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There is no doubt that video games are in their golden age at the moment. Since 2007 sales of consoles and games have grown by 57 percent in spite of the economic downturn. During March 2008 1.7 billion dollars worth of games products were sold. The games industry is now bigger than films and is gaining more and more mainstream appeal and recognition.

Nintendo have helped to bring games to a much wider audience than was ever thought possible. Many families and older people are joining in what was traditionally a hobby for young males. The current generation of technology has pushed games further than they’ve ever been before. Games on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 are pushing graphical realism to new heights while the Wii is looking to break the boundary between virtual and real space with motion sensitive controls.

An interesting question to pose is where the next generation will go, and where video game entertainment will end up. A common theory is that they will move away from being purely games and end up as virtual reality experiences. The starting points of the necessary technologies to achieve this are already in place.

Motion sensitive controls are a significant stepping stone toward virtual reality in the home. Imagine if when playing a bowling game instead of watching the screen with cartoon characters mimicking your actions you were wearing a headset and being fed photo-realistic graphics from a first person perspective. The experience would be far more realistic than anything available at the moment.

It is my opinion that there will be two distinct directions that electronic entertainment will take. One path is that of the Wii, appealing to a mass market with easy to pick-up games that are designed for a quick dose of fun with family and friends. The other side I think will go down the ultra realistic route and end up trying to give the user a virtual reality experience. With technology as it is, the scope for providing this in the home is limited. The Wii remote requires users to physically move their bodies. Obviously this will not work in the living room once games require you to do more than swing a tennis racket or bowl a ball.

A workaround for requiring physical movement from the participants is to read brain activity. While currently the stuff of science fiction there are significant strides being made into reading human brain waves and converting them into mechanical movement. On the 28th of May 2008 the BBC posted a news article stating that scientists from the University of Pittsburgh had managed to get a monkey to control a robot arm to feed itself by just using its brain. The monkey had tiny probes the width of a human hair inserted into the primary motor cortex in order to read the electronic impulses that control movement. With a little training the monkey was able to manipulate the robotic arm as if it was its own.

Such invasive procedures are obviously out of the question for simple home use but it is certainly feasible to see the technology being adapted to read the brain from outside the head. It would be in this way that thoughts could be read to control movements in a virtual reality. This technology would also have other significant advantages, such as restoring movement to those crippled by spinal injuries and motor neurone diseases. I would see a difficulty when using these systems in separating virtual and real movements. Once trained to control movements in a virtual world with the brain would one be able to move their real body properly afterwards?

With technology such as this in place combined with ultra realistic graphics, we may see some virtual reality games created that are almost indistinguishable from real life. Would this lead to a mass migration to a virtual world where people can be as they please? Perhaps the topic for another article but certainly it is a scenario explored in many science fiction books and films.

In 1999 action film The Matrix famously told of a future in which mankind lived unknowingly in a virtual reality, their physical bodies were used to power the machines which had enslaved them. While unlikely to happen, when you read stories of Korean men starving themselves to death while playing MMO games it certainly makes you worry about how many people would abandon their bodies should such technology become available.

In reality though it is highly unlikely that virtual realities this complex will be able to exist, at least not in the foreseeable future. The computing power required to process them is trillions of times greater than what can be achieved today, with some theories suggesting that it would take a computer the size of a planet to process a virtual reality complex enough to fool the human mind.

I do think that games will reach an extremely high level of realism though, just not in entirely virtual worlds. The biggest barrier isn’t just processing power, but how to give enough feedback to trick the senses. I think that vision and sound will be relatively simple to reproduce but taste, smell and touch will be much harder. The issue of balance and orientation is a sticking point as well. Without direct input into the brain these senses may prove impossible to mimic inside a computer simulation.

Of course in the end it also comes down to what is financially viable for a company to put out and sell. The consumer will dictate the direction that games end up taking by what they’re willing to spend money on. With the dominating success of the Wii over the other platforms it would suggest that users are more comfortable using controls that mimic real life actions than they are using a traditional control pad or keyboard and mouse.

Graphics and simulations will continue to improve over time and I’m sure that one day it will be quite standard to wear a headset to play games. Whether that headset reads the thoughts of the user or not depends on whether it becomes cost effective to sell to consumers and whether people are ready to embrace the technology. I’m sure the possibility will exist at some point in the future but whether it represents the future of video games and is actually used remains debatable.

