Dolby Axon Will Change the Way We Yell at Gamers Online

Xbox Live may have brought in–game voice communication to the masses but voice chatting with your friends and opponents during a deathmatch or raid isn't anything new for PC Gamers. Some of the most popular VOIP solutions for PC gamers are Ventrilo and Teamspeak, programs you've undoubtedly heard of if you've ever needed to speak with a fellow gamer online while using a computer. Other lesser known options are Skype, which is popular for smaller and more personal discussions, and Mumble, which uses a more up-to-date codec and minimizes latency. Both of which have been steadily gaining headway in the VOIP scene. However, a few people are catching on to this new kid on the block known as Dolby Axon, which promises to revolutionize the way we talk to and interact with each other in-game.

With this new technology your voice is intended to be integrated into the game itself rather than being simply played over the top of it like with most contemporary voice communication software. For example, as your teammates move around you so will the direction their voices come from. If there is a teammate directly to your right calling out enemy fire ahead, you will hear your teammates voice to your right without any distortion to the in-game gunfire coming directly in front of you. In addition, in-game obstacles like walls and buildings will muffle and drown out the voices of your teammates. Dolby also has some innovative ideas with the technology including spy microphones, the ability to hear through walls, throwing your voice, and more.

Right now the technology is confirmed to ship with Jumpgate Evolution, an online space combat simulator, and Mission Against Terror, an online FPS title. Dolby is also hoping that console game developers will embrace the technology, which would allow console gamers to have their voices mapped to the game environment in the same ways its currently being used on the PC. The ability to keenly flow through conversation in a group and knowing where people are by the sound of their voice, coupled with direct sound to game interactions should add much to the game experience. In addition Dolby assures us that any headset and microphone combination will work perfectly with the technology and lower level system owners can breathe a sigh of relief, Dolby has considered you as well.

Read all about Dolby Axon on their site.

Video Gamers aka Dream Controlling Masters

A study suggests that playing video games before bedtime may give gamers a higher level of awareness and control in their dreams giving them a better chance to have a lucid dream. Lucid dreaming is simply being aware you are dreaming, while dreaming, and being able to influence that dream in one way or another. Lucid dreams usually occur while a person is in the middle of a regular dream and suddenly realizes that he or she is asleep and must be dreaming. The person is then said to become "lucid", and may enter one of many different levels of lucidity. At the lowest level, the dreamer may be dimly aware that he or she is dreaming, but not rationally enough so as to realize that all events, people, or actions in the dream are not real. At the highest level, the dreamer is fully aware that she or he is asleep, and can have complete control over all aspects of the dream.

Gamers and Dreams

While gaming at night might not give you the ability to alternate the reality of your dream worlds in the same fashion as "The Matrix", it could however give your mind an edge when facing nightmares and other mental trauma in the every day world. According to Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada, dreams and video games both represent alternate realities which are commonly used by the mind to mimic threatening situations in a safe environment. In fact, several intriguing parallels between lucid dreamers and video gamers have emerged since Gackenbach began her research on video games and how they affect dreams.

The two groups are both capable of demonstrating high levels of focus and concentration, whether that be through lucid-training activities such as meditation and reality checks, or through hours spent mastering virtual worlds and combating countless enemies. In addition both lucid dreamers and gamers seemed to have better spatial skills and were less prone to motion sickness. These findings encouraged Gackenbach to survey the dreams of both non-gamers and hardcore gamers, beginning with two separate studies published in 2006.

The first study suggested that people who frequently played video games were more likely to report lucid dreams and dream control, or the ability to directly influence their dream environment. A second study attempted to narrow down several uncertainties of the first experiment by examining dreams that participants experienced from the night before and by focusing more intently on the dreams of gamers.

This study found that lucid dreams were common among gamers, but that they never had dream control over anything beyond their dream selves. In other words gamers are greatly capable of controlling their own actions in dreams, but are not very capable of altering their dream environments. The gamers also frequently flipped between a first person view from within their body and a third person view of themselves from the outside. This third person perspective was very rarely described as a calm detachment of somebody simply watching. These are very peculiar qualities in dreams which may stem from constantly watching and controlling the actions of a video-game character.

