Microsoft have made the final Release Candidate available for download from either MSDN or the Microsoft Technet Beta Program. They even provide new product keys for you to use.

Well… what are you waiting for.. GO GO GO.. get downloading..

(Windows Live ID Required)

Windows 7 RC 32-bit

Windows 7 RC 64-bit

Wondering what's been happening to Medal of Honor since Airborne? Well, at the beginning of the year EA (MOH Publishers) admitted that they were working on "the best FPS ever". What is that First-Person Shooter you ask? It's almost certain to be the highly speculated Medal of Honor: Operation Anaconda. We knew that EA were working on a new FPS when EALA put a job online for an Art Director for what would be "to create the coolest piece of entertainment software the world has ever known". EALA also said it was the best FPS they had ever made..”

What is Operation Anaconda?

Anaconda was an operation where the US Military attempted to destroy al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the South East of Zormat, Afghanistan. The allies were victorious, but the Taliban managed to evacuate with up to 800 casualties.

How could this be a good game?

If the "best FPS ever" is Anaconda, then it has the potential to be huge. Possibly a competitor to Modern Warfare. EALA need to take the right amount of time to make the game perfect. The physics system in the game needs to be as realistic as possible to even compete with the brilliance of Modern Warfare. The storyline is another thing that needs to be perfect as Call of Duty 4's storyline was one that will go down in history for brilliance and Infinity Ward are planning for Modern Warfare 2's campaign mode to exceed that.

Online?

Of course there will be an online mode if the game is going to compete with other FPS'. It's whether EA take more time on the single player campaign or the online campaign. The online mode needs a good setup menu, as Call of Duty's is so simple, it works for almost everyone. New online games need to be created (new type of Search and Destroy or something a little like that).

So Medal of Honor: Operation Anaconda hasn't been confirmed yet, but if it is on it's way it has huge potential in the gaming world. Expect an announcement of the new EALA FPS in the coming months.

Next Medal of Honor could be Next Big Thing :: LivePlayStation - Latest PlayStation 3 News

Despite warning and requests from readers, N4G continue to help propagate the latest internet scam by actually running adverts for it on their site.  Many readers have been fooled into parting with the credit card details in a very polished looking Google related scam similar to the LA tribune scan from earlier in the year.

The scam works by attracting anyone interesting in working from home (that’s just about everyone right, especially in the current climate with so many people being laid off and loosing their jobs) by using a convincing looking newspaper style website running a story on the subject. Through out the article are numerous links to the honey trap site, which is heavily Google branded.  The site claims they want to take a small $1.87 payment to cover shipping, however what the credit card owner doesn’t know is that they are unknowingly and without consent signing up for a free 7 day trail of a lifetime subscription. Once the 7 days has passed, you will be charged $80 a month forever until you ring and cancel. Problem is they never answer their phones, so you can never cancel.  The only way to solve this is contact your card provider and get them stop your card, and re-issue a new one.

This is not acceptable for a well known and trusted news site to be running adverts like this, especially after being warned about the potential lose to their readers.

Last image taken 18/06/09 22:32 GMT

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GPS systems could crash next year

Washington, DC - The world's GPS systems could start to fail next year, according to a report presented to Congress. This could cause catastrophic problems for aviation, 911 services and ordinary drivers, as well as the military.

GPS devices calculate their position by comparing time signals from at least four satellites. Because the Earth is spherical, a minimum of 24 satellites is required at all times. There are currently 31 operating, but many are way past their design lifetime.

The GAO predicts a one in five chance that the number will drop below 24 at times in 2011 and 2012, hampering accuracy. This could lead to blackouts and even misdirection of people all over the world.

The US Government Accountability Office (GOA) blames mismanagement and lack of investment. In recent years, says the report, the Air Force has encountered technical difficulties and problems with contractors. As a result, the program has overrun its cost estimate by about $870 million, and  the launch of its first new IIIA satellite has been delayed until November - almost three years late.

