In a word: yes.

Outside of a couple of articles I have read about this game, I don't know a lot about the game. Whom I do know are a ton of vets from the Korea era to today. Many are combat veterans.

This game needs to come out and it needs to have an uncompromising, unsanitized representation of war. It needs to show how soul crushing, torturous, and ruinous war is to those who fight it and the survivors of it.

Let kids see how war really is to the best of the medium's ability. Let them be horrified and disgusted by what they see. Strip away all the "rah rah rah USA RED WHITE AND BLUE" and meaningless "Thank you for your service" bullshit so they can see what combat is like from those who have been in it.

Let them explicitly know what they sign up for is absolutely nothing like what the flat out lies the recruiter told them.

Absolutely release this game and commemorate what the Iraq war and all wars have been like.

"Maybe I just need to get a third-party voice recognition app."

Dragon Nuance Home should be all you really need.

Mrs. Burrito uses it extensively because she has RA in her hands. Outside of the initial "learning your speech pattern and accent" phase, it has worked very well for her.

After my Pixel 5 dies, I am honestly considering just going without a mobile phone. Because of the insane amount of spam robocalls and spam texts I receive, my phone is always on silent. All my family and friends know to contact me on Wire if they want an immediate response.

I am at a point where a phone is a digital leash and not a usable tool if one is not interested in narcissistic selfies and being instantly connected at all times.

eRe4s3r wrote on Jun 22, 2021, 11:45:

Considering Steam canceled my Steam VR order (after confirming it I might add, pushing me back in the wait slot to 12+ weeks when I was literally 1 day to ship) and Amazon canceled 3 3070 orders over the months does this surprise you?

Production and capacity issues aside, it does not surprise me because there isn't a fundamentally compelling reason for the average gamer to spend a significant portion of their system build budget for a handful of titles

VR has not had, and may never have, that watershed moment that propels it in to mainstream appeal. As of today, there are too many factors against it, including production and capacity issues.

Eraserhead wrote on Jun 22, 2021, 04:18:
Ah, remember when VR was the future of gaming? Just like 3D was the future of cinema in the 1950s... and then on TVs in the 2010s...

Steam says that only 2.31% of all Steam users surveyed have VR headsets.

VR is a niche and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Jivaro wrote on Jun 21, 2021, 18:08:
I was really naive to how many people wouldn't take it. The news of the delta variant(s) hasn't seemed to change that much yet. At least not in my experience.

"People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." -Kay, Men in Black

Remember that Optimus Prime died to give us the glory that is Prime day. Take a moment of silence to remember a fallen hero,

<faint voice in the distance>
"Autobots, roll out!"

Wing Commander?

Mr. Tact wrote on Jun 19, 2021, 23:31:
You are right BoP I have seen you say that before. So, are all the gamers a bunch of idiots or brain-washed or what? Because I don't see a rush of gamers switching from Win10 to Linux. Hell, I worked in the IT industry for 25+ years and I haven't switched. Linux is a great OS for a ton of things, but AFAIK gaming isn't one of them.

I am well aware that gaming on Linux isn't on an equal footing with Windows. I 100%, freely admit that. I think it's getting much, much better with Proton but it isn't at equivalence.

But I think we can agree that, in terms of computer usage, it's a relatively small niche. The average PC user, worldwide, isn't going to be playing Call of Battlefield Halo Fantasy 9,147. The average user is going to do basic tasks just like my mother does. For them, there's no need to pay the Microsoft tax. There's no need to play the bullshit game of "We have six different SKUs for one OS because...reasons! We don't bother to do QA on anything we release anymore because automation solves everything!"

That's what I addressed. The average user. Because this is a gaming related board, we have the bias prejudice that all systems must be gaming machines first and foremost. Above everything else. Well, most of us. I know I am the weird one who builds his machines to be useful, functional tools that also happen to game as a second or tertiary objective.

//---\\

Jonjonz wrote on Jun 20, 2021, 06:40:
If you have ever tried to install it on more than one make/model of computer you know just how finicky it is about choosing what it will run on with out breaking because some nerd never got around to writing a proper bit of code for the speakers, or the GPU, or the keyboard, or the mouse, or the printer or all of the above. Sure you might have gotten lucky with one computer that magically works 100% with whatever distro you threw on it, but after 5 or more different computers and you realize that is the exception.

