i3Dm

Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO

Dylan — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:03:22 +0000

Goodness straight from Bioware Austin - a Star Wars MMO like it’s meant to be. Definitely looking forward to this one. GameTrailers has a video (and an older one).

Playstation Home doesn’t feel like it

Dylan — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:48:27 +0000

After waiting for a long time, last December I finally got a Playstation 3. My first next-gen experience was the new Prince of Persia, which was pretty decent (looked amazing, played ok). The second game I played on the PS3 was Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, which I absolutely loved. I checked out Little Big Planet too, but I must say I was a bit disappointed. More on all three titles later.

What I was really looking forward to though was Home, Sony’s online virtual world for gamers. It was delayed several times, but in the end it went into Open Beta. After a number of days (weeks?) of refusing to fire up at all, it finally allowed me to log on. Must say from what I’ve seen so far I’m not impressed, unfortunately.

While it looks bloody amazing, the whole experience is handicapped because of one major flaw - there’s no point in Home whatsoever. Sure, you can create your avatar (which looks nice but because of the limited styles available, everybody chooses the same, cookie cutter appearances). Sure, you can walk around beautiful scenery, but so far, that’s it, really. The areas are ridiculously small and take ridiculously long to load. The interface has been designed by programmers, I’m sure, as the functionality is all there, but accessibility comes second it seems. Despite all these challenges Sony still managed to make people spend lots of cash on virtual items. Wow.

Yesterday I stumbled on an article on BusinessWeek, which might provide an answer as to why one of the world’s biggest media companies is having trouble with engagement and usability - they let a real architect design the place.

Metal Gear Solid 4 behind the scenes

Dylan — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:25:18 +0000

A fantastic look at the development including a lot of images. Check it out over at the SoftImage website (there are a couple other cool stories on there too).

Tesla - Mad scientist extraodinair?

Dylan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:29:20 +0000

Just stumbled upon this page about Nikola Tesla. Fascinating to read about people that had such an impact on our every day lives. Without Tesla, there would be no electricity as we know and use it, thus no computers, thus no video games or virtual worlds. From the text linked above, it would appear he was quite the character as well.

Tesla was also featured in the awesome movie, The Prestige, played by none other than Mr. David Bowie. If you haven’t seen that one, go check it out.

Tombraider Underworld - 3D models

Dylan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:45:24 +0000

CGTalk.com continues to host fantastic work by great artists. Now up are 3D models for the recently released Wii and PS2 versions of ‘Tombraider Underworld’. Check out these threads by Jonathan Rush and Aaron Cross.

Flying car!

Dylan — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:42:13 +0000

Times Online has an article on what seems to be (or become) one of the first feasible flying cars. The transformation process seems a bit simplistic (and where’s the sound effect?), though both ‘alt-modes’ appear decent. I’m sure that when a couple have been sold, the design will be adapted into countless cooler forms.

Check Terrafugia for more information!

Triage Trainer

Dylan — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:38:37 +0000

Serious Games Source has a nice story on Triage Trainer.

“Triage Trainer places trainees at the scene of a city block ravaged by the detonation of an explosive device. Players must search for survivors and determine medical treatment priority based upon the severity of the victims’ injuries.”

It looks great, be sure to check out the demo video on the TruSim website. Also, on the technology page a number of awesome clips show the power of their engine.

History of the Internet

Dylan — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:19:42 +0000

Very cool animation explaining (part of) the history of the Internet. Always great to learn more about such important subjects in our lives. And the graphic style is quite nice too, including the credits at the end.