November 30th, 2008 DJB
The new Resident Evil Movie (AKA - bio hazard) is gonna be released very soon. I personally cannot wait and very much looking forward to buying it. It gonna be released on the 30th December 2008.
Heres a nice trailer for you to watch and see what you think.
Visit link below for brand new trailer.
http://stonerocket.net/vidz/view/12/redegenerationfulltrailer2/
Movie Bio
The film begins in the autumn of 2005, and the incident happens at an airport somewhere in a mid-western American city. Claire Redfield is now a member of a non-governmental organization which handles search and rescue of chemical and bioterrorist attacks. Claire arrives at the airport, for the purpose of business.Meanwhile, a passenger airplane is approaching the airport for landing. As one of the attendants checks the passengers, she notices one man is looking unwell. The man in question is clearly in the final stages of the deadly T-Virus infection, and warns the attendant as such and it is an emergency. Shortly after, the infection claims his life and he zombiefies, causing him to attack several other passengers, which spreads the virus throughout the plane. The out-of-control plane, attempting and failing to make an emergency landing, crashes into the airport’s lobby. Claire survives, along with many other civilians, and witnesses the door to the plane opening and zombies pouring out of the hatch and attacking civilians, causing chaos.
The government is quick to seal off the airport and prevent the panicked civilians from leaving. Claire hides from the zombies, along with several other civilians, with Claire promising to protect a young girl; Rani Chawla.
The Special Response Team, led by ex-SWAT police officer Angela Miller, is planning a rescue mission. The government sends in a special agent; Leon Scott Kennedy. Taking command of the SRT, Leon leads the team to battle the zombies. Leon rescues Claire and they, along with Rani and Angela, escape the airport before it is bombed.
Shortly after their escape, it is revealed that a terrorist; Curtis Miller, a former employee of the same organization that hired Claire and is related to Angela, broadcasts a message revealing that he is responsible for the outbreak. Curtis holds samples of the T-virus, and demands U.S. President Graham reveal to the public the truth of what happened at Raccoon City, along with his direct involvement with the Umbrella Corporation. Curtis gives the President a four-hour deadline, or he will spread the T-virus to every major city on Earth.
The SRT succeeds in locating Curtis’ hiding place, but Curtis releases a new type of Tyrant against them, and deliberately infects himself with the G-virus, turning him into a rampaging killing machine.
Posted in Gaming | 2 Comments »
June 11th, 2008 DJB
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
Sat on the start grid, foot poised over the accelerator, you wait for the row of red lights to extinguish. Alongside you are top names like Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen. The cars’ engines are screaming and everyone is poised to go. For any Formula One fan the chance to race against their heroes would be a dream come true.
Sadly, the closest most of us have ever got is watching the Grand Prix on television. But that could soon change if a company from the Netherlands has its way.
“It’s clear that the next trend in gaming is going to be bringing real objects into the virtual world; playing not against other gamers but people doing the real thing,” said Andy Lurling, founder of iOpener Media.
The patented system his company is developing sucks in real-time GPS data from racing events and pumps it out to compatible games consoles and PCs.
The idea is that you could pit yourself against the top drivers in the world, as it happens, from the comfort of your living room.
“You can compete against the best of the best,” he told BBC News.
‘Hardcore appeal’
And if all of this sounds far fetched, think again.
The European Space Agency (Esa) was so impressed with his proposal, it gave Mr Lurling’s company a grant to develop a proof of concept. A German venture capitalist has stumped up cash to develop it further.
He has already tested it with an F1 car and plans to have the first games on the market as early as September this year.
“At this point we have lots of interest and we are looking for the right partner to launch,” he said.
The firm is currently in talks with six developers about using the technology.
Gareth Wilson, design manager at Bizarre Creations, makers of the Project Gotham Racing series, says he thinks games with the real-time feature would “excite a hardcore minority of gamers”.
“Formula 1 and similar complex simulation games are getting less mass market nowadays, compared to their more arcade-style heyday in the late 90s,” he told BBC News.
“This sort of feature would probably appeal to the hardcore gamer or F1 fan more than a mass market gamer.
“Having said that, the hardcore would totally love it.”
Bizarre Creations is not currently one of the firms evaluating the system.
