(Forget) Voxel support (we want models and GL!)

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 8:52 am

You wouldn't get much out of a modern computer running under DOS. It's the same as with a software renderer that shows performance issues even on fast systems.

jallamann · Post by **jallamann** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:43 am

Well, at least DOS responds far faster than Windows could ever dream of, even when you compare an old computer with DOS and a new with Windows...

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:57 am

Is that surprising conidering that the amounts of memory involved are much less than 1%?

Most of the delays with Windows come from HD access (and of course a much larger complexity of applications. If you compare apples with oranges you get skewed results.)

jallamann · Post by **jallamann** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:10 am

While true, the two different systems can perform the same job when it comes to stuff like office work (you don't need a million megabytes of RAM and thirty times that in HD space to work on a spreadsheet or a text document), and on the same platform, but with a great speed difference. DOS is much smaller and therefore works both better and faster. The only thing that limits MS-DOS (not others IIRC) is the 640k conventional memory limit. And it's not really a limit, because you could just use high memory easy as pie.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:22 am

Whatever. Thank god I never had to endure stuff like that under DOS.

Cutmanmike · Post by **Cutmanmike** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:25 am

So uh... what's a voxel again?

Grubber · Post by **Grubber** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 1:05 am

VOlumetric piXEL

QBasicer · Post by **QBasicer** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 6:38 pm

And Pixel stands for Picture Element, so therefore we can call it a Volume Element.

Also going slightly offtopic, DOS has a kind of one-track mind. It doesn't need to keep the spyware that's active in the background, or the bugs running in IE, it just has to care about what's running (not really true, but you get the picture).

Also DOS apps have direct access to hardware, while Windows apps do not (sort of).

jallamann · Post by **jallamann** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 9:21 pm

Yeah, only one thing can run at the same time. That'd mean that you'd install any virus your computer would get yourself instead of Windows doing it for you. Any spyware would have to be loaded as a TSR (and would thus be very hard to cloak (just do a "mem /c | more"), plus it'd have to be listed in autoexec.bat or config.sys for automatic startup), so I'd say DOS is at least one thousand times more secure than Windows, even though all the applications have direct hardware access (which isn't a bad thing, at least IMHO)...

Post by **Kirby** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 11:55 am

Couldn't we just stick with Phoenix's FVoxels? I'd think those are at least satisfactory

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 12:47 pm

jallamann wrote: Any spyware would have to be loaded as a TSR (and would thus be very hard to cloak (just do a "mem /c | more"), plus it'd have to be listed in autoexec.bat or config.sys for automatic startup), so I'd say DOS is at least one thousand times more secure than Windows,

Don't be too sure about that. DOS viruses had their way of cloaking themselves, preferably by hiding themselves in other programs' memory.

jallamann · Post by **jallamann** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:14 pm

But as I said, you'd have to actually install the virus yourself, be it through a batch file or another program that claims it's something else, but it would be far harder for virus authors to infect computers than today's Windows vulnerabilities. And by hiding in other programs' memory, they could be pinpointable. AFAIK, most TSR's have a fixed memory consumption, so if a value is off by just a kilobyte, you could know where the problem would be. And if you have an antivirus application, it probably wouldn't be hard to get rid of virii, should you be unfortunate enough to ever get any.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:35 pm

You have no idea. I once got a DOS virus through some infected software (that was 1990.) How should I have noticed that? Unlike Windows viruses in DOS they were not separate programs that had to be installed. They spread by attaching themselves to other programs. As a result they spread like a plague.

And regarding removal, it isn't that simple. The one I got was resistant to everything that dealt with such infections at the time. The only means I was able to get rid of it was to use Norton Disk Editor and manipulate the boot sector in a very specific way so that running a HD checker later could detect the corrupted sector. That thing was as nasty and persistent as most modern Windows viruses, believe me.

Of course after finding that thing I took it apart with a disassembler. It was a truly nasty piece of work.

jallamann · Post by **jallamann** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:46 pm

Well, I didn't know much back in the days, but I believe you. And successful virus authors would need more knowledge than todays', am I right?
However, if you're cautious enough, you won't get any kind of virus. But most cautious people tend to let their guard down from time to other.

Nmn · Post by **Nmn** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 4:04 pm

Enough of this derailness.

I tought that colision support for voxels was coded in.. (think: Blood in Zdoom) but not their rendering..?

Kirby wrote:Couldn't we just stick with Phoenix's FVoxels? I'd think those are at least satisfactory

Rather no.. seing as each of his "fake voxels" is an independant thing it lags as hell.. at least for me