New Xbox 360, Coming soon

Xbox 360 controllers have been designed to be wireless
You can get a rechargeable battery pack for the controller that can recharge the batteries "lightning-fast,"
The bottom of the controller features an input jack that accepts any standard cell phone headset for voice communication.
Microsoft plans to release a video camera device for the 360 that will allow for videoconferencing,
as well as add a visual interaction element to games.
Microsoft decided early on to go with a multicore CPU design after deciding that a superfast single-core CPU wouldn't be a viable option.
The Xbox 360 will have a custom-designed IBM processor that has three processing cores,
each capable of handling two threads, or two separate applications.
Six total threads provides a lot of processing power.

The Future of Submarine Games
By: Neal Stevens

In the last six months, the demise of sims has been pronounced in abundance. Print mags and sim webzines have been telling you sims are being cancelled left and right Jane's A-10: Cancelled. Wolfpack II: Cancelled. Silent Steel II: MIA. M1Tank Platoon 3: Cancelled. Fighting Steel Deluxe: Cancelled. Jane's Attack Squadron: MIA. Thunder Over Europe: MIA. The list goes on.

We all know that this is a down cycle for sims and we believe there is hope that in a couple of years, things will turn around and sims will be hot stuff again. Hey, I remember in 1973 when the EPA and OPEC throttled the life out of the muscle car scene. I had a 1970 Cobra Torino that had 450 hp and ran the quarter in the high 13s. In less than three years every car out of Detroit was a smog controlled, gas economizing slug. They even started making them as ugly as they were slow! It was heartbreaking.

But over time, things change. Now you can get a high performance machine that handles and has luxuries like front/rear AC. My '99 Riviera has a supercharged V-6 that would make my old Torino proud.

So, keep the faith. Things will improve, even if no one knows when. Silent Hunter II and Destroyer Command are showing signs of life. Harpoon 4 is still under development. There are stirrings from the Sonalysts camp.

When a new subsim does hit the shore, try to remember, the developers and game producers are our friends. They make the kind of games we like because they like them too. Why would they labor over armor thickness tables, ship model physics, and torpedo trajectories for a niche market? I know a few developers and they all love the genre.

Try to keep your criticism balanced. Should you blast a sim you had trouble with or didn't enjoy with all the invective and animosity you would normally reserve for someone who stole your car or used your toothbrush? I was told by one producer that high-level executives frequently ask him about hard-core negative postings on newsgroups and forums. The industry sees us as demanding, unappreciative, and impossible to satisfy. It's much easier and more lucrative to crank out Deer Hunter and Barbie games and their users rarely flame the game company to a crisp.

I work with a CPA accountant who likes computer games and is pretty good at them. He can play a mean Age of Empires warrior. I tried to interest him in learning Jane's 688(I) for some multiplay. He took one look at the hefty manual and waved it off. He assumed he would need to learn all the material to play competitive. The blessing and the curse of a good sim is its complexity. You want to command a battle fleet or do TMA on a Los Angeles class submarine? You need to learn skills and study. And this restricts the popularity of the sim. Mass market games generally do not carry the steep learning curve a sim does. So while we hard core sim players are delighting in the minutia of seven different stations and all their controls, casual gamers are passing up the sim at a 20 to 1 ratio. Sims truly are a niche market.

Niche market games have limited budgets. This mean a small number of programmers and artists must concentrate on the basics. Don't expect to see everything you want and imagine in a sim. Oh yeah, I'm with you--I wish a subsim could have full motion crews and other fun stuff. But as one producer told me, "We don't have the money to design and integrate these features into the product. I wish we could, too."

We should be finding out the status of Silent Hunter II soon. Either Mattel Interactive is going to sign someone to complete it or it will be canned. I went through the "we are planning to do this" stage with the fabled Jane's Ice Pack add-on for 688(I), Crusader Studios' Akula: Red Hunter, Silent Steel 2, and the interoperability between Jane's Fleet Command and 688(I). I'm not passing judgment here, just stating that when the momentum dies, so does the objective. For whatever reasons, the product champions behind those sims were unable to secure the financing to start work. To get a better feel for the whole process, read my friend John Sponauer's analysis of the life and death of a sim, M1 Tank Platoon 2, from its early development as an upgrade all the way through its last couple of weeks.

Despite my previous experiences with other sim companies, I am optimistic that Carl Norman and Rick Martinez mean what they say and SSI will continue to raise the banner of the Digital Combat Series while the Jane's, NovaLogics, and Microproses around them fall like unfortunate tin soldiers. This is not to say SH2 is a done deal--that moment will come when you hold the box in your hand. We look to the next rumored subsim as our best hope for advanced underwater warfare. All we can do is stay positive, supportive, and if it's decent, buy four copies when it comes out.

About The Author

Neal Stevens is the editor of Subsim.com and contributing author of the coffee table book United States Submarines.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Theories Behind Magic Trinkets in Video Game and Virtual Reality
By: Lance Winslow

In Gaming we deal between Simulation, Augmented Reality, Fantasy and Virtual Reality. The best fantasy has some reality basis behind it. Trun your mind on for a second and let me explain.

Having studied the ancient art and cultures and myths of ancient civilizations we know that many groups of our ancestors and other genetic chains of members of our species often associated charms, trinkets and tools as sacred and possessing powers. Think of all the mythology out there with Brass Necklaces, Gold, Copper Artifacts and plates laced with metallic substances. Even gold plating and famous story of the singing of The Excalibur. Now then areas where meteorites hit the Earth and we know every 10,000 or more years we have a big strike and every 100,000 years we have a huge strike and every 1 million years we have climatic change or Extinction event.

