Friday, August 31, 2007

ps3. Haze going ps3 exclusive and warhawk first hand

First things first.

Warhawk is damn fun, easy going and highly affordable, sure it´s by far the most expensive psn game, but it is as worthy of that pricetag as any full blown online first person shooter like battlefield and quake wars.

It´s not as indepth as let´s say quake wars but it´s as fun as games can be and it´s simple, to the point and executes on what online shooter games should.

The one thing i do miss, being an old quake player is a higher skillcap, but since i dont have time to play games to get good at them anymore, warhawk is actually the most fun i´ve had with an online multiplayer game since i discovered urban terror for quake 3 a long,long time ago, and while it´s not as indepth or skilldemanding as urt, it´s just as fun and addictive.

So do yourself a favour, hit psn from your ps3 and pick it up, great stuff and tons of players are duking it out, and well it will eat away your time baby, so dont miss out on eating in between frag sessions :)

Heck, im giving warhawk 9.3 out of 10 *
And ign.com picked it as game of the month

Haze: As for haze, it´s aparently gone from multiplatform,ps3, xbox 360 and pc to ps3 exclusive, And yes, that is indeed confirmed by Ubisoft.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Ps3. playTv


Playstation 3 just keeps on evolving,improving and broadening it´s featureset and functions, great stuff and one of the best announcements i´ve heard in along,long time.

PlayTv is essentialy a high quality HD dvr, which of course works with sd content aswell, it´s external and it will turn your ps3 into a complete media solution for your home.

Let´s see once playTv is out, your favourite playstation 3 console can.

A: play games
B: play blu-ray movies
C: play sacd music
D: play dvd movies
E: stream movies and music from your computers, hub, server or other devices
F: play mp3 music and movies from the internal ps3 hd or an external usb drive.
G: browse the web
H: cure diseases with folding@home
I: Stream your ps3 music and movies to your psp regardless of where you are
J: - New: record High definition or sd tv shows from your hd tv, or standard definition tv shows from your sd tv, while you watch another channel.
K: - New: stream your tv shows to your psp.
L: - New: record preprogrammed tv shows or record tv shows anytime you wish and you can start the recording even if you´re on the other side of the world, all you need is your psp since it can trigger the recording.

Great stuff for sure and we´ll be picking one up asap it hit´s hometurf in Sweden and we already have built in dvr functionality on our hd tv but this makes it even better and would allow us to actually record two tv shows at the same time + it´s easy to add a bigger hd drive to the ps3, which isnt the case with our lg plasma tv.

And for those of you wishing that the ps3 could do nothing but play games, well this is highly optional, dont buy playTv if you dont want to.

The gui looks as sweet as everything else on the ps3 aswell.

Added a link to a Swedish article about playtv doesnt say to much tho but it doesnt hurt linking it up :)

folding at home on ps3

Folding@home for our beloved ps3 has been updated with more features, better information covering what you´re contributing to and with better graphics, some powersaving features and increased performance which means you´ll be able to cure diseases even quicker then before on your shiny black ps3.

ps3.Heavenly Sword

Well, judging by the reviews Heavenly Sword is getting one might be inclined to believe that Ninja theory purposedly released a super tiny demo, in all honesty, the shortest demo i´ve ever played to downplay the hype that had been hitting heavenly sword the last few months.

The demo´s high points were great, graphics,storytelling,atmosphere,surroundings, but the content way to short to give most people any satisfaction, in fact most people felt dishearted by it.

Which was weird because the game looked so good and had such super high production points one was wondering why give us such a short demo.

The answer seems to be that the game is so great that reviews and word of mouth will sell it.

What MotorStorm has become to racing and Odin Sphere to action role-playing, Heavenly Sword is now to 3D action: Perfection. [Sept 2007, p.17]


Qoutes from Play magazines review of Heavenly sword, awarding it an unheard of 100 out of 100 points. Wow is enough to say dont you think.

summary of reviews:

- Play Magazine: 100 out of 100

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

vue. tutorials by altuit

A few selected tutorials by altuit, covering your favourite landscape and scenery application vue.

