In Depth: Four legends who changed gaming
Demi-god and one of the founders of id software, John Carmack defined the way that shooters could take on a first person perspective in games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.
The latter was an impressive technical feat that offered up full texture mapping, superb use of light and shading, terrifying implementation of darkness and, of course, 3D graphics.
John Carmack is one of the most influential people in his field and has been inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame, and is the only game designer to be honoured twice by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Tamsin Oxford: How does it feel to be considered a gaming legend?
John Carmack: Gravitas definitely has some perks, but for the most part gaming legend related activities, like awards ceremonies, speaking panels, and (ahem) interviews are distractions from the work that I would rather be doing. (laughs) I do enjoy mingling with the crowd at Quakecon, where everyone is having a great time celebrating the work we have done over the years, and I can't help but feel a bit moved when I get deeply sincere emails from people thanking me for being a positive influence or inspiration to them over the years.
On a couple of rare occasions I have pulled the gaming legend card when I just don't have the time to slowly convince someone on a contentious development issue, and it just comes down to: "No. That is not The Right Thing To Do", but I feel a bit dirty afterwards. It isn't a proper way to resolve a point, and I'm not thrilled when I see people using me in an Appeal to Authority argument either.
TO: Did you ever expect Doom would become the huge success it is today?
JC: We knew it was going to be a huge deal while we were making it, but I can't say that I was thinking about how it would be looked at by people a decade after its release.
TO: While developing Doom did you have a "Eureka!" moment when suddenly everything fell into place?
JC: The original Doom's development actually went fairly smoothly, and I don't recall any significant periods of doubt about it. Certainly games like Quake, Doom 3, and Rage have been much more challenging development processes.
TO: Can you tell me one thing that nobody else knows about the days of Doom that captures the mood and the memories for you?
JC: To help me focus on a tough issue, I was taking my work away from the noisy office, back to my apartment. I was pulling a sleek, black magnesium NeXT workstation out of the Ferrari 328 I had just bought (yes, I was living in an apartment complex with a Ferrari) and I had to pause to appreciate the moment.
Awesome computer. Awesome car. An uninterrupted evening to work on a challenging problem. Life is good. I still remember that I was working with a dataset that eventually became E1M4 in Doom 1.
TO: What do you see as the next step for game development, what new wonders are left to be uncovered?
JC: Graphics will continue to get better and the next generation of hardware and software will be able to make current games look fairly primitive, but we are past the knee of the curve in effort / benefit there. Games already look really great today, and there are few creative visions that can't be pulled off at least fairly well. Major changes in IO devices will bring the biggest wonders.
The impact that the Wii has made with a really poor motion sensor is worth noting, and there are much better technologies available now. Displays are already about as good as we could want for games in terms of resolution and update rate, but very high dynamic range display technologies will offer significant perceived improvements.
Eventually, we will get to whole body sensing and some display technology that covers more of the user's field of view and we will be heading for Holodeck 0.1. A lot of important innovation will be in the unglamorous fields of just removing friction in the game development process – instead of optimising for frames per second, more effort will be expended on optimising for output per designer or development team. There are probably some very positive non-linearities when friction gets low enough.
TO: Can you play another game without analysing how it works and what can be improved or can you let yourself go and get lost in the game?
JC: I usually focus on the positive aspects of things, but there is always some part of my brain that is noticing software flaws and contemplating solutions to them.
TO: What game are you playing right now? Is it any good?
JC: Almost all of my videogame playing time is with my five-year-old son, so it involves a lot of Mario, Zelda, and Lego games on the Wii and DS. I was just starting to enjoy playing a daily game of Quake Live at work when things got crushingly busy again.
TO: Considering how few games are being made specifically, or exclusively, for the PC and how consoles are galloping up the lines, do you believe that this is the end of the PC for gamers?
JC: For the traditional 'buy it and play through it' sort of action game, the consoles are, and probably will remain, a more appealing platform for most games developers. That said, almost any developer would have loved to have made games like World of Warcraft or The Sims on the PC. I'm quite sure there are still awesomely cool and important interactive entertainment projects yet to appear on the PC, but you probably won't buy them in a box at the store.
The creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov came up with the first version on an Electronica 60 in 1984, while working for the Computer Centre of the Moscow Academy of Sciences. The game went on to be translated into over 50 languages, played on over 30 platforms and is still accessed over one million times a day via Tetris Friends Online Games.
Intertwined with the history of the Cold War, it's an impressive legacy that looks to keep on going for as long as we have access to devices that can play it. Not a bad thing, since Pajitnov didn't start profiting from his creation until 1996 when he moved to the States.
Tamsin Oxford: How does it feel to be considered a gaming legend?
Alexey Pajitnov: I was pleased for the first ten years, now I don't feel so strongly about it (laughs).
TO: How do you feel about the phenomenal success that is Tetris?
AP: Well, when I played my game for the first time I realised that it was a very good and very addictive game, but I had no idea it would be that big.
TO: Tetris is exceptional for many reasons, what inspired you to create this game?
