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Two weeks after the console launch, PC gamers finally got their version of Eidos Interactive's Batman: Arkham Asylum last week. Originally slated to launch with the console versions, Batman was delayed three weeks for the PC, presumably to give both developer Rocksteady Studios and partner Nvidia time to polish the integration of Nvidia's PhysX game physics acceleration technology.

After spending a weekend with the game, we can report that we were pleasantly surprised at how much the PhysX effects enhanced the atmosphere of the game's gloomy setting. Our last outing with a PhysX-enabled AAA PC game, Mirror's Edge back in January, was much clunkier.

In Batman, sheets of paper scattered on the floor move convincingly as characters walk over them. Bricks, glass, and tiles shatter and break apart realistically. Fog, smoke, and spider webs waft and curl around characters realistically (the slideshow at the bottom of this post shows off some Nvidia-provided screenshots). With PhysX off you get none of those effects, and a less interesting environment as a result. Compared to the tacked on PhysX-effects in Mirror's Edge, the effects in Batman noticeably improve the atmosphere.

The swirling paper in this scene isn't possible without Nvidia's PhysX effects.

(Credit: Rich Brown/CNET)

Not every effect in Batman is a winner. The banners draped over various rafters and arches throughout the game, presumably to show off realistic cloth behavior, seem more appropriate for an athletic facility than an asylum for criminals. The PhysX effects also provide no benefit to the in-game mechanics, but given that only a subset of PC gamers have PhysX-enabled PCs, we can't blame the Batman development team for not using PhysX to full advantage.

(Credit: Mobile Mechatronics)

If you're an iPhone owner who just hates typing on the device's virtual keyboard, Mobile Mechatronics has something for you: the iTwinge, a $30 BlackBerry-style, slide-on keyboard that mounts right on the iPhone.

Now iPhone purists are probably thinking this should be called the iCringe, but if you're heavy into texting and e-mailing and aren't proficient with the virtual keyboard, I can see some merit to using this device. However, it obviously covers up a good 40 percent of the iPhone's screen, which would seem problematic.

According to Mobile Mechatronics, the iTwinge Keyboard is a typing "Skin" for the iPhone that "enables faster and more accurate typing through the use of our patent pending Twinge Technology." Also, according to the company, studies show that an average user will improve their typing speed by 30 percent to 40 percent and reduce typing errors by 70 percent to 80 percent.

The lightweight keyboard sleeve--it weighs an ounce--attaches to the bottom of the iPhone and mimics the iPhone's virtual keyboard (it appears that touching the keys simply transfers the touch to the virtual keys below). According to the company's FAQ section, it slips on and off in a second and is durable (see a video of iTwinge in action here). It's also worth noting that it apparently draws some power from your iPhone, but only a tiny amount.

Mobile Mechatronics indicates that the iTwinge is also a training tool for those transitioning from a phone with a physical keyboard to the iPhone's virtual keyboard and that it has an iPhone app in development that helps "users build muscle memory & improve typing skills."

The iTwinge is scheduled to ship on November 17 and the company is taking preorders now. We assume Mobile Mechatronics has Apple's blessing to sell this, but it's worth noting that Apple has refused so far to approve or create Bluetooth drivers that would let you use a wireless keyboard to type on the iPhone. I've written about the whole iPhone Bluetooth keyboard fiasco in the past, and I still can't understand why Apple wouldn't give its users the option of using a Bluetooth keyboard with the iPhone.

Anyway, what do you guys think of the iTwinge? Is it intriguing and innovative or a waste of money?

(Source: Engadget via ChipChick)

(Credit: Mobile Mechatronics)

We've still got a long way to go before human beings can be beamed from one place to another Star Trek-style, but on Friday a team of scientists at the University of Maryland achieved, nonetheless, a milestone in teleportation.

According to LiveScience, the university's Joint Quantum Institute for the first time was able to teleport information between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter--about one step for an adult.

The overview of the experiment's setup.

(Credit: LiveScience)

Generally, teleportation works thanks to a remarkable quantum phenomenon called entanglement that only occurs on the atomic and subatomic scale. Once two objects are put in an entangled state, their properties are inextricably entwined. In layman's terms, if they are in entangled mode, what you "see" on one is what you get on the other.

The JQI team set out to entangle the quantum states of two individual ytterbium ions so information embodied in one could be teleported to the other. Each ion was isolated in a separate high-vacuum trap, suspended in an invisible cage of electromagnetic fields and surrounded by metal electrodes.

After that, the experiment worked like this: Single photons from each of two ions in separate traps interacted at a beamsplitter. When both detectors recorded a photon simultaneously, the ions were entangled. At that point, ion A was measured, revealing exactly what operation had to be performed on ion B to teleport ion A's information (see illustration at right).