The´ll cover how to make roads on your precious terrains and how to modell with vue, solidgrowth and seavue are two other segments that they´ll cover with their video tutorials.

Altuit, vue video tutorials

Media creation.realistic looking waves

And all the hard work that goes into making them.
In todays world alot of people just take all the great and truly magic things we see in tv commercials, movies, tv series like hero and battlestar galactica, 3d stills, art and ad´s for granted, kids that´s 10 years thinks that great looking games like motorstorm and dirt, oblivion, halo 3, call of duty 4, metal gear solid 4 and so forth look´s ok, but nothing more.

It doesnt matter to them how great it´s looking as long as it doesnt look like real life it´s just ok, and of course none of them, nor their parents appriciate the man hours and the blood and sweat that goes into making these games and movies, to them it´s just a computer doing it, but that´s of course not the truth, the tiniest effect takes time and knowledge and hence this post.

Head on over to sony pictures surf´s up and read up on all the work they had to put in to enable you, the audience to enjoy surf´s up waves, and i kid you not, it´s a hell of alot of work involved.

Surf´s up behind the scene

warhawk screen


and what a screencap it is, look´s like quite an intense firefight :)

Monday, August 20, 2007

Modo Hockey.new HD media cube

Modo Hockey will finaly get it´s new HD powered 16:9 media cube, 8 screens with 1920 x 1080 res per screen + a new LED screen outside of the Swedbank arena will make sure people wont miss anything during the 2007.2008 season, good riddens we´re finaly getting rid of that old bastard :)

Övik.net know´s more, but please take note that the article is in Swedish only

Hd movie war. blu-ray continues to pull ahead

Blu-ray is increasing it´s pace and widening the gap between itself and the hd.dvd camp, during Jan 1, 2007 and Jul 1, 2007 blu-ray sold more then twice as many movies as the microsoft empowered hd.dvd format.

Which is just how it should be, blu-ray is a far, far better medium and will provide you with superiour image and sound quality, well, atleast if the one´s producing the movies knows what they are doing, which isnt always the case, regardless of you buying your hd film on blu-ray or hd.dvd, alot of early releases were crappy standard definition releases no better then the dvd release or sometimes even worse.

But that has changed and alot of high quality releases has now made it´s way to blu-ray, the latest one being 300 which sold far, far better on blue-ray then hd.dvd.

Anyway, im sure that you also know that one of the best blu-ray players and weirdly enough by far the cheapest is the playstation 3 unit, so if you dont own one but you enjoy movies and have a hd tv, go out and pick up a playstation 3 right away.

Who knows you might end up playing high quality games on it aswell insted of just watching movies, because if we´re realy honest, virtualy every person out there, do enjoy a good game now and then, they just have to give up to that inner child of theirs :)

But if not, pick up a ps3 anyway and use it as a truly great media center capable of streaming movies and music, playing blu-ray and dvd(it has stellar dvd playback quality aswell) and all your mp3´s, and best of all, it´ll do it wireless.

Reuters knows more about blu-ray outselling hd.dvd

Thursday, August 16, 2007

ufo caught on video

and finaly a ufo video with no blurry images either.

But that´s not so strange since it´s a creative vue user that´s setup and done a ufo video of his own, quite a nice one aswell and it has aparently caused a stir on youtube getting alot of hits and producing both sceptics and believers.

Nice user made promotion for vue, that´s for sure, nice job to whomever did it.
And if we think of it, aint it cool and pretty impressive that people can create videos that look as real as this all by themselves in todays world without big budgets and tons of pc´s, just know how, skills and the right tools.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

so what´s been the best cinema experience so far

Well, so far into 2007, the best cinema experience so far has easily been die hard 4.0, such a great movie and no that´s not just my male reptile brain speaking up, my girlfriend felt the exact same thing, great movie and a very pleasant surprise since that wasnt what we had expected when watching it earlier this year on the big screen.

It´s a given the day it hits blu-ray, that´s for sure and by far the best die hard movie.

