Las Vegas' dystopia-sphere, powered by 150 Nvidia GPUs and drawing up to 28,000,000 watts, is both a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat | PC Gamer
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/las-vegas-dystopia-sphere-powered-by-150-nvidia-gpus-and-drawing-up-to-28000000-watts-is-both-a-testament-to-the-hubris-of-humanity-and-an-admittedly-impressive-technical-feat/Open linkView original on lemmy.world973
Comments432
The power of 21000 homes for advertising.
What's most impressive is that it is even legal.
Or profitable
Is it? Last I‘ve heard it was bleeding money.
Makes sense. Gimmicks are gimmicks.
Probably because they're not doing much with it. It's $100/person to see the basic "Planet Earth" showing and almost $200 to see The Grateful Dead show. Previously they showed a Phish show. That's it for options, and none of it sounds really appealing to me.
U2 played in it, too.
I'm sure these bands are all appealing to some, but it seems like they're really squandering the potential with them playing the same two shows over and over for months.
U2 is the best band ever, Bono told me that.
This way some faulty internet lore. The money losses were from a fluke of timing the opening date of operations versus when quarterly finances were reported. Big startup costs meant the first numbers looked silly until they had enough events to get steady profits. They’re doing fine now.
Internet should’ve known better too. It’s hard to lose in Vegas and the investors obviously knew what they were doing. The power costs are shocking for sure though. Yikes!
I love this kind of shit. Building things for the sake of it is worth it. Not only as just expression, which may be hubris but it's still expression. Also entertainment, inspiration, pushing the art of engineering, and just giving people something to do, and all the good that comes with that like personal and trade growth.
A purely utilitarian life is a life only spent on survival. Not a life I want to live.
We can do that, but first let’s make sure everyone on the planet has clean water first.
The money spent on this would not have been spent on giving clean water to people thousands of miles away
Does this really make it any less worthy of criticism, though...?
Yes?
How about using it for the free school lunches that the Governor decided to veto for some fucking reason?
We would rather have the children starve to death than being called a communist.
It was privately funded, this money would not have gone to school lunches
Is that where guillotines come in?
Maybe it would’ve if governments taxed them properly and spent that money to save the planet
Doesn’t flint still not have clean water?
Those are two different states, plus flint does have clean water now (although the effects of contamination and lead exposure still remain in people who grew up drinking it)
So we might a well build some shit.
Hey, it's just $2,300,000,000
Can't even feed a packed homeless shelter for that much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is the equivalent of saying “Eat all your dinner cause there’s starving children in Africa”.
Sure, this sounds nice, but this logic falls apart the instant you start thinking about it.
You sound like the people criticising NASA for spending money on science. "Who do X when Y is still an issue?"
I doubt you make that kind of prioritization with your own money.
NASA also consistently provides new innovation and new science.
What will the dome keep contributing to society for the absurd electricity cost it takes to keep running? Advertisements?
Yeah, there not really the same argument.
If this is something you feel strongly about, then please stop eating factory farmed meat and animal products if you havent already. It is something you personally can actually do. It helps, and it will genuinely make you feel better. You may not have much power, but using the power you do have to help the team you claim to be on instead of the other team is a massive step forward.
I don't agree. The comment points out the single most effektive move an individal without political nor financial power can make to cut personal co2-emissions with just a change of habit. It's not about veganism, animal rights or your health, it's just about sanity. Us still eating meat even though we know better is an incredibly dumb waste of energy for the sake of pleasure, exactly like this shitty powereating globe.
As long as >95% of the global population still consumes meat I understand the urge to bring this topic everywhere.
Take a train instead of a flight. Cycle to work or take public transport instead of driving. Install a heat pump or solar in your house. There are a million things people can do to cut down their emissions that can be as effective as becoming herbivores, depending on each one's personal situation.
Plus, I don't have the numbers in my head but I'm pretty sure a locally grown fillet of chicken is more environmentally friendly than an avocado that has travelled across the Atlantic, so "buy local" would be probably better advice.
Yeah, so many things one should do. Yet nothing is as simple as paying for a different product next time you're shopping your groceries.
Avocados are way less harmfull to our planet than local meat. People keep bringing this up so often it's #20 on the Vegan Bullshit Bingo.
And you are one of those "every problem on the planet is the fault of someone else other than me so I can do whatever I want with no regard for it's affect on anyone else" people. Stay away from us if you can't be bothered to carry your own weight, you just drag down people who actually give a shit about something other than their own immediate selfish gratification.
eating meat doesn't emit co2
Producing that meat does.
Note that the commenter didn’t say to quit all eating meat. They just said to quit eating “factory farmed” meat.
It’s not about eating meat, it’s about factory farming the meat and the damage to the environment caused by it.
You came in here with your absolutist utilitarian life above all else or we all die post just to respond with this because someone suggested you to stop eating meat. Beautiful.
That's not veganism, that's environmentalism. Veganism is recognizing that animals have the right not to be treated as property and have atrocities visited upon them. That the experiences of animals are real and matter. That their suffering is identical in nature to your own.
