Archive for 'Video'

There was never really any doubt the X-Box’s favorite master chief would return in another episode of the Halo series, especially with the cliff hanger we were all left with at the end of Halo 2. Well, avid fans (who haven’t already completed the game) will be please to hear the final chapter in the Halo trilogy continues the story and concludes it brilliantly.

For those who didn’t get caught up in “one of the most popular games in history,” the Halo story centers on the interstellar war between 26th century humanity, led by the United Nations Space Command, and a collection of alien races known as the Covenant.The player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier, as he wages war in defense of humanity, assisted by human Marines as well as allied alien Elites.Following the events of Halo 2 - The Covenant is on its way to Earth, continuing its universal ethnic cleansing and attempting to activate the floating space weapons known as Halos, which could destroy civilization as we know it. The Master Chief and the other Earth forces of the UNSC are in hot pursuit to stop them, with newfound alien allies such as the Arbiter coming along for the ride.

The third and final part of the Halo trilogy was released in September, 2007. During the opening day, over one million people connected to X-Box live to play Halo 3 and by the end of the day, Halo 3 had broken the record for the highest grossing opening day in entertainment history, bringing in $170 million within the first 24 hours. The game then went on the sell over 8.1 million copies by January 2008.

So now this is officially the most popular game to date, let’s take a look at the new features Bungie Studios have added.

Continue reading this article for a review on the game, lots of screenshots and a video review.

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Pioneers in military technology DARPA - The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - have just unveiled a six-wheeled autonomous robot that is capable of maneuvering through ditches, walls, streams and even other vehicles whilst raining down a hail of bullets against its enemies.

The Crusher - developed at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute - weighs nearly 7 tons, has a top speed of about 25 mph and is designed to be totally autonomous; it doesn’t even require a remote driver to control the robot, although this is an option if necessary.

Check out this first video of the Crusher Climbing a 4 foot wall.

The robot is armed with a large caliber gun, long range cameras that can spot enemy targets up to two and half miles away, as well as GPS sensors and internal maps to plot out its route. The Crusher can roll through just about anything that gets in its way, deviating from the most direct route only when faced with obstacles over six feet tall or deep.

Another two videos and more info after the jump

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Point based motion capture has become the industry standard procedure to capture the movements of the human body and convert the data for use in 3D animations. Reflective markers are placed at many points of the body, as the person moves around the data is recorded and can then be transferred to the animation. Both movies and games use this technology to give characters lifelike movements and actions.

However when it comes to realistic facial work, even setups that use of hundreds of reflective dots leave the developers with rough blocky data the requires a lot of post processing.

Enter motion capture company Mova. Mova’s Contour Reality Capture System uses multiple cameras that create 100,000 polygon facial models that are accurate to within one tenth of a millimeter.

Mova founder, also the man behind Apple’s QuickTime and Microsoft’s WebTV, Steve Perlman said,

“This pushes Unreal Engine 3 to its very limit … it’s about as photo-real as you can get in real time.”

Check out the video of the Unreal Engine 3 running real time on a dual NVIDIA 8800 GTXs with SLI.

Perlman says the company has been working privately with developers for some time to adapt the system for video game use.

“People have never had this kind of data available before in a game context … their heads are spinning,” he said. “What you’re seeing right there is the result of, having time to wrap our heads around this thing and see how we’re going to use it, and yes, we can in fact get a face that looks almost photo-real — you know, not quite, but almost photo-real — running in a game engine today.”

“You can see the difference then between what’s achievable in cinema and what’s achievable right now in video games…….But next generation game machines, they’ll be able to essentially show in real time what we can do currently in non-real-time using renderers. … Next generation, you’re going to have interactive sequences where people think there’s a live person in the game.”

The Unreal Engines abilities doesn’t stop there, the contour system can also create even more detailed animations if real time processing is not necessary. Below is another video of how reality capture data can look when pre-rendered.

