aszoth asks: "I working on a project that is going to require approximately 4 hours of video recording per day for about two months. We are currently using DVM tapes, however the extraction and compression time has left us with a large library of tapes un-converted. We are considering other methods, in particular real time MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 Compression. We also would like to be able to slow down our frame rate from the 29.7 fps to something along the lines of 5-15 fps. I am wondering if any one has any suggestions on possible ways to do such compression (or get similar results) with a Linux box. Thank you for any help you can give."

Obiwan Kenobi writes "Looks like they guys at Maximum PC got lucky -- they scored the first ever GeforceFX benchmarks via an Alienware prototype machine. Two 'marks to notice: The Geforce FX scored 209 FPS in Quake 3 (1600x1200x32) and 41fps in 3dMark Game4 demo, while the Radeon 9700 Pro attained only 147fps in Quake 3 yet came back with 45fps in the 3dMark test. It seems that the GeforceFX is the clear leader in pure processing power, but in memory bandwidth the 9700 Pro is still king."

Let's shoehorn a few gaming submissions together: tabby writes "For those not in the know here's the most amazing game I've played in ages. Its a Half-Life mod called Natural-Selection. Try to imagine CounterStrike + StarCraft. Its essentially a multiplayer First Person Real Time Strategy game." real_b0fh writes "I'm surprised no one mentioned it here yet, but Silicon Ice Development has released the beta 2.6 for their very cool Quake 3 Arena mod Urban Terror. Have played it a bit and it features cool things like better weapon hit model, some anti-cheat features, improved maps and some new nasty bugs. Well worth a try if you are into FPS games." And on the lighter side, LSDsmurf reports that there's a patch for Doom III Alpha. Yes, you read that right.

Alex_Ionescu writes "The Doom 3 E3 Demo Alpha has leaked to the public. It looks promising, altough I'm only getting 12FPS on a Radeon 7500. Did anyone else have the chance to play it and could post their FPS? Here are some sites with more information and screenshots: here , here, here, and finally here. "

captainstupid writes "The friendly folks at EPIC have working hard getting a build of the UT2003 demo ready for release. The official word from Mark Rein (VP of Epic games) is that the demo is done and it's being uploaded to the Infrogrames site as we speak. PlanetUnreal has the scoop including snippets from the IRC chat log. The linux demo is on the way as well! Gentlemen! Start your downloads!" With Icewind Dale 2 coming out recently, who has time for a FPS? Update: 09/15 02:00 GMT by T : HyperMagma submitted a link to the Linux version (as found on linuxgames.com) as well -- thanks.

Slashback this holiday evening with just a few quick updates and follow-ups (below) -- I hope those to whom the Fourth of July is a significant holiday are out (responsibly) making things explode.

porciletto writes "As seen on Ace's Hardware, this article features Quake 3 benchmarks comparing an 800 MHz ClawHammer sample to Athlon MPs at 800 MHz and 1667 MHz, as well as a Willamette Pentium 4 (256 KB L2, 400 MHz FSB) at 800 MHz and 1600 MHz. The benchmark results indicate a 40% performance increase over an Athlon MP for the ClawHammer. Additionally, the 800 MHz ClawHammer manages to tie (actually outperform by 1 FPS) the 1667 MHz Willamette Pentium 4."

Paul E writes: " An atlanta company seems to have developed (modified?) a linux clustering platform that is very conducive to FPS games. These guys apparently have built a cluster that will be pushing 2 TerraFlops, which would easily put it between Blue Pacific and Blue Mountain . Interesting that the same time the .mil starts making FPS's, FPS platforms are outperforming some of the top defense labs."

Warped-Reality writes "GameSpy has a new Doom III Preview covering aspects of the storyline and how Doom III will be different from the rest of the FPS genre. It includes some pictures of the E3 Doom III demo booth. As the article says, "This is DOOM III, and it's going to scare you to hell."" Looking at these images, I can only say two things: Wow and Cool Toilets. Update: 05/22 19:55 GMT by M : There's also an interview with Carmack giving a few more details about the game.

ubergamer asks: "Logitech's Dual Optical boasts two 800dpi sensors taking 2000 shots a second, Microsoft's Explorer 3.0 only has a single sensor at 400dpi but takes 6000 shots a second. Then there's ofcourse the Razer Boomslang 2000 with a single 2000dpi sensor but is partially mechanical (dust argh!) So which is best for playing my favorite FPS?"