AP: I was addicted to puzzles, riddles and board games all of my life. The idea of Tetris came to me when I worked on the computer version of the traditional puzzle called Pentomino.
TO: Can you tell me one thing about those first days of Tetris that's like a snapshot of the time for you?
AP: I do remember the great happiness of the "Aha!" moment when I got the idea to take the full lines of blocks out of the playing field…
TO: What made you choose that particular song for Tetris?
AP: It's a good song, it's an old Russian folk song that was very popular in Russia before Tetris.
TO: Do you think that the next Tetris might be around the corner?
AP: I think there were many really good Tetris games already during the past 25 years; at least I enjoyed many of them.
TO: What do you see as the future of gaming?
AP: I hope the next decade will be the time of the special hardware for games as well as intensive use of Artificial Intelligence.
Civilzation creator, Sid Meier has a place in not one, but two Halls of Fame. He was the second person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame and also has a place in the Computer Museum of America's Hall of Fame. Along with Bill Stealey, he developed MicroProse Software in 1982 and went on to create gaming delights such as Spitfire Ace (1984), Pirates! (1987) and, of course, Civilization (1991).
The champion of tight gameplay and addictive entertainment, he's inspired other legends, smashed genre expectations and is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
Tamsin Oxford: How does it feel to be considered a gaming legend?
Sid Meier: I'm humbled by the compliment and I'm fortunate that even after nearly 30 years, I still love coming into the office every day and making games. I plan to design and program for a long time to come – it's the greatest job in the world.
TO: Pirates! and Civilizations have been touted as some of the greatest games of all time and have influenced a generation of gamers. Did you ever expect this to happen and how does that make you feel?
SM: When we were making those games our focus was on creating a fun experience for the player. With Pirates! we knew the design was unique because we were combining a number of established genres into one game. The end result was a fun, open-ended game that appealed to a wide variety of players.
We knew Civilization was a big undertaking in that making a fun game about all of human history was a challenge. Our goal in designing the original Civ was to make the player the central figure and present them with lots of interesting choices and challenging decisions to make that would determine their success in the game. We hoped the games would deliver many hours of fun to players, but never expected they'd receive such high praise. I'm really happy people feel that way.
TO: What was the inspiration for creating Pirates!?
SM: Many of the games I've made are based on topics that I was interested in as a kid. I played pirate games, read pirate books and watched old Errol Flynn pirate movies when I was young and I thought it would be great to create a computer game based on this fascinating cast of characters.
It's a topic that seems to appeal to people of all ages, so we were confident that the audience was there for the game. We wanted to give players a chance to enter the world of pirates in an open-ended environment that allowed them to create their own story and have a new experience every time they played. That seems to be what made the game so popular.
TO: Can you tell me one thing about those early, early days at the offices of MicroProse that nobody else knows?
SM: In the very early days of MicroProse it was just me and Bill Stealey in the company. I would create the games, copy them onto floppy disks, place them in zip-lock bags and Bill would load them in his car and drive up and down the east coast selling them to retailers. He'd stop at a pay phone every so often to give me an update on how sales were going. And that was the start of the business.
TO: With games becoming shorter and more about instant gratification, do you think that the younger market appreciates games with the depth and scope of Civilization?
SM: We hope so! From what we know about Civ players it seems that they come from all different age groups and from all over the world. The great thing about today's gaming is that people have a lot of choices when it comes to the types of games they want to play and what platform they want to use to play them. I think people can enjoy short game experiences on an iPhone, for instance, and still go home to their PC and play a longer game like Civ. There's plenty of room for all kinds of videogames.
TO: Would you ever consider returning to the fold of the flight sim and what exciting new ideas are you formulating at the moment?
SM: I'm lucky to have the creative freedom to explore lots of game ideas, so I wouldn't rule out any topic for future games. Right now I'm working on Civilization Network - a Civ game for Facebook. I'm leading the design and programming and have a great team at Firaxis working with me.
Civ Network will offer the fun, addictive gameplay that defines Civ, in a fully persistent environment and it'll be free to play. We'll announce a closed beta soon and the full game will be available in 2010 (sorry for the shameless plug!). (That's not a problem, we can't wait to play it in the PCF offices).
TO: You're famous for the design approach of rapid prototyping and constant iteration. Is this still a process you use and would you recommend it to younger developers?
SM: It's a process that has worked well for us for many years and I do recommend it to young developers. If you can create a basic prototype that's fun to play (even without exciting graphics and fully implemented features), then you have a great foundation for a fun game.
The iterative process – play, improve, play improve – ensures that you remain focused on the gameplay experience every step of the way as you keep what works and get rid of what doesn't.
TO: What do you see as the future of gaming, what wonders are left to be uncovered?
SM: The recent popularity of iPhone and social network games creates interesting opportunities for game developers. There are more people playing games, and the idea that games can be played any time and any place means people are playing games more often and always looking for new experiences. That creates a perfect world for game makers.
TO: What game are you playing right now?
SM: Right now I'm playing Batman: Arkham Asylum on my Xbox 360 and I'm really enjoying it. It's got great atmosphere and Rocksteady Studios did a good job staying true to the spirit of Batman.
