Month: October 2019

In the Soviet Union, you got a knockoff Motorola brick phone and you were happy. In modern-day Russia, however, you might want an iPhone from OAO Mobile TeleSystems (MTS). You’ll pay over US$1,000 for the privilege. The carrier says that makes the iPhone a tough sell in a competitive market.MTS executives criticized Apple as being “in a dictatorship mode where they say, ‘This is what you have to do or you don’t get the iPhone.’ Being arrogant with your partners in big markets doesn’t pay off.” The cost of the iPhone and the strict retail standards that Apple requires for partners are apparently a burden for MTS, and its executives made their complaints known at an event in New York on July 29.Michael Hecker, MTS’s VP of strategy and corporate development, was cited by Bloomberg as saying that Apple would get a larger share of the Russian market by cutting the iPhone’s price or helping subsidize it. Russian consumers, unlike those in the U.S., don’t sign up for long-term mobile phone contracts, so there’s little incentive for carriers to subsidize the cost of the phone the way American carriers do.After the executives chastised Apple earlier in the day, MTS spokesman Joshua Tulgan smoothed things over by saying that “While we have differences with Apple, we have a constructive relationship. Smartphones like the iPhone are important to our customers and our economy and we want to get them into the hands of as many people as possible.” #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }

EQInterface and EQ2Interface have been stalwart sidekicks for me through the years, and it’s great to see them expand into other games. They now have a library of UIs for several MMOs and have really helped put player-made UIs on the map. EverQuest II’s site had a news article announcing that the collective UI site, now called MMOUI.com, is celebrating its 10th birthday this week, so I thought I’d get in the celebratory spirit by highlighting a few iconic favorites and taking a brief look at the state of the user interface in MMOs. I’ve included picks from three SOE MMOs: EverQuest, Vanguard, and of course, EverQuest II.In this week’s Tattered Notebook, we’ll put down our macros, take a break from resizing windows, and look at the quest for the perfect UI. InfoMap (Vanguard)Vanguard launched with an immense world and very little to help you figure out where the heck you were or where the heck you needed to go. Before the arrival of the Telon travel system, the best way to get a feel for the world map was Soresha’s InfoMap. There were several handy maps on her site, but you could also download a UI that contained every sort of important waypoint you might imagine. I couldn’t imagine life in game without the help of this amazing interface.Quartz (EverQuest)This was one of the first player-made UIs that I used, and for me, Quartz was also my first “cool” UI. It took the boxy look of the default UI and turned it into an awesome dashboard resembling the viewport of a cutting-edge sportscar. In fact, it probably should have come with driving gloves and a candy apple red leather jacket. When I look back, I realize it really wasn’t a great UI for utility, but I think I was just thrilled to have a UI that A) didn’t take up two thirds of the screen like the original EQ UI and B) had curves and a distinct look that broke away from the boxy look.Drox (Vanguard)I love UIs that clean things up. There are many UIs that add catchy borders and Gaelic-looking icons, but Drox is all about streamlining things to make it easier to get to the stuff you need. Not only did it organize things well, but it always seemed to make my eye go to the important stuff right away. UIs often get in the way of the fluid combat and immersive nature of MMOs, but Drox seemed to avoid that as much as possible.Profit (EQII)If I had to pick one UI as my favorite, it would be Profit because it’s clean, well-organized, and extremely helpful. The updater also made it easy to keep up with changes to the UI from game patches, so I rarely logged in to find that things were broken. On top of that, Profit incorporated other terrific UI tools, like Info Center, to make it the perfect all-in-one interface.EQ2Map (EQII)EQ2Map is the granddaddy of awesomeness. This was the inspiration behind the current default map, and it was always worth keeping up to date because of all the important landmarks and waypoints players submitted to it over time. I think of all the player-made UI tools, map projects tend to be the most valuable because the sheer volume of information that’s included makes it less of a headache to navigate and even complete content like quest updates and NPC turn-ins. In short, player-made maps are like the Wikipedia of game interfaces.5x Click to cure (EQII)I included this one because it embodies my love and hate UIs in general. This click to cure UI does make curing so much easier, but it brings up the problem of UIs in MMOs across the board. If I posted a screenshot from Tetris, people would be able to figure