Berita Buzz Indonesia

By Jon Fingas


If you were one of the many who funded OUYA and have been sitting on pins and needles waiting for tangible progress updates, you just received them in spades. The fledgling console builder is on track with its Engineering Verification Test phase (you're looking at a board sample here) and should not only deliver the initial developer kits in December, but include a pleasant surprise in the process -- the Android-based platform will be built around Jelly Bean rather than the originally promised Ice Cream Sandwich. Programmers who just have to start right away have likewise been given a head start on hardware expectations. They'll have free rein over as much as a 1080p screen for their free-to-play games, although they'll have to toss aside familiar Android tropes like back and menu keys, notifications and fallbacks for hardware keyboards. The distinctive trackpad is likewise just a single-touch affair. To us, though, knowing that the console is finally taking shape just might be enough to tide us over until the March launch.

Source: Engadget

By Jon Fingas


While we can't say that extra-dedicated gamers are tripping over themselves to buy the offline-only Wii Mini, we've got good news for those who weren't looking forward to waiting until December 7th to buy a second system for the kids or parties. Walmart Canada tells us Nintendo's $100 console is cleared to go on sale as of Friday, a week ahead of schedule; our local stores haven't yet received stock, but it's early enough that we're not raising alarm bells. We've asked Nintendo about other retailers and will let you know if additional retail chains get the green (or rather, black and red) light.

Source: Engadget

By Julian Horsey


To celebrate the 40th birthday of Pong, one of the earliest arcade video games ever created. Atari has created a modded Xbox 360 which is equipped with a LCD screen and been custom styled to look like the original Atari 2600 games console.

The original Atari 2600 game console was released back in October 1977 by Atari and used microprocessor-based hardware and ROM cartridges containing the games code, rather than using non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with games code built in.

Atari has also launched a new Pong game for iOS which is now available to download for free from the Apple iTunes App Store. “Pong World introduces a new generation to the classic game of PONG with a dazzling unique twist and colorful new look,”

To enter into the draw for the custom Pong Xbox 360 console, jump over to the Atari Facebook page to signup.

“We were impressed with the creativity and original vision of indie developers in the PONG contest, and the grand prize winner receives full honors as the marquee release for the title’s 40 year anniversary,” said Giancarlo Mori, EVP Product Development, Atari. “Pong World is an excellent tribute to one of our company’s legacy titles, giving players a fresh new look and the classic gameplay they know and love.”

Source: Geeky-gadgets

By Roland Hutchinson


We have been hearing rumors that Microsoft would launch their new Xbox 720 console some time in either 2013 or 2014, and now according to a recent report by Bloomberg, the Xbox 720 will launch before the end of next year.

Microsoft are expected to launch the Xbox 720 in time for the 2013 holiday shopping season, which could mean we could see the device available around Thanksgiving time in the US next year.

According to the report, Microsoft has yet to decide whether they will unveil their Xbox 720 console at E3 in June of next year, they may decide to host their own launch event for the console at a later date.

The new Xbox 720 is expected to be extremely popular, Microsoft’s existing Xbox 360 console which originally launched six years ago has sold over 57 million consoles around the world since it was first introduced.

Source: Geeky-gadgets

By Julian Horsey


If you were out and about looking for a bargain Black Friday you might have contributed to the sales of the top console manufactures, with Sony announcing that it sold a massive 525,000 PS3 console on Black Friday.

In comparison Microsoft sold 750,000 Xbox 360s, Nintendo 400,000 Wii Us, 300,000 Wiis, 275,000 DSs, and 250,000 3DSs.

Sony PS Vita consoles sales were not as strong as the competition, but Sony explained that its $199 PS Vita bundles that were packaged with either Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation, Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified, or Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes sold out at retail, with the PS Vita Assassin’s Creed bundle selling out in under five hours via Amazon.

“We’re very pleased with the Black Friday sales results, especially the incredible reception for the PS3 and PS Vita bundles,” said SCEA president and CEO, Jack Tretton. “The demand was very strong which quickly depleted our inventory across retailers nationwide.”

