Computers and Memory/storage question Options

[Jason Farlander]

Whatever, man. I dont have shadowbeat, so if you could provide the relevant quote I can comment further. Until then, since you admit that you made up the 10 second bit, I dont see that you actually have a point. However, since I enjoy giving lengthier explanations for things, I will go on.

Even without knowing the exact quote, I find it far more likely that when they mentioned the use of CDs they meant "discs that resemble CDs to give you a visual idea" than "700MB CDs" I mean, DVD as a format DIDNT EXIST when the published the book - Shadowbeat was published in 1992, and DVD-Video wasn't released until 1996 in Japan, and didn't make it to the US until 1997. So... its not like they looked at the wealth of available disc formats and chose 700MB CDs... CDs were simply the most advanced-seeming common medium at the time. Shadowrun is full of these sorts of issues, because predicting the future is a difficult thing to do.

Anyway, what *is* abundantly clear is that "pulses" and "megapulses" were designed as an arbitrary unit of computer storage for the purpose of avoiding any real-world comparisons and simplifying the game. If you really want to believe your calculation, go for it. But realize that you wont be convincing many people here that

[Botch]

Oh, I know the argument is weak and nobody really wants to convert MP to MB, its just that I find the cost of memory in SR INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY STUPID AND BROKEN.

I would have thought that by version 3 of the rule system somebody might have adjusted the costs properly or had the guts to produce an offical erata to all BBBv3 that said, in effect, "slash the memory costs". People winge about bits and pieces of SR rules being "broken", skills/magic/matrix/rigging all got an overhaul over the years, but nobody did anything about an item that underpins all recording/storage technology. In usefulness memory in 206x costs more than it did 70 years ago (in SR history). Just how did the corps pull the wool over the eyes of the entire world to get that one past

If you have a problem with 10 seconds, what you going to do? You want more than 10 seconds on a CD, then MPs are even smaller. Less than 10 seconds? Want a 1 second duration, that leaves 1MP=700MB. CDs changed capacity? Where in canon did it say that?

The old chestnut of an arguement that says "All data in shadowrun comes with it own attached software". How the did that one come about? Its absolute bollocks on so many levels it needs a rant of its own.

ps. Sorry about the hijack. I will be able to provide the quote when either I can remember to pack my book for work or the telephone company sort out my broadband connection at home.

[Kagetenshi]

If Phillips still exists in SR, you're right.

Otherwise, a CD is whatever someone says it is.

~J

[Herald of Verjig...]

Am I the only one here who remembers that CDs weren't always 700MB? Although 60MB of difference is relatively little compared to the differences being assumed for the "1MP=unknown but a whole lot more than 70MB," there's a lot of time for adjustments in the technology to occur. It also proves that CD is not a specific manufacturing process such that no changes can ever occur and still use the same name. It is not irrational to suspect that at some time in the future, consumers will grow sick of 90 different proprietary data storage methods and will demand that all technologies of that time be integrated into one format that will be significantly superior to each of the competing methods. Or, the corps will trade or steal whatever manufacturing technology they don't have and eventually will all be producing such composite tech CDs.

[Kagetenshi]

I remember 640MB CDs. However, Philips does keep a fairly tight leash on the definition of a CD, so unless they reverse that or die they won't grow too much.

On the other hand, how long would they retain legal ownership of that definition?

~J

[GrinderTheTroll]

New optical format in Japan has produced a whopping 1 Terrabyte storage capacity using a CD sized disc. MP was designed to be a generic measurement of size, attempting to convert Megapulses to Megabytes is silly. Furthermore, the name "Mega-pulse" implies dataflow rather than a fixed quantity of digital storage as does "Mega-byte".

Personally, I've never cared much about the conversion from MP to MB. Although I don't wholly agree on the amoung of "MP" it takes to store images or video considering what is capable by today's methods, I can agree on their idea to keep these concepts vauge.

[Botch]

[Kagetenshi]

Botch, we’re talking CDs, not CD-Rs or CD-RWs. I have a copy of Battle Chess on a 640MB CD.

Also, as I said before, this is entirely dependent on Philips.

~J

[hobgoblin]

discussions like these is why its best to look at SR like its a paralell universe that split of at around 1990 or so...

but we got a slashing of concealability for mobile devices so maybe we will get it on memory cost to?