Avoiding animal products for the good of the environment has nothing to do with veganism. At least understand what your childish knee-jerk reactions are actually reacting to.
no, it doesnt. despite the existence of vegans, meat production increases every year, year over year.
And there's crime so you might as well rape. What a pathetic cop out. You're lucky there are so many people taking care of you.
the claim is that by not consuming factory farmed meat, you make an impact on the amount of emissions from its production. this is not true. it is also not analogous to raping anyone.
You honestly think that factory farm emissions font change if people don't give them money for their product? If your head was any further down in the sand, the magma would melt it.
Analogies don't indicate a similar level of morality. They are used to explain points to people who, for some reason, are unwilling or unable to otherwise understand.
No it doesn't, Commie
you're cherrypicking.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL
What is your point?
I understand that perspective, but does it really have to be advertising?
I'd prefer if it weren't. Though that's not the only use for this thing.
This isn't pushing any boundaries, though. This is off the shelf technology. Anybody can do something big by throwing a shit ton of money at it. It would be pushing boundaries of tech or art if it was for instance super power efficient, or mind bending in any way. This is a fucking sphere, it's the simplest shape and a rip off of the pyramids but less original and not even comparable in terms of durability.
It is absolutely pushing boundaries to be driving this many pixels at a frame rate that doesn't take minutes to refresh. I build a lot of projects with addressable LEDs and the typical hobbyist stuff chokes out when you start trying to control more than a thousand or so. This thing has 256 million pixels inside and 1.2 million outside.
Could it not be argued that building this thing now gives people a chance at looking at the power draw and attempting to make it super efficient? Like now people have a tool to test things on.
They did mention that they are working on making 70% of this powered by solar panels. Maybe this will push forward solar technology in some way.
Sure but we’re burning tons of coal to have this thing advertise minion movies, not anything artistic or worthwhile.
Worthwhile for who
Advertising? This thing is essentially a theater. Yeah, it can run advertisement but anything with a screen can do that. It’s like saying a movie theatre is for advertising.
It's a 400 foot tall screen that's constantly on and in view, even at night, which plays ads like 90% of the time. Calling it "essentially a theatre" is a huge understatement.
Horrible and should be illegal.
But the energy usage is quoted as peak for the entire venue - which is literally a theater / concert hall. It opened with a live U2 performance. The energy usage isn't just for the displays, it includes all the power for the entire building, the concert speakers, heating/cooling, indoor lighting, any kitchen equipment, etc.
Ahh yes, energy credits. AKA bullshit.
We shouldnt call them energy credits, but rather indulgences.
We should call them FRAUD
Somewhere in an ancient crypt, the bones of Luther begin to twitch to life...
Hey!
They’re not always BS. Just most of the time!
Or are they? Some of the companies who are the best at it and seem to be genuinely trying have been shown not to be able to guarantee one way or the other.
“Wait, someone cut down that forest we planted?!” (no joke)
Edit: see REC clarification below (thanks!)
Just to be clear, renewable energy credits are different than carbon offsets, and easier to guarantee because they're often tied directly to a metered renewable energy source.
That said, there are still junk RECs on the market, like those tied to energy that was produced up to 2 decades ago that nobody got around to claiming / retiring. Or RECs tied to energy sources that may have happened regardless of the REC sale.
Ohhh good point! Wanted to edit that into my comment there even, thank you.
The junk RE credits are really interesting. As is the “ha we were building that solar farm no matter what!” problem - reminds me of when that happens in… tax deductions I think.
At least I understand forests that are replanted over and over to be used for lumber, effectively reducing the use of old lumber for myriad products.
Energy credits — what a bunch of vacuous rhetoric.
The reality is that it’s energy being taken away from the overall grid, requiring a larger grid and thus prolonging our dependence on non renewable energy while we build up renewable sources.
If we weren’t so wasteful with our energy we wouldn’t need as much of it and it’d be easier to go fully renewable.
Well this is not good math at all. If you create a project and offset all its power requirements, you haven't added anything to the grid. The alternative is to not do stuff, which is not going to happen anytime soon*, so it's a net good thing and needs to be incentivized, not disparaged.
*Well it will happen after the water wars and plagues wipe us out, and the sphere will stop drawing any energy at that point.
Consider ”hate credits”… like imagine the KKK can do whatever it wants so long as they claim to offset it with “hate credits”…
How stupid is it that somebody can claim “Net Zero” greenhouse gas emissions when 30% of their power is greenhouse gas.
Just gonna throw this out there. Fuck credits, charge a carbon tax.
We'll also ignore the fact that that solar could have been used to offset actual needs instead of this BS.
If only Las Vegas were located somewhere that the sun shines almost all day every day. \s
I highly doubt the operating hours of this ball of decadence match the time when solar power peaks
If only the creators of the ball had enough profit coming in to put up more solar panels and build up a battery bank for the night so they wouldn't take anything from the grid...
And yet they still couldn't cover the last 30%.
That's probably at night
Regardless, that energy could be going to offset other energy currently being produced by non-renewables no matter which way you slice it.