Atari's success as an entertainment platform, along with Al Alcorn and Ted Dabney, and Pong shot Nolan Bushnell into the history books. He's been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame, the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, awarded a BAFTA Games Award Fellowship and was named one of Newsweek's 50 Men That Changed America.
Tamsin Oxford: How does it feel to be considered a gaming legend?
Nolan Bushnell: I'm the kind of guy who always focuses on what he's working on currently so, yeah, I'm proud of the fact that I'm thought of in that way but, at the same time, it felt like a natural thing for me to do at the time.
TO: It was playing Spacewar! on the DEC PDP-1 that made you realise that there was a potential business in gaming, but was there also a passion for the games themselves?
NB: Absolutely! In fact, I played Spacewar! incessantly and almost failed one quarter (at university) because of it (laughs, a lot).
TO: Were any of your initial days in gaming development ever defined by a 'Eureka!' moment, when you suddenly sat up and said, "That's it!"?
NB: There was a magic point when I got the first rocket ship to display on the screen while I was developing Computer Space. It was such an epiphany for me. I knew I could do it but there's a difference between knowing you can do something and actually doing it. I can close my eyes and see that old TV tilted on its side and the little rocket ship defined out of diodes. That was really the turning point for Computer Space.
TO: Can you name one of the worst and one of the best things about being among the first people in the world to create games?
NB: Well, we could churn out a pretty complex game in a couple of months, and that's going right to the circuit board and getting it ready for production. I can remember when we created Pong. Al Alcorn did Pong on the hardware level. I was teaching him and this was a training project for him.
I can remember the time we put in the algorithm that caused the ball to angle based on where you hit it on the paddle. Before that it wasn't a game, after that it was a very good game.
I like to say that Pong had a square ball not because we thought a ball should be square, but because that was all we were able to do at the time with the technology. In those days, in some ways, the games were simpler and the process was simpler. Pong, from concept to playability, took less than a week, so in terms of return on time spent it was pretty exciting.
Today, of course, the large amounts of graphics have changed that. When we used to do graphics we would invent the characters on graph paper and mark them out on an 8 x 8 grid of dots. To get the dot into exactly the right place you'd mark the dot and then go across the room and say 'Does that look right?' and then you'd move the dot up or down or erase it and go 'Yeah, that looks a little better!' (laughs). You know, I remember stuff that nobody does anymore!
TO: Can you tell me one tale about your days of Atari that nobody else knows about?
NB: This is kind of amusing. A guy stole a design out of our labs and started a company. They were going to compete with Atari using a game called Viper Plane. Of course, we got a restraining order so they couldn't show this game at the upcoming trade show, but then we heard that they were at the show anyway and pulling our distributors up into a hotel room. In the same hotel we were staying at!
So one night we were maybe drinking a little too much and decided that we were going to take the law into our own hands and break into the guys room and beat the sh*t out of him. And so with all pompous self righteousness about how they were thwarting the law with this product, we pounded on his door, really put our elbows into it, but nobody was answering the door. And we couldn't really break it down.
So with sore shoulders we went back down to the bar muttering about the injustices of life. I've often looked back and said, 'Thank God we didn't carry that out.' It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time but really wasn't.
TO: In terms of PC gaming, who would you define as your fellow legends and why?
NB: Oh, I definitely think my head of engineering, Al Alcorn. I've always joked with him and said that I've got a lot of credit for the stuff that he did. Al was a guy who could create a lot of very, very interesting technology that allowed me to put games out as a result. Of course, Carmack and Romero from id games. The early Doom was, I think, a technological tour de force. That they were able to do what they did, they just have to be legends.
Alexey Pajitnov created a great series of casual games. The Civilization series from Sid Meier is something I've always had admiration for. It's a thing where some people's work just stands out, is revolutionary and just good stuff. I can't forget Steve Russell from MIT who programmed Spacewar!, I've always said he's the guy on whose shoulders I stood.
TO: What games are you playing now? Are you enjoying them?
NB: I play Warcraft with my son, not WoW, the old Warcraft and I also play a lot of casual games. My kids always beat me at first person shooters so I try and play games I can win.
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Review: MacRabbit Espresso 1.1
Espresso is for web designers who favour hand-coding. You define projects, set publish settings, and select files from the sidebar to open and edit in the work area. Items can then be dragged to any window's workspace.
Espresso's responsive text editor shines. It lacks the shortcuts flexibility of TextMate and BBEdit but nonetheless enables rapid coding: formatting and selection tag-wrapping options are solid; code folding and the navigator enable-code sections can be collapsed and selected; and page-specific and project-wide text-find tools work nicely.
Elsewhere, Espresso is less consistent. The interface is sleek, but sometimes feels a little confusing. Previewing is hit and miss: CSSEdit-style CSS overrides are included (to see how local CSS edits affect a live site) and, unlike Coda, previews can live in separate windows; but local servers aren't supported, restricting web page previews to flat HTML sites.