Presenting the report, Cristina T Chaplain, Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management for the GAO, said that both the military and civilian users could suffer. "The military could see a decrease in the accuracy of precision-guided munitions that rely on GPS to strike their targets," she warned. "Intercontinental commercial flights use predicted satellite geometry over their planned navigation route, and may have to delay, cancel, or reroute flights. Enhanced 911 services, which rely on GPS to precisely locate callers, could lose accuracy particularly when operating in urban canyons or mountainous terrain."

From Voodoo to GeForce: The Awesome History of 3D Graphics

Try to imagine where 3D gaming would be today if not for the graphics processing unit, or GPU. Without it, you wouldn't be trudging through the jungles of Crysis in all its visual splendour, nor would you be fending off endless hordes of fast-moving zombies at high resolutions. For that to happen, it takes a highly specialized chip designed for parallel processing to pull off the kinds of games you see today, the same ones that wouldn't be possible on a CPU alone. Going forward, GPU makers will try to extend the reliance on video cards to also include physics processing, video encoding/decoding, and other tasks that where once handled by the CPU.

It's pretty amazing when you think about how far graphics technology has come. To help you do that, we're going to take a look back at every major GPU release since the infancy of 3D graphics. Join us as we travel back in time and relive releases like 3dfx's Voodoo3 and S3's ViRGE lineup. This is one nostalgic ride you don't want to miss!

S3 ViRGE

A virgin in the 3D graphics arena, S3 in 1995 thrust itself into this new territory with its ViRGE graphics series. Playing on the hype surrounding virtual reality a decade and a half ago, ViRGE stood for Virtual Reality Graphics Engine and was one of the first 3D GPUs to take aim at the mainstream consumer. While nothing compared to today’s offerings, early 64-bit ViRGE cards came with up to 4MB of onboard memory, and core and memory clock speeds of up to 66MHz. It also supported such features as Bilinear and Trilinear texture filtering, MIP mapping, alpha blending, video texturing mapping, Z-buffering, and other 3D texture mapping goodies.

Ironically, those same ‘cutting edge’ features took a toll on the ViRGE silicon resulting in underwhelming 3D performance. In some cases, performance was so bad that users could obtain better results with the CPU, causing the ViRGE to be affectionately dubbed the first 3D decelerator. Ouch.

Fun Fact: Just how far has graphic cards come in the past 15 years? Enough so that we've seen the S3 ViRGE selling for as little as $0.45 in the second-hand market.

Model: ViRGE
Date Released: 1995
Interface: PCI
Shader Model: N/A
DirectX: 6
Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micron
Core Clockspeed: 66MHz
Memory Bus: 64-bit

Model: ViRGE VX
Date Released: 1995
Interface: PCI
Shader Model: N/A
DirectX: 6
Manufacturing Process: 0.5 micron
Core Clockspeed: 50MHz
Memory Bus: 64-bit

Model: ViRGE GX
Date Released: 1997
Interface: PCI
Shader Model: N/A
DirectX: 6
Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micron
Core Clockspeed: 66MHz
Memory Bus: 64-bit

Model: ViRGE DX
Date Released: 1997
Interface: PCI
Shader Model: N/A
DirectX: 6
Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micron
Core Clockspeed: 66MHz
Memory Bus: 64-bit

Model: ViRGE GX2
Date Released: 1998
Interface: PCI
Shader Model: N/A
DirectX: 6
Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micron
Core Clockspeed: 66MHz
Memory Bus: 64-bit

ATI Rage 3D and Rage II

Well before Radeon ever became synonymous with ATI, the Canadian-based graphics chip maker was best known for its 3D Rage line. Released in 1995, the original Rage 3D didn't have a whole going for it, such as slow EDO RAM, a 32-bit memory bus, and a max memory of just 2MB.

A year later ATI released the Rage II, and while the upgrades seem minor on paper, performance was significantly improved. The new chipset traded in 2MB of EDO memory for up to 8MB of SDRAM and widened the bus to 64-bit, while also increasing the core clockspeed from 40MHz to 60MHz.. Support for DVD playback was also added, and the Rage II.

