Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III thinks THIS is not a good person? American Carnage future target ... TBA

Is there a signed treaty? No. But the US SoS (James A. Baker III) and the German Foreign Minister (Hans-Dietrich Genscher) are on the record in 1990

Genscher is on video tape stating very clearly: "Wir waren uns einig, dass nicht die Absicht besteht das NATO-Verteidigungsgebiet auszudehnen nach Osten. Das gilt übrigens nicht nur im Bezug auf die DDR, die wir da nicht einverlaiben wollen, sondern das gilt ganz generell."

In English: we are in agreement that there is no intention of expanding the NATO security zone eastwards. This applies not only to the GDR, which we do not intend to incorporate, but in general."

Or how about Baker's words, Feb. 9, 1990, St. Catherine's Hall at the Kremlin:
"If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the East."

And the minutes show Gorbachev as having said:
"Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable."

To which Baker replied:
"I agree."

Again, no treaties, nothing. But some people, myself included, make the argument that unequivocal statements of a nation's highest-ranking diplomat are to be taken seriously, unless overruled by explicit, written agreements.

And from what we've heard from Gorbachev over the years, he took them for their words.

Admittedly, having been replaced by Yelzin who received massive "help" from the US might have made Gorbachev a little grumpy.

What remains at the end is this: NATO was created as a defensive alliance against the Soviets and wasn't dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. The highest-ranking diplomats of the primary players at that time (US, FRG) are on the record with promises that NATO wouldn't expand eastwards after the German reunification. Now NATO is closer to Russia's border than ever and the Ukraine had a democratically elected government (they were thugs, but elected) overthrown by forces that had massive support from the US. As a result, fascist militias wearing SS insignia are roaming free in Novorossiya, with government support.

If I were Russia, I'd be pissed.

But I'm in Germany, so now I have a strongman in charge of Russia, a thug who has journalists and opposition in general killed, on the one side, and the Americans who installed a Nazi-sympathising regime in Ukraine on the other.

What's not to like about it.

So when the US establishment then goes on a full-blown bender to position Russia as a scapegoat for now having to live with President Trump, they are playing with fire just to distract from their fucked-up domestic policies.

And we're not even touching on the hypocrisy of the US being outraged when some foreign nation meddles in their internal affairs. Of course Russia tries to influence US politics in their favor. Guess what, so does the UK, France, Germany, NZ, China, Japan, even bloody Luxembourg for all I know. Just like the US exerts influence on German politics (ie German Marshall Fund, Atlantikbrücke, etc), and on politics of every other nation of significance.

The short answer is "It depends!"

I know it's a crappy answer, but there are way too many parameters at play. There are many games today that have scripted scenes in them that are pretty cinematic. Think of GTA III, from 2001. The cut scenes in that game still outshine the actual gameplay of GTA V today.

If the scene is scripted, then all the animation, and camera movement can be fine tuned and all compute resources are pooled into the viewport of the camera. This allows the artists to focus all of the trickery on the shot itself, but not the rest of the world. From a PVS or scene-graph stand point, you have pretty much reduced the complexity to just what you are seeing.

I do not know how they made this demo and cannot comment on it with any authoritative capital. I've written 3D engines before (not for videogames though) and can comment on the technology I think I'm seeing here. My comments are just an opinion based on what I know. I do not have access to Unity and have never used it before. But here it goes:

For a scene like this, there should be reduced/canned computation in:

• Collision detection and response
  
• AI
  
• Animation / IK
  
• PVS
  
• Texture Atlasing
  

The shaders, unless they are geometry (the ripping of the skin/flesh in the Adam scene) could or could not be reduced in scope and complexity. I am not sure if they are scripted or dynamic. By scripted, I mean a geometry shader that reads vertex data from a VBO stream or some memory buffer instead of computing the vertices on the fly. It's still real-time, just not dynamic.

Most of the graphics you see here are standard applications of technology that's been around for a while:

• PBR shader
  
• Motion Blur Shader
  
• Depth of Field Shader
  
• Cascaded Shadow Maps Shader
  

The particle system seems pretty standard as well.

This is a great demo and I am extremely impressed with the art direction, but the engine itself is, after all, Unity with PBR for the characters, and maybe Global Illumation for the indoor scenes, which I believe they licensed from Geomerics.

I did not know the guy in the centre (Flea) was in this band. I remember him from Back to the Future III.

(He was the guy that Marty was supposed to drag race and crash into the Rolls Royce in 80s Hill Valley)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mme5vVMeot0

I won a Palm III as 1st place prize for a Quake tournament my freshman year of college. The final match was so close and frantic. (top 3 scores were 33,31,29) Quake II was already out at the time, and going back to Q1 deathmatch was much faster pace.
I brought my headphones and a 3M Precise Mousing Surface with me, both which gave an advantage. Ah Glory Days.

I think like the first comment there said, they're more like projections and overlays, not holograms.
My guess is that most of what we see is either added on top of the live video of the people, not actually projected amongst them, and the other one (in the dark) is like a planetarium movie, 360 surround, maybe even 3D, not hologram.

Now THIS was holographic, and awesome (I saw it in person), and it's a terrible shame that now, 30 years later, we still don't seem to have this technology outside of concerts.....(sorry for the quality of the video)
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Vancouver-Expo-86-Part-III-GM-Holographic-Exhibit

Vancouver - Expo 86 - Part III- GM Holographic Exhibit has been added as a related post - related requested by newtboy.

PS4. It's one of those games where you just see other players in the hub areas, but the rest of the world is a private instance. Sometimes it was super laggy, with enemies reacting a couple seconds after they got shot, and I did get kicked by a complete server crash in the short time I tried it.

I just don't get why they screw up the single player experience by running it through a server. On the PC it's easy to guess it's to prevent piracy, like Simcity or Diablo III. But that shouldn't be an issue on consoles.

Oh yeah...sorry.
http://videosift.com/video/Vancouver-Expo-86-Part-III-GM-Holographic-Exhibit

You've reminded me of something hilarious from the expo, but I can't find a picture of it. There was a 2D sculpture of a Canadian Mountie, I think near the roller coaster, that totally had a huge boner! It was really the end of the arm, but the way it was made the elbow is in back, but in front was just a little triangle just below waist level. It was too funny, and obviously not intentional. Oh, the things you notice when you're 16.

Exactly, in the same way that Pandarans from Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (2003) are a clone of Kung Fu Panda (2008). I don't know how Blizzard so consistently rips off the future.

I like a lot of anime, but I have to say, this bit embodies everything I hate about anime. This is the reason Matrix II and III sucked, this is why Superman movies always suck. Heroes need limits comprehensible by us mere mortals, otherwise the action just becomes a bunch of incomprehensible garbage (like the above).

Your video, What if Star Wars Episode III Were Good?, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

What if Star Wars Episode III Were Good? has been added as a related post - related requested by Vexus on that post.

What if Star Wars Episode III Were Good? has been added as a related post - related requested by Vexus on that post.