Well, let me see. There are 10 machines in this house alone of various makes, models, and configurations. All of them run Linux. Dells, home built, System76, Acer, Apple, and HP. Zero issues. If I throw the Pis and Pines in the mix, that's another 14 machines also running Linux with no headaches.

At work, over the course of my employment, I would conservatively say that we have deployed Linux on hundreds of different configurations.There were probably a half-dozen that required a little intervention but those were edge cases with external hardware that was esoteric to say the least.

Outside of Nvidia, which is Nvidia's fault, can't say I've ever had to worry about "drivers" in the last decade. Speakers? You're installing drivers for speakers? Really? I just plug mine in. The same goes for keyboards. The HID model has been a standard for like two decades now. Mice, too. Mesa covers AMD and Intel GPUs. Even my Xbox controller works with zero configuration on my part.

As for distros, I've used and deployed Ubuntu, Debian, Parrot, Fedora, Manjaro, and RHEL with regularity. On my own, I have played with probably four dozen or so different distros in the last five years.

So, clearly, far more than one machine and one distro. With the luck you seem to believe that I possess, I should win the lotto without even playing it.

RedEye9 wrote on Jun 19, 2021, 18:04:
But the new wheel is better than the old wheel. Microsoft told me so.

While reporting every mile and GPS location that wheel goes to and randomly deciding when to stop and restart the car, no matter how inconvenient it is for you?

PropheT wrote on Jun 19, 2021, 21:24:
If Windows was only as user friendly and compatible as Linux no one would want to use it.

If only. I know you tried very hard to be a smartass but I can tell you have never used a mainline Linux distro or, if you have, not very recently.

I have said on this site numerous times that my elderly mother is my barometer for the average user and Linux usage. She is quite literally the dead center, "average user". She uses the web, she occasionally watches some YouTube, she still writes letters, prints stuff off, etc. She's been on Fedora Linux since version 19 in 2013. She started off with my old hand me down which was a Q6600 and 8GB of RAM with spinning rust. That machine lasted her until 2019. Then she got a "blazing" fast 4770K with 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD. Throughout that entire period she upgraded the OS herself with only one input from me. It was a phone call in the beginning that literally went like this: "Sugar, my computer is telling me I need to upgrade it. What do I do?" "You hit the button that says 'upgrade', ma'am." "That's it?" "That's it." She has upgraded to every version of Fedora on her own since then*. She never calls me for support. Hell, it even supports this weird scanner/label printer thing that Windows gave up on back during Windows 7. She uses that thing to print out labels for her canning. Still works. Zero driver installs. Hell, she even got a BIOS and some firmware updates through Linux via fwupd and lvfs. They just came as updates through the GNOME Software Center. When was the last time you ever saw Windows make it simple to do a BIOS update natively via a one click update? Is Windows Update pushing down firmware for SSDs and system level devices yet? No? Ok.

*The only meltdown she had was when my father, a super Microsoft fanboi (and a former MS employee), decided to "upgrade" her machine with Windows 8. She hated it. Like cussing a blue streak hated it. Which is something as my mother is an old school Southern Belle who wouldn't say "shit" if she had a mouthful of it.So she asked me how to get back on Fedora and I lightly held her hand while she made a bootable USB stick and reinstalled the OS of her choice. Zero data loss, too

Hell, even Dell is onboard the Linux train. Last Thursday, I took possession of a Dell Precision 5550 laptop from work. Beautiful little beast of a machine. It came with Ubuntu on it. I swapped that out for Fedora but, to my surprise, I was also able to do BIOS and firmware updates from within GNOME. This machine was brand new and the updates had only been available for about two and a half weeks.

Where I work, which is by no means a niche employer, there are zero Windows machines in my entire department. Literally zero. Outside of the Windows team, everyone either runs the Ubuntu LTS release or Fedora. Even some of the Windows admins have swapped over to Ubuntu since they can now have PowerShell on Linux.

