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Hawk-Eye to play judge and medic at this year's Rugby World Cup
Hawk-Eye is best known for being a virtual line judge in tennis, though it's used in many other sports including soccer, where it powers the goal-line technology the UK Premier League adopted a few years ago. And soon, it'll make its debut on the rugby pitch when this year's World Cup kicks off on September 18th, following successful trials of the system earlier this year. As rugby fans will know, a Television Match Official (TMO) is always on hand at big games to review broadcast footage when the on-pitch referee needs a hand with a tough decision. At the upcoming World Cup, TMOs won't have to rely solely on TV feeds any longer, with Hawk-Eye's SMART Replay tech offering multiple angles of the action and other benefits like zoom and slow-motion features.
English Premier League to adopt goal-line technology next season, Hawk-Eye to be the provider
Football's ruling body, FIFA, has already decided that goal-line technology will be used at next year's World Cup in Brazil, which, in and of itself, was an indirect nod for other competitions to follow suit. Today, one of the globe's biggest leagues announced it too will implement the recently approved tech in its matches, with the Premier League letting it be known that the 2013-2014 season is set to be the first to adopt the new system. Speaking of which, the Football Association decided to go with Hawk-Eye, a technology currently present in professional sports like tennis and cricket -- one that provides seven fast-frame shooters around the two goals and uses software to quickly analyze if the ball indeed crossed the line. For the football (soccer) faithful, it's been a long time coming, so here's hoping this makes the game less prone to errors. After all, Howard Webb and Mike Dean need all the help they can get. [Image credit, Premier League]
IFAB gives goal-line technology the nod, first official run will be at this year's FIFA Club World Cup
For years and years now, football (soccer) fans have been asking themselves when FIFA would finally realize the "beautiful game" needed to start implementing some sort of tech to help referees with decision-making during major tournaments and in every-day matches. Well, that time is now. After a few months of putting the so-called goal-line technology through intensive and rigorous testing, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) has once and for all approved the use of such tech in official footie games. What this means is FIFA will utilize a couple of methods, one dubbed "GoalRef" and the other "Hawk-Eye," to assist refs in any controversial calls that may take place throughout the 90 minutes (or more if there's extra-time) on either goal. The first of these uses electromagnetic antennas around the goal posts and crossbar to transmit a signal to a referee's watch as soon as the entire ball crosses the line; meanwhile, the latter requires six to eight high-speed cameras -- that shoot at 500 fps -- to grab multiple images of the match ball and quickly process them to identify if it indeed crossed the line completely -- this is also helped by black-colored dots on each goal post which aid the cameras gain a better overall precision. What's best, though, these new systems are set to take their first legitimate runs as soon as the FIFA Club World Cup takes place in December, with the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil also said to have the goal-line technology ready to be used in all of its 64 global glory-seeking matches.
Scattered Shots: New and improved abilities
Scattered Shots: noun. 1. (Scatter Shot, singular) An ability used by Marksmanship hunters, especially to annoy other players in PvP. 2. (Scattered Shots, plural) A column at WoW Insider about anything even loosely related to hunters, except for high-level raiding and completely improper, sometimes libelous personal commentary.Hunters are getting quite a few changes in Wrath of the Lich King, but so far haven't covered them all. Today I'd like to go through the newest abilities and discuss them in greater detail.New Baseline Hunter Abilities:Nope, no Camouflage. We talked about this before, but it looks like the devs read our article, "Do hunters need Camouflage?" and decided the answer was no. So, instead we have a couple other new abilities to look forward to:Kill Shot: This is the new level 80 hunter ability, and it provides us with a bit of utility that help us to stand out and perform better in various situations:
Scattered Shots: A talent for leveling in Beast Mastery
The Scattered Shots hunter bears his or her teeth and says "RAAAWR!" to the mirror every morning in an uncouth, beastly manner -- thus affirming the beast within, which yearns for a way out to express itself.Which talents you should get as you level up is a tricky question with many different answers, many of which can turn out just fine or absolutely horrible, depending on how you play. Today I'll be taking you along on a journey through the first 40 levels of talent spending, and explaining why I think certain talent choices are better than others.One of the most important things to remember about talents is that, in spite of all their mathematical precision, they are open to poetic interpretation. Some talents give clearly superior advantages, while in other cases it's mostly a matter of opinion as to which one fits your play-style best. Sometimes the talents that look best on paper aren't the ones that will really help you the most when the going gets rough. Likewise, some talents are designed more for endgame use at level 70, even though they appear early on in the talent tree, while others are better for leveling up, and you may wish to drop them later on once you finish leveling.Most of my talent choices today are going to be in the Beast Mastery tree, for instance. Some people may say that they like Marksmanship or Survival best, and certainly that's their right. But from most of the people I've talked to, the general consensus is that Beast Mastery is best for both leveling and early endgame raiding, too. While talking about these talents, I'll list your level and the number of talent points you have at each stage, so that it's easier to keep track of your talent resources.
Hunter deadzone is dead: new minimum range = 5 yards, not 1
It appears that the latest information from the PTR for Patch 2.3 regarding hunters' ranged attacks is incorrect, as are the cries of multitudes who feel that hunters shooting close up would be unfairly overpowered. Drysc says:There's a tooltip error, it should be "5-35 yards". We want melee and ranged to be kept separate, so that when in melee attack range you should not be able to use a ranged attack. There's some amount of 'give' there, especially in fast paced PvP which can produce some temporary gray area but that's fully known with this change. Feeding the issue of the tooltip error is a bug currently where you can indeed range attack someone while being meleed, but that's in the process of being resolved as well.When I first saw the new "1-41" range for hunters (that's with the extended-range talent "Hawk Eye") over on World of Raids, I knew that something was wrong. To let hunters use melee and ranged attacks at the same time means that they would often do better up close to their enemies rather than far away, and would go against a lot of the fundamental concepts around which the class is based. As it is, the mechanic of switching between melee and ranged attacks is one of the exciting things about being a hunter, and, now that the deadzone is dying at last, there won't be that block of frustration getting in the way between the two.
