Rael's Blog

Z800 Joystick Emulator Released

2006-09-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

After what seems like an eternity waiting for Emagin to release a joystick driver or emulator for the Z800, I have decided to release my own joystick emulator.

This builds on the great work done by Deon van der Westhuysen in his PPJoy virtual joystick driver. PPJoy allows you to setup a virtual joystick and then write a piece of code to pass information to this virtual joystick. I have written an interface between the Z800 and the virtual joystick which passes the 6DOF tracker information from the Z800 to the virtual joystick as 3 seperate axis. I have tested this in the Flight Simulator X demo and it seems to work great. There is a little bit of drift, but I am pretty sure this is down to the headset rather than my code. This should work on any game that supports a joystick for 'look around' type control.

Anyway, enough talk. You can download the program from my website by clicking here, and there are some brief instructions on setup. If you find the program useful, or you have some questions or ideas then please drop me a line. This is a first release, I will be doing an update to add some options for reset hotkey and sample rate soon so stay tuned.

Scene Graph and Resource Cache UML Class Design

2006-08-28T14:56:00.000-07:00

I'm getting back into my game programming again, and I have put the code in to attach one mesh to another (sword to hand of character for example). Seems to work great. It was a bit of a grind going over my classes again, so I used visio to create a UML class diagram showing the basic structure of the scene graph and resource classes. Although I am not touting this as the best solution, it seems to work great and may be of help to amateur game programmers.

Below is shown a screenshot from the latest engine. This shot shows how a mesh such as a sword can be attached to the character's hand using the AttachNode object. The AttachNode object takes the AnimatedMesh reference and the name of the bone to attach to.

Resource Cache, Mesh and Animation Updates Complete

2006-02-11T17:48:00.000-08:00

I just finished a major overhaul to the mesh and animation classes for the engine, and also added a resource cache for more efficient memory management. Before I go into the very lengthy discussion of the changes and what’s next on the horizon here is a screenshot from the latest build.

The Geometry class has now gone in favor of a Mesh class which allows for both cached and dynamically created meshes. Vertex and index buffers are created directly in graphics API managed memory which means they no longer have to be copied from another memory area, thus cutting down on the previous duplicate memory usage. Textures are also now loaded directly into graphics API memory which means the previous duplicate memory usage with the concurrently held Image object has now gone.

The ResourceCache class is the manager class for any class derived from the Resource class. The resource cache is used primarily to keep the most frequently used resources in memory and also to allow shared usage of this resource data. The resource cache only manages resource objects that come directly from files. It has to be this way as the resource cache has to be able to dynamically load and unload resources and this can only happen if the resource exists on disk.

Resources represent data that can be shared and does not include any instance-specific information. For example, the vertex and index data of a character mesh is resource data because it doesn’t change between two instances of the same type of character. Information that does change, such as local and world matrices, instance names etc. are not part of the resource information. In the example of a character mesh the MeshResource would contain the resource data, and the Mesh class would contain the matrices, instance name etc. The Mesh class references the MeshResource object via a CacheDesc object, which basically describes where the resource comes from (usually a filename). When the mesh needs to access the MeshResource information it makes a call to the resource cache using the CacheDesc object. The resource cache then looks to see if the object is in memory, if it is then it simply passes a pointer back. If it is not in memory then it loads the resource from the CacheDesc and passes back a pointer.

Classes currently derived from the Resource class include TextureResource, HeightmapResource, AnimationResource and MeshResource. The Mesh and Texture classes also allow creation and saving of dynamically created meshes and textures. In the example of the Mesh object this is done by having a direct pointer to a MeshResource object that is not managed by the resource cache (resource cache only manages file-based resources). On creation of a mesh object you specify if the mesh is coming from a file in which case the CacheDesc property will be used, or if it is dynamic in which case the pointer to the MeshResource object will be used.

As you may have gathered from above, models and animations are now exported as separate files which means you can share animations between models which will help cut down on the memory usage and file sizes as well as making it possible to plug new animations into the engine without having to re-export all the models.

Animations are exported as ‘animation sets’. Each animation set can contain multiple animations denoted by the name, start and end frames of the animation. One or more animation sets are then bound to an AnimatedMesh object during run-time which then copies references to the animations to the available animations for that mesh. Issuing a ‘Play’ call to the AnimatedMesh object then sets a reference to the AnimationSet object which is then used to update the bones matrices each frame. At the moment the vertices are updated from the bone matrix to a dynamic underlying Mesh object that belongs to the AnimatedMesh class which is then rendered when the AnimatedMesh object is rendered. In the future this will be replaced with a vertex shader that will pass the matrix values into shader registers and the bone/weight table in with the vertex data to allow the model to be rendered using the static vertex set that can stay on the video card memory without being altered.