Perlman says that the cost of a Contour motion-capture session isn’t much higher than traditional marker-based capture session, somewhere in the region of a few thousand to a few hundred thousand depending on the length and complexity of the shot.

The real savings come in post production, Perlman explains,

“Unlike marker-based capture, which has a big manual clean-up process before you see results, with contour it’s purely computational….
“We’ve talked to people and one of the reasons when they announce delays for complex games is because they’re fighting to try and make the faces look good. With Contour, you send the guy in, he does a shoot, and we send you a face that looks nearly perfect. It’s no longer one of the risk issues for your schedule.”

The Contour system generates so much data, Perlman says, that the full value of the rendering won’t be apparent until hardware speeds improve.

“With markers, you kind of get the resolution of what those markers are and that’s it……
“When a next-generation game system comes out, or they decide they want to do something for a feature film, you can’t really use the data. With Contour, it’s actually capturing the data at much higher resolutions than any system in the world, even for feature films, can currently use. What we do is we store that data away … and when a next generation video game machine comes out and they want the data at higher resolution, they can.”

Perlman wouldn’t reveal which companies are currently using this technology, but said he expects the first games with Contour captures could come out in 2008, depending on developer schedules. He hopes the system will be in wide use by 2009.

The Pain Ray or Active Denial System (ADS) is a long standing joint project between the Air Force and the Pentagons Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. The ABS non-lethal weapon consists of a real life ray gun which shoots 95 GHz millimeter waves that penetrate the skin at a 64th of an inch beneath the skin. This causes the water molecules to boil where the nerve receptors are most concentrated and of course, this hurts like hell.

A press release by Sandia National Laboratories explains that when the waves hit,

“[They produce an] intense heating sensation [which] stops only if the individual moves out of the beam’s path or the beam is turned off……..
“The sensation caused by the system has been described by test subjects as feeling like touching a hot frying pan.”

Another Demonstration Video And More Info After The Jump >>>

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MojoPac is great new piece of software which allows you to install anything on a portable USB Mass Storage Device - whether it’s Photoshop or World of Warcraft - then take the drive to a host computer and use the programs on the guest drive.

MojoPac conveniently allows you to switch between the host and guest drive and also keeps practically everything personal including bookmarks, documents, history, etc.

View More MojoPac Demos and Guides >>>

MojoPac makes it possible to:

• Listen to your music library, watch videos and download podcasts from any PC
• Watch downloaded video like movies or TV shows with your media player of choice
• Play PC games such as World of Warcraft, Everquest or Half-Life from any PC and take the game and its current state with you
• Use expensive PC software you have limited licenses for, like Microsoft Office or Photoshop, from any computer
• Surf with your preferred browser, store your passwords and other sensitive data separate from an untrusted host PC
• Backup working copies of your essential software so that if your computer crashes or hard drive fails, you can plug your MojoPac into another PC and have a working environment ready to go

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Battlefield robots have been in use for a while now proving their worth in many situations. But no matter how good they may perform it will never stop researchers looking for new ways to improve the robots for optimal use on the battlefield.

The HARV - Head-Aimed Remote Viewer - is a new development by Chatten Associates which promises to do just that, claiming to improve mission performance by 300% to 400%.Check Out The Video After The Jump

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I’m sure that most of you stationed overseas will have noticed the different techniques other countries have for counting their money. We are not sure about the origin of these differing techniques but we did find a great little video that runs you through each one. They all seem rather practical - some slightly more than others - with the exception of the technique used in Turkmenistan, Kazakistan, Pakistan and some parts of Turkey, what exactly is going on there?

Corner shot is a high-tech weapon support system that provides the ability to observe, acquire and engage targets from “around the corner”.

