A comparison video of Battlefield 3 for Xbox 360 by WikiGamesGuides reveals what kind of difference the HD texture pack makes. Last week, EA finally fessed up to the feature, with executive producer Patrick Bach saying the difference would make the the game look “standard-def.” He wasn’t kidding — the difference is staggering.
The pack install is optional because, unlike PCs and PS3, hard drives aren’t standard for the Xbox 360. The real question, though, is why does it look this bad without the pack? Even ignoring all other non-EA, DICE games, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 didn’t require a hard drive install and still looked fantastic. If you don’t have a hard drive for your Xbox 360, consider this a warning.
Today we’re opening the map of Canada in Google Map Maker for users to add their expert local knowledge directly to Google Maps. Users know their neighborhood or hometown best, and with Google Map Maker they can ensure the places they care about are richly represented on the map.
Users can help make the map complete in many ways such as marking hiking paths and trails, fixing the name of a local business, or adding the buildings of a college campus so they appear in Google Maps. We’ve seen incredibly detailed contributions from users worldwide, for example, take a look at the map of a shopping mall in California before and after Map Maker was launched. We’re eager to see the same level of detail for locations throughout Canada.
Milpitas, CA (before, avant)
Milpitas, CA (after, après)
To confirm Map Maker user contributions are accurate, each edit will be reviewed. After approval, the edits will appear in Google Maps within minutes. To see examples of what people all around the world are adding in Map Maker, you can watch mapping in real-time.
Citizen cartographers using Google Map Makerin more than 180 other regions of the world help keep maps of their areas accurate and up to date. We are delighted to welcome Canada to the Map Maker family. To learn more, visit our handy guide to mapping Map Makerpedia or check out a video tutorial. Get started mapping at www.google.ca/mapmaker.
Note:Translated to French below.
Posted by James Kelly, Product Manager, Google Map Maker
Ajoutez de la couleur locale à la carte avec l’édition canadienne de Google Map Maker
Aujourd’hui, nous ouvrons la carte du Canada dans Google Map Maker afin que les utilisateurs puissent ajouter directement leurs propres connaissances locales aux cartes Google. Les utilisateurs connaissent leur quartier ou leur ville mieux que quiconque, et grâce à Google Map Maker, ils peuvent s’assurer que leurs endroits préférés figurent sur la carte.
Les utilisateurs peuvent contribuer à enrichir la carte de nombreuses façons, notamment en indiquant les pistes cyclables et les sentiers, en identifiant les commerces locaux, ou en ajoutant les édifices d’un campus universitaire afin qu’ils apparaissent dans Google Maps. Nous avons vu des contributions incroyablement détaillés de la part d’utilisateurs du monde entier. Par exemple, jetez un coup d’oeil à la carte d’un centre commercial en Californie, avant et après le lancement de Map Maker. Nous avons hâte de voir le même souci du détail pour des emplacements situés à travers le Canada.
Afin de confirmer l’exactitude des contributions des utilisateurs de Map Maker, chaque ajout sera révisé. Après approbation, les changements apparaîtront sur Google Maps en quelques minutes. Pour avoir un aperçu de ce que les gens à travers le monde ajoutent à Map Maker, vous pouvez visionner la cartographie en temps réel.
Les citoyens cartographes utilisant Google Map Maker dans plus de 180 autres régions du monde contribuent à rendre les cartes de leur région les plus précises et à jour possible. Nous sommes ravis d’accueillir le Canada dans la famille de Map Maker. Pour vous familiariser avec cet outil, consultez notre guide pratique de cartographie Map Makerpedia ou visionnez notre vidéo pédagogique. Ne perdez pas une minute. Rendez-vous à www.google.ca/mapmaker.
Publié par James Kelly, chef de produit, Google Map Maker
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google Music will launch in the next two weeks—regardless of whether or not Google has inked deals with the four major record label giants. That's a ballsy move, Google. More »
Android: There’s no shortage of mobile apps that allow you to look up recipes, bookmark them, and share them with your friends, but ChefTap also imports recipes from other web sites and food blogs, and walks you through their recipes, step by step, as you cook them. More »
Find an interesting article, add its author. That’s the very simple idea behind a very simple feature that Google has just begun testing. As TechCrunch recently noticed, Big G has started rolling out a new “add to Circles” button within some search results, allowing readers to more easily and instantaneously follow their favorite web authors on Google+. Writer profiles have already been integrated within search pages, but until now, users had to actually click on author pages before following them. This new circle button, on the other hand, cuts out that middle click and seems like a logical next step in Google’s ongoing integration. It also seems like a great way to help writers feel better about themselves, which we always support. And if you’re not seeing it, you’re not going crazy — Google’s just rolling it out to only a few users.
Want to catch every frame of your next extreme sports wipeout in all of its grotesque glory? GoPro knows where you’re coming from, and has updated its line of high definition helmet cams to help you capture every bone-breaking moment. The HD Hero2 competitively boasts that it’s twice as powerful its 2009 predecessor, the original HD Hero. The new helmet cam promises to capture 1080p 16:9 footage from atop your sweaty noggin at both narrow (90-degree), wide (170-degree) and medium (127-degree) angles, and can snap up to ten 11 megapixel photos per second. The camera’s mini-HDMI port, composite out, USB, SD card and HERO ports will help you share the spoils of your spills when your adventure ends — at least until this winter, when GoPro’s WiFi BacPac promises to enable live broadcasting and camera control over WiFi. Best of all? The Hero2 kills the original HD Hero’s confusing 3-digit code interface in favor of a simple language-based menu.
