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In-Game Web Browser Round-Up

theodp writes "CNET takes a look at Web browsers you can run inside of the latest video games, offering mini-reviews of PlayXpert, Steam, Rogue, and Xfire. Why run these instead of your standard browser? Well, these browsers run lean and mean, play nice with full-screen apps, provide hot keys that can make them appear or disappear in an instant, and offer transparency so you can continue to play a game in full screen while chatting, reading e-mail or looking up cheat codes. So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?"

6 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So.. the Video Game is the Computer? by setagllib · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Now that AIGLX lets you run any window as an OpenGL mesh and texture, it's not a stretch to map that into a surface in your game. But it would require some cooperation from the game itself, since it has to take a reasonable place in the OpenGL command pipeline unless you just want it hovering over everything.

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  2. Needs Adblock by ticklemeozmo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As with most geeks, no browser will get our full attention until it gets adblock.

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  3. Steam? by Crossmire · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Steam seems to still use Internet Explorer for some things. I removed IE with nLite and can easily see where Steam tries to use it. TF2 also has major problems and it forces the game to minimise and presents a dialogue asking me if I want to download an html file, it then takes 20 seconds to get back into the game. I wish there was some way to stop TF2 from making any attempts to use a browser, but I haven't found one yet.

  4. I seldom alt-tab by sw155kn1f3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Usually I have all my chat windows etc open on second monitor where I can see them. Second old 17" LCD does the trick.

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  5. Re:I don't like it. by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All it does is encourage people to multi-task more. And that is not a good thing. Our brain isn't good at multi-tasking (in terms of focusing on different things), we end up doing each job half-assed.

    The more you multi-task, the better you get at it - at minimum, you get better at combining the tasks that you regularly combine.

    With this happening more we are training our kids not to sit down and solve a problem but jump back and forth until until we fail at all of them.

    Growing up with a slow modem and a multitasking computer (1200 bps BSR modem, Amiga 500) I definitely learned to multitask. I find that I am better at it than my parents. Perhaps it's a good thing. Besides, there will always be those among us who enter a nerdly fugue state and tune out the rest of existence. And isn't Autism on the rise? Perhaps humanity is segmenting :)

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  6. Re:On windshields? by geminidomino · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
    3000kg at 100km/h is a force to be respected.

    3000kg * 28 m/s isn't a force, it's a momentum. ;)

    Now, when you hit something that makes you stop in .5 seconds...

    3000kg * -56 m/s^2 = -168000 N Now THAT'S a force to be respected. *G*