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Logitech Launches its First Force-Feedback Flight Sim Controller

Paul Lilly — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:30:00 -0500

All that's missing from Logitech's newest flight simulation controller is a cockpit. The Flight System G940, as it's being dubbed, is the company's first ever force-feedback flight sim peripheral and has enough pieces to keep hardcore flight sim fans busy, and those new to the genre thoroughly overwhelmed. And that's just fine with Logitech.

"There's nothing ordinary about a G-series gaming peripheral, and the G940 is no different," said Ruben Mookerjee, Logitech's director or product marketing for gaming. "We approached this project with the goal of redefining the flight sim experience. Whether you're flying an A380, an F/A-18 Hornet, or a Comanche helicopter, when you want to feel the wind on your winds, control engines together, or independently or master tricky maneuvers, the G940 behaves and feels like the real thing -- from takeoff to landing."

The three-component G940 comes with a force feedback joystick and dual throttle and rudder pedals, along with no less than 250 programmable button options integrated in a fully featured Hands On Throttle-and-Stick (HOTAS) design.

Logitech says its G940 will start shipping in September with an MSRP set for $299.

Image Credit: Logitech via Engadget

RAID5 May Soon Be Obsolete

Justin Kerr — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:35:07 -0500

RAID 5 users anxiously awaiting the debut of 2 TB drives to help build massive storage array’s may want to think twice before taking the plunge. An in-depth look into the underlying problems with massive storage RAID5 configurations suggests that s a single drive as redundancy might not cut it anymore. SATA drives carry a specified unrecoverable read rate of 10^14. This might sound like a huge number, but it basically tells us that any array in excess of 11.37 TB will contain at least one unrecoverable read. In the case of a RAID 5 rebuild, this can be catastrophic.

Storage companies want us to believe that RAID 6 will address the issue but sadly this doesn’t seem to be the case long term. The additional drive will increase redundancy, but since failures will always be followed by read errors on another drive, RAID 6 won’t help you one bit (pardon the pun). Many of the advances in storage capacity are a result of perpendicular recording which help reduce this problem, but it still exists. Perpendicular recording also isn’t likely to take us much further beyond 2TB. Delays in finding new methods will force those in need of massive storage configurations to turn to RAID5 or 6 which as we know now, are vulnerable.

Don’t get me wrong, we still have time to come up with a solution to this problem, but users stringing together 6 or more disks as early as next year could start hitting this ceiling. Additionally, in order for the worst case scenario to occur (loss of all data) the one failed drive would need to be completely unrecoverable. So the sky isn’t falling, but it sure makes for an interesting problem. Want to learn more about RAID? Read Maximum PC’s in-depth guide, RAID done Right.

An interesting item of note, on human progress. The picture shown below is just slightly over 2TB of storage. This much capacity will be possible in a single drive by next year. Isn’t progress wonderful?

(Image Credit Rainwulf.com)

Immersion Hands Over $20 Million to Microsoft in Rumble Controller Settlement

Paul Lilly — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 11:31:50 -0500

All that experience in court looks to be paying off for Microsoft. After all, how else could you explain receiving $20.75 million from the very company whose patents you're using. Confused? Let's backtrack.

In 2002, Immersion took exception to the rumble effects in Microsoft's controllers for the Xbox and sued the Redmond giant for patent infringement. Microsoft ultimately settled with Immersion, agreeing to pay $26 million to end the litigation, but not without a clause. Before agreeing to pay the sum, Microsoft stipulated that if Sony should ever license Immersions force feedback technology for it's PS3 controllers, Immersion would have to pay a portion of the settlement.

Immersion did end up settling with Sony last year, and that's good news for Microsoft. It took some legal wrangling to get it done, but Immersion has finally agreed to pay Microsoft and make good on the clause.

"We are pleased to have reached a resolution to our legal dispute with Immersion that includes a $20.75 million payment to Microsoft," said Steve Aeschbacher, associate general counsel for Microsoft. "We are gratified that we have successfully resolved our claims under the 2003 settlement we negotiated with Immersion, which provided benefits to both companies and specific rights to Microsoft."

