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DJI's Phantom 3 has its biggest rival in Yuneec's 4K Typhoon drone
We'd understand if you're not familiar with Yuneec; we've only written about its products twice. However, it's fairly well-known in the quadcopter world, and best described as a direct rival to DJI. When I reviewed DJI's 4K Phantom 3 Professional drone ($1,259), a reader asked if we could compare it to Yuneec's rival Typhoon Q500 model (around $1,100, but with a lower-res 1080p camera). Days later, Yuneec announced an updated Typhoon with 4K shooting for $1,299, making the comparison much easier. It only seemed fair to grant our reader's wish, and check out what the new Typhoon had to offer.
The Big Picture: NASA images typhoon eye in stunning detail
NASA's CloudSat has imaged the eye of a category 4 typhoon, a feat the space agency likened to a "golfer hitting a hole in one." Its cloud-penetrating radar has a field of view of just .5 square miles, making it a challenge to zone in on such a tiny, fast-moving target. The pass produced an accurate cross-section of the eye, as shown in the lower part of the image above. Researchers from Colorado State University also combined the data with Japan's MTSTAT infrared satellite to create a full 3D cross-section (below). CloudSat provides valuable wind data to forecasters, and is also helping scientists build more accurate climate models to better predict the effects of global warming.
The Big Picture: A massive typhoon as seen from orbit
No, a black hole didn't suddenly open up on the Earth's surface. That's Vongfong, a gigantic storm (then a super typhoon) that has been causing chaos in the Asia-Pacific region for much of October. NASA astronaut Reid Weisman posted this dramatic photo as the International Space Station orbited overhead on the morning of October 9th, when Vongfong was getting close to Okinawa. It had been downgraded to "just" a category 4 super typhoon by then, but that still made it both enormous and dangerous -- the eye alone was about 30 miles across, and it had sustained winds of nearly 150MPH. As beautiful as this orbital view may be, it's comforting to know that Vongfong has since weakened to a tropical storm and isn't posing nearly as much of a threat.
EVE Evolved: Donate your old spaceships to charity
The Philippines recently suffered its worst natural disaster in living memory when typhoon Haiyan made landfall on November 8th, leaving over half a million people displaced and millions without food and basic supplies. Countries and organisations around the world have been sending relief aid into the region, and gamers have once again proven to be a generous bunch. Several livestreamers have been running donation drives; the developers behind Luvinia Online even promised to donate 100% of the income from three new in-game items to the Philippine Red Cross. EVE Online has now also joined in the fundraising by reactivating its popular PLEX for Good scheme. CCP started the PLEX for Good scheme back in January of 2010 as a way for players to donate in-game assets and ISK to help people in the real world. EVE Online players have collectively donated over $150,000 US in aid following 2010's Haitian earthquake, tsunami devastation in Japan, flooding in Pakistan, and tornadoes in the US two years ago. Players hope to smash all fundraising records this time around with dedicated fundraising auctions, events, and liquidation firesales happening across the game. There are even ways for ex-players without active subscriptions to donate their idle in-game assets to charity. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the PLEX for Good scheme, the fundraising efforts players are using to help out a country in need, and how you can donate your ISK to charity even if you've long since quit EVE.
CCP turns PLEX for Good program toward typhoon relief
CCP announced today that EVE Online players who wish to help relief efforts in the wake of the typhoon that devastated parts of the Philippines can do so through the company's PLEX for Good program. For every PLEX donated between today and December 17th, CCP will contribute $15 to the Icelandic Red Cross. CCP will also award donating players with one in-game Sisters of EVE shirt as a thank-you gesture. In the world of EVE, PLEX is a tradeable item worth 30 days of game time. PLEX can be purchased with real money directly from CCP or with ISK inside EVE's incredibly complex marketplace. CCP has fired up PLEX for Good in the past; EVE players using the program have raised over $150,000 for disaster relief since it was debuted in the wake of the 2004 tsunami that struck Indonesia. To donate PLEX, contract the item/s directly to the CCP PLEX For GOOD character on a 14-day item exchange contract.