Publishing is better, and offers a Quick Publish switch, to save and upload changes simultaneously. Overall, Espresso is a good app, but its workflow and interface is inferior to Coda's, and TextMate and BBEdit are better text editors.
Consequently, Espresso currently feels a little overpriced and feature-light. With local server support and some interface refinement, it would appeal more to pros.
As it stands, we suggest sticking with MacRabbit's other app, CSSEdit, for CSS work, and TextMate, BBEdit or Coda for everything else.
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Review: Eltima SyncMate 2.5
Having access to your important data on all your computers and devices is becoming increasingly important to pretty much everyone.
SyncMate 2.5 comes in both free and expert editions, and offers data synchronisation with a range of devices and services, including Macs, PCs, Windows Mobile or Nokia S40 phones, Google (including 'Android' phones), Sony PSPs and USB flash drives.
The free edition will sync only contact and calendar information, as well as certain system preferences and SMS messages from supported phones. The expert edition also syncs iPhoto, iTunes, Safari, Firefox, folders and Mail messages.
Both editions also offer online storage for storing data and settings.
To use it, you launch the application, tell it what kind of connections you'd like to set up and then decide whether to merge or overwrite data. If you want to sync with a Mac, install SyncMate on it.
With a PC, install the SyncMate Windows module. Although the interface is aesthetically challenged and typo-ridden, it's still quite usable.
But while the program does a good job of synchronising most data, we found there were some glitches. Times and dates on some Google Calendar events would show up incorrectly, for example.
Anything less than 100% reliable syncs makes such software potentially dangerous, so we wouldn't recommend using SyncMate without making backups and experimenting first to see if it works with your setup. If so, it has the potential to be a premier tool for synchronisation.
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Guide: How to see and control everything that's running on your Windows PC
Regardless of how well you maintain your PC, some problems will crop up again and again. The hard drive may start thrashing even though you're not running any applications, for instance.
You may find your PC suddenly slows to a crawl for no apparent reason, or maybe it's become unreliable, locking up or crashing and you don't know why.
A good first place to look is Task Manager, which delivers a quick overview of the processes running on your PC and what they're doing. But we think there's an even better option.
Process Hacker is a free, open-source tool that's packed with features to help you monitor your PC, uncover problems, detect malware and more. We think it deserves a place in every PC user's troubleshooting toolkit – read on to find out why.
Basic monitoring
Launch Process Hacker and you'll immediately see a long list of everything running on your system. (Well, almost everything: click 'Hacker | Show Details For All Processes' to get the security rights for full access).
The program can display up to 40 details for each process, too, although we'd recommend you're a little more selective.
Right-click a column header, click 'Select Columns' and pick at least one of the following: Name, PID (Process ID), Pvt Memory, Working Set, CPU, I/O Total, Username, Description, Handles, Start Time (Relative), CPU History and I/O History. Click 'OK' when you're done.
Viewing these columns alone can be enough to diagnose many PC problems. I/O History, for instance, features a tiny graph that shows how each process is reading from and writing to your system's devices. If there's a lot of hard drive or network activity then these graphs should immediately identify the culprit.
Checking the CPU History does a similar job for processor use, showing you what's been making heavy demands on your CPU over the past few minutes.
The Pvt Memory (Private Memory) column is generally the best measure of how much RAM a particular program is using. Click its header to sort the list into ascending or descending order. This is a quick way to identify what's gobbling up most of your valuable RAM.
The Handles column is a measure of how many Windows objects a process has open (windows, files, Registry keys and so on). If this value keeps increasing for a particular process then it may have a resource leak, where it's grabbing new handles but not closing the old ones. If this carries on then your PC will start behaving oddly and eventually crash.
The precise point of failure will vary greatly depending on your Windows version and how it's configured, but we'd pay extra attention to anything using more than 20,000 handles and be highly suspicious of a total that has passed 100,000.
Clicking the Network tab reveals all the internet connections that your processes have open right now. If your internet connection seems slow then look for connections with a state marked 'Established' – these are the ones that are open.
If you're worried about malware then look for 'Listening' connections – these are programs that are waiting to hear from someone else. Don't jump to conclusions, though; lots of programs have listening TCP/IP connections for perfectly legitimate reasons.
Detective work
The main Process Hacker interface might have told you that a particular program is making heavy use of the hard drive or network, for example, but if you don't recognise its name, you'll want to know more. What is this program, and what is it doing?
There are several techniques you can apply to find out more. An obvious starting point is to search for the program's name using Google. There's no need to do this manually; just right-click the process and select 'Search Online', and a browser window will open with search results.
If the web tells you nothing useful, right-click the process name, select 'Properties' and click the General tab. The 'Image File Name' box will give you the folder name where the process is located, which might give you a clue as to its purpose.
Be aware, however, that malware authors may replace an existing executable or save their creation in the Windows folder to try to avoid suspicion.
Clicking the Handles tab (still within the Properties box) will display all the files, Registry keys and other Windows objects that the process has open, which is often a useful clue as to what it's doing.
The Threads tab can be even more informative. It'll show you all the threads that the process has open (a thread being a Windows object that runs executable code), and the Start address will often tell you the functions it's using.