Ok, that was a little more technical than I was planning to get for this blog update, but maybe someone will find this more technical information useful. The long and the short of it is that from a rendering and animation standpoint we are now looking pretty solid design wise. Some of the smaller changes that are more visible include adding some fog for distance rendering and a skybox.

The next big changes in store for the core engine will be the implementation of AABB against static and animated mesh objects, a dynamic quadtree class, attachment tags for meshes, more user interface code, indoor environment rendering and a particle system. Once these are done then the real test will be using all the components to build an actual (be it single player) game.

Outside of and before the engine changes though, I must put a static object manifest and static object placement functionality into the terrain editor. With the already written 3D Studio export scripts this will allow world designers to start putting together environments for testing. On this subject I also had a thought to calculate a shadow map for the terrain based on the light positions and object placement. I am not sure how complex this will be, but I think it will add to the overall aesthetics considerably. Priority-wise this is probably pretty low, and it will probably remain a wish list item for the time being.

Hierarchial Animation Working In Engine

2005-10-13T17:56:00.000-07:00

Great news. I have sucessfully got my hierarchial animation working in my game engine now. It took a while to figure out the nuances of 3D Studio Max's left handed co-ordinate system for my export script, but it's finally working. You can download a video here of it in action. You will need a software DVD video player in order to play the clip. The minataur figure is a 3D Studio sample from the website of the game Neverwinter Nights. I exported it using my Max export script into my engines proprietary format.

The next thing I am going to work on is my GUI library and event model. This will allow me to have menus, dialogs, buttons etc in the game. I will then take my terrain editor and convert it to use this GUI so I can finally get rid of MFC.

Blog Feed Active

2005-10-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

You can now subscribe to an feed of this blog powered by Feedburner. The atom feed is available at http://feeds.feedburner.com/RaelsBlog.

Why not put it on your personalized google home page! ;)

Using 5.1 Audio and a Microphone as a Tracking Device

2005-08-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is just a thought and may be completely unfeasible but I was trying to think the other night how to create a tracking device using regular objects that are low cost and in common use.

I was reading up on how GPS works by sending radio signals from satellites that are sync'd with atomic clocks and then calculating the distance from each satellite by working out how long the signal took to get from the satellite to the receiver thereby allowing the signal to be triangulated. This is an over-simplified view I'm sure, but bear with me.

So, my next thought was... why can't something like this be done for a local setup. Obviously radio waves would travel far too quickly so something slower would be needed, so my first thought was sound.

What if a 5.1 system sent regular high frequency blips from each of it's speakers (each speaker a slightly different frequency) and you used a microphone as a tracker and had software to calculate the relative distance between each of the speakers based on the order and timing of the frequencies on the sampled signal?

I am not a physics or math expert, but I have tried some lamens calculations here. The Soundblaster Audigy can sample at a rate of 96khz. Sounds travels in air at approximately 345 meters per second. Therefore to travel one meter it takes 0.00289 seconds. If 96khz means 96000 samples per second, then that gives a sample every 0.0000104166 seconds. That means a potential 277 samples per meter which could give an accuracy of 0.00361 meters (or 0.3cm). Sounds good. Obviously this is assuming the software could process the signal in realtime. I am assuming some type of Fourier Transform would be needed to split the frequencies back out. I am not sure how quickly that can be done.

Can anyone who knows more about physics than me possibly comment?

HMD Field of View Comparison

2005-07-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

There has been some discussion and confusion over field of view sizes for the Z800 in comparison to other head mounted displays. The fact that the individual manufacturers quote in different sizes does not make this any easier. To help clarify, I have calculated the virtual screen sizes at the same distance based on the published field of view specificiations for the major models. My results are shown below.

Cy-Visor DH4400

31 degree FOV equivalent to 44" at 2m

i-Glasses 3D

26 degree FOV equivalent to 36.4" at 2m

Sony PLM-S700(E)

38 degree FOV equivalent to 54.2" at 2m

Emagin Z800

40 degree FOV equivalent to 57.3" at 2m

Hope this helps!

