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Comments: 57 + -   Crytek Dev On Fun vs. Realism In Game Guns on Thursday July 22, @05:04AM

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday July 22, @05:04AM
from the rocket-jumping-is-as-real-as-it-needs-to-be dept.
fps
An anonymous reader tips a post from Pascal Eggert, a gun enthusiast and Crytek developer, who sheds some light on how weaponry in modern shooters is designed. Quoting: "Guns in games are like guns in movies: it is all about looks, sounds and clichés. Just like in the movies, games have established a certain perception of weapons in the mind of the public and just like in movies games get almost everything wrong. ... The fact is that we are not trying to simulate reality but are creating products to provide entertainment. ... if you want to replicate the looks of something you need to at least see it, but using it is even better. You should hold a gun in your hands, fire it and reload it to understand what does what — and at that point you will realize, there is nothing on it that does not have a function — because guns are tools for professionals. Lot of weapon designers in the game industry get that wrong. They think of guns like products for consumers or magic devices that kill people at a distance when really it's just a simple and elegant mechanism that propels little pieces of metal. Unfortunately 3D artists often only get access to the photos that Google Image Search comes up with if you enter 'future assault rifle' or, even worse, pictures from other games and movies that also got it wrong. This may explain a lot of common visual mistakes in games, especially since guns are mostly photographed from the side and egoshooters show weapons from the first person view."
Read More... 57 comments story

Comments: 57 + -   37 States Join Investigation of Google Street View on Thursday July 22, @03:44AM

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 22, @03:44AM
from the loking-into-the-lookers dept.
google
bonch writes "Attorneys General from 37 states have joined the probe into Google's Street View data collection. The investigation seeks more information behind Google's software testing and data archiving practices after it was discovered that their Street View vans scanned private WLANs and recorded users' MAC addresses. Attorney general Richard Blumenthal said, 'Google's responses continue to generate more questions than they answer. Now the question is how it may have used — and secured — all this private information.'"
Read More... 57 comments story

Comments: 34 + -   US Targeting China In New Anti-Piracy Drive on Thursday July 22, @02:39AM

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 22, @02:39AM
from the most-pirated-nation-status dept.
piracy
oxide7 writes "The United States will make China 'a significant focus' of its beefed-up efforts to fight global piracy and counterfeiting of US goods ranging from CDs to manufactured products, a US official said on Wednesday. The International Intellectual Property Alliance, which represents US copyright industry groups, has estimated lost sales in China at more than $3.5 billion in 2009 due to piracy of US music, movies and software."
Read More... 34 comments story

Comments: 103 + -   World of Warcraft Can Boost Your Career on Thursday July 22, @01:31AM

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 22, @01:31AM
from the tanking-the-boss dept.
business
Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes reports that although videogames have long been thought of as distractions to work and education rather than aids, there is a growing school of thought that says game-playing in moderation, and in your free time, can make you more successful in your career. 'We're finding that the younger people coming into the teams who have had experience playing online games are the highest-level performers because they are constantly motivated to seek out the next challenge and grab on to performance metrics,' says John Hagel III, co-chairman of a tech-oriented strategy center for Deloitte. Elliot Noss, chief executive of domain name provider Tucows, spends six to seven hours a week playing online games and believes World of Warcraft trains him to become a better leader."
Read More... 103 comments story

Comments: 14 + -   Recettear: an Item Shop's Tale Localized on Thursday July 22, @12:22AM

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday July 22, @12:22AM
from the just-crazy-enough-to-work dept.
rpg
An anonymous reader writes "An indie-produced item-shop-sim-slash-RPG, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, has been localized and a demo released by the equally indie startup Carpe Fulgur LLC. The game is equal parts item shop sim (as in, item shop like the kind you find in every RPG ever, except you're behind the counter now) with certain Zelda- or Diablo-esque elements also present in the form of randomly-generated dungeons that you can grab an adventurer friend to go tromping through for loot to sell. The response so far has been pretty positive and it seems like Carpe Fulgur is trying to make a business of taking (non-pornographic) unique indie titles from Japan and getting them into a state where the rest of the world can enjoy them."
Read More... 14 comments story

