Michael Fabian 'Xaymar' Dirks
390 lines
23 KiB
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390 lines
23 KiB
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="4.2.1">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://www.xaymar.com/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://www.xaymar.com/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2021-12-24T10:35:51+01:00</updated><id>https://www.xaymar.com/feed.xml</id><title type="html">Xaymar</title><subtitle>Just another software developer in an endless pool of humans.</subtitle><author><name>Michael Fabian 'Xaymar' Dirks</name></author><entry><title type="html">New Year, New Website</title><link href="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/12/22/new-year-new-website/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="New Year, New Website" /><published>2021-12-22T00:00:00+01:00</published><updated>2021-12-22T00:00:00+01:00</updated><id>https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/12/22/new-year-new-website</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/12/22/new-year-new-website/"><div class="block block- ">
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It's been a while since the last visible change to the Website, almost exactly two years now. In 2019, I switched the theme back to a more lightweight version with the old 2016 CSS override applied, but eventually that was no longer enough. Over time, WordPress's updates spiralled out of my control, changing how WordPress worked - and at the same time also drastically increasing processing time required.
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While the move to a more <a class="inline inline-link" href="https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax101" ></a>
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powerful machine<a class="inline inline-link" href="" ></a>
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initially improved the situation, after a few updates to WordPress even that was negated. It was time to find an alternative solution, one which would not take ages to compile a static page to be served live. Looking through solutions, including some outright dumb ones, I ended up picking Jeckyll for the job. It took me a while to learn, but I've finally mastered it enough to make my own fully static website with it.
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So, welcome to the new site! I hope you will find everything you were here for, if not the old blog will still be active while I port things over to here.
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</div></content><author><name>Michael Fabian 'Xaymar' Dirks</name></author><category term="News" /><category term="Jekyll" /><category term="WordPress" /><category term="HTML" /><category term="CSS" /><category term="Performance" /><summary type="html">It's been a while since the last visible change to the Website, almost exactly two years now. In 2019, I switched the theme back to a more lightweight version with the old 2016 CSS override applied, but eventually that was no longer enough. Over time, WordPress's updates spiralled out of my control, changing how WordPress worked - and at the same time also drastically increasing processing time required. While the move to a more powerful machine initially improved the situation, after a few updates to WordPress even that was negated. It was time to find an alternative solution, one which would not take ages to compile a static page to be served live. Looking through solutions, including some outright dumb ones, I ended up picking Jeckyll for the job. It took me a while to learn, but I've finally mastered it enough to make my own fully static website with it. So, welcome to the new site! I hope you will find everything you were here for, if not the old blog will still be active while I port things over to here.</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">A little bit of Silence</title><link href="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/08/14/a-little-bit-of-silence/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="A little bit of Silence" /><published>2021-08-14T00:00:00+02:00</published><updated>2021-08-14T00:00:00+02:00</updated><id>https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/08/14/a-little-bit-of-silence</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/08/14/a-little-bit-of-silence/"><div class="block block- ">
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For a few weeks now I’ve taken a step back from the public eye, for various reasons. The main one is that I simply need some more time to myself, time to enjoy life a bit more than I used to. I’m barreling straight towards my 30s, and haven’t even experienced half of what I could have at this age, despite having the means to do so. So in the near, and perhaps far future, I will put a lot more focus on enjoying life.
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The people that follow me <a class="inline inline-link" href="https://twitter.com/Xaymar" ></a>
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on Twitter<a class="inline inline-link" href="" ></a>
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know that I’ve recently picked up a new hobby, which I’ll put a lot of time into: playing bass guitar. I’ve gotten reasonably far with it so far, but I still need a lot of time to actually be decent at it. Also I’ve started to pick up <a class="inline inline-link" href="https://twitch.tv/xaymar" ></a>
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streaming and content creation<a class="inline inline-link" href="" ></a>
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again, both something I liked to do, but dropped as nobody in my friend circle still had time to play multiplayer games.