So build concentrated solar power and store the heat for after the sun sets. Bonus - thermal power plant turbines give inertia to the grid, which photo-voltaics don't.
Vegas exists because of the BS.
The word net does a lot of heavy lifting and it’s just a scam
You can use 100% coal power and claim net zero by buying a forest
Well you don't understand what "net" means.
It doesn't mean literally zero. It means colunm A and column B average out to zero.
To acheive a real net zero, they have to save energy somewhere else that takes that column past 100% (Such as if their solar panels produce more energy than they use during certain times.)
They probably just make some shit up to say their are saving extra somewhere they aren't (so to that point, yes...credits are bullshit.)
Maybe, I mean just maybe, they can run this thing only as long as the solar generated power lasts, and then turn it off 30% of the time.
Run it at 70% percent brightness.
Oooh, this is a good idea
IMO it seems RECs are a better solution than carbon taxes at least in situations like this. With RECs you're buying renewable energy to offset non-renewables, with a carbon tax the company is just giving the government money for use of non-renewables. Only funds spent on RECs in this case actually go to supporting the renewable energy sector. I'm no expert in this stuff so I could be off, just how I understand it.
They never claimed net zero. They plan to achieve net zero by 2050
Yeah, that’s in the quote. I’m more complaining about the concept of “net zero”.
Exactly. Carbon credits for the win! I love me some Pigouvian taxes. :)
Las Vegas in general is a testament to the hubris of humanity and an admittedly impressive technical feat. Does it even exist without the Hoover Dam?
I don't know about power, but Vegas is actually incredibly water efficient. Due to the way the water rights work with the Colorado river, they're not allowed very much, but it doesn't "count" if you put it back in. So nearly every drop they use is treated and put back (probably cleaner, tbh). Boggles the brain, but somehow it's actually a fairly sustainable city. More than any other other major metro, in any event.
Considering they are in a literal desert, they would have to be fairly sustainable to exist in the first place. Not saying it's not super impressive, my dad lived out there when they were building up a lot of the expanded infrastructure and he has some cool stories about how he saw the desert on the outskirts disappear as they added in all the water and transportation stuff
What do other cities do with their wastewater? Isnt that the norm?
Thrilled you asked! So yes: Treatment is always required, but the final destination of the treated water can vary. For instance, in a lot of places they may have municipal water TO a home or business, but that may be discharged to septic, as opposed to the river. Also in a lot of areas, water may be taken out of an underground aquifer (either by private well or a municipality) but when treated it may be discharged into a river or ocean. That can create problems because if you're near the coast, the empty space in the aquifer may be filled by salt/brackish water that can lead to salinity rises in the aquifer. To solve that some places turn to "ground water recharge", which is just a fancy way of saying "we built a big well to put it back in the aquifer".
Increasingly, you're seeing some places essentially sell their treated water. Santa Rosa CA, for instance, built an entire pipeline that goes from their treatment facility to another municipality to be injected into their groundwater.
So yes, everywhere treats it, but the final destination makes a difference. Las Vegas (or anyone else on the river) only gets credit for what goes back into the river, so any evaporation etc is a problem. It sounds trivial, but there is a reason those other strategies exist. It essentially doubles every pipe, limits where you can park a treatment plant etc. Vegas also does some great grey water re-use. That essentially means it doesn't go "back" but can get used many many times, limiting the initial draw.
Wastewater is funny because it's far from rocket science, but the numbers to implement any of it get staggering very quickly.
Wastewater isn’t rocket science. It’s just harder and significantly more important. Every engineering discipline makes fun of the civils, but the fact is none of us are half as critical to modern life as them. Every benefit any of us claim rests on their backs. The flow of electricity is a civil engineering feat, the flow of water to and from our homes, businesses, and farms is a civil engineering feat (and critical to health), as is our transportation networks, our entire constructed environment, and even crazy and weird shit like controlling the location of critical rivers.
oh I'm not shortchanging it, I work in the field. It's crazy how "simple" it is in concept and hard to deliver. But it's on par with antibiotics with how many lives it's changed. Like you said, it's like a lot of civil stuff. A solid highway system, for instance. Just some dirt with fancy rocks on it right? Righhhhhhht?
And don't get me wrong, wastewater has tons of complications. Any plant is operated in equal parts science, engineering, and art. It's a living, breathing, bioreactor. They've each got their own distinct personality.
I actually thought about going into civil engineering in school, but I ended up really liking Computer Science instead. In high school, I was waffling between being a software patent attorney and a civil engineering attorney, but once I took some CS classes, I decided software patents suck and I really wanted to work with computers.
I have a lot of respect for our civil engineers. My state is experimenting with a variety of civil engineering stuff, like paints for our highways (should help visibility in crappy winter conditions), alternative grass mixtures to cut water use (less engineering and more horticulture, but whatever), and expanding trains. I kind of wish I was involved with that, but I still really like my job, so I just follow that kind of stuff as a hobby. Bridges, trains, and tunnels rock.
Yeah in retrospect I wish I’d gone civil. It wasn’t offered at my school but I went industrial because I loved both engineering and psychology. Civil would’ve meant I did more good and got less poisoned by my career
Where does Santa Rosa’s wastewater go to?
