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A Wii Thanksgiving test on the family
With Nintendo marketing the Wii to cross demographics outside the realm of the hardcore gamer, it seemed only fair to test out the system at a family friends house after Thanksgiving dinner. Bringing the system over and saying I wanted them to test it out, the most apprehensive person wasn't the adults, but 21 year-old Meredith McSorley saying, "I'm not good at that stuff. I can't do the button things." I informed her this would be different.
Wii + Parents = ???
Considering Nintendo designed the Wii, and its marketing, to appeal to a wide demographic, it's time to put it to the test. We here at Joystiq will be testing our family over Thanksgiving on how intuitive the Wii is and we'd like to hear how things go at your home. YouTube some video, take pictures and let us know how it goes.
Pogue's perspective: megapixel numbers don't matter
David Pogue has faced his fair share of myth-busting duties, but his latest assignment sure didn't have to be done in order to convince us that his unanimous discovery was indeed correct all along. While theorists (and those adamant that bigger always equals better) can theorize forever on why additional megapixels should yield clearer, more accurate prints, the reality of the matter is that extra megapixels are typically not much more than a marketing ploy to lure consumers into making an additional purchase. In his latest test, he took identical photos with anonymous 5-, 8-, and 13-megapixel shooters, and then printed them out on 16- x 24-inch poster paper at a professional photography lab. Then, he surveyed the general public in Times Square to see if the naked eye could actually discern between the varying sensors and the level of clarity -- to no surprise (and to theorists' chagrin), only a single person (a photography professor, mind you) correctly sorted the prints in order of megapixels, and Pogue even asserted that the lucky winner was probably guessing anyway. So, if you still don't believe us, be sure to hit the read link for the full skinny, and save yourself a few bills the next time you're camera shopping by not making megapixels your ultimate priority, capishe?[Via TheRawFeed]
Still no discernable difference between 1080i and 1080p?
Although HomeTheaterMag has already told us that there's no (discernable) difference between 1080i and 1080p, it's quite understandable to still be skeptical when television manufacturers are screaming otherwise and touting 1080p as the new "must have" feature. In the latest battle between the two outputs, eagle-eyed testers at CNET compared the 1080p output from the Blu-ray version of the hot-selling M:I III film on five different displays. With monitors sporting resolutions ranging from 1,024 x 768 to 1,366 x 768 to 1,920 x 1,080, the conclusions were unsurprisingly similar to various other studies. Essentially, reviewers stated that in a vast majority of the scenes, the "level of detail was virtually identical" across the higher resolution sets, and that even the (relatively) low resolution Philips 42PF9631D plasma showed imagery "difficult to discern" from more elite monitors. Overall, testers felt that native 1080p rendered "slightly more detail in near background images in scenes with long depths of field," but was otherwise not really "necessary," and recommended that prospective buyers save their cash for the time being rather than buying in (literally) to the 1080p hype right now.
Option brags about successful HSUPA tests
They can't claim to be the first to rock HSUPA outright, but Belgian outfit Option appears to be the first to hit up the 3G+ tech via an honest-to-goodness data card. As a reminder, HSUPA is the de facto successor to HSDPA in the GSM family tree, leaving the plenty-fast HSDPA downlink speeds be to concentrate on boosting the uplink; it's capable of topping out at a whopping 5.7Mbps up, compared to HSDPA's measly 384kbps. Of course, those crazy upload times do us no good without somethin' we can plug into our lappies; that's where Option comes into the equation, demonstrating a prototype card using Qualcomm's MSM7200 chipset in a variety of real-life scenarios (including a car traveling at 50 km/h), managing a respectable 1.3Mbps up and 2.7Mbps down. Now that testing is in full swing, Option says we can expect commercial HSUPA products from their camp in the first half of 2007.