And Microsoft has every reason to be pleased. Legal costs aside, the payment whittles down the company's initial $26 licensing settlement to just over $5 million.

Image Credit: Microsoft

Speak of the Devil -230 MB/s SSD Becomes Reality

Chris Moody — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:00:18 -0500

Indilinx has completed the development of their Barefoot (IDX22) high-performing solid state drive controller with 90nm process technology which shows an impressive fastest read speed of 230MB/s and supports a capacity of up to 512GB with multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash. Indilinx claims “phenomenal performance at a competitive price”.

Barefoot supports native SATA 2.0 interface and provides maximum read and write speed of 230MB/s, 170MB/s with SLC NAND flash, and 200MB/s, 160MB/s with MLC NAND, respectively. It uses Indilinx’s unique architecture and technology, including independently operating 4 channels and external DRAM buffer and it enhances stability and reliability by using two types of hardware error-correcting code (ECC).

Those improvements are coming by leaps and bounds in SSDs. It's not clear if this will be competing with Intel’s controller directly. No mention if this is targeted at portable or stationary (or both) PC market.

Asus Announces a Wii Nunchuck-Like Wireless Gaming Controller

Paul Lilly — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:09:17 -0500

You knew it would happen sooner or later, and now it has; a Wii controller knockoff for the PC. Sort of. Asus has dubbed its new Wii remote lookalike as the Eee Stick, "an easy-to-~~sue~~ use yet highly versatile Plug and Play wireless controller for the PC platform that translates users' physical hand motions into corresponding movements onscreen."

Interestingly Asus has no plans of selling the Eee Stick as a standalone peripheral and will instead bundle the motion controller exclusively with select models of the Eee PC and the Eee Box. Huh? We don't understand it either, but Asus justifies the move by saying the Eee Stick is "perfect for gaming on-the-go."

The vibration capable controller connects via a 2.4GHz RF dongle with a broadcast range of 10m. Two AA batteries are required to power the Eee Stick, which Asus claims will provide up to three days (72 hours) of continuous play.

Will the Eee Stick entice potential customers to pick up an Eee PC or Eee Box, or is Asus making a mistake by not offering the controller as a standalone device?

Image Credit: Asus

Multi-function Modding

Chris Adcock — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:24:06 -0600

Since Santa felt the need to hold back on my flux capacitor last month (Dear Santa – Planetary Security is not an excuse!), I decided to order a multi-function panel. These little gems have both form and function. They rarely get the coverage they deserve. Not too pricey either. You can pick one up for less than the Murph keeps in his pizza fund (where do you think I got the money?).

Am I promoting bolt-a-bling? Sure I am – nothing wrong with an accessory here and there. I picked up an Aero Cool unit myself. It takes up two bays and will monitor temperature and fan speed. It also works as a fan controller and has a few other goodies. Of course, there are a number brands and many different looks, options and functions. Some monitor temperatures, some monitor fan speed, some even monitor ambient audio signals. Panel styles range from “automotive” to “Def-Con 9 missile launcher” (sorry, no Hello Kitty motifs). Most of these are easy to install and typically offer more accurate monitoring than software solutions (and they look cooler). These are perfect for a “first mod” to get in to the sport, or even to top off a pro-level mod.

Normally they have to be installed to function, but a bit of fiddling in the lab and we managed to light this one up hooked directly to a PSU.

I can’t wait to install it fully! Then I will Rule The World!!1!

Wait – No, Santa, that was just a joke – really!

Happy Moddin’!

In today’s bling, Bill Owen let’s you stand next to his fire (and his airbrush).

RAID Done Right

David Murphy — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:49:59 -0600

Like the eponymous bug spray, RAID gets results. But in this case, the active ingredient isn’t a deadly poison, but hard drives—or, to spell out the acronym, a redundant array of independent (or inexpensive) disks.

RAID represents a storage schematic, a way to use multiple hard drives to accomplish wondrous achievements in automation and capacity. You can chain a number of drives together to create one large super-volume, you can have one drive automatically replicate the contents of another, you can do it all!

