Pocster

Always time for playtime!

I will get to procedural vegetation honest. Had a sphere to drive over terrain working i.e. physics remap as you move so effectively infinite also. But the sphere bugged me. Trying to procedurally generate something decent was always poor - like the original face attempt. So, bought a rigged and animated model to use! But also I got excited about procedurally generated creatures so invented creature lab! - some quite funny!, needing work of course. But AMAZING!

5 hours on 1 bug. Claude constantly wants to give up. Lots of horrible maths (well beyond mine and most people's comprehension). A function needs to be computed and the exact same code is done in ALU and in shader. 100% same code. Therefore assume same output. True - mostly..... occasionally a minute fractional variation between the 2 compute functions. In a sane world wouldn't matter; in procedural generation after a zillion iterations big difference. Claude and I were guessing and trying to reason everything between us we could think of. So I got claude to call the 2 functions with the same values accumulating millions of times. Different results proved it. So we engineer everything now that the compute is done only by one thing and a separate method for everything else to read it. Slightly slower method but works! Also means of course that the procedural worlds I look at (always use 42 as my base case) , everyone of the 16 billion are now different LOL!

Nice!

getting there

It struggled with the sci fi picture. Why?; because it doesn't follow proper building design!. Staircases not going to all levels, cutting through floors, ending incorrectly, no steps etc etc. (expletive deleted) me I had to basically build not just a underground house but an underwater one to get it happy!.

The number of times I argue this whether Claude ot Chat. What I want against what I get!. LOL! . BBC BASIC anyone?. Anyway I map out a mega spec and unlike Chat Claude will deliver something more inspiring!. Compute_cheap_to_pocster=TRUE; me thinks!

OTT but look at the dome!. environment mapped on dome and base. Can have 5 or 6 on screen before frame rate tanks. Looks AMAZING! - better than 99% of PS/Xbox chump. But of course I eye the next bigger prizes!

Read lots of reviews and went with Treaggar . Did lamb rack in it last night! Worth the 3 hr wait. If you've not used one it's different than BBQ - what I mean is its not the same LOL!. You leave it for a long time. Burgers/lamb rack/ribs come out tender and flavoursome . I had to do lots of experimenting with each food type to get it right (did Salmon once for swmbo she loved it). Bit of faff with cleaning and pellets stuck/wet. But when it's hot and you havent got to 'fanny' over like a BBQ otherwise everyone gets burnt food; then its worth it. Got pizza oven also (swmbo is boss here) good pizzas BUT even betetr home made nan bread!!!

cubic environment mapping! Taking most of today to get working!.So for those not in the know! You place a 'probe' in a prop you want to map its environment and it renders 6 views i.e. 6 faces of cube. So its (expletive deleted) expensive!. There are some tricks to optimise. One of these alien domes next to a river get the river reflected with clouds - looks awesome. Now for tricks as 6 renders (low res) per prob is insane. Claude really (expletive deleted)ed me around on this as it kept saying from the screenshots it was correct (when clearly it wasnt). Render pipeline is 4000 lines of code and we have some legacy stuff in there from chat - removal means breaking ; so I'll live with that.

Yeah Claude used to say "5hr renews in x minutes at y o ' clock". Now it doesn't you get 5 hrs and thats it. If I stop then my 5 hr ticks on. When that ends I get nothing until I type and the 5hr timer starts again. I did used to benefit from using say 2 hrs of last 5hr slot remaining and then just rolling into the next 5hr slot.

Hmmmm, Claude now changed the 5 hr window?. It starts as soon as I type i.e. you cant use from the previous 5 hr remaining until it renews and carries over? Cheeky gits!

waiting for 5 hr limit to reset whilst drinking chilled wine next to the pellet smoker. THAT IS A LIFE! (or perhaps need to get one?) TBF if Claude was a bloke I'd buy him a drink or 2. If she was a woman well....

claude said "lets be clear before I change this for the FOURTH time" GET HER!. Can spend rest of my life trying to improve water - always a really tricky thing to look and react great without killing fps.

Landscape is gorgeous!. Especially when you change time of Day and let terrain cast shadows on itself and the basic alien prop buildings (still in experimental mode). Get the sun low; planet in the background, lens flare - looks proper ps5 pro. Back once more at 60fps

Right! Need to stop playing with terrain!. Another round of optimisations and more features added - could go on forever!. Environment cube maps on props next and then (finally) procedurally veg!

Claude just stung me . Hit my 5hr limit early so bought more usage . Can see I’m using it - that’s fine . Then it stopped again saying I had reached my limit - which of course I hadn’t ! . Bought £5 more . Then got 10 mins then same again . Assume a bug . Emailed them ! Not much point to buying extra if you get blocked anyway !

Really helpful. I guess it depends what you are using the model for; but for me opus 4.8 is destroying gpt5.5 for coding in my experience. I mean they have codex. If I get that to 'scout' it can take a minute+. Yet claude (git is local in both) takes 20 seconds, explains the code and proposes patch. Codex was never that reliable. Codex suggestions for patch I dumped back into gpt5.5! - it usually said they were wrong. But the claude "I can open a preview" and agentically fix the issue is AMAZING. i guess the claude environment is just far easier and cleaner for me than my attempt to harness gpt5.5. I did ok for 20 quid a month mind for quite a while.

Thanks guys. So you're both using it for real things not playtime like me! What isn't clear at all (probably deliberately) is things like is best sonnet better/worse than say opus on lowest setting?. Difference in settings is vague anyway - "reasons more" meaning what? it puts 10% more effort in. How would I know it really did "reason more". I think this cloud AI needs new rules on what you actually get for your money - feels a bit make it up as they go along. Still love it - NEW TOY INDEED!

erm just tried ultracode to find a nasty bug.... 70k tokkens gone in 20 seconds! 7 agents on the job. Dont really get how this agent thing works but I;ll let it run and eat my 5hr limit in 10 minutes LOL! 100k! sounds a lot! I always think of it as £'s! 400k!!!

JESUS! As we struggle to maintain 60fps with SO much more added an optimisation loop again. Every trick I can think of discussed with Claude. Gained 30% again!!. Now to use that on expensive effect! Terrain can cast shadows!. That will make it look like the bollocks with bollocks on it looking at bollocks with golden bollocks.

@SimonD if you dont mind me asking what kind of problems do you need fable to look at??. I'm doing a super advanced 3d engine that basically makes 95% of game ones look shit - so I'm curious what task you are doing that requires even more umph than opus (only answer if it's ok of course). I'm just thinking "WTF is HE doing!"

Cost me an F'ing fortune I bet!. But as I said competitive nature of these firms models getting better, hardware costs will come down, more people use it then costs per user must decline. I read something interesting; people are quite loyal to say netflix,apple tv, even sometimes ISP - but for AI no one gives a (expletive deleted) and we whore about for the best deal. If I did a frontier cloud AI I'd name it "Susie does". I reckon I'd pick up a couple of million subscribers from day 1.

Oh I didn't mean free I just meant no subscription but paid API i.e. pay as you go!. Honestly though visually I'm flabbergasted at what can be achieved. But I keep adding more effects and tanking frame rate so another round of optimisations!

This is funny! I screen grabbed a shot for Claude to look at. Unbeknown too me my buildhub page was showing so it got to see my 'signature'. Here's what it said "The note "hoping some hair will grow around it" — if you mean you want vegetation/scatter around the feet to hide the leg-terrain junction, that's a separate feature (prop-adjacent vegetation scatter) I can look at. Want me to?"