Even if the process 'iTunesHelper.exe' on our test PC had an anonymous name, for instance, the fact that its Threads tab showed QuickTime and 'iTunesMobileDevice.dll' would give you a good idea about where it belonged.
In addition, going to 'Process | Inspect Image File | Imports' displays a list of Windows functions that the program may be using. This can be very technical, but not always. Do this with iTunesHelper.exe, say, and you'll see it references 'WININIT.DLL', along with functions such as 'internetOpenA', 'internetConnectA' and 'internetReadFile'.
Even if you've never done any Windows programming, it's obvious that these functions relate to internet communications, so it's clear that the program may try to go online to send or receive information.
Be careful how you interpret this information, though. A program may reference WININIT.DLL functions but never use them, or list internet functions but never go online.
Another may not reference them, but make an internet connection in a different way. Thus the Imports list only gives you a rough idea about the program's purpose.
Could your mystery program be malware that's found a way through your antivirus defences?
To find out, we start with some of the Process Hacker tests we've applied already. Either click the Network tab to see if the process is making a connection online, or right-click the process, select 'Properties | Handles' and check to see which files and Registry keys it's watching.
Next, try right-clicking the process, selecting 'Properties' and clicking the Memory tab. This will not only show you the various blocks of RAM owned by the process, but also let you search them. Choose 'String Scan' in the Search box and Process Hacker will browse through each memory block and report any ASCII strings that it finds.
If a program has, say, been secretly collecting credit card numbers or reading important files, you may see the results show up here. You may also see interesting blocks of data that are part of the program's code: Registry keys it browses, filenames it's looking for, URLs it may try to reach or even prompts to be displayed later.
This catch-all nature makes memory searches handy for exploring legitimate programs, too. Unfortunately, Malware developers can use tricks to conceal information from memory scans. If all else fails, use your antivirus software to scan the file.
Right-click the mystery process, select 'Miscellaneous | Upload to VirusTotal' and the program will immediately send the file to www.virustotal.com, where it'll be scanned by around 40 antivirus tools. A browser window will open to let you know the result.
Some malware will attempt to avoid detection entirely by hiding its processes, but Process Hacker can be useful here, too. Click 'Tools | Hidden Processes' and then 'Scan', and the program will apply a simple but effective technique to find some hidden processes.
If it doesn't find anything, choose the 'Brute Force' option and click 'Scan' again. This isn't particularly advanced technology and is no substitute for a specialist rootkit detection tool, but it's quick and worth a try if you suspect possible infection.
Take action
So far, we've focused on Process Hacker's monitoring tools, which tell you about the processes running on your PC. However, it also has some useful ways to interact with those processes that can help you manage your PC.
If a particular process is consuming an unusually large amount of RAM, for instance, right-click it and select 'Reduce Working Set', and Process Hacker will ask Windows to trim this down to something more manageable. This isn't a magic bullet, and if the process is actively using that RAM then the Working Set figure will start to grow again and quickly be back where it was, but it's worth a try.
Sometimes processes do much more than hog memory, grabbing all your CPU time and interfering with other applications. In this case, we'd try right-clicking the process, selecting 'Affinity' and ensuring only one box is checked. This restricts the process to one CPU core, leaving the others available for everything else.
You could also try right-clicking the process, selecting 'Priority' and reducing its priority a little – below Normal is best, but Idle will do if all else fails. The program will continue to run, but Windows will allocate it less CPU time overall, so it shouldn't interfere with other applications.
If a program is out of control or is unresponsive, then you may want to close it down. Right-click the process name and select 'Terminate Process' to close the process alone, or select 'Terminate Process Tree' to close it and any other processes it's launched.
But be careful! Closing a system process could lock up your PC, and selecting 'Terminate Process Tree' for Explorer.exe will also close all the processes it's launched, including all your Windows start-up programs.
Occasionally, a program will lock up so completely that the regular Terminate option won't work. You'll probably have come across similar situations before, when even the Task Manager 'End Process' option won't kill a particular program. Luckily, Process Hacker has an extra function that just might do the job.
Right-click the process, select 'Terminator | Run' and Process Hacker will apply up to 16 ingenious methods to close it down and clean up afterwards. It's a powerful feature-set, and if Process Hacker works for you then there's an easy way to ensure it's always quickly available.
Click 'Hacker | Options | Advanced', check 'Replace Task Manager with Process Hacker' and click 'OK'.
Pressing [Ctrl]+[Shift] +[Esc] will now launch Process Hacker, making it easy to monitor everything running on your PC.
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Review: Mozilla Thunderbird 3
As a Mac owner, chances are you use OS X's Mail application to get your emails. But just as the open-source Firefox has features that can tempt you away from Safari, so the latest version of its cousin, Thunderbird, might tempt a Mail user.
Version 3 has a new interface, with the same brushed-metal look and support for tabbed windows that Firefox has. These tabs can display not just email messages, but folders, searches and even web pages.
