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Accelerated PowerPoint? 188

Posted by michael from the just-what-the-world-needs dept.
darkjohnson writes "If you're looking for an excuse to offer your manager to approve that high end graphics card so you can play Doom 3 at full tilt (on your 'breaks' ;) you might want to check out the Instant Effects' technology as it has the first product (OfficeFX) that justifies upgrading your display hardware so you can do a POWER POINT presentation of all things. Especially true if you're the one stuck with the duty of making them look good. I saw this at Siggraph and was not only impressed with the look but the number of people packed into the booth to see it demoed, competing side by side with real time 3D game renders and high-end effects software."
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Accelerated PowerPoint? More

Accelerated PowerPoint?

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  • Green Link (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/15/163420 6&tid=152&tid=10 [slashdot.org]

  • Demo (Score:2, Informative)

    by hillg3 ( 656728 )
    BIG DEMO [dph.com] - 26MB

    SMALL DEMO [dph.com] - 13MB

  • browser support (Score:2, Interesting)

    by serano ( 544693 )
    It's hard for me to look at their product. Their site doesn't seem to work in Firefox.
    • Their site works just fine in Firefox, because I just came back from there.

    • Re:browser support (Score:4, Insightful)

      by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) * on Sunday August 15, 2004 @01:51PM (#9974781) Homepage
      It's you. I've just visited using FF, and watched the demo through it too. You're not missing much, mind. Looks like it's just a bunch of canned 3D effects to make PP presentations even more pointless - and probably drag out boring meetings even longer ;-) I'm thinking that by the 10th time you have to sit through the "Dolphin swims through text" animation, you'll be wanting to start fragging for real, sod the 3D card upgrade...
    • You're not alone. Much of the site renders like ass in Safari as well.

  • OfficeFX: When you need to justify your salary (Score:3, Funny)

    by BubbaThePirate ( 805480 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @01:45PM (#9974731)
    I haven't been slacking off with the anual reports... i've been... applying hardware T&L!

    Because purty graphics make yearly losses look so much more exciting! The Red's never been so vibrant!

  • Didn't NASA... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by isudoru ( 452928 )
    ...state that Powerpoint makes you stupid [slashdot.org]?

    Imagine, now you can become dumb 3D style.

  • Do people honestly think these look good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wheany ( 460585 ) <wheany+sd@iki.fi> on Sunday August 15, 2004 @01:48PM (#9974750) Homepage Journal
    Do the people who make Powerpoint presentations honetly think the sweeps and other effects look good? Because I've seen many presenters getting embarassed about the letter flying around the screen when they're trying to make a point.

    And if you just have to use some transition effect, pick one. Do not use a different random one on each page.
    • I think Apple's transitions in Keynote are much better than the PowerPoint ones. I've never seen a bad keynote presentation, come to think of it.

      C'mon, who doesn't like the cube effect...
    • Ha! Try having some Powerpoint newbie (which really comprises of 95% of all people presenting with it) lose the point of having PowerPoint by having them make weird ass transitions along with having a 'typewriter' sound effect after EVERY SINGLE LETTER pouring from the screen followed by a car crash sound effect.

      Honestly, I could spend all day pointing out what NOT to do in a PowerPoint presentation, and I'm by no means an expert in either PowerPoint or general presentations.

    • Re:Do people honestly think these look good (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bob65 ( 590395 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @04:59PM (#9975805)
      No, I don't think anyone thinks the effects look good. I think the effects are there for the sole purpose of justifying the creation of the presentation in PowerPoint.
    • I might request the NOC to block this site at work, for fear of my manager finding it.

      Last week he wanted to show us a graph. Just one. He spent the better part of Thursday hand crafting a 45 slide presentation with 1 second automatic progression so that it would 'animate'. Since he figured that one out every single presentation (or 'preso' as he calls them) has one in, and time taken to create them has rocketed.

      Of course, it could be worse. He could be doing something evil to use plebeians.
    • In broad terms, I agree with you; I really hate to see text flying in and stuff like that. If you don't want it there when you load the slide, just make it appear or at least fade in quickly. Motion is distracting. (I did my last (and only major) PowerPoint presentation with white text on a black background.)