Apple begins collecting Philippine typhoon donations for the American Red Cross
Apple is now offering people the ability to donate directly to the American Red Cross in order to help support the Philippine typhoon disaster relief. The donations are being advertised on Apple's home page and in iTunes. iTunes users can donate in increments of US$5, $10, $25, $50, $100 and $200 in the US iTunes store. Check your local iTunes store for currency amounts there. Of note, 100 percent of every donation will go to the American Red Cross. Apple does mention that because it does not share iTunes user data with anyone, people who donate will not get an acknowledgment from the American Red Cross, but they will receive an iTunes receipt noting their contribution.
EVE Evolved: Fitting battleships for PvP in Odyssey
Tech 1 ships in EVE Online used to be arranged in tiers that determined the cost and power of the ship and what level of the appropriate skill was required to fly it. This gave a sense of progression back in 2004 when all we had was frigates, cruisers, and battleships, but developers have since filled in the gaps between ship classes with destroyers, battlecruisers, strategic cruisers, and tech 2 ships of all shapes and sizes. In a recent game design initiative, CCP has been removing the tiers from within each tech 1 ship class by buffing the lower-tier ships up to the same rough power level as the largest ship in its class. The recent Odyssey expansion saw the humble battleship buffed beyond all recognition. The Megathron, Raven, Tempest, and Apocalypse all became extreme damage-dealing powerhouses, but the Dominix, Scorpion, Typhoon, and Armageddon were buffed the most. Each of them can now fit several monster setups, dealing upward of 1,000 damage per second or completely disabling enemy ships with energy neutralisers and electronic warfare. The build costs of these tier one battleships were more than doubled in the expansion, but prices are only slowly rising due to the existing stock on the market. That makes the tier one battleships incredibly cost-effective PvP powerhouses at the moment, and players are beginning to take advantage of it. In this week's EVE Evolved, I experiment with PvP setups for the newly revamped Typhoon, Armageddon, Scorpion, and Dominix battleships.
Shifting Perspectives: A Mists talent analysis for cats and moonkin
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our DPS edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. This week, we feel talented. So. New talents! Awesome, right? This week, I'm going to take a closer look at the tiers and make recommendations on which talent you'll want to pick up for your Mists of Pandaria adventures. (Yes, I've looked at the new talents before, but we've had several months' worth of discussion and changes since then.) I apologize in advance for the terrible puns in the subheaders. Tier 1: We like to charge it, charge it No way around it: Displacer Beast is flat-out terrible. In theory, the ability serves as a way to escape from enemies; in practice, it completely fails at this because it lacks the threat-dropping capabilities of Feign Death or the temporary damage absorption of Vanish. DoTs will still immediately snap you out of stealth, as will spells in the air (sometimes). Non-players will keep all their threat and keep attacking you. I could maybe sorta kinda see it being used offensively in PvP for feral (open from Prowl, dump some energy, DB out and reopen), but that's pushing things. At this point, I don't think the talent is fixable, and I'm hoping they scrap it and replace it with something that buffs Dash and/or Stampeding Roar. Luckily, we have two other talents that are much better. Feline Swiftness's passive movement speed increase is boring but very helpful in any situation. Unfortunately, it has one key downside: It does not stack with boot enchants, which makes them an integral part of the decision. Feral will almost certainly be using the Blurred Speed enchant anyway for the agility bonus, so it's really more like a 7% bonus for them. Balance has a little more choice here; they can choose between move speed + 140 mastery or 175 haste, which will likely be a superior DPS option. Wild Charge, in contrast, has a wealth of situational uses, especially in PvP. The cooldown being so short means you can use it pretty much every time you need it, which is great. Of course, that means you have to use it to gain any benefit from the talent. If you'd rather focus on your rotation, just go with Feline Swiftness. Basically, it's a pretty close call. I probably prefer Wild Charge for feral and Feline Swiftness for balance, but it can go either way.
