Spiff

I have been playing the demo they released on XBox Live over the past week and I have to say that I am intrigued. On the one hand the gameplay seems a little simplistic: they have a rocks-paper-scissors type setup (e.g. helos beat tanks, transports beat helos, and tanks beat transports, etc.), and there doesn't seem to be much difference between nationalities. I'm still experimenting with this and it seems that there might be some differentiation (e.g. Euro gunships have a special attack where they launch "HOT Missiles" at a target and the American infantry units can use squad automatic suppression fire or marksman attacks. Things still seem pretty generic though. On the other hand, once you get used to it the voice system opens up a whole new level of fun. You can command units without even selecting them to do various tasks, deploy new forces, and call in special attacks (airstrikes, EW attacks, call in rapid response forces, fry them with WMDs etc.). You can manage the whole war from your command vehicle's tactical map if you want. You can even create unit groupings and refer to them collectively (e.g. "taskforce 1 secure delta" -- your tanks will escort transports containing troops who will then disembark the troops who will secure the command point). On a console system with limited buttons, this is an amazing way to manage a complex battle quite well. The demo is also very limited and I understand that your units will persist between online engagements (if they don't get wiped out) and can receive unique upgrades and become more specialized (e.g. heavy infantry or stealthy scout/snipers etc.), and gain experience to be more effective.

The "All Ghillied Up" mission was one of the more fun episodes of any game in recent memory. They captured the essence of post-disaster Chernobyl perfectly. The AC-130 mission was entirely too short, but it too was awesome. They must have watched a lot of AC-130 TV footage because it is clear they worked hard to get little things right like the appearance of the explosions and rounds hitting objects and sending hot metal splattering all over. They even modeled the delay between firing and the rounds hitting so you had to lead the targets. Then there is just the little details like being able to watch the security teams from the extraction choppers deploy and cover the team they are retrieving through the thermals. A lot of the sequences are in there more to advance narrative than for gameplay -- which just adds to the sense of being in an action movie. So, has anyone been able to complete "Mile High Club" on Veteran yet?

"X" pops smoke.

As I understand it, the ISO setting adjusts the sensitivity (or gain) on the CCD, like a true ISO corresponds to film sensitivity. So even if I use a ND filter it doesn't change anything on the CCD itself. Now the D100 does have a built in noise-reduction algorithm which kicks in if the exposure time is over 2 sec or something (will have to check), is that what you were referring to? Still the ISO 200 setting works fine, and I may just be talking like the guy on Spinal Tap who has the amp that is better because it goes to "11." I actually use a set of graduated ND filters but they are more for compressing the dynamic range of the shot (e.g. bringing down a bright sky to be able to catch a darker foreground) rather than lengthening exposure time.

I've been using the D-100 for a couple of years now. Overall it has been a great camera, and I have no real complaints. It is a great deal for the money. I haven't had any direct experience with the S3. It is about $1000 more than the D-100 and I understand that the color reproduction might be a little sketchy. It seems mainly like a better build quality S2. The S3 has a better sensor which allows you to *interpolate* a higher resolution (the straight unprocessed max resolution is pretty much comparable to the D-100, and allows you to use AA's instead of the Li Ion battery (although see my comments below on this). In all, I'm not sure if the S3 is worth a whole $1000 more for what little advantages you get, but thats just my opinion. A few comments on the D-100: The battery life is incredible. One great thing has been never worrying about the battery conking out at the wrong time. I took my D-100 on a four day hiking trip through Big Bend National Park and still had plenty of battery life to spare (took about 400 pics). The ISO setting only goes down to 200. I primarily do landscape stuff on the tripod and it would be nice to trade some longer exposure times for the higher quality you get at lower ISO settings. Still, ISO 200 is plenty sharp. Don't use anything higher than ISO 800 or risk having a significant amount of noise in the image. Images from the camera straight out of the box tend to be a little on the underexposed side. I think Nikon did this on purpose because you can always adjust the exposure up but you cant get detail back from overexposed areas. There are several sites out there that have custom exposure profiles you can load to correct for this on the camera. When you shoot photos with this camera meter like you would if you were shooting slide film instead of print film. Metering is excellent. Also... you will need to do some sharpening on all your images after you get them off the camera. If you use the autosharpening feature, the results can be hit or miss so I tend not to use it. "Normal" sharpening tends to be too soft, and "High" sharpening tends to be overkill. I usually like to go with the more conservative "Normal" setting and sharpen in software when I get the photos off the camera. I have had excellent results this way. Slow flash sync time. Flash sync is limited to 1/180 which really sucks for daytime flash use when you want to fill in some shadows. Overall though, the flash system on the D-100 beats Canon hands down. Like I mentioned before, if your system is calibrated, you can get dirt cheap but excellent prints from any of the Sams Clubs in San Antonio. They are mass production outfits so they are focused on untrained employess putting out print "quantity" rather than print "quality" but the dirty little secret is that they also use top notch Fuji Frontier printers. If you get the color balanced right on your system and send them out to Sams "precorrected" you can get some beautiful prints for a pittance. They key is doing the right preprocessing yourself. Anyway, good luck in your search.

It depends on the printer that they are using. Remember you are printing so the screen resolution doesn't matter. What matters is the print size (in inches) and print resolution (in dots per inch "DPI"). For good labs that use something like a Pegasus printer a good rule of thumb is to size the photos to whatever size you want at 250 dpi. Keep in mind that your screen can only display a maximum of 72 or 96 dpi depending on your platform The other issue is to just make sure that your screen is decently color balanced so that what you see on the screen is what you get in your printout. If you size this way, and your screen is balanced, you can actually get wonderful prints from Sams Club of all places (and cheap too).

The Combine troops don't show up until you place the third turret, so you actually have quite a bit of time before they show up. During that set-up time, I placed some of the boxes and barrels to block off passageways and create some kill zones for the turrets. The Combine soldiers won't move obstacles out of the way, so you can completely box off a hallway if you want. Basically I just spent time in a covered corner trying to take out as many as I could and only leaving cover to go pick up a fallen turret. Hopefully the diagram below works. it shows how I set things up near the turret storage room. The barriers made the combine soldiers take extra time to negotiate that little hallway and thus give the turret time to take them out. Edit: diagram didn't work. [Edited by Spiff (27 Nov 2004).]

Having a good time, but I am a total noob when trying to manage battlefield tactics. I usually just employ a version of "hold the front with infantry, flank with cavalry" routine. I would love to see any sources on more advanced or creative tactics if anyone knows of any out there. Incidentally, for those having difficulty with the strategic game, gamespy has a pretty good strategy guide out. Brian

Currently shoot with a Nikon D100 (6 megapixel 35mm digital SLR) ... traded up my 35mm film camera a while back because I just wasn't using it as much anymore. I also shoot 6x6 MF with the Hasselblad and salivate about someday getting into large format 4x5 stuff a la Murph.

Name: Brian M. Age: 28 Country: USA, San Antonio, TX Service: None Interest: Medicine (currently a medical student), Biomedical Engineering, Camping, Military History... and tanks of course. Tanknet: What can I say, I like tanks. Been lurking here for a while and have been impressed with the level of expertise here and it's entertaining too. Comments: Thanks for the site!