Oh, cool. My current device uses Logitech Options+, which is not the same as the old G Hub and is not the same as what you’re describing.
Which honestly, before we get into the mandatory login and everything else, begs the question… why does Logitech need three different multi-device software hubs? What the hell?
It’s not (just) that manufacturers are trying to mine all this bloatware for data, it’s that most of them are absolutely terrible at making software in the first place.
Yeah, I’d like to know the specifics, too. My Logi mouse still uses the same application (although they did update terms recently) and while they’ve added some AI shovelware to it the mouse stil remembers its shortcuts with that thing off and I haven’t noticed any changes to how the application is put together.
It’s entirely possible the application is a Chromium-based browser thing, but in any case it still doesn’t require a login (although it does support one) and it will run offline.
Don’t get me wrong, Logi’s approach to this, along with a lot of other hardware manufacturers, sucks really bad. I do appreciate Microsoft, of all people, recently starting to standardize RGB controls, at least. It’s still wonky and interacts weirdly with some third party software, but it’s a start. I don’t need twenty different apps to keep glowy lights and saved shortcuts going.
Right, but now you’re giving me arguments for using original hardware, not for modifying it.
See, that’s the part that loses me. I use original hardware all the time, I have tons of original hardware and software for a whole bunch of platforms, including ones that are trivial to run in cycle-accurate emulators and FPGA reproductions. All good there. I even have some flashcarts and softmods to allow cross-region usage or to consolidate libraries. No problem with that.
But that is based on using the original hardware, unmodified. Once you start gutting it for mods then you’re working against your argument that complexities and sublteties of original hardware are important. I mean, yeah, I do care to at least have a way to go back to sanity check the sublte ways in which original hardware parses the code in a rom. But for that same reason I want to see how the default composite or RF signal subtly interacts with that output and with a period-accurate CRT display. I want to hear the CD spinning when it’s supposed to spin and the original loading times.
To be clear, I think this is just a case mod, but I’m talking about the modding scene more generally. I don’t see why you would think “total accuracy” is important in the interaction between the CPU, VDUs and RAM but not on the I/O. Wouldn’t the CD drive and the video signal be part of “total accuracy”? Wouldn’t the form factor of the shell and the controllers be a part of that accurate experience as well? If you push me I’d even say I consider a MiSTer FPGA solution with a correct analogue out signal and an original controller feeding into a CRT is far more accurate to the original NES than the original Analogue NT that was made from gutted NES parts, or even than an original console pushed through an HDMI scaler or mod.
I guess there is no accounting for taste, but I do struggle to follow the logic where running the original CPU and video chips on completely different I/O is justified by trying to maximize for accuracy.
Okay, but you can do that with a softmod or a flash cart on the Saturn, too. You don’t need to rip out its guts to transplant them to a different case. Even if you had a Saturn with a faulty drive you can add a ODE solution without having to sacrifice the original form factor.
Plus, yeah, Saturn emulation is harder and less accurate than other systems, but we’re pretty much there these days for most of the stuff you want to play. You can do all sorts of cool cases and consolized devices to play old games these days, why break apart an original Saturn for that?
Okay, people will likely bash me for this hot take, and if this is for you feel free to enjoy it, but…
…why do this instead of using a FPGA or emulation-based solution?
If you don’t want to run original media or don’t want to output original video out signals, why bother to use original hardware at all? I can see it as a way to upcycle heavily damaged Saturn units, but there aren’t that many of these in the wild in the first place, why dismantle an existing piece to make what is effectively a completely different product? I don’t see the point.
Hah, I handed one to a kid just this week, too, and they loved their time on it. I’m just assuming a lot of people aren’t actively playing theirs.
I’ll add the homebrew community to what I said above regarding the emulation community, too.
I would have loved a stereo Switch, for sure.
And I hear you on the impact on 2D games. Man, the 3D remasters of Sega classics on the 3DS are amazing and it sucks that they will remain trapped in there indefinitely.
And yeah, emulation. You can get stereo output out of it right now, but it’s just such a hassle even if you have the hardware. You can do it, but the 3DS was so seamless that it just isn’t the same thing. Pulling that thing out of mothballs if you haven’t played it in a while is immediately magical. It still looks sci-fi because it just works. Having some convoluted emulation-to-VR setup or whatever is fundamentally different.
Well, the fact that not everybody has good stereoscopic sight should mean that, on accessibility alone. But I’ve also never bought into that particular criticism.
I mean, I also don’t have a useful game mechanic for super detailed graphics and you don’t see me complaining about games looking good. I thought playing through little dioramas looked great and was super fun, and that was all I needed. When the DS had its phase of shoehorning touch controls on everything I found that extremely obnoxious. Not every gimmick needs to be at the core of every game.
The original implementation without eye tracking gave it an (undeserved) reputation for that, but I don’t think the current version of it is givin people headaches at all. Having played a 3DS with 3D on full just this week, I also don’t find the resolution was the dealbreaker. Obviously the Switch is way ahead of its performance, but coming from the DS they delivered a big bump in 3D performance along with the stereoscopic display.