it out pretty quickly and jump at the chance to fit the falling piece. It’s intuitive, and the UI (which is minimal at best) helps make it quick and easy to understand. The game itself is challenging (and many a term paper in college was late as a result), but it takes about two seconds to recognize right away what the game wants you to do. It’s what Jesper Juul described in A Casual Revolution, which is that good UIs are like familiar songs: You can hum a few bars and people will eagerly help finish off the verse.But if you toss up a screenshot from World of Warcraft, EQII, or even the soon-to-launch Guild Wars 2, how easy is it to figure out what the game wants you to do based on that one screenshot? Not only do most people struggle to “finish the song,” but they’re actually turned off by the non-intuitive nature of the UI. To the educated gamer eye, it looks perfectly normal. And for Cypher, it wasn’t numbers; it was “blonde, brunette, redhead.” But for new players and non-gamers, it’s a turn-off.Of course, the quest for the cleanest, most perfect UI doesn’t really lie in the hands of the players because try as they might, they still have to include all of the necessary buttons, buffs, debuffs, targets, cures, and group lists that seem to be standard operating procedure in most MMOs. EQII is making a huge push to shape the title into a more casual-friendly game that fits in the free-to-play market, but the elephant in the room right now is that it has a very intricate UI (as do many MMOs), and in order to make it less convoluted, SOE would need to make fundamental changes to the game. At this point in EQII’s life, that’s probably not a feasible option.UI builders do a great job of making things easier for us. I know some players will call it dumbing the game down, but if you understand the rules of a game and your only hurdle is the UI, why not find a way to make that clearer and easier to understand? Otherwise it’s like playing with a Star Wars blaster helmet on your head, and unfortunately, we’re not all blessed with the force.As I was putting this column together, I was struck by how many UIs from years ago are still at the top of the favorites list and the most downloaded lists. Foofyspells, SARS, T.King, GlassUI, Drums, and MilqueTowst Info Center have been around for years, and even though I didn’t use all of them, I always considered giving them a try, sometimes even after I already loaded a custom UI. In a way, it’s almost like a baseball hall of fame, with the perennial favorites always there to brighten our gaming days.EQ2Interface has been especially helpful to me, and it seemed to be for the EQII team as well. Back a year or two ago, the developers decided to rework the default UI in game, and they turned to the EQ2Interface community for assistance. In fact, the default map now is a result of player input, as are many other interface features that were inspired by player-made interfaces. When it comes to the asethetic, I think developers and the community have collaborated to create some sleek and attractive UIs. But when it comes to utility and ease of understanding, I think MMOs can do a better job of trimming off the complicated clutter and making a UI that makes sense while still keeping the challenge in the game. In the meantime, we have an amazing library of UIs to enjoy, thanks to EQ2Interface and its sister sites!From the snow-capped mountains of New Halas to the mysterious waters of the Vasty Deep, Karen Bryan explores the lands of Norrath to share her tales of adventure. Armed with just a scimitar, a quill, and a dented iron stein, she reports on all the latest news from EverQuest II in her weekly column, The Tattered Notebook. You can send feedback or elven spirits to karen@massively.com.

Early research has had DNA making circuits and little factories. We haven’t really seen DNA used as a storage medium, however, and it’s evident we’ve been missing out. A Harvard team led by George Church, Sriram Kosuri and Yuan Gao can stuff 96 bits into a DNA strand by treating each base (A, C, G, T) as though it’s a binary value. The genetic sequence is then synthesized by a microfluidic chip that matches up that sequence with its position in a relevant data set, even when all the DNA strands are out of order. The technique doesn’t sound like much on its own, but the microscopic size amounts to a gigantic amount of information at a scale we can see: about 704TB of data fits into a cubic millimeter, or more than you’d get out of a few hundred hard drives. Caveats? The processing time is currently too slow for time-sensitive content, and cells with living DNA would destroy the strands too quickly to make them viable for anything more than just transfers. All the same, such density and a lifespan of eons could have us turning to DNA storage not just for personal backups, but for backing up humanity’s collective knowledge. We’re less ambitious — we’d most like to know if we’ll be buying organic hard drives alongside the fair trade coffee and locally-sourced fruit.

