"But when people are not only wrong, but so dismissive of those who know a thousand times more than they do, one realizes that such people are simply ineducable: they don't know how to assess evidence or argument; they don't know what real scholarship consists of; and they don't know who the real scholars are; yet they do not hesitate for even an instant before insulting and ridiculing scholars whose shoes they are unfit to tie, often people who have spent decades immersing themselves in the study of a particular subject." -- Trancecoach's inspiring profile quote.

@Trancecoach - keeping in mind that you hold scientific rigour in the highest regard, judging by your love for the text above - could you please tell me what you think of the paper after my criticism?

You can either claim that i do not have a scientific objection to the paper, or you can admit that the paper is unscientific, and therefore meaningless in the context of a scientific discussion about climate change.

Surely a man of science such as yourself (see above paragraph, very inspiring) wouldn't disagree with me - no uncertainties, highlighting of meaningless data points showing a total lack of statistical understanding, no key or legend for plots rendering them COMPLETELY useless, not listing sources therefore none of it is provable, having sarcastic digs at previous scientific work..... It isn't as though i've nit-picked problems with it, these are problems that render the work meaningless. The author is not making a scientific argument, and this is a scientific debate.

Right?

Would you say, perhaps, that you don't 'know how to assess evidence or argument?' That you 'don't know what real scholarship is, nor who the real scholars are?'

Please. Please read your own profile quote back to yourself and consider it and how it relates to your own approach. I would love you to come out of this with a net gain in understanding, i am not trying to ridicule anyone. Ensure that you are one of the educable.. I have also had to reconsider my own approach in the past, i would say it's a good thing.

An average person can become fluent in any language in well under two years through proper immersion techniques.

For when a roller coaster isn't exciting enough and Oculus Rift just isn't immersive enough....
...just go bungie jump or something

Oh god the acting, I'm completely immersed.

*promote the immersion

Makes me a tad envious.

After being a gamer for 24 years now, there are no shock effects left. Proper immersion would be a nice change of pace, but even then I seriously doubt that it would have any effect like this on someone who has been through tens of thousands of hours of basically the same.

Huh? What games are you currently playing?

And please don't confuse cinematic production value with immersiveness,

what they are showing and what they are focusing on are two different things.

unless you are in with the development team, I'm going to go ahead and say you don't know what they're focusing on.

and even for us backers, it's very understandable that they don't tell us everything, especially since gameplay will always be a fluid thing. The instant they set down some gameplay, something will inevitably need to be tweaked.

graphics and immersion will either hit or miss. gameplay however will be an ongoing work in progress as players figure out optimal ways of doing stuff.

Now that's what I'm talking about total immersion!

I'm eager to see the space sim come back, but I feel the Star Citizen developers are really focusing too much on graphics and "immersion" where gameplay should come first. Compare it to Elite: Dangerous, which started production at the same time but on a smaller budget, and yet at this point in time, has a multiplayer alpha that is amazingly fun to play and shows huge promise for the rest of the game to come.
I want both to succeed, but I'll definitely be spending my money on ED first, and waiting for Star Citizen to flesh itself out later.

I think this is hilarious. There is an immersion factor to it -- a coach or player could be given a technical foul for this. As already stated, it's VERY relevant for multiplayer.

I would hope this type of thing could be turned off in single player (maybe by simply unplugging the Kinect?).

What? Render time? I'd guess minutes at most. C'mon, this is 2013, not 1993.

But you're right: Oculus Rift + This = Star Trek Holodeck in real life. Sports is possibly the best application for this combination, since the area of play is limited and well defined. Let me build upon your vision of the future.

It would require the ability to change your camera angle even when the "video" is playing. They'd also need to thoroughly map all audio sources on the playing feild. Heck, I'm sure there are tons of other massive technical hurdles that I haven't even thought of, but if you will, imagine this:

Go to an empty baseball field (or other large, flat area) during a time when you can be assured you'll be totally alone. You'd need to set up some kind of markers, four in total, non-coplaner. They would track your movement on the field in 3 dimensions. You might also set up a large circle fence around the outter edge of the field with sticks and string, to make sure you don't run into a tree or a building, since you'll be totally blind once you don your Oculus Rift. Then, put on the Rift, and play the video with your vantage point on the field as the camera angle. You'd be holding in your hand a remote control which can pause, rewind, or fast forward.

You could literally be IN THE GAME, AS IT PLAYS, with the ability to run along side your favorite football player as he runs into the end zone, seeing everything he sees, hearing everything he hears. Or stand in the endzone, and watch your favorite plays from every imaginable angle as though you were really there. Rewind the "video" and watch again from the vantage point of the quarterback, or the referee, or the coach.

There is no higher form of sports immersion. It is Nirvana.

See video here for explanation. Not to many cameras actually needed:
http://www.replay-technologies.com/technology.html

Our technology works by capturing reality not as just a two dimensional, or stereoscopic representation, but as a true three dimensional scene, comprised of three dimensional "pixels" that faithfully represent the fine details of the scene. This information is stored as a freeD™ database, which can then be tapped to produce (render) any desired viewing angle from the detailed information.

This enables a far superior way of capturing reality, which allows breaking free from the constraints of where a physical camera with a particular lens had been placed, to allow a freedom of viewing which has endless possibilities.

The current working deliverable of this technology ("Watch As U Want") allows producers and directors to create "impossible" camera views of a given moment in time as seen in Yankee Baseball YES View- But we believe that ultimately the biggest freeD™ innovation, as display technologies get better and more advanced, will allow the user to get fully and interactively immerse in the content.

At this point it's pretty likely it's a development build running on PC, too early to tell if it's really been optimised well for current gen consoles.

Anyway, I'm glad they're focussing explicitly on mechanics. I've always found GTA games to be full of superflous 'gameplay' I wouldn't ever spend time on. Perhaps I'm part of the cynical bunch that doesn't buy the immersion angle.

If more mini-games this time around are actual fun diversions then great. If the gun mechanics are tightened up, maybe it'll play as a better 3rd person shooter in it's own right.

Otherwise, I worry they're just bloating out the feature pool like they've done in each successive sequel.

Hey, at least they didn't just recycle an earlier trailer, only changing the ordering a bit or switched some locked doors around!

DA2 wasn't THAT bad. It wasn't so much that the environments were repetitous, they were like that in DA:O, it was that the copypasta was so flagrant it completely broke any kind of immersion. Every now and again I reinstall the game to see if I can put up with its bad parts and finish it, and every time I have failed.