I was originally told by the person who built my computer how great on-board cards have become and how there is no need for a dedicated one. That was quickly shot down when I found out not only how particularly low the quality was (It was a SoundMax attached to an "Asus P5E3 Deluxe" mother board), but that I didn't have any proper support for environmental effects used in games (e.g. EAX) and OpenAL didn't work very well either (i.e. it would drastically reduce performance/framerate and/or sound would become very choppy). I even remember sound effects cutting out like crazy in Bioshock which was very annoying.
I also agree with the article about "business class" boards. This explains why the school computers always had MUCH higher quality audio from their respective on-board sound card than what I was getting from my gaming rig. Nowadays, I have an external "Sound Blaster X-Fi" (i.e. Model No. SB1090 which are surprisingly popular given how often they become sold out) which works great because it has all the perks of its internal counterpart with the advantage of being placed outside of the case (thus there is no electrical interference). Yes, it can potentially be a CPU hog (since it is a USB sound device and all), but I am only using stereo headphones (as opposed to a 5+ channel setup) and plus I have a very fast CPU.
I just wish the article covered more on the Soundblaster X-Fi. It seemed to mention it but then focus on the Asus board far too much. I know the Asus one is a far better sound card but it would have still been nice to have both compared.
That's what I was thinking too actually. Nanotechnology applied to a mouse to reshape/mold based on the size and curves of your hand. The way it is now, if more than one person uses the computer, each would have to re-adjust it to suit their personal preference.
I couldn't agree more with you. I used NoScript for a little while and it was a pain having to whitelist sites one by one as I visited them. For areas I don't trust, I simply can shut off the JavaScript and Flash engine altogether (ESPECIALLY flash which some sites abuse by hosting very loud ads playing horrible music out of nowhere). Also handy for web development when I need to see how a page I am working on responds when someone enters without JavaScript enabled.
These can't really take off though until they become just as affordable as conventional HDD's. Once they do though, they sure will make for some excellent backup storage devices at the very least though. It's a royal pain setting up my conventional external HDD's (i.e. bulky power supply+USB cable+space to set the rather large drive down, etc) to backup my data or restore from backup.
I assume or at least hope this drive can be powered by the USB cable itself.
I am guessing that the intention was to prevent children from staying up all night playing these games. However, as you said, parents themselves should really be enforcing these limitations automatically without any external intervention.
I wasn't aware of this. That certainly explains the reasoning behind both the points I made above. Thankfully, today you can find numerous third party patches to improve the overall quality and the same mistake were not made with the PC version of Final Fantasy VIII.
The answer to your question RockDoctor depends on whether Sony actually makes money off of selling the consoles or only through the games. If they are "losing money" because the cost of the console is less than the resources required to produce it, then I can understand why this would be happening. In other words, as a business, Sony wants you to buying and using their console in such a way that would net them a profit.
It still does suck for those who do take advantage of OtherOS AND ALSO plays online using the same box. It's rather unfair Sony would do this.
To be honest, that only applies to games with local "split screen" multiplayer to which not all console games have and sometimes it just does not work depending on the game's genre.
Sega & Sonic All-Star Racing has local multiplayer on both consoles and PC and it uses split-screen so like you said, you only need one copy for multiple friends to play. However, if we got into a game that has no local multiplayer (RTS and even some FPS games for example which could never work on split-screen), then whether you are using consoles or PC, you will need a network and multiple consoles (and copies of the game) to play multiplayer.
There were other problems with the PC version FF7 though. Just to name a couple:
1. The music went through your sound card's Midi Synthesizer which was MUCH lower quality than the PSX's sound hardware at the time (although the included Yamaha XG SoftSynthesizer did help mitigate the quality gap) and was incapable of producing vocals (yes that meant that you got absolutely no lyrics during the "One Winged Angel" song heard while fighting the final boss).