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Originally, my hobby was programming, but it was more of a means to escape reality than anything – and now it has turned into a well-paying job, one I’m actually good at. This doesn’t mean that all my projects will end up abandoned, just that they will slow down drastically while I figure things out. StreamFX, VoiceFX, Tonbrett, ARMA 3 Partitioner, etc. will all still be worked on, just much slower than before.
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One thing I’m definitely not going to do is drop any of those projects before they hit 1.0, I’ve done that too many times, and I’ve regretted it every time. I’m sure that someone will spin this to be super negative, or political, or somehow fit their narrative like many times before, but this is just me saying I need a fucking break and enjoy this life before it can’t be enjoyed anymore due to various external circumstances, like Climate Change, and the current Pandemic killing everyone.
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Well, that’s all I had to say.
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</div></content><author><name>Michael Fabian 'Xaymar' Dirks</name></author><category term="Blog" /><category term="Health" /><summary type="html">For a few weeks now I’ve taken a step back from the public eye, for various reasons. The main one is that I simply need some more time to myself, time to enjoy life a bit more than I used to. I’m barreling straight towards my 30s, and haven’t even experienced half of what I could have at this age, despite having the means to do so. So in the near, and perhaps far future, I will put a lot more focus on enjoying life. The people that follow me on Twitter know that I’ve recently picked up a new hobby, which I’ll put a lot of time into: playing bass guitar. I’ve gotten reasonably far with it so far, but I still need a lot of time to actually be decent at it. Also I’ve started to pick up streaming and content creation again, both something I liked to do, but dropped as nobody in my friend circle still had time to play multiplayer games. Originally, my hobby was programming, but it was more of a means to escape reality than anything – and now it has turned into a well-paying job, one I’m actually good at. This doesn’t mean that all my projects will end up abandoned, just that they will slow down drastically while I figure things out. StreamFX, VoiceFX, Tonbrett, ARMA 3 Partitioner, etc. will all still be worked on, just much slower than before. One thing I’m definitely not going to do is drop any of those projects before they hit 1.0, I’ve done that too many times, and I’ve regretted it every time. I’m sure that someone will spin this to be super negative, or political, or somehow fit their narrative like many times before, but this is just me saying I need a fucking break and enjoy this life before it can’t be enjoyed anymore due to various external circumstances, like Climate Change, and the current Pandemic killing everyone. Well, that’s all I had to say.</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Mozilla, why?</title><link href="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/06/05/mozilla-why/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Mozilla, why?" /><published>2021-06-05T00:00:00+02:00</published><updated>2021-06-05T00:00:00+02:00</updated><id>https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/06/05/mozilla-why</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/06/05/mozilla-why/"><div class="block block- ">
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I didn’t mind the addition of Pocket because I didn’t use it. I didn’t mind the addition of Hello, as I didn’t use it. I didn’t mind the removal of the original themeing ability, which was far superior to what we have now. Didn’t even really care about the removal of Flash either. What I do mind is when you ignore user feedback, push out a release, break every existing theme and make things look incredibly stupid, then continue to ignore user feedback.
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Your new rounded theme design is horrible to look at, and it’s not something I want to continue using. The new tabs are oversized with needless padding and disconnected from the UI itself – they feel out of place. Your menus take ages to open and render correctly with the amount of Fonts I have for design and testing. Everything feels like you designed it for mobile, tablet or finger input – but this is your Desktop browser.
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Though in the end, this decision doesn’t surprise me. You haven’t exactly made great decisions in the past, and you continue this path even now. Only a matter of time until Firefox is completely forgotten, and only Chromium remains.
