NVISION 2008 and GeForce LAN

One of the biggest and most anticipated events this summer is the NVISION 2008 event which will feature not only just games but will be a first-ever visual computing mega-event. This even is gathering top visual computing professionals and specialist, professional gamers, product artists and designers, and cutting edge technological developers and researchers. Thousands of engineers, designers, developers, researchers, artists, enthusiasts, gamers, film makers, business professionals, and consumers from around the world are expected to attend and this is a 3 day event that any computer enthusiast doesn't want to miss.

I will personally be in attendance at this event for the GeForce LAN and the 5v5 Call of Duty 4 tournament that will be held. The turnout for this LAN is already looking to be larger than the previous NERV LAN in Pennsylvania which had 26 teams attend. There are already 16 teams confirmed for this event with many more interested in signing up.

Where: San Jose McEnery Convention Center
150 West San Carlos St., San Jose, CA 95113

When: Monday, August 25–Wednesday, August 27, 2008

How much: $50.00 on or Before June 1 (Early Bird Ticket)
$65.00 June 2 through August 27 (Standard Ticket)

Call of Duty 5: World at War

The next installment to the Call of Duty franchise has decided to return to the World War II theme and is taking place in the Pacific theater. Based off of the Call of Duty 4 Engine, World at War looks to keep things fresh by completely redesigning the AI to simulate the Japanese style of warfare as compared to our familiar European style.

"We figured out early that the Imperial Japanese fought in a different way that was full of suspense," creative lead Rich Farrelly tells OXM. "From that point we started to skew the game in that direction."

To boot, Treyarch has had a full extra year in development compared to their last title of COD3, which from many viewpoints felt rushed despite the good reviews it got. Expect a very successful game that will live up to all the previous installments in the franchise.

Frag Dominant Back with New Roster

Due to Alec "s1refrosty" Zurek's return from Australia to the North American CoD4 competitive scene, Frag Dominant has decided to return to Call of Duty 4 to sponsor his newly assembled roster. This roster is comprised of two previous Frag Dominant players, myself and jestlolk, a few players from the old guardians roster and some new faces to the CoD4 scene. We hope to build a solid and stable roster that will be able to compete with the best and are in it for the long run. Check Gotfrag for the full story on this latest roster development.

Current Frag Dominant CoD4 Roster:

Brett "brett" Crick
Alexander "MasterAlex" Solis
Chad "jestlolk" Hansen
Alec "s1refrosty" Zurek
Zach "Holt" Holt
Mark "Benn1tt" Bennitt
Ray "rayZer" Sheehan

Valve: PC Gaming Not Dying

Look anywhere on the net, like here, and you will undoubtedly find people ranting about how PC gaming is dead and that consoles are the future. While it is unfortunate that many developers are making games for console, and then simply porting the game to the PC to make some of the worst PC games possible, there is still hope in PC Gaming with developers like Valve who see value in the community rather than an easy dollar in consoles.

If you look properly you'll find that PC game sales are even, if not bigger, than all of the next-gen consoles. "We sort of laugh at it," says Valve's Doug Lombardi. "Because we've been wildly successful--we're very fortunate, you know. Our games have all done really, really well, Steam has taken off and become this whole other business for us, Valve has never been in better shape--and yet everybody is talking about how in the PC world, the sky is falling."

For me, console gaming will be nothing more than clumsy joystick controls, toned down graphics at 25 frames per second, and 13 year old kids playing Call of Duty 4 on their xbox live screaming at the top of their lungs. These reasons are why I will always stick to PC gaming, and I will consider the console a red headed step child.

PC Gamers Hate Vista

Possibly Vista's biggest selling point to the PC Gaming market is the fact that Vista is the only way for users to get DirectX 10, and to play games in their beautiful DX10 glory. Its abundantly clear that games such as Crysis and many Next-Gen games coming out will benefit from the DX 10 upgrade. However, current statistics show that this graphical upgrade hasn't been enough to shift the PC Gamers towards Vista.

Currently there is no way to play DirectX 10 on Windows XP, and the only way to get the best possible gaming experience would be to upgrade to Vista If you are unfamiliar with the differences between DX9 and DX10, see here for a video comparing the two. However, this difference hasn't been a big enough to push many gamers into upgrading to Vista. The statistics from Valve show that less than 15% of users are using Windows Vista, with over 80% of users running Windows XP.

Another poll shows the exact same information, that many users don't see the need to upgrade to Vista right now. Perhaps once a truly great game comes out that is compatible with DX10, we will see the market shift towards Vista.

CTF Incursion Stream

For those of you who never saw, The CTF Incursion has finally been uploaded by Max Reiger and is now streaming. Both Myself and Max edited and directed this Call of Duty 2 frag movie and made it for the CAL CTF community in hopes that it would draw more attention to the gametype. Unfortunately, CTF was not included in Activisions Latest addition to the Franchise, but instead, made a new gametype called Sabatoge which has about as big of a following as CTF did for CoD2.

For those of you who would like to watch, here is the stream for the CTF Incursion. Hope you enjoy.

Frag Dominant CoD4 Division

The most recent team I have joined for Call of Duty 4 series to finish out the current Cevo-P season and to compete in future LANs is called Frag Dominant. We are currently the #3 seed in the Cevo-P Season 1 playoffs with a recent loss to MoB Gaming placing us in the lower bracket. Our next match is scheduled for April 24th and from the looks of it we will most likely play the winners of EG vs. MoB. This is a relatively new roster and we hope to finish the Cevo-P season strong as well as have a good showing at NERV 2.

Current Roster:

Charly "BUNz" Bun
Ryan "twmbly" Twombley
Casey "CaseMan" Garber
Alex "MasterAlex" Solis
Chad "jestlolk" Hansen