Sony also announced that outside of its retail sales, its PlayStation Plus subscriptions increased by 259 percent since the same time last year.

Source: Geeky-gadgets

Dead Rising

Ah, the Xbox 360, the granddaddy of this console generation. Microsoft’s second home video console has a slew of excellent titles in its library, both disc-based and digital, that have thrilled gamers since 2005. This X-List highlights the ten best games in the Xbox 360′s catalog, spanning traditional titles and motion-enabled Kinect offerings. If you haven’t delved into Xbox 360 gaming, consider the games presented here your collection’s building blocks.

Dead Rising lets you live out the classic George A Romero zed film Dawn of the Dead in video game form. Gamers play as photojournalist Frank West who snoops around a quarantined shopping mall, but unbeknownst to him, there’s a zombie outbreak. With the helicopter he rode in on being the only way out, West investigates the reason behind the horror and tries to survive for 72 hours until his ride comes back to get him. You defend West from the undead and the psychotic in this open-world survival horror action title using every piece of environment available. Factor in the RPG-like leveling system (in which you increase your speed and strength, and learn hands-free techniques) and Dead Rising becomes an absolute Xbox 360 must-buy for zombie game fans.

The story follows a 1,000-year old immortal amnesic solider named Kaim who meets a cast of characters who set forth on an odyssey to find out about themselves and their destinies. This gem is highly underrated despite it being a RPG from Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the legendary Final Fantasy series. Turn-based battles feature a timed button queue for melee attacks to increase the amount of damage dealt. With up to five characters participating in battles at once, there’s a full opportunity to experiment with teams of mostly Black Magic users (elemental attacks and negative status effects), Spirit Magic (stat changes status, ailments and non-elemental attacks), or heavy physical hitters with some White Magic (offering health and protection to the party) users. Lost Odyssey, featuring an awesome leveling up system, customization and dynamic story, has the greatness of any Final Fantasy installment.

Gears of War 3 is one of the most satisfying games I’ve ever played. Besides closing the chapter on Delta Squad and the Locust/Lambent threat, there are numerous modes on that single disc to keep you entertained long after the main campaign’s completed. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself a bit. The story begins with the military COG’s dismantled and the remaining soldiers scattered as there’s no home to go to after the human stronghold’s destroyed. Each of the spiritually broken Delta crew members attempt to find their own peace as the story progresses. The ending is satisfying (save a few unanswered questions), the four player co-op in campaign mode delivers on all points, and Versus Mode is quite polished. There’s even a Beast Mode where you get to become the enemy sort of like Left 4 Dead, where you become a Locust or Lambent. This Gears of War installment is easily the best of the three, and even rivals the god-like Halo franchise in terms of shooting action.

I’m not much of a Halo fan outside of the series’ multiplayer modes. That isn’t because I thought they were bad; I, frankly, didn’t dig the story. Halo: Reach, on the other hand, is a story without Master Chief and set before Halo: Combat Evolved. You’re a member of “Noble Team,” a Spartans special ops unit on a mission to gather information about the Covenant. The multiplayer is top-notch as always, but this time around, you aren’t as super powered as you are in previous installments. You don’t fully heal as time progresses, which makes brazen gunslinging a foolish endeavor. The standout mode here is SWAT, a multiplayer setup that sees your warrior equipped with just a battle rifle and pistol (no shields or motion trackers).

This is the game that forever changed the face of war games. Developers went out of their way to produce shooter upon shooter to get a piece of that sweet, sweet genre pie after Modern Warfare‘s release. None of them, however, can live up to the Call of Duty franchise. I chose this one out of the many CoD games released in its wake because it was the first, and to me, the one with the best story. You play as John “Soap” Mactavish who’s tasked with cleaning up a mess of a civil war raging in Russian…see what I did there? The missions and dialog are immersive, especially the “All Ghillied Up” mission (Captain MacMillan, FTW!), which I won’t spoil here. Other than introducing the revolutionary multiplayer aspect of most shooters today, developer Infinity Ward also managed to squeeze in one of the most difficult and self rewarding achievements in Xbox 360 history: Beating the Mile High Club mission on Veteran difficulty. Virtual high-five if you did it.

