Windows tablets
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Nowadays, diversity in touch input is achieved through multitouch and press-and-wait touch.
Something like Starcraft I'd say it'd be possible with single-touch for LMB (select unit), dual-touch for RMB (order unit) and tri-touch (pan the map).
It shouldn't be difficult to adapt a mouse API for a multitouch one, IMO.
As long as you aren't setting your target actions-per-minute to higher than maybe 10% of what you can do with a mouse+kb combo, sure.
FWIW, the Windows 7 version supposedly gets up to 7 hours of battery life, so its not horrible and actually in line with lots of the other Windows 7 Tablets out there. It's not horrible as the Asus EP121 with stated time of 4.5 hours. Preliminary comparisons I can do show about 50% advantage for the Samsung one in real use, coming from a combination of slightly bigger battery and 2nd gen Core i5.
I had Master of Orion 1 running in Dosbox on my mere Nook Color and yeah that works pretty damn well. Strategy games may be the best target for tablets. Mouse control maps very well to touch.
But if the keyboard is used more than slightly things become annoying quick.
Turn based games map well, most RTS'es require you to do stuff way faster than touch interface can handle.
Not that I complain, 4X is my favourite genere
If you want to play at any serious level (= kill stuff in group dungeons) then you WILL need quite fast reflexes and decent input to get those reflexes in-game. When I used to play wow I had half my KB bound to all sorts of actions + mouse was in constant use. And that was just PvE, in PvP it's much worse
Of course it's always possible that someone designs an MMO that specifically targets those platforms with limited controls.
Of course it's always possible that someone designs an MMO that specifically targets those platforms with limited controls.
Yeah, analog fixed viewing angle movement is easy to accomplish with a onscreen thumbstick like that of the N64 emulator. Free look in a fast game is not enjoyable though. It's easy enough to play something like Mario 64 for example, except that the game uses quite a few buttons which don't all fit well on the screen.
It gets "better" when you have to control movement and camera separately + use a bunch of abilities and possibly click on areas on screen to do stuff
Basically touch-oriented MMO has to be dumbed down to basically interactive movie to make it work.
With today's generation of sensors, yes. But I can see clever use of a more accurate accelerometer to provide enough controls (accelerometer gestures, perhaps) to make MMO's playable.
It gets "better" when you have to control movement and camera separately + use a bunch of abilities and possibly click on areas on screen to do stuff
Basically touch-oriented MMO has to be dumbed down to basically interactive movie to make it work.
Or you could change the gameplay and way of controlling your avatar.
You could easily make an MMO that would fit perfectly on a tablet. Don't let the lack of buttons and controls fool you.
Before 2006, people didn't think you could play games like on the Wii either.
Tablets and Wiis have the same problem of not working so great with some control schemes. I never did figure out how to play a full freedom FPS on Wii very well. On the other hand, touch and wii-motion both have abilities that a gamepad and kb/mouse don't have.
Collected set of new Ivy Bridge ULP information. 17W Sandy Bridge CPUs are used in the Samsung Series 7 Slate Windows tablets and in Macbook Air and all the other Ultraportables, so it's Ivy Bridge ULP replacement is a very interesting product.
Both are top of the line 17W i7 products (CPU price is around 300$).
Sandy Bridge (Core i7-2677M, 17W)
CPU: 2/4 threads, 1.80 GHz base, 2.90 GHz turbo
GPU: HD 3000 (12 EU), 350 MHz base, 1200 MHz turbo
Ivy Bridge (Core i7-3667U, 17W)
CPU: 2/4 threads, 2.00 GHz base, 3.20 GHz turbo
GPU: HD 4000 (16 EU **), 350 MHz base, 1150 MHz turbo
**) A single HD 4000 EU can do two MADs per clock and has two texture samplers, theoretically doubling the performance of HD 3000 EU: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4830/intels-ivy-bridge-architecture-exposed/5
Some raw math and conclusions:
- 11% higher CPU base frequency, 10% higher CPU turbo frequency.
