Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

So, a new gaming OS based on Linux, a new console, and now, a new game controller… Value has been busy!

Valve reveals haptic game controller for release in 2014

“Games developer and publisher Valve has shown off its Steam Controller, the final part of its strategy to bring its PC-based platform to the living room.

The controller offers two trackpads which provide ‘haptic’ feedback capable of delivering various physical sensations to the player.

Valve said it offers a better way to play games that have traditionally been controlled with a keyboard and mouse.

Gamers have been invited test the device before it goes on sale in 2014.

‘Traditional gamepads force us to accept compromises,’ the company said via its announcement page.

‘We’ve made it a goal to improve upon the resolution and fidelity of input that’s possible with those devices.

‘The Steam controller offers a new and, we believe, vastly superior control scheme, all while enabling you to play from the comfort of your sofa.’

Research and testing

The controller is the third announcement the company has made this week. On Monday, it outlined plans to create an entire Linux-based operating system for running games, and followed up on Wednesday with details of the Steam Machine, essentially a new type of games console.

The widely-anticipated controller completes what Valve will hope is a strategy that can shift gamers that use traditional PCs – which is seen as a market headed for decline – and coax them into the living room.

However, the biggest challenge the company faces in doing so is in convincing gamers who have spent years playing titles, particularly first-person shooters, by using a combination of keyboard and mouse that a handheld controller can offer a more enjoyable solution.

The company said it had spent a year researching and testing different control methods. It said the haptic feedback offered new possibilities for creating immersive gaming.

‘This haptic capability provides a vital channel of information to the player – delivering in-game information about speed, boundaries, thresholds, textures, action confirmations, or any other events about which game designers want players to be aware.’

The company is to send out 300 early versions of the controller to people who sign up for beta testing.

Giant owl eyes

Rob Crossley, associate editor of Computer and Video Games, has been following Valve’s announcements throughout this week. He has described the latest move as ‘fearless’.

‘Controller design standards haven’t changed since the first PlayStation… the D-pad, the two sticks… that’s evolved only slightly over the last 20 years.

‘Sure, it looks a little funny – those two giant owl eyes – but I think that this could lead to a change in the way we look at controllers.’

Valve is banking on the trackpads providing the same kind of precision offered by a mouse, Mr. Crossley added.”

More good news for Linux! NVIDIA is pledging to help the Open Source community with NVIDIA driver help! Awesome!

Nvidia pledge to help Linux’s open source driver community

“This week, it seems, everything is coming up Linux. First Valve announce their own Linux-based OS, and now, Nvidia are making moves to get more involved with the open source community. Nvidia’s Andy Ritger contacted the developers of Nouveau – an open source, reverse-engineered version of Nvidia’s proprietary drivers – offering information on the workings of their GPUs.

‘NVIDIA is releasing public documentation on certain aspects of our GPUs,’ wrote Ritger, ‘with the intent to address areas that impact the out-of-the-box usability of NVIDIA GPUs with Nouveau. We intend to provide more documentation over time, and guidance in additional areas as we are able.’

In the first instance, that means releasing info on Nvidia’s Device Control Block layout, which I’m not going to attempt to explain because I’m not a tech journalist. Ritger admits that ‘much of the information in that document is not news for the Nouveau community,’ but that the official explanation should help strengthen Nouveau’s implementation.

Speaking to Ars Technica, Ritger outlined Nvidia’s future plan, saying, ‘more BIOS-related information is in the pipeline.’

‘Our goal is for the Nouveau driver to give NVIDIA users a reasonable out-of-the-box experience,’ he continued, ‘This entails things like successful GPU initialization, display configuration, and basic 2D and 3D rendering. The DCB and other BIOS-related information will hopefully help improve some scenarios where Nouveau had initialization problems, or display enumeration sorts of challenges.’