Test your MacBook for random shutdowns
Some MacBook owners around the web are reporting a 'random shutdown' issue, where the machine will - as you might guess - seemingly shutdown at random; either during work or patiently idling for your next command. If you haven't experienced this issue yourself yet but are still concerned about it, The Apple Files has devised an unofficial test to see if you might be a victim. The test involves entering a few simple commands into the Terminal and testing a few things over roughly half an hour of your time. Just to be thorough, the author recommends running this test two or three times to be sure, but it's really up to how paranoid you're feeling. Again, this is an unofficial test, and we haven't seen any official reports or announcements from Apple on this issue, its cause or how widespread it might be, but it's simply nice to have options, hey?[via digg]
Mac Pro benchmark roundup
Other sites are already getting their hands on Mac Pros and putting them through the benchmark ringer, and since we aren't done checking the couch for change yet, I figured a benchmark roundup would be the best way to let you sink your teeth into some cold, hard numbers. If you've been waiting to see how well these things perform in real world tests, your wait just might be over: Macworld pits a 2.66 Quad Core Ghz Mac Pro against 2.5 Quad and Dual 2.7 G5 Power Macs - G5s run crying to mama in everything but Adobe Photoshop tests (hint: that will be a benchmark theme across the board) MacInTouch posts some initial impressions as well as a wide variety of benchmarks, including some real low-level geek stuff like "multi-threaded scalar." Until now, I thought a 'scalar' was just a monster in Unreal Bare Feats posts their own set of tests, including the only After Effects test I've found so far (AE still isn't a UB either; I guess Adobe misunderstood the phrase 'fashionably late to the party') Geek Patrol, as you might glean from the name, also posts some extensive low-level tests in categories such as memory performance, floating point, integer and more Apple's product page also seem to think pretty highly of their own new Mac Pros That's it for now. Just don't blame us for the credit card interest if this pushes you over the edge to buy one.
US PTR Maintenance: Now!
Well, they don't usually give us much warning on these things, so at 4:44 PM PDT we received word that the PTRs were going offline for patch maintenance with no ETA on them coming back online. The fact that the PTRs continue to be updated, despite being online since July 17th, makes me feel that patch 1.12 is still something that's being fine tuned - which lends me to think that the patch going live may still be some time off. Of course... Blizzard has been known to surprise me before, so take this thought with a grain of salt (or two or three). And... since the test realms are still online and going strong - it's a great place to have some fun playing a class you know nothing about!Update: The PTRs seem to have come back online at 7:25 PM PDT.
My Secret Life as a Rogue: Of Talents and Talent Builds
It's been some time since I wrote about my initial attempts at playing the rogue class. And, no, I haven't given it up yet! I've only reached the fairly puny level of 33, but the rogue changes coming in the next patch have me excited about continued leveling - after all, there's little joy in having half of a talent build. However, my recent efforts have been divided between my own rogue on the live realms and a pre-made level 60 rogue on the test realms. After some initial goofing off - it is, after all, a bit disorienting to jump from a low-30s character in mostly greens to a level 60 character with dual crusader enchants - I set to work trying different talent builds. Of course I've read all of the discussion on possible builds, but sometimes there's just no substitute for experience - and the test realms provide an ideal opportunity to see just what the class is capable of, with all possible talent permutations. And, perhaps, some experimentation could teach me something about how to play my own, lesser rogue a bit better...
OS X browser test, fourth edition
After reading this article, I'm simply giddy with self-righteous indignation for all the people who have ever told me I was silly for paying money for a browser. The guys over at macintalk have revived their popular Macintosh browser shootout and re-tested all of the competitors using the latest universal binaries of Firefox, Camino, Safari, WebKit, and the OmniWeb 5.5 beta. As many of you might expect, Firefox, the PC favorite, lagged behind all other browsers tested in the speed tests, with its sleek sibling Camino not scoring much better. The two gecko browsers also failed to render the Acid2 test properly, while OmniWeb and Safari/WebKit passed with flying colors.Now, I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm bashing Firefox and Camino. Camino will always have a place in my dock to handle all of the sites that WebKit can't, but I much prefer OmniWeb for my day-to-day usage, and the test results seem to agree with me.[Via Creativebits]
Bungie busy testing Halo 3 single-player
According to Bungie's most recent weekly update, the team has begun testing elements of Halo 3's single-player campaign. The testing is currently focused on gameplay, specifically, AI encounters.Bungie's Frank O'Connor details a run-in with a pack of Grunts who had wisely flanked Frankie while he was distracted by "something bigger than a Grunt." Frankie describes the Grunts' tactic as "quite a shock," given that their behavior in the past has been half-witted. Frankie reminds us, "Lots of folks focus on what technology can do for the appearance of a game -- but the 360's prodigious horsepower can also be applied to AI."
Public Test Realms Closed
Once again it's been a fun run on the PTRs, but they have, officially, closed. Of course, the real news here is that this means patch 1.11 has been mostly finalized, and that we should expect patch deployment soon - possibly as early as this week. On the matter of a release date, Tigole tells us, "No promises as to when the patch is going live, but if I were you, I'd start working on that Argent Dawn rep by tomorrow -- either that or pillage the guild bank while the pillaging is good." Of course, what that means is up in the air, but if you'll excuse me, I think I need to be getting a Scholomance run together about now...