20 observations from a leveling tank
My main is a druid tank and healer, but on occasion, I've returned to two low-level warrior alts and braved leveling in the Dungeon Finder. Most leveling groups are a bit like the proverbial little girl with pigtails: When they're good, they're very, very good ... and when they're bad, they're horrid. The following is a list of somewhat random observations I have collected after several expansions' worth of tanking for low-level groups. 1. Don't take shortcuts on trash packs. The time you save sneaking past one of them will be eliminated by the time you'll lose when someone blunders into them and dies. 2. Someone will almost always blunder into them and die. 3. Despite common complaints on the forums, the vast majority of players are actually really nice people who are perfectly willing to tolerate mistakes and the learning curve. The actual occurrence of true, unforgivable jackasses seems to be about one per five groups, although this depends on when you're queuing.
Striker integrated display helmet has something to tell you about that old saying 'if looks could kill'...
We've been told in the past that our mean, hate-filled looks could kill, but we never took that literally. Now, if Britain's BAE Systems has its way, that phrase could seriously have a whole new meaning. The company has developed an RAF helmet that will allow pilots to deploy and steer their weapons by turning their heads. It all sounds incredibly horrifying and futuristic, of course, but the technology which enables the new gadget is pretty intense, as well. The helmet is fitted with an optical head tracker, with targets popping up in the visor, which provides a supposedly highly accurate missile fire with low latency, at any altitude. The system has been extensively tested on the Eurofighter Typhoon, but is modular in styling so that it can be fitted to many systems. There's no word on when this tech will see actual action, but we have our reservations about it, so we hope they take their time.
Abilities I usually wish didn't exist in 5-mans
Most tanks are control freaks. As a matter of fact, you should hope that your tank is a control freak, because the ones who shrug off a mob running around loose are the ones you probably don't want tanking your run anyway. With that in mind, there are several player abilities that, while great for soloing or PvP, don't make the transition to a 5-man very well. Either they make life a real nuisance for your group members due to inherent design, or they tend to do so in the hands of a player who doesn't deploy them in a particularly helpful fashion. Not all tanks will have the same degree of irritation with all of the following skills (for example, I play a druid, and because bears don't have a ranged silence, a knockback on a caster mob is much more likely to annoy me than, say, a death knight tank), but I promise you that they've all been mentioned by my tanking colleagues as abilities with a high chance of blowing a pull.
EVE Evolved: The faction warfare mission debacle
When faction warfare went live with EVE Online's Empyrean Age expansion back in the summer of 2008, It was a magnificent success. It was intended as a way for newer players to get into PvP and as a stepping stone from the safe haven of empire to full-on sovereignty warfare. It wasn't long before large fleets were duking it out in low security space and for a time, it was great. Eventually, problems began to come to light that demanded developer attention. Capturing exploits and a lack of rewards were causing players to leave the war and after a year with no development, faction warfare was looking abandoned. Rewards were eventually implemented in an attempt to revitalise the ageing faction warfare system and promote PvP. With the Dominion expansion came the most anticipated of those rewards - new tier 1 navy battleships available only from the faction warfare loyalty point store. Since the announcement that they were coming, mission-runners have been farming faction warfare missions like crazy for loyalty points. The promise of unique rewards from the missions was intended to revitalise the game and give pilots something to fight over. But did the rewards really improve faction warfare and promote PvP or was it a huge mistake? In this three page exposé, I run down the history of faction warfare missions, from the development mistakes to the EVE corp that made almost enough ISK to build a titan. Did the mission buff revitalise faction warfare or did it put the final nail in its coffin? And just how did mission-runners make billions of ISK?
