Rod White van AGN Hardware heeft een review van de CH Products F16 CombatStick op de net gepoot. Hier hebben we een plaatje van deze pretstok, die op de USB bus aangesloten dient te worden:

Als we CH Products mogen geloven is dit een exacte replica van de stuurpook in de F16:

The shaft of the stick is a replica of the flight stick found in the cockpit of the F-16 Fighting Falcon USAF military jet fighter, making it an impressive stick to look at, as well as being a well designed stick for combat simulation and flight simulation usage. I've always enjoyed the Combatstick design, as I use a CH Products Force FX stick on a daily basis, which essentially uses the same grip offered by the F-16 Combatstick USB. On the shaft you'll find two four-way hat switches and six buttons at your disposal (which includes the trigger). All of the buttons and hat switches couldn't be laid out more perfectly than they are already. A pinky button can be found right where your pinky finger rests, a thumb button for launching missiles and switching weapons is in perfect reach, and the remaining buttons and hat switches are all easily accessible without putting a strain on your hand or fingers during the heat of battle when reaching for them.

Gamespot UK heeft een preview gepost van Force Commander, een 3 dimensionaal real-time strategy spel gebaseerd op het Star Wars universum:

From a technical standpoint Force Commander is impressive. The game doesn't just display a lot of polygons - it moves a huge number of large and small Star Wars vehicles all over your screen simultaneously. And unlike Homeworld or other highly anticipated 3D games that take place in airless space, it has to deal with rolling and broken terrain. Thus, in addition to the ice world of Hoth, you'll battle over vast plains, dense jungles, majestic mountains, and deserts.

The Tech Zone heeft een review gepost van de AMK-0334, een kast die is voorzien van een extra intake en outtake fan. Leuk voor overklokkers:

So how does this case perform? Great! Temp wise it only ran 2F hotter than the Project 620 case, which has allot more fans. With the Project 620 system inside the AMK-0334, the case temp never once went over 84F, even after 2 hours of Unreal loops and Prime 95 torture test. Then I turn off those fans and watch the temperature sky rocket to over 100F! Needless to say, I turn those fans back on real quick.

Uiteraard kun je zoiets met enig geknutsel ook eigenhandig in elkaar sleutelen.

GA-Source heeft een verzameling vieze plaatjes gepost van Nell McAndrews - voormalig Lara Croft model - in de Playboy. Hier heb je een paar fotootjes van haar (toen ze haar broekie nog aan had):

Voor het geval je nu zo snel mogelijk richting GA-Source wilt klikken om de plaatjes te zien: dat kan niet meer, want GA-Source heeft ze weggehaalt. Op dat moment had ik echter nog een windowtje met de pagina open staan en natuurlijk ben ik even zo vriendelijk geweest om daar een screenshot van te maken . En voor het geval je je nu afvraagt waarom Fempie het vredige familie karakter van Tweakers.net zo wreed zit te verstoren: dit is games nieuws .

AMD is voorlopig niet van plan de prijzen van de Athlon omlaag te gooien, nu Intel de prijs van z'n PIII-600 naar beneden heeft bijgesteld. Hier heb je de details van The Register:

A senior executive at AMD Europe said today that speculation Intel is cutting its prices would not alter its position its Athlon K7 pricing.

[...] Robert Stead, European marketing director at AMD, said: "Our position is we will offer a good product at a fair price. A fair price is determined by infrastructure costs and the competitive position."

But, he added: "Clearly we need to run a business and have customers."

But Joe D'Elia, senior microprocessor analyst at Dataquest Europe, said: "Certainly, if I were Intel, I wouldn't take prices down proactively but wait to see what the position on the Athlon is.

"Intel might want to do that anyway if its Pentium III yields are ahead of what it thought it could do."

Bij Sports Gaming Network vind je een zoveelste review van NFS4: High Stakes. Hier een stukje over de gameplay:

If there are two things that you can usually count on in an EA game, it's over-achievement in the graphics department, and under-achievement in gameplay. This was certainly true of last year's Hot Pursuit version of the NFS series. Does High Stakes follow in the same EA tradition? Well, yes and no.

High Stakes is quite a bit more entertaining than last year's version. A lot of this is because of the damage model. Gone are the days of bouncing off a guardrail as the fastest way around a corner. That will slow you down and damage your car now. So you have to drive more realistically. The career mode also encourages careful driving because you have to pay for car repairs out of your winnings. And since you also pay for new cars and performance upgrades, you don't want to waste any money.