Rendition Verite 1000

Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Rendition emerged in the mid 1990s as a fabless semiconductor manufacturer whose goal was to compete in the high-end videocard market. Throughout the company's tenure, Rendition managed to get a leg up on the competition by working with John Carmack to develop the first 3D-accelerated version of Quake (VQuake, or Verite-accelerated Quake).

VQuake was designed to take advantage of the Verite 1000 chipset, which was launched in 1996. A year prior, Carmack stated "Verite will be the premier platform for Quake." The card came capable of bilinear filtering, perspective correcting, and a basic pipeline configuration of 1/1/1 (textures/pixels/Z).

Poor 2D performance proved problematic for the board, as did programming for the Verite. It was the latter which Carmack would later say led to iD's decision to move away from proprietary APIs to OpenGL.

Model: Verite 2100
Date Released: 1996
Interface: PCI
Shader Model: N/A
DirectX: 2
Manufacturing Process: 0.5 micron
Core Clockspeed: 25MHz
Memory Bus: 64-bit

3dfx Voodoo1

Like a modern day Greek Tragedy, the rapid rise and untimely demise of 3dfx can best be described as a wild roller-coaster ride that most enthusiasts wish would have never ended. And in a way, it didn't, as 3dfx had a tremendous hand in shaping the 3D market as we know it today. But every good story needs a beginning, and this one starts with the original Voodoo card, or otherwise known as the Voodoo1, released in 1996.

The Voodoo1 launched 3D gaming into the limelight, even if the add-in card's implementation was less than graceful. While other videocards fused both 2D and 3D functionality onto a single board, the Voodoo1 concentrated solely on 3D and lacked any 2D capabilities. This meant consumers still needed a 2D graphics card for day to day computing, which would be connected to the Voodoo1 via a VGA pass-through cable. Only when a compatible 3D videogame was detected would the Voodoo1 then wake out of its slumber and flex its gaming muscle.

It's hard to imagine such a design being successful today, but consumers were willing to cope with the costly inconvenience at the time because the Voodoo1 put every other available 3D card in a headlock and gave them a noogie.


Voodoo1: No Shader Model, DX3 support, 0.5 micron, PCI, 50MHz core, 64-bit

Model: Voodoo1
Date Released: 1996
Interface: PCI
Shader Model: N/A
DirectX: 3
Manufacturing Process: 0.5 micron
Core Clockspeed: 50MHz
Memory Clockspeed: 50MHz
Memory Bus: 64-bit
Transistors: 1 million

Source MAXIMUMPC

It seems that filefront may have drowned under the weight of its downloads,users going to their website  www.filefront.com are greeted with the following message

We are suspending FileFront site operations indefinitely on March 30. Please see the following link for more information: Farewell

Dear FileFront User:

We regret to inform you that we are forced to indefinitely suspend the FileFront site operations on March 30, 2009. If you have uploaded files, images or posted blogs, or if you would like to download some of your favorite files, please take this opportunity to download them before March 30th when the site will be suspended.

We would like to give a warm thank you to all of you who have been part of the FileFront communities we have built together. Your support has had a meaningful impact for all of us here at FileFront. Again, we want to give you a sincere “thank you” for your support over the years and wish you all the very best.

Keep gaming alive,

FileFront Management and Team.

Contact_us@filefront.com

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The official blurb is below, but I wanted to take this opportunity to say a huge well done to the whole team at Brightlight, but particularly to my very good friend Sim who has been working on this title for EA’s Brightlight. With so many games and SKU’s getting canned during development these days, its an achievement in itself just shipping a game in today’s market. Well Done Sim.  :)  I’m sure this will be a huge success in today’s more family orientated market.

It's time to bring home a new game and bring your family together - it's time for FAMILY GAME NIGHT! HASBRO games are a tried and true medium for lively, engaging, face-to-face fun and connection.

When you bring home a new game and make a night of staying in and playing, your family gets to laugh, trash talk, have new adventures, and get into the fun!

With so many new Hasbro games, the possibilities for Family Game Night are endless!

Family Game Night