Friday, January 25, 2013

The Little Computer That Could

There was once a Little Computer called Pi. He was smaller than all the big computers around him. Pi wanted to do the work that the big computers were doing. He would love to run high resolution 3D games for all the gamers in the village. But the big computers made fun of him. "Oh, you are too small for HDTV gaming." they would scorn. But the Little Computer would respond "I think I can! I Think I can!" But the big computers would not let him run the complex games. "Too slow for rigid body physics simulations" they would say. Well, "Running physics simulations, I think I can, I think I can!" responded Little Pi.

On one day, when all the expensive computers were busy charging micro-transactions to their users, Little Pi was given the task to run a crane simulator game with complex rigid body simulation and render it at a 1920x1080 resolution. The programmer demanded a fluid 30 frames per second. The Little Pi was straining, but thought "I think I can! I think I can!" It began calculating the constraints and solving the matrices, it would spew out 2 MPixel framebuffers, and there it was. "I knew I could! I knew I could!"

If you want to play The Little Crane That Could on the big screen, now you can conveniently do so with a Raspberry Pi. This little $35,- computer packs quite a punch, and manages to run the game at 1920x1080 at 30 frames per second, albeit without the dynamic shadows. So why don't you head over to the Pi Store and get yourself a free copy of The Little Crane That Could.

2 comments:

Bram said...

Look who is Number One!

Bram Stolk Sr said...

TLCTC has a buddy TLCTC what is the difference? One is about ones and zeros and the other about a bunch of silicon connected by wires. One is for free and the other for $35.....guess who will be making money, but more important, who is getting famous? Proficiat for completing a job no one thought to be possible.......