Everything considered the future of electronic entertainment is certainly a bright one. Eventually the technologies will merge and we’ll see virtual reality games integrated into TV, radio and the Internet. The only question is when all this will happen.

Patrick is an expert researcher and writer in computing, music, travel and airport parking. Currently he is doing research in Virtual Reality (http://www.holidayextras.co.uk/gatwick-airport-parking.html)

The demand for computer video games is very steadily increasing day by day. The computer game designers are working continuously to meet the demands of the users and produce better games compared to the earlier ones. The computer video game manufacturers have till date manufactured and sold millions of units. The future of the video game designer seems bright.

The market for computer video games is on the increase and has made tremendous profits already. Keeping in view the demand and popularity of computer video games, it won’t be a bad idea to become a computer game programmer. If you are a freak for computer video games, then go for the job of a computer game programmer or a video game programmer as this is the best time to venture into this industry.

The industry of computer games is in search of many new talents who can bring up new ideas and concepts, so that the development of this industry is guaranteed. The industry is always on the lookout for new players who can bring innovations. Then only newer games and new technologies will emerge.

There are a lot of challenges and much excitement in store for you if you become a computer game programmer or a video game programmer. The people who have taken up this as their career have risen very high and today they are earning much money. If you are also interested in this sector and want to become a computer game programmer, then first of all you have to ask yourself whether you have that particular quality necessary to survive in this profession.

You will also have to know if you can work really hard. And the most important thing is that you should be creative. You should also know the different tastes of the game lovers and about the craze that the young generation has towards the games.

Firstly, try to mark out the different areas of development of computer video games and the different kinds of tasks involved. There are video game designer, artist, animators , producers, and testers too. So before getting into this career make sure about the areas and the aspect in which you are most interested.

A computer video game programmer is usually responsible for generating the codes of the computer that makes the game run and function smoothly. The person who is working in this sector has to spend at least 10 to 12 hours a day. You can have intense pressure on you. You should research and play the game that has been manufactured by the other competitors within the industry and make your product much better than theirs.

In order to be a good competitor, the best way is to get into any of the gaming companies as an intern. Or you can even produce your own game with the help of the computer game software. There are various web sites from where you can get the ideas about how to become the best programmer. Go through them and you can have a bright future as a computer game programmer.

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When buying network supplies, one must take into consideration the quality of the products and its longevity. These are a very important element to computing and keeping your IT system running. In the event of your supplies depleting after a prolonged amount of usage, you should always have a backup plan with your networking systems. Networking supplies can include things like connectors, LAN testers, crimp tools, data/server racks, LAN cables, RJ45 adaptors, fibre optic leads and patch panels. All of these items can wear away and lose its optimum functionality after a long period.

Finding the best quality network supplies can take plenty of time; this can very often confuse people as to deciding which suppliers to approach. Many suppliers online say they offer the best quality and reasonably priced products. The best thing to do is to approach the suppliers that have a good reputation for the supplies and have proven track record of selling good quality products. To do this you can research on the internet, read up forum posts from people who have had direct contact with these suppliers and compare prices from the selected suppliers.

Always look for a guarantee or warranty, as unpredictable situations will arise and it is best to be prepared to take back your products if it is necessary. If you do not have a guarantee for your product, you can always approach your suppliers and discuss a possible exchange or discount on your next purchase order. You want these products to be tried, tested and trusted. Often buying network supplies will mean that you will not know how well they function after a long period, as different supplies have a different functionality.

Some of the network supplies may take up plenty of floor space; if this is an issue then some of the accessories such as the essential server racks and cabinets, are good to save floor space and prevent cables from being stretched across the room. This continues to be a mounting problem for many people; therefore, extra accessories such as cable clips and ties are good to maintain a neat and tidy system. Patch leads are also good for keeping things looking presentable and are also very popular as they are affordable to buy off the internet.

Using the network supplies is good for making sure that you have access to your IT system as and when you need it. Many people find that this is a necessary tool for offices and in their daily working life. You can take a glimpse at how each of these network supplies work, through looking at specific supplier websites and reading up on the various product reviews. This will ensure you make the right choice on the product you want, however, if you really are stuck for what to get, then you should approach someone with more experience or speak to someone directly at the suppliers.

Anna Stenning is an expert on network supplies as she has had to pre order many products for the computer systems at work. For more information visit http://www.comms-express.com/

Walking through any toys department or toy section of a superstore, and the one thing which is blindingly obvious is just how important technology has become as far as the popularity of toys is concerned. Shelves upon shelves of computer games scream out for attention, offering children worlds of possibilities, exciting game play, full throttle interaction, total immersion in fantasy worlds and other experiences which seem almost too good to be true.

