In-Game Web Browser Round-Up 193
theodp writes "CNET takes a look at Web browsers you can run inside of the latest video games, offering mini-reviews of PlayXpert, Steam, Rogue, and Xfire. Why run these instead of your standard browser? Well, these browsers run lean and mean, play nice with full-screen apps, provide hot keys that can make them appear or disappear in an instant, and offer transparency so you can continue to play a game in full screen while chatting, reading e-mail or looking up cheat codes. So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?"
Re:So.. the Video Game is the Computer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that AIGLX lets you run any window as an OpenGL mesh and texture, it's not a stretch to map that into a surface in your game. But it would require some cooperation from the game itself, since it has to take a reasonable place in the OpenGL command pipeline unless you just want it hovering over everything.
Eve's Browser (Score:1, Interesting)
Eve has its own browser, which works just dandy. And considering how much vital information about playing the game can only be found from 3rd party sources, it's less an add-on and more an essential element of the HUD.
Needs Adblock (Score:4, Interesting)
Steam? (Score:2, Interesting)
Steam seems to still use Internet Explorer for some things. I removed IE with nLite and can easily see where Steam tries to use it. TF2 also has major problems and it forces the game to minimise and presents a dialogue asking me if I want to download an html file, it then takes 20 seconds to get back into the game. I wish there was some way to stop TF2 from making any attempts to use a browser, but I haven't found one yet.
I seldom alt-tab (Score:4, Interesting)
Usually I have all my chat windows etc open on second monitor where I can see them. Second old 17" LCD does the trick.
Re:I don't like it. (Score:3, Interesting)
All it does is encourage people to multi-task more. And that is not a good thing. Our brain isn't good at multi-tasking (in terms of focusing on different things), we end up doing each job half-assed.
The more you multi-task, the better you get at it - at minimum, you get better at combining the tasks that you regularly combine.
With this happening more we are training our kids not to sit down and solve a problem but jump back and forth until until we fail at all of them.
Growing up with a slow modem and a multitasking computer (1200 bps BSR modem, Amiga 500) I definitely learned to multitask. I find that I am better at it than my parents. Perhaps it's a good thing. Besides, there will always be those among us who enter a nerdly fugue state and tune out the rest of existence. And isn't Autism on the rise? Perhaps humanity is segmenting :)
Re:On windshields? (Score:4, Interesting)
So how much longer before we see a variation of this on our real-world car windshields?
3000kg at 100km/h is a force to be respected.
3000kg * 28 m/s isn't a force, it's a momentum. ;)
Now, when you hit something that makes you stop in .5 seconds...
3000kg * -56 m/s^2 = -168000 N Now THAT'S a force to be respected. *G*