McPhee

I don't know anything of Natal other than the principals of the tech it's based on. There is a catch to it as with everything. These cams have a limited effective operating range. The minimum distance between the player and the cam will have to be something in the range of 1m (though it depends on the camera, you could design one that would work a lot closer than that) and the max could be anywhere between 3 and 5 meters. It's a lot like the Wii pointer in that respect, it won't work if you're too far away. The possibilities are huge for it. The reason why this actually excites me when the Wii doesn't is simply because all the way up until Motion Plus the Wii wasn't really doing anything special (from a technical point of view). It was well thought out, well marketed, but there was a lot of false promise there. Motion Plus righted that, but it's essentially tracking the position of a stick in 3D space. Natal can track that stick, the rest of your body and your pet dog if you want it to, all at the same time. It's also much more flexible, a developer could use the camera along with the control pad to (as an example) create an FPS where you can lean and peer around corners through body movements. They could essentially integrate this in to the next CoD game;

It's possible, though i doubt Natal will be that sensitive. They have to draw the line somewhere otherwise costs would be silly high. MS are likely trying to find the right trade-off between cost and effectiveness, when that comes about they'll release it.

It see's everything. One of the intended purposes for this tech is to replace green screen technology in film making, does that give you an idea for how effective it is? If you imagine your hand as a few thousand pixels and turn it, is the brightness of those pixels changing? That is how this tech works, it picks up variances in brightness. I look at my hand in front of me and the base of my thumb and the tips of my fingers are all brighter than my palm due to them being closer to the light source above my head. From this image one of these cameras would be able to tell how far (proportionately) my finger tips are from my hand in all three dimensions. It can do this for every single "pixel" on my hand, creating a 3D image of that hand. I can turn the hand and the brightnesses change, creating a new image. I change light source and the brightnesses are different but the image (as it's a comparison between the brightnesses on my hand) will be the same. Have i explaimed it ok? If there's anything i can reword then ask away

That's exactly what this technology is, 1:1 mapping in a 3D space. To what extent Natal will be able to manage this remains to be seen. It does seem that at the very least it's able to discern hand jestures, maybe not sensitive enough for fingers? Theoretically the tech could see and recreate the movement of individual hair strands if it was sensitive enough.

Hate to say this, but having owned both i actually prefered L4D on the 360. Really wish i didn't swap it for the PC version, it just doesn't seem as good

Hit the Windows Key + R, type DXDiag and click on display. Tell us what it says. Graphics cards have moved on quite rapidly lately, you might find a new card as cheap (and more power efficient) than replacing the cooler.

What does he actually want to use this machine for? That's usually the best starting point for deciding on a build, you can build a better gaming rig for much cheaper. Same goes for a workstation (Photoshop, 3DS Max etc.). If it's a balance he's after then get him to name a firm budget otherwise it turns in to a "sky's the limit" sort of affair, throwing money at the problem.

Cry Engine 3? Awesome! Cry Engine 2 is already really, really stunning and they're away a raise the bar even higher. Looking forward to this! The first game was pretty average, but really, really beautiful to look at. Thought Warhead was a bit better all round though and lower on the system requirements.

You should, i've missed everything since a couple of weeks before the Scout update I know what the weapons are but i'm yet to use them. Just to add insult to injury... PEOPLE KEEP SENDING ME STEAM INVITES!

Vodafone. They're only charging 20p/minute for voice calls and 10p per text, regardless of the network the person you're calling is on. They're also doing 'Freedom Packs' where you can get £50 worth of calls/texts (100 mins, 300 texts) for £10 and they've dropped roaming charges throughout Europe for the whole summer. Not certain that it's the best, but it seems to be a pretty competitive deal to me.

If it was my money; Intel Core i7 920 - £225 Asus P6T SE - £160 6GB Patriot Viper PC3-12800 RAM - £68.99 @ Overclockers (only lasts til Tuesday, new offers on Wednesday) Sapphire ATi 4870 - £103.49 @ Novatech Samsung 64GB MLC SSD - £91.99 @ Novatech Western Digital 1TB Caviar Green - £67.99 @ Overclockers (til Tuesday) Samsung DVD-RW - £15 Corsair HX-520 - £80 Coolermaster Storm 'Scout' Case - £76.99 @ Overclockers (til Tuesday) Xigmatek HDT-S1283 "Dark Knight" CPU Cooler - £35 Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keybord 4000 - £17.99 @ Play.com £942.44 Might be worth getting a quieter cooler for the graphics card though, it's a very quiet system other than that. The SSD is an odd one, but it's there because it makes a HUGE difference to desktop performance. Apps load a lot quicker and don't 'lag' as much because the drive can find the data a lot quicker than on a mechanical drive. Well worth the money on this sort of budget. A mechanical Hard Drive is still needed for data though, both due to capacity and the low transfer speed of SSDs when they're handling large files. Spec'd with a energy efficient 1TB drive but if the space isn't needed a 500GB drive might be worth the saving. Use the Windows 7 Release Candidate instead of buying Vista, the RC isn't set to expire til next year. Just spend the money intended for Vista on Win7 Retail on release day instead, cheaper in the long-run and you get to use a better OS. For Office, try here; http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx MS Office Ultimate £38.95.

