Duke Nukem Forever? Busted, you just dated yourself. We'll be seeing your $1 laptop with DNF in 2012. But I hear DNF might be post poned for another 6 months after hardware release.
I'm also very picky about controllers (I NEVER like 3rd party ones) but I love the 360 controller. The PS style one is fine, but I think the 360's is my favorite now-a-days and I have to agree with the last guy who mentioned the triggers, I think they feel much better for FPSs (which currently dominate the game genre lately).
>> the UK could save ~600 million pounds per year by switching to Linux
And they could save an additional $600 mil pounds by not using computers all together. Sorry to beat the TCO drum, but seriously, how much is it going to cost to rewrite all their client applications (emulation will only require MORE computing power than the actual Windows box). Last I checked moving from old hardware to new hardware isn't always that bad (ex: LCDs over CRTs, Core 2 Duo's use significantly less power than P4s) not to mention that old hardware is re-used for 3rd world countries or poor families, local recreation centers, etc.
Sounds like to me the occasional upgrade every shop makes every 3-5yrs isn't all that evil.
I couldn't disagree more, I live in Western NY and go to Canada about 5 times a year. Entering Canada is a breeze, 90% of the time they only ask if I have any weapons, how long I will be staying and what I will be doing. Entering the US, even after showing my license often and most likely a license plate lookup still results in a barrage of questions.
The last couple times I've gone to Canada I have notice they are entering some kind of data involving my license plate (probably just tracking how often I'm entering). So I'd say once in a blue moon entering Canada gives me a hassle, but once in a blue moon entering the US doesn't give me a hassle. Heck the lines on the US side are longer & slower too.
I doubt this has much about "border guards care less about citizens of their country" and more about a laid back attitude from Canada but a paranoid attitude on the US side.
Smoothly is a relative term, but with a P2 350mhz on a TNT I would have expected the game to play well (at the time 30fps was what people aimed for) at 640x480 as long as you used 16bit rendering.
Perhaps you were running 32bit rendering and didn't know 16bit was faster, or perhaps I'm being too optimistic with that old hardware.
Despite, I also ran the 512x384 because it looked fairly decent (for a 3d game) and still gave great performance. When I got my Voodoo2, I'm pretty sure I ran 640x480.
All this talk of Unreal 1, along with a documentary on the Unreal franchise on G4 makes me want to bust out my old copy and check it out on today's hardware.
Actually when I got Unreal 1, I had a P2-233 (on a dual mobo as I assumed dual cpus would be the future, little did I know at the time your OS had to support it. Well at least I never bought the 2nd CPU, I know I was wrong about duals when the P2 400mhz came out). I had a Diamond MM Viper card, which had a VERY based 3d chip and iirc, Unreal 1 didn't support it.
Anyways, Unreal 1 on software rendering (well at least I had fast MMX, I figured) was a mix blessing; visually, the game was amazing, and the beginning level had more atmosphere than I had ever seen in a game before. The view distance was very large and the skies were lush and very high (unlike Quake which seems fairly close). But there was some serious shortcomings, obviously the frame rate was unbearable when you fought an enemy (the advanced AI ate up a ton of cpu) and things like water couldn't use alpha effects, so instead they used a checkerboard trick where half of the pixels showed what was in the water, and the other half showed the water. By the way, frame rate while swimming was unbearable too.
I let a friend/w a Pentium 1 "borrow" my game, and I told him this was a P2 only game. It was totally unplayable for him.
I very quickly bought a Diamond MM Monster Voodoo 2 for a mere $175 (it was a steal at the time, and a lot of people were speaking highly of Monster's quality and constant driver updates) by the time I was at the 4th level/w software rendering. I replayed the game from scratch and the experience was so much better, obviously I could play in 16bit instead graphics, I now had alpha effects so the water, clouds, explosions and lighting was amazing.
My first 3d accelerated game was MDK on my Viper 330 card, and since I could run 16bit, I was blown away by the colors. But Unreal 1 on a Voodoo 2 is what really sold me on the "new age" of accelerated 3d gaming with it's large levels, rich 2 layer skies, alpha effects and smart enemies.
Well I can tell you where I live now, Rochester, NY, has underground power lines everywhere. I've only lived here two years but I haven't seen a power company digging anywhere. TCO aside, I can vouch that the lack of power lines hanging everywhere adds boatloads to the visual appear of a city. It means trees on the sides of roads don't have to be mutilated or cut down.
MSN Search is dead... long live Live Search!
Ok it's not the cat's pajamas but somebody while Google is reindexing and the results are out of whack, Live search provides better results. But that's like one day a month:P
I'd like to point out that when talking about 3D graphics, 2x as powerful isn't enough to notice a difference. It's the classic high school math question that 90% of students seem to mess up, a 2x2 cube is NOT 2x the size of a 1x1 cube, it's 4x.
If you want double the resolution, double the texture sizes, double the polygons and double the effects we're talking significantly more power, in the area of 8x. You need to jump in iterations of at least 4x to even see a difference but more along the lines of 8x to actually impress people.
Back in the 2d days you didn't need to make such extreme improvements in speed, obviously just double the CPU and minor improvements to video means you could have thousands of colors instead of dozens, and you could double or triple the number of objects on the screen, often allowing for very large bosses vs small ones, and all of this looked really impressive compared to the previous hardware.
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9.4GB is enough for anyone!
