Using Excel As a 3D Graphics Engine 292
simoniker writes "Obviously whimsical but slightly mind-blowing — an Eastern European coder has published video and the Excel tables to get full 3D wireframe running in Microsoft Excel. He even has solid polygonal graphics running. This isn't an Easter Egg by the Excel creators. Rather, he's using formulas to output the graphics, using two different methods, and showing all the variables on-screen in real time as the 3D is created."
One can only ask... (Score:2, Funny)
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-RetroMud Grandpa
Re:One can only ask... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
He did it because he could, all other reasons would be redundant.
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt he would apprecaite ASCII Quake either.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Its kinda fun to create a button in word which executes a vba app that creates an excel chart based on data in an access database and embeds it in a cad drawing then prints that to pdf and sends an email through outlook. Makes peoples heads explode even though it is very basic programming.
Re:A true geek... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A true geek... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A true geek... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A true geek... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A true geek... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A true geek... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Informative)
Functional coding guys would 'get' the wow factor of it all, I guess.
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:4, Funny)
I dated her once, and I've never been quite right ever since.
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
I can give you the CSV version:
Income, Car, Looks, Star Wars Fan, Flosses, Dress Quality, Glasses, Muscles, Fat
$250k, Porsche, Good, 0, 1, >0.8, 0, 1, 0
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
you can't have extra spaces in a CSV, unless you drive a " Porsche".
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry. I'll append my CSV:
Pedantic, Feelings of Superiority by Mastering of Mundane Technical Details, Nitpick a Comment About Why Geeks Don't Score
0, 0, 0
Re:One can only ask... (Score:4, Funny)
compressed: (Score:3, Funny)
0
Re:compressed: (Score:4, Interesting)
As to WHY these girls like geeks, it's generally a combination of the following:
a) They have a mother complex that makes them want to care for and nurture the most socially inept/awkward partner they can find.
b) They're geeks themselves, and stick to their own kind.
c) They have a fetish for crying boys sobbing "thank you, thank you, thank you!" over and over.
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b4i4q ru/18
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
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I've read that England spent so much money on the thing
Had to do it (Score:3, Funny)
What's the Excel formula for getting laid?
Gainful employment, a shower, a suit and a tie.
#REF!
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
No, more like "because we HAVE TO. We can't help ourselves.
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No cake for you! (Score:4, Informative)
For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead.
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
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Old != Smart
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Please turn in your card.
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I guess I prefer the newer usage of "geek" over the older when applied to me. "Hacker" has changed too. Eh, try calling someone "niggardly" and see what happens. I sometimes wish English evolved a little more slowly, at least as far as usage of existing words.
circa 1990 MS Works was a Turing Machine (Score:5, Funny)
Why? If you have to ask, get off Slashdot.
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Where's the download link?
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Be sure to enable the macros included and then Alt+F8, and run.
Re:One can only ask... (Score:5, Interesting)
Tim Sweeney's POPL talk had some similar ideas too.
A month early... (Score:4, Funny)
Why Did You Ask? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Spoken like someone too young to remember the Amiga demo scene. For some people, the challenge of seeing just how far you can push a piece of software/hardware is irresistible.
This explains it (Score:5, Funny)
/.ed (Score:2)
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Try the single-page print version via Coral Cache [nyud.net] (worked for me).
Hope he had fun at least (Score:2, Insightful)
Could this be... (Score:2, Funny)
Obligatory Joke.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Joke.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Obligatory Joke.. (Score:4, Funny)
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Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
Explains the flight simulator in Excel 97? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Explains the flight simulator in Excel 97? (Score:4, Informative)
(Obligatory Dilbert) [mit.edu]
A cool trick, straight from the textbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, the point is that Excel is reasonably well set up for doing the kind of math you need to do when making computer graphics and has vector output capabilities. It's a neat trick and something that would likely be useful in teaching the underpinnings (watching what happens as you tweak variables in a transformation matrix in realtime would have been very nice when I was taking my class).
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The novelty here isn't the computation, it's the use of the spreadsheet grid as a display.
(At least, if I'm understanding correctly despite giving up after three molasses-slow pages. Since when does Gamasutra get Slashdotted?)
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One of the examples uses colored grid elements; the other uses an actual rasterization-type rendering system built into office.
If you wanted to get really fancy, you could probably have excel load DirectX objects one way or the other as well.
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Demonstrations (Score:3, Informative)
Not to worry ... (Score:5, Funny)
Those guys have a mode for everything.
Cheers
Re:Not to worry ... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course I still prefer butterflies.
skip right to the video (Score:5, Informative)
and
http://www.youtube.com/user/GamasutraOfficial [youtube.com]
Quick Summary of Article - Breathless Hype (Score:2)
2. You can do math in Excel
3. Excel makes it possible to see your math as it happens
4. Excel can help prototype some ideas for 3D graphics engines
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No you don't. You can do 3D graphics with a pencil and a ream of paper, which is how it was done before computers.
