Phanteks PH-TC14PE Review
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Trine 2 Release Date Announced - December 7th for the PC and Mac, Console Versions Later
Trine released back in 2009 for the PC, Mac, PS3, and 360. It combined fantasy action with some great physics work, where you had control of three different characters to defeat both enemies and the environment. The challenges and puzzles required some thinking to solve, but you could approach them in any number of ways. Trine also sold pretty well and even won some awards, so you can bet a sequel was underway. Today, we learn that Trine 2 will release on December 7th for the PC and Mac, while PS3 and 360 gamers will have to wait until the 20th (PS3) and 21st (360). Trine 2 was supposed to have released earlier this year, but it kept being delayed. Now, it will soon be here, and just in time for the holidays too.
Trine 2 will cost $14.99 and releases on December 7th for the PC and Mac. The PS3 version will follow on December 20th with the 360 version on the 21st.
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New Defense Grid DLC Features GLaDOS
It seems GLaDOS has tired of Aperture Science and is moving on to a different environment to administer new tests. Defense Grid: The Awakening will be getting some new DLC called You Monster that features GLaDOS. There will be eight new maps and 35 challenge missions where GLaDOS will send wave of monsters at you while monitoring your progress. It will be interesting to see just what GLaDOS has in store for us in a tower defense game, but I am sure she has something devious cooking up. Nothing about GLaDOS says she has to play fair, so expect her to change the rules of Defense Grid at her discretion.
Defense Grid: You Monster launches on December 7th.
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Making UV Light More Easily
Ultraviolet light gives you a tan, is used in the lithography process to produce many computer components, and cannot be seen by the human eye. It is also very hard to produce efficiently because of its small wavelength. To directly produce UV light would require the source is the size of the wavelength, which is just very hard to work with. Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a way to get around this requirement using a nonlinear process.
In optics, a nonlinear material is one which does not emit the same light that enters it. Instead it produces a different harmonic of light. Going up by one harmonic means if the source light is 800 nm (near-infrared), the resulting light would be 400 nm (violet). In this case the wavelength is actually a fourth, instead of a half. This allows a much simpler, more efficient, and cheaper infrared light source to be used to produce UV light.
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Battlefield 3's Next Patch Fixes a Little Bit of Everything
EA and DICE keep on improving Battlefield 3, since every game is bound to have something that needs fixing. Sometimes a patch will fix one set of things, then expose some entirely new things that need to be patched. In the case of Battlefield 3, EA will soon issue a massive 2GB patch that fixes a little bit of everything. You will be able to change the color of the in-game HUD to something more visible (useful for the colorblind) and reassign cycle weapons, plus no longer die in some extreme cases, like running and vaulting over an obstacle into water. There are also plenty of tweaks and bugfixes, like moving of a tank spawn on the Caspian Border map so the tank is no longer destroyed when a tree falls on it. The Tactical Light has been tweaked so it no longer blinds you over a long range, AT mines now are active for 20 seconds after a player dies to avoid infinite mines, decreased accuracy for all weapons on fully automatic firing (burst fire is now more accurate), and an increased mortar reload time and travel time for the shells.
The full list of changes can be viewed at the source or on Battlelog if you own Battlefield 3, and the patch should hit around 8am GMT tomorrow morning.
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Lighting the Way to New Technologies
Researchers at MIT have devised a new way to measure the properties of a solid material. To understand how any material will interact with another one must understand how the electrons behave. Traditionally this is determined by shining a light onto the material to see how the electrons react at a specific point. To get information on the entire material, it is shifted slightly and the process repeats. This can take a very long time, which is why the MIT researchers were looking for something new.
Though electrons are single particles with a single charge, they do act like bar magnets and the direction of the 'magnet' is called spin. The new method takes advantage of that spin by shining a circularly polarized laser at the material. An electron’s spin determines in what direction it will drive and how fast it will move due to the laser. Pulsing the laser allows the researchers to determine, the energy, momentum and spin of the electrons it hit in three dimensions.
This technique was developed to analyze topological insulators but may impact far more. Topological insulators are curious material which conduct electricity on their surface, but are insulators inside. They have the potential to reduce the heat put out by electronics because their resistance is not greatly affected by impurities. Regular metals will see their resistances increase with impurities, and their resistance will cause the metal to heat up.
This technology could also be used to create a new kind electromagnetic storage where light is used to flip a bit, instead of an electronic interaction. The fact that light can selectively push away electrons of particular spins, leaving a current of other spins, can be very useful in the future. The potential for this new technique, like topological insulators, is still being discovered as researchers envision new futures.
