samm

Sounds glorious to me :D I can already see many gamers disappointed with combat (again, after PS:T) however, as the Crises (?) will automatically be fewer and there will be less fighting involved, except for players of really aggressive characters, than in "usual" CRPGs.

I completely understand your perspective and consider it to be very vendor neutral. In fact, I even doubt that there is any reasonable case where an FX will beat an i7. As for ARM taking over by way of mobile devices and servers: Intel is pushing its Atoms into these markets, backed by massive subsidies as usual, so I'm not sure x86 will be out of the picture even in the long run. However, AMD seems to agree with you as that is what their HSA strategy (with ARM and mobile manufacturers on board) and more recently their ambidextrous strategy entails: a standard 64bit ARM for servers as a first try, followed by pin compatible ARM and x86/AMD64 processors, both using GCN for their GPU part, as a second step, and then, if I interpret this correctly, processors allowing for both ISAs. Ok, ahem, and sorry for derailing this thread^^

I share your sentiment. It also causes my inner fanboy to stir... Vishera is still "fast enough", especially outside of games, but fast enough isn't a very compelling selling point sadly, people even prefer Pentiums, i3 and other feature crippled chips thanks to the i7 nimbus. I'm perfectly happy with mine, because in demanding contemporary games it's still my GPU that limits the options, and in older games (which I play most of the time) it does not matter. When programming business applications, the Vishera is somewhere between i5 and i7 territory performance wise, and it behaves more predictable than an i7 (Hyperthreading). So Vishera's performance is not an issue for me personally. While I am a fan of efficient, modern technology, and Vishera's perf / W is not good, when deciding between AMD and Intel, the following arguments are enough for me to prefer the underdog: David vs Goliath, monopoly, business practices and - less and less important at AMD sadly - company principles. An 8 core Excavator on FM2+ I'd prefer over Vishera, it would provide a very solid, modern platform. Oh, and in 20nm pretty please... :/ Regarding the iGPU: The Iris Pro is rare, expensive, and uses brute force over know-how to achieve its performace, made possible thanks to Intel's ever present process node advantage. I'm not convinced it is a real contender to AMD's and nVidia's offerings, seeing Intel's long history of GPU fails. Haswell has the first iGPUs produced by Intel that, apparently, can now play back HD content without sync issues. And maybe, just maybe (haven't tested one yet), they can correctly guess the resolution of displays/projectors connected by VGA now, because Ivy Bridge couldn't: One of the laptops I use at work has an Ivy Bridge i5, and every time I start it up on an external display (because when plug'n'play-ing, chances are 0% of the following happening), it is a gamble whether that slouch will offer the full resolution or even correct screen ratio on the external display. And it can power two monitors at most (internal + 1, or VGA + DP), while my trusty Llano workhorse of the same manufacturer has no problems of driving multiple displays or recognizing a VGA display's properties. So, if Intel's Haswell GPU featureset has indeed reached the two better IHVs, it is a first, and they have years of proving ahead until they can be considered a serious contender in the GPU space, feature- and technologywise.

Bad rap in the intro, but good and highly important content. They're right about the average user however, and this Wheeler guy with his "Open" internet claims will convince some others. It's just another step into an online future that began looking very bleak with everyone on earth being treated as profitable data, more recently a suspect and now soon as member of a social class.

The Jay Leno Fly - I think it's hilarious xD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMg6TiHcAjw#t=16m0s

It's what people at the Codex voted, so "errors" in the list are not easily blamed on a clueless single writer... I am in agreement with the placement of the Fallouts before BG2, but IWD should have ranked higher imho. Glad to see Bloodlines and Arcanum up there Now for some of the reviews *goes off to read*

oh my http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyIrtjNszMg

To our so very western war mongers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdSGCiK2KmA

Banner Saga. Damn hard game, but very pretty Blackguards, also damn hard - stuck in the final few fights, and unable to survive any one of them.... Stick of Truth. Well... okay, at least I can play again if I disable my Antivirus xD FTL. Started playing again with the new enhancement patch, and beat it for the first time with the Kestrel, even though I really disliked that ship :D BF4. Thought I'd give my GPU something to chew at. Really good visuals, but no time to gaze at them due to non stop military BS (as is to be expected in a war game, but still...). Also, I wonder why my character's eyes are prone to excessive lense flares, bokeh and depth of field effects, is he running around with a camera all the time?

The game's name is Pillars of Eternity, it's out of its project phase Also, you might want to get a native English speaker to write your posts / emails regarding localization, otherwise it might cause some doubts regarding your company's abilities to correctly translate English games. That said, it can't hurt to have a text heavy game like this one translated to as many languages as possible to widen the audience. So good luck with your mission, I hope the devs or the publisher will contact you

As they have very specifically not answered this question that came up multiple times now, I'd bet that the soundtrack will not be played by real instruments. Maybe the main theme or something, but certainly not the whole game - otherwise, the process described in this update would not make sense as a whole anyway.