[hyzmarca]

[hobgoblin]

infact its about to run out as we speak...

[Kagetenshi]

Once that happens, it's open season on what CD means.

~J

[Edward]

SR3 p301. simrig: a simrig is an implant that makes WET simsense recordings.

Emphasis mine.

And in the sprawl survival guide it talks about postproduction technics.

As I understand the movie industry every digital media type ever has had postproduction compressing the data in some way (even if it was only reducing image resolution). Do you have a reference for something other than the wet record?

How do you get a physical limit on the amount of compressed data a CD can hold? There is a hard limit on the number of bits you can store but if I want to store a 50-gig bitmap of solid blue (all one shade) any competent compression utility will bring it down to a few K. compression efficiency has nothing to do with the media you store the data on, only the complexity of your raw data and the quality of your encryptions program.

CD may be an industry standard but recall that there has already been one expansion while retaining the name CD (70-80 min I think). There was really nothing stoping them calling DVD CD2. It was the same size and the readers where backward compatible. SR effectively assumed that the name would stay and started using the term CD before the advent of DVDs. It would be highly improbable that the item referred to as a CD in SR don’t have much more capacity than a modern DVD.

As a final point, who would use a 10MP removable media system when for a lower price per MP you can have any capacity up to 1000MP and a cheaper r/w device?

I do concure that the price of media is unreasonably high. Compare ~$5 for a DVD RW that can hold 90 min of the best quality flat vid you can get to a opticam listing 1MP/min making offline storage 90 MP = 455 nuyen for the offline storage especially strange seeing as you can by a video playback unit for 400 and a video chip for 20

Edward

[Da9iel]

The vehicles section mentions 1MP/min for video and 1MP/min for audio, but you can digitally zoom 20x before losing quality, so 90 MP on a DVD probably isn't too unfair.

[Edward]

True removing resolution that is not displayable without zoom is something post production would probably do.

But this is where it breaks down for me.

Even if you accept the MP as an arbitrary measure of storage space (which I easily do) how can you justify 1 min video with 20* zoom capability taking up the same amount of storage space as 1 min of audio.

The technology exited when the game was originally released to record a 90 min interview on a couple of dollars worth of reusable media (caset tapes remember those) in SR the media to record a 90 min interview would cost 455nuyen. The quality may be better bus pleas 10000% increase in cost over 70 years.

Edward

[Botch]

Shadowbeat p.98

Regardless of the physical media used for storage, the amount of storage required for various forms of information is always the same. It does not matter if a user has a CD, an OMC, or his own lovingly implanted dome-chrome. It's a digital world, chummer, and a megapulse is a megapulse.


Hi-Res Video imaging = 1Mp/minute
Normal spectrum sound = 1Mp/minute
Extended spectrum sound = 3Mp/minute
Wet record baseline simsense = 1Mp/second
Dir-X Format baseline simsense = 1Mp/second (theatres)
ACT-format simsense = SimsenseMp/100 (personal systems)

the standard OMC ... Commercial configurations are available in increments of Mp up to 100Mp, then in increments of 100Mp up to the gigapulse level (1,000Gp). ...

and I really should have read this bit on SR CDs

...Six centimeters in diameter, a standard high-density/double sided digital compact disk can hold 500Mp of stored data. ...

So

Currently it is not unfair or unreasonable to take MP3 file size to be 1MB/minute. This is makes the effective storage capability of a SR CD to be around the 600MB capacity with current compression systems. If the technology is better in 206x, the capacity per :nuyen: of SR storage sucks big time. In fact it sucks so badly I cannot imagine how OMCs ever got into the marketplace. OK, OMCs are fast, but who would buy 1 TerraByte of off-line storage for $500,000? It is time to bite the bullet and say that low-res video, normal spectrum audio, and electronic books have no storage requirements beyond a basic 10-20 :nuyen: OMC.

In regards to the hermetic library, if the base library can be used in a hardcopy format then there is no justification for the cost of storage required to port it to electronic media. Remember the original is 2D, non-magical text with simple graphical images that can only be accessed at a few hundred words per minute.

