Wednesday, March 27, 2013

How Gaming Technology Will Change Manufacturing

The gaming world has been revolutionized by games that track a player's natural body movements and translates them into the virtual environment. By using gesture and voice recognition, gaming consoles such as the Xbox Kinect allow players to kick a ball, shoot an arrow, and actively participate in the game by simply moving their bodies, no controller required.
Watch out manufacturing, the revolution is coming. Very soon, factory floors may start seeing gesture and voice recognition systems, combined with biometrics, which allow workers to control factory operations with natural body movements and voiced commands. A simple example of this, according to a Machine Design.com article, involves logging into workstations.
Currently, many automated factories operate off of Graphic User Interfaces (GUI's), where a worker would log in by clicking on an icon and entering a username and password. In the future, the same worker could simply step up to the work station, which would scan his retina and automatically log him in. With a simple gesture the worker could command the computer to start operations, and by holding up his hand in a "stop" gesture, halt operations. The machine could be programmed to ask for confirmations of these gestures, requiring a vocal "yes" from the operator.
So how does this technology work? A color video camera works with a depth sensor that provides a 3D perspective and a set of microphones which isolates individual player's voices. Advanced software tracks the layout of the room and player movement, monitoring movements and responding accordingly.
A biometric natural user interface (NUI) would be able to identify only the person logged into that particular machine, responding singularly to that person's gestures and movements while ignoring all other workers. Should a worker leave a workstation, it would not respond to anyone else and can even be programmed to shut down after a specified period of time.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

How Game Consoles Evolved

Every day is a new day for game consoles and gamers like us. The advancement in games are in a very rapid phase, and the products being release today are fast becoming more advanced, more convenient, more interactive, and more entertaining.

Video games were with us decades ago, but the market is not is massive as it is today. To name two of the pioneers in the world of gaming, we have Atari and Nintendo. If not for these companies who have brought video games to our homes, I think that we will not be able to have Playstation, Xbox, and Wii today. These game consoles are considered as the most advanced and best consoles of all time.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

How Gaming Laptops Are Different Than Regular Ones

Gaming laptops are simply just laptops that are designed for enhanced gaming usage. When gamers are searching for a new machine to play on, these systems are what they want. However, the market lacks a variety of already built gaming systems, leaving gamers to have to order customized systems that come with their specified configurations. Standard notebooks often come with fast processing speed, good graphics cards, extended battery life and effective cooling units, but these are still looked over in favor of a system that is built to the gamers specifications instead.

How well a game performs for a gamer on a laptop can be measured by how good the graphics card it has is. ATI and NVIDIA are two names you well encounter frequently in gaming systems. A fast processor speed is also a vital configuration. Gaming computers often use the Pentium 4 Athlon to achieve high performance.

At least 80 GB or higher is needed in the system for the best performance and the hard disk speed should be in the 5400 rpm range, if not more. For 3D games you will need at least 7200 rpm, however, and these days 3D is the most popular.