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| Posted at 06:34AM PST by edwardquilo
Today is a great day for adventure gamers everywhere. Yesterday Tim Schaefer and company announced their plans to develop a brand new (but old school) adventure game, but needed some help to develop it. Perhaps because major game studios out there didn't want to shell out money for a potential point-and-click masterpiece, Schaefer reached out to gamers instead. The best part is Schaefer and the Double Fine staff even roped in the legendary game designer Ron Gilbert to help out in the project. The Grim Fandango designer and the Monkey Island creator working on a new adventure game? Who wouldn't want that?
Here's how Double Fine's Kickstarter project will work: Pledge $15, and you get a Steam copy of the game once it's released in (hopefully) October 2012. Donate an even larger amount and you get cool stuff like autographed posters, your name on the game credits, and your likeness drawn by Double Fine artists. The team has already hit its financial goal (in just one day), but there's still 33 days more to go if you're willing to pitch in and donate. So go ahead - open up that wallet and help out an awesome gaming cause. You know you want to.
OCC recently reviewed the Sapphire VID-2X, a display adapter allowing you to drive two external monitors which is great for laptop users needing more screen real estate. For road warriors though, lugging those two external monitors around is not an option which is where the GeChic On-Lap 1301 portable monitor comes in handy. This is a 13.3-inch, USB-powered monitor that hooks up via an HDMI or VGA connection. For those of you firmly rooted in front of your desk there's always the ASUS VG278H LCD Monitor 3D Vision-2 kit for 1080p HD, 3D viewing. We also have a look at the Hitachi Touro Desk Pro 3TB USB 3.0 external hard drive, OCZ's Octane 512GB solid state drive and more.
A long time ago, True Crime: Hong Kong was supposed to be released to revive the True Crime franchise. However, Activison canceled the project last year, and all hope seemed lost for a new True Crime game. Now, Square Enix has announced Sleeping Dogs, a Hong Kong-based cop drama designed by United Front Games. Sleeping Dogs is a spiritual successor to True Crime, and since United Front Games was working on True Crime: Hong Kong, it is safe to say we will get a similar style. Sleeping Dogs sounds like it will have an intense combat system, with shootouts, martial arts, and even street races getting a focus. You play as Hong Kong detective Wai Shen investigating the criminal underworld in the city-state.
Sleeping Dogs is planned for release later this year on the PC, PS3, and 360.
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| Posted at 06:13PM PST by CheeseMan42
Amazon has announced a new partnership with Viacom Inc. that will bring its television shows to the online streaming service offered by Amazon. Viacom owns networks such as Nickelodeon and MTV and will increase the amount of available content on the service by 15%. The service is part of the Amazon Prime subscription that also offers free two-day shipping, and costs only $79 per year. The increase in content is seen as a necessary move as Amazon tries to compete with Netflix in the video streaming market. Amazon still only spends about one third of what Netflix spends on content licensing deals per year, and many analysts feel that Amazon will need to continue to expand its content offerings to put any pressure on Netflix.
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| Posted at 05:47PM PST by CheeseMan42
G.Skill has announced a new line of memory products, the Ares series. This series will feature a low profile heat spreader design, measuring a mere 3.2cm. The low profile design will provide an excellent option for fitting under large CPU heatsinks or in small form factor PCs where space is at a premium. The Ares line will be available with both blue and orange heat spreaders, with kits available in capacities from 8GB to 32GB at a variety of memory frequencies. Check the G.Skill website for full details on all of the options.
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| Posted at 05:26PM PST by Guest_Jim_*
Lasers are cool. What is cooler than a laser? How about a laser smaller than the period at the end of this sentence? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed some new nano-lasers that measure half a micron (500 nm) across. No other laser capable of operating at room temperature has been made that small before, and never has there been a thresholdless laser.
Lasers require so much power be put into them before the material actually starts lasing. This energy requirement is called the threshold and the design the researchers have developed does not have one. This is greatly important as no power is wasted with a thresholdless laser.
The laser is coaxial in design, similar to a coaxial cable, with a metal rod surrounded by a metal-coated ring. The ring is designed to cause quantum electrodynamic effects which are what remove the lasing threshold. This design also appears to be scalable, so the researchers may be able to make an even smaller laser.
Such small lasers could be integrated into computer chips, biochemical sensors, and high-resolution displays. With a little math that’s 16933 pixels to an inch, assuming each pixel is three lasers wide and the lasers could be placed directly next to each other. Lasers are cool.
