Lady In The Water

Hi there again,

Today was a cinema-day. I went to watch Lady in the water. In a few words, the movie is just great! Okay, I've got a weird taste for movies, the movie is sorta bizarre, the argument is different, original.
I'm bored of lots of movies that are about the same thing (accion, guns, a man and a girl), this movie is about something different, something new, and that's why I liked it.

Go watch it. As for what it is about, I won't tell anything about it... 'cause.. it's hard to explain lol

Microsoft Office for Linux

Within the next couple of years, a linux version of Microsoft Office will be released.
Stuart Cohen, chief executive for the Open Source Development Labs, said: "They did it once with Apple, they will do it again with Linux"

I'm a Linux & Windows fan at the same time (or rather a partial time fan lol), and in my opinion it's a great new for both parts.
For Windows, the Office software will be in one more market, and on the Linux side, Open Office will have to improve if they want their software to be still used.

FSX Demo Review

After a flight or two, I think I've tested FSX Demo enough as to talk about it. First of all I would like to say that this is my personal opinion. This opinion is against many opinions I've heard since this demo was released. Many of you didn't like this demo, I respect that opinion, so respect mine :-)

The specs

It's important to say that I own a low-end PC, in which I've tested this demo. I'm not gonna judge FSX because of this fact, I understand the MS position of developing a high requirements game to offer the most realistic graphics. Not all of us are able to enjoy them, so I'll focus on the non-graphical part as well.

The main problem of my PC is the graphic card, I couldn't use AA and a low resolution (1024x768x32 on a 19' display). Furthermore, my graphic card is DirectX 8.1 only, so I can't see any of those amazing effects like water reflections.
This is my PC:

AMD Sempron 2800+ running overclocked at 2.14Ghz.

512MB of RAM at 400Mhz.

ATI Radeon 9000 64MB AGP 4x.

Seagate Barracuda 7200 160GB 100 2MB of cache.

The graphic settings

Those were my graphic settings while I was testing it (as well as when I made the screenshots at the bottom). As you see, low - very low settings. I got about 25-30fps (sometimes 15), which is not as bad as people say. Also think that this is a demo in development, so it doesn't have to be like the final version of the product. It should get better!

General settings.

Aircraft settings.

Scenary settings.

Weather settings.

Traffic settings.

The review

Okay, time for the hard part :)

Remind this is a demo, and not a finished product!

• Graphics: I'm not gonna add anything in here. Enough is said with the screenshots. MS has done the job and you can see it. Of course, if you can afford a machine better than mine!


• Scenaries: They are much more detailed than before. Photorealistic textures and water reflections make it look great. Again: not for me, for those with a good pc. The airports are suppoused to be better, but I haven't been able to check that in this little demo.


• Aircrafts: Check the CRJ cockpit, the default aircrafts are much better than before. What can we expect from PMDG, PSS, etc? The animations are pretty much the same.


• Sound: I haven't seen anything different here. If it's better, I don't feel it.
  

Score: 8,5/10

This is the score of the Demo, but I hope I can set a higher score once the final version is released.

The cool things

• The cameras (lots of them, some of them are pretty cool, like one below the landing gear).
  
• The camera moving inside the virtual cockpit as if it was your head.
  
• The missions.
  
• A button to make screenshots.

The crappy things

• The ATC has not changed at all!
  
• The flight model... as bad as it was!
  
• The camera control is hard :S

Conclusion

Most of the people expected a lot out of this game. The truth is that MS did a huge job to code this tenth version of their Flight Simulator. Some are disappointed because this is not what they were expecting. People complain about the frame rate.

What do I say? In my humble opinion this version does the trick. I mean, they have improved, they've given what the general public wants: better graphics. You don't have a more realistic flight simulator regarding physics or detailed cockpits, but now you feel more like you are actually inside a plane and you are flying that thing. MS can't do things that a 1 percent of the public wants, FSX is a game, not a realistic simulator. If you want a realistic simulator, go buy X-Plane, MS' FSX and X-Plane are running different races. While X-Plane is everyday more realistic, FSX looks better.

For me, FSX is good enough for what I expected. I haven't been able to test it as well as I should, but I will in the future, as soon as I get a high-end PC.

The perfomance? You can't ask for amazing graphics and really-high frame rates. You have to choose from one of them, not both. And Microsoft chose to put inside FSX the best graphics a nowdays PC can handle, and I'm talking about a double core, SLI graphic cards and stuff PC, not my crappy machine! The graphics are amazing, they'll look even better on Vista D10 computers, and that's all.

For the simmers? You get a funnier flight expereance, similar to the FS2004, a few new things, and that's all. But I like it. I can only say: wait for the cool addons to come.

I'd also want to say to those who are disappointed, that wait for the final version on October 3rd. Don't say no to FSX this soon!

The Screenshots

Raining.

CRJ 2D cockpit.

The cameras.

The water effects with the lowest water quality.

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So this is it. Hope you enjoyed reading it.

Silent Hill - The movie

Hey there,

I wanted to talk to you about a movie I recently saw. It was released in the States long time ago, but in Spain (where I live), it was on theaters on late July. It was Silent Hill.
Well, I went to watch it with a couple of friends. No one liked it :D
Though I did (and my brother did too), I found it one of the best movies I've seen. Okay, it's a different movie, it's not the typical movie you can see, but it was worth the money (6,20€ by the way).
I had played from Silent Hill 2 to Silent Hill 4, so I knew what it was all about, and I must addmit that the atmosphere of the movie, is just like in the games! it's as terrorific, weird and bizarre as the games.
What helped the most to that, was the music. Akira Yamaoka songs fit perfectly to the movie, they give myself the creeps!

So, if you haven't seen it, go watch it and tell me what you think.

xbox 360 HD-DVD Device

Hi everyone!

This is the first entry in my blog, so first of all I want to thank you for visiting it :)

This is also the first time I blog, so I hope I do it fine!

And this first `new` is about the extern HD-DVD player that Microsoft is releasing later this year. Yesterday, they told us a little bit more about it, but they still don't want to say anything neither about the price, nor about a release date, anyway they're announcing it shortly, and we expect it to be shipping before christmas.

We just was told that it was going to be cheaper than the HD-DVD players are in the US market (around 500 US$), because "All the audio and video processing is done inside the Xbox".

One more important thing about the HD-DVD disks is that no game will be made in that format. Which means we'll only need to buy a player if we want to enjoy the movies in High Definition. But... why? I heard from one guy in Microsoft, that the games won't have better graphics if you burn them in bigger disks, since that depends on the system, not on you save it. And a DVD9 (double layer) disk is enough for anygame.

This is the opposite side that Sony took for their Play Station 3, which will have a built-in Blu Ray player. And the games will be in that format.

Those of you who have a xbox 360, will you buy a HD-DVD player?

Me, personnaly (I own a xbox 360) won't by now, since I don't have a HDTV beside my computer monitor. So I'm going to wait for the market to accept either the HD-DVD or the BluRay format for me to choose any of them. Moreover, I need to wait for it to be cheaper :)

That's all by now, I'll keep you all blogged.