

So you think machine learning is boring? - prakash
http://www.causata.com/blog/2010/02/so-you-think-machine-learning-is-boring.html

======
SlyShy
Just thought I should point this out: that Euphoria video is totally fake
(that is, prerendered and not actually generated in real time like they want
you to think--it's less impressive than a second year animation student's demo
reel). See [http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/11/why-we-are-not-using-
euphori...](http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/11/why-we-are-not-using-euphoria/)
for details.

~~~
jgrahamc
_that is, prerendered and not actually generated in real time like they want
you to think--it's less impressive than a second year animation student's demo
reel_

The blog post you link to doesn't seem to make that claim. It talks about how
they were unable to purchase it because the company only wants to work with
big companies and it's not a prepackaged library you can just work with.

~~~
SlyShy
Maybe not the way you read it, but this is the paragraph I read.

"The animation in games that use Euphoria bears little resemblance to the
slick, organic movement in their tech demo video. For example, here is a video
of how fighting looks in an Indiana Jones game using Euphoria. Similarly, in
The Force Unleashed game, the only physically-based behavior I could see is
magnetic hands -- the stormtroopers' hands stick to anything they encounter.
Penny Arcade even made a comic parodying their indiscriminate grasping. Here
is the official Lucasarts video showing off this dubious 'feature':"

Their PR video is not an accurate representation of how the technology works.

If you want a statement from the programmers themselves, I can even provide
that.

"IGN: Once the video hit the net, there was a lot of speculation as to whether
or not that footage was real-time, a target render, etc. Can you set the
record straight and let everyone know specifically what it is, what it's built
on, and when you created it?

Blackman: One of the ideas the next-gen Star Wars team has been exploring is
the concept of the "Force unleashed." To us, the "Force unleashed" is exactly
what it sounds like: a Jedi or similar character releasing the full potential
of the Force in ways that, while they feel like logical extensions of powers
we've already seen, are also new, amped-up, or over the top. The video was
created a little over a year ago, still very early in pre-production, so that
the development team could wrap our collective heads around the concept and
understand the gameplay and production implications.

The video is a pre-rendered pre-visualization of what we're targeting in terms
of gameplay, the degree of interaction with the environment, and character
reactions."

[http://www.gamespot.com/pages/unions/read_article.php?topic_...](http://www.gamespot.com/pages/unions/read_article.php?topic_id=24854167&union_id=2998)

~~~
dandelany
The second quote is in regards to a _Star Wars: Force Unleashed_ pre-
visualization video, _not_ the Euphoria demo reel.

------
mnemonicsloth
This looks like a summary of the first lecture of the Stanford machine
learning course on YouTube:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxYlbK2c7E>

------
igrekel
I am a bit disappointed, I had hoped the post would compare the strategies
used in all these cases...

Just saying because I haven't touched machine learning in the last 7 years and
think maybe it is time to catch up a bit.

------
albertcardona
Machine learning and lots of awarded PhDs will likely replace me [a good
thing] for the task of neuronal reconstruction:

<http://t2.ini.uzh.ch/data.html>

If I have to go over several terabytes of images, manually segmenting like
that, I'll need to live a thousand lives.

~~~
joeyo
Definitely. Did you see Sebastian Seung's talk at SfN a few years ago about
connectomics, I think he called it?

~~~
albertcardona
I was in San Diego SfN 2007, where Sebastian Seung talked about the brain as a
device maximizing reward globally.

In any case, manually segmented data from my lab already went to Sebastian's
lab. They are testing their convolutional networks on it--I hope they get them
to work.

------
freebsd_dude
Machine learning made statistics cool.

