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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?"
So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
I would rather have a car that steers itself
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Kind of makes sense. A friend of mine was complaining that her son spent all his free time gaming, and I told her: "he's learning the user interface of the 21st century".
So how long until video games start to offer virtual Linux consoles so I can compile and start an in-game web server to serve those in-game browsers?
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These new in-game browsers are great! I used to be annoyed that I'd have to hit Alt AND F4 to switch away from my game to check my stock prices, but now with these new in-game browsers I can simply hit Shift+F4 and browse at my leisure.
This is a huge step forward in usability. I can't wait until Emacs includes a browser that can be toggled with an intuitive set of keystrokes.
Hopefully never. People already have enough things to distract them while driving. Do they really need another one?
So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
I hope that we never see this. Not as long as there's a human steering the car. Do we really need yet ANOTHER distraction from driving? People are texting, putting on makeup, calling, eating, drinking, reading and doing too many other things than driving. Imho if a police should see you doing this they should sell your car and take your license since you're too stupid to figure out that 3000kg at 100km/h is a force to be respected.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Use quest helper.
have multiple monitors and multiple computers (though the latter is not always necessary). Having a browser come up and block whatever I'm doing is still annoying.
Although in game excel or access would be nice for the OCD that keep a tracking of everything they're doing in game, long as I can save that file and open outside of the game.
I remember in the old days when gaming meant keeping a journal (Ultima 3D) and drawing a map (Wolfenstein) as you went along. Now websites generally have most of the data, but sometimes, you need your own.
Eve has its own browser, which works just dandy. And considering how much vital information about playing the game can only be found from 3rd party sources, it's less an add-on and more an essential element of the HUD.
As with most geeks, no browser will get our full attention until it gets adblock.
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
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. And have a big switch when we go from one to the other. It is like a drug though because we use so much extra brain power multi-tasking we feel like we are being more productive however you are better off doing job 1 then job 2 in order. 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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
Malware authors already found games as a new attack vector. Do we really have to give them an interface they're already very familiar with?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you're just looking for something to look up info there is no need for a browser in WoW.
Install the Questhelper and lightheaded addons and you're all set.
Questhelper points you to the quest locations and lightheaded parses all comments from wowhead on quests in a ingame addon.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Just think of it this way: it is a locked down version of Internet Explorer.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Usually I have all my chat windows etc open on second monitor where I can see them. Second old 17" LCD does the trick.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Sign me up, I'd use it, I'd even reactivate my WoW account.
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
"...So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?"
Are you serious? We can't even keep people from crashing at 80MPH and killing innocent people because they're too busy texting on a 2x2" screen on a fucking cell phone, and you want to slap a full-blown YouTube/Facebook/Myspace portal on the windshield?
I'll tell you how much longer. When we have a foolproof autopilot system for our cars.
too bad linux games kinda aren't there, but I used to do this with quake4..
Just run the game in its own X11 session. Then switch between them using and .
"So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?"
just as soon as I mount those rockets, .50cal, smoke screen, oil slick, caltrop seeder, and armor on my truck.
Oh, and I need to mod the controls to let me handle steering and acceleration/defense devices with a joystick and the aiming/offense with a mouse.
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
If you're just looking for something to look up info there is no need for a browser in WoW.
Install the Questhelper and lightheaded addons and you're all set.
Questhelper points you to the quest locations and lightheaded parses all comments from wowhead on quests in a ingame addon.
Questhelper has too large of a performance impact for me in my 3.8 GHz C2D with 4 gigs of ram. I'm glad you mention wowhead, which the GP should be using instead of thotbot. I think a good solution is cartographer and playing the game in windowed (but maximized) mode. In windowed mode, alt tabbing out is instant instead of incurring the 2 second delay of full screen. Of course, windowed mode incurs a performance penalty too, but it's less than QH and it can easily be turned off when not in need of constant reference material.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
It'd be cool if more games added IRC clients like Uplink had. Just imagine having an IRC overlay on Fallout 3, where you can chat from the Pip-boy. It can damage immersion I suppose.