Viewing the Nightmare World in the Eyes of a Gamer

As mentioned before, dreams mimic threatening situations from real life in the safe environment of the dream world. Such nightmares would help organisms hone their survival skills in a protective environment. To test this theory, Gackenbach conducted a 2008 study with 35 males and 63 females, and assessed the threat levels experienced by the dreamers in their sleeping world. She found that gamers experienced less or even a reversed threat simulation in which the dreamer themselves had become the threatening presence. She also noted less aggression overall towards the dreamer, yet aggression in the gamer towards the dream often culminated in violence not unlike that seen in mature rated video games. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something fun for a gamer.

"What happens with gamers is something inexplicable," Gackenbach explained. "They don't run away, they turn and fight back. They're more aggressive than the norms. If you look at the actual overall amount of aggression, gamers have less aggression in dreams, but when they are aggressive, oh boy, they go off the top."

It appears indeed that video gamers are the undisputed masters of their dreams.

Possible Console Killer Arriving Mid June

Traditional console manufacturers like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo could be endangered by an up and coming online videogame service called OnLive, which promises to shake up the contemporary business model. OnLive, which was started by WebTV founder Steve Perlman and former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey, aims to launch a system over eight years in the works that will digitally distribute AAA games from publishers like Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, and Atari, at virtually the same time as those titles are released into retail. The system is designed to allow players to stream on-demand games at high frame rates and experience zero lag while on any Mac or PC regardless of how powerful, as long as they have the needed internet connection speed.

Rather than having consumers download the games directly, OnLive will host them all and stream them from a series of the high-end servers across the United States. Users will only need to download a 1 MB plug-in to have access. "The really hard problem," said Perlman "is how to get this to work reliably over consumer connections. [There are] packet drops, packets reordered, and other people using the connection." So, he explained, OnLive solves this issue by building error correction and error concealment directly into the data compression. "We don't have time to ask for a new packet, if the packet is lost or corrupted...We have to deal with what's coming in right then."

However, many have already criticized whether such a system can successfully operate under real-life conditions. The most obvious issue at hand is what if users are too far away from OnLive's servers? There would be no possible way that the performance would be as good as advertised. Perlman countered stating that the service is intended to work at full capacity as long as the customer is no more than 1,000 miles from a data center. And with data centers located in the San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Dallas, OnLive hopes to alleviate that particular problem. In addition the company will need to have a significant budget for infrastructure upgrades if OnLive hopes to keep its servers up to the task of handling an increasing amount of subscribers as well next generation games.

Of course, if performance degrades due to distance, incoming traffic, or hardware, OnLive's potential user base will be much smaller than what is needed to seriously challenge the console maker giants, or any other company that looks to deliver quality games over the internet. The upside of this infrastructure model, Perlman said, is that OnLive is somewhat future-proof, meaning that players won't have to upgrade anything. Instead, the upgrades will happen on their end, with the company regularly boosting the performance of their servers it uses to host and stream these games. This means that users will be able keep on playing games on their system years into the future.

OnLive is expected to launch June 17, 2010 with partners like EA, Ubisoft, and 2K Games but is quite tentative about which games ill be available. OnLive said that they will officially announce the list of launch titles before E3, but also let leak that "anticipated" games include Borderlands, Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect 2, Assassin's Creed II, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Metro 2033. The company also said that for their $14.95 a month fee, users will get a constantly expanding library of games and, in addition, the first 25,000 "qualified" gamers to sign up for the service will have this fee waived for the first three months. Right now, eyes are on OnLive to see if they will revolutionize the game industry.

Tritton AX Pro Gaming Headphones - 5.1 Surround Sound

So I'm currently in the market for some new gaming headphones and particularly those that employ surround sound as well as have a great sound quality. I've noticed many popular gaming headphones currently on the market claim surround sound but only use two speakers. After some looking around I've come across the Tritton AX Pro Gaming Headphones which employ Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound through the use of 8 different speakers, 4 in each earpiece.