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WickedPC heeft een review van de Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 90e op hun site gesmeten. Dit is een 19" die toch niet zo lomp en zwaar is dan de meeste andere 19" modellen. In het artikel zijn zat plaatjes opgenomen dus spring naar de review!

Size of the monitor is a big deal. Remember lugging a 100lb monitor up stairs for a LAN party? This is a thing of the past. The Mitsubishi 90e weighs a measly 54lbs. Its weight is quite acceptable, but the size is what really gets us. It has to be the smallest "back of the monitor" we've seen. Usually the tube that is behind where you see the picture sticks out quite far and deep. The Mitsubishi 90e's only pops out about 15-16" to the back, making it sit farther back on the desk and having more room for Pepsi, mice and keyboards.

Firingsquad heeft een artikeltje geschreven over de ontwikkelingen die we in de toekomst op het gebied van 3D accelerators mogen verwachten. Eén van die nieuwe ontwikkelingen is geometry acceleration, een feature die aanwezig zal zijn in o.a. de nVidia NV10, S3 GX4 en 3dfx Voodoo4:

Long-since applied to professional workstation graphics accelerators, moving transformation and lighting operations onto dedicated circuitry can free the CPU from any 3D chores, and potentially provide an insane boost in speed.

One big effect of geometry acceleration is the difference (or lack of difference) on lower-end PCs. Potentially, if you've got a P2-266 and a P3-500 side by side, the graphics portion of games such as Quake 2 and Unreal will run at near exactly the same speeds on each of the systems. Unreal might lag slightly due to more sophisticated AI, but you'll no longer need to worry about upgrading the CPU to get more FPS. Yep, this is probably Intel's nightmare as the CPU becomes a non-factor in the specifics of 3D performance.

Of course, tomorrow's games are going to use all of those unclaimed MIPS for more realistic physics engines, non-graphical entities, AI, and the like. The CPU is too great a resource to waste, and you'll see some amazing things as it's unshackled from the weight of 3D processing.

Ace's Hardware heeft een emmer met Athlon vs PIII benchmarks (afkomstig van Hardware-fr.com) op z'n site leeg gekieperd. De Athlon haalt in vrijwel alle benchmarks een hogere performance dan de PIII, meestal rond +15 tot +25%. Zie hier de QuakeII en Half-Life resultaten:

Quake III 1.05	INTEL Pentium III 550	Amd Athlon 600 MHz	Profit / Loss
640*480 16 bits	76,2	91,4	20%
1024*768 16 bits	55,4	57,7	4%

Quake II - Crusher	INTEL Pentium III 550	Amd Athlon 600 MHz	Profit / Loss
640*480 16 bits - Software	21,2	29,3	38%
640*480 16 bits	60,7	76,2	26%
1024*768 16 bits	57,8	66,7	15%

Half Life Cheat	INTEL Pentium III 550	Amd Athlon 600 MHz	Profit / Loss
640*480 16 bits - Direct 3D	44,6	62,8	41%
1024*768 16 bits - Direct 3D	44,2	57,5	30%
640*480 16 bits - OpenGL	57,6	72,2	25%
1024*768 16 bits - OpenGL	56,5	67,7	20%

Check de frontpage van Ace's Hardware voor het overige spul (3DMark, Expendable, Dethkars en een aantal application benchmarks).

Voodoo Extreme heeft een interview met Tim Sweeney online gezet. Interessante stuff:

VoodooExtreme: Ok, the real one, now that you've had a LOT of experience with Direct3D, some with GLide, and with OpenGL, what do you feel are each APIs strong points and weak points? Do you forsee JUST going with Direct3D in the future?

Tim: Glide: Was a good and necessary thing two years ago, before OpenGL and Direct3D performed acceptably. Destined to become obsolete soon. Nobody working on a new engine nowadays is targeting Glide. OpenGL: The cleanest and easiest API to use. Driver quality is worse than for Direct3D, but I see hardware vendors making a serious effort to improve that.

Direct3D: Has the best and fastest hardware drivers available. The API isn't very clean, but I see Microsoft making a serious effort to improve that. The big issues on my radar screen right now are...

Voor die big issues verwijs ik je verder naar de frontpage van Voodoo Extreme.

AVault heeft een interview gepost met Billy Wilson, de man achter Voodoo Extrme:

AVault: Did you ever anticipate VE would grow as big as it has? To what do you attribute this success?