An archiving function helps to declutter your inbox, while an improved search function lets you find email messages easily. There are now smart mailbox features to unite your inboxes, and improved Gmail support, so Gmail's special folders are understood correctly.
Address Book handling is also improved so Snow Leopard's contacts can be used, and Spotlight can now search messages.
While it offers advanced features that enable greater fine-tuning of settings than Mail, Thunderbird's biggest selling point is its expandability. It supports hundreds of extensions including calendars, antispam, themes and encryption. Thunderbird can also run off a USB stick.
Compared to version 2, Thunderbird 3 is slower and a little uglier. It also lacks many of Mail's features, including MobileMe, iPhone account syncing and Exchange support. But it is a good alternative for power and mobile users looking for a wider range of possibilities.
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Review: Agile Web Solutions 1Password 3.0.2
Every day, you juggle more passwords: app registration codes, banking details, logins for online services. 1Password acts as a secure repository for them all, justifying its price by being more versatile and usable than your Keychain Access.
1Password is essentially a secure vault. You begin by defining a master password, which you mustn't forget, since you can't retrieve it.
With the vault open, 1Password resembles an iLife app crossed with Delicious Library: a sidebar houses categories, a second column provides 'shelves' with items, and the largest pane enables you to edit details. (Leave your Mac for a user-definable period of time and the vault automatically locks.)
Items can be added manually by selecting a sidebar item and keying in data. However, you can speed things along: just drag an app selection from Finder to set up dozens of software records, or use 1Password's browser integration to grab website login details.
You can add tags to assist with searches and attachments (such as receipts) to records, and generate stronger passwords.
In browsers, 1Password's menu can be used to fill forms with card and identity details too. At first, 1Password seems extravagant, but, in use, its ability to save time and reduce worry becomes clear.
As an app for storing website logins and app registration details alone, it'd be worth a punt; but add security for notes, identities and banking items – plus loads of polish – and you've got a winner.
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Whatever happened to PC soundcards?
When I was a lad, it was all soundcards 'round here. Now a trip to your local PC emporium's a very different experience. You'll find a handful of cards pitched at pro-gamers, a couple of USB interface devices and lots of speakers. Speakers and headphones. Aisles of them stretching as far as the eye can see, like that bit in The Matrix.
Okay – we exaggerate – but only a bit. The PC audio industry has turned topsy-turvy. Where once the soundcard was an essential component in every system, it now seems like an afterthought – if it's included at all. Check out a cross section of ready built systems aimed at Joe Public; like Dell's Studio XPS range.
They're high performance desktop PCs aimed at power users, shipping with Windows 7 Ultimate and up to 16GB of dual channel memory, but with integrated audio by default.
Or there's the Mesh's Matrix Pro PII 955, it's great for gaming with 8GB of memory and 512MB ATI Radeon graphics but with 7.1 audio built into the Asus multimedia motherboard.
Where did the soundcard go?
The ability to upgrade PC hardware has long been one of the platform's most appealing aspects. Memory and storage can be slotted in at will. Even CPU upgrades are no longer the rocket science they once were. So what's happened to the soundcard? When did they become so scarce and why?
We already had some ideas of our own. The switch from XP to Vista then Windows 7 seemed to play its part. Integrated audio is looking pretty good these days, too. To confirm our speculation, we spoke to a panel of industry experts; bigwigs in the world of PC audio production. They paint a picture of an industry that's very far from being sent to the knackers' yard. In fact, it's looking healthier than ever.
For some, the shift in attitude towards PC audio can be traced back to the release of Windows Vista and DirectX 10 in 2006. In the previous versions, DirectSound: the API layer between the software on your machine and your soundcard directly communicated with the hardware through its drivers. In Vista, this functionality was radically altered so that DirectSound ran in emulation mode instead, as a software process.
The immediate result was that apps requiring hardware acceleration took a performance hit. Games with DirectSound3D sound went silent, DVD soundtracks didn't play back properly, mixing was glitchy and effects were dry.
Gamers' frustration
Reading through messages left on gaming boards revealed much more than leet speak and bad punctuation. There was a lot of frustration, not only with Microsoft, but with soundcard manufacturers for a response to the issue that was perceived as slow.
Considering that the Universal Audio Architecture deployed in DirectX 10 had been around on paper since 2002 – and had even been implemented previously in the 2004 release of Windows 2000 SP4 – that frustration may have had some foundation. Three years down the line, what's the state of play?
Microsoft hasn't budged on the issue. It's following a decade long plan to help standardise audio hardware support, after all. Windows 7 and DirectX 11 still emulate DirectSound in software. But, audio component developers have caught up and, more significantly, have even made strides to correct legacy game behaviour on Vista and Windows 7.
"When we transitioned from XP to Vista, we came up with a utility called Creative ALchemy that intercepted DirectSound calls and rerouted them to OpenAL APIs, which has direct access to the hardware," says Steve Erickson, VP of Audio at Creative Labs, "That solution is still relevant for Windows 7. We provided that as a free service to anyone who owns our (legacy) products, so that they would have a good experience going forward".
Good for the industry?