It was also, literally, built by the mob
It's funny, I think Vegas is perfectly fine as the city of sin so things like this really don't phase me. It was built on the idea of crime and excess.
What does seem weird to me is how in a desert, why isn't everything solar? The sun is their only natural resource besides sand. Every rooftop and parking lot and flat surface possible seems like it should be a panel.
Vegas is surrounded by empty desert, they don't need to use rooftops and parking lots
even deserts host life. it's kind of a ecological misnomer that we could just cover the deserts of the world in solar panels. that would have serious repercussions.
What repercussions could covering a few acres more in the mojave with solar panels have?
Also, the ocean is a desert with its life underground and the perfect disguise above.
Honestly if we could get space elevators figured out, the best place to put solar panels would be in the upper atmosphere. Tethered to the ground by massive columns that feed the energy they collect to massive capacitors on the ground?
Solar only works during the day. During night you need batteries which are not renewable. Mining lithium trashes ecosystems and we probably have enough for like 50 more years at this rate, cobalt is extracted through slave labour. And we've seen how well recycling works for other materials which are less complex. So all these renewables aren't all that green in every aspect. Unless we solve the energy storage problem it isn't as simple as putting up more panels.
You know, I'm getting really sick of these comments where people think they know what they're talking about and repeat a bunch of talking points about lithium.
Lithium is not going to be the basis of a renewable grid. We need it for EVs because it's the best Wh/kg that we have right now, but we don't care so much about weight for grid storage. Cost/kg is the main measure we care about there (though there are some other considerations in specific conditions). We already have tech being deployed in the field that's better than lithium for grid storage. Flow batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, or just heating up sand or rocks. Others, like sodium batteries, are being manufactured and will probably find their way into real products in the next few years.
Chill, no need to be stressed. Part of the ideas you mentioned are already implemented in some cases, but they are not without drawbacks. Pumped hydro is good, but has high maintainance costs, messes with the fish and requires large bodies of water, how do you get tbat in the desert? Flywheels have good inertia, great for stabilizing the grid, Ireland has some for that exact reason, but can't store a whole lot. And heating up roxks and sand may work if you need heat at night, but you need electricity, so you need water to turn into steam to produce it. Sodium batteries look the most promising, we'll see how they develop. But until we get these storqge facilities built, adding more solar would only destabilise the grids even more.
So if you knew this which is a reasonable post why do you post the propaganda piece before?
What propaganda? I think you have to go back and read my post once more... The thread started from solar panels in the desert. At the moment the most widely used grid storage is pumped hydro, how will you do that in the desert? Next most used tech RIGHT NOW is lithium batteries. Other solutions exist, but how many are there implemented and ready to capture that energy right now? Oh, not so many? Then putting up more solar panels hoping that one day we have the storage for them is foolish, these panles lose efficiency over time. I don't have an agenda to spread, there is no propaganda, I am only talking about the an issue which exists, which is energy storage, for which we have some solutions, with their pros and cons, but not close to being implemented.
Sodium batteries (which are on the market now) are way more environmentally friendly than Lithium batteries.
The materials are very accessible by comparison to Lithium batteries and they're way more stable.
https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery
That's usually written as 28MW. I know some Americans don't like metric much, but one of the points of metric is that you don't ever need to write that many zeroes - you just need to use the right prefix (kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc) on the unit.
True, but 28 million watts really puts things in perspective when your average PSU is less than 1000w.
Exactly. This is literally a PC gamer article. Writing it out like that really puts it into perspective for the average reader.
That's true.
Unrelated but I wish it was easier to find lower-wattage PSUs. My local PC store doesn't have anything under 650W. I know modern GPUs use a lot of power, but not all PCs use a GPU! I have a home server where 400W would be more than enough, yet the smallest I could find was 550W, in stock from just one manufacturer (Be Quiet).
I mean, it should be fine, just because the PSU can provide more watts doesn't mean the system is actually using that much power. I have an 800w PSU in my gaming rig, but its average load is only 240 - 320w during gaming (I've measured it by powering the system with a portable Ecoflow battery).
It runs fine, it's just less efficient.
Where are you getting this from? Intuition?
I think the quiescent current and losses are less in a well engineered psu.
This is verifiable in manufactures data sheets.
Efficiency at less than 20% and greater than 80% loads isn't great relative to in between those ends.
This is compounded by lower wattage PSUs being more limited with regard to features and benefits.
If you end up with a 650w PSU and your system idles at 80 watts for the bulk of a working day you spend long periods of time in this less efficient window.
We need to see some quality 300w to 600w designs come back onto the market.
Well, it depends on how much you're spending: 80 plus titanium units, for example, are 90% efficient at both ends of the spectrum, which is as good as a 80 plus gold unit at the ideal 50% load.
Of course, they're expensive, and thus maybe not really the best solution since the wasted power is probably never going to add up to the cost of the better PSU, but there is enough of a demand for high and low load efficiency that it's a thing that you could go buy.
Way easier to compare 28MW to 1KW.