EVE Evolved: The faction warfare mission debacle, page 2
The save came in the form of the previously mentioned unique items limited to the faction warfare loyalty point store. LP was given out for kills against the enemy militia and completion of missions. The hope was to get more people back into the war and give them some incentive to do faction missions that put pilots at risk of PvP.
EVE Evolved: The faction warfare mission debacle, page 3
Certain missions that required the collection of an item from a wreck or killing a lot of ships were eliminated as they would take extra time or pose extra risk. With intense practice, missions ended up taking as little as 30 seconds each and at most a few minutes. By using a strong PvP presence to lock down the systems in which they took missions by force they were able to keep their mission-runners safe and run 45 missions in an average of one and a half hours.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Undocumented druid changes
Our esteemed colleague Boubouille has datamined some undocumented changes to druids on the patch 3.3 PTR, so while I'm waiting for it to download (53 more minutes.../sigh), let's take a look:BALANCENATURE'S GRACE: Now procs from non-periodic spell criticals (old: all spell criticals).So direct-damage spells (e.g. Wrath, Starfire, Moonfire's initial hit) or direct-healing spells (e.g. Regrowth's initial heal, Nourish) will be the only ones that can trigger the 20% haste effect from 3/3 Nature's Grace. This is definitely a nerf for Balance concerning Starfall and Hurricane crits, but it's also a nerf concerning specific gear sets. Moonfire's DoT component can crit if you're using Balance 2-piece Tier 9, and a Restoration druid rocking 4-piece Tier 9 gains the ability for Rejuvenation to crit.For Balance's AoE situations and Starfall cooldowns, it's an out-and-out nerf, albeit a limited one given Starfall's cooldown and the unlikelihood of Hurricane playing a major role in any given boss fight. Otherwise, it's also a nerf directed at Tier 9 bonuses, unless Blizzard's planning on future tier bonuses (or class changes) that will make periodic damage and/or healing crits a routine thing. Stay tuned.
Patch 3.2.2 PTR Druid changes
There really aren't a ton of Druid changes on the 3.2.2 PTR as yet, but two of them are rather intriguing means of handling current PvP concerns for the weaker PvP specs (Balance and Feral). Anyway, I wanted to get our commenters' take on them because PvP is definitely not my area of expertise.MOONKIN FORM: This form now also reduces the damage the druid takes while stunned by 15%. Ghostcrawler mentioned recently that the main concern for Balance PvP isn't damage or CC -- it's just survivability, pure and simple. This is a very welcome change in that vein, although I'm surprised that it went to us over other casters, who are arguably more vulnerable to melee stuns. Well...maybe not. Shadow Priests have Dispersion, Warlocks have Demonic Circle, Mages have Ice Block and Blink, and so on. All of these are instant-cast, which might be part of why they're more effective "Oh s^$t!" buttons than Roots and Cyclone, both of which can be interrupted and silenced. Travel Form leaves you more vulnerable than you are in Moonkin, Bear Form has limited options given that most moonkin PvP builds I see still don't put any points in Feral despite the change to Survival Instincts, and Nature's Grasp -- well, you have to get hit for that to trigger that anyway. We'll see if this helps, although if the root of Balance arena issues lies in the vulnerability of caster form (which was one of the factors driving the "tankiness" of Trees in Season 6), this change just nudges the Druid to stay in moonkin more than they already are. Still, I'm curious to see what effect this will have.