2. The FMV compression was also rather poor and looked more pixelated than on the PSX.
The only difference here is that while Ubisoft succeeded (so far) at keeping (fully playable) pirated copies from surfacing, EA has not. If you look around, you will even find a scene release of C&C4 which from what I read, uses a server emulator to handle all the basic requests/calls made by the C&C4 game client. Assassin's Creed 2 on the other hand has the DRM integrated into the maps and mission data thereby making it far more tedious and time consuming to crack.
This suggests that EA did not implement the DRM nearly as well as Ubisoft. Not only that, but with Ubisoft's DRM, your game will literally save-state if the connection drops so you can pick up where you left off. You don't lose any progress whatsoever (I've even had the game crash to desktop from a Vsync bug and I didn't lose any progress since auto-saving is so frequent). This really makes EA's DRM seem like a "cheap knockoff" of what Ubisoft has done.
It's fine when you can choose YOUR OWN security question and answer. However, many sites limit you to a pre-defined selection of questions which I found to be very annoying. The only way to really secure yourself is make the answer not related to the question or even as a secondary password that you know you'll never forget.
Border searches would take an eternity if the guard has to conduct the search in THAT level of detail. Even with iPods, I'd say good luck having someone verify ownership of every single file on it.
Not that I am blaming Nintendo's designers in any shape or form (it was clearly the parents' (or in this case step-parents) fault for leaving the loaded weapon within reach of an unsupervised child) but perhaps this could be one of the reasons why toys today are no longer supposed to resemble real weapons.
I never really read any of the books so I wouldn't know how the characters were originally meant to be (I am only judging by the films). Books are never the same as movie versions anyway (and never up to par for that matter). I was just pointing out that the "Force Unleashed" storyline was very well put together and fits nicely within the context of the "movies".
Also, there's no need for personal attacks here. I am NOT solely responsible for the way the prequels turned out and I am definitely not what is wrong with them in general. Blame the producers (and anyone else involved in their creation) for that one. I just watch the films after they are released.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I read that article. That CTO must be quite ignorant of the new model (I think even Windows Vista did the same thing if I recall correctly). Hopefully someone brings him up to speed on this.
I must say though that this new model does make it very difficult to get an accurate reading of how much memory is actually being used since the task manager does not differentiate between what has been reserved as cache and what memory space is actually occupied by applications. The best you can do is look at your list of running processes and make an estimate. Some of them may actually be in the pagefile though even when there's free RAM available because they are background applications that are used very rarely (or haven't been touched in an extended period of time).
I'm sure there are third party applications available though if you need a dead on accurate reading.
I don't know about you, but I think he should somehow include the storyline used from the game "Star Wars - The Force Unleashed". That was really well done, fits nicely between episodes III and IV, and would make a great film adaptation (or multi-part TV episode).
Homebrew is extremely limited though as Sony does not give you full access to at least the GPU (and probably other aspects of the hardware). If the PS3 gets FULLY hacked, then developers can now use the full horsepower of the PS3 which is excellent news to them (especially those porting Linux over which already runs but once again, you can't use any of the advanced GUI features with the GPU locked down the way it is).
Sony probably only locked down the PS3 in the first place to prevent piracy and to make sure people don't release unlicensed games.
I can see how this could be a problem if you had several accounts for different MMOs that used this and had to juggle around all these authenticators. However, most people only play ONE MMORPG and thus would only have one authenticator to worry about. Also, surely if Blizzard even went further and require this for battle.net accounts, they would let you use the same authenticator device as WoW.
I can't see it happening for anything outside of WoW to be honest especially since it would complicate any sort of digital distribution especially when a physical device needs to reach you first before you can play. There's also the problem of hackers reverse engineering and spoofing the device but that's extremely unlikely.
Yup. Dolphin works very well actually and it's surreal being able to play a current gen console game on a PC (usually this kind of thing only happens with portable game systems which are relatively simpler or otherwise wait at least 10 years after the console is released (which is why we are only now starting to get competent PS2 emulation)). You can even use real WiiMotes w/ Motion plus if you have the right bluetooth receiver.
