Retrofuturism, my favorite. Tati is turning in his grave.

There 's more fun stuff on the Lost Highways site.

(From BoingBoing, among others.)

Real-Time High Dynamic Range Image-Based Lighting.

OK, so it's eye candy. Sue me.

Some of this has been visible on the horizon, i.e. Siggraph, for some time, but there it all is, and you can play around with it if you have the right hardware. The guy got 67000 visitors in about two weeks.

Wired has written an article on Doom 3. I'll spare you my criticism of the article's flaws. There are some interesting tidbits in there, such as Carmack's view of the future of graphics engine programming. You know, graphics engines, "the brain of any game". (Couldn't resist.)

Found on Usenet:

""!!! LATEST VERSION, all girls perfect with assholes and no tanlines, For peeps having trouble with freezing in the DOA Xtreme Volleyball nude patch, Here is the solution & added money hack - 1 attachment"

So now you know.

Hacking the XBox is becoming increasingly easier, although the actual procedure is still complicated. It all started with the same kind of security leak used to hack into web servers and DBMSes, meaning thinking about security may become more important in the games world, even for off-line games.

However, writing a book called "Hacking the XBox" turns out to be really hard (this is an interesting interview).

The IGDA commissioned an Online Games Committee to address the needs of game developers concerning online games. The purpose of the Online Games White Paper is to provide online games market statistics, business model descriptions, technology summaries and publisher listings. Additionally, this White Paper provides online games case studies and reference resources.

You need to be an IGDA member to get the white paper, so I haven't read it yet. But decent market research is definitely one of the few things that might make an IGDA membership interesting to me.

In-Stat/MDR has released an online gaming report. Some of the conclusions from their press release:

The high-tech market research finds that while online gaming won't take over the world, even a moderate number of gamers (such as 10% of the game consoles), playing for relatively short periods of time (5 hours a week), would consume more than 5% of all of the American Backbone Traffic by the end of 2003.

...

The biggest risk to any company that is even marginally affected by online gaming is to dismiss it out of hand or put plans on the backburner until they think it matures. There are a lot of companies that are working very hard to grow this industry quickly so, odds are, they will help to move things along, faster than some expect.

...

The combined data throughput for both paid and free online console gamers will top 285 Petabits a month by 2007. At the same time, the paid console subscriptions will bring in just under $650 Million. However, as it currently stands, none of that money will end up with the broadband providers that are handling these hundreds of Petabits of additional data.

You can read the abstract for free. The whole report costs $2,495.

According to BoingBoing, the US Department of Defense has issued US soldiers decks of playing card-sized cards with the 55 most-wanted Iraqi leaders on them. However, their link to the DoD site doesn't work. Various other sites use the same link and have the same problem, so it looks as if the news item has been removed.

Update: By now, you too may have received spam about actually buying "the World's Most Wanted Deck of Playing Cards", which is not a bad pun in a way. "Own A Piece of History! Destined To Become a Valuable Collector's Item!" Sheesh.

Kaydara announced that famous ballet troupe La La La Human Steps integrated their technology into Amelia, its latest ballet production.

Several years ago, famous choreographer Merce Cunningham usedUnreal Pictures' Character Studio and LifeForms in some of his dance pieces.

It's interesting to read about this integration of dance and 3D technology from the point of view of the dance world.

Update: Leslie Bishko, computer animator, Certified Laban Movement Analyst, and associate professor of animation at the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, together with Jana Wilcoxen, held a tutorial at GDC this year called "Making Characters Move: Expressive Character Acting Through Laban Movement Analysis". So while other people are applying computer animation to dance, LMA, which came out of dance, is now being applied to computer animation.

He makes funny videos. According to a reliable source, these really were made by Mr. Broussard. And according to another reliable source, the company has spent money on strippers at least once.

Justin Hall has written an article about ethics in video game journalism. It begins to cover my dissatisfaction with the professional gaming press.