It's important to note that the achievement is not any form of conventional communication. This is because in teleportation no information pertaining to the original object actually travels to the other. Instead, the information measured from the first object appears on the second object.

The research was supported in part by the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity program under U.S. Army Research Office contract.

It looks like the military's interest in teleportation remains strong. Who knows? This might mean we'll catch Osama bin Laden soon.

AMD will work with game giant Havok to tailor Havok's game technology to AMD processors, the companies said Thursday.

The plans call for optimizing game-physics effects utilizing AMD's multicore processors and graphics processing units, or GPUs.

Game physics brings the laws of physics--or physical-world simulation--to a game. For example, explosions may be modeled differently depending on the terrain.

Havok, which Intel acquired in September of last year, provides development tools and services used by digital-media creators. Havok's technology has been used in game titles such as BioShock, Stranglehold, Halo 2, Half Life 2, and has been used to create special effects in movies such as The Matrix and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Physics code has traditionally run on a CPU such as an AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor. As part of the collaboration, Havok and AMD plan to further optimize Havok physics on AMD CPUs. Right now about 300 titles are optimized for Havok physics on the CPU, said Matt Skynner, vice president of marketing at AMD's Graphics Products Group.

AMD wants to take this CPU-centric approach a step further, however, and optimize certain components on the GPU, as well. "The plan is to work with them to leverage the right pieces of the physics (technology) that can be accelerated on the GPU," Skynner said.

"The feedback that we consistently receive from leading game developers is that core game play simulation should be performed on CPU cores," said David O'Meara, managing director of Havok in a statement. "Beyond core simulation, however, the capabilities of massively parallel (GPU) products offer technical possibilities for computing certain types of simulation," he said.

AMD is chasing Nvidia, which acquired Ageia Technologies in February. Ageia's PhysX software is widely used, with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii and gaming PCs, according to Nvidia.

And Nvidia has said that the conversion of Ageia's physics application interface to Nvidia's CUDA C language environment is under way. This means users will be able to get the benefits of a physics accelerator via a software download, Nvidia said.

SAN FRANCISCO--If you were at the Exploratorium here the other day, you might well have needed to be wary of flying objects.

That's because, way in the back of the world-class science exploration museum, senior scientist Paul Doherty was giving a primer on why the curveball--one of the most important pitches in baseball--curves.

Of course, being a hands-on kind of scientist, one who had kindly taken time out of his day to explain the physics of baseball, the only way Doherty could explain the science was to demonstrate it. So he was flinging balls everywhere, and boy were they curving.

Exploratorium senior scientist Paul Doherty demonstrates how to put spin on a ball and make it curve. The demonstration was part of a talk he gave on the physics of baseball.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

Fear not, however. These were just foam balls, and even the one kid who got hit in the head barely noticed.

What was amazing, though, was that the kid who did take the ball in the head was far, far off the straight-line trajectory the ball began on. In fact, I would say that each time Doherty flung the ball--using a hand-made contraption designed to put a lot of spin on it--it must have curved off that trajectory by at least 45 degrees.

That's unlikely to happen with a real baseball, however, because of its weight. Whereas this foam ball weighed almost nothing.

Click here for video on baseball science: CNET News.com's Kara Tsuboi checks out the sweet spot on the bat and the stitches on the ball with the Oakland A's and with scientist Paul Doherty.

It turns out that for years, there was a whole school of thought that denied that a baseball could curve at all. Some, Doherty said, believed that because a ball falls with gravity, the "curve" was an illusion and wasn't in fact a side-to-side motion but rather a much easier to understand drop.

In 1949, according to an article in Science News, aeronautical engineer Ralph Lightfoot used a wind tunnel and high-speed photography to demonstrate conclusively that a pitched baseball could, in fact, curve.

And not just a little bit, Doherty said: Up to 17 full inches.

But why does the ball even curve in the first place? That's what my colleagues and I were there to find out, and Doherty did indeed learn us.

The answer boils down to the fact that the seams on a baseball "interact" with the air around the ball as it spins.

"It acts like a little rocket motor," said Doherty. "The spinning ball throws air down and behind" it.

One thing that's clear is that the ball must be spinning really fast, Doherty said. That explains why not everyone can throw a good curveball: It takes a lot of strength in a pitcher's arm and wrist to make the ball spin so quickly.

In actuality, the theory behind the curveball is quite simple. And if you extrapolate, it explains other pitches, and even rules in other sports, Doherty explained.

For example, he said that it is illegal, in golf, to use a ball that only has dimples on the sides because the ball will self-correct in flight and won't, in the end, curve way off track. Being able to control a tee shot, then, is what separates the pros from the weekend duffers. Really being able to control tee shots is what separates Tiger Woods from the rest of the pros.

But what about a knuckle ball or a spit ball?