Yes, it is 28 times more!
Oh, thanks.
Bruh, it's PC Gamer.
quick edit: Hey! Why aren't you converting it to Joules?
Because Joule is the SI unit of energy, meanwhile the Watt is the SI unit of power, equivalent to one Joule per second.
"Converting" joules to watts would be like converting m/s to US dollars.
I liked the analogy but I do think it would be clearer to say something like joules = money in bank account and Watt = spending per second
They say there are 16 screens inside, each with a 16k resolution. Such a screen would have 16x as many pixels as a 4k screen. The GPUs power those as well.
For the number of GPUs it appears to make sense. 150 GPUs for the equivalent of about 256 4k screens means each GPU handles +-2 4k screens. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it could make sense.
The power draw of 28 MW still seems ridiculous to me though. They claim about 45 kW for the GPUs, which leaves 27955 kW for everything else. Even if we assume the screens are stupid and use 1 kw per 4k segment, that only accounts for 256 kW, leaving 27699 kW. Where the fuck does all that energy go?! Am I missing something?
This is a complete shot in the dark but could the huge power draw come from needing some intense industrial cooling/airflow stuff in/on the sphere?
Edit: forgot a word
The big power draw is because of the sheer amount of light it dumps out. You try lighting up 54,000 square meters of LED panel to a few hundred nits like a pc monitor, and see how much power it takes.
More likely it's the thing that generates all that heat in the first place.
Man, I wanna delay the stupid edgy joke I’m making but I can’t help myself
In the future there will be myths that we once had standards such as html but after we tried to build this sphere, god cursed us to use only incompatible proprietary protocols
Yeah, 4k phone and 4k plasma tv don't consume same ammount of energy.
Says 16K, where’s the disconnect? (I don’t know display tech)
Anything most likely driving factor here?
That's the outside. The inside is 256 million pixels.
And a waste of electricity?
I believe that's implied in the "hubris" bit.
Its one of the smaller atrocities in Vegas, particularly when compared to the Bellagio Fountain or the food waste generated by all those casino dining halls.
The fountains aren't quite as wasteful as they seem. They use a lot of water compared to a house, but way less than some car washes.
Plus it is recycled. They would only replace what is lost due to evaporation or after a drain and cleaning.
I looked it up (because the air is very dry in Nevada) and about 32,000 gallons of water per day are evaporated at the Bellagio fountains.
Source: The Las Vegas Sun
An average car wash uses 40 gallons per car and washes a hundred cars per day: Source
A car wash uses 80 gallons per car. The car wash by my office probably washes a thousand cars a day.
Car washes recycle water, too.
Yeah we should have never invented televisions or records either! And don't even get me started on cell phones. Just waste waste waste.
Why, if it were up to me we would all still be hunting and gathering!
Apples to oranges dude, this is for pure spectacle that wears off after five minutes. Plus any data gained from it was at the lab they prototyped it I believe in Burbank. This aint really a sign of progress, and itll be funny to see what happens to it when it inevitably breaks.
I don't know what they need so many GPUs for. There's 16 displays inside, and the sphere itself has fewer pixels than even 1 of the internal displays. You could probably run the sphere off a laptop if you aren't trying to do anything fancy.
Maybe they plan on doing crazy live simulations on it or something. I can't imagine what kind of displayed image would actually use all 150 of them. Nvidia A6000 cards are damn powerful.
Probably have a few cards running the displays and the rest of them mining some sphere-themed memecoin
I guess the practicality of the decision depends on the finances. Did they actually buy the cards or were they gifted by nvidia for free advertising?
It does seem suspiciously like they picked 150 completely arbitrarily to make the project sound impressive, when they could have easily done it with 20. I'm sure a bunch of people in the middle made a bunch of money off that transaction too. Or like you said, maybe this is Nvidia doing some guerrilla marketing
Pretty sure it's just for bragging rights.
You don't know. Full stop.
My job has been to run things on GPUs for almost 10 years now. The only thing anyone practical is doing on that many GPUs is AI training, massive scientific simulations, or crypto mining. 1 or 2 of them is enough to run something like ChatGPT.
Real-time graphics it turns out don't scale well across multiple GPUs. There's a reason SLI has gone away for consumer GPUs. At the current ratio, each of those $3000+ GPUs is only driving 8000 pixels (assuming each led puck is being used as 1 pixel, given their size). It makes no sense other than bragging rights
Add a solar array and battery bank, a you might even have electricity left over. It’s in the desert after all.
Still a waste of energy because that could be used for the general grid
I wouldn’t say entertainment is a waste of energy even if there are nobler uses for the power.
Advertising may be entertaining but it's not entertainment
I dunno man. You ever see the infomercials for the magic bullet, or the slapchop?
Fetticini
Linguine
Martini
Bikini.
You're gonna love my nuts!
Remember when he got his dick almost bitten off while doing coke with a hooker?
Wasn't it his lip?
Shit you might be right. It's been a long time
It may be entertaining, but it's not entertainment.