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Rumored Wii U Specs Turning Heads
Out of the big three console makers, Nintendo was the first company to announce a next-gen console, the Wii U, back in April. The company also had a prototype showcased at E3 in June, but we didn't know much about the system specifications; until now. Specifications for the next generation Nintendo console were supposedly leaked to Wii U daily, and if the source turns out to be correct, we'll have another console war on our hands. The first thing about the new console that jumps out is the processor; an IBM made quad-core PowerPC processor running at 3GHz, a chip that is "very similar" to the 3.2GHz processor you find in the Xbox 360. Other points of interest include 768MB of eDRAM, which is built onto the same die as the CPU, and an unknown 40-nm GPU, supplied by AMD. All of this is very interesting, but a few details jump out for the wrong reasons. For instance, IBM has previously hinted that the Wii U would utilize a Power7 variant of its Power processor architecture, and not a PowerPC chip as stated in the specs. There is, however, a Power7 chip that runs at 3-Ghz, so the article may have had a typo or misprint. There is also an issue with the memory listed, mainly that eDRAM is extremely expensive, and would beef up the size of the console considerably. As an example, the Xbox 360 has 10MB of eDRAM, and the Wii has 3, so it is more likely that the 768MB will be the main memory of the console, and have something closer to 32MB of eDRAM. In either case, a console running these specs would be considerably faster than the current offerings from Sony or Microsoft, so get ready for an interesting year for consoles.
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New Graphene Discovery Could Lead to New Encoding Method
In 2005 researchers discovered a combination of carbon and calcium is a superconductor at 11.5 K. Researchers at the London Center for Nanotechnology, a partnership of University College London and Imperial College London, have been continuing research into this combination.
When passing calcium atoms beneath a sheet of graphene, a single-atom thick sheet of carbon, the new electrons were reacting not as expected. The anticipation was for the electrons to spread out evenly, but instead they formed charge density waves. Under an electron microscope, the waves appeared as stripes on the graphene, and they could be used for storing data. For example, vertical stripes could represent a 0 while horizontal stripes represent a 1. Regardless of how they may be used, researchers have been investigating possibilities with stripes and are very pleased to find them in the two-dimensional plane of graphene.
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New Star Wars: The Old Republic Video Features Jedi Consular versus Imperial Agent
Star Wars: The Old Republic is basically two weeks away from launching. It is the first MMORPG from BioWare, but it is set in the Knights of the Old Republic universe the studio popularized with the series of the same name. SWTOR is set several hundred years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic II, and this being BioWare, has a much larger focus on story than your average MMORPG. I'm sure you've seen some of the gameplay videos and may have even participated in some of the beta events, so you should know by now if you are going to get Star Wars: The Old Republic or not. Some of you may even have picked your first class, but for others, you may need a little help to decide what to play as. Well, today BioWare has released a new video showing a Jedi Consular squaring off against an Imperial Agent. The Agent is a good long-range class, but the Jedi Consular can throw immense rocks from a distance to help even the odds. The video should help you get a better idea of what class you want to play as, as well as show off some of the in-game battles and story aspects.
Star Wars: The Old Republic launches on December 20th for the PC.
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MIT Knows When You Run a Red Light
In 2008, 7000 people died in car crashes, and of those deaths, over 700 at crashes in which a driver ran a red light. Researchers at MIT want to shrink those numbers with an algorithm to predict when a driver is going to run a light. Algorithms to do this already exist, but they do not have an accuracy of 85%.
Before we can get this in our garages though, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) systems will have to be implemented in cars. This technology is being explored by the Department of Transportation and many car manufacturers such as Ford. A V2V system allows cars to talk to each other so the vehicles and drivers can know better the distance between them, their speeds, and their directions. Benefits from such a system include gas mileage, by minimizing the need for minor speed adjustments, and safety with systems like MIT’s.
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Public Windows 8 Beta Could be Coming in February
2012 is promising to be a year with a lot of Windows 8-related activities. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is headlining the CES with a keynote address on Redmond's touch-enhanced OS, and rumors abound that the public will also be given access to the Windows 8 Beta shortly after CES concludes. According to Read Write Web, the public beta will be available in the latter part of February. There was no mention as to which features would make it into the build, as the Windows 8 engineers are still deciding on which components to include. A slick touch interface(optional), faster boot times and a quicker, streamlined OS installation are just a few of Windows 8's interesting new attractions. As such, if this rumor proves to be accurate, we'll finally have some first-hand experience at some of the enticing features Microsoft has been teasing us with for the last few months, and that's a good thing for those itching to take a peek at what Windows 8 has to offer.
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