Here's a good demonstration of "New Super Mario Bros Wii" on Dolphin at an HD resolution and why it can look better than the real hardware: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MurWPRzmzo
I've tried this myself and to be honest, I find it MUCH more comfortable when played using an Xbox 360 controller than a real WiiMote (no more fierce shaking to do that spin jump and rotating cannons and the platforms feels less awkward when using the triggers instead of actually rotating the controller)
At least now with eduke32, Duke Plus, and the Hi-res packs around, Duke Nukem 3D has literally been modernized to the point where it could have easily been a 2009 release. That has essentially been an ample replacement of Duke Nukem Forever at least for me (and everything other than the original game being totally free).
Also, unlike before, the so called 'mods' that can drastically transform the game are now possible. There is one floating around that literally changes "Duke Nukem 3D" into a solid 3D sonic the hedgehog platformer (yes, loads better than Sonic 3D Blast).
As for the regular additions themselves: -> High resolution textures and gone are most of the 2D sprites thereby making a TRUE 3D game -> Higher quality (more realistic) sounds with better music (Midis have been replaced with streamed audio and the OpenAL sound engine is now used) -> Bloom/HDR effects including having ambient light emit from sprites such as buttons (you can see their green or red hue on nearby textures) -> Modernized and more refined WASD+Mouse control scheme with far better mouselook -> New weapons that are commonly found in other modern FPS games (e.g. dual pistols, double barrel shotgun, etc) -> Improved AI (enemies follow you and attack relentlessly). -> More voices/taunts for Duke such as "Your ass is grass, and I am the weed whacker".
There is of course much more as well if you're willing to look around. I used a pack created by MasteFaster which combines pretty much every main mod, expansion pack, and major user created map pack into one package.
It really depends on the person. For some (like yourself), it may cause a headache or other undesirable side effects or just not a worthwhile enhancement. However, for others (like myself), it really enhances my enjoyment of a particular movie when I can experience "true depth" instead of the flat image we have all grown accustomed to seeing. In short, it increases immersion even further.
In my case, I've begun to use it on PC games too with iz3D's drivers and I find the gaming experience a whole lot better (especially with certain titles). The same can be applied to movies.
@FiloEleven: Whoever made this video was probably using the OpenGL plugin in Dolphin which is more "technically" complete but extremely slow compared to the Direct3D9 one. Use that and the game runs at full speed. The only problem is that the blue coins that appear when you hit a P-switch are invisible. Fixing that (which can be done in the settings) will slow the game down even more so it's hardly worth it (does not matter though since this game feeds you enough 1-ups already and thus those extra coins aren't that essential and you can still kind of guess where they appear).
This game is also awesome when played on an Xbox 360 controller. I love how you can set up the analog triggers to control those platforms that can be tilted left and right (or the cannons). Also, that whole "shaking" nonsense to spin is simplified to a single button. In a way the controls are better emulated than the real hardware for this particular game and in fact make it feel like I am using SNES style controls.
As said in some posts above, the game is actually rendered in 3D but at a fixed angle to make it appear to be a 2D platformer. Therefore, it does show off the emulator prowess very much although not the best example. You should see Wind Waker when it's upscaled and that's just a gamecube game:
Personally I think the similarities between the Gamecube and Wii is what made it so easy to emulate compared to other systems where it was a completely different architecture than the previous generation. This is clearly why the gamecube and Wii emulation are being developed alongside eachother and compatibility appears to be similar for both systems.
When I tried the demo, the lack of Rally points made things very tedious when I wanted to pool together all my units on the perimeter in order to maximize defense. I would have to click each area and move everything manually.
This once again distracts from the graphical beauty of this game as it also forces you to remain zoomed out where you can hardly see anything noteworthy.