I too hope they take the time to properly smooth the backgrounds, yes. Bad memories regarding lots of jaggies in IWD 2...

True Now I'll have to check if this applies to Mantle as well. I doubt it, since almost all control is on the developers' side with that API, but maybe AA can still be tweaked. I'll report back

The first one was it :D Have to disable FSecure DeepGuard to be able to play. Thank you! Just shows how intrusive a DRM Steam is... *sigh* The list from the second link is funny too - "please uninstall AVG, Nod32, AdAware, SpySweeper, Firewall, etc." xD

Yes it does, just tested on BF 4 DX 11 @Ultra @4xMSAA, see linked screenshots (big PNGs, so mind the loading times). The scene may not be perfect here, and I stupidly left PP-AA on high, but the LOD difference is noticable on the distant palm tree leaves and the fps. A restart of the game was necessary however, Alt-tabbing to Windows and changing the setting in the driver did nothing. 4x MSAA 4x MSAA --> SSAA

Merlkir: Changing the password worked fine for me. Maybe some problem with unexpected characters? Web devs seem to often use regular expressions to check password validity and forget to include Umlauts, space, or other such things, so that might cause the error. Or maybe you forgot to type in your old password as well? Completely disagree. There was nothing subtle (only attempts to sound so) about Zur's tracks, everything was *in your face* and I really thought it was one of the worst parts of IWD2. Otoh, I found the game tedious all in all, so its music fits in that regard...

I have the P182 as well, upgraded cooling in various ways, and wanted to change that now, after about 10 years or so^^ for a newer case with more room: I am planning to build a water cooled system in the long run. So I had a look at multiple big towers, and actually none of the inspected ones (Nanoxia DS 5, Fractal Design R2 XL, and NZXT H630) felt remotely as good - the material choices of the Antec case really are superb, despite its plastic flaws. Soo... if that is anything to go by, I'd recommend the P280 or the Nanoxia DS 1, but both are not high air flow cases.

Good article and interestingly varied piece, thank you for sharing The music sounds not very theme-y to me, and will be good for setting a mood while running in the background. However... is it youtube or does the sound library, even if it uses up 32GB, reproduce string is this distracting quality? If that is how it will sound in game, I'll have to turn down the volume to match it to the ambient sound, otherwise the strings will catch my ears as sounding "wrong" :/ [edit] Why did I write this big oO *changes font options*

Updated the game today and now face the same issue. I let Steam check the game files' integrity, which resulted in "everything ok", restarted Steam, all to no avail. Would be nice to know how to fix this issue and be able to play again

Regarding the driver, this is still possible like in the olden days on AMD cards at least. You can leave everything on "use application settings" but select Supersampling for AA method, and now whenever a game asks for Multisampling, what you actually get is Supersampling

This is not quite true. While forcing AA via driver is unreliable for DX9 games, it is plain impossible for anything using something > DX9, independent of whether you use a modern graphics card or an older one. Similarly to "trick" a game using MSAA to use SSAA instead, which can still be done for some games >DX9 as far as I know - all of this is not a problem of modern graphics cards, but of modern game programming. So: Yes, I do hope the devs will include some form of AA (best suited probably MSAA + some form of transparency AA, because we don't want to blur the background, but smooth the characters' polygons and leaf textures etc). If by "fancy AMD/nVidia proprietary anti-aliasing" you mean their post processing excuses to blur the image while not doing anything against aliasing (FXAA and MLAA, i.e. destroying information instead of adding information to smooth jagged polygon edges), or the dirty glasses effect that is TXAA: Please dear devs don't add that^^

"Why you shouldn't worry about ..." ? Can't be good article then, because "cui bono" is always the first and most important question when thinking/talking about big business decisions. They would have to, literally, change the games to be a good experience on Oculus. There's a good intro from Luckey from the Steam Developer Days, called something like "how to port your games to the VR". Hm, I concur that the described scenario how FB could make money of this deal is a likely one. Wasn't on my mind at first, but it does make a lot of sense, given how current web advertising metrics work. Also, his point is mine too: What was a very inspiring, open and competent technology Start Up is now bought by one of the dullest, untrustworthy and technologically as well as ethically questionable technology... using firms. I'm also a bit disappointed that Carmack has not jumped ship (yet), but even tweeted about setting up an FB account instead of his other communication channels.

Hey, is that Rosbjerg on the second portrait?

So far, the Rift was always a technology preview, not a design piece. Morpheus on the other hand works the other way around, design first, function barely good enough. Depends on everyone's priorities to decide which one suits the needs.

Oculus acquired by Facebook for 2 billion. Please let this be a hoax... oh please... [edit]Otoh, Obs also worked on that ridiculously simple TB "RPG" Stick of Truth and now on a Free to Play *redacted* Tank *redacted* Online *redacted* game. So it shouldn't surprise me that business just has nothing to do with sympathy or principles. It shouldn't, but it still does *sigh*