Even taking a step away from these purely computer driven games, it seems that almost every other toy contains a microchip, for fun filled fully interactive entertainment. But do our children really need to be entertained? Or do children have not only a natural desire to entertain themselves, but actually have such a need? It’s tempting to think, looking at the array of toys on offer, that computer games and technology driven toys are likely to take over a child’s life, and replace their play time with entertainment time. Replacing play with entertainment is not, of course, the same thing, and creates a particular issue.

Play is fully active, the child is the centre and the driving force of the game, and the child is the one who need to use their imagination, whereas entertainment is more passive, with the child merely observing, or participating in a relatively passive way, what someone else has imagined and created. Reducing the child’s active involvement, and reducing the need for them to stimulate and use their own imagination can be no good thing – but is this where we are heading, and are traditional toys set to be resigned to the history museum? Will the children of the future simply plug themselves in to play?

Certainly it is tempting to suggest such a thing, but in reality, the answer can be found very easily by watching children play. Children’s basic needs are not moulded by fashion or industry. Children have a strong natural desire to play, to be in control of their own play, to create their own rules and to break the rules set for them. This is not simply a misty eyed way of looking at childhood, these needs are set in the psychological stone of thousands of years of evolution. It’s the way children discover the independence, and how they makes sense of the world.

Although children enjoy playing computer games, generally this is a social thing, with them inviting friends round to play with them, as most games are multiplayer. The game then becomes not the focus, but the medium through which they play and compete. The amount of time they spend on each game is, in the vast majority of cases, actually quite limited. Even looking at the clever technological toys, such as the ones that sing, dance, tell stories and react. When the batteries are dead, the toy is often still played with, in the more traditional sense. My daughter will happily play tea time with her teddy bears and have a couple of all singing all dancing dolls sitting alongside them, remaining switched, entirely mute and enjoyed every bit as much as if they were active.

Children write the rules, and although the technology and toy industry can throw technology into the mix, it’s the children who ultimately make their choices about not only what to play with, but how. Clever toys might produce an excited reaction, and receive much attention during the life of the first set of batteries, but when the batteries have dies, and the initial novelty has worn off, there will always be building blocks and crayons, which never run out, either of possibilities, or power. Powered by children’s imaginations, rather than batteries, these toys are set to last forever.

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One of the buzz words in computer gaming today is ‘artificial intelligence’. All right, so that’s two words really, but let’s not be too picky. What does it mean? Artificial intelligence is a phrase that has been around for years, and basically describes the ability of a computer to give the impression that it is thinking, in the same way that a human thinks. It has been suggested that the best artificial intelligence systems should give an impression of behaviour that, to the observer, are indistinguishable from the behaviour seen from a human. In other words, if the computer‘s characters and responses are variable, appropriate and as meaningful as though another player was playing against you, then the computer is doing a good job of mimicking intelligence.

Many people argue whether artificial intelligence is something which is simply mimicked – in other words, the computer is giving the impression of intelligence and thought but actually this is pre programmed by a designer, or whether the computer is genuinely thinking independent and original ideas.

Our own brains are simply very complex computers – they are made up of millions of little processors all connected using living wires which use electrical signals to exchange, process, store and retrieve data or information. By linking together a number of computer processors, linking them together in complex ways and giving the computer a basic formula for learning, it can proceed through the same sort of stages we do as humans, learning about the world around it, learning about knowledge, information, responses, communications, reactions and the many other influences which affect behaviour. It is hard to see how this type of intelligence is really any different from our own. Certainly computers are able to come up with original ideas in just the same way that we do.

This kind of intelligence is necessary in computer games when players are competing against, or alongside, other characters which are played by the computer. Most people enjoy playing against other people rather than a machine because other people can provide variable, random and sometimes unpredictable responses and behaviours, whereas simply programmed machines will always respond the same way, in predictable ways that mean a player only has to remember the few basic responses possible, and respond to them in order to complete the level.

With artificially intelligent characters playing against you, it can mean that in some cases, even the game designers can’t entirely predict what the computers characters will do, and each game is likely to proceed a different way, depending on those responses.