Precision position
At the core of iOpener’s technology is an enhanced GPS system known as differential GPS (DGPS).
This uses a network of fixed base stations to correct the GPS signal, which on its own may only be accurate to within 10m. DGPS is commonly used for air navigation or shipping where precision is key.
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1. Car position located with Global Navigation Satellite Systems
2. Location data and car telemetry is beamed to a track side server
3. Data is tagged with unique ID of the car and sent over the internet
4. Information stored on servers and “mediacast” to gamers.
Whole process from car to gamer takes less than five seconds
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“With that we know the location and the velocity of the car,” explained Mr Lurling.
As further precision is needed, iOpener can use information from the European EGNOS network, which augments GPS satellite signals to provide positional data accurate to within 2m.
Other tweaks include fitting cars with an inertial measurement unit (IMU), commonly used in guided missile systems, which measure acceleration, angle and yaw of the object.
“IMUs give accuracy on a short range,” Mr Lurling told BBC News.
“Combined with DGPS, we know the location of the car to within less than 30 centimetres.”
In addition, the system collects telemetry data from the car, which is fitted with a small computer, transmitter and the GPS receiver.
“That is already good enough data for a game,” he said.
Telemetry is commonly collected by track-side engineers to monitor the vehicles’ performance and can include information such as acceleration and what gear the car is in.
It has already used by games developers to build more realistic simulations.
Designers at Bizarre Creations used the telemetry to generate accurate track models for early F1 games, before detailed circuit maps existed, for example.
From the track side, the data is sent over the net to a server farm, where it is saved before being pumped out - or “mediacast” - to eager gamers.
The delay between collecting the data and the gamer being immersed in it is up to five seconds, similar to the lag on a TV broadcast.
“We also store the data, so not only can you play the game in real time, but you can replay races at a later date,” said Mr Lurling.
Intelligent gaming
The company does not intend to develop its own games; rather it will provide the backbone for games developers to build on to.
But it will provide some software; specifically an artificial intelligence (AI) program to make sure that the virtual and real worlds blend seamlessly.
Artificial intelligence handles collisions between real and virtual drivers
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“If Hamilton is driving behind you he can’t see you [in the game], so he would drive right through you,” explained Mr Lurling.
“So the AI takes over at that point and you see a very realistic overtaking.”
The system also handles the results of in-game collisions between real and virtual drivers.
In this case, the real car always drives away. The gamer’s fate is less certain.
“We go for optimal realism but the game experience has to be right,” he said.
Mr Wilson agrees with this approach.
“There is a huge difference between what happens in the real world and what happens in video games - even the most ‘realistic’ simulator has to bend real world physics to make the game more fun,” he said.
However, even with the AI, he thinks gamers may encounter a more fundamental frustration with the system.
“I know I wouldn’t even get close to the lap times that Lewis Hamilton could run, unless my car in the virtual world had a load of extra grip and power - which might defeat the point,” he said.
At the moment, iOpener is concentrating firmly on racing games, but believes that there is a huge market for the system in other sports.
“You can think of biking, rowing, skiing and snowboarding,” said Mr Lurling.
“In the next three to five years, we believe that games will not be ‘triple A’ games unless they have our feature in,” he said.
Mr Lurling was the 2006 Dutch regional winner of the European Satellite Navigation Competition (Galileo Masters) which aims to find novel uses for location data. The 2008 competition is now open to entries, until 31 July.
Posted in Gaming | 3 Comments »
November 18th, 2007 DJB
Pushing the PC gaming boundaries
Games like Crysis can demand high-specification hardware
The PC remains a big player in the games market but in recent years its cutting edge has been blunted. The vast majority of games are still played on PCs rather than consoles; typically casual games played on cheap desktop machines or online games, such as World of Warcraft.
The industry is currently experiencing a renaissance in innovation as the trinity of new hardware, developer ambition and tools come together to improve experiences.
The introduction of chip technology with four cores, effectively quadrupling processing power, graphics cards using DirectX 10 tools and developers keen to push powerful machines to the limit are resulting in games which set new graphical benchmarks.
In some cases these machines are desktop behemoths; near supercomputers in a box that are delivering game experiences beyond the wildest dreams of console owners.