Duke Nukem Forever? Busted, you just dated yourself. We'll be seeing your $1 laptop with DNF in 2012. But I hear DNF might be post poned for another 6 months after hardware release.
Looks like April 1st came late this year
I'm also very picky about controllers (I NEVER like 3rd party ones) but I love the 360 controller. The PS style one is fine, but I think the 360's is my favorite now-a-days and I have to agree with the last guy who mentioned the triggers, I think they feel much better for FPSs (which currently dominate the game genre lately).
If you can't compete, sue the heck out of them, you must be new to American business.
>> the UK could save ~600 million pounds per year by switching to Linux And they could save an additional $600 mil pounds by not using computers all together. Sorry to beat the TCO drum, but seriously, how much is it going to cost to rewrite all their client applications (emulation will only require MORE computing power than the actual Windows box). Last I checked moving from old hardware to new hardware isn't always that bad (ex: LCDs over CRTs, Core 2 Duo's use significantly less power than P4s) not to mention that old hardware is re-used for 3rd world countries or poor families, local recreation centers, etc. Sounds like to me the occasional upgrade every shop makes every 3-5yrs isn't all that evil.
I couldn't disagree more, I live in Western NY and go to Canada about 5 times a year. Entering Canada is a breeze, 90% of the time they only ask if I have any weapons, how long I will be staying and what I will be doing. Entering the US, even after showing my license often and most likely a license plate lookup still results in a barrage of questions. The last couple times I've gone to Canada I have notice they are entering some kind of data involving my license plate (probably just tracking how often I'm entering). So I'd say once in a blue moon entering Canada gives me a hassle, but once in a blue moon entering the US doesn't give me a hassle. Heck the lines on the US side are longer & slower too. I doubt this has much about "border guards care less about citizens of their country" and more about a laid back attitude from Canada but a paranoid attitude on the US side.
Smoothly is a relative term, but with a P2 350mhz on a TNT I would have expected the game to play well (at the time 30fps was what people aimed for) at 640x480 as long as you used 16bit rendering. Perhaps you were running 32bit rendering and didn't know 16bit was faster, or perhaps I'm being too optimistic with that old hardware. Despite, I also ran the 512x384 because it looked fairly decent (for a 3d game) and still gave great performance. When I got my Voodoo2, I'm pretty sure I ran 640x480. All this talk of Unreal 1, along with a documentary on the Unreal franchise on G4 makes me want to bust out my old copy and check it out on today's hardware.
Actually when I got Unreal 1, I had a P2-233 (on a dual mobo as I assumed dual cpus would be the future, little did I know at the time your OS had to support it. Well at least I never bought the 2nd CPU, I know I was wrong about duals when the P2 400mhz came out). I had a Diamond MM Viper card, which had a VERY based 3d chip and iirc, Unreal 1 didn't support it. Anyways, Unreal 1 on software rendering (well at least I had fast MMX, I figured) was a mix blessing; visually, the game was amazing, and the beginning level had more atmosphere than I had ever seen in a game before. The view distance was very large and the skies were lush and very high (unlike Quake which seems fairly close). But there was some serious shortcomings, obviously the frame rate was unbearable when you fought an enemy (the advanced AI ate up a ton of cpu) and things like water couldn't use alpha effects, so instead they used a checkerboard trick where half of the pixels showed what was in the water, and the other half showed the water. By the way, frame rate while swimming was unbearable too. I let a friend /w a Pentium 1 "borrow" my game, and I told him this was a P2 only game. It was totally unplayable for him.
I very quickly bought a Diamond MM Monster Voodoo 2 for a mere $175 (it was a steal at the time, and a lot of people were speaking highly of Monster's quality and constant driver updates) by the time I was at the 4th level /w software rendering. I replayed the game from scratch and the experience was so much better, obviously I could play in 16bit instead graphics, I now had alpha effects so the water, clouds, explosions and lighting was amazing.
My first 3d accelerated game was MDK on my Viper 330 card, and since I could run 16bit, I was blown away by the colors. But Unreal 1 on a Voodoo 2 is what really sold me on the "new age" of accelerated 3d gaming with it's large levels, rich 2 layer skies, alpha effects and smart enemies.
Well I can tell you where I live now, Rochester, NY, has underground power lines everywhere. I've only lived here two years but I haven't seen a power company digging anywhere. TCO aside, I can vouch that the lack of power lines hanging everywhere adds boatloads to the visual appear of a city. It means trees on the sides of roads don't have to be mutilated or cut down.
MSN Search is dead... long live Live Search! Ok it's not the cat's pajamas but somebody while Google is reindexing and the results are out of whack, Live search provides better results. But that's like one day a month :P
I'd like to point out that when talking about 3D graphics, 2x as powerful isn't enough to notice a difference. It's the classic high school math question that 90% of students seem to mess up, a 2x2 cube is NOT 2x the size of a 1x1 cube, it's 4x. If you want double the resolution, double the texture sizes, double the polygons and double the effects we're talking significantly more power, in the area of 8x. You need to jump in iterations of at least 4x to even see a difference but more along the lines of 8x to actually impress people. Back in the 2d days you didn't need to make such extreme improvements in speed, obviously just double the CPU and minor improvements to video means you could have thousands of colors instead of dozens, and you could double or triple the number of objects on the screen, often allowing for very large bosses vs small ones, and all of this looked really impressive compared to the previous hardware.