Hey everyone, welcome to the winter term! And the last year that we will all see – at least according to the Mayan calendar. (Anyone ever consider that they might have just stopped at this point because they realized the error in their calculations might start to affect things so they would revisit it in a couple thousand years or so, then they got wiped out by invaders?)
Anyway, as of reading this article, the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will have ended and we will hopefully be able to get our hands on some amazing new products – if you can afford them anyway. Often, CES is used by manufacturers to show off technology or products that will be coming out, or may be, or might just be concepts that would never be commercially viable. This kind of vaporware is annoying, but it can still have positive effects in driving innovation forward.
CES has never been as big for gaming as it has for other devices, so the news on the gaming front is rather small. From the Microsoft camp, the biggest news was really just about new software and sales figures. The Xbox 360 has apparently been the bestselling console this year, which is not surprising considering it has been ahead of the PS3 and Wii almost every month. Microsoft is also proud to announce that 18 million Kinect systems have been sold, while the Xbox 360 system itself is the first of the current generation systems to reach an install base of 66 million. Microsoft also announced a few partnerships with news companies to bring news feeds and shows to the Xbox 360. The only real new gaming related product is the commercial software development kit (SDK) for the Kinect on PC. The non-commercial version has already been released, allowing personal and educational users to connect the Kinect directly to a PC and access all of the motion, depth, and audio info that the Kinect brings in for games and research. The commercial version will allow for even more advanced programming and will definitely expand what we see the Kinect being used for.
Sony is still trying to gain interest in its new PSP Vita portable system, announcing new specs and showing off some new games. The company is also trying to widen the adoption of 3D by making it more accessible and user friendly. Sony also revealed several new laptops and other technologies across its many fields of manufacturing.
On a quick side note, I wanted to comment on the new PS3 branded 3D monitor/TV that Sony has released. This $400 24” unit (it was on sale for $200 off on Boxing Day) comes with 3D shutter glasses and is designed to work with the PS3, as well as functioning as a regular TV or computer monitor. I ordered one of these units for my new gaming PC, but ended up cancelling the order after personally viewing the monitor and reading lots of product reviews. The biggest complaint that people had about the monitor was its brightness (especially when used as a monitor), with secondary concerns being significant light bleed around the edges of the screen, and the high cost compared with other 3D computer monitors. I personally noticed the darkness of the screen when I saw a demo unit in a Future Shop; I think this is partially due to the type of 3D technology used. The monitor uses Active Shutter technology – those are the type with the big, heavy (and expensive) glasses that everyone likes to make fun of – which uses a super-fast shutter to cover one of your eyes at a time to correspond to the image displayed on the screen. Your left eye sees the left image only and your right eye sees the right image only, and your brain combines them into 3D just like it does with normal vision. The inherent problem with this technology, which will always make the screen look darker, is the fact that at every moment in time one of your eyes is seeing an opaque surface. I personally think this might also be a cause of dizziness or headaches in some users, as your eyes are suddenly switching between seeing a screen several feet away from you to a solid barrier just an inch away. Even if the change is too fast for you to see, it definitely has an impact on the viewing experience over a substantial amount of time.
The other main type of 3D technology uses a prism lens in much cheaper glasses, this is the technology you see when you go to a movie theatre (hence the name Real D 3D or Cinema3D). This method uses a simple pair of plastic glasses to focus the correct image into your right and left eyes, there are no moving parts, nothing blocking your view, no batteries, and the glasses are normally around $5 (rather than the $100 for the active shutter glasses). As there is no opaque surface blocking your view, these screens are perceived as being much brighter, have better contrast, and richer colour. Big screen TVs are available using this technology, as are computer monitors. I ended up picking up an LG 23” 3D monitor for less than the cost of the Sony monitor, and I look forward to watching 3D movies and videos – YouTube has hundreds of 3D videos, and more are added as people purchase 3D video cameras.
If you are interested in 3D technology in computers there are plenty of different methods, some using the RealD 3D and some using active shutter technology. At FanExpo 2011, I saw a very interesting laptop which had the same kind of 3D capable screen (without glasses) that the Nintendo 3DS uses. While the 3DS requires you to manually focus the settings to get the 3D effect and moving outside of the calibrated range can give people headaches, this laptop monitor instead uses the built in webcam and facial recognition to follow the eyes of the person viewing and dynamically recalibrate in real-time. This kind of technology, and other visual based technology, is often tested on laptops and monitor screens before being expanded for larger screens. This is good news for gamers and anyone using a smaller screen – we get the tech first, and we get the cheaper units as they are developed.
Wow, that ended up being a very long side note. Back to CES, where Nintendo was rather quiet, focusing on gaining attention towards its Wii U console. I have mentioned in previous articles and I will say it again, I am worried about the success of this console. I don’t think there are enough new features in terms of control or novelty gameplay over the existing Wii console, and the advances in graphics over the Wii only succeed in bringing the console up to the level of the Xbox 360 and PS3, not enough to win over core gamers or convince casual gamers that they need to replace the Wii. I think the seniors are content with Wii bowling, I don’t think they will be out fighting for a spot in line in front of Best Buy to get the Wii U on launch day.
So, back to CES, where there were a number of other gaming-esque announcements, or just generally cool. The biggest one in my opinion was LG’s announcement of a 4mm thick OLED TV, and this isn’t just a little monitor or concept tech showpiece, this is a fully functional 55” TV on sale soon. OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode, and as the name suggests, they are made from naturally occurring organic material that emits light. This technology does not use a back light and colour filters like other TVs, as a result it gives a true black and more vibrant colours. The TV is supposedly very sturdy and light, meaning that it shouldn’t warp or risk breaking when moved, but don’t lose your grip on your Wii remote and throw it at the TV – this thing isn’t that strong.
Another interesting product are new virtual reality glasses, which can overlay images into your field of view – and since a different image can be shown on each lens, you can view these images in 3D so they won’t look flat. Possible real-time uses described by the developer include providing additional info about a restaurant you are looking at, displaying the name you forgot of the person you are talking to, or how about overlaying a wallpaper design or image onto a billboard you walk by every day. The glasses are still very expensive and very bulky in some cases, as the more advanced ones are actually able to track your hand movement and allow you to interact with 3D images displayed on the screen. That is where the gaming possibilities really catch my interest, as these glasses could be used to project the game environment directly in front of you and move to directly follow your head movement. Aiming would follow your actual hand motions, and if you get to close to something in the room around you, an alarm would pop up (hopefully preventing some trips and falls).
Memory cards also seem to be really popular, with SanDisk announcing a reasonably high speed 128GB SD card. Personally I think that is insane and pointless when cards are so small. This isn’t like you are carrying around an extra storage device the size of a VHS tape or something, instead you are carrying an extra SD card. Does it really take up that much extra space, and is it really that much more convenient to have such a big card? I can understand if it is for an HD video camera where you are limited in recording time by the size of the card, but for still images or something – just bring two 64GB cards.
On the same thread, Sony is attempting to launch a new type of memory card which is being designed as a successor of sorts to the CompactFlash card type. The tradeoff for its increased size apparently is transfer speeds several times faster than existing cards. This could again be a big benefit to HD video recording, but for regular consumers I don’t think it will have much impact.
So that is my partial review of CES, check out your preferred tech news site for products announced after the submission deadline of this article, and anything that I glossed over that might catch your interest – some of the concept cars were really cool. Enjoy the term, study hard – between gaming of course, and see you next issue. Keep on Gaming!
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