Runner ups so far into the year has to be the third pirates movie with sparrow and crew, great entertainment but not close to taking first place, but it´s also a fun experience and worthy third installment on that franchise and we simply put enjoyed that one alot aswell.

After those two movies, well im not sure so i´ll have to think about that but we hit the cinemas quite often and tend to watch the films we realy want to in the cinema, the ones we miss get´s a hdtv treatment and we usualy purchase em instead of rent or download, hey, it´s still cheaper then going two or four persons to the cinema for some big screen action so i think buying movies are pretty inexpensive, but we do restrict ourselves to movies that we know are good.

Not that i wouldnt mind them being even cheaper and same goes for the cinema.

a well, nr.uno so far into 2007 is die hard 4.0 but there´s been alot of realy good movies both on the cinema, dvd (blood diamond) and blu-ray (casino royale was by far the best bond and flags of our fathers were a sad but intruiging war movie)

sketchup.free for all

Well it´s been out for a very long time now, but it´s still worth mentioning since it´s such an excellent application and of course completely free of charge.

The reason i havent touched upon it yet is simply that im one of the pro users so i never had a reason to check out the free version, but i ended up installing it for fun on our new laptop, if for nothing else to finaly check it out since i dont expect to do much real 3d work on this laptop, the intent behind the purchase was after all browsing,email,writing doc´s and mobility for my gf, not to mention a kids free home rig, not getting one more work and or gaming computer in the household :).

Anyway, sketchup is an excellent application, it´s easy to use and very intuitive.
It´s getting used more and more in higher end educations and studios which means it´s worth spending time getting familiar with and it simply put makes it fun and efficient doing houses.

Another reason to mention it is of course that it works real good with vue, and regardless of you comming from the architechture side of things or the landscape part, getting both apps is a smart move and they fit right in with each other.

The one thing to be aware of is the slightly steeper requirements if you´re using vista, might make it a non option to use sketchup on your laptop, it´s a non issue for desktops tho in my humble opinion.

Official website

and the

Official blogg

Monday, August 13, 2007

Modo Hockey.11 august örnsköldsvik

Was the day for Modo hockeys official first public icehockey training this season in Swedbank arena.

We were of course there and so were about 4-5000 other fans, and it was for sure a bliss, Peter forsberg and Sedin,dont remember if it was daniel or henrik, participated aswell and so did the new recruites lika tolsa.

One have to say that Peter looked more agile and light on his feets then he´s done in alot of years, it was great fun finaly seeing him play again in Övik and in a Modo jersey :) and he looked like he had a realy great time, which isnt something i can say i´ve seen in a long, long time.

It also marked the return of mr.modo, Magnus wernblom to the club and did he get a nice, warming welcome, the fans stood up and gave him a standing ovation, cheering, "werner, werner".

Great stuff and it realy made us all look forward til the start of the season even more!

vue.How to create wet sand a a foamy beach line


Well, there´s a thousand and one solutions to that question, because as easy vue is to use it´s also just as equaly powerful and complex, however this tutorial by david burdick, the creator of skinvue,is an excellent, and i mean excellent tutorial, it´s to the point, it get´s the job done and in a splendid looking way and it´s easy to understand.

beach shore tutorial in vue 6

linking to david´s showcase image showing you what to expect out of his tutorial.

Friday, August 10, 2007

ps3.Killzone 2 gameplay in BBC video interview

A short, to the point interview with killzone 2 creator guerilla courtesy of BBC.

BBC, video interview

ps3.Uncharted drakes fortune,preview

Our first play on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune showed its potential to be a superb adventure that mixes tactical shooting, platforming and Hollywood movie-style action scenes together in one huge quest.


A pretty looking game thus far and with a theme and vistual style that´s very appealing this is a game im looking forward to even tho it´s not a must have so far, but we´ll know more once it´s out.

But for now, that qoute will have to make due until you hit the link below and find out more in the preview.


cvg, preview

Thursday, August 9, 2007

hd.Universal stupidity leak

Well i frankly have no other word for it.
Aparently Universals President Craig Kornblau thinks that hd-dvd is on the brink of extinction and that if universal would go neutral and start releasing blu-ray movies that would kill of hd-dvd right away....