The latest games, like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3, are taking advantage of quad core processors, and twin graphics cards. These are the play things of hotrod PC gamers - the enthusiasts who see their machines as customisable dragsters delivering the pinnacle of performance.
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 High end games PCs are important to the professional players 
Michael O’Dell
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“PC gamers see themselves as the elite gamers,” said Michael O’Dell, who runs the professional gaming group Team Dignitas and manages Birmingham Salvo, a team in the Championship Gaming Series.
“High end games PCs are important to the professional players and hard core because the extra processing power can make that millisecond of difference between success and failure, and whether you win prize money or not.”
For the hardcore the extra grunt of the most powerful desktops improve the FPS (frames per second) in FPS (First Person Shooter) games.
“My gamers are always moaning about their FPS (frames per second). They always want more and some of the newest games are very demanding on the hardware.”
For these gamers, whose reaction times put them in the superhuman category, more frames per second means a smoother experience.
So how much more powerful are these high-end PCs than the latest generation of consoles?
“It’s absolute nonsense to think that consoles are at the cutting edge,” said Roy Taylor, vice president of content relations at Nvidia, the world’s biggest manufacturer of graphics cards.
“As good as consoles are, they are so far behind the PC gaming experience that there is no comparison.
Unreal Tournament 3 will help hardware sales
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“In terms of raw processing power, the high-end PCs are at least three times more powerful.”
Nvidia provides the graphics grunt for the PlayStation 3, while rival ATI provides the imaging hardware for the Xbox 360.
Mr Taylor points out that the latest graphics cards can draw twice as many pixels, twice the screen resolution, as a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
The latest games are employing DirectX 10 tools developed by Microsoft, which are used by developers to get the best out of the high-end and middle-range graphics cards.
Mr Taylor said the new tools and the new hardware had given developers a library of effects to play with.
Nvidia’s latest high-end graphics cards, the 8800 series, can easily produce graphical effects that tax the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, such as motion blur, depth of field and volumetric smoke.
Mr Taylor said: “Fog, smoke or mist in games until now have been flat and don’t respond to objects. Volumetric effects mean they are dynamic - a helicopter can now displace cloud or smoke, or a character can step through the fog realistically.”
But these sorts of effects come at a price.
A quadcore Intel machine with twin graphics cards and four gigabytes of ram - at the high end of the PC gaming experience - can cost more than £2,000 “$4000″, six times the price of an Xbox 360.
Nvidia’s flagship graphics card, the 8800 Ultra, costs more than £400 “$800″ although a cut-down version, the 8800 GT, costs from £120 “$240″, about the same price as a Nintendo Wii.
Rival ATI also sends a high-end graphics card which supports DirectX 10, costing from about £120 “$240″.
PC gamers love to “mod” their machines
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Hardcore PC gamers also specialise in customising their “rigs”, with unique cases and intricate cooling systems.
The gaming experience they deliver can be exceptional.
Playing Crysis with the screen resolution set at 1920×1200 with all effects switched up to very high and anti-aliasing turned on, the game is breathtaking to look at and puts consoles titles like Gears of War and Call of Duty 4 into the shade.
“We worked really closely with Intel and Nvidia and even had engineers from Nvidia on site for the last year,” said Bernd Diemer, a producer on Crysis at developers Crytek.
“We wanted to be an early adopter. When we started Crysis the current hardware wasn’t available or being planned. There was no DX10 or the latest graphic cards. They were not even on the drawing board.”
They went to a special effects company in Hollywood to create a render movie of how Crysis could look - and that movie has been the benchmark for the firm.
“We got pretty close. In some areas we even surpassed it,” said Mr Diemer.
He said PCs gave gamers the “best possible experience”.
Crysis boasts realistic breakable environments - a goal of developers for many years.
“In some areas we have managed to set a new standard. We’ve managed to push it a bit further,” he said.
Crysis is at the forefront of a wave that is delivering blockbuster titles to PCs and making console owners envious of their PC gaming friends.
“The PC is finally back up where it belongs,” said Mr Diemer.
He added: “The innovation is happening on the PC; but that’s always been the case.”
Source - BBC News
Posted in Gaming | 1 Comment »