Half-Life 2, Half- Life 2 Episode One and Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 all ported and bundled together for your gaming pleasure? Yes! Gordon Freeman’s thrilling FPS adventure continues in Half Life 2, and also in Episode One and Two. Portal is a story-driven puzzle game set within Half-Life‘s universe. Combine those titles with Team Fortress 2, one of the gods of PC multiplayer gaming, and you have a near-perfect package. All of these games, from developer Valve, are top-tier and must-plays if you call yourself a gamer.

 

Fable 2 takes place in the fictional land of Albion, five hundred years after the original Fable. This time around, however, you can select a male or female gender, get married, or pick which sex you want to make naughty time with! This console exclusive title features interactive cutscenes that you use to mold your character as good or evil, and a doggie as a companion that assists in missons. It’s also one of the most gorgeous games on the platform.

Dance Central 2 is the only game I know where you could shake your ass to both a Lady Gaga and Mary J. Blige song. As it’s a Harmonix game, you basically play it like Rock Band, but you use your body instead of plastic guitars and drums. Basically the players perform on-screen dance moves, which the Kinect tracks and scores. The more accurately the player executes the move, the more points s/he racks up. Multiplayer, a drop in/drop out system, and voice control means that you can party hard with your friends and look foolish while doing it.

Mass Effect 2 is one of the greatest games ever made. Everything you love about the original is greatly improved upon, while everything you hate is repaired or scrapped completely. The story drives the game, your choices drive the story, and the earth-shattering obstacles and amazingly fleshed out characters drive your choices. You play as Commander Shepard, a military solider from Earth out to stop an alien race called the Reapers from re-emerging and destroying galactic civilization. If you played the first Mass Effect, the actions you took will follow you in part two; even the most minuscule bit from the original may play a big role this time around. A game has never made me feel as connected to fictional characters quite like this one. Don’t let the Mass Effect 3 controversy keep you from experiencing this amazing title and series. Action RPG’s don’t come better than this, folks.

An underwater utopia set in the ’60s that’s beaten down by politics, drugs, and alcohol. Citizens turned psychopaths by a revolutionary product made for society’s betterment. A leader whose vision of a better place than America becomes as corrupt as the people he sought to escape. Bioshock is easily one of the most memorable games to appear this console generation. The quick rundown: Your character survives a plane crash and finds shelter in an underwater city called Rapture. There, you meet a man named Atlas who’s looking to escape the hell this paradise has become. Bioshock, between the frightful environmental designs and the timeless ’50s and ’60s music that’s more creepy than joyous in the game’s context, is an audio-visual beast. Morality comes into play, and I absolutely refuse to spoil any of it here. All you need to know is this: Play this game now.

Source: 2R-X

Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensor brought affordable controller-less motion input to game consoles. However, the resolution on offer does limit the level of body motion that can be detected and used in a game. If you want better detection you need more sensors, and a demo using the Unreal Engine has shown just how good full-body motion sensing can be with the right kit.

At the Institute of Navigation (ION) GNSS 2012 conference held last month a system was setup that allowed for full-body, real-time motion tracking of a person walking around a room and doing a range of actions. The system relied on the use of 17 YEI 3-Space Wireless Sensors attached to the body and 3 3-Space Wireless Dongles.

The information gathered from tracking those sensors was fed into Epic’s Unreal Engine and applied to a character mesh that copied the actions. As this was all happening in real-time, the on-screen character mimicked the actions almost perfectly, suggesting such a system could work in-game as a control solution.

The tracking system uses YEI’s miniature, high precision sensors coupled with an attitude and heading reference system. Each sensor includes a triaxial gyroscope, accelerometer, and compass sensor, along with on-board “Kalman filtering algorithms” allowing for both position and orientation to be assessed precisely.

