Exploring Stuff That Makes Life Great
Even though it was Intel’s 6-core monster that got all the attention, one little gem that missed out on the publicity a bit was Larrabee, Intel’s CPU-GPU hybrid or essentially a graphic card processor, or a processor graphic card, or something along those lines.
To find out more about this demonic hybrid, hit the jump!
Continue reading “Intel’s “Larrabee” is a mutant CPU/GPU hybrid of doom”
In what comes as a slap to the face of anyone who spent their year’s-worth of savings on a quad-core, Intel has announced that it’s devilish 6-Core processors will go into production as soon as this very summer, making a 2008 release very likely.
The first generation 45 nm processor, a “six-core Dunnington server CPU platform using Penryn architecture” will feature 16 Mb of L3 cache – pioneering Intel’s goals of phasing out its Core architecture and the Front Side Bus itself! Also, Intel unveils its mysterious “Simultaneous Multithreading” spell!
Hit the jump to know more!
Continue reading “Intel’s 6-Core processors coming this very year”
Walmart? Who shops at Walmart for state of the art gaming stuff?
Well, pretty soon it may be me and YOU, as Walmart corporate has allowed its key buyers to blog information they obtain from consumer electronics shows.
Now you can preview the newest games, gadgets and gotta have techno toys at their new blog.
BUT before you click away, here are some of the up-and-coming trends in the market as put forth by Tifanie Van Laar the Walmart game buyer.
Expect Packaging to Matter – We spoke with quite a few folks about their publishing. It is time for our industry to mature and take more responsibility. Look at movies and music and some of the efforts they have undertaken. No need for heavy plastic packages that really are way overbuilt. We challenged quite a few suppliers on this front. We can, and must do better.
Expect More Street Dated Releases – Here too, we have much to learn from our brethren in music and movies. You know that Tuesday is the day for big releases in movies and music. Even smaller releases are out on Tuesday. With some of the marketing and development costs makers are talking about, there is no need to just ship date these titles. A street date serves as a call to action for the consumer. Hey, if I were spending $10 MILLION on just marketing a title, I would want a street date. Only one retailer does not want street dates, the other retailers want them. Seems that less than 30% of the industry is trying to have it their way. It just does not make sense to the industry or the consumer.
Continue reading “WALMART Looks Into the Gaming Future”
You can roll in all the big numbers you can think of, but when it comes to technological progress, nothing turns more heads than something that looks really cool. That is why more people took interest in Microsoft Surface, the Apple iPhone and the Nintendo Wii than, well, uh… you see?
While Microsoft Surface is still a bit far from release and will cost more than the war funding, we are left to simply dream of such intuitive interfaces. The latest to roll in this line comes from a comparatively obscure “Cynergy Labs” who unveiled their top-secret weapon, codenamed Project Maestro.
As you will see in the video below, Project Maestro utilizes the Wiimote, Microsoft WPF, third party libraries, custom-built Minority Report-inspired gloves as well as costly hardware like that TV you see. The result is a demonic interface that you can control with your hands. In the air. As the guy in the video at Cynergy’s site says, it’s Microsoft Surface, without the Surface. (Microsoft Surface – Surface = Mircosoft? The mind boggles.)
In the video, you can see the guy demonstrating Maestro by cutting and throwing Mona Lisa around as well as showing his photos, much like Microsoft Surface. The sexy gloves cover only three of his fingers, and allow him to pinch and grab stuff on the screen. He also shows off his encounter with Microsoft, which is cute. I particularly like the half-professional, half-homemade style of the video.
What bothers me is that I can’t see any particularly useful applications of this. It’ll be cool for some games, especially sports titles, racing titles or maybe shooters; that is until your arms ache and you take that gamepad back. Sure, throwing photos around and dissecting Mona Lisa is fun, but it’s not worth the massive price tag. I’m sure you can’t do office work waving your hands in the air. Internet browsing should be okay, but it’ll wear you out and incorrect pointing will have you clicking the wrong button.
In movies it should be good, since you don’t need to reach for the remote to pause, rewind or fast forward – simple hand-movements should do the trick. But then it would really suck if you grab a soda and the sensor thinks you want it to stop playback. But it would be a’ight nonetheless, and the same applies to listening to music. It’ll be pretty cool if we use to it create sounds out of Air Guitar moves.
Got some more ideas for this sweet thing? Post them in the comments and we’ll try to blackmail the guys at Cynergy into implementing them!
For those of you who have been having graphical problems with Crysis on ATI graphics cards there is now a possible solution. ATI have released a hotfix to sort out your problems before the next display driver version comes out. You can find it at ATI’s website.
If you’re not in the film industry, you may not have heard about the most advanced video camera in the world. Thanks to the Digital Cinema Society, I had the privilege of getting an in-depth look at what makes the Red camera tick.
First off, what makes this camera special is that it records in 4K. This is the same resolution that 35mm records on – a resolution higher than High Definition. Currently there are only 50 Red cameras in the world. At the event we were looking at #30.
