expected no less.
So, from there, it was time to REALLY test it. How much could this thing handle? I know just how to do that, I've got exactly the program for it.
I must show this:
This is a Mandelbulb fractal. I work with these often. These are INCREDIBLY draining on the PC and will bring even a super high-end machine to its knees. And I wasnt going to produce just any image, no sir. We were going all the way with this one. Raytracing and everything.
So, get the fractal itself loaded (I'd already put it together on the previous machine before it went bonkers, but that was just the basic generation, not any full renders). Get it set to some high quality options. Try to render. Okay... it wants 20 hours to do this. For ONE image. No, that cant be right. Look around a bit more in the program... ah. I see. It's not using the GPU at all. Argue with it for like 20 minutes (it's more complicated than it sounds) and I've got it using the GPU finally. Let's render the image.
20 hours... down to 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Okay... wow. The previous machine at it's best couldnt do that. It wouldnt have been even JUST 20 hours... at the level of stuff I wanted here, it would have been multiple days. But now... 2 minutes.
But that's not good enough. Just some raytracing and such is only the start. Let's REALLY push it. Turn on all sorts of options, set up additional light sources, and do some complicated weirdness.
The final image is the one above, and it would have taken an unviable amount of time on the previous machine... provided it could do it at all. This though? 20 minutes.
The crazy thing about fractals is that it can still be pushed way further than that. It's worth noting that rendering a fractal isnt like rendering something in a game. Game rendering happens so fast that you get, well, a bazillion frames a second. But a fractal? No. It's all ultra-complex math that I barely understand, and the limits of what the programs in question can do are... way further than I even know how to use.
And so, that's where I am at now, having just completed that thing, and feeling like most of the "main" setup and testing is done. While getting a cool bit of art out of it.
An old PC would take like, an hour to get to a "totally ready" state. But this took like all freaking day. And there's still so much more stuff to do yet, with the main bits out of the way. I'll likely spend an inordinate amount of time tomorrow arguing with the stupid Switch controller, getting that set up is a giant pain. As it is now though, it's about time for bed.
I'm just glad it's done though. I dont know how it is for everyone else, but if I get disconnected from my main special interests for too long my mood and mental state take a nose-dive. That's part of why my recent posts have been rather... unpleasant. Well, the gender thing too, but that's another topic really. One way or another, with this back, mood improved a whole lot.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway. Yeah, since I was doing that all bloody day, it was on my mind here, so... a bit of a ramble, for the heck of it. Because I do that. Also I thought it might be cool to show that image there... it takes a lot of work to make those things.
I talked a bit about it here: Finally getting a new PC which has the specs and such for anyone interested.
I was thinking though about how different all this is now.
Like, way back when, you'd buy a machine, get it into the house, get it onto the desk... where it would often lie flat with the monitor actually sitting on top of it... and once plugged in, ya turned it on, it made a variety of jet-engine noises, and BAM, you were just in. That's it, that's the initial setup. Either DOS or Windows (depending on the exact era) would be loaded pretty much immediately. From there you could do any installations.... very, very, very, very, very slowly. With disks. Lots of disks. So many disks. The quality of the resulting programs... well, the experience of using them... would vary wildly, even among the same sorts. Like, I remember playing a lot of CGA games back then, and they didnt get along with the general speed of the machine very well. On a more powerful PC (well, powerful back then) a game might run at a ridiculous rate, becoming this unplayable blur. So you'd have to manually set the speed of the game and fiddle with it until it went the way it should. And that's just the games... there was cryptic weirdness with everything else. But at the same time, it was all super fast to do.
And that was it, really. Simple, but at the same time not at all user friendly... you still needed to know enough about how to use the thing, particularly for the old DOS machines, which were a cryptic mess to many people at the time.
Now though, boy is it different. In the process of setting this thing up today, there was a lot to do. First, gotta get it physically set up. It's this giant freaking brick, even bigger than my previous machine. I definitely needed help getting it in here at all (I cant really lift things), and then once that's done, and once the "stuffing" is pulled out of it, it was time to attach like a bazillion wires. I keep the back of the machine facing me, like I did with the previous one, as I'm frequently switching stuff out. But already it's a wiry mess, particularly with the VR headset in there (has multiple wires of its own) and the keyboard (very screwy connector that splits into multiple wires, no I dont know why).
From there, turn it on. Wait awhile. It needs to load. Initializing stuff. Then, the Windows setup and such. A million questions, a million little bits, including having to do the accursed Google account sign in (I dont even want to talk about that, I had to do it 5 times today and it was the worst part), getting the Microsoft account going, preferences, blah blah blah. And some other stuff I didnt expect. Decided to give the Xbox game pass a try, because why the heck not. And then... er... something else, I forget what.