Remix still slaps
https://youtu.be/UWRyj5cHIQA
I’m in a good mood all day
I think he means the outside
Here's a link. You can go inside of it and it's essentially a huge concert venue. It's clearly entertainment.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TuanMw6zwBk
Like those ass massaging power chairs.
I'd hate to be the one to use them after /u/buttfarts.
There wouldn't be an incentive or the capital necessary to instigate the build out of solar without the sphere. Yes, it would be great if someone did that. But the owners of the sphere specifically have a financial incentive to do so for the sake of lower energy costs. There's not a lack of land or sun, so whether they do or do not doesn't amount to a "waste" of energy - anyone else can build out solar production too.
I saw several concerts there and it was awesome. You want to live a life without anything fun in it?
Have you ever seen a solar array that gives 28 MW?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower
So?
Or how about six wind turbines? It’s rather windy in Las Vegas.
I mean, have you seen it with your own eyes?
I’ve flown over a couple big ones. Not sure of the exactly area or output.
110MW https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project
392MW https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
These are both near Vegas.
Is it bigger or smaller than a football field?
Rough calculation says it needs about 28 ha, this could be about 30 football fields (depending on whatever they mean in your area when they say football :))
Thank you for doing the math.
allow me to remind you about ✨opportunity costs ✨
I hope the name “dystopia sphere” catches on.
Is the 'dystopia-sphere' trying to compete with the torment nexus or something?
Thunderdome was already taken
If they reversed it (displays inside), it would be the best immersive gaming setup ever.
Edit: looks like they are inside.
That’s what it is on the inside.
Wait, the article says it's "internal displays" but the picture shows images on the outside of the globe?
Yep, it is both. Highly recommend this amazing video from Eddie Burbank about it, very entertaining. https://youtu.be/KN63DDD9Y04?si=q6gE98LszfcPzBvy
Never heard of him nor the sphere before. Excellent video that explains the sphere, made by an excellent YouTuber.
Excellent recommendation!
His entire channel is gold
Hi is willing to commit to suffer so much for the most stupid and hilarious of quests like eating at every Margaritaville in the continental US. What a legend.
It's got both. It's awesome. But it's also owned by James Dolan, and he's a douche. I say that as a big Rangers fan.
The article says
Did you literally stop reading mid sentence? Or are you just not able to read good?
"internal displays" could mean whatever. They're embedded for example.
So not read good. Thanks
Except it has the worst pixel density ever
9.818127340823 should be the pixel density if my numbers are correct.
The numbers i was able to find(please correct if these numbers are not accurate)
160,000 sqft display converted to inches 23040000 sq/inch
16K x 16K resolution equals 15360 pixels x 15360 pixels So thats 235,929,600 pixels
Various Notes.
Thank you for confirming this, I'll stick with my 109ppi 27" 1440p 165hz monitor
Not even close to the worst pixel per inch though. That would be probably a drone array in the sky im guessing assuming they could be made to stay perfectly in sync, ppi could be as bad as you wanted it lol. This does make me wonder what the extreme limits of ppi can be and still be usable. You would probably need to be on the moon or in space to be in the ideal viewing position. Having to acount for the limitation of the speed of light to produce the picture on that "display" would be an impressive feat of engineering.
Did you really build a dyson sphere just to build a bigger tv? Yes yes i did
Pixel pitch takes into account viewing distance.
The displays in the sphere are 16K displays. They look insanely better than your monitor from the ideal spot in the venue.
Their display has 64x more pixels than yours.
Silence! I will hear none of this blasphemy! Fallout 76 does not have 16x the detail!
Using the max power use of a video card to math this is ridiculous. It's not at full TDP pushing this content. They aren't playing max FPS 3D raytraced gaming, they're playing videos.
What.
The article says that, for the GPUs, they can have a "maximum power draw of 45,000 W at full tilt".
The 28 million W comes from the full system, and surely the massive displays, LEDs and eventually sound system makes up the bulk of that, the gfx cards are a rounding error...
Synchronizing that many screens into one/two continuous displays is not light computing work. Roughly every square foot is its own panel in commercial displays.
Might as well just give up on the earth right now I guess
It would be impressive it could be done without destroying our planet. This should impress no one.
I mean it is cool. But really a testament to why we deserve extinction at this point...
A bomb that could destroy Earth's core would be an admittedly impressive technical feat!
WAVE PROPIGATION
The Core appreciators... UNITE!
That article gets stuck so much and makes my (relatively high end) laptop's fan scream so hard you'd think the website was designed for that kind of hardware.
Wouldn't just one GPU be enough to run the Sphere, or a I getting something wrong?
I remember hearing about that it's not exactly high resolution, each "pixel" being a bunch of pretty large lamps.
Wikipedia says it's 16,000x16,000 (which is way less than I thought). The way the math works, that's 16x as big as a 4k monitor, so 16 GPUs would make sense. And there's a screen inside and one outside, so double that. But I also can't figure out why it needs five times that. Redundancy? Poor optimization? I dunno.
But wouldn't that be only necessary if it needed to render real-time graphics at such a scale? If I'm correct, all its doing is playing back videos.
I think it's doing some non-trivial amount of rendering, since it's often syncing graphics with music played live.
