2008
OCZ Demos Mind Controlled Gaming Device
It looks like OCZ is planning the future of gaming with its Neural Impulse Actuator - the world’s first gaming control system that allows users to play games by monitoring muscle movement, brain waves and eye movement. After calibration, the device allows the wearer to carry out actions such as moving, turning, strafing and changing weapons without needing a keyboard, simply by thinking what they want to do. This allows for more fluid gameplay and faster reactions - things that are essential to hardcore gamers. The mouse is still used to aim, but absolutely no keyboard inputs are required. Apparently the device is almost ready to go into production, and has been designed to take advantage of DirectX and multithreading as much as possible to minimise the performance impact. There are no details on pricing or availability yet, but if OCZ has its way, gaming could be very different in a few years time.
LG has officially today announced the release of the first Blu-Ray/HD DVD Super-multi DVD burner capable of writing at 6x on Blu-Ray media. The new GGW-H20L is the successor of the currently available GGW-H10N Super-multi Blue Blu-Ray /HD DVD combo drive. Basic specifications include a SATA interface, support for Lightscribe, 6x burning for BD-R media using the CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) writing strategy, 3x HD DVD-ROM reading (15GB and 30GB), 16x writing for DVD+/-R media and 40x for CD-R. Another strong advantage of the new drive is the support for 4x BD-R DL (50GB) burning, which means that you will be able to write approximately 46 GB of data in less than 50 minutes. Currently, LG is the only ODD maker that offers drives compatible with both Blu-Ray and HD DVD formats. The new GGW-H20L drive will be available in the Korean market first and LG has not confirmed yet confirmed its availability overseas any time soon. It will sell for W490,000 (U.S. $526), almost the half price of the company’s previous Super-multi model. HLDS also plans to release a Blu-Ray/HD DVD ROM drive (GGC-H20L) with Lightscribe, keeping up with the demand for more affordable drives for entertainment PCs.
NVIDIA is ready for its next-generation GPU launch. According to sources at graphics card makers, the company plans to launch its GeForce 9 series GPU in February 2008. The first chip to roll out in the GeForce 9 family will be the D9E, a high-end product that adopts 65nm manufacturing. The new product will also support DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1. In addition to the D9E, NVIDIA will release a mid-range GeForce 9 family 55nm GPU named D9P in June 2008.