I miss TF2. The sooner my net connection gets sorted out the better

The point of this much bandwidth is as a simple demo, he's trying to demonstrate that his technology allows for a single line to carry that much data. If ISPs were actually installing this tech they'd likely split that 40Gb/s connection across your whole street or something rather than give it all to a single household. Still, it's not gonna happen. The lines might be able to carry that much data but the ISP's servers wouldn't be able to handle a lot of people with 1Gb/s+ connections, all ISPs would need to vastly upgrade their servers which would result in silly prices for the consumer.

You'll be less happy to hear that they've abandoned the Elder Scrolls series for the forseeable future then. New projects can't be bad, but i'm not too happy about that news

I've tried it, prefer the buttons on Noia 2.0 Extreme though. If you could import buttons from other themes then i'd probably use it.

That site is why i trained myself off of Southpaw controls. Got used to them in the N64 days but it severely restricts your games choice. While i don't find conventional as accurate in terms of aiming i do find movement a lot faster. Same goes for PC, i've always used my right hand for the mouse because when i was young i only had access to mice moulded for the right hand. Apparently it's obvious when people watch me play FPS games, i can't aim to save my life but i dance around like a breakdancing hobo desperate for a "coffee"!

If a BD player is Blu-Ray Live compatable then you can upgrade the firmware over the internet. I believe that's what you're asking? BD Live isn't anything to do with these updates, but having it means the player has the necessary hardware in place to do the update. BD Live itself is extra content, special features etc.

It's Rockstar, to them the Daily Mail is free publicity. The title will be done on purpose for that very reason

Awww. Who changed the thread title

I sold the SNES a couple of years back. The NES still works, though there's a loose connection in the internal power supply that needs resoldering, but that was due to wear and tear (unplugging, plugging back in, moving it around a lot and generally not taking as good care of it as i should).

The new Arcades have HDMI ports too. Anything labeled Arcade, Pro or Elite will have them. Anything labeled Premium or Core probably won't. I made the switch before Christmas. Sold my old Premium to my bro for £80 and then bought a Pro from work for about £110 (staff discount + a really good offer on at the time). TBH if you find a good bundle pack then the upgrade is never going to be that expensive anyway. Gamestation regularly chuck in a couple of new releases and a 2nd pad for the RRP.

Wierd controllers? Why? Just why? It practically kills the game... The bastard son of a PS2 pad and a PC trackball mouse! A modified chainsaw controller. http://www.chainsawcontroller.com/ The OCZ NIA. Control games with your mind!!!! The Alphagrip. Every single keyboard button on a control pad. Improves your typing speed apparently... The single handed 360 controller. Play no longer interrupts beer drinking Microsoft's Sidewinder: Dual Strike I had one of them! Was bloomin awesome! I wonder where it's gotten to? Bet the rents threw it out when they moved house

It works, i used to use the same cables for both back in the days when i was too young to realise that it could have killed one of the machines :p

So, i'm completely and utterly pissed off with Media Player, suddenly it doesn't want to play any of my old iTunes files (i'm sure i had it working before i did a windows reinstall the other week). Tried Songbird, i like it but i'm having the same problem. iTunes is a no-no, i found it irritating and it's bloatware these days really (used to love it a few years back but the recent updates have been a step backwards). Any suggestions? I hear Media Monkey is good, same goes for WinAmp.

A broken MBR is no reason to buy a new PC really, the PC itself still works it's just one of the files on the hard drive is screwed. If you can aquire an XP disk (assuming you're on XP? Vista if you're on Vista) then you can fix it easily enough. If not then a temporary solution would be to get someone to download the Windows 7 Release Candidate and install that. It'll have a file in it called Windows.Old, all of your old files will be in there.