So he wants the format war to continue by not selling blu-ray content forcing the poor folks that do pick hd-dvd players to pay up for a format he doesnt even believe in himself, and he also said that by the end of the year Universal will perhaps decide to go blu-ray, which translates to, sure hd-dvd is losing but hey, the ones that pays for hd-dvd players until we start pushing blu-ray can always buy a new hd movie player next year.

I mean, it´s one thing if he atleast believed in his hd format, then it would atleast be justified to continue fightning even tho blu-ray is increasing it´s lead, just look at the recent 300 release, the blu-ray version is just plain smoking the hd-dvd version, but this guy doesnt even believe in hd-dvd winning, he just wants you to rebuy hard and software once universal has made their switch in 6 month, 12 month or whatever the date will be.

More info here

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

hd.300 sells a ton thanks to blue-ray

Noticed ps3fanboy writing a piece on 300 being the fastest selling hd movie ever, selling more then a quarter of million units in around a week.

And you know what, blue-ray stood for 65 percent of it´s sales while hd-dvd only mustered 35%, just as the fanboy himself i´ll have to say that the hd-dvd camp trying to make it look and sound like the ps3 doesnt affect blu-ray sales is looking more and more like a famous bird with it´s head stuck deep down in the sand, well he didnt say it like that, but i did, because it´s the truth :)

Anyway, it´s good for both consumers and sony and the ps3, and of course the entire blu-ray camp and it´s of course good for time warner and the 300 producer and pretty soon im sure that the last few hd-dvd only producers will give up and switch to producing blu-ray aswell.

ps3 fanboy article

NPD.survery shows 30% of x360 owners aware of hd

.... ah i got to smile, 30 percent of all xbox 360 owners are aware of the hd capacity of their hd,next gen console...

What´s wrong with people, are they so numb and uninterested even in the things they buy that they dont even bother to know what they are buying.

And it just continues, about 50% knew the xbox 360 also can play dvd´s!

Say what... a well playstation 3 owners arent much better, alittle, but not much.
Around 40 percent did know that their shiny new top of the king media centerpiece(which is what ps3 is) can play both games and blu-ray movies and about 50% of those 40 had been watching blu-ray movies during the last ten times they fired up their ps3.

So the numbers are slightly better but hey, just as ps3 fanboy asked, i´ll have to ask, you do know that your playstation 3 can play blu-ray movies, right? And you do know that it just cant play em, the ps3 is actually one of the top blu-ray players available on the market!

The quality of the blu-ray player in your ps3 is top notch, dont take anyother myth for the truth, it´s featureset and the quality of the playback easily matches the most expensive standalone blu-ray players.

So heck if you didnt know that, go out, buy a blue-ray movie(flags of our fathers is one of the blu-ray movies taking advantage of the format, the latest james bond, casino royale is another, but some early on blu-ray movies should be avoided since they arent true hd movies, just redone sd reharsh).

And even better, if you´re in the market for a standalone blu-ray player, go out and pick up a brand new ps3 instead and get yourself one of the markets best blu-ray player, one of the 2 best consoles for gaming (i´d say it´s the best one, but i´ll give x360 owners some slack and say that for now it´s a tie just talking about games)one of the best dvd players out there and one heck of a sacd player(super audio cd) + it acts very easily as a wifi powered media server which even streams your music and movies from any of your pc or mac´s and it´s also, an excellent machine to use for browsing the web.

So no cords, no hazzle and pretty much all you could need from a media entertainent purpose, all in one shiny black console.

1 up knows more about the npd survery

Modo hockey.signs with Patrick yetman

A 27 year old Canadian player recently got signed to Modo Hockey, The current sm gold champions in Swedens elitserien ice hockey league, Modo has done a bunch of realy good recruitments last few years, including signing Karol Krizan for several seasons, Justin morrison last year(even tho it just ended with one season),Robert döme was another highlight, which sadly ended with just one season aswell even tho the player himself wanted to stay in the club and was realy loved by the fans.