You have to do math to do ANYTHING on a computer. That's how computers work and why they're called computers - they compute. All they CAN do is compute.
Re:Quick Summary of Article - Breathless Hype (Score:5, Insightful)
It not like he's claiming to have discovered this: this is the fundamental reason why spreadsheets have been used for well over a decade - they give you a logical map. You could lay out a spreadsheet as a single list of mathematical operations, but it would obviously suck in comparison to a a spreadsheet. He's just pointing out this is interesting to think of in terms of a programming paradigm.
(YAY! I used 'paradigm' and didn't sprout horns or anything!)
Cheers!
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Hack-o-the-Day (Score:2)
Not impressed (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe instead... (Score:2)
Oblig. (Score:4, Funny)
65,535 (Score:4, Funny)
Revolutionary (Score:2)
Quick - someone do this in Oo.org! (Score:2)
Gnumeric (Score:2)
big whoop (Score:5, Funny)
Re:big whoop (Score:4, Funny)
Finally... (Score:2, Funny)
That's pretty cool... (Score:2, Funny)
* Runs away *
Eastern European? (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy's email address is in Hungary which means he's probably Hungarian. That's a country directly between Austria and Bulgaria, south of Poland and north of Greece (indirectly) which, depending on where you draw the Eastern boundary of Europe, may or may not be in "Eastern" Europe. It lies almost precisely between the western border of France and the Eastern border of Ukraine, the northern border of Poland and the southern border of Greece (excluding Cyprus), making this guy more of a Central European.
French coders are French, German coders are German. What makes a Hungarian coder "Eastern European"?
Re:Eastern European? (Score:5, Funny)
Not so much that he's from Hungary, but for what he did. You see, we Westerners think of the old Soviet-era Eastern Europe as a windswept expanse of cold, grey concrete buildings. All the people are huddled inside, shivering over a fire made out of rolled-up Pravda, because the Central Committee didn't come through with the oil for the 15th year running. Smartly-dressed politzei wearing fur hats patrol the streets with vicious attack dogs.
So it's pretty natural that if you see a 3D render in Excel, you have to think: "My God, what God-forsaken country do you have to be in to have to do 3D renders in Excel?!" And then you picture that guy hiding in a monk's hole, giggling to himself, swilling tea made from thrice-used teabags heated by Pravda fire, with a dash of bootleg Stolichnaya for kicks, and it couldn't happen anywhere except Eastern Europe, that fictional colorless country where it snows all the time.
--Rob
I did this years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Fractal Generated Landscpare Excel: http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/excel/terrain.html [orcon.net.nz]
The source of progress (Score:5, Insightful)
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LoB
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I hope you are not serious (Score:5, Insightful)
In wich deranged moral system is there some sort of duty that forces smart guys to spend all their available time on things useful for society?
(And who decides what is beneficial for society anyway?)
If his hoby was playing chess or collecting stamps or climbing mountains, would you say that he should spend his time on more useful things? If he could afford to spend a lot of time on those hobbies, why shouldn't he?
So why is it that every time someone does something cool and strange and for all purposes harmless, someone else always has to say "THIS GUY HAS WAY TOO MUCH FREE TIME"? Someone who, I might add, spends his time on slashdot?
Envy?
(I know I am envious, I wish I had the time and the determination to do a lot of these things. Considering that I am wasting time on slasdot, determination is what I am lacking more of)
Re:I hope you are not serious (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as "useless" goes, the best times I've ever had in my life have been essentially "useless" under your definition - sex, travel, rockclimbing, programming for fun, and so forth - though never all of these at once, it must be said.
Work less, enjoy more.
Re:I hope you are not serious (Score:5, Insightful)
A "sad waste" would be if you lived your life without ever doing anything just because you liked doing it.
And dedication or intelligence is not some limited resource that gets less each time you use it on something you enjoy, quite the opposite.
Same for time, unless you somehow manage to live your live without any free time (which brings us back to the "sad waste")
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On a serious note, let me ask, to what end is this pursuit? Of what practical use is it? Oh, sure, you can do what ever you want in life, but the whole excel thing sounds like something to do when you are bored.
I'm in my 40s now, and time is so precious and I just see something like this as a sad waste. Here's a guy who is obviously intelligent but he devoted an amount of his finite time on planet earth doing something basically useless to himself and others. Were his energies properly "self-directed" think what he could have done for himself!! Think about the lost potential in the form of dedication, intelligence, and time!!!
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Re:I wish that when articles such as this get out (Score:2)
Re:I wish that when articles such as this get out (Score:2)
This is something that spreadsheets are _absolutely_ not designed for. This story is just an interesting thing that can be achieved if the software is used weirdly. If anything, it could be an example of bloat. Anyone who decides to go out and buy a spreadsheet solution with full 3D wireframe integration needs to be shot. Seriously, quit the defensiveness.
ps. All my points are void if they can get elite running on excel.
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