Updated Z800 Information... Games Testing

2005-07-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

I have had a little while longer to try some games and this so far is my experience. Note that the problems with stereo 3d not working are the fault of the nVidia driver/game compatibility, not a problem with the headset.

Battlefield 2

Finally got this to work in stereo by setting the antialising to 2x. This seems to correct the missing polygon and textures problems. I must say it looks fantastic. Head tracking works great too.

Half Life 2

Stereo 3d looks great in this game and the headtracking works perfectly. Now if I can only find the time to play it over again.

Flight Simulator 2004

Stereo 3d looks amazing in this game, but unfortunately the drivers do not support joystick emulation, so you cannot use the head tracking to look around the cabin in virtual cockpit mode.

UT2004

Cannot get stereo 3d support to work correctly. It switches in, but it doesn't look like proper stereo 3d seperation is occurring. Head tracking works fine though. I will try and keep this post updated as I get time to try more games.

World of Warcraft

Got the stereo 3d effect to work by switching off all shader effects inside the game. The result is absolutely insane. Walking though the gates of Stormwind and looking up at the huge statues in stereo3d with headtracking is just mindblowing.

Live for Speed

This game is simply breathtaking in stereo 3d. I think one of the reasons it looks great is because you are sitting down in a car, so it feels more real as you are sitting down in real life. Head tracking works great, as does the stereo 3d. Add a steering wheel and you really feel part of the action.

Z800 Review

2005-07-23T16:10:00.001-07:00

I just received my Z800 from EMagin this morning via UPS. First thing I noticed is how small the package was, but then they say the best things come in small packages. Opening the box I see everything is neatly packed. The manual, registration and driver disk were inside, and the unit itself was packed inside the supplied carry case as were all the required cables.

First impressions of the unit were how light, yet well constructed it was. The head unit is hardwired into the control box, but the cable is very long (about 10ft) and quite thin. The control box has a USB port (for power and head tracking information), a DC power port (not quite sure what this is for, as it can be powered by USB, but a nice option just in case), an audio input port, a microphone port (not sure what this is for, as the unit has no microphone), a VGA input port (of course!), and a VGA pass-through port.

Setup and driver loading was simple, and the manual supplied though brief is very well written and gets straight to the point. Once the utility and drivers were loaded I connected my secondary display port to the unit, the USB cable into the PC, the pass-though cable to my monitor, and the audio input to the headphone output from my speakers. After configuring the nVidia driver to output on the secondary port, I turned the unit on and it came to life straight away.

First thing I noticed was that the image was a little dim, but a brightness button on the front of the unit that is used to switch between several different levels of brightness soon fixed that right up. Once this was done, the next thing I noticed was that the image was a little distorted. Looking at the optics, the quality seemed a little poorer when compared to the Sony PLM-S700. What I mean by this is that the clarity in the center of the optics is very good, but even just a little from the center there is some distortion of the image. Adjusting the inter-pupilary distance (which is done by just moving each eye’s display individually) helped a lot with this, as did moving the displays physically closer to my eye. Once I had tweaked the brightness and position of the displays the clarity was very good with no individual pixel elements distinguishable as is the case with some LCD head mounted displays. The color reproduction, brightness and contrast are excellent and far surpass any of the LCD units I have seen including the Sony.

The field of view was very good, and seemed a little larger than the Sony unit, and certainly larger than the Cy-Visor. If you have not had any exposure to VR headsets then this is where you really need to have realistic expectations. It’s not going to be like ‘The Lawnmower Man’, and if you are unsure what using one of these displays will be like then I suggest you try one first. It’s really like looking at a large screen in a dark room. I I tend to find the immersion is much better when you use the unit in the dark as you can still see your normal surroundings out of your peripheral vision when the room is not darkened.

After running the utility software the head tracking mouse emulation kicked in. This allows the head tracking to control the mouse, primarily for use in FPS type games where the mouse is used to ‘head look’. The driver software is very well presented and easy to use, and the X and Y sensitivity of the head tracker is individually controllable. The head tracker itself was VERY impressive. It felt very accurate with no discernable drift at all. In fact, I would even go as far as to say it is far superior to the InterTrax2 tracker which I bought a few years ago at the cost of $800 which had considerable drift. The tracking worked great in all the games I tried, which included Battlefield 2, World of Warcraft, Live for Speed and UT2004. Unfortunately a major letdown is that there is no joystick emulation for the head tracking, which means I could not use it with Microsoft Flight Simulator which was really looking forward to. Also, because of the lack of joystick emulation I could not tell if the head-tracker supported roll. Only pitch and yaw can be emulated with a mouse because a mouse only has 2 axis. That being said, software is easily upgradeable and I will take this up further with Emagin. Hopefully they can put it in a later release. Also, it would be nice to have an option in the drivers so that it also emulates the right mouse button being held down while tracking, as some games such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars use this kind of configuration.