Some manufacturers even say that the change that began with Vista has been a good thing for the industry. Asus make discrete soundcards and motherboards with integrated audio, so are well placed to survey the market from the top and the bottom.
"In Vista and Win7 - everyone's at the same starting point," says Asus spokesperson, Iain Bristow, "Even in XP, the CPU resource required by audio is so little that the difference isn't noticeable". Referring to benchmarks that show little difference in response time between hardware accelerated systems and CPU reliant audio, Bristow says it makes little sense for gamers to chase nanoseconds of latency.
"The key to great gaming experience is sound quality, which Asus provides consistently throughout all of our sound products".
Altec Lansing is well known for its speaker solutions. Adrian Bedggood, who oversees PC audio for the company in Europe is in agreement with his competitors at Asus: "Windows Vista did make significant changes to the handling of audio within Windows OS. Over the long course, this will allow more integration of software with the sound system allowing new features and convenient function".
Integrated audio
Arguably, the changes in the PC audio market go back much further. There have been sound chips on mobos since the first PCs, but it wasn't until 1997, with the introduction of Intel's AC97 codec that it became feasible to drive game audio and music apps with an onboard chip:
"Integrated audio is a reality. It's been like that for over 10 years now," says Steve Erickson. Rather than seeing it as a threat to the soundcard, the Creative Labs VP thinks that integrated audio is just another segment of the market.
"If I'm going to play a first person shooter, I'm probably going to use a discrete soundcard, because the graphics load is still very high, to get a good game experience".
"We also deal directly with PC OEM producers like Acer, Asus, MSI. We provide them with the software stack that goes on their motherboards to give them functionality that's similar to our high-end soundcards, but that runs in software. From a consumer perspective it's good no matter what they have; it just depends on what their desire is".
Predictably, developers who have more of an invested interest in onboard audio are a little more bullish. IDT (Integrated Device Technology) make PC audio chips with up to 10 audio channels, with Windows Logo Program certification.
"Even for demanding gamers, the integrated audio on modern PCs is normally more than adequate," says Pietro Polidori, an IDT Vice President overseeing Europe, the Middle East and African markets, "The IDT High Definition Audio products are developed specifically for major PC manufacturers, who then integrate them onto their motherboards. It's hard to understand the need for a separate soundcard for any mainstream app".
The difference between the graphics and sound markets is at its most pronounced in the field of I/O devices. Sure, there are discrete devices and specialist cards for getting sound into PCs, but they're not as mainstream as the market for USB audio.
"We've seen a huge insurgence of people wanting USB," says Steve Erickson, "People want 5.1, for instance, but they can't get it out of their laptop, or they want to have an optical connection, or they want an extra line control or an extra headphone jack. Sales for USB headsets in gaming are definitely growing, too".
"That plays into the type of games that are really popular today, the MMO type stuff, World of Warcraft, the FPS high-end graphics stuff these are more of a headphone experience". In the music sector too, USB break-out boxes, audio interfaces and external sound modules continue to be popular.
Creative Labs identify home recording hobbyists as an important sector driving demand for these devices. "That's really a connectivity thing. It's quarter inch versus eighth inch, digital I/O versus analogue. That we do see more and more growth in".
The same can be said of more casual users; people who might want to route their PC through their hi-fi or digitise their collection of 80s vinyl records. USB connectivity offers them a convenient way to get audio in and out of their PCs. Unlike gamers, many of them are more reluctant to build a special rig dedicated to a single purpose. USB can offer ports that onboard audio just can't.
Reading between the lines, we're getting a picture here of a market that was once in thrall to the soundcard in the same way it is to add-on graphics, but that is now fragmenting. It's breaking up into power users and mainstream punters; pros and hobbyists. The soundcard is becoming specialist kit.
Beyond stereo
This wasn't supposed to happen. The soundcard was supposed to get more sophisticated at the high end, with volume producers churning out basic boards at the bottom end. Our PCs were supposed to become media centres, serving video and multi-channel audio to every room in the house.
While this is still the vision of the industry (just look at those new Windows 7 adverts) it isn't something consumers have been adopting. We still have discrete PCs for different jobs. And, although 5.1 and 7.1 are built into many PCs, gamers are in broad agreement that 3D stereo is all they need.
"And I would say that for gaming that's not necessarily a bad thing," says Steve Erickson, "We're able to do stuff with multi-channel virtualisation that's really amazing. We can make the brain think that sound is coming from behind it, just with stereo headphones".
As for anything higher than 5.1, Erickson is sceptical about how useful that is. "It's funny, there's always the feature thing you have to do – 7.1 has always been that. I think Creative, Logitech and a couple of others had a 7.1 speaker system at one time, but no one's really sold one for the last two or three years".
For Erickson, who admits that home cinema has "stayed flat" for Creative Labs, the motivation for offering 7.1 and higher multi-channel audio isn't a quest for the ultimate sound experience: "It doesn't really cost anything, you just add an extra output," says Erickson. "In reality, users gravitate towards 5.1, whether it's for watching movies etc".