Life on the test realm
Insults flying, duels at twenty paces and "your mom" jokes filling up the LookingForGroup channel. Welcome to the Test Server.After queueing for over three hours, I popped on to the US Test Server yesterday to see if I could get a glimpse of Naxxramas. There are a few improvements over previous test experiences -- actually having flight paths is a nice touch. However, some of the fellow inhabitants leave a lot to be desired.I understand that it's very appealing to want to try out a new level 60 character, but the general level of competence was frighteningly low -- both in PvP and an instance group. Multiple wipes on trash mobs led me to much despair, with little strategy or organisation. Add to that the fact that almost everyone is playing sexy classes such as rogues, and it's hard to even get a full instance group together. Players in my group kept switching characters, as if playing another class ham-fistedly would help with our wiping problem.The Test Server is a fun place to mess about and try things out, but the immense amount of lag and lack of co-ordination drive me to despair. If only the serious players could be separated out from the less serious, then some actual 'testing' might happen. For now, it's waiting in a queue of thousands to see players with names like Omgwtfpwnbbq raiding Crossroads.
Two Upcoming Raid Changes
Tigole has announced two changes to dungeons that we should see in patch 1.11. These aren't live on the test realms yet, but should be in a few days. The release timer is being removed for players in instances. This should come as welcome news for anyone who has ever died at the beginning of the Nefarian encounter. To prevent exploits, players will no longer be able to zone into an instance during certain encounters ("almost entirely raid bosses," explains Tigole).
PTR Naxxramas Changes
The test realms haven't been up for long, but Naxxramas bug fixes are already starting to show up. Also, to help testers, a vendor has been added to Naxxramas that will offer free repairs, free resurrection sickness removal, spell reagents, tome of tranquilizing shot, and rogue poisons. So if you're interested in checking out Naxxramas, it's been easier. However, character transfers to the test realm still seem to be down, so if you didn't copy a character when the PTRs were first brought online, you're going to have to wait a while.
Breakfast Topic: Testing!
The public test realms opened late Friday, and despite stability issues, are officially online. With lots of interesting changes, are you interested in checking them out? Perhaps exploring the new Naxxramas dungeon with a pick up group, or just enjoying playing a pre-made and pre-geared level 60 character. So let us know - will we be seeing you on the test realm?
Testing Raid Content
When Blackwing Lair was released, way back in patch 1.6, it was ridden with bugs. In order to keep the content top secret and preserve fair competition between guilds seeking world firsts on the live realms, it was never released on the public test realms - and its lack of polish showed. For Ahn'Qiraj, Blizzard took the alternate approach, releasing it on the public test realms for all to try. Tigole has already announced plans for an "extended test period" of Naxxramas, but some question whether having the instance available for testing ruins the race for world firsts. What do you think - does testing make enough of a difference to be worth spoiling the surprises?
Are We All Just Beta Testers?
GameDaily has an interesting article up about how game developers seem to be using players as beta testers. Buggy code is released as a final product to the public with the thought that it can always be fixed with a later patch. And, while the article specifically discusses single player games, the argument is perhaps even more applicable to large MMO's in which regular patches to add content (and fix old bugs) are the norm. While it's understandable to an extent - World of Warcraft is a massive game, and it would be impossible to test every race, class, and talent spec in every situation - some of the bugs are sufficiently obvious that they make one wonder how much testing happens at all. However, perhaps MMO's are so expansive that it's imposible to give them the full quality assurance treatment in the traditional sense - which is why we've ended up with test servers and a regular patch cycle. What do you think - are we beta testing the software we're paying for? And should we be?
MacTech benchmarks Office 2004 on Rosetta
MacTech has published what I am fairly certain are the comprehensive Office 2004 on Rosetta test results for Intel Macs. Honestly, there is so much literature and testing in this article that I simply skimmed most of it and skipped ahead to the conclusion: "in general, Office 2004 under Rosetta works "well enough" to "very well," and in some cases, it's even faster than on the PowerPC baseline machine." Having recently acquired a MacBook Pro, I have to agree. However, I think Word has a slightly longer startup time than on my previous PowerBook, but I would attribute that to Rosetta having to work some magic in the background.Don't take my word though: check out MacTech's article for more than you'd ever want to know about how well Office 2004 will perform on Intel Macs.[via MacMinute]
Now Testing: Patch 1.10.2
In an unusual move, Blizzard has opted to bring the public test realm online for a round of testing for patch 1.10.2. To the best of my knowledge, it's the first time a minor patch has been put through public testing, and I suppose we'll see how it works out. The patch seems to be primarily bug fixes, so check out the patch notes - and, as usual, be aware that these may not be final. If you want to copy a character over, start here, but be aware that character copy hours are Monday through Friday, 3:00 AM - 3:00 PM PDT.