Next on my list was to test the stereoscopic ability. I downgraded my nVidia drivers to 71.79 and first tried FS2004. For some reason the glasses seem to take a few seconds to ‘warm up’ to stereoscopic mode. Even on the nVidia test application I couldn’t see the effect for a few seconds but once it kicked in is was simply breathtaking. The only games I have that truly supported the stereoscopic 3d are FS2004 and Live for Speed. Both of which looked simply unbelievable. The image had a fantastic sense of depth with no perceivable flicker or ill effects on the eyes. I had to configure the stereo settings to an almost minimum amount of separation to get the best effect, but it looked SO GOOD! The best game I have tried so far for these glasses is Live for Speed. With the glasses hooked up, head tracking, steering wheel and stereo 3d the game was SO immersive. Being able to look around the car in stereoscopic 3d while driving just blew me away, and took this game to a whole new level. It is the closest feeling I have had to driving without actually being in a car. Playing on this headset, and playing on a monitor is like night and day.

The headphones that come built into the unit are the small ear-bud type. It may just be me, but I couldn’t get these things to stay in my ear to save my life, but then I can’t get regular ear-bud headphones to stay either, so maybe I’m just a freak! The annoying thing was that even though the ear-buds do have a clip to store them in the frame they jumped back out again very easily. I notice though that you can unplug them from the unit, though I still need to figure out how to take them off completely, but I am sure it is possible. I will probably just use my wireless headphones with the Z800, which to be honest have a far superior sound quality anyway.

Overall I must say I am very impressed with the unit. The build quality and display quality is great, and the head tracking surpassed my expectations. If I had any negatives I would have to say that they could do with improving the quality of the optics, if that would be possible without raising the cost. Also joystick emulation support in the driver I would say is key, as many people will want to use this product with Microsoft Flight Simulator. It would also be nice to see an option to emulate the right-mouse button being held down when head-look information is converted to mouse messages.

If you haven’t been exposed to any consumer head mounted displays such as the i-Glasses or the Sony PLM-S700 before, then I would suggest you try the unit out first. At $900 it is not cheap, but then just a few years ago gamers were paying that for an 18" LCD monitor. These glasses undoubtedly represent the state of the art as far as current consumer VR hardware goes, and if you are serious about your simulation and/or gaming then you need these glasses! This could well turn out to be my favorite toy of the year.

$5 Off Any PSP or PS2 Game at Best Buy

2005-07-05T16:58:00.000-07:00

I've had this coupon for some time now. I got it when I was standing in line at Best Buy at Blossom Hill in San Jose to purchase my PSP when they first came out. The guy came round and handed out a bunch of flyers, one of which was a photocopy of a coupon for $5 off any PSP or PS2 game good until the end of the year! The fact that it was a copy made it even better, as I could scan it and re-use it. I have done this a couple of times now and they have never questioned it. Even if they did, there is no way they can tell it is not the original coupon they gave me since it is an exact copy.

This is great, as most games that are $49.99 and $39.99 are usually $10 off at Fry's when they first come out (get a price match at Best Buy if you live close to a Fry's), or they go on sale at Best Buy eventually for $10 off, which means with the coupon you are paying $24.99 and $34.99 for a game, which I think is a pretty damn good deal considering their original sticker price.

Anyway, enough talk. You can download the coupon by right clicking here and selecting 'Save Link As...'. It's a little large, but I kept it that way so it looks like an authentic photo-copy. Enjoy!

Terraformer Taking Shape

2005-07-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

After much work recoding the Windows front end into MFC, the new version of my Terraformer terrain editing tool (for game programming) is coming along nicely. With MFC I have now added a toolbar, a toolbox and two dialog bars contained within a rebar control. This makes most functionality now available in the window frame rather than having to go to the menu all the time. I have also added a perlin noise generator with realtime preview that you can then use as a brush to both textures and height onto your landscape in real-time.

Next step is to tidy the code up and make sure everything is encapsulated properly and then add a few last remaining features for this first version. I will probably revisit the rendering engine and try to add some performance improvements, as it is a little slow with large terrain at the moment, which is why the current demo version only allows a 2x2 tiles of size 32x32.