Comments: 42 + -   Boeing Shows Off First Commercial Spacecraft on Wednesday July 21, @10:33PM

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 21, @10:33PM
from the lost-luggage-in-space dept.
nasa
coondoggie writes "Boeing today released the first public glimpse of the commercial spacecraft it is working on under an $18 million contract with NASA. Boeing's Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 can hold seven crew and will be bigger than Apollo but smaller than NASA's Orion, and be able to launch on a variety of different rockets, including Atlas, Delta and Falcon.The company envisions the spacecraft supporting the International Space Station and future Bigelow Aerospace Orbital Space Complex systems. Bigelow is building what it calls 'expandable habitats,' that which are inflatable spacecraft would act as large, less costly space stations."
Read More... 42 comments story

Comments: 433 + -   Industrial Marijuana Farming Approved In Oakland on Wednesday July 21, @08:18PM

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 21, @08:18PM
from the grow-em-if-you-got-em dept.
government
Trintech writes "According to MSNBC: 'The city of Oakland, California on Tuesday legalized large-scale marijuana cultivation for medical use and will issue up to four permits for "industrial" cultivation starting next year. The move by the San Francisco Bay Area city aims to bring medical marijuana cultivation into the open and allow the city to profit by taxing those who grow it. The resolution passed the city council easily after a nearly four-hour debate that pitted small-scale "garden" growers against advocates of a bigger, industrial system that would become a "Silicon Valley" of pot.' Yes, you read that right. MSNBC just compared computer chip fabrication to pot cultivation."
Read More... 433 comments story

Comments: 38 + -   NASA Creates First Global Forest Map Using Lasers on Wednesday July 21, @07:39PM

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 21, @07:39PM
from the if-a-tree-is-measured-and-nobody-is-around-to-see-it dept.
nasa
MikeCapone writes "Scientists, using three NASA satellites, have created a first-of-its-kind map that details the height of the world's forests. The data was collected from NASA's ICESat, Terra and Aqua satellites. The latter two satellites are responsible for most of NASA's Gulf spill imagery. The data collected will help scientists understand how the world's forests both store and process carbon. While there are many local and regional canopy maps, this is the very first global map using a uniform method for measure."
Read More... 38 comments story

Comments: 178 + -   Facebook Wants Ownership Case Thrown Out on Wednesday July 21, @06:52PM

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 21, @06:52PM
from the your-own-personal-facebook dept.
money
crimeandpunishment writes "Attorneys for Facebook and a New York man claiming majority ownership of the site faced off in a Buffalo courtroom Tuesday, and if Facebook gets its way there won't be too many more days in court. The site wants to get Paul Ceglia's claim thrown out of court. He claims a seven-year-old agreement with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg entitles him to 84 percent of the company. Facebook acknowledges Ceglia and Zuckerberg worked together, but says the contract Ceglia submitted was full of 'things that don't make sense'."
Read More... 178 comments story

Comments: 291 + -   Death Grip Tested On iPhone Competitors on Wednesday July 21, @05:42PM

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 21, @05:42PM
from the not-deathy-enough dept.
cellphones
adeelarshad82 writes "Given Steve Jobs' recent claims about 'Death Grip' being a common problem among smart phones, PCMag tested out six major iPhone competitors to see how they would react to the grip. The test included Motorola Droid X, T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide, Droid Incredible by HTC, BlackBerry Bold 9650, and the Samsung Captivate. The signal strength was measured in dBm, which typically ranges between -50 to -110 dBm (numbers closer to zero show better signal). Interestingly, the test results video showed mixed results. T-Mobile myTouch 3G and Samsung Captivate showed drastic changes, dropping down to -89 and -97 dBm respectively. On the other hand, while the signal strength dropped for HTC Droid Incredible, Motorola Droid X and Blackberry Bold, it wasn't as severe. Results of testing showed that not all phones reacted the same way to the typical death grip and required variations of it to bring about results."
Read More... 291 comments story
 

YRO

Poll The Oldest Timestamp On a File I Created and Still Have Is...
2005 - Present
2000 - 2004
1995 - 1999
1990 - 1994
1985 - 1989
1980 - 1984
Even older
I created the epoch, you insensitive clod!
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:373 | Votes:24060

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