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</div></content><author><name>Michael Fabian 'Xaymar' Dirks</name></author><category term="Blog" /><category term="Rant" /><category term="Mozilla" /><category term="Firefox" /><summary type="html">I didn’t mind the addition of Pocket because I didn’t use it. I didn’t mind the addition of Hello, as I didn’t use it. I didn’t mind the removal of the original themeing ability, which was far superior to what we have now. Didn’t even really care about the removal of Flash either. What I do mind is when you ignore user feedback, push out a release, break every existing theme and make things look incredibly stupid, then continue to ignore user feedback. Your new rounded theme design is horrible to look at, and it’s not something I want to continue using. The new tabs are oversized with needless padding and disconnected from the UI itself – they feel out of place. Your menus take ages to open and render correctly with the amount of Fonts I have for design and testing. Everything feels like you designed it for mobile, tablet or finger input – but this is your Desktop browser. Though in the end, this decision doesn’t surprise me. You haven’t exactly made great decisions in the past, and you continue this path even now. Only a matter of time until Firefox is completely forgotten, and only Chromium remains.</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">FidelityFX Super Resolution: DLSS Killer, or not?</title><link href="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/06/02/fidelityfx-super-resolution-dlss-killer-or-not/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="FidelityFX Super Resolution: DLSS Killer, or not?" /><published>2021-06-02T00:00:00+02:00</published><updated>2021-06-02T00:00:00+02:00</updated><id>https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/06/02/fidelityfx-super-resolution-dlss-killer-or-not</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/06/02/fidelityfx-super-resolution-dlss-killer-or-not/"><div class="block block- ">
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It’s been a day since the reveal of FidelityFX Super Resolution, and it appears to be a DLSS killer. But on closer inspection, it seems that AMD made a mistake in at least one of the examples, and forgot to show the FSR footage, instead only showing the native footage. Let’s go into the details on AMDs FidelityFX Super Resolution a bit.
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A mistake in the Presentation
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If you watched the AMD presentation only once, you would most likely not have spotted this – I’ve even had to watch it three times to spot it. There’s three demos in the presentation, but only one of them has this issue:
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<li><a class="inline inline-link" href="https://youtu.be/eHPmkJzwOFc?t=84" target="_blank">The first demo highlights the Ultra Quality mode.</a>
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<li><a class="inline inline-link" href="https://youtu.be/eHPmkJzwOFc?t=109" target="_blank">Then we get a demo comparing each quality mode at the same time.</a>
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<li><a class="inline inline-link" href="https://youtu.be/eHPmkJzwOFc?t=182" target="_blank">And finally, an example of the Quality mode in motion.</a>
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Going by AMDs patent registrations, FidelityFX Super Resolution is entirely Spatial, but in the second demo it has information that would be completely hidden without Temporal information. It is able to perfectly represent textures and surfaces, despite it lacking the information to do so. This can’t even be explained away by VP9, HEVC or H264 compression artifacts, as those are vastly different from what we end up seeing here.
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My conclusion is that AMDs marketing team made an honest mistake here. They seem to have forgotten to show the layers or even add them after testing the overlay. It is still impressive in the other demos for a Spatial upscaler. If AMD wishes to clarify this, please contact me at info(at)xaymar(dot)com.
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Update: Other sources in contact with AMD have confirmed that this is a Spatial upscaler, therefore the second demo should be physically impossible.
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Is it a DLSS killer?
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It depends on which version of DLSS. If you compare FidelityFX Super Resolution to DLSS 1.0 and 1.1, I’d take FidelityFX Ultra Quality over DLSS 1.0 and 1.1 any day. The temporal issues in DLSS 1.0 and 1.1 are horrible to look at, and make games unplayable because of heavy ghosting issues and similar. But if you compare it to DLSS 2.0 and 2.1, FidelityFX Super Resolution doesn’t hold up anymore. DLSS 2.0 and 2.1 look almost identical to the native resolution, while running up to 400% faster.
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AMD definitely has a strong contender, and if they can figure out how to add a Temporal compontent to the upscaler, they will be competing with DLSS 2.0 instead of DLSS 1.0. As an example of a great upscaler, Unreal Engine 5 recently unveiled Temporal Super Resolution which gives a slight improvement in performance, while losing nearly no quality.