Mass Effect 3 may be a month away from launching, but it seems some downloadable content is already available. GameStop recently sold a piece of DLC for Mass Effect 3 called "From Dust," which could be some day one DLC for the game. The price is listed at $10, so whatever it is could be a big piece of story-based content for Mass Effect 3. However, no other DLC for ME3 has been revealed other than weapons and armor, and it is unlikely EA or BioWare will comment on the early sale.
On another note, BioWare has announced Mass Effect Infiltrator for iOS devices that will tie into Mass Effect 3's story. Infiltrator is a "fully featured" third-person shooter that sees your character, an intergalactic hero, freeing prisoners from Cerberus bases. You are also tasked with gathering intelligence on Cerberus that will help to expose it. Freeing prisoners and gathering intel helps to improve your galactic readiness in Mass Effect 3's single player story, but if you do not own an iOS device or are keen on ME3's multiplayer, you will be able to achieve a high enough galactic readiness to get the "optimal, complete ending." Infiltrator will also unlock weapons to be used in ME3, giving gamers a little bit more of an incentive to try it out.
Mass Effect 3 launches on March 6th for the PC, PS3, and 360. Mass Effect Infiltrator will be playable on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch but an exact release date was not announced at this time.
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| Posted at 04:20PM PST by Guest_Jim_*
There seems to be a general push in consumer electronics to a wire-free society. From networks to headphones, the cords are being cut. Now researchers at Stanford University are working to pull the plug on electric cars.
Two of the biggest issues with electric vehicles are their short range and long recharge times. Needing several hours for a single charge that only gets you 100 miles does not look as good as a tank of gas getting you 250+ miles. To address this, the researchers devised a way to wirelessly provide power to an electric vehicle while it is on a highway. The solution involves electromagnets buried beneath the road and within the car. The copper coils underground resonate at a specific frequency, which the magnets in the car also react to. When the car drives over them, the onboard copper coils are affected by the magnetic field of the other electromagnet, and start to resonate as well. This transfers energy that is then used to power the vehicle.
A major concern for this system is how the magnetic field will affect people, animals, and other pieces of technology. While only something with the same resonance as the electromagnet will feel the full power of the magnetic field, there is still 10 KW of power in the magnetic field. More research has to be done, but the initial simulations are quite promising.
Last week came the news that Ubisoft would be taking down a DRM server, which would result in a few games no longer being playable. Those games require an always-on connection, and without the DRM server to give the green light, Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, The Settlers 7, and Might & Magic Heroes VI would be unplayable. Those were supposed to have been the only games affected, but now it looks like Anno 2070, Driver: San Francisco, and Assassin's Creed: Revelations are all unplayable. All three of those games were listed as "safe" during the server move, but that does not appear to be the case. Ubisoft has issued an apology of sorts, and is working on a fix.
Why more games are affected than originally announced is unknown, nor is the reason why the games are unplayable to begin with. If the server move would impact some games, one would hope a backup option is in place to let gamers play the games they bought. In the world of draconian DRM measures, Ubisoft's plan certainly has become even less popular due to this snafu. There is no word on when the server will be back online, either.
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| Posted at 02:51PM PST by Guest_Jim_*
Graphene, like many other materials, responds to light by creating an electric current, and researchers want to know just how fast this happens. This information will be crucial for ultra-fast photodetectors based on the atom-thick plane of carbon. Making such a measurement though has been difficult for researchers, as it occurs on the order of picoseconds (10^-12 seconds), but those at Technische Universitaet Muenchen figured out a way to do it.
The measurement was done using the pump-probe technique. This involves shining a laser pulse onto a material to excite its electrons then firing a second pulse at the material to see what the electrons do. Think of it like trying to take a picture of insects scattering from a camera flash. You first use the camera flash to cause the insects to scatter, then a second flash to take a picture of them actually scattering.
Incidentally, the researchers found an interesting reaction of graphene to the optical laser. The light emitted by the graphene, after the optical lasers stimulated the electrons, was in the terahertz band. Radiation in this range of frequencies has a myriad of uses as it can pass through many materials, but illuminates organic compounds without damaging them. The ability to produce these photons from optical photons could prove useful in the future.
Last month, word came that the original Killzone would be landing on the PlayStation Network on January 24th. Well, today is now February 8th and there is still no Killzone on the PSN. Developer Guerilla Games has commented on the matter, and says the original Killzone is "delayed indefinitely" for a release on the PSN. Guerilla did not elaborate any further on why the PSN release was delayed, but hopefully it surfaces down the road. The original Killzone was a stunning example of what the PlayStation 2 hardware could do, but there were still some performance probelms since Killzone was pushing the hardware as far as possible. If the PSN release does come out, hopefully the game can be tweaked just enough to no longer have any issues.