      That said, saying they're never useful is almost as silly. For instance, I think the effect in the video demo they have up at 1:00 is pretty cool. Leaving that up on the screen as you wait for your pre
    • Especially as sll these funky effects will looks crappy on a grainy 800x600 data projector anyway.
    • Really - it comes down to matching the layout of the slide with a transition.. I bet it's possible to make a dissolve look cool - but it takes a bit of talent. Most people don't have talent, but some of them erroneously think they do. I think we're mostly blaming the messenger here..

      Powerpoint and other presentation software is a really good tool if used correctly. If the presenters have letters flying around and they aren't prepared for it, then they aren't very good presenters!! No software package can r

  • Just what I've been waiting for (Score:5, Funny)

    by bobhagopian ( 681765 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @01:48PM (#9974751)
    Text spiraling in at a million miles per hour! Now if only I can figure out how to connect that 4,000 watt subwoofer, I can add sound effects!

  • Finally (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been trying to say this for years. Accelerated graphics and nifty effects have a use in games, sure, but in the operating system arena they don't seem to be useful for much more than eye candy (and games are an area where eye candy usually helps).

    Except presentation systems!. On IRC at least, where I rant about this occasionally I'm often dismissed with a "feh, who really cares" but presentation software is all about making a big impression (regardless of those who attempt to use them like note sheets

    • Re:Finally (Score:2, Insightful)

      by The_Unforgiven ( 521294 )
      If you want to make an impression, do it with your speech, do it with what you're presenting. No one cares if you can use pretty pictures, and no one with a brain will be impressed. Write your presentation well, and they just might.

      • and no one with a brain will be impressed.

        "No one with a brain" pretty much describes most of the audiences I end up presenting to. And yes, they like pretty effects and flying text.

  • My chief complaint about Powerpoint has always been that while I sit here with a computer capable of rendering Lord of the Rings-style special effects, when I do a presentation it looks like build-your-own-greeting-card software circa 1996. There's just no excuse for it. it's not that hard to make things look nice instead of like crap. That little pixelated "dissolve"? Please. As a Mac user I'm watching for Keynote [apple.com] to become a more mature product. Either that or I use iMovie [apple.com] or - heaven forfend! - nothing at all. (That's right, just talking with maybe only the aid of a whiteboard can be quite refreshing occasionally!)

    Anyway, I doubt if getting a new video card is going to make PP look more tasteful. Someone in Redmond would have to get a sense of style for that to happen. I'm not holding my breath.
    • Did you read the article/site? This isn't about Microsoft PowerPoint... It's about a NEW presentation software called OfficeFX. The _new_ video card is required because this new 3D software is extremely demanding.
    • My favourite presentation system [opera.com]. Shouldn't be difficult to add support in Firefox, Safari, etc; nothing in it that's not in the CSS spec.
    • My chief complaint about Powerpoint has always been that while I sit here with a computer capable of rendering Lord of the Rings-style special effects, when I do a presentation it looks like build-your-own-greeting-card software circa 1996. There's just no excuse for it. it's not that hard to make things look nice instead of like crap.

      What I've always wondered is why Word, having been in "development" for around a decade, still by default makes articles that look like crap compared to TeX/Latex, which has been around since 1985!

      Yeah, you can say that Word makes a decent job at the typesetting if you haven't compared them much. But after reading a few articles in default Latex typesetting, an article in default Word typesetting is pure horror to your eyes. The text just pops out of an article collection, and not for its benefit.

      What many people don't realize is that typesetting is not just about putting words one after another in a line. As Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] says: "Typesetting [wikipedia.org] involves the presentation of textual material in an aesthetic form on paper or some other media" (emphasis mine). Word simply hasn't got a clue when it comes to aesthetics.

      A good example is line justification: Word (as far as I can tell) simply crams as many words on a line as possible (and most often even hyphenation isn't on, though this can arguably be blamed on the user). The extra space is put equally between the words and the last line of a paragraph is never justified. Latex, on the other hand, tries to find line breaks which look good on a whole, avoids hyphenating when not needed, adds more space after punctuation marks, and justifies the last line of the paragraph if it's almost as wide as the paragraph. Also for instance a consecutive f and i are combined into a ligature [wikipedia.org]. Simply put: it looks better.

      The total is a sum of many small things, that Word just doesn't even try to handle (at least by default, I doubt at all). I'm not saying that I know much about typography, but I sure can tell what looks good and what doesn't, and it sure as hell isn't rocket science.
      • There are a few LaTeX packages designed to make creating PDF slideshow presentations easy.