From the look of the Tritton AX Pro Headphones Package Contents, they don't seem very travel friendly but I have no qualms with that seeing as a LAN environment are always extremely noisy and my current headphones will suffice. The fact that each earpiece needs its own power adapter and connects to a audio decoder box seems to indicate the quality of sound that I should expect from these headphones. I've also read that each audio channel is customizable so I can custom set the volume of my game as well as my ventrilo as well as set which speakers they come out of. I'll probably be ordering these within the few coming weeks and Ill post back again with my review of these headphones.

Holiday Gaming Gifts - 15 Great Games from Fall 2008

While trying to come up with ideas for a Christmas gift for my younger brother and sister, I came across an article titled The 15 Coolest Games of Fall 2008. I was already thinking of purchasing them some type of game as they own a Nintendo Wii and an Xbox 360, but couldn't think of something they would want that was recently released.

This is a great article for those like me who are looking for a new game to get as a gift but aren't sure where to look. The article gives a short synopsis of each game and gives a short opinion from two people who have played the game. Personally I think Mirrors Edge looks pretty cool and I'm sure the new Guitar Hero game would keep both of my younger siblings happy and occupied.

Call of Duty: World at War - Pleasantly Surprised

If you have read any of my previous posts concerning CoD5, you would know that I was not looking forward to CoD5 at all, and that I absolutely despised the way the beta played and felt. However, despite all the negative rep I had been giving the game, yesterday I decided to go out and pick it up anyway. Even if the multiplayer gameplay didn't change, I had always enjoyed the singleplayer missions in the CoD franchise and I had a few online friends who would be picking up the game as well.

To say the least, I was pleasantly surprised. No I didn't play the actual online versus multiplayer (and I doubt my opinion will change on that), but I did play the Co-op campaign mode and the zombie mode. I feel like my $60 was justified simply from playing these two modes with a few of my online buddies. The zombie mode was a blast with trying different strategies for surviving longer and there were some intense moments when we were getting swarmed. The Co-op singleplayer was also fun and none of the three other people I played with had yet tried the co-op. As expected from a Call of Duty series, there were some awesome cutscenes, insane fights, and lots of "wow" moments. The experience was even better when you're on vent talking with some of your buddies and it adds an element of team work not yet experienced in any of the previous Call of Duty series.

All in all, I'm glad I decided to purchase the game and it was the most fun I had in awhile. Games where meant to be played with other people and hope to see more of the co-op style campaign mode in future games.

Projectors For Gaming Enthusiasts

Many Gamers who are looking to optimize their playing experience are beginning to purchase projectors for their gaming systems. This makes perfect sense for gamers because projectors provide a high definition, high resolution, and eye catching display. With the ability of both PC's and consoles to play high definition content such as DVD's and Blu Ray's, a projector designed for gaming would be excellent for doubling as a home theater system and serving your gaming needs. Surprisingly, projector response times are great and video delay is commonly not a problem with users reporting little to no negative effects in their gameplay.

See here for more information about Gaming Projectors.

Can E3 Pick Itself Up for Next Years Event

To recap, E3 drew more than 80,000 attendees in 2006, but big companies complained their costs were skyrocketing. The Entertainment Software Association, which sponsors the show, shifted the 2007 E3 event to Santa Monica and carved back attendance to 5,000, mostly journalists, in order to cover up some of the costs. This year, the show was held in the cavernous Los Angeles Convention Center, but the attendance did not resemble the 2006 showing at all. Instead only a mere 5,000 showed up to what had hoped to be the biggest gaming convention of 2008.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter comments on how E3 is "headed for extinction, unless the publishers and console manufacturers wake up to the fact that nobody cares about the show anymore."

"The show was small in scope, and the spectacle of E3 is dead. The Los Angeles Convention Center concourse was as quiet as a college library during summer, with little to attract media attention. The main game display area was similar in size to a school cafeteria (as compared to filling the entire convention center), and the "fireworks effect" of past shows was reserved for the evening parties."

