IGN’s COD fan explains his fear of flying while showing you how to kick some FPS ass.
From: http://feeds.ign.com/~r/ign/pc-videos/~3/poELcAaSi0Y/black-ops-ii-bobbya1984-on-a-plane
Tag Archives: FPS
Review: Unigine's Valley benchmark gives you room to roam
Unigine’s gift with benchmarks has always been the deft, artful touch they lend to their number-gobbling glitter engines. From the candlelit crypts in 2007’s Sanctuary to the blue skies of 2011’s Heaven, they have a long history of serving up the stats with an extra helping of eye candy. With their latest benchmark, Valley, the new twist is size and plenty of it. Think Skyrim meets granola bar commercial, and you’re starting to get the picture. They’ve squeezed a national park into this one.
Heaven fans will feel right at home, as the interface remains unchanged in Valley. Startup presents an attractive options window that offers language selection and visual effects customization. DirectX 9 and 11 APIs are supported, along with OpenGL. Screenshots are saved via hotkey. Most startup options are also available inside the application via a row of buttons along the top of the screen.
The Valley benchmark itself consists of 18 different scripted runs through the environment, from flowerbeds to mountaintops, through rainstorms and dappled sunshine. The depth of focus changes, shadows lengthen, leaves flicker and drops of water splash against the lens of your imaginary camera. It’s all quite beguiling. At the end you’re presented with a raw score and the FPS numbers (avg/min/max). That’s not a lot, but it’s enough to gauge gaming potential in a general fashion.
As in past Unigine offerings, you can also opt out of the canned benchmark runs and explore the environment at will, either gravity-bound on foot or as a floating camera. While this was a fun sideline in Heaven, Valley’s enormous size makes nature hikes through its meticulously designed forests a true holodeck-style pleasure.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
DHS Numbers Don’t Pencil Out
Last fall, Senator Coburn sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security demanding an explanation by the end of November for the agency’s reported purchase of massive quantities of ammunition. Yesterday, Dr. Coburn released correspondence that he finally received from DHS purporting to explain the purchases.
First, here’s what was disclosed by DHS: As of November 2012, it had over 263 million rounds of ammunition on hand. The agency said it was purchasing an additional $37 million of ammunition in this fiscal year, but did not give the actual number of rounds. Using the prior year’s cost per round of approximately 35 cents, it appears that DHS is adding another 105 million rounds on top of the 263 million on hand, minus rounds consumed in training and operations this fiscal year.
Using this 363 million round figure, the agency’s explanation for its large purchases can be assessed. For Immigration (ICE), DHS claims that 1,000 rounds per firearm per year are necessary for training. Assuming training of 250 rounds per quarter, this estimate seems reasonable.
The Federal Protective Service or “FPS” (the agency charged with protecting federal facilities owned or leased by the General Services Administration) also uses “1000 rounds of ammunition per firearm per year for quarterly qualifications and training.” Again, another reasonable number.
Read more at Restoring Liberty. By Joe Miller.
'BioShock: Infinite' Review (part 2)
It?s been slow-going writing part two of my BioShock: Infinite review, and not because the Irrational Games? FPS is complicated. This game has made me want to slow down and savor this experience. At the same time, it also has urged me forward, all the way to the ending?and what an ending. But this is a spoiler-free review, and I?ll save my thoughts for another article. You can read this review safe in the knowledge that you won?t hear about from me. …read more
1.6 Billion Bullets By The DHS Numbers
By Avg Joe
I keep waiting for someone who knows what they are doing to investigate, look at the numbers and do some simple math. Since no one has, here is what I have been able to come up with based on “what has been reported thus far”. Most government contracting includes statements like, up to, which means that they can request more of an item over the period of the contract, but not the full amount if they don’t need that many. Most of the purchases are for a five year period, which means that they are not getting it all right away.
Since 2004, the number of Federal Agents has increased by about 30-40% to somewhere around 120,000 agents employed under about 70 Federal Departments. It is estimated that about 90,000 of these are under DHS. These are Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) and include NOAA, SS, FWP, ICE, FPS, ATF, and just about all the alphabet soup entities of the federal government whose primary purpose is enforcement. It is a lot. However, 1.6 Billion rounds divided by 120,000 agents it is still 13,333 rounds per LEO.
Each LEO has to “qualify” at the range with any weapon that they carry on duty, twice a year. The standard qualification includes various shooting positions, magazine changes, and reloads, and hitting targets at various distances. Standard run of the mill street cops carry a side arm, rifle, and shotgun.
One of the departments that were folded into DHS is the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. It was originally under the Treasury Department. It operates four training centers in the United States and at least two outside. A statement by FLETC is that they use around 15 million rounds a year. This ammo is for all Federal Agents under DHS and the LEOs that work for say, the IRS or Social Security. FLETC also provides training for state and local LEOs that are outside of the aforementioned. It is unclear whether the 15 million rounds per year statement includes all of the training centers, or just the main one, in Georgia, a 1600 acre complex with multiple ranges and even a small town to simulate urban warfare, I mean urban LEO scenarios.