Doherty said that a proper knuckle ball is thrown in such a way that the ball barely rotates at all--maybe one-and-a-half times between the pitcher and home plate.

With little spin, he added, the air goes turbulent as it encounters and flows around the ball and gets deflected to the side. And that means it's rather impossible to predict what the air will do and how the ball will move. A good knuckleball, in other words, wobbles all over the place and can be nearly impossible to hit.

Ah, but throw the knuckleball wrong and trouble happens to a pitcher.

"If you get it wrong," Doherty warned, "then you get a nice, fat, slow pitch that goes right across the plate."

In the big leagues, that's the recipe for a home run.

Speaking of home runs, the best way to hit one is to hit a pitch with the "sweet spot" on the bat.

So Doherty also spent some time explaining what that is, and why it matters.

Doherty also explained the physics of the 'sweet spot' on a baseball bat. To do so, he showed what happens when you hit a bat in various places with a mallet. Depending on where you hit the bat, energy goes to different places. When you hit the sweet spot, the energy goes straight into the ball.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

Essentially, the sweet spot is the one area on a wooden baseball bat where, if the ball hits it there, the bat won't jump at all in the hitter's hands and where all the energy of the collision between the bat and the ball goes into the ball.

If the ball hits anywhere else on the bat, he explained, at least some of that energy is directed into the batter's hands, meaning the ball won't be hit as hard and also that there might be some pain involved.

"When you hit a ball with a baseball bat," he said, "sometimes it stings your hand and other times the ball just flies off the bat."

In other words, sometimes you don't hit the sweet spot, and sometimes you do.

To explain why hitting a ball sometimes hurts, he held a bat by the knob and smacked it over and over with a mallet. Where he hit it affected how the bat flew out of his hand.

When he hit the bat right in the center of its mass, he showed how the bat doesn't spin. And that results in the energy transferring to the batter's hands.

That's in part, he said, because the collision between the ball and the bat produced 8,000 pounds of force for a thousandth of a second, much of which goes into the hands.

The final score of a game, like this one between the Oakland A's and the Cleveland Indians often depends on who has more success, a pitcher trying to throw good curveballs or a hitter trying to hit pitches with the sweet spot of the bat.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

If, on the other hand, the ball--or in this case, the mallet--hits the bat at the bottom of its barrel, it does spin.

So over and over, he smacked the mallet on the bat, and the bat flew, spinning, out of his hand. It must have been a rather odd sight for any passers-by.

This doesn't produce Hall of Fame hitters, he suggested. Instead, lots of ground outs.

But somewhere in between the barrel and the center of mass, there's a small point where, when hit by a ball--or a mallet--the bat produces a loud, satisfying "crack" and either the ball flies off it, or the bat shoots off the mallet without spinning, dropping directly away.

"It's the center of percussion," he said, "the place where you hit it, and it doesn't jump in your hands. There's a couple of inches to hit that home run."

The trick is, Doherty explained, the sweet spot is different on every bat. So in order to find it, it takes trial and error. We know it's between the center of mass and the end of the barrel, but where exactly depends on the individual bat.

But, regardless, the message is clear: "If you want to hit that home run on opening day," Doherty said, "hit that sweet spot."

The graphics processing unit (GPU) is in, the central processing unit (CPU) is out. That was one of the main themes running through the Nvidia fourth-quarter conference call earlier this week. Nvidia is the largest graphics chip supplier.

Gateway P series FX PC with Geforce 8800 GPU

(Credit: Nvidia, Gateway Computer)

During the call on Wednesday, Jen-Hsun Huang, President and CEO of Nvidia, repeated one thing often: GPUs are playing more of a central role in PCs, CPUs less so. "The CPU has become fast enough for the vast majority of (PC) users," he said. "PC enthusiasts, gamers, and design professionals have know this for some time." The GPU offers more horsepower for parallel processing, essential for today's visually rich environments, he said.

Huang cited the Gateway P series notebooks as an example. One model has an Intel 1.6 GHz processor and a GeForce 8800 GPU. He said systems like this with a "higher-end GPU" and "lower-end CPU" are better optimized for today's users. "Relative to a notebook with a higher-end CPU and lower-end GPU, the Gateway FX is twice the performance and yet $200 lower cost." In short, Huang was saying that users can save $200 by buying a system with a low-performance CPU and high-performance GPU--and get better performance to boot than the other way around.

Intel, of course, has other ideas. "We feel that the CPU is absolutely vital and you need a fast CPU and a fast GPU for the best experience. Take game AI (artificial intelligence) and physics for example, something that is consuming more and more CPU cycles," an Intel spokesperson said. "Also, the CPU is essential for intensive stuff like hi def video encode, 3D rendering," the spokesperson said.