"The lack of a spectacle will likely keep media away in the future, the lack of surprises will keep retailers away, and the lack of interaction with management will likely keep investors away. Without these three constituencies, the show will likely lose its relevance. We strongly believe that E3 should be held no later than early June (when companies can meet with investors and when some “secrets” have yet to be revealed), and believe that the spectacle should be restored by increasing the size of the show space."

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.

GeForce 9800 GX2 Released

The long awaited 9800 series has finally arrived and it looks to be the fastest card available on the market, but at a price. Right now you can own the card for $599.99 + S&H, but what does price matter when your system will be able to play the latest games at maxed out settings on 1900 * 1200 resolution without skipping a beat.

This card excels at high resolutions and it is a big improvement from the 8800 series. But for those of you who run 20 inches or less, you may be somewhat disappointed as the improvements aren't as noticeable. All in all this card will have your rig easily set for the next year or so without the need for an upgrade, and as new drivers come out the card can do nothing but get better.

Here is some consolidated information about the GeForce 9800 GX2 for those that wish to learn more.

Call of Duty 4 - First Strike Xfire Event

Xfire is hosting the first officially sponsored Call of Duty 4 Tournament Called First Strike. This is a free tournament opened to all North American players and is scheduled for November 15-21.
I will personally be competing in this tournament with Team 50 Calibre and hope to go far in the tournament.

The prizes include a Voodoo Omen Gaming PC (priced at $7,400) for 1st place and a XFX NVIDIA Video Cards (specs TBA) for 2nd place. A Professional Series Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty will be rewarded to 3rd place and Fatal1ty Gaming Headset will be rewarded to 4th place respectively.

This is good news for the Call of Duty 4 competitive scene as it shows a bright future for the game seeing as it has been sponsored by Xfire within the first week of release.

Soldier of Fortune 3

Recently announced is the game Soldier of Fortune: Payback, which is supposed to be the third game in the Soldier of Fortune series. However the game isn't being designed by Raven Software, who made the Soldier of Fortune and Soldier of Fortune 2: Double Helix. Rather picking up where they left off is Cauldron, who is designing and producing Solder of Fortune: Payback.

For me this leaves some speculation, I loved the first two games made by RavenSoft and hope that Cauldron can make this third game as enjoyable as the first and second. I will be buying the game and I hope to see great things from it. For me what will make or break the game will be the multiplayer, coming from SoF2, which i feel had the greatest multiplayer in any FPS genre so far, I hope to see some of the things that made the Double Helix so great.

A Trailer for Soldier of Fortune: Payback can be seen HERE

Bioshock

I have just finished playing the newly released game Bioshock. While i enjoyed the game i cant help but feel disappointed. I remember System Shock 2 being such a great game and was looking forward to the same feel from Bioshock. Unfortunately it didn't happen. The game felt to easy and at times the story line didn't make sense to me. The cartoonish looks of the game also did not appeal to me. It also got a little old for me killing the same monsters over and over again. I didn't even use some of the weapons like the grenade launcher because i kept saving it for something harder to kill. The boss at the end was a joke and both endings were awful. While the game was fun to play it didnt' live up to my expectations.

The CTF Incursion

After the end of season 5 CAL CTF I have decided to partner with Max Reiger and Curtis Laboiteaux to help design and produce a Call of Duty 2 frag video. The movie will be called The CTF Incursion: It Stops Here. The directing and editing will be done by myself and Max Reiger, with graphics by Curtis. We have decided to make this movie to try and promote the CTF community, which is largely ignored and frowned upon. We are hoping that with the production of a high end movie, it will attract more players to the gametype.

Call of Duty 2 Competitive Gaming Dead?

I have been playing call of duty 2 competitively since the game was released. With season 5 of CAL about to be finished, it seems that there is no longer the same hype about teams and matches as there was during seasons 1, 2, and 3. I used to join irc scorebots, watch shoutcasts, look forward to reading predictions about the teams. Now however it seems that all this has been lost or diluted. With the coming of Call of Duty 4 being released in November, there is just 1 season left of cal before the game dies and the community splits. What will this last season hold in store, will there be new surprises in the form of new teams or will this community continue to be dominated by the same 3-4 teams. I don't see it changing much but hopefully with cod4 coming out all this will change.