Though it's nice to see Microsoft blatantly copying Linux for new "features" in Windows 10. Virtual desktops? Been native in Linux for decades. Decades. BitLocker? A poor man's LUKS but at least they have something. Package manager? Awww....that's cute. We've had that for decades, too. Being able to update your OS without having to reboot? Well, guess Microsoft can't get it all right.

So, sure, go ahead and be a smartass but at least use the fucking OS so you know what you're actually talking about.

Verno wrote on Jun 19, 2021, 21:23:
The rest of us deal with the reality that many people in rural areas lack proper broadband access, that's the target market for products like Starlink.

Some years back, I was one of those people. The absolute best I could get was CenturyLink at a whopping 3Mbps. I would get that 3Mbps on alternate Tuesdays at 1:17AM for three minutes. Then my actual throughput was less than half that.

Spectrum (Then TimeWarner) had zero plans to invest in the area even though we were less than half a mile from their existing service area. The copper phone lines were so old that AT&T could not run DSL due to "attenuation problems" (their words).

I would have given my left nut for Starlink back then.

You also have the recent efforts to make municipal broadband straightup illegal to protect cable monopolies. So you can't magically bootstrap your way up to a modern broadband connection.

I am so very appreciative that I do not have to deal with the bullshit you guys chained to Microsoft's wheel have to endure.

Rigs wrote on Jun 18, 2021, 16:22:
Oh, I dunno, I thought what they put out was pretty good. Certainly wasn't a disaster, it had a nice gameplay loop and humorous (if not sometimes cringey, depending on your taste) dialog.

I thought it was exceptionally cringey. It's like that friend everyone has who tries way too hard to be "funny" and just never, ever lands the joke. I especially hated the planet hopping. The spherical map rotation just didn't work for me. To me, it just felt like a "We have the name of Star Control so we're just going to make a semi-clone of SCII with different assets since we don't own the OG Star Control universe" effort. It'd be like Dice working on a new Wing Commander...but not having any rights to access and use to the story, characters, races, lore, or assets of the Wing Commander universe.

I have seen the three titles you mentioned and they did not pique my interest in any meaningful way. I can get the same experience, for free, from Endless Skies plus infinite moddability if that were to be my thing. So if I am jonesing for a top down spacecraft based RPG, I just play that.

I hope your recovery will be swift and as pain free as possible, Blue.

RedEye9 wrote on Jun 18, 2021, 13:21:
A couple nights ago a Texas Blue alert woke me up. Hundreds of miles away a LEO had been shot. It didn't give enough information to identify the suspect or a link to get more information.
I quickly added it to the other alerts that I've disabled.

Haha! So did I! Of all the alerts, "Blue Alerts" are the ones I give the least fucks about.

Even before the legal battle, Toys for Bob said they were "working" on an SC2 sequel. At this point, I will believe it when I see it.

Stardock's attempt at a Star Control game was mediocre.

SlimRam wrote on Jun 18, 2021, 07:40:
Here are the two questions that will mean the most to whomever:

1) Will you protect me, even with your own life?

2) Will you protect my family, even with your own life or the life of your family?

1. No.
2. No.

Cutter wrote on Jun 17, 2021, 21:21:
Just look at the mess at the US southern border currently.

Hey RedEye and Aclesius, as fellow Texans, have you guys seen an absolute brown wave of immigrants just jam packed in your streets? I know I haven't.

Now we could talk about the refugee prison/concentration camps that are the direct result of decades of piss-poor immigration policy. That is on both the Democrats and the Republicans. No one side is worse than the other in that particular topic. Xenophobia helps no one.

From my own experience with both US immigration and Canadian immigration the differences are night and day. Even with the roadblocks and extra hurdles the pandemic has thrown in, the immigration process to Canada has been far, far easier than what Mrs. Burrito had to go through to become a US citizen.

I'll only watch this if it has two manky hookers, a racist dwarf, and cunt kids. Gotta have the cunt kids.

Aaaaaaand now we're moving the goal posts, trying really hard to gaslight, and whining about rules.

Oh, yeah, that's totally a valid, logical, and reasonable response.