So where do you start? With this guide, because while RAID may sound simple, the actual practice of setting up an array is mildly daunting. But before we start attacking the various configuration options that smack you in the face with every RAID setup, we’ll start with the easiest part first, the shopping list.

To set up a RAID, you’ll need at least two items: a motherboard with the ability to create and manage RAID volumes and some hard drives. The exact number of drives will depend on the flavor of RAID you choose, the level of performance you hope to achieve, and your budget, but the drives should be of an identical make and capacity, as your RAID configuration will always be limited by the speed and size of the slowest drive. If you’re planning to string together more than four drives, you’ll likely need to invest in a RAID controller card as well (check your motherboard manual for details about its integrated RAID support).

RAID 0

The RAID variant that offers the fastest speeds and most capacity also comes with the biggest worries

A RAID 0 setup is commonly known as a striped array. Instead of writing all of your data to a single drive, this configuration allows a file to be broken up into smaller chunks, or stripes, which are then written across all the drives in the array. The more drives you add to a RAID 0 config, the faster the overall performance of the array. After all, by adding drives, you’re just spreading out the workload.

To really get the most from RAID 0, you’ll want to play with the stripe sizes. We say play, as there’s no concrete way to gauge what stripe size will be best for your particular setup—short of testing its performance with the apps you’ll be using.
If a file is a pizza, then a stripe is a slice. Slap a 50KB file onto a four-drive array with a 16KB stripe size, and three hard drives will have full 16KB stripes while the fourth will have just 2KB. The sizes affect RAID performance because using smaller stripe sizes often spreads the simultaneous writes and reads across multiple drives, which improves transfer performance for larger files. Using larger stripe sizes allows a single file to be split across fewer disks and, if your RAID controller allows it, will free the unused disks for other access operations. This improves the ability of the drive heads themselves to get to the part of the drive platter with the data.

Hands On

We used four Western Digital Raptor drives in our RAID 0 testing, with a fifth Raptor for the Windows partition. We experimented with stripe sizes ranging from 4KB to 1,024KB, measuring performance with the HD Tach and PCMark05 benchmarks. We achieved the best results with a 128KB stripe size. Using this size, we compared the performance of both a two-drive and four-drive RAID 0 config to that of a single Raptor.

As you’d imagine, the four-drive RAID 0 setup produced the fastest speeds in our benchmark tests. But even striping two drives together gave us a pretty awesome advantage over a single drive. The PCMark05 scores weren’t as much of a blowout as the HD Tach benchmarks, but they nevertheless show that our RAID array is faster than a single drive in every single benchmark the program has to offer.

This immense power, however, comes at a great cost—namely, the safety of the data stored on the array. For if a single drive in your setup fails, that’s it. Your data’s gone. On a two-disk array, striping doubles your chance of data loss due to drive failure. And that risk only increases as you add more drives to the mix.

RAID 0 Benchmarks
HD Tach				PCMark 05
	Burst (MB/s)	Average Read (MB/s)	Average Write (MB/s)	Score	XP Loading (MB/s)	App. Loading (MB/s)	Virus Scanning (Mb/s)	File Writing (Mb/s)
RAID 0 (Four)	414.1	208.7	180.2	11,984.0	23.19	9.07	131.52	272.87
RAID 0 (Two)	358.5	156.2	158.36	8,949.3	15.80	6.07	102.22	266.76
Single Drive	452.1	78.0	102.7	6,329.0	10.42	4.93	77.88	160.51

Two Terabytes? Denied!

Wait! Before you start building a super-array of drives, know that Windows XP does not support partitions greater than two terabytes. It’s just not happening. If you want to, say, chain four terabyte drives together, you’re going to need Windows Vista and a fifth hard drive, because even Vista can’t boot into the partition scheme you’ll need to set up, unless you have an EFI motherboard.

