Archive for the 'Software' category

For most people, this is absolutely minor information, but the web site just went through an important change. Nearly nothing visible (except some possible bugs still to be uncovered), but it’s now using WordPress v2.6 (the latest version of this excellent tool to manage web sites and blogs).

This should help a little the readers willing to write posts on Roumazeilles.net…

Several times, I talked about the limitation to photo image quality by light diffraction but I failed to go into the details. To the general request of one reader who asked, I will try to give some explanations to better understand why the digital photographer must absolutely take that into account to make better pictures and to choose its camera.

The first thing to know is that light diffraction is a very general phenomenon and quite natural. It’s been a long time already that scientists and engineers noticed that -on the one hand- light rays are slightly deflected while running through a very small orifice and -on the other hand- two light rays can interact with each other on the condition that they are have very paths nearly perfectly parallel. This is even one of the most significant and founding elements of quantum physics. When you combine both those phenomenons, you will notice that light going through a very small opening like camera lens diaphragm will produce not exactly the expected neat circle but a more irregular and circular shape that you can see in the illustrative figure that goes along this paragraph: Usually named an Airy disk or Airy disc.

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hanks to FreeGeekery, here are 101 Awesome Downloadable Fonts for Designers. I am sure that you will appreciate teh variety, the diversity and the quality of this archive.

In this PC shooter game, still unavailable, you’ll see quite some destruction.

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100 hours, that is the promise from Ubisoft Montréal (where most games only last 10 to 20 hours). This game will have a fully open map in Africa (50 square kilometers, only limited by deadly deserts) where you will meet mercenaries, and weather elements (including fire).

Analysis (in French) at JeuxVideoPC.com.

While Crysis Warhead is now in pre-order for $29.99/29.95€, we heard that it will come along with a new multi-player component named Crysis Wars.

• new online multi-player modes
• 21 maps

Crysis Warhead is a sort of complement to Crysis, the FPS PC video game that shocked the FPS game world last year. For my own part, I’ve drawn pleasure from the mere act of replaying the solo game campaign, for its realistic combat scenes, its pleasant images, and its great playability.

But EA is preparing a kind of follow-up. It’s all about following the deeds of a character already found in Crysis. this time, in Crysis Warhead, you are Sergeant Sykes (”Psycho”). It is not a sequel to Crysis (even if everybody was disturbed by the abrupt end essentially opening to the following two episodes in the series), but a a parallel approach to the same part of the scenario.

Nevertheless, what PC configuration will be needed? EA told us that software optimisations will help a lot the users with relatively small PC configurations, who were unable to play Crysis correctly (EA said that a 400€/$620 PC would be enough for the “High quality” settings).

Minimum requirements

• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ or Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
• Memory: 2 GB of SDRAM
• Graphics: DirectX 9.x on GeForce 66xx or Radeon X16xx

Recommended requirements

• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ or Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
• Memory: 2 GB of SDRAM
• Graphics: Radeon HD4870 or GeForce GTX260

See also: Image gallery at IGN.

These days, I received a number of news in preparation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky launch. This is an FPS video game for PC that should attract many players already in love with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky will be shown by GSC Game World in Los Angeles for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (with probable availability in the stores around the end of August)
• Image gallery 1 on IGN
• Image gallery 2 on IGN
• Analyse/preview du jeu en français sur JeuxvideoPC.
• Analyse/preview du jeu en français sur ImpactVirtuel.
• And still the required PC configuration to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

We already knew that AMD-ATI had succeeded to frighten nVidia with its new graphics cards, Radeon HD4850 and HD4870 (the latter are able to do as well as the nVidia GTX260, for less money). But the nVidia GTX280 graphics cards were left without real competition… up to the arrival of Radeon HD4870×2.

Two RV770 GPUs (identical to the one on the AMD Radeon HD4870 card and able to bring the raw power of a GTX280 card), this is the solution found by AMD-ATI. They did it before, they intend to win again.

The announcement arrives with two information bits important for potential purchasers and for nVidia: The price will be identical to the nVidia competition ($499) and the card will be sold starting 2nd August 2008.

nVidia reply? Maybe a “super GTX280″ that is still undescribed.

To play with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, you will only need a small PC configuration. This FPS video game will accept:

Minimum requirements

• Processor: Athlon XP 2200+ or Intel 4 @ 2GHz
• Memory: 512 MB SDRAM
• Graphics card: DirectX 9c on an (old) graphics card with 128MB memory

Recommended requirements

• Processor: CPU dual core (Intel CoreDuo E6400 / AMD 64 X2 4200+)
• Memory: 1.5 GB SDRAM
• Graphics card: DirectX 9c on an (old) graphics card with 256MB memory (or DirectX 10 card, of course)

Absolutely not surprising news for people who read my post of yesterday about Radeon HD4870 performance: nVidia just announced a general price reduction for its new line of graphics cards in the GTX200 family. The GTX260 go under 300€ (still a little expensive to confront the Radeon HD4870 at 250€ and at a slightly higher performance point). The GTX280 fall under 450€.

Source: Hardware.fr.

3Dguru has a nice review of the upcoming Radeon HD4870 graphics card. It’s supposed to be the fastest offering from AMD and it is stacked against the GTX260 from nVidia, cheaper Radeon HD4850 and older nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX.

The conclusion is that the HD4870 is going to be a tough competitor for the much more expensive nVidia GTX260 (expect nVidia to cut down prices quite quickly to compensate).