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</div></content><author><name>Michael Fabian 'Xaymar' Dirks</name></author><category term="Review" /><category term="AMD" /><category term="FidelityFX" /><category term="FidelityFX Super Resolution" /><category term="FSR" /><category term="NVIDIA" /><category term="DLSS" /><summary type="html">It’s been a day since the reveal of FidelityFX Super Resolution, and it appears to be a DLSS killer. But on closer inspection, it seems that AMD made a mistake in at least one of the examples, and forgot to show the FSR footage, instead only showing the native footage. Let’s go into the details on AMDs FidelityFX Super Resolution a bit.</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Routine Maintenance</title><link href="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/05/25/routine-maintenance/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Routine Maintenance" /><published>2021-05-25T00:00:00+02:00</published><updated>2021-05-25T00:00:00+02:00</updated><id>https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/05/25/routine-maintenance</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://www.xaymar.com/articles/2021/05/25/routine-maintenance/"><div class="block block- ">
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Site was offline for ~2 days for maintenance, as I was moving the entire infrastructure to the new Server, which is located somewhere in the frosty north, and has plenty of hardware to handle the things I throw at it. For those on IPv6, the site should already be 100% online again, while for those on IPv4-only, it may take a day or so to update. During the move/maintenance I learned a couple things:
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<li>While the majority of ISPs have adopted IPv6 (some even being IPv6-only), there are still some that only have IPv4 or require IPv4 or their DNS won’t resolve the IPv6 addresses. It is baffling that 26 years after the standard has been accepted (~15 years for the adoption) that some ISPs are actually so incompetent to not have IPv6 support at all.</li>
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<li>Because of the above, I now know how to forward ports to VMs without it only working one-way. I no longer have to buy more IPv4 addresses, which are already sparse enough, to allow those ISPs to keep working fine. Thanks to that ServerFault user for pointing me in the right direction.</li>
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<li>As far as testing goes, a single 10gbit link seems to outperform any previous infrastructure I had. Even though the server is in the north which increases ping quite a bit, it is still responding much faster than when it was local to me. It’s also way easier to maintain now, as it’s 1 physical machine instead of 4 different ones.</li>
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<li>SystemD is annoying and painful to work with. It will fight you with everything it has, even if you follow the documentation as stated. Especially systemd-resolved and systemd-networkd. Great if they work, awful if they don’t.</li>
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<li>As expected, Zen1 to Zen3 is a massive upgrade even when used as a Server. All VMs are booting blazingly fast now, with the Database even having a 2-3x increase in raw throughput. Absolutely worth the extra 30€/mo if you ask me.</li>
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<li>Debian is … questionable these days. ‘partman’ still doesn’t have any idea what KiB/MiB/GiB/… is, the installer still requires a normal user account for server installs, and for some reason there’s still bloat being installed in the netinst version. </li>
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And I’m also left with one question: What the heck do I do with 8 Zen3 cores that are practically sitting idle?!
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<b>Update:</b> The mail server is now also available with IPv4 again, as people still pretend that IPv6 doesn’t exist. Notably affected are: Amazon, Microsoft, Google/YouTube, the FFmpeg mailing list, the Debian mailing list, Slack, and some others that I forgot the names of. Shame on every single one of the listed for not supporting IPv6 in 2021.
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</div></content><author><name>Michael Fabian 'Xaymar' Dirks</name></author><category term="Blog" /><category term="Blog" /><summary type="html">Site was offline for ~2 days for maintenance, as I was moving the entire infrastructure to the new Server, which is located somewhere in the frosty north, and has plenty of hardware to handle the things I throw at it. For those on IPv6, the site should already be 100% online again, while for those on IPv4-only, it may take a day or so to update. During the move/maintenance I learned a couple things:</summary></entry></feed> |