Nvidia has had an interesting relationship with Linux in the past. While its proprietary drivers are reasonable – by Linux proprietary driver standards – their reluctance to help the community prompted Linux creator Linus Torvalds to call them the ‘single worst company’ that developers could work with.”

Step one in our attempt at world domination… well, OS domination, anyway! For a LONG time, I have heard, “Well, Linux is nice, and all, but you can’t play games, so it won’t catch on for personal PCs, for most folks.” Oh yeah? Check this out!

Why SteamOS will challenge Windows for PC gaming supremacy

From PC World – “You have to give it to PC gamers. Throughout all the trials and tribulations of the past few years—plummeting PC sales, the mainstream shift to mobile, Windows RT, et cetera—gamers were one of the few bedrocks Microsoft could rely upon. Virtually all major PC games run on Windows, and many run only on Windows.

That’s a big deal. In August, Jon Peddie Research predicted that Bohemia’s ARMA III would drive more than $800 million in PC hardware sales all by itself, and JPR estimates the total market for PC gaming hardware to hit nearly $18 billion in 2013. That’s a lot of quarters, and it’s all funneled toward Windows machines.

But suddenly that domination seems imperiled.

On Monday, Valve launched an assault on one of Windows’ strongest bastions with the announcement of SteamOS, a free, Linux-based operating system built around Steam, the most popular PC-game service in the land. And if any company has the brawn to shift PC gaming to Linux, it’s Valve.

The good news for Microsoft: Windows is going to be the featured destination for PC gamers for a while yet.

SteamOS was built to power so-called Steam Boxes—small, living-room-friendly PCs designed to challenge the gaming consoles’ death grip on the big screen. They’re not fire-breathing enthusiast gaming computers. SteamOS was built around gamepads and Steam’s Big Picture mode rather than keyboards and mice, and perhaps more importantly, it removes the cost of a Windows license—a big expense in the price-competitive living room.

‘I think it is important to understand that the vast majority of gamers consider ‘PC gaming’ to be a situation where the display is a few feet away from the gamer,’ says Ted Pollak, the senior game industry analyst at Jon Peddie Research. ‘…Couch-based gaming is ‘console gaming’ and that is what Valve is making a play toward with Steam Box.’

What’s more, native Linux gaming is still in its infancy and mostly involves using WINE to run Windows games on your machine. Steam for Linux itself only supports around 200 games currently. Most are Valve titles or indie games, and even fewer offer the full gamepad support SteamOS begs for. In fact, SteamOS will rely on a proprietary Wi-Fi technology to stream the nearly 3,000 games available for Steam for Windows to your Steam Box.

‘I think Valve’s challenge will be to get the games ported to its OS,’ says Jon Peddie himself. ‘They can start of course with their own games, and as interesting as they are, that’s a small library.’ (Beyond Steam, Valve has created legendary PC-game series such as Portal, Half-Life, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Left 4 Dead.)

For now, Windows is still firmly entrenched. And yet…

Though Steam Boxes aren’t an immediate danger to Microsoft’s supremacy, the love PC gamers hold for Steam is fierce, and if SteamOS picks up popularity, Valve’s love for Linux could encroach upon Windows’ gaming stronghold.

‘Possibly more important than the ‘PC vs. console’ question is that Valve’s move toward Linux cuts Microsoft Windows out of the picture,’ Pollak says. ‘This then circles back to PC gaming in its traditional form. Will developers make—and people play—Linux-optimized games on the desktop?’

That prospect just got a big boost. On Wednesday, AMD announced ‘Mantle,’ a low-level, cross-platform programming interface driver (read: DirectX replacement) designed to eek superb hardware-optimized performance out of GPUs based on AMD’s GCN architecture across multiple platforms—including both next-gen consoles as well as Windows and SteamOS-based PCs using Radeon graphics.

That could reap immediate benefits for SteamOS if it becomes popular with developers, especially as Steam machines are a natural fit for console ports. EA is already on board with its Frostbite engine; Battlefield 4 will be the first major title to use Mantle.”