Wilson: A very hard question. It’s done out of fun, and I think readers can see through people that just hop on the “Oh boy, I’m going to start a web site and make money and get free hardware, even though it’s not something I really enjoy doing” bandwagon. People can tell when somebody is enjoying what they are doing, and for the most part, except on some off-days, I really enjoy it, after all this time. I think the other part that has helped is being consistent. No matter how tired I am, how beat I am from Kung Fu, how many ribs I have broken, what painkillers I’m on or anything else, I always try to keep the page updated. Also, having a chronic case of insomnia helps tremendously! And finally, I think keeping it fun helps. I mean, for God’s sake (God, depending on who you are and what you believe), we’re talking about games here, so you shouldn’t sound too professional. We’re not talking about Wall Street.

Een interessant interview voor mede-webmasters en andere lotgenoten. Check 'm hier.

iXBT Labs heeft een artikeltje in elkaar geknalt met speculaties over de zwaar geheimzinnige Elbrus E2K, een in Rusland ontwikkelde processor die naar verwachting drie tot vijf maal de performance van de Intel Merced heeft. Klinkt allemaal iets te lekker!?

Elbrus E2K with EPIC architecture is developed by Russian company Elbrus International (www.elbrus.ru). The project is led by Boris A. Babaian, Associate Member of the Russian Academy of Science. Mass production is planned for 2001 in case the financial basis remains sufficient. We can suppose that E2K prototype will be introduced by the beginning of the year 2000. And it is likely to be manufactured on a mini-plant in Moscow. Now the processor exists only in form of a certain description on a special language called Verilog. This description embodies the final stage of the logical projection, and then the Verilog description will be transferred into the silicon. The system software set for E2K is already completed. It includes the parallelizing compiler and binary x86 code translator. About two years ago Elbrus showed the running of MS Windows 95 and MS FlightSimulator game on Sun workstation with UltraSPARC processor. Elbrus E2K is expected to be much cooler than the American achievements in all respects. The E2K will deliver higher performance with lower power and less silicon. Moreover, the software binary translation provides absolute compatibility with x86 code almost without any performance reduction, which is not much worse than in case of E2K original code. By the way, the programming languages C and C++ with E2K static type are very likely to acquire new peculiar features: hardware supported type dynamics and context protection.

Check iXBT voor het complete verhaaltje.

Anand heeft een review gepost van de AOpen AX6BC Pro, maar zijn zeggen de "absolute best single processor BX motherboard on the market". De plank doet nu ook aan voltage tweaking en beschikt over een flinke kudde busspeeds:

here is no excuse for making a motherboard without a jumperless setup these days, ABIT is no longer the only option for an easy setup. AOpen is no exception, the jumperless CPU configuration of the AX6BC Pro is identical to that of the AX6BC. The available FSB settings on the AX6BC Pro are the 66 / 68 / 75 / 83 100 / 103 / 112 / 117 / 124 / 129 133 / 138 / 143 / 148 / 153 settings that have been present since the AX6BC's release. As far as how useful those overclocked FSB settings are, that is up to you. For most gamers, anything above 124MHz is usually out of the question as the BX chipset is still limited to only the 1:1 and 2:3 AGP clock ratios. Translation? Generally speaking, all FSB speeds greater than 124MHz push most AGP graphics accelerators to the limit as far as their overclocking tolerance levels are concerned. Regardless of whether or not you'll use them, the settings are present for you to play with. Keep in mind that this may result in damage to your graphics accelerator, in the past AnandTech has lost graphics cards while attempting to push the FSB frequency of a system in excess of 150MHz (resulting in an AGP frequency 50% higher than the specification allows for).

Reinder wees me op deze twee errug toffe pics :

Is misschien leuk voor de personen die maar niet los kunnen komen van hun lego steentjes .

GA-Source heeft een review van de Terratec SoundSystem DMX geluidskaart op de site geparkeerd. De DMX is de eerste geluidskaart met zowel een optische als coaxiale S/PDIF uitgang. Verder wordt-ie geleverd met quad speaker support en om de soep helemaal gaar te brengen heeft-ie ook nog eens ondersteuning voor alle populaire 3D Audio API's: DirectSound3D, EAX, A3D en Sensaura!

At present, Sensaura licensees supply over 65 per cent of all soundcard and PC motherboard audio chips worldwide. Sensaura licensees currently include Yamaha, ESS Technology and Cirrus Logic. The MultiDrive is meant for handling 4 speaker sound, and MacroFX does special handling for the sounds of objects as they pass within a certain distance from the user (near-field proximity effects). I had found that the Yamaha Waveforce 192 that I reviewed a while back gave better 2 speaker performance for gaming than the competitive cards due to Sensaura's HRTF (Head Response Transfer Functions). The pity was that with its awesome 2 speaker 3D effects, and spectacular wavetable performance, it still didn't support 4 speakers.