But does Questhelper let you browse online "art" collections during the boring bits?
So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!! I will shoot the idiot that does this. It's already dangerous enough with people eating, putting on makeup, reading, sending text messages, watching movies, and rolling joints without adding web browsing. YOUR CAR IS FOR DRIVING ONLY!!! It's not an entertainment center and it's not your living room.
It looks pretty nice, especially the part about have multi-protocol IM support. Unfortunatly the reviewer forgot to add in that it isnt compatible with vista or 64 bit yet. Hopefully soon.
"PLAYXPERT is built to work with XP and Vista for both 32 and 64 bit systems - however - the 'In-Game Overlay' system is not currently operational for Vista or 64bit systems. The Vista overlay system will be made available via the auto-updater in January 2009 and 64bit support will shortly follow. "
Problem with QuestHelper is that is causes all sorts of conflicts and problems, I've known alot of guildies who have to turn it off for raids because it interferes with things. One time someone couldn't move. Even when he logged out and back in again. He had to disable QH before then... freaky as hell tbh.
WoW isn't that pissy about ALT+Tabbing either though, quite smooth transition from one to the other even when full screened so a Browser-add-on isn't really required.
FPS games in general seem to have a harder time coping with ALT+TAB (particularly online games, Source-based ones being a prime example, Counter Strike being the biggest culprit of throwing minimised hissy fits)
the only shooter i've known to work well while alt+tabbing has been S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and it's prequel which pauses and returns to the main screen when you alt tab (useful).
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
I see an opportunity for a new plugin....
Actually, I find that trying Questhelper has pretty much killed all my interest in WoW.
Now I do appreciate having Thottbot or such, for when I got lost or couldn't figure out the directions after trying for half an hour. But just following the cube makes me feel like a bot could do the same thing, and probably better. There is no need for any more complex thought above "click on that guy because Questhelper says so" or "head that way because Questhelper says so." There's nothing left to discover (technically QH discovered it already for you), nothing worth remembering (QH already tells you whether you need to go east or west, so no point in even trying to remember where the quest told you to go), you don't even need to look at the major landmarks (if it's behind that hill, QH will tell you so.)
And you can tell. I know people who play exclusively by Questhelper (heck, mom does) and frankly, they don't seem to actually use any brainpower in playing the game. Often they won't even remember what they just did or where some major landmark is, because really there was no more thought involved than obediently doing what the bot told them to. They've run along some road a dozen times, but ask them to show you where it is, and you find that they couldn't find their own arse with a map and a compass, but without QH. Or you see them forgetting they had to use some unique item, and some whole group trying to take down some elite boss the hard way instead, because none of them bothered even reading the quest text and QH doesn't tell them, "dude, use the shreder".
Now if that still keeps you entertained, good for you, and I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise. But it's just not for me. For me it makes the whole thing boring as heck, and takes away any kind of sense of achievement too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
EVE-Online is also alt-tab friendly. Both WoW and EVE got that right. I wish more games took that into consideration when playing in full-screen mode. For example, Entropia Universe will time-out and disconnect if you alt-tab for more than 30 seconds. However, if you leave the game up in full-screen mode it won't disconnect you until the idle timer is reached (about 5-10 minutes later).
Level pally...watch porn...level pally...watch porn...
hmmm...
EUREKA!
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What's wrong with having a second computer and either a second monitor or a KVM switch? Or a laptop? It really doesn't need to be anything fancy just to show a few web pages. You can basically get an entire suitable computer and (crt) monitor from freecycle these days.
Get free bitcoins: http://freebitco.in
This isn't entirely accurate. Base installations of source game servers don't easily allow for this, even if you have RCON. However if they've installed a third party server administration addon, such as Mani Admin for Counter-Strike Source, etc, where there is a command called ma_browse, which allows users to bring up websites in the MOTD window, admins with sufficient access can use the ma_cexec command to force players to bring up websites using the ma_browse command, but the majority of servers (I.E. the well run ones) do not give out this kind of functionality to most of their admins.