Now then often these meteors hit and displace rock and melt minerals and alloys under the ground. In many areas there are copper, zinc, iron, gold, silver under the ground. If a meteorite hits is likely to melt local metal as it explodes on impact sending debris for 10-100 miles, this metal is coated and combined so to speak with the electromagnetic energy from the meteor through intense heat transfer and exchange. The metal alloy is then coated with an electromagnetic signature. This would appear rather incredible and magical to a member of an ancient society. It would also have real changes to the person and there own electromagnetic brain waves. We know this because we are currently studying the electromagnetic pulse in different levels and frequencies on the human brain to increase acuity, special cognitive ability, fatigue control in different parts of the brain. You may wish to read this issue of Scientific American for more information.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0004CB6A-2C08-1F30-9AD380A84189F2D7

This is merely one article and I would recommend the entire issue to understand some of my other hypothesis. Now then we are using this for pilots to over come massive amounts of visual input from night vision and HUD – Heads Up Diplay units in combat and in simulators during training. Currently DARPA is testing these and many other scenarios of which I totally am in favor of because the benefits of mankind are immense. This field of study is called TMS-Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. It’s real and it appears to work by sending tiny impulses into specific areas of the brain. Now then by using a wire coil in the helmet of a pilot they can send small minute magnetic pulses into the brain.

Well a necklace or special piece of art made from a piece of copper collected from a nearby village where a meteorite hit a million years ago would do the exact same thing. And make that particular individual smarter. And give them a superior edge over the rest of the population, if all Indian or ancient cultures used this along with the witch doctors then in fact you would have magical powers. You see? Have we forgotten more than we have learned as a species? I submit to you that we have.

Today we travel to Mars, yesterday the moon, but for 160,000 years of upright walking on the planet, much was learned in medicine, electro-magnetic, stellar navigation, calendar making, etc. Interesting no doubt. Many have asked why on Earth I had to pay $560.00 for a physics class that used a textbook with only two pages on electro-magnetic energy? I want my money back. Typically education and professional PhD people hold themselves out as experts. When we challenge the experts such as Einstein asked us to do, they lock us out. Afraid to imagine, dream, think and try. We must press on, the human race and the continuance of this species clearly depends on it.

Eventually the truth comes out and people say wow, look? Yes, no kidding, very interesting, but it took how many years to get back the theories and basic ideas of over 200 years ago, with what was then modern science and although the ancient cultures did not fully understand how it worked they were aware of its power (my theory). And to that thought, let me pose one other, Have we not forgotten more than we have ever learned? Hmmm?

And today as we attempt to connect the Organic Computer Brain of Humans, we find a few difficulties, beyond the electro-magnetic innovations and research needed. I believe this to be an excellent idea and interesting topic. Seeing as the interface betweens human beings and computers is merely a few years away and will be available to the public on a pretty routine basis soon. Certainly not more than two decades as Chimpanzees are no controlling items on a computer screen by mere thought. Check out the DELL Catalog in February 2010 for more information. For now we have available these things:

http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/

http://www.xybernaut.com/

Let us take places like the Meteor Crater in AZ and nearby copper mines in Flagstaff now defunct and the areas near the Sedona Valley said to have magical powers, which if you have been there, you might have felt different for a spell and simply wondered why or if that happened to be what everyone else is trying to explain.

Is it possible that a piece of that meteorite hit a body of water and sunk itself beneath what is now a covered over dry bed of an ancient lake? And yet it still emits a different radio frequency or electro-magnetic impulses which are pleasing to the human brain or assist the human brain in higher cognitive or different brain patterns producing what science is sure to pass off as silly phenomena and label the residents crack pots? Well the people at the Internet Café in Sedona, AZ and others who have been involved in the Holistic Universe theories believe, why? Why so many people including the Indians of the valley previously.

Indian cultures and ancient cultures discuss magical powers of their art, and if their art was made with magnetized alloys collected from above ground scavenging then in fact these magical powers as far as they are concerned are quite real. Well even today as we learn that electromagnetic waves are able to heal, enlighten, take the brain waves to a different state of mind. The current scientists are working on ways to use electromagnetic waves to cure cancer, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other degenerative diseases.

Perhaps the Egyptians believed that the gold plated tombs and use of gold would hold in such powers of electro-magnetic energy for some reason. Thus hold in the healing capabilities or what they believed to be magic or of the gods.

Whatever the case maybe we have seen higher cultures early on nearby areas of known meteor strikes of sizeable proportions. Why is this? Did these cultures benefit from these events or settle upon such land where meteors had hit the Earth millions of years prior but left their electro-magnetic mark. Did such events help species of all types on this planet evolve faster, better or stronger? How much did modern man benefit from living in these regions?

We hope this ice-breaker has gotten the jucies flowing as to why the magic trinkets often seen in computer games make a lot of sense. Items with magical powers do have some reality basis.

About The Author

Lance Winslow - Discuss Thought Provoking Concepts, Controversies and Major Social, Economic, Political, Science and Technology Issues That Impact Our Planet At The World Think Tank: http://www.WorldthinkTank.net/wttbbs Geniuses Wanted. Join our free forums to develop the genius in you or share your unique perspectives.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

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