Mode is simply the wavepattern of the light traveling through the optical fiber. Multimode means there are a few different wavepatterns traveling down the fiber, they tend to potentially interfere and its not as efficient of a use of optical power. In singlemode, this is a lot harder to do and requires better optics, the light is in one pattern, power is efficiently allocated to that pattern, and thus the light can be sent much further. Its been many years since college so hopefully that explanation suffices.
Now lets say you want to send multiple signals to get more bandwidth on one fiber, you just need to move the frequency/wavelength of light so different signals have different wavelengths and can be discerned at the receiving end. That's gonna take even more optics and filters on both ends, but works quite well to add more bandwidth to existing fiber installations where running more fiber would cost a lot more than installing new equipment on the ends.
Rather than interfering with each other multimode suffers mainly from modal dispersion as the modes do not travel the same path and some take a shorter or longer one, so the signal is spread out.
It's fascinating to see how far the pendulum has swung since those days. Maybe there is no place for honest writing anymore, as he described it, in the blogs of that era, which suffered the same issues of PR and monetization.
Can we get a field report from someone who has played it? I remember hearing about it 10 years ago and it seemed cool, I always thought it turned into vaporware.
I've got over 3k hours at this point roughly, so i maybe slightly biased
The game has major ups and downs, but nothing really comes close to the same feeling of being on a capital ship with your friends pulling out from a beautiful space port. I wish there was a better alternative but there isn't, nothihng really comes close.
Performance has vastly improved from 50 players per server to 110 now i beleive? And i think theres talks of increasing it further.
I tried it during one of their free play weekends. The first time I rode an elevator to the hangar, it ejected me through the wall, breaking my legs and forcing me to crawl to a medbay before I could do anything else.
Curious, not saying its your fault but did you have the game installed on Nvme/ssd? On a standard HDD even with high r/w speeds the game is borderline unplayable.
Also free fly weekends are when the game is at its worst, the servers are bought to its knees.
Again, no fault to the player and its completely on CIG but its a shame that a lot of players never get to see the game in its best light because free fly is a nightmare.
I might be missing something - are you suggesting that the elevator blasted me through a wall and broke my legs because I installed the game to a hard drive? I can't remember what sort of drive I installed it to, it wasn't installed for very long.
Yes youre missihg something, SC on slower disks (even ssds) sucks it needs to be on an NvME drive for best performance
It fails to load geomoetry on slower disks sometimes, i.e. insides of an elevtator which causes the player to clip through and the game tries to compenstate and cause funky reactions.
Yes youre missihg something, SC on slower disks (even ssds) sucks it needs to be on an NvME drive for best performance
It fails to load geomoetry on slower disks sometimes, i.e. insides of an elevtator which causes the player to clip through and the game tries to compenstate and cause funky reactions.
Sounds about right. I played off and on for a month or so; through a few updates.
There had/have been recurring problems with elevators and inventory. I would get ejected into space; no leg breaking.
I think just the way they mesh the world together makes that something that has been hard for them to fix.
The inventory issues are what got me to stop playing. Long inventory load times, and then 75% of the time, inventory would be lost or permanently broken (items lost/can't add new things to inventory).
Still fun for a few days. Pretty graphics. Space flight was fun.
FPS missions needed a lot of work, but functional.
Another thing that made me quit, was the tedium of setup. You respawn quickly, from death into the hospital (unless you end up in prison, for shooting an at FPS guard that looks 90% exactly like an FPS enemy (then you get the prison play loop, which is fun once or twice)). But, then you need to take the elevator (chance of instant death) down to the ground floor. find the train. wait for the train. take the elevator (chance of death; or stairs if you are lucky [ i feel like there's a 'I'm gonna git you sucka' joke in here ]) to the shopping district. Wander around the shopping district (which is different on each planet) to hopefully find new Armor, Rifle, Mining tool, Gravity-gun tool (not all planets have the things you need, even)... then get back to the train and repeat for the space dock. then elevator to your ship bay.
... that's like 10-30 minutes. it just gets tedious.
- probably more fun playing with groups of people, but it got too tedious playing solo.
Was an early Kickstarter backer, so I'll try it again at some point when it is more polished.
Agree that what I paid for was mainly a modern Wing Commander/Freelancer type game, and they are overreaching by a lot. I think the First-person-shooter stretch goal was added later in the funding campaign.
I also feel like a lot of the kick-starter ships have been power-creeped (and they also seem to be lagging behind in quality updates; because CIG has to design and sell new ships to make more money to fund development, and then most of that money goes to make new ships).
They should not be making new ships at all at this point, unless those ships are required for the single player campaign. Focus should be on game systems and game play.
I played during a free play weekend. I got out of my bed and immediately fell through the world and died. Tried again and went to look for the space port. Had to take a train to get there. The train ride was cool exactly once, but then you realize the planets are vast nothingness and the cool city you see really is completely empty. Lots of T-posing 3D models standing on tables and chairs. A much-vaunted "Bartender AI" that plays the same pint glass flip animation and says the same few dialog bits ad nauseum. The flight model is rather.. erm.. version zero like the rest of the game? As in, it doesn't really exist but maybe someday.
It's not an MMO as such, with something like 50 players per server. The Server Meshing God-tech that they've been banging on about for years now is practically impossible as described. To paraphrase, "you'll be able to shoot a gun from one ship and the bullet will pass through several cloud servers as it hits a player in another ship". Latency and n^2 are not your friends here. Honestly, based on this alone I'm surprised by the amount of Gell-mann Amnesia in the thread.
In my experience it's a "make your own fun" sort of game. Try it on a free play weekend, but IMO don't get sucked in and donate tens of thousands of dollars to a broken CryEngine demo running on promises.
The thing I love about Borges is that he is both a big-idea sci fi writer and a poet. and his poetry definitely shows through in his sci fi. For example, as in "The Zahir". The thought of a person obsessing about the beauty of the shadow of a rose really does it for me.
But I like his big idea stories too. Absolutely "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" may be his masterpiece. But it's dense for an introduction to the author. Contrast this with "The Secret Miracle" which also has a beautiful big idea, but it's so elegantly small. in a sense the whole story fits into just one second.
Finally, I went overboard and calculated the number of books on the shelves in "the library of babel". I remember distinctly that the story made our very real universe feel small for the first time in my life. and to think, I barely scratched the surface. a whole book was published about the math in that one story alone: "The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel" by William Goldbloom Bloch.
The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths is a page long, and you can find it online (html). It is a small example of his style. If you like that one, then you will probably like his other stories. Of his short stories, my personal favorite is The Secret Miracle (it is included in his book Fictions). He also wrote poetry. My personal favorite is The Golem (included in the book The Other, the Self).
The recommendations you´re getting are right on spot:
Fictions (1944)
The Aleph (1949)
The Book of Sand (1975)
I have to say, however, that not all stories in those books are equally palatable for newcomers. If you´d like more specific recommendations on which stories to read first, let me know. I have written a full page with recommendations for beginners on how to start.
You could get his _Selected Fictions_
Then read
The library of Babel
Funes the Memorious
The God´s Script
The Book of Sand
The Garden of Forking Paths
The above are enjoyable for beginners - even though of course there are many more layers of meanings than are first apparent in those stories. But that deeper enjoyment can come later. They´re formidable narratives in their own right.
I'd recommend anyone new to Borges to begin with "The Garden of Forking Paths." It's a sort of spy thriller story but also includes his trademark meditations on time and infinity.
The first short story of his I read was “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”. It remains my favourite of his, and I probably read this story and handful of his others once a year or so.