GPT, or the GUID Partition Table, is an updated version of the Master Boot Record partitioning scheme that will let you break through Windows’s 2TB limit on disk sizes. Install the OS on your separate hard drive, then set up your RAID 0 config. When you initialize the disk in Vista’s Computer Management window, make sure you select the GPT partition style instead of MBR.

RAID 1

Making a spare copy of your data will impact performance, but by how much?

Otherwise known as disk mirroring, RAID 1 maximizes protection between two disk drives. Unlike a RAID 0 setup, two drives linked in a mirror configuration don’t double the total capacity of a single new volume. Rather, the capacity of the volume is determined by the size of the smallest drive in the array.

The benefit of mirroring two drives together is obvious; just consider the name of the array. Whenever data is written to a single hard drive, it is instantaneously written to the other drive in the array as well. If one drive fails, you’ll have a copy of all your data. You can then boot off of the survivor by itself or replace your busted drive in the array with a working drive. Your RAID controller will rebuild the array without interrupting normal file operations and return everything to full working order.

This kind of setup is ideal for those who are more concerned about protecting their data than increasing performance. However, don’t misconstrue the benefits of RAID 1 for a data backup solution. A mirrored array is more designed for those, “Oh crap, the hard drive just died randomly” scenarios. A mirrored array won’t protect you from accidental file deletions or malicious software that wipes out your drive (see the sidebar below).

Hands On

Due to the extreme differences between RAID 1 and RAID 0, we expected to see dramatically different results in the relative speeds of the two formats. After all, you’re trading storage speed for sustainability. What we were unsure about was the performance difference between a mirrored setup and a single identical drive in a stand-alone configuration.

As it turns out, the mirrored array actually performed better than a single Raptor. We attribute this to our RAID controller’s ability to select which drive to read data from—it can use one hard drive for one data task, while simultaneously accessing a different data request with the other. Not surprisingly, the mirrored array’s write speeds weren’t as impressive but still bested a single Raptor drive by about 7MB/s.

RAID 1 Benchmarks
HD Tach				PCMark 05
	Burst (MB/s)	Average Read (MB/s)	Average Write (MB/s)	Score	XP Loading (MB/s)	App. Loading (MB/s)	Virus Scanning (Mb/s)	File Writing (Mb/s)
RAID 1	465.9	99.46	109.63	8,085.3	14.90	6.24	82.96	221.53
Single Drive	452.1	78.0	102.7	6,329.0	10.42	4.93	77.88	160.51

RAID 1 As a Backup Solution? No way!

If one drive’s contents are always replicated on another drive in a mirrored RAID configuration, RAID 1 is the perfect backup solution, right? Wrong. Using a mirrored RAID as your de facto backup solution works wonders in certain disastrous occurrences, like if one of your hard drives spontaneously explodes. But RAID 1 doesn’t prevent any of the more malicious (or user-created) data loss issues. If you have a virus on one drive—guess what?—it’s been replicated on the second drive. Or if you accidentally perma-delete a file, it’s gone on both drives. Grab a third-party backup program for your files and let RAID 1 take care of the act of God–type situations.

RAID 1+0

The best of both worlds, the RAID 1+0 combination approach yields great results! Right?

The mix-and-match of RAID setups, RAID 1+0 offers a unique combination of RAID 0 performance with RAID 1 data protection. It’s one of the proud members of the “nested” category of RAID configurations. Like peanut butter on bread, a nested RAID uses one RAID configuration as the base for a second RAID. This hybridization gives you a chance to reap the benefits of both setups, although you’ll never achieve the ultimate benefits of either.

Each RAID controller will handle the setup of the RAID 1+0 config differently, and some won’t even support such fancy storage dreams. Whether the controller defaults to RAID 1+0 or forces you to create an array on top of an array, the basic premise is still the same.

You’ll need at least four hard drives to create a RAID 1+0 setup. Logistically, the drives are split into two pairs. Each pair operates as a mirrored array, or RAID 1. The two pairs are then chained together in a RAID 0 configuration. This gives you data redundancy on the micro level, while still giving you speed and storage benefits on the macro level. You’re safe from data loss as long as you lose only one drive per mirrored pair. You’ll face the same data loss problem that plagues individual RAID 0 arrays if both drives in either of the mirrored pairs suffer an untimely demise.

