If you own an HD 2900 XT you should definitely check it out, since that graphics card is on top of the to-do list for ATI's driver team. If not, it will depend on the games you play and how many months have gone by since your last update.

Before downloading it, take a look at the release notes (performance improvement department):

"Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Dark Messiah Might and Magic performance improves on the ATI Radeon™ HD2900 XT Crossfire configurations. Improvements of 16% or more can be seen with HDR enabled."

It doesn't sound like much, but TweakTown and Technic3D have tested them and, as usually, OpenGL performance is improved.

As for bugs fixed in this release of the ATI Catalyst™ Software Suite, the list is rather long, specially the one for Windows Vista.

 

 IGN has compiled an article on upcoming games for the "summer drought". The worst time for gamers? More than a new title per week (June 21-September 21) is more than enough to cast aside that statement.

And we are talking about AA titles for the Xbox 360. This are the games sorted by genre:

- First-Person Shooters: BioShock, BlackSite: Area 51, The Darkness, Medal of Honor: Airborne, TimeShift and Turok.
- RPG titles: Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Mass Effect and Two Worlds.
- Action: John Woo Presents Stranglehold and Overlord.
- Sports: Madden NFL 08 and Skate.
- Racing/ fighting: Project Gotham Racing 4/ Virtua Fighter 5.

Chess and computers have been on a colision course for decades. Most people believe it all ended when the World Champion lost against a PC program. Finally, any home user could get an opponent that was better than what humans could hope to be. But, was there any reason for making PC games so good? After all, you could already choose among a wide selection of chess engines (some of them for free) that would beat 99% of all chess players. No, for playing purposes there was obviously no reason, but if you want some serious analisys, that's another question.

There are people, though, that don't agree with that date of late 2006 as the turning point, because the favored chess engine was actually not the best one available and had not been for a year. One of those persons is no other than the author of the relegated candidate: Rybka, which sees now the last 2007 release and the polishing of the 2.x branch. You will have to wait for 2008 for version 3 and see what brings to the table, but this year's champion can be crowned right away.

So sure is Vasik Rajlich about the superiority of his creation, that he's challenged the FIDE and it's betting 100,000$ that it will win a match against their favorite. This is a dire reaction to the FIDE organizing what they call "The Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge", which pits to engines from the same company against each other. The funny thing is that none of them is even 2nd place in the most important rankings.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, the industry's guru John Carmack is preparing a new game. And we mean NEW.

[...] at a London event earlier this week, the id CEO said: "We are working on an all-new franchise: it's not Doom, it's not Quake, it's not Wolfenstein, it's not Enemy Territory, it's not even Commander Keen.

"It is a new id brand with an all-new John Carmack engine and I think that when we show it to people, once again they'll see, just like they saw when we first showed Doom 3, that John Carmack still has a lot of magic left."

Id software fans start now a very long waiting "game". If the eternal delays with the release of Doom3 are any indication, it won't be until the next decade that we see this one. Let's hope it pays off with such a good reward this time.

One of the main reasons for most users to migrate to the new OS from Microsoft is the upgrade to the last version of DirectX. Maybe you are not happy about Windows Vista, but if you want to play the coolest games, there is no other option. Or there wasn't until now.

After all the delays with OpenGL, this year will see two version releases: Longs Peak (OpenGL 2.x) and Mount Evans (OpenGL 3.0). They will be finished in July and October. The first one "is a major clean-up of the code after almost a decade and a half of nothing else but stacking numerous extensions together", while the latter will need DirectX 10-class hardware to run.

Having to switch to another API is something most game developers will not do, but the option is there, and some companies (like ID Software) are biased towards OpenGL. Therefore, if you want to stick with your old Windows platform but still be able to enjoy astonishing graphics... don't despair, there is life after DirectX 9.

"OpenGL 3.0 offers features such as instanced rendering, stream out of vertex data to a buffer, texture buffer objects, numerous new texture formats and so on.". Link: The Inquirer.

Most fans suspected that much, but until today Blizzard had not confirmed that a sequel to the popular real time strategy title would see the light of day.

Go to http://www.starcraft2.com/ and see what they are up to. Information is scarce, but you can download artwork, screenshots and trailers. And in case you were wondering about the quality of the trailes: yes, they are as good as tradition mandates. Here are some highlights from the FAQ:

"StarCraft II will run on a vibrant new 3D-graphics engine that will be capable of rendering beautiful landscapes as well as massive individual units and army sizes. [...] The game will be compatible with DirectX 10, and we're still considering whether there will be exclusive DirectX 10 graphic effects, but the graphics engine will also be very scalable to ensure that a wide range of different systems will be capable of running StarCraft II. The new engine is also capable of rendering very large units, as well as large numbers of units on screen together. Havok physics have been integrated into the engine for added realism as well."

The real question still hangs on the air: will heroes be WarCraft III-like? This can make the difference between success and failure. Maybe tomorrow, when the Gameplay Video is ready we will get our doubts cleared.

The wait is over! If you want to know how future gaming feels, you can download the Lost Planet demo and check it out.

Just remember that you need Windows Vista to run the DX10 version of the game. And for a real head to head, we advise against Windows XP 64 bit as the host OS for the DX9 version (anybody had that thought?). Testing the 64 bit Vista makes some sense, however, because it's what lies ahead.

Take screenshots, grab Fraps and you will have guaranteed fun (even if you don't like the game itself).

 

No, not the game, only the internet site for now. But if they decided to get it up and running, the game release can't be far behind.

There, you'll find a trailer and some high resolution screenshots. The pictures may take some time to display because they're big. Don't trust the viewer if you use a low screen resolution, it'll resize them so they fit, but it'll take the same time than what you'd need to download them, so you're better off just doing that.

Another problem you'll likely meet is sheer connection loss, which is not surprising if we think how much time the game's been in developement and how many people is there trying to get some information. The misery of it all is that you won't find any information for the moment.

If you want to get a taste of what the game'll look like, be patient and go watch. If you wanted information, continue waiting. At least now there's a place where you can expect it.

Even before it reached stores, Windows Vista faced tons of critics, fears or just plain animosities. As with any new OS from Microsoft, there were all kinds of questions regarding it's compatibility, security and performance. With time, some of those concerns were, are or will be dismissed.

The point of compatibility seems moot, as the majority of commercial applications will sooner, rather than later, upgrade. Device compatibility is up to manufacturers. In the end, it will be a time and money issue.

Security, like any Windows version before is debatable.

Performance... that's it's Achilles heel. It looks like all that can be expected is for the new OS not to fall far behind Windows XP. While 2D apps hold their ground, games are another world: one that's dominated by the old brother. DirectX games are closing the gap with every new driver release, but what about OpenGL based games? For a long time it was tought that playing them on Windows Vista would be horrible, but Beyond3D took time to explain what all the confusion was about and added some benchmarks to polish it all.

GT HD is supposed to be a taste test of what is to come from GT on PS3 and it successfully does this but it's not going to last you more than a few hours. On offer is one track and ten cars with only one car available initially, where as more become unlocked as you beat the various track records with each car. Generally, even without the driving aids on, you will unlock most cars within one lap of the circuit and then it just becomes a piece of software to show your PS3 off to mates.

TTGamer have posted a review on Gran Turismo HD for the PS3. This free download for the PS3 gives gamers a sneak peak at what's to come with GT on the PS3, but is it worth the trouble?