Little Things

We have a 4 year old.

Being the youngest, he learns a lot from his older siblings.

We, as responsible parents, try to limit, or at least filter, the “things” he picks up on.

But still, there are times when I have to look at him and be amazed at how he figured certain things out.

Like the other day he wanted to play star wars on the Xbox, (yes the old version) but still a whole lot of fun to play.


This 4 year old of mine has learned some key strategic tactics.

Like the value of height in the playing/battle field.

Line of sight.

Hiding (out of the Line of sight).

And camping . . . (that little bugger)


It also amazes me how a 4 year old can often beat his dad at a stupid video game.

I think I have to teach him one more tactic.

Letting the other guy win.

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E3

As some people out there know, E3 stands for the video entertainment industry showcase; Electronic Entertainment Expo. Gaming is one of those things that I wish I had more time and money to do. I am a big fan with a small wallet and little free time. But some day, one day....

Also.

As some may or may not know, I am a big Brian May and Queen fan.

So naturally I was surfing my semi usual internet haunts and came across this on the BrianMay.com site. It is the presentation for Sony at E3 and features a great Queen sound mix and some great video clips of games.

The entire clip is about 117 minutes long but the intro is the most exciting part, ;-) and only lasts a couple or three minutes long and is totally cool.

Oh, and of course one can always invest in this industry through shares of GameStop (GME) and or Sony (SNE). See, I can tie this into stocks and investing after all :-)



If the embed part does not work you can see it and other intros (Microsoft and Nintendo) HERE.

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D.C. invaded by insect aliens

Having commuted into DC more than a few times, I know how frustrating it can be.

Well, now you have your chance for revenge!

This is really cool because it has the DC area metro system detailed pretty well.

Your commute will never be the same again!!!

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Are you better than a 2nd Grader?

Me? Apparently not.

You see, I can predict my finish.
Either I finish 2nd, 4th or dead last.
Actually 4th and dead last have a lot in common. It means I screwed up on the last lap and crashed!
Dead last only means that I did it more than once.

And I have never won a race against him or the computer.

Makes me wish I still had some dirt bikes available and race him on the real thing.
Then again, I'd probably loose that one too.
At least I recover more quickly from the crashes on the video game...

So, I think I will keep practicing until I can win. Not against the computer, but against my way too smug 8 year old...

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I've met Defeat!

Last week I was in one of multiple business meetings and during one of the breaks got into talking with a guy who runs one of our service desks.

It seems he is really into gaming, I believe he mentioned this to me at one point in the distant past; but what I failed to realize then was that he is also part of a group who actually render the scenes and action in some of these games.

The one game he has done perhaps the most work with is Day of Defeat. So I took a look at some of his in progress stuff and was impressed. Enough so that I also went out to the site to see some more. It seems to be one of these multi role playing games on the Internet and is based on the VALVE half-life engine.














Really cool!

It's amazing the things you learn about in meetings now-a-days.

Maybe one day I'll actually pony up the money to play MRPG's.

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Online Games, On Demand...

Just to prove how diversified, popular, dynamic and in demand video gaming is; we have yet another startup company which, if they can make it work, is really cool.

From http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Game-Over-for-Game-portfolio-14731001.html...

After seven years of development, a startup called OnLive announced today that they have a model which will make video game consoles obsolete and cut into retail sales of videogames on disk.

OnLive will offer high-end video games such as Burnout Paradise City on demand over the internet. The games will run on OnLive's servers in five data centers across the U.S. Gamers won't download the games—they'll connect via the Net to OnLive servers and play the games remotely.

The system works similar to streaming video. But video games are a harder challenge. Games need to react instantly when the gamer pushes a button—if a high-end game has more than about a tenth of a second of latency, the gamer will notice.

Making latency disappear—so the games feel as if they're being played on a console right in front of you—over the balky public internet "is the hard problem that took seven years," says OnLive founder Steve Perlman, who previously co-founded WebTV and helped create QuickTime while at Apple.

Gamers will no longer need a console or a super-fast PC to play even the most graphics-intensive games. Gamers playing OnLive on a computer will have to download a small bit of software to plug into their browsers. For TV, OnLive will send customers an adapter the size of a deck of cards. Plug a broadband internet connection into one end, the TV into the other, and controllers into ports on the adapter.

An added bonus: Since the games are running on a remote server, a game could be started on a PC and picked up later on a TV.

"The functionality was great," says Michael Pachter, research analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, who tested OnLive. "Response times were very fast, and I didn't perceive a quality difference between OnLive and console games."