Hands On

RAID 1+0 performance is far superior to that of a single Raptor drive. But that’s like saying ice cream is tastier than cat food. Two Raptors in a RAID 0 configuration still dominated in the average write portion of our HD Tach benchmarks. And that makes complete sense, as the mirroring portion of the RAID 1+0 array reduces its performance.

RAID 1+0’s average read speeds, on the other hand, are higher than those of two Raptors in RAID 0, but that’s not so much an issue of technology as it is one of scalability. Just for giggles, we fired up four Raptor drives in a striped RAID to get a true, four-drive showdown. The four-drive RAID 0 mercilessly decimated the benchmarks of our RAID 1+0 setup. Average read speeds were 38MB/s faster and average write speeds were 43MB/s faster. If you’re willing to risk catastrophic data loss, RAID 0 is still a speed demon’s friend. But you certainly won’t suffer, speedwise, with a RAID 1+0 array.

RAID 1+0 Benchmarks
HD Tach				PCMark 05
	Burst (MB/s)	Average Read (MB/s)	Average Write (MB/s)	Score	XP Loading (MB/s)	App. Loading (MB/s)	Virus Scanning (Mb/s)	File Writing (Mb/s)
RAID 0 (Four)	414.1	208.7	180.2	11,984.0	23.19	9.07	131.52	272.87
RAID 0 (Two)	358.5	156.2	158.36	8,949.3	15.80	6.07	102.22	266.76
RAID 1+0	334.1	170.73	137.8	10,307.7	22.43	7.90	106.22	225.33
Single Drive	452.1	78.0	102.7	6,329.0	10.42	4.93	77.88	160.51

Make a RAID with Windows

If you want the size benefits of a striped array but don’t feel like setting one up using your motherboard’s controller—or if your motherboard doesn’t include a RAID controller—you can actually create a large, striped drive in Windows itself. Just head over to your computer management screen (you get to it by right-clicking Computer in the Start Menu and selecting Manage). Convert the drives you want to stripe to dynamic disks, then create a new volume and select “striped” for the configuration. Voila! The speeds of the array won’t be nearly as fast as those of a controller-based striped array, but they’re still noticeably faster than a single Raptor’s, with the added benefit that your data isn’t tied to a controller that’s soldered onto your motherboard.

Windows vs Controller RAIDS
HD Tach				PCMark 05
	Burst (MB/s)	Average Read (MB/s)	Average Write (MB/s)	Score	XP Loading (MB/s)	App. Loading (MB/s)	Virus Scanning (Mb/s)	File Writing (Mb/s)
Controller RAID	358.5	156.2	158.36	8,949.3	15.80	6.07	102.22	266.76
Windows RAID	N/A	N/A	N/A	8,107.5	13.6	5.63	100.82	239.74
Single Drive	452.1	78.0	102.7	6,329.0	10.42	4.93	77.88	160.5

Best scores are bolded. HD Tach measures hardware-based volumes and cannot run benchmarks on software-based RAID solutions.

RAID 5

Parity makes a world of difference and barely hurts speeds.

Like RAID 1+0, a RAID 5 configuration is a hybrid combination of data safekeeping and speed. But unlike the former, RAID 5 doesn’t rely on mirroring to preserve your information. It instead uses an alternative method of data redundancy found in RAID setups—parity.

To get into the fine nuances of how parity works would require Excel charts, lots of binary code, and acronyms—lots of acronyms. So we’ll generalize. The mathematics of parity dictates that if you have four drives in an array, the RAID will split each piece of data into three stripes. Each stripe will go to a single hard drive, as it would in a RAID 0 configuration.
The controller then creates a parity stripe based on the three stripes of data. A parity stripe is a logical calculation that allows the controller to re-create any individual stripe that becomes corrupt (or in the case of a drive failure, nonexistent). Similar to mirroring, the lost data is made available to the host machine instantaneously. But the loss of a single drive puts the entire array at risk. Should an additional drive fail—making that two of the four drives dead—all the data on the array is lost. A parity stripe works wonders, just not miracles.