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I was originally told by the person who built my computer how great on-board cards have become and how there is no need for a dedicated one. That was quickly shot down when I found out not only how particularly low the quality was (It was a SoundMax attached to an "Asus P5E3 Deluxe" mother board), but that I didn't have any proper support for environmental effects used in games (e.g. EAX) and OpenAL didn't work very well either (i.e. it would drastically reduce performance/framerate and/or sound would become very choppy). I even remember sound effects cutting out like crazy in Bioshock which was very annoying.
I also agree with the article about "business class" boards. This explains why the school computers always had MUCH higher quality audio from their respective on-board sound card than what I was getting from my gaming rig. Nowadays, I have an external "Sound Blaster X-Fi" (i.e. Model No. SB1090 which are surprisingly popular given how often they become sold out) which works great because it has all the perks of its internal counterpart with the advantage of being placed outside of the case (thus there is no electrical interference). Yes, it can potentially be a CPU hog (since it is a USB sound device and all), but I am only using stereo headphones (as opposed to a 5+ channel setup) and plus I have a very fast CPU.
I just wish the article covered more on the Soundblaster X-Fi. It seemed to mention it but then focus on the Asus board far too much. I know the Asus one is a far better sound card but it would have still been nice to have both compared.
That's what I was thinking too actually. Nanotechnology applied to a mouse to reshape/mold based on the size and curves of your hand. The way it is now, if more than one person uses the computer, each would have to re-adjust it to suit their personal preference.
I couldn't agree more with you. I used NoScript for a little while and it was a pain having to whitelist sites one by one as I visited them. For areas I don't trust, I simply can shut off the JavaScript and Flash engine altogether (ESPECIALLY flash which some sites abuse by hosting very loud ads playing horrible music out of nowhere). Also handy for web development when I need to see how a page I am working on responds when someone enters without JavaScript enabled.
Exactly what I was thinking Khashishi.
These can't really take off though until they become just as affordable as conventional HDD's. Once they do though, they sure will make for some excellent backup storage devices at the very least though. It's a royal pain setting up my conventional external HDD's (i.e. bulky power supply+USB cable+space to set the rather large drive down, etc) to backup my data or restore from backup.
I assume or at least hope this drive can be powered by the USB cable itself.
I am guessing that the intention was to prevent children from staying up all night playing these games. However, as you said, parents themselves should really be enforcing these limitations automatically without any external intervention.
I wasn't aware of this. That certainly explains the reasoning behind both the points I made above. Thankfully, today you can find numerous third party patches to improve the overall quality and the same mistake were not made with the PC version of Final Fantasy VIII.
The answer to your question RockDoctor depends on whether Sony actually makes money off of selling the consoles or only through the games. If they are "losing money" because the cost of the console is less than the resources required to produce it, then I can understand why this would be happening. In other words, as a business, Sony wants you to buying and using their console in such a way that would net them a profit.
It still does suck for those who do take advantage of OtherOS AND ALSO plays online using the same box. It's rather unfair Sony would do this.
To be honest, that only applies to games with local "split screen" multiplayer to which not all console games have and sometimes it just does not work depending on the game's genre. Sega & Sonic All-Star Racing has local multiplayer on both consoles and PC and it uses split-screen so like you said, you only need one copy for multiple friends to play. However, if we got into a game that has no local multiplayer (RTS and even some FPS games for example which could never work on split-screen), then whether you are using consoles or PC, you will need a network and multiple consoles (and copies of the game) to play multiplayer.
There were other problems with the PC version FF7 though. Just to name a couple:
1. The music went through your sound card's Midi Synthesizer which was MUCH lower quality than the PSX's sound hardware at the time (although the included Yamaha XG SoftSynthesizer did help mitigate the quality gap) and was incapable of producing vocals (yes that meant that you got absolutely no lyrics during the "One Winged Angel" song heard while fighting the final boss).
2. The FMV compression was also rather poor and looked more pixelated than on the PSX.
The only difference here is that while Ubisoft succeeded (so far) at keeping (fully playable) pirated copies from surfacing, EA has not. If you look around, you will even find a scene release of C&C4 which from what I read, uses a server emulator to handle all the basic requests/calls made by the C&C4 game client. Assassin's Creed 2 on the other hand has the DRM integrated into the maps and mission data thereby making it far more tedious and time consuming to crack.