- CPU has some architectural improvements over Sandy Bridge (such as float16 conversions and HW random generator), but it's not a completely new core, so we shouldn't expect huge IPC gains (a few percents maybe).
- GPU base frequency is the same, turbo frequency is 4% lower.
- HD 4000 has 16 EUs while HD 3000 has 12 EUs. That's a 25% improvement in execution unit counts.
- HD 4000 is a completely new GPU architecture, and has twice the MAD throughput and texture samplers per EU and several other improvements. How much real life performance these improvements give is unknown at the moment.
- Theoretically you could calculate 0.96 * 1.25 * 2.0 = 2.4. So a bit over 2x performance over the old HD 3000 should be possible in some scenarios (synthetic benchmarks) at least.
Some new benchmarks (Sandy and Ivy with same clock compared):
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...y_Bridge_Performance_Numbers_to_Partners.html
- CPU performance per clock seems to be improved by around 14%. If gains are similar for the ULP product, in total the 17W Ivy Bridge CPU would be around 26% faster than the 17W Sandy.
- Intel is comparing HD 4000 against the low end HD 2000 instead of HD 3000 it's going to replace (HD 2500 in Ivy will replace HD 2000 in Sandy). GPU performance jump from HD 2000 -> HD 4000 is around 2.5x to 3.0x. But HD 2000 has only half the EUs of HD 3000, so it's very hard to draw any conclusions yet (except that it's going to be somewhere in +25% to +100% range). Intel's estimate of +60% GPU performance sounds pretty much valid (but only for GPU limited software/games).
Both are top of the line 17W i7 products (CPU price is around 300$).
Sandy Bridge (Core i7-2677M, 17W)
CPU: 2/4 threads, 1.80 GHz base, 2.90 GHz turbo
GPU: HD 3000 (12 EU), 350 MHz base, 1200 MHz turbo
Ivy Bridge (Core i7-3667U, 17W)
CPU: 2/4 threads, 2.00 GHz base, 3.20 GHz turbo
GPU: HD 4000 (16 EU **), 350 MHz base, 1150 MHz turbo
**) A single HD 4000 EU can do two MADs per clock and has two texture samplers, theoretically doubling the performance of HD 3000 EU: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4830/intels-ivy-bridge-architecture-exposed/5
Some raw math and conclusions:
- 11% higher CPU base frequency, 10% higher CPU turbo frequency.
- CPU has some architectural improvements over Sandy Bridge (such as float16 conversions and HW random generator), but it's not a completely new core, so we shouldn't expect huge IPC gains (a few percents maybe).
- GPU base frequency is the same, turbo frequency is 4% lower.
- HD 4000 has 16 EUs while HD 3000 has 12 EUs. That's a 25% improvement in execution unit counts.
- HD 4000 is a completely new GPU architecture, and has twice the MAD throughput and texture samplers per EU and several other improvements. How much real life performance these improvements give is unknown at the moment.
- Theoretically you could calculate 0.96 * 1.25 * 2.0 = 2.4. So a bit over 2x performance over the old HD 3000 should be possible in some scenarios (synthetic benchmarks) at least.
Some new benchmarks (Sandy and Ivy with same clock compared):
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...y_Bridge_Performance_Numbers_to_Partners.html
- CPU performance per clock seems to be improved by around 14%. If gains are similar for the ULP product, in total the 17W Ivy Bridge CPU would be around 26% faster than the 17W Sandy.
- Intel is comparing HD 4000 against the low end HD 2000 instead of HD 3000 it's going to replace (HD 2500 in Ivy will replace HD 2000 in Sandy). GPU performance jump from HD 2000 -> HD 4000 is around 2.5x to 3.0x. But HD 2000 has only half the EUs of HD 3000, so it's very hard to draw any conclusions yet (except that it's going to be somewhere in +25% to +100% range). Intel's estimate of +60% GPU performance sounds pretty much valid (but only for GPU limited software/games).
According to engadget's review, that slate had a 3.5 hour battery runtime. How on earth is that usable?