Live audio visualization in game engines is definitely a thing ex. https://youtu.be/IZL7VAt97ws?si=H74SwrLZYfsYNTY8
Even if it's just playing back videos, it still should compensate for the distortion of the spherical display. That's a "simple" 3d transformation, but with the amount of pixels, coordinating between the GPUs and some redundancy, it doesn't seem like an excessive amount of computing power. The whole thing is still an impressive excess though...
I'm guessing it's the department of redundancy department, is my guess.
Someone elsewhere in the thread suggested it might be a marketing thing on Nvidia's part, and that makes a lot of sense.
I work for a digital display company, and it is definitely redundancy. There will be at least two redundant display systems that go to the modules separately so they can switch between them to solve issues. If a component fails on one side they just switch to the other.
Ah, nice. Thank you for bringing your expertise to my nonsense.
The way I think it, it's possible a really small number of GPUs would be enough to render the framebuffer, you'd just need an army of low-power graphics units to receive the data and render it on screens.
Having a high-power GPU for every screen is definitely a loss unless the render job is distributed really well and there's also people around to admire the results at the distance where the pixel differences no longer matter. Which is to say, not here.
That pretty much describes all of Vegas.
Useless
Ok, so it's "capable of drawing" enough power for 20,000 homes in the area. How much does it actually use day to day? Does it dim at night and brighten in the daytime to keep those ads rolling in the sunshine?
And unless it displays a picture of Mr. House it's all for naught
I guess they dont need to pay for heating when you have a bunch of high power computers pumping out a crap ton of heat
It also helps that it's in Las Vegas.
Those displays must dump a ton more of heat.
In 2030 this will just be the standard system requirements for AAA games because optimization is hard.
70*
Right, forgot AAAA was the new norm
At every stage of it’s life cycle; the Sphere has been the dumbest thing imaginable
And because some rich people got scammed into buying in now everyone has to advertise it
"Capable of drawing 28,000,000 watts of power" doesn't tell us anything. As was noted, it should've been given in megawatts (28 mW) or kilowatts (28,000 kW). Clickbait aside, how many kilowatt-hours (kWh) does it actually use?
28 mW isn't that much energy, relatively speaking. As of 2015, Forbes estimated LV uses 8000 mW on an average summer day.
The potential is impressive. I doubt it pulls anywhere near that. Unless I did my math wrong, this seems sensationalist.
Just Fyi, mW is milliwatts, and MW is megawatts. Agreed though, I doubt it draws that much day to day.
Thank you, I stand corrected!
I don't get it, are they implying that each GPU can draw 200kW? a home is like 10 max. Wtf is a gpu that can consume more power than 20 homes? Mine at home draws peak 300W...
ok, monster gpus, got it.
They tried to build this abomination in London and it got shot down.
Before the Sphere, the largest spherical building in the world (since 1989) was the Globe in Stockholm.
On it they sometimes project stuff on, which seems to be a way cheaper and energy efficient way than adding a billion LEDs.
Fun fact about the arena Globen, it's actually the biggest piece in a art installation about our solar system, representing the sun. Pluto is about halfway up in Sweden.
It's also the home arena of Swedens national ice hockey team.
We need more nuclear power ASAP
There's no such thing as "ASAP" for nuclear power. If you had the permits signed off today, it would take 10 years before a single GWh of new nuclear energy goes to the grid.
Instead, maybe we shouldn't build giant spherical advertising displays?
Sure there is. It's just that the P stands for "20 years from now."
Vegas is almost entirely powered by the hoover dam. It's already pretty green as far as energy goes. The question will be where do they get their power from in a few years when lake mead dries up.
That's not true. The Hoover Dam contributes to Vegas's power supply, but it's nowhere near "almost entirely powered" by the dam, except in Fallout: New Vegas.
Turns out you're correct. I appreciate the correction.
Fallout: New Vegas is powered by my ever dwindling sanity. I am currently trying to get my mods to play nice.
Also its implied ingame that only the strip is powered by the damn dam and that Freeside and West Vegas get either limited or no power, hence why directing the electricity from Helios One to the area is such a big deal.
In addition to the other thing, dams have a dramatic and disastrous impact on the ecology in the immediate area and the entire riparian system they connect to. It's "green" in terms of emissions but they're still harmful and we should be phasing them out for lower impact alternatives as much as possible.
Should? Definitely, but let's be realistic, we can barely get people off of coal and oil right now.
In the world we live in, Dams have some of the lowest environmental impact compared to the other places we get our energy.
So we probably shouldn't be trying to phase them out while there are much more severe effects being felt from the other base load facilities.
So how is the total power over 500x that of the GPU power? If it's all LEDs, that thing must get brighter than the damn sun.
Funny enough you can barely see it during the day
Normally I'd be suspicious of these kinds of megastructure projects but Vegas is the city that figured out how to get damn close to net zero water use from the Colorado so I'm willing to start off with the benefit of the doubt for the city leaders that ok'd this.
Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.
someone pay to put the Lemmy logo on it, i heard there was a way to pay for an image to show up
Kinda feels like humanity is in the process of jumping the shark on this one
It's the last season anyway
Shame
28 MW? What are they doing in there, aluminum?
You all go ooo and aaaa then yell at oil companies for climate change.
The power usage wouldn't be a problem if the electricity were generated in a green way.
If only the energy sector had a workforce experienced in building offshore structures that could build offshore wind farms. And maybe a workforce that had experience in drilling that could develop geothermal energy.
Of course we also need an energy sector that had a lot of financial resources to put into these kinds of investments.
If only the energy sector had these kinds of resources, a big sphere drawing a lot of electricity wouldn't be a problem.
As an industry insider, can tell you old oil and gas wells are being converted to geothermal where possible. There is lots of innovation in the works!
The non-stop anti-humanity propaganda is exhausting.
God you guys cant have any fun. Yeah it uses power but cant we have cool things once and awhile?
The whole uses lots of energy therefore bad argument is complete bullshit. Energy usage is directly proportional to technological development and technology is effectively human evolution.
Good luck, you are talking to people who think that if the billionaires passed out all their money to everyone, then we would all be able to afford way more stuff. They have no idea that more cash doesn't mean way more products appear. Supply and demand is such a simple concept, but to them, it might as well be rocket science.
Imagine being so naive as to believe massive wealth hording deprived others! What turkeys! Amirite?
Imagine if you will that there are 5 items to be had, everyone wants them. Everyone except for the evil rich man has 10 tokens. The evil rich man has a billion tokens. Right now people are willing to sell an item for 4 tokens. One day the people kill the evil rich man and spread out all his money evenly. There's still 5 items! They just go up in price! The rich man's blood doesn't create more items! It isn't complicated. It's very simple.
Now you imagine that the rich man undermined democracy and the rule of law, monopolized industries, and charged everyone 5 tokens a year for basic necessities.
I don’t think it’s everyone else who has a child’s understanding of economics.
And yet somehow despite all this, nearly everyone is living a much better standard of life than they would have 50 years ago, land we all far excited the kings of 200 years ago. We are rapidly progressing due to our extradoniary ability to work together. Complaining that this beautiful system of cooperation isn't working as fast as you imagine does nothing.
What system ever worked better? What do you compare how good standard of living should be to? The past? Well guess what, we are all hell of better off than the wealthiest 100 years ago. Do you just imagine a much better world than we have now and decide that you have somehow developed a system to get there and not enough people want it? Wow, you must be a genius to have outsmarted everyone across all cultures!
I'm gunna guess no. You don't have an almighty better system, you've just fallen for the trap of thinking that nothing is connected. You think you can have all the benefits of systems you don't like while having none of the connected realities. You are like a child putting whiteout all over their homework to make there be no questions so they always get 100%. Eventually, you will grow, realise people are trying their hardest, we have ways to improve and we are working on them. What doesn't help is spoiled teenagers complaining that they have to do chores while saying their parents are mean because they won't always buy them every new video game. Burning everything down that gave you everything you live won't help. Ever.
Ok but the way I see it there are 100 people and 1000 tokens. Instead of every person getting 10 tokens, one guy has 998 tokens and everyone else argues over the remaining 2. Would killing the one rich guy not free up some tokens for the rest of us?
Yes, it frees up tokens, but it doesn't make there be more items. As a result, people pay more for the items that do exist. It is the same as people saying the government should print a bunch of money to end poverty. They have the machines. They just don't want us to have money, they could just print us all into being billionaires, and we could all live happily ever after!
I see what you're saying, the tokens represent access to a finite amount of resources and creating more tokens won't create more resources. I get that.
But if the problem isn't with the amount of resources but with their distribution, then redistributing the existing tokens out of the hands of the greedy hoarders must help the rest, mustn't it?
Edit: I can't believe I'm sitting here arguing with someone on the goddamn Internet. Must be out of my damn mind
BTW, Internet arguments can be useful, imo. My whole reason for doing it is so I can say what I think and hope someone else says something thay makes more sense than what I'm saying so that I then have something new to say in real life(and the internet) that makes more sense to me. This makes me able to then argue against my previously strongest argument.
Yeah, so if bezos is actually eating 50,000 peoples worth of food every day, then splitting up his money/food would make a whole lot more people be fed. He doesn't seem very fat to me, though. I do realise that he has a personal jet and uses lots of fuel and energy, much more that the average person. Guess who uses more energy/resources than him, though? The number of people born in a single hour. Those people far exceed his resource usage. So we could kill him and spread out all his money, but if there is really such an extreme shortage of resources, then this would be like throwing out a handful of water instead of plugging massive gushing leaks in the boat.
Who's they? Are you schizophrenic?
For real, that dude's tilting at windmills.
Anti-rich/billionaire/capitalism agenda is quite widely subscribed to by a large amount of Lemmings
The same people that think energy use is a bad thing are the people that think that if we pass out all the billionaires money, then we can all have way more value. They are teenagers or people who never learned anything beyond what they teach in middle school. They think their gut instinct must be fact, so they spew it over and over. I'm sure you're not one of them.