BBC reveals stunning sample footage shot with TyphoonHD4 camera
The BBC has already proven itself to be quite the source for some impressive HD images, but the network's Natural History Unit looks to have really outdone themselves for their forthcoming South Pacific documentary, which makes use of a modified, $100,000 TyphoonHD4 camera. Of course, those exact modifications appear to be a closely-kept secret, but it has apparently been outfitted with a special underwater housing designed by German high-speed camera expert Rudi Diesel, and the camera itself is able to shoot in high definition at 20 times the speed of a normal HD camera, which results in some pretty amazing super slow motion footage. You can get a taste of that after the break but, trust us, you'll want to head up the read link below to really get a sense of what this thing is capable of.[Via SlashGear]
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Druid glyphs and undocumented changes
Personally the change I'm still plotzing over most in relation to 3.1 is the sheer locational chutzpah of the Argent Tournament. I'm not sure I understand why the northern portion of Icecrown is considered an appropriate spot. It's like seeing some Milwaukee strip-mall developer parachute into the middle of Mordor and exclaim over the retail and tourist opportunities within a 100-yard radius of Sauron's eye. What does the Scourge think about this tournament? Did they get a cut of the concession stand's profits as a means of buying their cooperation? Who else was bribed in order to make this happen? These are all questions to which I think we deserve answers.Anyway, I seem to be one of the unlucky souls doomed to disconnect every 10 minutes from the PTR (although I'm not anywhere near Dalaran), but I'm sure it'll get fixed. One minor suggestion for all those Druids porting to Moonglade in order to pick up dual-specs immediately; have 1,000g in hand before you do so. As we all know, getting into Moonglade is rather easy. Getting out of Moonglade tends to be rather more time-consuming unless you're willing to burn your hearth in a world newly free of ghetto-hearthing.Some of the undocumented changes we've actually already talked about, so if you don't see something here but missed our first article, you should find them here.
Shifting Perspectives: The Druid of 2008
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, our author is completely spaced out on cold medication, and is somewhat concerned that her raid performance has improved under the circumstances.The time has come (the Allie said)To talk of many things.Of Roots and Bash and Travel Form,And Strength (which scales with Kings).Why Tauren cat form sucks so hard,And whether trees have wings!And, yes, before anyone asks, I'm tripping on too much cough syrup and ibuprofen after receiving a belated viral Christmas gift from a relative. So I'll just put this out there right now; this column's probably on the weird side. I took a long look at all three Druid specs over 2008 and saw a few sad things, a few happy things, a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants, and now I'm channeling the famous Mary Tyler Moore episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust," and that has to stop because I do not believe Mary Tyler Moore ever played a Druid.If you're completely uninterested in reading an account of any spec that's not your own -- although that would make me weep into my little cup of generic label cough syrup -- here's a set of quick links to each: Balance Feral Resto
Wrath of the Lich King: Druid round-up
Welcome to Wrath of the Lich King, my fellow Druids -- and welcome, I hope, to another expansion full of great things for the class. In general I believe the future is very bright for each spec, and with dual specs coming to the game, it's going to be a lot easier to enjoy the Druid's versatility without having to finance your class trainer's boat payments.THE DRUID CLASS IN WRATH Balance: We took a thorough look at the balance spec's current state and likely future here. Our laserchicken contingent probably received the most substantive overhaul of all three specs heading into the expansion, and most of the news is very good indeed. Feral: Our assessment of the feral is here and includes a look at Blizzard's effort to split the tree into bear-centric and cat-centric talents. Bears on the outside seemed hardest hit with an average loss of 10K+ armor post-patch 3.0.2, but don't let it depress you; bear tanking is better than it's ever been. Cat DPS is poised to gain a massive boost at level 75 with Savage Roar, but until then it's same ol', same ol'. Restoration: Resto, covered here, has probably taken the biggest blow in terms of both PvE and PvP viability in the form of a Lifebloom nerf and the disappearance of now-classic PvP specs, but we still got a lot of big buffs. Tree of Life has been vastly improved and we've gained both a flash heal (at 80) and an AoE HoT. Unfortunately, Wild Growth may be facing a nerf in the form of a cooldown soon, but nothing's certain yet. I don't want to sound too down here. You will notice the Lifebloom nerf in the post-3.0.2 world, but resto's gained a tremendous amount of raw healing output coupled with its customary mana efficiency. Stay tuned; healing is likely to undergo some major changes soon.
