Latest News - Page 4120

Another portable/tablet device (re: iPad 2, Xoom, 3DS, Galaxy Tablet, Playbook) announces Augmented Reality capabilities. Yay. The Sony NGP unveiled some AR demos at the GDC 2011 in San Francisco yesterday. This bit of exciting news also got lost in the iPad 2 Internet Frenzy Of 2011.

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Do you have buckets of free time and love antiquated Microsoft operating systems? You might want to give this guy a call. Youtube user TheRasteri (Andrew Tait) posted a 10 minute video of his Windows OS experiment. Using VMWare, this video tracks the installation of DOS 5.0 to Windows 1.0, and then every additional upgrade.

Amidst the craziness that was the iPad 2 announcement yesterday, Nintendo's exciting news about their own portable device may have been obscured. President of Nintendo Saturo Iwata took the stage at the San Francisco 25th annual Game Developers Conference yesteday to deliver a keynote in which he spoke about the history of Nintendo and his own career.

Earlier on today I stopped by the BitFenix headquarters here in Taipei and spoke with product manager David about the Taiwanese company's new range of mid-range computer cases that are due to go on sale midway through April in the United States and Europe.

Shinobi is the name and there are two versions: the standard Shinobi coming in at $59 USD and the Shinobi Window coming in at $69 USD. You would be mistaken in thinking that the only difference between the two is that one has a side window and the other one doesn't. While that is partly true, the window version is actually more expensive since it also includes a well designed tool-free design for the hard drives and optical drives.

These cases are made of a nice soft rubbery material that is easy on the eye and feels great. The design is simple with no fancy lights or anything like that, but still manages to maintain a good level of style. Internally most of the important chassis design points can be ticked off with good color coding, impressive cable management, a CPU cut out for easily changing coolers without the need of having to remove the motherboard and more.

In the video above David gives us a good introduction to both cases.

It looks as though Microsoft might be cutting the SideWinder range of products off, reports from VR-Zone are saying that Microsoft plan to discontinue the SideWinder Range which consists of four mice (X3, X5 and X8) and two keyboards (X4 and X6).

Microsoft discontinued the SideWinder range back in 2003 but bought it back in 2007 hoping to establish a name for itself amongst the gamers. Apparently none of the SideWinder products ever really took hold of the gamers and with serious competition from Razer, Logitech and SteelSeries, Microsoft look to be bowing out of the race.

Even though there's no USB Port, iPad 2 still got some pretty cool accessories today at the unveiling.

As you can see from the video, this cover is all magnets and intelligence. The cover, made of microfiber, attaches magnetically to the side of the iPad. It's unique design allows the user to fold it into two different stand positions, and it's quite lightweight as well.

Not only does using the cover clean your iPad screen, it automatically puts the device to sleep, too- which will of course reawaken when you fold back the cover. Pretty darn nifty- and it's available in polyurethane (bright colors) or leather (earthtones), albeit at a moderate price tag of $39 and $69, respectively.

Apple, famous for the restrictiveness of its post-pc devices finally gives us more than, well, an Apple cable.

According to the twitter-stream-throttling hashtag #ipad2, everyone is talking about Apple's newest post-PC product release, announced today at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Despite rumors of his failing health, a very chipper-looking Steve Jobs showed up to deliver the keynote presentation, which in true Apple style rolled out all of the next-gen iPad's newest features, many of which confirmed previous rumors and speculations about the device.

For those of you old enough to remember Flashback, this news might come as a surprise to you. France-based VectorCell is the work of Paul Cuisset of "Moto Racer" and "Flashback" fame. They have a new title in the works dubbed, Amy.

The world of "Amy" takes place in December 2034, when global warming has taken its toll on human life with the spread of disease and the occurrence of natural disasters. The game is set in the small Midwestern town of Silver City where players take on the role of Lana, who wakes up in the aftermath of a meteor strike.

WOW. That's all you'll say when you see the video below. This is where the teaser footage came from, but it full gameplay footage. The one thing in this video that brings a tear to my eye? A guy gets shot and from the your point of view, you walk up and pick up him to drag him to safety... this is where a WASD graphic comes up, telling you to press "S" (which is obviously, reverse/backwards).

Compared to the disappointing Crysis 2 PC demo, this looks absolutely, hands-down, new-pair-of-jocks worthy of your money. The video shows off the insane character models and movement animation, environmental and lighting detail (smoke and debris fly when bullets hit walls). I've been really pushing Battlefield 3 to crazy levels of anticipation, but believe me, I'll be taking the day off work when this puppy comes out.

Crytek and EA launched the Crysis 2 multiplayer demo yesterday and after playing it, I found myself quite under-enthused. It was okay graphically, but there are only a few drop down menus for graphics, no way near the customizability of the first. There's barely any destruction (which was a big feature of the first game) and no sound through my USB-powered Logitech G35's.

Motion blur is too annoying in the sequel, and it is only DirectX 9. News is leaking that the full game will ship with DirectX 9 only and DirectX 11 support will be added later through a patch. This is a very big blow as CEO Cevat Yerli has put his name on the line saying this will still be a huge hit on the PC and they have spent considerable time on PC making sure PC fans are not disappointed.