The DMX sounded better than any of the other cards that I have used in a 4 speaker setup for gaming. In the Creative Labs Unreal EAX levels, the DMX is fantastic. The razorjack room makes you want to jump, dodging the flying razors. And one thing that really amazed me was that for the FIRST time, I got some amount of height feeling from the sounds. Not in all areas, or in all games, but in some. In all the games I tested, I was definitely thrilled with its performance. This area brought to light the only downside I really found in my entire DMX testing experience.

James Hills van Gamer's Alliance heeft een editorial in elkaar gedraaid, waarin hij een eind weglult over Linux: "Become a Penguin, Looking out the "Window" at Linux". Hier heppie een stukje:

Having used Windows for many years and virtually every version, I have seen it become more and more bloated, and more and more unstable. The top thing I liked about Linux was that it was much faster than Windows and at the same time was far more stable. Infact, the only time I had Linux crash was when I had a brown-out and the computer got confused somehow. In the time while I was experimenting, I only had one application crash as well, and when this happened it did not hurt the system in the least. I merely shut down the program and logged out but did not have to reboot, as I often have to do when a program crashes in Windows.

I feel that the reason why Linux is so stable and optimized is the Open Source philosophy that surrounds it. Because of this, the system is constantly being improved and optimized unlike Windows which appears to have many bugs in it which continue to exist for years across numerous versions. As long as the two philosophies continue to diverge I feel that Linux will continue to improve while Windows will continue to degrade at its core, only adding new features as we saw with the progression from Windows 95 to 98.

Yamaha heeft een nieuwe geluidskaart aangekondigd met quadspeaker support en een S/PDIF interface, zo lees ik bij THG Technews:

Yamaha has announced its XG-Quad digital sound card, featuring 4-channel sound, with 64 XG voices in hardware. Software providing 256 XG voices is available as an option. The board provides either optical or coax S/PDIF I/O. Retail availability will be announced at a later time.

The new sound card uses Yamaha's YMF744 chip and supports the Environmental Audio Extensions open standard. The signal to noise ration is greater than 90 dB. The card features 4-channel surround sound, S/PDIF output that can send Dolby Digital encoded digital audio data, 3-D sound technology by Sensaura, and full duplex hardware for telephony functions.

Production quantities will become available for OEMs later this month.

Logitech gaat een nieuwe Quickcam Express op de markt zetten, met een prijs onder de 50 dollar:

Logitech has introduced an Internet video camera that breaks the $50 price barrier. The QuickCam Express employs a simple design for both camera and software -- so consumers can send video images and photos over the Internet as easily as they now send text, company officials said. The product will be available in late July.

The integrated hardware and software package is easy to install and use. Users plug in the camera, load the software, and push a button to record a video or snap a photo. Sending video e-mail or a photo over the Internet requires a single click. The seventh generation in the QuickCam line, the product also bundles a copy of Microsoft NetMeeting 2.1.

Minimum system requirements include Windows 95 or 98, a Pentium 200MHz or higher, a USB port, at least 16MB of RAM, at least 50 MB of hard drive space, a CD-ROM drive, a 16-bit color display, Windows-compatible sound card, speakers and a microphone.

Coolinfo weet te vertellen dat Codemasters een patch heeft gereleased voor TOCA2. Schijnt nogal een kewl spel te zijn. Hier heb je de details:

Codemasters has released the version 4.1 patch for their racing title, TOCA2: Touring Cars. The update fixes several gameplay and technical problems within the game. Internet issues have also been fixed which should provide for a much more enjoyable multiplayer experience. The new AI scripting allows gamers to tweak computer controlled driver statistics and track numbers. Directplay version 6.1 is also included in the patch file. The 2.13MB download can be obtained at the Codemasters website. (http://www.codemasters.com/touringcar/TOCA2patch.exe)

Planet Riva heeft een interview gepost met Michael Hara van nVidia. Er zit best wel interessante info tussen, bijv. dit stukje over Transformation & Lighting, een veelbesproken feature van next-generation videokaarten zoals de nVidia NV10 en S3 GX4:

Michael Hara : Just to be clear, we have not yet announced specifically which future products will incorporate Transformation and Lighting. We haven’t announced any new products since the RIVA TNT2, so I can’t make any comments to the product you refer to as “NV10.”

Transformation and Lighting are the first two of the four major steps (triangle setup and rendering being the final two) in the 3D graphics pipeline, or series of steps required to produce 3D graphics. Both steps are mathematically intensive and very specific in the mathematics they require.