Once that's done, time to get the antivirus setup. Not too hard, but there's account stuff to deal with that (I use Norton). Okay, that takes a bit of time, now Chrome (I'll eventually switch to Firefox). Okay, Chrome is in, let's start Youtu- oh. Oh. Right. Ads. That's a no-no here. We dont allow ads here. Time for extensions! As expected, just one adblocker isnt enough. The previous machine had multiple layers of the things, and that's already the case here. Various adblockers, and also Sponsorblock (since I want *every* type of ad on Youtube GONE, period). There's still more to do there, but I'll do that tomorrow.
Next: Steam. Okay, gotta download that... get it going... oh, did I mention a lot of things want authentication when logging into accounts? Like, good grief. Had to keep bringing out the ol' phone or going to email (or both). Steam wants email, so there's a code to put in to get that working. From there, it's install time. What I really wanted to do first here was get the VR (index) set up, FINALLY. I havent been able to use it in weeks, and it has a variety of major uses for me, including sensory aspects. So, need to get that set up. Gotta download SteamVR to get it functional, get the tangled mess of the headset and the trackers going, get the rear tracker to DO ITS FREAKING JOB (I dont know why I have to fight that one so often). And then OH BOY time to set up the boundaries AGAIN. This involves doing frankly silly things like putting the headset on the floor while waving the controllers around, and other stuff. But then it's done, finally.
Into VR, let's try it out... ahhh, FINALLY, I have functionality. On the previous machine, well... when it was nearing collapse it just kept getting more and more corrupted. It's hard to explain what that means, really. It's one thing to be, like, playing a game or something, and you see a glitch happen on the screen. It's a visual effect on a flat surface in front of you. But that's not what a glitch looks like in VR (and to be clear, by "glitch" I mean not just bugs, but also things like framerate drops and processing problems). I mean really, you get to BE the glitch in there, which is... not a good experience. Never expose a new user to that, it doesnt end well. Fortunately I'm immune to all VR side effects at this point, so it didnt do anything other than irritate me. But on the new machine here... finally, none of that nonsense, we're back up to the proper 90 FPS at all times. Even in things that the previous machine wasnt *quite* up to even at its best. Given the graphics card on this thing, I expected no less.
So, from there, it was time to REALLY test it. How much could this thing handle? I know just how to do that, I've got exactly the program for it.
I must show this:
This is a Mandelbulb fractal. I work with these often. These are INCREDIBLY draining on the PC and will bring even a super high-end machine to its knees. And I wasnt going to produce just any image, no sir. We were going all the way with this one. Raytracing and everything.
So, get the fractal itself loaded (I'd already put it together on the previous machine before it went bonkers, but that was just the basic generation, not any full renders). Get it set to some high quality options. Try to render. Okay... it wants 20 hours to do this. For ONE image. No, that cant be right. Look around a bit more in the program... ah. I see. It's not using the GPU at all. Argue with it for like 20 minutes (it's more complicated than it sounds) and I've got it using the GPU finally. Let's render the image.
20 hours... down to 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Okay... wow. The previous machine at it's best couldnt do that. It wouldnt have been even JUST 20 hours... at the level of stuff I wanted here, it would have been multiple days. But now... 2 minutes.
But that's not good enough. Just some raytracing and such is only the start. Let's REALLY push it. Turn on all sorts of options, set up additional light sources, and do some complicated weirdness.
The final image is the one above, and it would have taken an unviable amount of time on the previous machine... provided it could do it at all. This though? 20 minutes.
The crazy thing about fractals is that it can still be pushed way further than that. It's worth noting that rendering a fractal isnt like rendering something in a game. Game rendering happens so fast that you get, well, a bazillion frames a second. But a fractal? No. It's all ultra-complex math that I barely understand, and the limits of what the programs in question can do are... way further than I even know how to use.
And so, that's where I am at now, having just completed that thing, and feeling like most of the "main" setup and testing is done. While getting a cool bit of art out of it.
An old PC would take like, an hour to get to a "totally ready" state. But this took like all freaking day. And there's still so much more stuff to do yet, with the main bits out of the way. I'll likely spend an inordinate amount of time tomorrow arguing with the stupid Switch controller, getting that set up is a giant pain. As it is now though, it's about time for bed.
I'm just glad it's done though. I dont know how it is for everyone else, but if I get disconnected from my main special interests for too long my mood and mental state take a nose-dive. That's part of why my recent posts have been rather... unpleasant. Well, the gender thing too, but that's another topic really. One way or another, with this back, mood improved a whole lot.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway. Yeah, since I was doing that all bloody day, it was on my mind here, so... a bit of a ramble, for the heck of it. Because I do that. Also I thought it might be cool to show that image there... it takes a lot of work to make those things.