As you’d expect, such a system doesn’t come cheap with the sensors ranging in price from $99 to $299 each, and the dongles costing $89. If you want the VR headset too, that’s an additional $4,000. Even so, prices will always come down over time and this level of motion tracking would be very useful in both first-person shooters and third-person action games..

The other question to ask here is: even if the price of such a system came down to a consumer-friendly level, would you be willing to wear 17 sensors every time you wanted to play? I think if the game became much more immersive and offered you a serious work out through playing, most gamers wouldn’t mind as long as they had the space to move around and play effectively..

Source: Geek

Gaming system showing airflow and thermal simulation results using Autodesk Simulation CFD. Image: Autodesk

To remain competitive, manufacturing companies need to understand how their product designs will perform before those products exist in the real world. Without this critical insight, customers are faced with potential product failures and liabilities that can have a significant impact on their businesses.

For example, when early versions of the game console Xbox overheated and then stopped functioning, Microsoft extended warranties to restore customer faith in the product, a sensible investment as the Xbox went on to become one of the best-selling consumer products of all time. However, not many other companies could afford to do the same. Most products made, marketed, and sold with design faults become nothing more than costly—or even dangerous—mistakes.

Computers have been used to carry out physics-based simulations to predict the performance of a product for more than 40 years. Yet during this time, simulation has generally been seen as complex, expensive work for experts. Only very large companies could afford to hire full-time simulation specialists to develop methods to apply to their particular products.

There have been attempts to introduce simulation to non-experts. But computer-aided design (CAD) operators are not typically trained to calculate the engineering evaluations involved, and the tools were only able to carry out simple linear analyses on single components.

At different times in the product lifecycle, the needs of the designer, engineer, or analyst are very different. The historical answer to this challenge was to take an analyst-level solution and to simplify it for use in different situations and by different people—a solution that has never worked and has solidified the perception that simulation requires extensive, specialized knowledge and training in order to use it effectively.

Consequently, simulation experts rejected them as over-simplified and their view was backed by the fact that sometimes, parts verified by these tools failed the final validation tests. There were examples of success, but only for those organizations that were prepared to invest in training, standardizing processes, and generally working hard to force the technology to fit their needs.

The integration of intelligent 3D modeling technology with multiphysics simulation makes simulation-driven design early in a product development process a reality. This can have an enormous impact on product cost, quality, and development time. And the power of simulation is the ability to make a better decision earlier in the design process. This design process can be used in mechanical, injection molding, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

Perkins Specialized Transportation Contracting, Northfield, Minn. , a provider of highway transportation services for long, heavy, and oversized objects, used simulation software for the custom design of a 400-ft-long truck to transport nuclear generators. The simulation software enabled Perkins to perform motion analysis and check for interferences through a full range of motion as the various axles turned and rotated. It also helped the company optimize its designs, ensuring the transporter had only the support beams necessary to successfully distribute weight among the various axles.

Articulinx, a Cupertino, Calif.-based medical device company that develops implants for osteoarthritis patients, used cloud-based simulation software to assess the unique material properties required in creating a new type of implant. The company ran multiple simulation computations in parallel, and enabled designers to optimize injection molds to reduce or eliminate design changes.

Daktronics, a New York-based supplier of electronic scoreboards, digital billboards, and large-screen video displays, used simulation software to make certain that its displays withstand all types of weather, dissipate heat generated by light-emitting diode components, and are readable even when facing bright sunlight. The software enabled the company to eliminate the time-consuming CFD process to analyze complex product design factors early in the design process and compare benefits and costs for different combinations of components, fans, heat sinks, enclosures, and materials.

An additional factor breaking down the barriers to mass simulation adoption is the cloud. The virtually infinite power of the cloud allows complex engineering tests that were once limited to simulation specialists to be performed by mainstream designers.

Autodesk’s aim is not to dethrone the experts, but rather to democratize the technology, making it available and accessible to more sizes and types of businesses.

Source: Rdmag