The role of the transformation engine is to convert data that is described in World Space coordinates to Eye Space and Screen Space. World Space describes the 3D world, Eye Space describes the lighting and culling, and Screen Space describes the scene in the graphics frame buffer. Since each of these spaces use different coordinate systems, the 3D data must be converted or “transformed” from one space to another as it moves through the 3D pipeline.

The role of the lighting engine is to calculate the direction and distance from lights to objects in the 3D scene as well as the direction and distance from the objects to the viewer’s eye. The lighting engine also separates the distance information from the direction information to simplify future steps in the 3D pipeline.

Dedicated transformation and lighting will have the same impact as filtering did for pixels, but much bigger. Software transformation and lighting done by the host CPU today is the biggest bottleneck that has forced software developers to limit the geometric complexity and lighting sophistication of their 3D characters and environments.

Verder nog wat spul over texture compressing, bump mapping etc. Check 't hier.

Ik kwam op deze wazige japanse site een paar pics tegen van de nieuwe Asus P3B-F (BX plank):

Zo te zien 6 PCI slots, 4xDIMM en er zitten dip switches op. De doos is ook wel interessant:

Hmm, "JumperFree BIOS". De mistige tekst op de wazige japanse site doet vermoeden dat zowel Vcore als Vi/o aanpasbaar zijn. Dit kan een mooi bord voor PIII overclocking worden!

Tim Sweeney heeft op de Unreal Tech Page een update gepost waarin hij wat weglult over de gevolgen van de nieuwe super snelle 3D accelerators en 3D engines voor bedrijven zoals SGI en Intergraph. Videoplankjes van 150 dollar racen inmiddels SGI renderbakken voorbij als het op real-time rendering aan komt. Hetzelfde geldt voor 3D engines, waarbij Tim het voorbeeld noemt van architecten die de Unreal engine gebruiken voor real-time walkthroughs. Hier heb je z'n conclusie (het complete verhaal lees je hier):

The result is that high-volume general-purpose hardware and software is quickly gaining the lead in absolute performance. This trend will only accelerate as the PC market becomes larger and the R&D investments grow. The ramifications are:

Specialized software and hardware loses out to general-purpose. The company that focuses on generality (for example, a CPU, or a 2D+3D graphics accelerator, or a general-purpose game engine) has the expectation of higher sales, and can make so much more of an R&D investment that special-purpose solutions can't compete (for example, 3D-only accelerators, or a once-off engine powering a single game).

Volume and increasing R&D investment enable 3dfx and NVidia to sell millions of $150 graphics cards that outperform SGI's $50,000 solution which sells 1000 units. That has the effect of crushing SGI's business model, even though companies like 3dfx aren't even consciously trying to compete with SGI.

When a company like Epic or id Software builds a 3D engine, we do it with the expectation of it powering games that sell a few million copies, between our games and licensee projects. We make money from each one, and that realization drives investment in making more and better tools. This gives our engines a price, performance, and feature advantage over "in-house" engines made specifically for one game, and over less-capable engines designed for niche markets. We amortize our R&D investment over ~10X more units sold. This licensing model has already proven successful with mainstream game developers, but now it's starting to overflow into non-game markets too. We have this great 3D engine, why not use it for your architectural walkthrough?

As a result of widespread interest, thriving ecosystems develop around successful general-purpose products. For example, there are hundreds of web sites dedicated to 3dfx hardware, and lots of developers optimizing their games for 3dfx. There are many hundreds of web sites covering Unreal and licensee projects; thousands of kickass aspiring level designers building maps and making them available online; many licensees building games; and lots of other cool projects that tie into the engine, such as mods and TC's, and the research projects like Notre Dame. The community has a multiplicative effect on growing the platform.

Where we go from here

When you look at the big picture, what's happening now with 3D graphics on the PC is just the tip of the iceberg. In the past, we've been limited to the realm of hardcore gamers, but now 3D acceleration is becoming much more mainstream, and 3D engines are becoming recognized as a viable development tool for a wide range of projects. The coming years will be interesting.

-Tim

The Register beschikt over wazige info waaruit zou moeten blijken dat de feitelijke verkoop van de Athlon zal beginnen in Japan, halverwege juli:

Once more, and as we predicted a week or so back, the Japanese market will be first off the starting blocks with sales of the AMD K7, now known as the Amazing Athlon.

Thanks to our friends for pointing to the following place where the 500MHz, the 550MHz and the 600MHz parts are already priced up.

According to Daiki, sales will start mid-July...

The parts will cost ¥44,800; ¥69,800 and ¥89,800 respectively. The UK distributor and dealer market is being told early August for real K7 parts.