        Some of the examples I've seen are significantly better than PP, especially for engineering presentations. (Anything with formulas and graphs...)
      • You are unclear on the basic concepts involved. A word processor is not a typesetting program, nor vice-versa.

        While you're at it, please stop trying to open your mail with a screwdriver.

      • Re:PP looks like crap - no vid card can change tha (Score:4, Interesting)

        by hobbesmaster ( 592205 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:39PM (#9977381)
        Notepad is not Word is not QuarkXPress. You can complain that Quark doesn't have a spellchecker and you can't set anything on a page in a predictable manner in word and that Notepad doesn't have any image options until the cows come home as far as I'm concerned. I use text files out of notepad like postit notes, type up papers in word and use quark to make nifty looking posters and so forth. Although all the before mentioned programs deal with text, each is very different and the three should never come together in one app.
        • Notepad is not Word is not QuarkXPress.

          Of course there are different tools for different needs, but Word and Latex are meant to fulfill the same need - making articles, reports, books etc. They work with different design principles - Word is WYSIWYG, while in Latex you type the content and Latex formats it - but they're designed for the same thing. And when writing something, Latex simply makes it better looking.

          Sure, there are problems with Latex, it doesn't interoperate as seamlessly(?) with other ap

  • Fun app (Score:4, Funny)

    by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @01:50PM (#9974767) Homepage
    Say what you want about people who rely on PowerPoint (I know I do), but the app is actually pretty fun. I'm preparing a few training sessions now and PowerPoint is one of the things staff wants to learn. I've barely delved into it, but I'm finding a lot of Flash-like features. Sure, it's for "business", but it'll probably be the funnest training class I've ever held.
  • We shouldn't assume that, in this case, better graphics are more desirable. There are already complaints that PowerPoint's graphical features distract from the information that a presentation attempts to convey. Sometimes, a little simplicity goes a long way.

  • It isn't for geeks like us (Score:3, Insightful)

    by psetzer ( 714543 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @01:52PM (#9974783)
    I'm the kind of guy that when I make a PPT presentation, it's black text on a white background made to emphasise what I'm doing rather than what the graphics are doing. However, if you're off selling stuff, this could be 'useful'. Not truely useful, but a piece of eyecandy that some marketeer or executive would want, earning the creators money. It's like a pop-up blocker add-in for IE. None of us are going to use it, but there's still a market for it, for better or for worse.

  • OfficeFX Review (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BubbaThePirate ( 805480 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @01:52PM (#9974784)
    Short OfficeFX review [informit.com].

    Points of interest:

    "Besides a graphics chip like the ATI Radeon, the program requires the .NET Framework (available from Windows Update) and DirectX 9. A pre-installation panel reviews your system and tells you whether you can continue setup."

    "I discussed this with Don Brittain, the CEO of Instant Effects, and he said that in his view the product is 18 months ahead of the hardware cycle. This means that you need the very latest laptop to make sure you can show an OfficeFX show. But here's how it works."

  • Even though I prefer using Keynote's polish over PowerPoint I think this thing is going to be overkill - presentations using this product are going to be brash, obnoxious infomercials with little substance - akin to watching Entertainment Tonight. So I am sure we will be seeing all the brash, obnoxious companies who favor PR over product using this.

    Has Darl McBride purchased a copy yet?
    • PowerPoint presentations are only important if the workplace is a theme park where everyone must be entertained in order to be persuaded.

      And that is why PowerPoint is the most important thing in most companies.

  • Powerpoints new easter egg... (Score:4, Funny)

    by kev82 ( 526371 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @01:59PM (#9974823)
    ...is built on the doom3 engine. great, and I thought it was bloating the product when they bundled some version of flight simulator with excel

  • Improving your Presentations (Score:5, Insightful)

    by enkafan ( 604078 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:01PM (#9974834)

    As a technical instructor, I give presentations basically 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. And let me tell you, a rotating teapot isn't going to improve anyone's presentation. The best way to improve your presentation is to cut out as much as possible. Make yourself the focus of the presentation, not the clip art or whatever fancy crap you've got on the screen.

    I'd highly recommend anyone out there who is looking to improve their presentations to check out "Presenting to Win" [amazon.com], by Jerry Weissman. Excellent book on giving presentations.