Huang had a lot to say about physics too in the wake of Nvidia's purchase of Ageia Technologies this week (first announced on February 4th). Ageia's PhysX software is used with more than 140 PhysX-based games on the Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, and gaming PCs. (Game physics simulate the laws of physics in games.) "We're going to port the Ageia PhysX engine onto CUDA."

CUDA, a programming interface, has now shipped into 50 million GeForce 8 series processors and over the next several years will ship into a few hundred million more, Huang said. "Our expectation is that this will encourage users to buy a second GPU...and for the highest-end gamers, will encourage them to buy three GPUs." One GPU would be used for physics, while two for graphics (or vice-versa), Huang said. "Every single GPU that is CUDA enabled will be able to run the PhysX engine when it comes. In the end, it's just going to be a software download," Huang added.

But Nvidia's CEO returned to his overarching theme again and again. More Nvidia and less Intel. "Rebalance the system so that more GPU horsepower can be dedicated to the (user) experience." Nvidia even has a name for this strategy. The "optimized PC design approach." And Nvidia believes that more and more consumers are coming to know this, resulting in high growth. "The consumption of GPUs is increasing," Huang said, citing 80 percent year-to-year growth in Nvidia's discrete GPU business in the fourth quarter.

"I think I would say that [Huang's argument] has qualified merit. It's completely true that in some applications graphics, rather than CPU, is the limiting factor, and naturally Nvidia would be concerned with those applications most often," said Dean McCarron, founder and Principal of Mercury Research. But Intel and AMD are not standing still. "As far as rebalancing, it's pretty clear the CPU suppliers are actively re-partitioning their products, and graphics capabilities are perhaps the highest priority here. If you look at AMD and Fusion, or Intel and its Nehalem CPUs, both suppliers clearly see advantages to repartioning the PC around graphics -- in this case, moving graphics onto the CPU."

Nvidia's execution is not flawless. It is not competitive in the business segment and at the lower end of desktop and notebook lineups. Large computer segments unto themselves. Here both AMD-ATI graphics and Intel integrated graphics dominate. AMD-ATI is also competitive in the mid-range to high-end.

In related news, Nvidia's shares fell Thursday due to lower gross margins. On Wednesday, the company said that for the first time in 13 quarters non-GAAP gross margins did not increase quarter to quarter. Gross margin shrank to 45.9 percent in the fourth quarter from 46.4 percent in the previous period. In the fourth quarter, the company posted a 58 percent jump in fiscal fourth-quarter net income.

On another front, Nvidia CFO, Marvin D. Burkett, said no new process technology will be needed for the 8800 processors and they will continue to be made on a 90-nanometer process.

How would real cloth react? This might not be the best way to find out, but it sure is fun.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

While having a fast gaming rig lets you experience games with high frame speeds and ridiculous polygon counts, there are some simple pleasures in the realm of Flash gaming. For such an endeavor, check out this cloth physics simulation created by Web developer Jeff Nusz.

The "tool" (as I'll call it loosely, since you're likely not worried about air speed effects on large pieces of cloth frequently enough to use it) lets you futz about with an imaginary cloth that can be resized and put up against a fan. You can tune the speed of the fan, all the way to hurricane strength, which will keep smaller sized cloths nearly parallel with the ground.

The entire experience is only limited by the size of the testing room--which unfortunately cannot be altered. Just remember, if someone catches you playing with it just tell them you're using it to buy curtains.

[via Digg]

(Credit: Life Solutions Plus)

We recognize that "BlackBerry Thumb" can be an all-too-real affliction but, seriously, if you need something like this therapeutic contraption you've really got to let it go. Literally.

The "Xtensor" claims to be "the first product on the market to perform with true bio-mechanically correctness and treats the direct cause of this pain." That may be so, but to us it looks like a bowling glove combined with those elastic bands that pitchers use for to exercise their rotator cuffs.

In any case, the makers of the Xtensor say it can help rehabilitate habitual gamers as well as CrackBerry addicts. As for us, we'd rather be at the spa.

Some say it was 'The Best Damn Show on Television.'

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

I've always thought it was strange that so many people who bought VHS tapes rarely watched them. And then a lot of them bought them again on DVD! They needed to own Sex in the City, The Godfather, or the Star Wars trilogy, but never even broke the seal. Maybe they buy them as keepsakes, to remind them how much they loved the film or TV show, but don't actually need to see it. Or they watch it once and that's all they need. Big multi-disc box sets can be daunting, I bet half the ones sold remain unviewed.

Sure, it looks like downloads are the future, but how does that jive with the desire to covet your favorite films? Millions of people keep buying new editions, Director's Cuts, 20th anniversary editions, remastered Sopranos, and some smaller number will buy them again on Blu-ray. Will the keep buying new downloads of old faves?

Maybe it's just that people crave a physical connection to the things they love and virtual facsimiles don't cut it. Physical media may be impossible to replace--its actual usefulness doesn't seem to be the point.