Kristian Kusela was yet one more succesfull recruitment, signed just for the playoffs, and as such he did the match ending goals in the two last games, so i have high hopes that modo once again has done it´s homework.

Anyway, im sure Patrick is psyched over coming to Modo, playing in the worlds second best ice hockey league outside of NHL and getting to play for Modo, a globaly wellknown club and recognised for it´s ability to produce NHL stars, actually more then anyother town of it´s size in the world, so it will be fun to see how much energy he can bring with him.

Welcome to hockeyville Patrick.

you can read more in this article by aftonbladet(swedish only)

poserpro. when the world turns

It sometimes brings with it unexpected changes, and this is one of those.
Poser with it´s akward and unfriendly userinterface wasnt the app i thought would get a pro treatment, not that it isnt used in alot of commercial studios, it is.

But e.frontier has realy been lagging behind last few years and has been struggling with an ever growing bigger and older and slower software, but now that daz studio 1.7 is out(a lightweight app for hobbyists, but alot smoother and pro looking tho) e.frontier unleashed the poser pro version.

Great stuff and i love seeing more and more apps supporting collada, just wished that vue would do it to, just imagine how much smoother workflow would be.

Anyway, as for poser, it´s a great addition, im not found of poser myself but it´s usefull, and i hope that the pro version get´s a serious gui,workflow overhaul aswell now that it dips it toes into the pro taged app land.

poser pro website

life. enjoying the sun

mm, the sun and warmth just keeps on ticking in northern Sweden so im outside, working from my laptop, enjoing the sun instead of sitting inside.

It´s a great feeling being able to work outside when you realy feel like it even tho our vacation is over for this year.

great day at work in other words :)

siggraph07. and e.on

Hot on the heels of the siggraph vue 6.5 unveiling e.on decided to release the public 6.5 build, it´s what´s called an interim update and it´s free of charge for every vue6 user.

The v6i, 6.5 release gives us even better and more natural looking atmospheres to play with, or atleast it give´s us even better tools to play with, creating our own atmospheres, so no guaranteed results as with anything creative :) heck, the create art button is still not there, but anyway, this is a realy nice update and it also fixes some issues that´s been around in previous v6 updates.

But the main thing is the improvements made to the atmosphere editor and how lights affects cloudlayers.

doing a small qoute.

New features in 6.5:

- Create skies with as many overlapping spectral cloud layers as you like for complex and unbelievably realistic cloudscapes!
- Revolutionary new cloud lighting technology that lets local lights affect spectral atmospheres and clouds!
- Create true-to-life thunder storms, search lights or illuminated fly through clouds.
- Render spectral atmosphere animations significantly faster thanks to the optimized spectral atmosphere anti-flickering technology!


Download the v6i, 6.5 update here

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

ps3.Heavenly sword fight blog

Courtesy of the heavenly sword dev´s we get a thourough view of the fighting and the difference between the demo and the final game in the form of a blog post.

SaiTong Man, lead combat designer, Ninja Theory

Monday, August 6, 2007

console sales.latest numbers from europe

Here´s the latest numbers from Eu,aug 06 to be precise.

Per week, total since eu release

PS3 36,759 1,249,384
PS2: 34,617 41,786,533
X360: 18,471 3,253,571

Biggest change was that ps3 increased it´s sale´s per week with 5000 units more then what it mustered last week, it´s of course remarkable to see the now older then old ps2 selling as much as it does, but then again, sony and it´s ps2 dev´s have managed to crame out alot more performance out of the ps2 then anyone would have imagined.

And modern ps2 games actually doesnt look that bad at all and gameplay is as rewarding as always, + singstar, eyetoy and buzz is games that will always have an appeal to quite alot of people.

Which brings us to the not to distant ps3 singstar debut, a casual game like singstar will be a nice addition to the growing ps3 library.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

gaming.rage by id

First trailer looked like a motorstorm rip off but the second trailer that just got released looks damn sweet and i have to say that rage might put id back at the driver seat as far as gamers are concerned and not just as a powerhouse when it comes to 3d engines.