    • Re:Improving your Presentations (Score:4, Informative)

      by gnu-generation-one ( 717590 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @03:01PM (#9975147) Homepage
      "I'd highly recommend anyone out there who is looking to improve their presentations to check out "Presenting to Win", by Jerry Weissman. Excellent book on giving presentations."

      While we're on the essay reccomendations, Perl now has a page up on giving presentations [perl.com], geared towards the shorter presentations

      • Perl now has a page up on giving presentations, geared towards the shorter presentations

        The best piece of advice in the Perl page is:

        So it's important to put something in your slide to allow people to find out more about what you're talking about and provide a way of contacting you once you're done speaking. The biggest mistake I've made in my talks in the past is putting this information on the last slide, which of course only appears for 10 seconds and no one has time to copy down. Now I place a simpl

    • The best way to improve your presentation is to cut out as much as possible. Make yourself the focus of the presentation, not the clip art or whatever fancy crap you've got on the screen.

      That's because you're a technical instructor. The best lectures I've attended are ones where the instructor uses the chalkboard/whiteboard, and *shock* actually writes legible, well organized notes on the board that *shock* perfectly compliment his/her verbal speech.

      On the other hand, most business presentations, fr

    • Much better advice: go to the Apple site and watch any of Steve Jobs' presentations.

      Hint: don't try to extemporize from your slides. Write your speech, deliver it well, and use your slides as punctuation marks.

  • Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:01PM (#9974835)
    The thinking not done because of the "elevator pitch" approach to business is one of the reasons so many companies are losing so much money.

    AT&T is no longer trying to sell residential phone service.

    Disney no longer makes animation. Instead, they want to make computers.

    and so on. "There's no money in it" they whine. What they really mean is "nobody can explain in a PowerPoint presentation or an elevator pitch (30 seconds or less with no eye-glaze) how we can make hundreds of millions of dollars this quarter with no work or capital expenditure."

    Everything formerly valuable is becoming a commodity while attention span is becoming the most expensive luxury in business. Nobody listens any more. Ideas and products that make hundreds of millions of dollars CANNOT BE EXPLAINED PROPERLY IN THIRTY SECONDS.

    So, everyone runs from meeting to meeting, conference room to conference room frantically looking for something, ANYTHING that they can borrow to sell and get some short-term cash to the bank so the paychecks don't bounce (well, the paychecks for the half-dozen people who didn't get fired prior to the last quarterly stock-bump layoffs).

    And, so business gets what they want. Accelerated PowerPoint so the elevator pitch can be 27 seconds instead of 30. Why, we're TEN PERCENT MORE EFFICIENT! LET'S FIRE SOME PEOPLE TO CELEBRATE!

    It's just another icon to click. Another "efficiency token" to impress rooms full of accountants who, in the money-grab economy, are the only people who matter.
    • On the contrary. Most anything can be explained in 30 seconds. You just have to have both the ability and the willingness to tell the person you're talking to what he needs to know by relating it to things he already understands.

      You need to stop thinking in terms of encyclopedia pages and start thinking in terms of sound bites.

      Oh, one more thing: quit being such an elitist snob. You apparently don't know the first thing about business, or why businesses make or lose money.

      • You need to stop thinking in terms of encyclopedia pages and start thinking in terms of sound bites.

        In other words, make it devoid of all true understanding of the material and take the flashy (and let's not forget politically-correct) pulp left behind as all there is to know... great...

        I was reading an article the other day that described how the "sound bite" and modern media in general have irreversibly changed politics in the U.S. For example, rather than say anything risky or possibly requiring an

        • In other words, make it devoid of all true understanding of the material

          Remember back when I said to stop being an elitist snob? You really should have listened.

          It is possible to understand without knowing all the details. I understand coronary artery bypass surgery. Does that mean I'm a heart surgeon? No. Is it necessary for me to be a heart surgeon in order to understand coronary artery bypass surgery? No.

          I was reading an article the other day that described how the "sound bite" and modern media in g

          • Well, I wasn't going to respond to your post because it was ridden with unnecessary personal attacks, but I'll bite.

            It is possible to understand without knowing all the details. I understand coronary artery bypass surgery. Does that mean I'm a heart surgeon? No. Is it necessary for me to be a heart surgeon in order to understand coronary artery bypass surgery? No.

            But not all topics are so easy from a conceptual point of view like coronary artery bypass surgery might be (eg. "re-routing the pipes" or wh

            • because it was ridden

              I think you mean "riddled." Unless you mean "horsey," which is cute but makes little sense.