Anyway, if you would like to download the demo version, you can do so by clicking here. If you have any problems running the program, please let me know as I have not got a machine without a development environment to test the release version. I have also included a demo terrain that I put together in about 2 minutes which you can load from the file menu. I am sure you people out there can come up with much better terrains than the demo one. If you do, please send them to me... I would be really excited to see what other people can build with this tool.

Well, back to work. Enjoy the program!

Harmony H688 Smart Remote Control Review

2005-05-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

These days with so many home audio and video devices, it isn’t long before you find yourself juggling four or five remote controls just to switch the TV on. There are a number of universal remote controls out there now, but you are still essentially controlling all of the devices independently using the one remote control. This is where the Harmony remote control comes in. The harmony remote control is designed to control everything as if it were one device.

So how does it work? The Harmony is not unlike a lot of the existing universal remote controls, but it has a couple of features that set it apart from the rest. First of all you have task buttons. This is the core feature of the Harmony remote control. You tell the remote control, via its setup, what devices you have and how they work. With this information, it then configures the common tasks for the task buttons such as ‘Watch TV’, ‘Listen to Radio’. While this may sound quite straightforward, these tasks can often involve many different operations on many different components. For example ‘Watch TV’. A simple task you may think, but these days it usually involves first switching on your television, selecting the correct video input mode, then switching on your home audio receiver and making the correct selection there, and finally to switch on the cable box and select the right station.

The second feature is of course the LCD screen. This is used for a number of things, but mainly for setting up your own custom tasks, and adding additional buttons that are non-standard. In this mode, the screen acts as dynamic labels for the buttons that lay either side of it. Having custom tasks is great, especially if you have a lot of entertainment devices. For example, I have created tasks for ‘Play X-Box’ and ‘Play PS2’ which in themselves are quite complex as they are also connected to my receiver via a Pelican HD component switcher which allows up to 10 HD devices. The additional buttons also come in handy for my front projector, which has features like ‘auto-align’ and ‘keystone’ which of course would not be practical as hard-labeled buttons.

The software install is very easy, and installs a small program into the taskbar, which is used to synchronize the remote control via the supplied USB cable. The software used to setup the remote control is web-based which is a good move because it means it can easily be upgraded without having to update the software on my computer. The software works very well, and I found it easy to understand. My only two negatives are that it looks a little ugly, and sometimes there are multiple lists of devices that relate to the same physical device. For example for my PS2 there was ‘ps2’, ‘PS2’, ‘Playstation 2’ etc. Synchronizing is pretty quick, and takes just a couple of minutes, though it’s a little annoying because it launches a file that you have to ‘approve’ in your browser security before it will launch the taskbar program to synchronize the remote control. There may be a way to disable this, but I am not sure if that will be possible without disabling automatic execution of all programs from the web (obviously not a good idea!). As a side note, the software worked fine with both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I used Harmony’s technical support a couple of times during setting up my system, and they answered the phone very quickly, and were very helpful on both occasions.

The unit itself feels well made and well balanced when you are holding it. The screen is easy to read and both the screen and the buttons are lit during use. The silver color is also nice, as it blends well with a lot of current consumer devices.

The Harmony remote control is not cheap, with a recommended price of $249, though I picked mine up from Amazon for $159 with free shipping and no tax. Even though the price is high, it’s USB connectivity makes it highly upgradeable and future proof, which means it should be with you for a long time to come regardless of how many times you upgrade your entertainment system. I would definitely recommend the Harmony remote to anyone suffering multiple-remote-control-confusion, or anyone who just wants to get rid of the huge amount of remote controls necessary with modern AV setups.

Dell 2405FPW Review

2005-03-24T10:20:00.000-08:00

Dell delivered my replacement 2405FPW today. The white line pixel problem had actually disappeared on my first monitor when I switched it on the second day, but when a problem has shown itself once, who is to say it would not come back. I feel better knowing I have a new monitor with zero problems from the start.

So, now all the problems are over, how is the 2405FPW? Outstanding!!!

Setting up the monitor was easy. The stand was first out the box and was very sturdy with a nice rubber cable channel at the back. The monitor itself came out next (with VGA cable already attached, which I thought was a bit strange). The monitor hooks into the top part of the stand and snaps into the bottom half. This is a nice design, as there is a release button at the bottom of the monitor, which means it can just pop back off the stand again very easily. The stand also has a height adjustment, which is somehow weighted so the monitor can be raised up and down very easily. When at the top of it’s height setting, the monitor can also be pivoted to give a portrait-style display. Very useful if you are editing lots of documents, I am sure.