OnLive debuted in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Major game producers—including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, and Atari—are announcing they'll make their games available on OnLive. Activision has not yet said whether it will be on OnLive. Games for Nintendo's Wii, most of which are produced by Nintendo, "will probably be the last ones on OnLive," Perlman says.

The service won't be available until later this year. Pricing also hasn't been determined. OnLive will probably charge a monthly fee; games could be rented for a few days, or bought for unlimited use. OnLive says it might offer new kinds of package deals. One idea: Let gamers buy a subscription to get an updated version of Madden NFL every football season.

OnLive's backers include Time Warner through its Warner Bros. unit and the software company Autodesk. It's been secretly operating inside Rearden, a technology incubator that also started Mova CONTOUR, maker of the image capture technology used in the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

OnLive could have the kind of impact on the videogame industry that iTunes had on music, cutting out the need for a physical disk and a device to play it on. That could especially hurt Sony, which is struggling to make its Playstation 3 take off. "Most gamers have a console already, so the effect won't be big right away," Perlman says. "Come the next generation, that's when you might see a big shift."

A lot will depend on how OnLive prices the service. "If the consumer feels that the cost of the service is greater than the cost of a console, it is unlikely that the consumer will buy into OnLive's model," Pachter says. "If (the subscription) is free, it's likely that a lot of consumers will buy in."

Another potential impact: the used-game market. Games played on OnLive over the internet can't be re-sold at stores like GameStop.

All in all, OnLive should help game producers make bigger profits by ending the need to manufacture physical disks and cutting back on used-game sales.
Copyright © 2008 Portfolio.com. All rights reserved

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Top Fun

Ok, this may seem to be a bit OT for my blog, but bear with me and you'll see...

There is a company headquartered here in Norther VA that does satellite imagery. I know many folks in this company, have worked for some of them in the past, and even invested in the company from time to time.

That company is GEOEYE. Their primary customer, as you might guess, is various government organizations. Their work plays into other sectors as well such as Google earth/maps and various GPS companies.

But, what really caught my eye and is the inspiration for this post is the following article.

It ties together a bunch of stuff that is really cool and interesting - at least to me.

Video Gaming, Photography, Folks I know (who help put this stuff to market), Aerospace Industry, and yes stocks.





Now, I have not purchased a video game in a long time, mainly because I do not have the time to play them enough to be really good.

See, if I am going to do something for fun and entertainment, I either like this activity to require little effort and be relaxing, or challenging, fun and give me a sense of accomplishemt.

Video games can be challenging, but if I end up stinking at it and not doing well...








Well, then I get fustrated and end up not have any fun...

I just end up feeling that I wasted all that time not accomplishing anything; which, definately does not make me feel more relaxed than when I started!

Anyway, here is the article. And maybe I'll buy the game, if for no other reason than to do a fly by over my house....

GeoEye’s satellite data used in UbiSoft’s new Tom Clancy game, H.A.W.X

Dean Takahashi February 27th, 2009
GeoEye spent about $100 million sending a satellite into the sky so that you could see realistic ground imagery in a new Tom Clancy air combat game.

Not exactly. But the data from a satellite 423 miles high has been integrated into UbiSoft’s new game, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., a modern jet combat game set above real-world locations (see the trailer here).

The game debuts next week on various game consoles and the PC. The data comes from the GeoEye Ikonos satellite, which can see things on the ground that are just 16 inches long. That data serves as the backdrop for ground maps in the game. UbiSoft’s game developers in Romania integrated the data with their 3-D elevation technology to create accurate terrain maps. They essentially drape the terrain data over a kind of relief map of the globe.

“The whole point is to give the gamer a real sense of authenticity,” said Mark Brender, vice president of communications and marketing at GeoEye. “It does a much better job than a cartoon map of immersing the player in the experience.”

So if you aren’t too busy with a dogfight, you can glance at the ground below to see where you are in the world. Washington, D.C.-based GeoEye is launching a new satellite as early as 2012, but the satellite imagery has been available for commercial use for some time. It’s an example of how technology once available only to government spy agencies has now migrated to the open market.

GeoEye was formed in 2006 when Denver-based Space Imaging and Orb Image Corp. combined. Space Imaging had launched the commercial Ikonos satellite in 1999. In September, the company launched its GeoEye-1 satellite.

The company has 502 employees and reported revenue of $181 million in 2007. The company is profitable and just signed a $12.5 million-per-month contract with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. It also has a contract with Google to supply data for Google Earth. The GeoEye-2 could cost $90 million to $110 million to deploy.

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