              The problem is the over-simplification that inevitably results from "soundbites" and the "30 second pitch."

              Nope. That's not a problem. In fact, the problem is inherent in your sentence. It's not "over-simplification." There's no such thing as "over-simplification." If an idea can be simplified, simplify it! Continue until the idea is simple.

              If you can't get there, that's your problem.

              Firs
  • Don't bother if you have OOo. Ran the system check:
    PowerPoint: Requires version 2002 or 2003.
    Reccomendation: Purchase Powerpoint version 2002 or 2003.
  • Rendering and outputting to video could have the same effect, and instead you burn your presentation to a DVD and use the DVD remote to navigate and cue your presentation. DVDs can already loop video, have basic overlay functions (that you might not even need), and can be used as a presentation medium. After the meeting you can hand out DVDs to interested clients.

  • My eyes hurt (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OpCode42 ( 253084 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:09PM (#9974872) Homepage
    Seriously, i know this if off-topic and all that, but light brown links on white and a touch lighter-brown background?

    Horrible, guys. Horrible.

    • Re:My eyes hurt (Score:5, Informative)

      by sublimusasterisk ( 539187 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:15PM (#9974907)
      I totally agree. Just a little tip that someone mentioned a while ago that I'm using until slashdot stops their excessive crack smoking... change the first part of any slashot url to one that you like the colors of.

      For example, this one is of the form it.slashdot.org. But if you change just the "it" part to, say "linux" (yielding something like linux.slashdot.org) the color scheme changes to that of the linux section, but keeps the same content of the article you're reading.

      AFAIK, this works for all sub-sections.

      • I rarely access Slashdot by going to the web site these days. Instead I subscribe to the RSS feed. The great thing about it is all of the article URLs are plain "slashdot.org" addresses, so all the articles come out in the old green and grey colour scheme. I didn't even realise what people were complaining about for months.

    • Why are you looking at /. with the stupid colors? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:36PM (#9975018) Homepage Journal
      1. Go, right now, to your preferences.
      2. Click on the "homepage" section.
      3. Click on "Light".
      4. Hit "enter"/click submit

      Yes, it takes some getting used to, but leave it there for a week and see if you don't like it better.

    • Doesn't look so bad on my TFT, but it's worse on my CRT. Really, you're better off mailing Taco or someone with suggestions for something better than making endless off-topic postings to every single IT article.

      Personally, I recommend the tritanopic version [aagh.net].

  • Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tliet ( 167733 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:09PM (#9974875)
    Let me guess, does it look like Apple's Keynote [apple.com]?.

  • making PowerPoint look good is easy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dekeji ( 784080 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:11PM (#9974887)
    Just remove all the animations, gradients, and clipart and concentrate on the message.
    • Just remove all the animations, gradients, and clipart and concentrate on the message.

      You don't want to remove them all. Plain text alone tends to bore the viewers, and if your viewers are bored, they won't listen to your message. An occasional graph or chart is helpful if it illustrates your point. If graphs or charts are inapplicable, and you have several slides in a row made up of exclusively text, it usually helps to throw in a clip art here and there.

      As we all know, too many pictures and transition

  • Tufte on PowerPoint (Score:5, Informative)

    by image ( 13487 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:15PM (#9974908) Homepage
    "Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely."

    Though I'm sure I won't be last to reference this, Yale's professor emeritus Edward Tufte [edwardtufte.com] has been writing about PowerPoint for a while. This piece in Wired [wired.com] helps explain how the cognative processes encouraged by PP presentations are subtly (and not-so-subtly) corrupting the way we perceive data. And you can purchase his whole essay here [edwardtufte.com].

    Whether or not you agree with all of Tufte's work, he is among the seminal thinkers about how we disseminate information. And having sat through too many years worth of PP presentations, I think he's dead right about this. I fact, I do my presentations from notes, using nothing more than dry-erase markers and a whiteboard. It never fails to impart an order of magnitude more information than a static bullet-point presentation ever could.

    • 28 pages? (Score:3, Funny)

      by douthat ( 568842 )
      you can purchase his whole essay here.
      28 pages is a bit hefty.
      Where can I find the executive summary?



      ...note to morons. the above is sarcasm :P
    • I used to build PowerPoint presentations for clients at a previous job, and I think one of the best we ever did had no words. It was for the international division of a beverage company, and it was just a series of pictures of people around the world enjoying their products. It brought a little humanity to a dry message about marketing product Y in X country, and added to rather than detracted from the presentation.