The HD Hero2 comes in three $300 configurations: outdoor, motorsports, and surf editions, all of which are compatible with existing accessories. Too rich for your blood? Then you’ll be happy to know that the previous models are getting price drops — $200 for the original HD Hero and a paltry $150 for its “960” variant. Hit the break for the official PR and a full list of features.
YouTube user Martin Craig shows us an easy way to shuck corn without having do deal with messy corn silk threads—just microwave each ear for four minutes, cut the end off, and slide the corn out as shown in the video above. More »
Many of you have been wondering if Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will allow users to use USB game controllers with their phones and/or tablets. We have good news as Android engineer Roman Guy tweeted the above. This can’t be a surprise since this feature was added to Android 3.1 Honeycomb, so why would they drop it now with 4.0?
Of course it will be up to the developers to make their games compatible with controllers, but I think by this time next year all the major games will support it. If you are dying to try it out, you can always try Sixaxis Controller which will let you use a PlayStation 3 Sixaxis or dualshock 3 on your phone or tablet that is rooted.
Police formally arrested two drivers suspected of running over a toddler who died a week after she was struck on a busy market street in southern China and was ignored by passers-by, newspapers reported Sunday.
Zounds! So this is what my ex-girlfriend meant when she said sex with me was akin to “carnal relations with an empty husk.” Too much web porn! It’s killing our libidos, lads, one frantically one-handed mouse click at a time. More »
Albert Pujols joined Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson as the only players to hit three home runs in a World Series game, tying records with five hits and six RBIs that led the Cardinals to a 16-7 rout of the Texas Rangers on Saturday night that gave St. Louis a 2-1 Series lead.
As if it weren’t hard enough keeping your house safe from debt collectors these days, now you have something else to worry about: a falling German satellite called ROSAT. The German Aerospace Center has estimated that the hunk of decommissioned, extra-orbital metal will enter the atmosphere sometime between 7:30pm ET tonight and 1:30am ET tomorrow. It’s unknown whether any of the thing will survive re-entry, but the 1.7 ton telescope mirror onboard very well may, striking the surface at a hasty 17,398MPH. The agency doesn’t know where it will fall, but did reassuringly say that it won’t hit Europe — German scientists basically telling the rest of the world to spend all night worrying while they doze away, peacefully. At least it won’t be taking any of its orbital brethren with it…
Update: Looks like it landed in the Indian Ocean on Saturday night.
The apparent indifference shown by passersby to a Chinese toddler hit by a van in a hardware market may be the result of the country’s legal system, observers say.
While certainly impressive technology, modern touchscreens are still kind of limited in that they only really know where on the display they’ve been touched. So researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are hoping to advance their capabilities with a new system that can tell exactly what they’ve been touched with. More »
Are you in DevCon withdrawal? Need a little BBX preview to ferry you safely into the weekend’s arms? Well, you’re in luck, as German site Macberry.de took the time to film a walkthrough of the recently released BlackBerry Playbook 2.0 developer beta. The homescreen of this new build now offers users folder options similar to that on iOS, neatly collecting your gaggles of data into appropriate bundles — like documents and games. But you probably care less about that, and more about seeing BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps in action. We’re happy to report those Google-specific applications are shown here running quite smoothly, filling the 7-inch tab’s screen without any hint of lag. You can download the dev build now for your own first-hand account, or simply click on past the break to gawk at the silent tour.
Are you prepared to stay away from swimming pools for a year or two? Then go ahead and watch this music video for the DyE’s track “Fantasy,” directed by French animator Jérémie Périn. It’s all sorts sorts of brain-scarring fun. We dare you to watch this without making a sound. More »
Styli and Android haven’t exactly been strangers as of late — with devices like the HTC Flyer and Samsung Galaxy Note offering pen-based input — but it looks like that option will soon be even easier to implement with Ice Cream Sandwich. As noted on Reddit, Google’s recent overview of some Android 4.0 platform highlights includes a small tidbit towards the end that details the “full support for stylus input events” in the OS — including features like pressure sensitivity and the ability to distinguish motion events from different sources (i.e. a pen and your finger). Of course, it still requires some hardware-level assistance from tablet and smartphone makers, but native support in the OS could well open up some interesting possibilities, especially when it comes to third-party apps.
It has long been rumoured that William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk, attended high school in Regina, but in an interview Thursday with CBC Radio’s The Morning Edition, Shatner settled the matter once and for all.
After getting its first showing at AsiaD, we know ASUS’ Transformer sequel is super thin, powered by NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 chip and coming soon. And now we really know it, because the Transformer Prime has been gifted an official landing page, along with a requisite shadowy product shot. There’s no trace of the original’s mocha hues, which have been replaced with something brighter, and we think it looks mightily enticing. Those with a similar fetish for modular tablets can ensure they’re up-to-date by bookmarking the source link below.
Battlefield 3 video shows 360 version without HD texture pack originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