Altec Lansing, with a great deal of continued investment in surround sound and multi-speaker audio, have a different take: "Sometimes high volume, late night gaming is best enjoyed 'privately'. However, high SPL (Sound Pressure Level) audio is more than just an experience for the ears," says Adrian Bedggood,
"The entire body experiences sound, and the ear itself uses many cues from the room, reflections and the body to shape the sonic experience. While headphones do provide a terrific experience of isolation, we think projected sound at all the SPL levels with a loudspeaker provides the ultimate in 'immersion'."
Market demand
Adrian says there's still a lot of innovation to come in the surround sound market, citing height channels as one particular feature that gamers should be embracing: "There are now a wide variety of surround schemes with as many as 9.2 channels".
Overall, the industry experts admit that the demand for soundcard upgrades is on the wane. They just disagree about the reasons why. Creative Labs are still leaders in the sector, with most of the gamers we spoke to sporting Creative kit in their systems; the majority choosing one of the company's Vista and Windows 7 compatible X-Fi models.
"I would say the demand for discrete soundcards has gone down, but USB solutions have climbed about the same rate, says Steve Erickson. "The overall number of units is about the same – it's just that the mix has changed".
Integrated chip maker IDT would like to lay a greater claim to the decline in the soundcard market though. It is, they say, because onboard sound is now just as good. "The demand for soundcards has fallen because the quality of integrated solutions has increased dramatically," says IDT Vice President Pietro Polidori.
"This hasn't happened with graphics, as there is no sign of integrated graphics providing the performance of add-in cards, but for PC audio it's game over: there's no need for a separate card".
Whichever camp you side with, a cursory look at online stores tells you that there are fewer soundcards available than there were five years ago. Fewer manufacturers too. But that doesn't mean PC audio is dead.
Our experts suggest that there are now more types of user, all with different demands. Gamers and home cinema enthusiasts, music fans and home recording hobbyists. These, in turn, are subdivided according to spending power and enthusiasm into smaller and smaller groups, each with their own tailored part of the market.
When a sector fragments to this extent, two kinds of developer survive: volume producers and high-end, niche manufactures. Companies like Creative Labs and Plantronics are able to dominate the market with their size and financial clout. As for everyone else? They're around to mop up the gravy.
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In Depth: Six Nations Rugby 3D: behind the scenes
This weekend sees yet another sporting event getting the 3D treatment.
Hot on the heels of last week's 3D Arsenal vs Manchester United match, the opening match of the RBS Six Nations is to be shown in 40 Odeon and Cineworld cinemas across the UK in 3D.
Although the BBC has rights to the content, it's not actually the BBC who will be taking care of the 3D feed. An independent UK company is taking the 3D reigns, called Inition, which has a long-standing relationship with 3D in the UK.
The team at Inition were behind Keane's historic 3D internet vidcast last year and the company also shot Usain Bolt on the streets of Manchester for a promo for the Manchester Commonwealth Games.
That race saw the runner beat his World Record time. Luckily the production company was on-board, complete with the first 3D tracking shot to capture the eye-popping action.
To understand just how much of an undertaking shooting England vs Wales in 3D is, we spoke to Inition's Director Andy Milns and were invited to its studios in London to see the cameras being used in action.
"It was two years ago when we, along with two other companies, decided to do a 3D broadcast of the rugby," explained Milns to TechRadar. "We approached the BBC and we funded it privately."
There were a number of issues with that experimental first shoot, namely the lack of equipment on hand for the match.
Not that this dampened Milns' spirit in any way or his enthusiasm for the technology: "Unfortunately we only really had one camera position and no graphics so we were limited.
"And then there weren't any tries and it was a rubbish game, but apart from that it was a great experience."
With this much pressure, the kit used to film to the action has to be fool-proof. Luckily Milns is very confident in the rig that will be used.
"We will be using standard Sony split-block cameras, as they are great for 3D -as they are quite small," he explains.
"Essentially you have two cameras instead of one which replicate your own eyes. There's a left and right camera, one mounted on top, the other below and the rig will be holding two standard broadcast 2D cameras.
"We are using a 3D mirror rig as it is better to shoot 3D and doesn't have the limitations of a side-by-side configuration. Use the side-by-side method and in certain close-up shots you can't get the cameras close enough together.
"With the rig we can control the alignment and how much 3D you will see in the picture."
After witnessing live football in 3D for the first time, we did notice some limitations to the technology – especially with blurring on fast action.
Milns hopes he has a way to counteract this when it comes to rugby: "Blurring can be associated with fast movements such as rugby balls, but we'll be shooting at 50fps which should stop this problem."
There's definitely a groundswell taking place in 3D at the moment. Even if the public hasn't quite got round to the idea of 3D in the home – despite manufacturers trying to persuade us otherwise – there's something special about watching 3D in the cinema.
And considering the cinemas playing the game are kitted out with alcohol licenses the atmosphere should be immense. Let's just hope the 3D technology helps rather than hinders the experience.
England vs Wales in 3D is shown in selected Odeon and Cineworld cinemas in the UK today.England vs Ireland will also be shown in 3D 27 February.
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