Just out of curiosity I first tried the monitor with the VGA cable. It looked very good, but there was a little ghosting. Not unusual for an analog signal at such a high resolution. I immediately switched to DVI and the difference was amazing. The clarity was pixel perfect and the colors were very vivid.

After loading the driver disk (which really didn’t do that much since plug-and-play had already recognized the resolutions of the device), I proceeded to give the first test. Having just purchased the third season of 24 (another Frys bargain at $44), I thought this would be a good start. I loaded up Cyberlink PowerDVD and ran through a couple of episodes. With the 2405FPW's 12ms refresh rate, I saw no visible ghosting on any of the fast action scenes, it looked superb. I then proceeded to try The Incredibles. Coming directly from the digital source, The Incredibles looks fantastic on this screen. If anything the only problem is that having a monitor of this kind of resolution and quality starts to show up the imperfections of DVD MPEG-2 compression more than it does itself. Roll on Blue-Ray.

So, great for DVD’s, but let’s face it the real reason to buy a monitor like this is for hardcore gaming. Next test was World Of Warcraft. Setting the resolution of 1920x1200 was no problem; it was immediately available in the games options. The result was truly outstanding. The vivid colors of Warcraft came through beautifully, and the resolution size and width of the new screen added an amazing amount of immersion to the experience. I immediately used the HUD scaling to shrink the user interface and give me more world viewing area. Even using the UI scaling the interface still looked very sharp. So, last test. Half-Life 2. Again, I loaded the game and the options were immediately available for the new resolution. I have to say that Half-Life 2 on any system is a beautiful game, but seeing it on this monitor just blew me away. The textures on the avatar’s faces, which I think are the most detailed in the game, were unbelievably clear and life-like. During the action scenes again, no visible signs of ghosting and the extra screen size and width added an immense amount of immersion, especially with having virtually no HUD.

Dell has also built a memory card reader and USB hub into this monitor. This I found to be more annoying than useful since every time I turned the monitor on and off from the front it would connect and disconnect all the USB devices attached. I think a better design for this would be to have the front power button just turn off the display and have a rear power button for turning the entire unit including the USB hub off. This is just a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things though.

In addition to the VGA and DVI connectors, the monitor also has connectors for S-Video and composite video input. I haven’t tested these yet, but I will probably give the composite a test with my PS2 when I get it set back up again.

To conclude I would say this was the perfect screen. Clarity, color reproduction and resolution are superb. In true Dell style the build quality is excellent and very well thought out. The size is perfect. In fact, to be honest I have been drooling over the 30” Apple Cinema display lately, but having played on this monitor now I think that 24” is the perfect size. Any larger would be great for TV, but not ideal for desktop gaming as you would have to be moving your head to see the extremes of the display. Moving your head to look at the HUD on the top left corner of the screen would distract from the action of past-paced shooters. At a price point of under $1100 after discount, this monitor blows the competition out the water. I love my 2405FPW, and I think it will be on my desktop for a long time to come.

Dell 2405FPW Blues

2005-03-21T22:29:00.000-08:00

My 2405FPW widescreen flat panel finally arrived today from Dell. This is my first buying experience from Dell and I must say I am NOT impressed!

I ordered my monitor on the 6th March. During my wait for it to arrive I spent some time reading the forums on Anandtech. Fun posts about all the people that ordered their monitor after me and had their monitor in 2-3 days. How long did mine take? Well it just arrived today on the 21st. The product did not even leave Dell until the 11th and then incurred further delays with UPS. I would expect any vendor to ship products out on a first come first serve basis. Anything else is unacceptable.

Nevermind, it's here now. At least it's worth the wait... right? WRONG!

The monitor arrived by UPS. It was well packaged and very easy to assemble. I hooked it up and turned it on, and what did I see? A whole line of static white pixels at the top of the display.

I thought maybe it was some kind of configuration of driver issue, so I tried VGA aswell as DVI. No luck. So I then disconnected all external inputs, and guess what... the line was still there. A manufacturing defect. Does Dell have QA? Do they even test any of their products before they go out the door? I would have to suspect not. I was very disappointed.

So, 20 minutes on hold to Dell and 3 internal transfers later I arrange for a replacement monitor. Fortunately they will pickup and drop-off at the same time so I will not have to be without a monitor, this is one blessing in what seems like a string of disasters.