Designed to enable military, law enforcement and security operators to effectively observe and engage targets without being exposed, Corner Shot consists of a segmented, assault rifle-type folding stock - complete with a high-resolution video camera and color display - onto which a pistol of choice can be attached. A lateral left and right swinging hinge mechanism and a remote trigger control allow the user to squeeze the trigger from behind the safety and comfort of any suitable structure

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Tired of getting out of the lazy boy to change games in your PS2? Well now you might not have to……A new firmware update for Memor32 – the PS2 modchip on a memory card – promises to allow your none chipped Playstation to play an entire library of games direct from the comforts of your own USB hard drive.

A group of Russian hackers named Memento are responsible for the firmware handiwork. The memory card chip mod couldn’t be simpler to use, now all that’s left is to get our hands on one to see how well it actually performs.

For those of you who own an older PS2 (the bulky version), there is another equally simple hack. HD Loader comes in the form of a DVD and can also hack your Playstation without the need for a chip mod. Using the PS2’s 3.5″ IDE slot and a network adapter, simply hook up your hard drive and run HD Loader in PS2.The HD loader has been around for some two years now but it may not have gained great popularity due to reports of compatibility issues; let’s hope the new update from the Russians will run a little smoother.

Benjamin Heckendorn aka Ben Heck is known for modifying gaming consoles into custom laptops, some of his previous creations include various portable Xbox 360’s, a portable Atari 2600, a Commodore 64 laptop and numerous other modified devices. Mr. Heck seems to be at it again with yet another portable Xbox 360 Elite, this time with a Halo 3 theme.

The modded Xbox comes complete with the new 65nm CPU, a 120 GB Elite Hard Drive, HDMI-to-DVI video connection for digital picture, Xbox Live Vision camera and a 17 inch widescreen Gateway LCD with a 1280×720 pixel resolution (this allows a pixel-perfect ratio when using the 720p HDMI connection).

Some more pictures and a video after the jump!

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The Navy is hoping that their latest project, a 10 megajoule railgun, will replace the standard 5-inch guns on most of their ships. Currently in testing phase, this awesome weapon uses a magnetic field to fire projectiles at a speed of approx 5,600 mph. But the Navy is not stopping there; they hope to create a 64 megajoule system capable of shooting at over 13,000 mph and hitting 5 meter targets from 200 nautical miles.

Check out two videos of the Railgun in action after the jump>>

“If you’ve got a little over 10 megajoules as with this demonstration model, you’re looking at 5,600 mph. When the system is completed, it’ll be firing shells with over six times that energy (well over 13,000 mph) using 64 megajoules of energy”

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In the world of custom laptops and PC’s, steampunk specialist Richard R. Nagy aka Datamancer is on a level of his very own…… Know for creating some of the most original steampunk modifications his newest creation, the steampunk laptop is no exception.

Based on a Victorian music box made from brass copper and wood, the design is extremely intricate. Inside the elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents and antiqued copper keyboard and mouse lies a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop. Other features include leather wrist pads, a customized network card, a power on switch that works by winding an antique key and a hidden power down switch.

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With the popularity of last month’s blog post Free Adobe Photoshop Plug-ins and Effects, I wanted to make sure we did a follow up to this.

Now you have the tools to get the job done, but what good are these tools if you don’t know how to use them. We have compiled a list of popular FREE tutorials on how to master Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop is by far the leader in graphic design and photo editing. It is an advance software that has seemingly limitless possibilities. It may be difficult to use at first, but once you start learning you will be able to easily combine, blend, and invent new methods to help capture your photo.

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News of the GoldenEye XBLA being dumped is storming across the internet. Those who thought it was only a rumor that the game was being developed, found out that it existed when it was being halted.

According to 1UP, an XBLA version of Rare’s classic N64 shooter GoldenEye was being ported with the same graphics, sound. It was also noted as having multiplayer over XBLA.

The 2 months before completion project scrap was due to a disagreement between Microsoft and Nintendo on how to split proceeds.

This however does not mean Game Over for GoldenEye XBLA. Social Internet networks are trying to take a stand and complain to get the project started back up.

Here is comparison footage featuring GoldenEye XBLA

Great video that will show you an easy way to make fireballs. Great for parties, raves, and magic tricks.