This suggests that EA did not implement the DRM nearly as well as Ubisoft. Not only that, but with Ubisoft's DRM, your game will literally save-state if the connection drops so you can pick up where you left off. You don't lose any progress whatsoever (I've even had the game crash to desktop from a Vsync bug and I didn't lose any progress since auto-saving is so frequent). This really makes EA's DRM seem like a "cheap knockoff" of what Ubisoft has done.
It's fine when you can choose YOUR OWN security question and answer. However, many sites limit you to a pre-defined selection of questions which I found to be very annoying. The only way to really secure yourself is make the answer not related to the question or even as a secondary password that you know you'll never forget.
Border searches would take an eternity if the guard has to conduct the search in THAT level of detail. Even with iPods, I'd say good luck having someone verify ownership of every single file on it.
Not that I am blaming Nintendo's designers in any shape or form (it was clearly the parents' (or in this case step-parents) fault for leaving the loaded weapon within reach of an unsupervised child) but perhaps this could be one of the reasons why toys today are no longer supposed to resemble real weapons.
I never really read any of the books so I wouldn't know how the characters were originally meant to be (I am only judging by the films). Books are never the same as movie versions anyway (and never up to par for that matter). I was just pointing out that the "Force Unleashed" storyline was very well put together and fits nicely within the context of the "movies".
Also, there's no need for personal attacks here. I am NOT solely responsible for the way the prequels turned out and I am definitely not what is wrong with them in general. Blame the producers (and anyone else involved in their creation) for that one. I just watch the films after they are released.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I read that article. That CTO must be quite ignorant of the new model (I think even Windows Vista did the same thing if I recall correctly). Hopefully someone brings him up to speed on this.
I must say though that this new model does make it very difficult to get an accurate reading of how much memory is actually being used since the task manager does not differentiate between what has been reserved as cache and what memory space is actually occupied by applications. The best you can do is look at your list of running processes and make an estimate. Some of them may actually be in the pagefile though even when there's free RAM available because they are background applications that are used very rarely (or haven't been touched in an extended period of time).
I'm sure there are third party applications available though if you need a dead on accurate reading.
I don't know about you, but I think he should somehow include the storyline used from the game "Star Wars - The Force Unleashed". That was really well done, fits nicely between episodes III and IV, and would make a great film adaptation (or multi-part TV episode).
Homebrew is extremely limited though as Sony does not give you full access to at least the GPU (and probably other aspects of the hardware). If the PS3 gets FULLY hacked, then developers can now use the full horsepower of the PS3 which is excellent news to them (especially those porting Linux over which already runs but once again, you can't use any of the advanced GUI features with the GPU locked down the way it is).
Sony probably only locked down the PS3 in the first place to prevent piracy and to make sure people don't release unlicensed games.
I can see how this could be a problem if you had several accounts for different MMOs that used this and had to juggle around all these authenticators. However, most people only play ONE MMORPG and thus would only have one authenticator to worry about. Also, surely if Blizzard even went further and require this for battle.net accounts, they would let you use the same authenticator device as WoW.
I can't see it happening for anything outside of WoW to be honest especially since it would complicate any sort of digital distribution especially when a physical device needs to reach you first before you can play. There's also the problem of hackers reverse engineering and spoofing the device but that's extremely unlikely.
Yup. Dolphin works very well actually and it's surreal being able to play a current gen console game on a PC (usually this kind of thing only happens with portable game systems which are relatively simpler or otherwise wait at least 10 years after the console is released (which is why we are only now starting to get competent PS2 emulation)). You can even use real WiiMotes w/ Motion plus if you have the right bluetooth receiver.