Really, it's not a huge deal, and you barely ever see it happen, and I mean, what's to stop someone changing their server's MOTD to a simple HTML page with a bunch of gay porn pictures or something else most people find unpleasant to have forced upon them? Power has the potential to corrupt, the way I see it, it's not very different than if the admin were to slay people or set his health or give himself guns, or anything else.
Can I leave this box empty?
Steam (and probably the others too) just uses the drop-in ActiveX Internet Explorer component. It's not mean and it's definitely not lean.
If they used Gecko or Webkit it would be a different matter.
There is one server i've played on that has special commands. IE typing "Boobies" brings up ratemytits.com (or something)
But this is a very locked down version of IE that doesn't actually run any JS (so you can't actually RATE their tits)
other commands they use include 'cameltoe' and 'sheepy'
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
And maybe someday we will have games that run in resizable areas that take less than the full screen, so that one can run any arbitrary application (or even applications!) in the remaining space. Wow! Wouldn't that be something!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I love this new in-browser browser, now I can open a new window without having to be annoyed with that silly CTRL+T key combo, who can remember that anyway?
Hey, does anybody want to hire me to invent the wheel?
So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?"
Hopefully not before we get the option in our car to hit ESC and choose LOAD > This_Morning.sav after being in a fatal car accident.
There's no advantage here. WoW runs in windowed mode just fine in windows. Hell, that's the only way myself and a large part of my guild plays nowadays, just because it's easier to access other things during downtime between wipes.
A car in my car, so that I can drive while I drive?
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
Actually, I think the best thing to do with these in-game browsers is to play in-browser games.
Hopefully, those games will include browsers, too, so we don't get bored.
What are you talking about? I run multiple TF2 game servers and I can assure that the in-game browser (even the in-game stats pop-up ones) are having your PC get the data and render it in IE. Theres is absolutely ZERO web data streamed from the game server. Also, even the MOTD data is taken locally. This is the MOTD on all my servers: http://www.epicbananaclan.co.uk/motd/motd.php Ive checked apaches logs and on map change, that page is accessed from a number of IP's, ive even checked that those IP's were also those of gamers playing.
For quite some time now you've been able to bring up FireFox inside of Everquest 2 (they have the files inside a sub-dir of the EQ2 directory, so it's a "private" copy of it, not accessing what you already have installed). They mainly did it because they were overhauling their in-game support page (reporting bugs, etc) to a normal web page instead of a one-off interface window specific to the game, but I guess somebody finally had a brain and said "hey, let's just let the players use this as a regular browser too" and so it happened.
It's slightly limited, since you can't put your own extensions in (I'd kill for Adblock Plus), or access the options panels, etc, but generally it's fine, and I haven't noticed it killing performance, but I have a really good computer, so other experiences may vary.
I can't say that I see the point of this. Usually games require the player to be involved in the process of playing the game, thus leaving little time for multi-tasking. Also, this spoils the point of games. When you watch a movie you don't want to read a newspaper at the same time, do you? (unless the movie is crap, but then why are you watching it?) There is only one game in existence that benefits from an in-game browser - EVE Online. And guess what? It's already there, and it's TRULY in-game, as in "integrated with the game's interface".
Isn't the point that the admin could use IE as a malware vector? For example, force the player's computer to open http://www.malware.com/ieexploit.html, which then uses one of the many IE bugs to install a trojan? This also applies to the MOTD feature. Because Mani is a server-side feature, you are forced to trust the admin not to do this.
Even if you can trust the admin (and trusting him not to crack your computer is not the same as trusting him not to cheat), you can't necessarily be sure that the server is secure. It might be cracked; the cracker might replace the MOTD with a redirect to a malware site. This has happened to big advertising networks. Keylogging used to be about credit card numbers, now it's about WoW usernames and passwords. Steam users have never been more at risk. Arbitrary web page rendering is an extremely ill-considered feature.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
I wonder why they didn't test EVE's IGB (In-Game Browser).