What I think they had is terrible timing. The 3DS had a rocky launch and then had to make that back during the peak of “stereo 3D sucks” cyclical backlash coming from rushed movie conversions sold at a premium and TVs doing it poorly in the living room. Weirdly a lot of that was coming from the same people that keep hoping that VR would be the next big thing. At the same time. The cognitive dissonance was harsh there for a bit.
Still, it was a thing, and everybody lumpled the 3DS along with it. “Turn the slider down and never think about it again” was a meme, which sucks, because plenty of 3DS games look great in stereo.
I mean, there are seventy million of them out there, so collectors will be fine for a while, but… man, we really missed a step not embracing the crazy cool 3D display tech in these. I really loved it.
Also, point people at this thread next time Nintendo comes after the emulation scene, because… yeah, this is why.
I don’t know that it’s an eyesight issue. I mean, if you have good enough eyesight to read stuff on your phone screen you have good enough eyesight to see the difference.
It may be an awareness thing, where the more you care about photography the more the limitations of the bad cameras stand out. And hey, that’s fine, if the phone makes good enough pictures for you that’s great. Plus, yeah, you can get phones with the exact same lens and sensor where one of them has a big fat bump that is deliberately blown up to make the cameras “feel” premium. There’s been a fair amount of marketing around this.
But if you compare A to B it’s very obvious. Camera bumps became a marker of premium phones for a reason.
Yep. That sample above is from a review, but digging into my own archived photos at the time it’s crazy to see how much blur picutres taken from moving vehicles have, even in direct daylyght, and how grainy indoors images are, even when well lit. That thing was genuinely just opening itself up for a while and hoping for the best.
I am annoyed by most phone trends of the past decade, but… yeah, if you go back to a 2014 phone today there is some readjustment between what you remember phone photo and video looking like versus what they actually look like. That was the Galaxy S5 year. That thing had a single camera you would consider unacceptable as your selfie shooter today.
EDIT: This thread made me go look up reviews, and man, yeah, I remember every single indoors photo on my own S5 looking just like this. What a blast of nostalgia. I didn’t realize there is a digital equivalent to 80s pictures having gone all sepia and magenta-y, but here it is.
Oh, that works for me, definitely. It just takes maybe two hours, instead of 20 minutes. Same principle, though.
How do you get motivated in the afternoon? I have maybe three, four hours of semi-effective brain function between waking up and what seems to be some form of power saving mode that lasts the rest of the day. If I’ve eaten food with a fork that day, doing things is a struggle. Send motivation tips for post-lunch humaning, please.
Absolutely, and if you can’t take the plunge on either do whatever feels right.
But I’ll say if you’re anxious about it at all, shaving is a good way to not have to think about it. Not everybody has an easy time just getting over the way they look and not giving a crap, obviously.
Plus if you’re worried about your hairline, going to get a haircut can be a stressful time and shaving means getting it out of the way. And it’s super cheap and fast by comparison.
Well, then you don’t need a phone review, do you?
Which is fine. Most people don’t need a phone at any given time. You go check reviews for phones when you need one and when you care about the differences between them. If you just need a phone-ass phone you can just go to your carrier and grab whatever is packed-in, no need to check reviews for that, most phones just fine work out of the box these days.
Okay, I’m here to help.
Shave.
Seriously. The amount of pressure put on guys around balding is horrendous, and it can consume your attention if you let it. The moment that superfluous, vestigial hair comes off, it’s such a breath of fresh air (no pun intended). No more fussing, worrying or stressing about it. Plus, in many cases it looks pretty good. Give it a couple of weeks and it’ll just become your face.
Give it a couple of months and the moment there’s a scratchy, annoying milimeter of hair on your head will be a natural call to give it a shave for the comfort alone.
See, this is the exact process I am trying to describe. I’m sure that made sense in your head, and I’m sure if you think about it for a second you’ll realize that Target will very happily set up an affiliate link, just as Amazon does. And, of course, a whole bunch of the SEO listicles are the SEO hooks of bigger traditional review sites, including RTINGS, IGN or whatever. For the sake of argument, punching in “best bluetooth speaker” on DDG returns SEO listicles from Tom’s Guide, Wired, RTINGS, the New York Times, CNET and The Verge, in that order.
Which is not to say it’s not annoying, affiliate links and SEO have done terrible things to how practical reviews on websites are presented and parceled out. But that’s not to say they aren’t done honestly or lack validity on the sites that do it right, which are also the more successful ones.
I don’t know, I think maybe it depends on age? Most people exposed to US media will recognize at least the landmarks, but that’s probably true of other cities as well.
But NYC has been in so many videogames I feel younger people with a passing interest in gaming will at least have a weird set of expectations. Of Manhattan, if nothing else. The twenty years of open world Spider-Man games alone are more exposure to an overhead map of a city than most people get of the place where they live in that amount of time.