Here's a good demonstration of "New Super Mario Bros Wii" on Dolphin at an HD resolution and why it can look better than the real hardware:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MurWPRzmzo
I've tried this myself and to be honest, I find it MUCH more comfortable when played using an Xbox 360 controller than a real WiiMote (no more fierce shaking to do that spin jump and rotating cannons and the platforms feels less awkward when using the triggers instead of actually rotating the controller)
At least now with eduke32, Duke Plus, and the Hi-res packs around, Duke Nukem 3D has literally been modernized to the point where it could have easily been a 2009 release. That has essentially been an ample replacement of Duke Nukem Forever at least for me (and everything other than the original game being totally free).
Also, unlike before, the so called 'mods' that can drastically transform the game are now possible. There is one floating around that literally changes "Duke Nukem 3D" into a solid 3D sonic the hedgehog platformer (yes, loads better than Sonic 3D Blast).
As for the regular additions themselves:
-> High resolution textures and gone are most of the 2D sprites thereby making a TRUE 3D game
-> Higher quality (more realistic) sounds with better music (Midis have been replaced with streamed audio and the OpenAL sound engine is now used)
-> Bloom/HDR effects including having ambient light emit from sprites such as buttons (you can see their green or red hue on nearby textures)
-> Modernized and more refined WASD+Mouse control scheme with far better mouselook
-> New weapons that are commonly found in other modern FPS games (e.g. dual pistols, double barrel shotgun, etc)
-> Improved AI (enemies follow you and attack relentlessly).
-> More voices/taunts for Duke such as "Your ass is grass, and I am the weed whacker".
There is of course much more as well if you're willing to look around. I used a pack created by MasteFaster which combines pretty much every main mod, expansion pack, and major user created map pack into one package.
It really depends on the person. For some (like yourself), it may cause a headache or other undesirable side effects or just not a worthwhile enhancement. However, for others (like myself), it really enhances my enjoyment of a particular movie when I can experience "true depth" instead of the flat image we have all grown accustomed to seeing. In short, it increases immersion even further.
In my case, I've begun to use it on PC games too with iz3D's drivers and I find the gaming experience a whole lot better (especially with certain titles). The same can be applied to movies.
@FiloEleven: Whoever made this video was probably using the OpenGL plugin in Dolphin which is more "technically" complete but extremely slow compared to the Direct3D9 one. Use that and the game runs at full speed. The only problem is that the blue coins that appear when you hit a P-switch are invisible. Fixing that (which can be done in the settings) will slow the game down even more so it's hardly worth it (does not matter though since this game feeds you enough 1-ups already and thus those extra coins aren't that essential and you can still kind of guess where they appear).
This game is also awesome when played on an Xbox 360 controller. I love how you can set up the analog triggers to control those platforms that can be tilted left and right (or the cannons). Also, that whole "shaking" nonsense to spin is simplified to a single button. In a way the controls are better emulated than the real hardware for this particular game and in fact make it feel like I am using SNES style controls.
As said in some posts above, the game is actually rendered in 3D but at a fixed angle to make it appear to be a 2D platformer. Therefore, it does show off the emulator prowess very much although not the best example. You should see Wind Waker when it's upscaled and that's just a gamecube game:
http://www.dolphin-emu.com/images/photoalbum/album_1/win.jpg
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/7384/windwaker1280x9608xqcsawx8.jpg
Personally I think the similarities between the Gamecube and Wii is what made it so easy to emulate compared to other systems where it was a completely different architecture than the previous generation. This is clearly why the gamecube and Wii emulation are being developed alongside eachother and compatibility appears to be similar for both systems.
He can celebrate for now but he'll surely have much much more to do once Cataclysm comes out.
One of the common complaints that wasn't covered in this review was the lack of "Rally Points" in this game. It was requested several times on the steam forums but the developers there actively refused it (Source: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11634198&postcount=4).
When I tried the demo, the lack of Rally points made things very tedious when I wanted to pool together all my units on the perimeter in order to maximize defense. I would have to click each area and move everything manually.
This once again distracts from the graphical beauty of this game as it also forces you to remain zoomed out where you can hardly see anything noteworthy.