So if each of the FLETC locations uses 15 million rounds a year, which is a stretch, and there are at least six that we know of, a conservative estimate for all training using all three weapons, could be as high as 450 million rounds. That leaves approximately 1.2 billion rounds to be distributed to 120,000 LEOs in the field of operation. Or around 10,000 rounds per LEO.
So how much ammo is distributed to each LEO to carry in the field and how much is kept in reserve at each local office? Well we all know that every LEO in the field already has ammo, and each field office already has a stockpile, what are the additional 10,000 rounds per LEO for? That is an additional 2,000 rounds per year over the five year period.
It is still …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism
A Look at Post-Patch 'Aliens: Colonial Marines'
By Carol Pinchefsky, Contributor
When Aliens: Colonial Marines (A:CM) came out last month, the FPS was lambasted by many critics for glitchy AI and low-fi graphics. I was apparently one of the few who could look past this, because Lance Henriksen and xeno spree killing. Still, I had hopes that the game would be patched, if only because demo footage showed a much better version of the game existed…somewhere. Now it looks like my hopes have been realized: Gearbox has released a patch that’s nearly 4 GB. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Developer Interview
PlayStation Vita is desperate for a quality FPS, and Mercenary may just be it. See what the developers have to say about their game, and what you should look forward to. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN Video Games
Tactical Optics Gameplay Trailer
Learn the best ways to gun down foes from afar in this long-range FPS. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN Video Games
Just How Human is Crysis 3?
Just how human is Crysis 3 going to be? According to various interviews from developer Crytek, this game will attempt to subvert meat-headed norms in first-person-shooters, and aim straight for the player’s emotional reactor core.
But it’s no easy thing to give an FPS real heart.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Map Workshop Now Available
Steam Workshop has officially been added to Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, in the form of a new community Maps Workshop.
Creative, right-brained individuals can now easily become map makers themselves using the CS:GO authoring tools. Valve’s announcement specifically notes that creators don’t need to follow the standard CS formula. Gameplay-affecting changes can be baked into any map, letting players create an FPS experience more to their liking.
Government Lies About So-Called ‘Assault Weapons’
By Avg Joe
Lies and half-truths is all that we seem to be getting from the government these days. The latest lie is that military-style guns have no legitimate purpose in the hands of civilians. Of course the media is in on it. The government can’t really do anything without the media. The media is the machine that carries the lies out to the uneducated masses.
There has been a lot of debate about these weapons and a lot of terms being used, inappropriately, by both sides. So I am not going to go into the detailed operation of each firearm type and the proper nomenclature, except for one. The term “assault weapon” was high jacked by the government and gun control crowd, from the term “assault rifle” which is used to describe a military firearm capable of “selective fire.”
An “assault rifle” is a firearm that could be used in two different ways. It is a combination rifle; one that is suitable for a rifleman or infantry in one mode and also suitable for storming an occupied position where rapid fire of multiple rounds is necessary to subdue the enemy.
Since these terms are very similar, the media gets it wrong most of the time and that is why the government likes it so much. Now that it is an accepted term, to describe any military-looking weapon or “scary” weapons, the gun grabbers are now saying that no one needs these weapons for self-defense, and they are not very good for self-defense, and we should ban them.
If you look at an M16 military assault rifle, there is a three-position switch on the side of the receiver. It has positions for Safe, Semi, and Auto. This is a selective fire weapon. Semi mode is for the rifleman who is picking out targets at range to efficiently fire rounds hitting targets. Auto mode is for assaulting multiple targets that are in close quarters or massed together and laying down suppressive fire. Suppressive fire is just that, keeping the enemy’s heads down by shooting at them so your men can move from one position to another without getting hit. These selective fire weapons are not available to the public without stringent and specific licenses. All civilian models do not have, nor can they be converted without extensive knowledge, to selective fire.
If you have followed the terminology so far, and understand that the combination of an assault weapon or submachine gun was a fully automatic firearm and a rifleman’s rifle was an auto-loading rifle designed for accuracy, together in one firearm coined the term “assault rifle.” The liberals highjacked the “assault weapon” term and are now using it to describe neither of these firearm types.
To further compound the lie, the government does not use any of these terms when procuring weapons for its own use. They are called Personal Defense Weapons or (PDW) which is the term describing a selective fire weapon in a government procurement request. Additionally, “DHS and its components have a requirement for a 5.56x45mm NATO, select-fire firearm suitable for personal defense use in close quarters and/or when maximum concealment is required.”
So the government on one hand is telling us that these weapons are not suitable for personal defense and on the other hand it is saying that they are. By the way they want to buy 7,000 of them for Border patrol, ICE, and FPS agents.
Honey mixed with poison, America: The government is mixing lies and half-truths to disarm Americans.
Star Field Plasma Wallpaper 0.4.2 (Plasmoid Binary)
Star Field Plasma Wallpaper 0.4.2
(Plasmoid Binary)
This plasma wallpaper draws an animated starfield in the background of your
desktop. It was inspired by the star field chrome experiment –
www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/starfield/
INSTALLATION
————
Firstly make sure you have the KDE workspace development files installed. For ubuntu run: sudo apt-get install kdebase-workspace-dev
If the source came in a zip then unzip it first. To install run install.sh:
Open up a terminal, navigate to the the starfield directory which has
install.sh then type:
./install.sh
You may be asked for your root password during installation.