Hands On

RAID 5 gives you the best combination of speed, size, and data savings. Our RAID 5 and RAID 1+0 arrays scored similar speeds, with the RAID 5 squeezing 15 additional MB/s in our HD Tach average read test.

The bonus comes in the fact that our RAID 5 array gave us an additional drive’s worth of space to play around with—450 total gigabytes as opposed to the RAID 1+0’s 300GB of total capacity.

Admittedly, a RAID 1+0 array gives you better data redundancy on paper, but the additional mirroring seems like overkill. In essence, you’d be performing the same maintenance tasks you’d be performing in a RAID 5 array. If a drive goes out in a RAID 1+0, it would be in your best interest to stop what you’re doing and immediately replace the dead drive; the same goes for RAID 5. While the next drive that goes out in your RAID 1+0 array might not be the one to destroy a mirrored pair and consequently your data, do you really want to roll the dice? We wouldn’t, and we’d much rather have the performance and size benefits a RAID 5 array brings.

Why Use a Controller?

All of the benchmarks in this feature were completed using Adaptec’s RAID 31605 controller ($1,000, adaptec.com). In our initial tests, we found that our EVGA 608i chipset-based RAID speeds simply paled in comparison. Thanks to an onboard 800MHz processor and 256MB of DDR2 cache memory, the controller was able to output an average read speed of 211.7MB/s in a simple HD Tach benchmark of a four-drive, striped array. The motherboard-based RAID topped out at 118.9MB/s.

RAID controllers also offer more options and safety features than a motherboard-based chipset, and the motherboard RAID itself is limited to the number of free SATA ports you have. In contrast, our controller supports up to 16 SATA drives.

Motherboard RAID vs Controller RAID
HD Tach				PCMark 05
	Burst (MB/s)	Average Read (MB/s)	CPU Use (MB/s)	Score	XP Loading (MB/s)	App. Loading (MB/s)	Virus Scanning (Mb/s)	File Writing (Mb/s)
Motherboard	234.5	118.9	2.0	10,525.0	25.54	12.61	82.53	129.05
Controller	473.3	211.7	2.0	12,162.0	23.76	9.08	132.57	282.73

Best scores are bolded. Arrays were tested using a four-drive RAID 0 configuration.

Xbox 360 Controller

Maximum PC — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:16:42 -0600

Are you fed up with Xbox 360 owners waxing poetic about their new controller—how durable it is, how comfortable it is, how much better it is than a PC gamepad? Well, now you can shut ‘em up by buying an Xbox 360 controller for your PC.

The Xbox 360 controller uses a standard USB connection, so the corded version is compatible with both the Xbox 360 and the PC. (An Xbox 360 Controller for Windows version is identical to the standard controller in every way, except it includes a driver disc in the package, and costs $5 more at Best Buy—you don’t need this disc, you can download the drivers via Windows Update.)

If you own a 360 and play PC games, the benefits are obvious: You can use one controller for both platforms—you don’t have to fool with different control layouts. Even if you don’t have a 360, the news is good: All upcoming gamepad-friendly PC games are required to support the 360 controller to get the “Games for Windows” sticker on their box. This means you won’t have to remap button functions for any Windows-branded game you play.

The Xbox 360 controller is comfortable to hold and the buttons are well-placed, even for our clumsy mitts. You get twin analog thumbsticks, a d-pad, and 10 buttons, including four triggers, two of which are analog. The two analogs are notable, as you can use them to, say, make tiny adjustments to speed and braking in Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The controller also features force-feedback vibration and a port that accepts a standard PC or Xbox headset, for voice-chat in games.

The Xbox 360 controller is expensive, especially when you consider that you can’t program its buttons to perform macros. But it’s a very solid PC gamepad, the headset compatibility is a plus, and it has enormous potential to make gaming on the PC much easier down the road.
--Steve Klett

Month Reviewed: February 2006

Verdict:

URL: www.microsoft.com