[Kagetenshi]

There is absolutely no way that a minute of audio having the same size as a minute of video is compressed in any way, shape, or form. We can only assume that the quality and range of recording is insane, and can be manipulated later much the same way the video can. MP3s are not germane to this discussion in the least.

~J

[Botch]

[Herald of Verjig...]

Try the math for a 512 point surround sound audio file. More immersive than any audio currently available for comparison. Is it likely? Not with current trends. Is it feasable? To an extent, it's feasable now, just the market will not accept such an expense of storage mediums with little or no gain for most users. Is it just a random attempt at justifying the numbers that I never bothered with anyway? Yes.

[Edward]

The quality that CDs record at is generally accepted to be better than what the average human can differentiate.

This is why my monitor runes at high colour and not true colour.. I cant tell the difference. (especially when I am this tired and can barley see).

Is there any reference for the space required to store formatted text (the SR equivalent of .doc or .pdf). if thay give unformatted text somewhere you can work out the MB/MP as unformatted text always uses one bite per character and always will as long as we use binary computers (and the otaku fluff says they do).

Edward

[Kagetenshi]

[Botch]

*Points to digital cameras and their 10X zoom capability, using MB storage*

[Da9iel]

Times--what is it--32 frames per second? Still a lot more memory hungry than even very fine audio. No?

[Botch]

[Botch]

Pentax currently produce a digital camera with a 10xdigital zoom. It is also capable of recording MPEG-4 at 30fps. It comes with only a 64MB card as standard. The manufacturer's spec if available here.

For static images the memory requirements are.

64MB memory = 241frames@640x480 pixels = 29frames@2048x1536

This gives a memory multiplers of:

8.31 for 10x digital zoom
2.21 for 2.5x digital zoom
4.82 for 6.25x digital zoom

If you do the math a 20x digital zoom based therorectical requirements modified by how current pentax digital camera techology works the answer is

16.7 x MB requirement for 20x digital zoom.

so...

The camera can capture video at 30fps and requires 25.6MB/minute to record MPEG-4, add in the memory multiplier for 20x digital zoom at the memory requirement is 428.44MB/minute at TV resolution.

For the earlier post it can be seen that uncompressed sound requires 9.46MB/minute compared to 428.44MB/minute for MPEG-4 compressed video. We have not yet brought the video stream upto a resolution that fills a meta-human's visual field without pixelation and already video requires 45 times as much memory as stereo audio that is of a better quality than a meta-humans ear can distinguish. The memory requirement for DVD 20xzoom using pentax's current compression technology is 946.87MB/minute, 97xgreater than the uncompressed CD quality audio stream.

For the memory requirements to be the same for normal frequency audio as 20x digital zoom 2D video, something is seriously wrong. If I take, as has been suggested, that the SR sound files contain individual tracks that can be played/interigated seperately I would have use at least three 32-track samplers at a base price of 67,200 :nuyen: , figure in that really audio would also be compressed and the ratio is 1:900 using current compression systems.

That's right, 1 minute of 20x digital zoom, DVD quality 2D video requires the same memory storage as 900 minutes of 3D surround sound normal frequency audio.

Simsense, well, I've always imagined that would include, sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and hormone/gladular secretion effects. Staying with baseline (how do you quanitify emotion), that is 9000 extra elements for taste, approx 1000 elements for smell, and increasing video resolution to a pixel count of 130 million pixels, the maximum resolution of a meta-human eye without IR. Without adding in nerve impulse to re-create touch/pain we have a memory comsumption of approx 8,800MB/minute no-zoom and 181,000MB/minute for 20x visual zoom.

So in final, using CD quality as a base at of 9.46MB/minute, rounded to 1 decimal and assuming that it equals 1MP.

Normal spectrum audio = 9.5MB/minute = 1MP
DVD quality video with 20x digital zoom = 950MB/minute
Baseline Simsense without touch, no zoom = 8,800MB/minute
Baseline Simsense without touch, 20x zoom = 181,000MB/minute

Smoothing of the edges for game comparisons

Normal spectrum audio = 1MP/minute
Hi-Res Video, 20xzoom = 1,000MP/minute
Baseline without touch, no zoom = >9,000MP/minute
Baseline without touch, plus zoom = >180,000MP/minute

Can you see the problems with memory in SR yet?