Socialism is state ownership of the means of production. The governance of that state, be it democratic, monarchical, or dictatorship of the proletariat, is a separate question.
Socialism is public ownership of the means of production. If there isn’t a way for regular people / “the proletariat” to influence the government, it’s not socialism because an autocratic government isn’t “the public”
By that definition, which again proves my point that you have no idea what socialism is, a king personally owning an entire country through the apparatus of the state would be socialist. Most socialists would reject that conclusion because ownership by a state isn't the same thing as ownership by society.
State ownership alone isn't sufficient. If a hereditary ruling family controls the state, then "state ownership" just means ownership by that ruling elite, not by society.
I would love to see somebody code this up to run in the browser -- it's from 2003, so I bet it could now run really fast with lots of voxels. It will steal your face right off your head. Happy Halloween!
1,367 views Jul 31, 2009: A prototype user interface for browsing volume data. Presented at IEEE VIS 2003 by Michael J. McGuffin, Liviu Tancau, and Ravin Balakrishnan. For more information, see
Louis Castle developed a "voxel plus" software renderer for Westwood Studios' 1997 Blade Runner. It used "voxels" (with scare quotes) for character animation, not just terrain.
madmoose on May 28, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: How Voxels Became ‘The Next Big Thing’
Blade Runner didn't actually use voxels, they used a rather unique technique that they called "slice animations".
The 3D models were sliced from bottom to top into a couple of hundred slices (depending on desired quality) by intersecting the model with a horizontal plane and storing the resulting polygons.
The engine can only rotate the models around the vertical axis.
I made a hacky javascript version of the renderer a long time ago:
Seems that the people that developed the game considers it voxel based.
madmoose on May 28, 2018 | parent | next [–]
The page you linked quotes Louis Castle:
> What we are using is not voxels, but sort of 'voxels plus.'
So "not voxels". Louis Castle probably called it voxel-like because he didn't want to get too technical in an interview. Their technique has not been described in detail in the press but see http://deadendthrills.com/future-imperfect-the-lost-art-of-w... [Dead URL -- I tried to rewrite it with archive.org but it's down for me and apparently everyone else now -- can anyone else get through? -Don] for an article that calls it a "slice model"-technique.
I'm not an expert on voxels but I've reverse engineered and reimplemented most of the Blade Runner rendering engine and in my opinion it doesn't count as voxels. For one, you're never going to be able to rotate the models around any axis other than the vertical.
LouisCastle on May 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]
Fun! Yeah, we stored our data as slices for space and restricted rotation to the Y axis. Both were optimization since each frame of an animation was a full model there was no need to rotate them. The renderer could render them from any angle though so I still consider them voxels. More like voxels lite then voxel plus. We also used a lot of sprite cards with zdepth and a quick normal hack for lighting. You had to cut corners where you could back then!!
madmoose on May 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]
Hello Louis!
I've certainly had a lot of fun figuring out how you did what you did, so thank you for that, no matter what you call it :)
You certainly crammed a lot of tech into one engine! Full screen 15 BPP videos with full z-buffer with smaller alpha-channeled videos rendered on top, character models with lighting. Even the UI is looping videos.
Once I get proper path finding working Blade Runner will be a lot more playable in our ScummVM engine.
I've probably rewatched the opening scene of the game a thousand times while working on it...
I only wished that you had used a scripting language for your game code instead of compiling it to DLLs. I know you optimized heavily for speed but it would have made our task a lot easier :)
DonHopkins on May 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]
So that's why you didn't include the Deckard -vs- Pris scene where she rotates around the X-axis! ;)
pjtr on May 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]
Fun indeed!
Can you talk about how the artists authored the original models? Was it an automated conversion from a standard polygon model or from a full voxel model? Or was it all drawn in this special slice format directly somehow?
madmoose on May 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]
Not Louis, but the article I linked above says they used 3D Studio Max and converted it to the slice model format.
>Q: Can an “AI command line” replace the GUI as the primary user experience for computers, assuming the technology improves and irrespective of today’s state?
>A: Alan Kay -- Still trying to learn how to think better (May 26, 2026)
>The “related questions” have interesting slants — some of which make more or less sense.
>I think most people should be able to answer this for themselves if they look at this from a number of different angles.
>One is that we have multiple ways of “perceiving”, “knowing”, “learning”, etc. — for example by touch, sound, vision, symbolic representations, abstract languagues, etc. Besides inventing interactive computer graphics, Ivan Sutherland pointed out (in a famous 1964 paper) that “the ultimate display” should be able to do every kind of I/O that humans can do and experience. His famous last line with typical Ivan humor was “In the ultimate display, a simulated bullet would be fatal to its operator”!
[...]
----
The Ultimate Display -- Ivan E. Sutherland (Jan 1, 1965)
>TL;DR: The authors live in a physical world whose properties they have come to know well through long familiarity but lack corresponding familiarity with the forces on charged particles, forces in non-uniform fields, the effects of nonprojective geometric transformations, and high-inertia, low friction motion.
>Abstract: We live in a physical world whose properties we have come to know well through long familiarity. We sense an involvement with this physical world which gives us the ability to predict its properties well. For example, we can predict where objects will fall, how well-known shapes look from other angles, and how much force is required to push objects against friction. We lack corresponding familiarity with the forces on charged particles, forces in non-uniform fields, the effects of nonprojective geometric transformations, and high-inertia, low friction motion.
>A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland. Computer displays today cover a variety of capabilities. Some have only the fundamental ability to plot dots. Displays being sold now generally have built in line-drawing capability. An ability to draw simple curves would be useful. Some available displays are able to plot very short line segments in arbitrary directions, to form characters or more complex curves. Each of these abilities has a history and a known utility.
[...]
>The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked.
Then don't read the article, and don't post your Human Slop to this discussion. With your incurious attitude and performative compulsion to proudly announce your cultivated self imposed ignorance instead of contributing to the discussion, it would be best for everyone if you just deleted your account. Your best hope is to go find a job in the Trump Administration regulating AI, where you'll fit in perfectly.
In other words, you're on a monthly plan, haven't read the not-so-fine print, and not going over your monthly limit, so not paying by the token yet. When you do, you will be in for a big surprise. Look it up. You'll thank me later.
That's not socialism. It's an absolute autocratic monarchy distributing oil rents to a privileged citizen caste.
Most of the private-sector work is done by foreign workers who don't receive the same benefits or political rights.
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