R Jason Valentine writes "Before Ogg was an encoding standard it was a verb. Before the internet enabled the masses to play against each other in Quake and Ultima Online, there was a cross-platform multiple player interactive online game called Netrek. Netrek can trace its history back to 1972. It's an interesting, though incomplete, read, that includes travels through places like Berkeley's XCF. Netrek generally peaked in play in the early 90's, from about 1992 to 1995 or so, and was popular enough to even get an article in Wired. With this explosion of players, several variations on the original style, called Bronco, emerged. These were Chaos (similar to bronco), Paradise, and Hockey. The Chaos and Paradise variants are all but dead, mostly due to lack of players and an expired Paradise-capable client for Windows. A Bronco pick-up game still occurs daily, and usually once or twice a week, there is a hockey game. League games still exist, and this is the 10th year of league play, with around 200 players registered for the 2002 draft league."

batobin writes "Looks like Apple is expanding their grasp on the film editing industry with their new release of Cinema Tools for Final Cut Pro. It enables FCP 3 to better manage film and 24 fps high density video. The product is expected to ship in May."

cybercyst asks: "I've been having a problem with this for quite some time, and thought it was just me -- until two good friends of mine experienced the same problem. What we are experiencing is best described as a time-skew: our system time is apparently jumping forward an hour, and then returning to normal. It repeats this multiple times, and as far as I can tell only a reboot is any sort of remedy for this, albeit a temporary one. As you can imagine this causes all sorts of problems (under windows managers xscreensaver is always popping up -- in fact as I wrote this, the screensaver has come on over 10 times, negative fps in OpenGL programs, extremely large ping times, and so forth)."

Keith Handy asks: "I seem to be unable to find algorithms and/or open source programs that will do accurate motion tracking, i.e. you mark a point on an object in frame 36, and the program can follow that point on that object through all the frames following it. This is useful not just for analyzing motion, but also for interpolating/extrapolating frames of video -- so if you had something at only 15 fps, you could generate inbetween frames (which are not just crossfades between the frames) and actually smooth the effect of the motion. Not something so complicated as to get into actual physics -- just something that will indicate where (in 2D only) that part of the object has moved from one frame to the next, for any given point in the whole picture. And for that matter it doesn't have to be 100% accurate, just any means of generating a reasonable motion-flow map." This doesn't strike me as an easy algorithm to develop, but are there any papers online or offline, that might describe an algorithm that can at least track objects in an image?

Eric^2 asks: "My family has over 50 spools of 8mm (real non-magnetic no-audio developed) reel-to-reel film that I would like to get converted over to a digital format before it deteriorates any more. The majority of the solutions I've seen involve an expensive (frame-rate-adjustable) projector and a miniDV camcorder. Even the services I've looked into (while quite expensive) use this scheme. The film speeds are not 30 fps (i.e. NTSC), so there are some synchronization issues that must be overcome."

Over the last few months, I've had a number of AskSlashdot questions about quiet computers, what hardware to get, and other items for assembling a mega-machine that won't knock the roof off. I've put the finishing touches on my own mega machine -- if you're looking at doing the same thing, or are just curious about the hardware involved, you can find out about what I built.

mmaddox asks: "Who ELSE is following, or has invested in, the awful release of the MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), World War 2 Online? Plagued with server problems, switch configuration issues, poor client performance (less than 5 FPS on some systems, with 8-10 commonly reported), and a growing list of angry users returning software to the store, it looks like this much-heralded game may well be tolling its own death knells. The final outcome is still to be seen. Are releases like this to be expected? Should a game buyer be patient and wait for the system to be repaired, or is the buyer justified in demanding results for hard-earned money?" I've noticed that there have been several MMOG's that have been looking to get off of the ground over the past year and a half, however not many of them have (of course, for reasons of my own, I'm hoping Neverwinter Nights succeeds). What MMOG's, currently under development, have you all been following and do any of them look to be progressing the way they should?

Elyjah writes: "A company called Essential Reality is devloping a 3D Glove input device. They have several demo movies you can watch (if you have Quicktime). The movies show the glove being displayed by runway models (this is amusing), being used in several FPS games, being used as an interface to a a 3D graphics development tool (this looks really cool), and being used with a music application. While truely usable devices like this are probably several years off, it is fun to see what is being worked on."

Tom has extensive poop on the GeForce 3. Some history, and a ton of why this card may or may not be worth the $600 price tag. Lots of stuff on the Vertex Shaders (which look to be a truly amazing idea). Very worth a read if you're interested in state-of-the-art 3D, or just wanna sneak preview at what next year's FPS will be doing.

Thermodyne writes: "The sequel of the game that helped invent the fps is being developed and the first of the screenshots have been released here. The game is based on the Quake 3 engine, but seems to stray away from the original intent of the first game." I can't begin to count the number of hours I lost in wolf3d ... course, I hope it does stray from the original game: who wants to run around shooting dogs and finding hidden switches for 30 levels? The lighting in some of those screenshots is super impressive. (check out that flame thrower). Sadly, I think my fps days are past me. I played The Sims for the first time last week. What an amazing game.