Come on Dell, get your act together! Products should be shipped out on a first-come-first serve basis. It also wouldn't hurt to turn these things on and even maybe give them a test before you ship them out.

So, my review on the 2405FPW is delayed yet again. I could technically review now, but I feel my mood may negatively influence my review so I will wait for the fully working model. Let's see how quickly then can get a replacement out... maybe they can beat their previous 2 week shipping attempt.

New PC Up and Running

2005-03-16T00:03:00.000-08:00

Well, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting for FedEx and a few trips to Frys, I have just finished putting together my new PC with parts mostly from NewEgg.com. List of parts are...

Intel 915GUX motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 3.6Ghz socket 775 800mhz FSB
BFG GeForce 6800GT OC PCI-X graphics card
Antec P160 super tower case
Antec SP160W side windowed side panel
Antec Neo Power 480w power supply
1GB PQI dual channel DDR2-4200 (3-3-3-8) memory
Western Digital 250GB SATA hard drive
Danger Den TDX Intel 775 water cooling block
2 x Vantec 120mm Stealth Fans

Used some of my existing hardware such as my Pioneer dual layer DVD burner and my water cooling setup comprising of Danger Den Black Ice radiator, a single 5 1/4 bay reservoir, and a DTek Customs CSP750 Mark II pump.

I have to say I was very impressed with the case. I have been a fan of Antec since my last case (the Sonata) was so well put together. This case is no exception and the aluminium finish looks superb. The motherboard tray can be pulled out and the board mounted outside of the case and then slid back in again, very nice. The windowed side panel (an extra $29 direct from Antec) makes this case even smarter, especially with a couple of neons mounted inside. It also has two built in temperature probes which link to the LED readout on the front of the panel. Currently I have them connected to the GPU heatsink and the chipset heatsink (the chipset incidentally runs at what seems like a VERY hot 61C under load).

The Neo power supply, also from Antec, is also a very nice piece of kit. It runs super quiet and not very hot at all. The cable management system is great, being able to only connect the cables you need helps streamline the airflow in the case.

Although the memory is 3-3-3-8 it seemed to default in the BIOS to 4-4-4-12. I went in and manually adjusted it to 3-3-3-8 and I have had no problems or crashes since. Neither the CPU or the GPU is currently overclocked. With the new NVidia 71.84 drivers I am getting the following benchmarks...

3DMark03 11988
3DMark05 5091

My benchmarks for my old system which was a P4 2.4Ghz socket 478 with a GeForce FX5900 (standard) using older 66.93 Nvidia drivers was...

3DMark03 5455
3DMark05 1033

As you can see, quite an improvement especially on the 3DMark05 benchmark which seems more geared towards next generation games.

Incidentally I also did a test overclocking the BFG to 409mhz/1080mhz and got a 3DMark05 score of 5540, a nice 10% performance gain but still the card stayed pretty cool even on stock heatsink and fan.

Memory bandwidth benchmarks in Sandra are coming out at 4823 Int, and 4834 Float. I expected this to be a little higher, since many reviews of lower latency DDR2 are now coming in above 5000. Not sure yet why this is so low. I have a feeling there is somewhat of a bottleneck on the FSB since the standard Pentium4 775 runs at 800mhz FSB and the memory bus is running at 1064mhz. It would be interesting to try a Pentium Extreme Edition since I understand the FSB runs at 1064mhz also thus potentially reducing the bottleneck. I am still kinda learning about the Pentium architecture so I could be talking BS here... I will have to go do some more research.

This setup runs Half Life 2 and World of Warcraft great on my Samsung 192N at 1280x1024. I should be receiving my new Dell 2405FPW on Friday which should stress the card a little more since it runs at 1920x1200. I will post some pictures and a review of the Dell later aswell as some information on performance at this resolution.

MX1000 Laser Mouse Review

2005-03-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

Historically I have not been a big fan of wireless mice. I love to game, which requires very accurate mouse tracking and in the past wireless mice have just not delivered this so I have been tethered to a USB mouse for a long time. That is... until now!

I must say at first I was very sceptical, but although it took a little getting used to I knew the first time I layed hands on this mouse that it was something special. The mouse itself is a little larger than my normal MS Intellimouse, but after the initial adjustment I found it to be extremely comfortable to use over extended periods of time. The tracking and communication of tracking information is second to none... it could just as easily be a wired mouse, I could not tell the difference. I think this is more down to the way the information is relayed from the mouse to the base station than it is to the laser tracking since I never really had that much of an issue with the regular wired IR tracked mice. Either way the whole package works very well.