After installing log out and then log back in. Then right click on your
desktop, go to ‘Desktop Settings’. Then in wallpaper type you should see
‘Star Field’.
CONTROLS
——–
– Dragging the starfield with the left mouse button will change it position
– Middle clicking on the wallpaper will pause the animation
– Mouse wheel scrolling will change the perspective of the view.
CPU USAGE
———
This wallpaper can be quite CPU intensive. To reduce the CPU usage you may try
the following:
– Pause the wallpaper. This should make the wallpaper use 0% CPU
– Enable ‘Pause when desktop loses focus’ in the advanced options
– Reduce the frames per second. This is THE main factor in deciding the CPU
usage. 15 FPS gives a somewhat smooth animation.
– Reduce number of stars
– Use a blank background (Leave the background path empty)
– Reduce trail length
– Use a lower quality
– Turn off antialiasing
– Use plasma in raster mode. To do this first quit plasma then restart it with
-graphicssystem raster argument:
For KDE 4.2:
kquitapp plasma
plasma -graphicssystem raster
For KDE 4.3:
kquitapp plasma-desktop
plasma -graphicssystem raster
However be warned that this method has not been thoroughly tested.
NOTE: Star speed does not affect CPU usage.
ENJOY!!
——-
changelog:
+ New features
– Removed features
% Changes
* Bugs fixed
v0.4.2 – 20/01/13
* Made wallpaper work on new versions of KDE
v0.4 – 25/08/09
+ Starfield pauses when a window is maximised on the current desktop
+ Added option to pause starfield when desktop loses focus (off by default)
% Reduce initial settings for lower CPU usage
% Large star size is now slightly smaller
* Stars now move smoother in lower speeds
* Zooming is much smoother now
v0.3.1 – 14/07/09
% Tweaked the UI
* Increasing the number of stars no longer crashes Plasma
v0.3 – 12/07/09
+ Added pause option
+ Added star size option
+ Added foreground option
+ Starfield view can now be dragged to move around
+ Added some tooltips and whatsthis to settings dialogs
% Middle click now pauses instead of resetting view
% Changed the look of the configuration window
% Keep basic settings in main configuration window and move
advanced settings to a seperate dialog
* Some drawing bugs fixed. Other plasmoids no longer corrupt the
starfield drawing.
* Preview screen now works better
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at KDE Apps
Call of Duty Movie? Not So Much
Don’t get your hopes up for a movie based on the Call of Duty games. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said in a recent interview that the company has no interest in adapting their FPS series for the big screen.
According to an article in the New York Times (via /Film), several studios have approached Activision about turning COD into a feature film, but the company has turned down their requests. As Kotick put it, “movies based on video games rarely please devoted fans and could taint the brand.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN Movies
Ace of Spades Review
If Minecraft appeals to my inner child’s desire to create, then Ace of Spades caters to a more specifically boyish urge to run through others’ creations and dash them to pieces. Once upon a time (in the days before Jagex took over the project), Ace of Spades catered to both. My teammates and I would dig tunnels that’d put ant colonies to shame and we’d erect fortresses with all the zeal of Minnesota schoolchildren building snow castles. And then the enemy would come, and we’d snipe from behind our blocky barricades and take part in a Team Fortress 2-inspired style of FPS combat that felt refreshingly new. It’s a different game now, though, and the Minecraft elements assume a much lesser role than the shooter mechanics. The gameplay now moves along at a faster pace as a result, yes, but at what cost?
Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN Video Games
Modern Combat 4 Review
With Modern Comnat 4, Gameloft continues to push mobile gaming to new visual heights. The studio 4 has taken full advantage of the power of modern tablets like the 3rd and 4th-gen iPad to introduce flashy new effects like motion blur and Havok physics. New particle effects also now punctuate key bullet impacts and explosions.
Unfortunately level and encounter design has failed to keep pace with these visual improvements. Much like the Call of Duty franchise that it apes, Modern Combat 4 can sometimes feel more like soulless and disconnected series of set-piece battles instead of a cohesive FPS experience. The 13-mission, 4-hour campaign feels designed by check-box. Unmanned drone mission? Check. Sniper segment? Check. A contrived occurrence separates you from your squad? Check check check.
Continue reading…
Source: IGN Video Games
Ace of Spades Release Date Announced
Jagex has announced a release date of December 12th for Ace of Spades, its Minecraft-meets-Team-Fortress team shooter.
The game will be released through Steam and will cost you a mere $9.99. We went to see Ace of Spades recently and thought it was very cool indeed: “Taking cues from Minecraft, Ace of Spades thrusts you into a block-based world where everything can be mined, dug out, or built. Only instead of trying to erect that five story wang you always said would be your greatest artistic achievement, here the aim of the game is to obliterate the enemy team through a mix of teamwork, construction, destruction and raw FPS skills.”
Continue reading…
Source: IGN Video Games