Thanks Adrian!

Yes, you are exactly right. One of the several catalysts for the 
Croquet project (started last Sept) was that graphics accellerators 
in laptops were clearly crossing the boundary into "wow". So we did 
it in anticipation that "every" new computer could and would have a 
really powerful really inexpensive accellerator.

Cheers,

Alan

------At 9:56 PM -0500 11/7/02, Adrian Sampaleanu wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I thought I'd give some feedback on performance with my system so that
>people might have an idea of what it's like when it flies.
>
>AMD Athlon XP 1900,
>1 gig RAM,
>Nvidia Geforce4 Ti 4200 video card with 64 MB DDR RAM (3.3 nanosecond) -
>latest driver, 41.03, and overclocked with RivaTuner
>
>I have to say that the experience is amazing - motion is really smooth,
>2D tools (browsers, paint, etc.) are really useable in 3D (the Nvidia
>card does a really good job of scaling without significant blurring)
>with menus, text selection, scrolling working just as well as in real
>2D. Textures are really sharp and the translucency used throughout is
>beautiful. I had no problem getting things started and the load time is
>not very significant. Easily worth the download, but I do have a
>broadband connection and I figured I would meet the requirements
>hardwarewise.
>
>I'm only afraid that people with clunkier systems will try this out and
>go - "Yeah, I guess the concept could be good if only things worked in
>real time" and dismiss this as something whose time hasn't yet come.
>That time is here guys - let me do the math for you!
>
>AMD Athlon XP 1900 CPU - $109 CAD
>RAM - $140 CAD (this is for 133 MHz SDRAM) - performance could be even
>better with DDR, I guess, but I wanted to use the RAM I had with my
>previous system
>MSI Nvidia Geforce 4 card - $212 CAD
>Motherboard - ECS K7S5A (this board takes two sticks of SDRAM or two of
>DDR) and has built-in lan and sound - $82 CAD
>
>Total - $543 CAD  or a measly $340 for you lucky folks south of the
>border - I just recently upgraded to this (kept case, HD and rest from
>previous system). That's not a lot for quite good performance.
>
>The point I want to get across is that the environment, even in this
>alpha (beta?) state, is very usable (not talking bug free by any means
>obviously) in the sense that you do feel total immersion and don't get
>the sensation that, yes it's cool, but you want to escape to the
>"surface" after a little while to do real work. I certainly felt like I
>could actually work inside the teapot without any pain.
>
>To everyone involved in Croquet's development - I want to congratulate
>you! This _is_ the dawn of new era and this is no cliche, I assure you.
>I'm so hyped I can't tell you. I'm willing to carry my system (which is
>nowhere near being portable) about 1 KM just to show the guys at work.
>
>
>Woohoo!
>
>Adrian


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