Of course some games contain artificially intelligent characters more developed than others, and certainly those characters that are simply programmed to either run left, run right or stand and shoot, depending on a random choice, don’t resent much in the way of variation or intelligence. But in many cases it can become quite spooky watching characters milling about, getting on with their tasks, knowing that they are being controlled by a thinking computer. As computers become more and more advanced, and their intelligence becomes more developed, who knows what they will eventually be capable of doing.

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You may have come across the phrase either in gaming forums of in science fiction, but exactly what is meant by virtual reality, what is it, and does it present us with any possible benefits or advantages in the future?

This phrase can be answered by either simply looking at the technology currently used, and understanding the basics of how it works, and what it tries to achieve. The more complex way of looking at this concept is by firstly asking what we understand by the word reality, before we try understanding the idea of an alternate, virtual version of reality.

Basically, if we understand the idea of reality to be the sum of all of the sensory inputs our brain receives, virtual reality is the use of technology to replace as many of those sensory inputs as possible with computer generated ones, to fool the brain into believing in a world which is false, and which only exists within the brain of the computer.

The most common form of virtual reality is one where the user wears a visor which wraps entirely round their normal field of vision. The computer then projects or displays a visual three dimensional world onto the inside f this visor, entirely replacing what the user would normally see with a computer generated view. The clever part of this is that the visor has a number of motion sensors built in to it, so that if the user turns their head, tilts their head, or moves their body entirely, the display inside the projector will move to match the user’s movement, creating the illusion of the user actually moving around within this three dimensional world of the computer‘s.

Taking this idea further, the world may contain a number of objects, such as furniture, doors, objects that can be picked up and examined. By wearing special gloves which have a whole range of sensors built in to them, the computer can track the position, movement and actions of the user’s hands, and work out whether they would be touching anything, and if so, how the objects would react. Would they be being picked up, turned, knocked over and so forth?

By adding audio as well, the user can be very immersed within this world, and with advancing technologies making greater and more realistic computer generated scenes, the user can very easily start to believe in this virtual world, or reality.

One way in which this technology is an exciting area for development is within computer and video games, and already we are starting to see early developments of this with basic visors, and hand controls which are motion sensitive. Eventually we may well all find ourselves entering an alternative reality in which to play our games, which would make chase scenes, fights and cliff top adventures even more breath taking!

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about kids toys, dolls, and video games. You will find the best marketplace for kids toys, dolls, and video games at these sites: http://www.4kidstoys.info , http://www.dollsgamestoys.info , and http://www.usedvideogamesell.com .

Often people assume that playing computer games or video games is a very anti social activity, and is a solo activity which isolates an individual from the real world, cuts them off from other people and then allows them to sit on their own in a small dark room hitting keys over and over again in order to mindlessly destroy anything that moves on their screen. In fact, nothing could be very much further from the truth, and in fact those people who play computer games on their own, completely cut off from interaction with other people in any way are such a minority group it may prove hard to find anyone to actually put in to it.

Quite apart from not being a solo activity, recent research has found that over 66% of people who play computer or video games do so with their friends, either sat with them advising, or actually with a second handset competing in the same game. 30% of gamers play with their brothers or sisters and a quarter of all gamers play with either their parents or their partners. This completely goes against the argument that most people lay on their own, and shows that the majority of people play as a social game, in various combinations and ways.

Even taking in to account that there may be 20% to 30% of people who do play games without someone else being physically with them, it is still not possible to generalise isolation by suggesting that these people are cut off from any kind of social interaction. Many games these days are what is referred to as multi player, meaning that more than one person can play the game at the same time, and with a very wide number of the most popular video games being online too, this means that all players will be competing against and taking part with other real people, rather than the computer. In fact, many of these online multiplayer games have relatively little input from the computer, and far more input from the people playing the game against each other.

One of the main requirements of many of these multiplayer online games is that people group together and try to work out strategies and tactics to overcome certain obstacles, opponents and challenges. This will require great teamwork, very in depth discussions involving roles and group work, and will require people to work together as individuals and as a team. As a result, many players become part of a more stable and permanent group which means that there are people known to each other ready to take on challenges without having to start all over each time analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. These groups can become social groups, meeting outside of the game, and there are many examples where people who have met through these groups have gone on to develop meaningful friendships and relationships beyond the game.

Video games are most certainly not isolating – for many, they open doors to friendships that the real world may never have offered.

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about kids toys, dolls, and video games. You will find the best marketplace for kids toys, dolls, and video games at these sites: http://www.4kidstoys.info , http://www.dollsgamestoys.info , and http://www.usedvideogamesell.com .