X-bit labs

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Valve's Way of HDR Rendering. Preview of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

Game designers try to use all the means at their disposal, in order to persuade potential costumers to buy certain game titles. One way is to organize nig shows and gamer conventions. Another is to release an update to the title already available in the market.

Last year, CryTek released a patch for the famous FarCry game, which enabled the High Dynamic Range feature. This move aroused almost as much interest to the FarCry game as when the game was released for the first time. Now it seems that Valve is hoping to achieve the same, by releasing a small update to the Half-Life 2 game.

In the coming weeks Valve is going to offer a new game-level for the Half Life 2 game, which will be available via Valve’s Steam software. This level is called Half Life 2: Lost Coast and it is supposed to bring new features to the game: one of them is HDR support. Bit-tech.net has managed to get a sneak peek at this upcoming title.

“To date, what has been touted as “HDR” in games such as Far Cry is pretty much just a single feature called Blooming: where the light from a bright source spills over the edge of an object, obscuring it from view. The exact featureset that makes up HDR varies within the game industry, so Valve have made a list of what they think is important for HDR. This featureset includes Blooming, HDR Skyboxes, HDR Cube maps, HDR light reflection and refractions and many more,” reports bit-tech.net.

• bit-tech.net: Half-Life 2: Lost Coast.

The Date is Set for Next Gaming Console from Microsoft. Xbox 360 to Arrive on Thanksgiving

On Wednesday, Microsoft revealed the launch dates for its much-anticipated Xbox 360 video game console.

“In an announcement at the Tokyo Game Show, the company said the new Xbox – Microsoft’s entrant in the next-generation console wars - would hit store shelves in North America on Nov. 22, in Europe on Dec. 2 and in Japan on Dec. 10. The company clearly wanted to take advantage of the holiday shopping rush just before and after Thanksgiving in the United States,” reports CNET News.com.

The move made by Microsoft about their next-generation gaming consol launch was quite predictable.

“That’s what you want to do to launch a console. You definitely want to have it on shelves to enjoy the Thanksgiving shopping period,” said Mike Sabine, International Development Group market analyst.

The other reason to put the product into the market as soon as possible, is the competition, of course. New Xbox 360 sales may suffer quite tangibly when Sony and Nintendo launch their own next-generation gaming console.

“For months, Microsoft has said it would have the Xbox 360 out in time for the holidays, and Wednesday’s announcement confirms the company will get several months of first-mover advantage over Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Revolution, both of which are expected to be released next spring,” writes CNET News.com.

• CNET News.com: Xbox 360 to hit shelves before Thanksgiving.