Oculus Rift. If you didn’t know, the Rift is a Kickstarter-funded VR gaming headset (stay with us) that’s caught the attention of several games developers — most notably John Carmack. He liked it so much, in fact, that he developed a special Rift-ready version of Doom 3 for the headset and Doom 4 will also be heading to the VR peripheral too. We got to play with the earlier game and while there’s a video after the break, we reckon you’ll really need to try this in person to fully grasp how the Oculus Rift plays. Check out our impressions after the break. Gallery: Oculus Rift prototype hands-on | 12 Photos 12 +8 Picking up the headset, we were surprised by how light it was — we held it in one hand with ease. The weight’s already been reduced since Oculus’ developmental model did the rounds earlier this year, and it’s almost comparable to a pair of ski goggles. Once the Rift is around your eyes, you can nudge it to hit the optimum sweet spot — the two screens project 640 x 800 respectively, creating a 3D image that’s 1,280 x 800. This resolution was picked to ensure that the Oculus Rift danced at a frame rate up to 60Hz and was HDMI-friendly. If they had plumped for 1080p on those screens (which is possible, for a price) then the frame-rate would arrive at around 24Hz if using the existing HDMI standard.The wide-angle view works in generating a more immersive gaming environs, and even slight turns registering on the game avatar. Tilt your head, and your view will do likewise — not that we’d be doing that too much in-game. When you reach the limit of your head-turn, you can then use the games controller to see beyond it. Movement within the Doom 3 demo (also not the finished article) was dedicated to the left analog stick on an Xbox 360 controller, while the right managed our heavier turning.When polled on whether Oculus was working with those major console makers, the team told us that it was completely focused on its developmental PC version at the moment, but that there was “no technical reason why it wouldn’t work (with other consoles).” Oculus is keeping game developer support a secret at the moment, but the sheer fact that there’s a workable title to show off (albeit an eight-year-old one) gives the project a strong kick — and gives our short play-through a semi-accurate feel as for what the end result will be like. A few hours after seeing the Oculus Rift and we’re still raving about it, with a low-latency response to our head movements augmenting the VR at work. While we’re not sure whether it’ll have a huge effect on how we play games, it’s that immersive effect (and how surprisingly comfortable they were to wear) that’s got us fascinated by how that final developer model — and eventual consumer version — turn out.

Here’s a discouraging statistic for independent developers looking to break into the increasingly crowded iOS App Store. According to a report from mobile analytics firm Adeven, over two thirds of the store consists of “zombie” apps, which generate few downloads and almost no revenue to their creators.The total number of these apps sits at around 400,000, so while Apple often brags that there are hundreds of thousands of apps available on the App Store, the majority of these aren’t of interest to most users, and likely aren’t getting discovered.How are developers making money on the App Store then? Apple’s marketplace is looking increasingly more and more like the traditional software market, in that a few companies with a lot of experience, brand recognition and marketing money are able to catapult their products up into the Top 25, where they’re usually profitable as long as they can sit there. There’s also a thriving market for apps that address specific business verticals rather than aiming at the general consumer.Not all is lost, however: It’s still possible for really well-done apps to break out into the public’s view, even though it takes a little luck to do so (hasn’t that always been the case?). But the next time Apple comments on the number of apps it has on sale, keep in mind that many of those apps are seldom glanced at by potential buyers. There’s a very busy strip of apps at the top of the App Store, and a huge swath of empty strip mall apps out there not seeing much traffic at all.[via iJailbreak]