Modo hockey.summertime blues

Recent news for Modo hockey during the summer have had both it´s up´s and downs.
Obviously one cant except everything to be as shiny as the sm gold that Modo won this year but loosing Robert Döme was and still is sad, despite how his personal life was outside of the rink he was a cherrished and loved ice hockey player in Modo hockey and a realy good one aswell, always positive and feeding emotions and energy to both the team and audience.

And of course since he had one year on his contract and Modo recently powned all the competition in the playoffs it was quite surprising to see Robert leave Modo in the middle of summer, and i guess we all know and understand that something else was the reason for the abrubt breakup.

But to counter that low, Modo announced that Jari tolsa had signed a 1 + 1 contract, and since Jari is another high energy, emotional player that´s a good thing.

And another thing of beauty is happening next weekend, august 11 to be more precise and the happening is Modo´s first public training, we´ll also get to see some classic Modo jerseys being hauled up in the air + an internal game and of course we´ll be there.

ps3.a how to for changing the internal ps3 hd

Gamepro posted a frame by frame guide covering how to change the internal playstation 3 hard drive to a bigger one, which is real easy btw, and affordable, but if you feel insecure on how to do it, check out this to the point article + it´s not every day that you´ll see gamepro posting something worthwile about the ps3.

gamepro article

Saturday, August 4, 2007

vue. at siggraph, 6.5 in the works

i usualy dont post vue related news that isnt publicly available, but this is already spreading so vue 6.5 will be showcased on siggraph and will feature even more and better atmosphere features, the interim .5 upgrade is free of charge for all v6i users.

console sales: japan

Ps3 is continuing it´s global sales increase and this time it´s japan that´s starting to move, ps3 is now at 28,829 units sold for the past week, while xbox 360 only sold 4000 units.

Psp and ds both sold 35000 units during that week in japan, so Sony for sure has had some realy good summer sale´s number throughout the world.

And from the top of my mind, that put´s ps3 at more then twice the total global sales for the past week compared to xbox 360, a realy strong performance considering virtualy no games have been released during this timeframe, granted tons of high profile ps3 games are just around the corner for august,september and october.

ps3.warhawk´s gone gold

yep, it´s set in stone, both the blu-ray version and the psn version is 100% done and both will ship on august 28:th.

price is low, damn low: warhawk will ship for just 59.99us$ for the blu-ray version, which will ship with more video content, manuals and a jabra bluetooth headset.

The psn version will ship for 39.99 us$, great price and big, big thumbs up for sony, deciding to set such a low price for both the download and the blu-ray version, great value being able to download a full blown next gen game for such a low price, or pick it up in stores with a jabra bluetooth headset (which usualy costs quite alot).

rage and quake zero, id quakecon speech

Quake zero is virtualy QIII for free and with the new tech 5 engine, so big thumbs up, could prove to be a major dm,tdm,ctf game.

rage is id´s new IP and is still a fps game but alot more open and it will feature open landscapes and tons of driving aswell, think mad max meets motorstorm to make out with unreal tournament and quake in a foursome :)

Some highlights

- tech5 wont make use of dx10 atleast not yet, since according to carmach, we´re not even close to maxing out dx9.

- rage will hit pc, ps3 and xbox 360

- rage will make use of blu-ray and dvd, but unless costs is transparent it wont be released on hd.dvd.

- rage will have co.op

- tech5 games will have it´s own physics engine and not make use of havoc, which carmack never wonted to do with quake4 since he thinks using havoc is a bad idea.

- id prefers the open platform of ps3 compared to xbox´s closed down philosophy but finds the ps3 more challenging, but believes that in the end, the ps3 tech 5 engine will be even better.

media creation. ozone 3.0 ple edition

ozone 3.0 ple is on it´s way and it will feature the hyper real atmosphere´s from v6i straight inside max,maya,lightwave,c4d and xsi.

Ozone 3.0 will feature all the atmoshpere technologies that e.on supplies to the world with it´s industry leading v6infinite and Xstream apps, inlcuding spectral atmospheres.