As for the laser tracking, I have had this mouse for some time now on a variety of surfaces and have never had ANY slippage whatsoever. Although I don't think this is a huge issue for IR mice since most people are aware of the kind of surfaces it does and doesn't work on, it is nice not to have to worry about having a good surface if you want to take the mouse out and about.

Logitech are about to release the MX3100 combo which includes this mouse plus the MX3000 keyboard for a retail price of $149. The keyboard also communicates with the same base station, which cuts down on the number of receivers. My previous Logitech wireless keyboard was not compatible with this mouse base station, so I ended up with two wireless receivers... not a very neat solution. It is not yet clear whether this keyboard will be available seperately. I am hoping it will since it would be a shame to have to go out and buy the whole kit and end up with a duplicate mouse.

The mouse itself is not cheap at $79, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has the money to spend and wants the best mouse money can buy. I would most definitely recommend it to any power gamers out there and indeed challenge them to find a better mouse, wired or wireless. If you like your keyboard wireless too though, it would be worth holding out for the combo pack.

World of Warcraft Review

2005-03-15T23:30:00.000-08:00

After the plethora of second rate MMORPGs that have come to market lately, especially from a large corporation that shall remain un-named, finally we get an MMORPG that is both beautiful and engaging.

There is so much I could say about this game, but I want to keep this review short so you can go see for yourself!

The graphical style of World of Warcraft may not be to everyone’s taste, but it undeniably embodies the beauty and creativity of high fantasy. The world ‘feels’ alive with all its beautiful colors, and it’s flickering, glimmering detail.

Graphical character customization could be better. The options here are a little limited, but still enough to create a character you can feel good about. A wide variety of clothing options in game help alleviate this a little, but hopefully this is something Blizzard will improve after retail

The sound is just incredible. From the amazing musical score to the creaking, stomping of the ent-like protectors in the Elven lands, it’s all there.

The user-interface is very easy to use, and detailed tooltips make sure you are never lost wondering what something is used for.

Quests in this game are wonderfully compiled. Each quest is weaved together from multiple tasks that REVEAL a STORY as you complete each stage. That’s right, I said a REVEAL a STORY! As in… ‘I want to complete this part of the quest to see what happens next’. Quests are beautifully written in a true role-playing style that really absorbs you into the game and makes you feel like you are affecting the world itself. As quests progress, they also take you into new parts of the world as you become ready for them, giving you even more of a sense of accomplishment and adventure. Pay attention other MMORPG developers who have forgotten than MMORPG still has the letters RPG at the end!

As well as being able to play above land, the game features the amazing ability to play underwater. Sunken ships and sea creatures adorn the seas for more questing and adventuring.

The class system is very well put together. You choose a class when you create your character, and as you level you can learn new skills from your class trainer. These skills are extremely varied from one class to another, and blizzard have made sure that each class has some very cool skills to utilize. You also get to purchase talents as you level, which helps you to enhance your skills and differentiate your character from others of the same class and race. In addition, each race also gets fixed racial traits from the beginning (such as increased dodge change for elves etc.).

PvP still needs some work, but there is a strong foundation for Blizzard to build upon after release, which is exactly what they plan on doing with ‘battlegrounds’. The two sides of Alliance (Good) and Horde (Evil) form the basis for PvP. There are two types of server… regular and PvP. Both have the ability for player vs. player, but only on the PvP server can you potentially be attacked while questing (though only in enemy, or contested territories).

I only tried trade skills at a very basic level, but they seemed very well implemented with both gathering professions (such as mining, fishing, skinning etc.) and production professions (such as smithing, tailoring etc.). Also there are service professions such as enchanting and first aid. Any character can take 2 primary professions such as those mentioned, and an unlimited number of what are called ‘secondary professions’ such as cooking and fishing.

I must say this is the only MMORPG I have played where I have had so much fun playing the game, that I forgot all about leveling. I truly felt drawn into a world of fantasy and adventure.

Blizzard have injected the RPG back into the MMORPG genre and spiced it up with creativity and great gameplay. They have kept of the best parts of the existing genre and made the other parts even better. With ambitious plans for the future, from a developer we can trust to do the right thing, this game will only get better and better.

I for one can’t wait to step back into the World of Warcraft!