It sucks, but still...
Questhelper has too large of a performance impact for me in my 3.8 GHz C2D with 4 gigs of ram.
Sir...I call bullshit. I can run Questhelper fine on a crappy Compaq laptop running Vista on 1 GB of RAM.
Although TourGuide (w/ the WoW-Pro guides) is better, and I use that now anyway.
The in-game browser in EVE is so basic, it transports you back to HTML 1.0.
"how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields" The average idiot on the highway already has to many distractions. Note that cell phone use is being made illegal in many areas, due to accidents attributed to cell phone use. Now, you want a web browser on windshields? Duhhh. An automobile is a means of transportation. Transport yourself, and when you get where you are going, you can browse, play games, listen to music, call a freind, whatever. Autos need to be stripped to bare bones essentials, so that the average American idiot doesn't WANT to live in his car, wasting energy and polluting the environment.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
This can cause a large performance hit for some games/computers though. On my 2 YO computer, running UT3 with the steam overlay cost me ~25% of my FPS without it.
I'm pretty sure it's Epic's fault for you losing 25% of your First Person Shooter. Perhaps they should have made UT3 better.
I'll see myself to the door, thanks.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
looking up cheat codes. So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
What's the cheat code for enabling infinite fuel in my car?
Window up, window down, window up, window down, turn signal left, turn signal right, turn signal left, turn signal right, AC, emergency brake, ignition.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Why? Compiz already lets me make any window I like (i.e. Firefox or WoW) translucent at the click of a button...
The problem is clearly your inferior, hard-coded window manager.
What, no mention of EVE's godawful IGB? The one that barely supports fonts, images, and nothing else?
I'm shocked.
Question everything
"So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?" While a HUD on my windshield would be awesome, the fact that someone can hardly turn a radio dial without swerving off the road kind of says that this should never be done. It takes way too much hand-eye-coordination for the average person.
With linux, which has several decent window managers (not that childish thing you people has with windows and apple) you can do as you wish. I said, as you $&*^%@ wish!
:(
e.g.
When i play starcraft, I left the IM window and IM notification icon override the full screen and be on top. so any time anyone IMs me, my IM hotkey will make the im window appear on top of the game. (the notification icon hides part of the population limit, but can be fixed if it really bothers you. and of course, the im window will be in the 800x600 resolution the game is using but i don't even think i need to mention that.)
When i play*ed* world of warcraft, i left it full screen at virtual desk one, and a browser with toothbot on virtual desk two. a simple windowskey+f2 and voila, a browser! a terminal! a solitaire game! my music player! some star trek episode from the dvd!
with wow i confess i had some problems dealing with hotkeys in game and out of game... but i managed to solve it *without* waiting for someone to do an app for me.
But "linux is no good for games"
with wine, it runs star craft, it runs warcraft 3, it runs world of warcraft.
and at pretty good speed. and i last tested it on a duron 1.3ghz with 2gb ram with a value nvidia card (had to use some low settings for graphics because of the card)
you bunch of pussies.
And since I listed two DIFFERENT operating systems, which one am I supposed to be a fanboy of? Hmmm? You seem a little confused as to the definition of fanboy junior. Why don't you finish third grade before you start throwing around terms you don't understand.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Questhelper has too large of a performance impact for me in my 3.8 GHz C2D with 4 gigs of ram.
Sir...I call bullshit. I can run Questhelper fine on a crappy Compaq laptop running Vista on 1 GB of RAM.
Although TourGuide (w/ the WoW-Pro guides) is better, and I use that now anyway.
60 FPS pegged in Fjord vs. 60 dropping to about 20 every few minutes. Not only is that my experience, but it's shared by most people I know who have used QH and it's mentioned in a number of "essential mods" guides. Acceptable performance varies from person to person, and we don't share the same threshold.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
If you're good at multi-tasking, you can be better with this. It is beneficial for those playing World of Warcraft and purchasing wow gold. I would probably use it to.