DEWD! I now have 30 meg symmetrical at my house! Zowie! Rock on Internets! As the banner there says, “Faster than 88% of anyone” in the good ol’ US of A! I now have Northstate Plex fiber optic run all the way to my house. There is nothing sweeter to a geek than tons o’ bandwidth. What else do ya need?!

To take advantage of it, I got a new, rocking wireless router as well. Ton’s of neat features with it, including NAS-like file sharing. What a geeky day I had yesterday getting all this set up! (By the way, the bandwidth DID test out to be 30.4 down and 30.2 up tested directly from the port after it was set up at my house.) I am still performance tweaking the router to get that through it… but, I am pretty dog gone close! I am a happy man!

Lot’s happening in the Roku world!

Introducing the all-new Roku family

“We’re excited to announce that streaming is about to get even better with our all-new family of Roku players. First, like all things Roku, we try to simplify everything about streaming, right down to our product names. The new family features the new Roku 1 and Roku 2 to go alongside the Roku 3 that we launched earlier this year. We have also updated our entry level product, the Roku LT, giving all current Roku players a fun, friendly design.

Second, just in time for fall TV viewing, we’ve added some great new features to give customers more enjoyment and value. For example, we’ve added a headphone jack for private listening and dual-band wireless to the Roku 2, and support for 1080p HD video to the Roku 1.

As always, every Roku player comes loaded with a broad selection of steaming entertainment – currently more than 1,000 channels in the U.S. and more than 450 channels each in Canada, the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland.

The new Roku 1 and Roku 2 models will be available in the US, Canada, the U.K, and the Republic of Ireland, and we are very pleased to now be offering our flagship Roku 3, the fastest and most powerful Roku player to date to users in all these countries as well.

Here’s the new Roku family lineup in more detail:

• The new Roku LT (model 2700) is the easiest and most affordable way to stream to virtually any TV with support for up to 720p HD video quality. (Expected to be available in the U.S. in October for $49.99).
• The Roku 1 takes streaming a step further than the Roku LT with support for up to 1080p HD video quality. (Expected to be available in the U.S./Canada/U.K.+Republic of Ireland in October for $59.99/CAD $69.99/£59.99).
• The Roku 2 offers the same great experience as the Roku 1 and features a remote with built-in headphone jack for private listening and dual-band wireless for better Internet connectivity. Both are popular features that were previously available only with the Roku 3. (Expected to be available in the U.S./Canada/U.K.+Republic of Ireland in October for $79.99/CAD $89.99/£79.99).
• Leading the family is the flagship Roku 3 which sets the bar for streaming with all the features of the Roku 2 plus Ethernet and USB ports and an enhanced remote with built-in headphone jack and motion-control for gaming. (Expected to be available in the U.S./Canada/U.K.+Republic of Ireland in October for $99.99/CAD $109.99/£99.99).

We’re also introducing the M-GO movie and TV store, integrated directly on our home screen menu in the U.S. for easy and instant access to their great selection of movies and TV shows including Hangover 3, The Croods, Breaking Bad, Modern Family, Big Bang Theory, Glee and even fall-premiering shows like Brooklyn 9-9 starring Andy Samberg. To make it even simpler, the M-GO service features direct billing with a Roku account so users can rent or buy through M-GO without any extra account setup.

The movie and TV show shortcuts powered by M-GO will be available in the U.S. on the new Roku LT, Roku 1 and Roku 2 players, and will automatically roll out as a free software update beginning in October to all current-generation Roku devices – the Roku LT (models 2400 and 2450), Roku HD (model 2500), Roku 2 HD, Roku 2 XD, Roku 2 XS and Roku 3 players as well as the Roku Streaming Stick.

Whether you’re looking to upgrade to a better TV experience for yourself or as a gift this holiday, the new Roku family has you covered!

Happy Streaming!”