      So I guess what I'm saying is, yes, bullet points can be an inferior way to try and get info
    • Perhaps. Some of his proof in the article is a little contrived though. That 'simple' table of his is anything but. You can't get trends or relationships out of it without significant work. What would be better is to have a CORRECT graph relating the matters. Something that I can analyze visually.
      Yes, raw data has it's place, and many time the effects and flash-bang gee-whiz of PP is used as a replacement for actual content in a presentation. But not always. Power Point is better than using overhead
    • I fact, I do my presentations from notes, using nothing more than dry-erase markers and a whiteboard. It never fails to impart an order of magnitude more information than a static bullet-point presentation ever could.

      I wholeheartedly agree with this approach. For one thing, audiences understand that you actually know what you're talking about when you are so comfortable that you're willing to forgo the PowerPoint crutch.

      Tufte is dead-on when he notes that PowerPoint engenders "a deeply hierarchical sin

  • Especially true if you're the one stuck with the duty of making them look good.

    you know what would look good? a presentation that conveys information INSTEAD OF LOOKING LIKE A FRUSTRATED PIXAR MOVIE.

  • this [informit.com] is [informit.com] pretty [informit.com], but [informit.com] unreadable [informit.com]

    I just wanted a show

  • So many critics.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @02:52PM (#9975097)
    Sure, a spinning teapot isn't going to seal the deal ... but more powerful tools give an artist more options when creating a presentation to market whatever it is they're marketing. That's not to say that every slide needs 3D crap flying all over the place, but I'd argue that used appropriately and conservatively ... these new tools definitely offer a presenter a more complete toolset with which to convey their message.

    Unfortunately, we'll probably suffer the same hell that Photoshop filters have yielded (i.e. overuse of the lense flare, and drop-shadow) but I believe the talented artist will use these new features to build some truly impressive presentations.
  • Just what we need--more wiz-bang effects and styles for procrastinators to obsess over, rather than crafting presentations which are actually informative. The only redeeming feature I see is that it requires nice hardware, which means people will hopefully think twice before either sending me this eye-candy nonsense or before bringing their presentation on a CD to a conference.

    You don't have to become a marketing weeny to make a nice looking presentation. I reuse my LaTeX sources in HA-Prosper [stuwww.uvt.nl] (putting i
  • Big deal. I've been using Flash for presentations for years. I can incorporate 3D animation and have a full multimedia presentation withiout having to purchase two overly price products... I only need one overly priced product.

  • DirectX 9.0c (Score:2, Informative)

    by JoeG ( 7388 )
    Did anyone try and download the demo on a system with XP SP2? It reports my DirectX is out of date and can't install... so I guess the installer doesn't detect 9.0c (from SP2) properly? Cool!

    Joe
  • Isn't this just the same thing Apple's Quartz Extreme already does? Using the GPU to perform realtime effects is an Apple thing since Jaguar, and Keynote (presentation app) uses the API hooks to do its transitions. Tiger will have more hooks with Core Video. Apple Motion also does realtime effects using the GPU.

  • Old news and misleading title (Score:3, Informative)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @05:02PM (#9975827)
    Office already has hardware accelerated PowerPoint, as of, I think it was, Office XP. This lead to silky smooth fades and transitions.

    As for OfficeFX, ATI has been giving away free copies for bloody ages: http://ati.com/buy/promotions/officefx/index.html
  • ... when's it being done for OpenOffice?

  • Does anyone remember Office Advantage from Metacreations? It was back when Metacreations hadn't sold all of its products.

    As I recall, it offered a much better engine for rendering powerpoint slides, complete with drop shadows and improved anti-aliasing (bascially the look that Metacreations was famous for in its interfaces). As well as that, it added a heap of new transitions, like pond rippling between slides (I know sounds dicky, but the ripple was done at 25fps, so it looked really nice).

    That was the s
  • ...upgrading your display hardware so you can do a POWER POINT presentation of all things. Especially true if you're the one stuck with the duty of making them look good.

    I always make powerpoint presentations look great on my 3GHz machine with 512MB of ram. I make sure to use the highest resolution possible for video and 24 bit bmp files and useless wav files that play at each transition. Then when my boss gives the presentation on his two year old laptop he looks like an idiot. It doesn't get any better

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