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| Posted at 12:53PM PST by Guest_Jim_*
Fiber-optic cables are a key part of modern information technology. The high speed and bandwidth they provide is necessary for the Internet to exist in its current form. Using them however is not very simple though as optics use photons and electronics use electrons. At the ends of every fiber-optic cable there has to be technology to convert electronic and optical signals, and something to allow a round cable to interface with a flat chip.
Researchers at Penn State and the University of Southampton have developed a new optical cable to simplify the optical-electronic connection. Instead of having all of the conversion technology on the computer chip, the researchers have moved some of it into the optical cable itself. This means the necessary computer chips do not need to have fiber-optics integrated anymore. Creating such chips requires extremely expensive clean rooms but this new fiber-optic cable can be made with much simpler and cheaper equipment.
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| Posted at 09:32AM PST by edwardquilo
Vinyl lovers out there have probably been lamenting for ages about the sound quality of digital music, especially since the MP3 format took over the rest of the world. MP3s may have a small file size, but contains no more than five percent of a song's original source data, making the format a horrible choice for discerning music enthusiasts. Enter Neil Young, who's more than happy to put the MP3 format to its virtual grave, and lavish our typically ignorant ears the kind of sound quality its not used to hearing. "Steve Jobs was a digital pioneer, but when he went home, he listened to vinyl," remarked Young in a recent interview. Had Jobs lived longer, Young speculated that it's very likely the former Apple CEO would've made a gadget that supported digital music playback in its pure form. Still, Young remained optimistic that another tycoon with deep pockets might be developing something like it.
Unfortunately, having pristine audio in a digital music player does have its drawbacks. For one, high-quality formats like DSD (Direct Stream Digital) amount to 300 MB for five minutes of audio. With that kind of size, a 200-song playlist is going to eat up a lot of space, even on a beefy 64 GB portable music player. Streaming songs online with audio files this big isn't going to make your ISP happy. Go the high quality route, and you also lose the accesibility of a fast download with an MP3. That's assuming you can find an online music store selling a single song with a 300 MB footprint. We're still a long way from matching the sonic clarity of vinyl against the convenience of a bite-sized MP3 file, but surely we'll get there someday.
Biostar has made its entry into the higher-end segment of the motherboard market with its TPower X79 and, as the name implies, it's based off the Intel X79 chipset. Corsair has a series of Enthusiast power supplies and we get to examine 550W and 750W modular units along with the NZXT HALE82 850W 80Plus Bronze power supply. We have picked up a couple of case reviews looking at the Antec Eleven Hundred super mid-tower and the BitFenix Raider mid-tower chassis. That still leaves us with plenty more items in our roundup which you can read about using the links posted below.
Fans of Bethesda RPGs have two reasons to rejoice today, as not only has the Creation Kit been released for Skyrim, but Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition has also launched. Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition includes the base game and all the DLC, giving you countless hours of enjoyment in the Mojave Wasteland. Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, Courier's Stash, and Gun Runners' Arsenal are all packaged in with the base game of New Vegas, and at just $40 for the PC version, you cannot go wrong with picking up the Ultimate Edition. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 gamers have to shell out $50 for the Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition, which is a small price to pay. If you head on over to the source link, Bethesda has included the sheet music for "Begin Again" from Dead Money.
Some PlayStation 3 gamers have been enjoying the Starhawk beta, with everybody getting a chance to check it out soon. Starhawk is the spiritual successor to Warhawk, but set in the future with more advanced gear at your disposal. If you have a GameStop nearby, you may be interested in pre-ordering Starhawk to get a free upgrade to the Limited Edition. The Starhawk Limited Edition includes a digital copy of the original Warhawk (the PS1 version), multiplayer maps and skins, an XMB theme, and the game's soundtrack. Pre-orderers will receive the Maw of Despair Outcast Pack, which includes an underground co-op map and Shade Warrior multiplayer skin, and the Echo Scrapyard Rift Pack, which has the Scrapyard Homeworld multiplayer map and the Huxley Ardin multiplayer skin. The theme consists of concept art, while the soundtrack is composed by Christopher Lennertz, who composed the score for Mass Effect 2.
Starhawk will be available exclusively on the PS3 on May 8th.
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| Posted at 06:22PM PST by Guest_Jim_*
In physics the Curie Point is the temperature at which a magnet will lose its strength. Materials are magnetized when the atoms align themselves so their individual magnetic fields add together. As heat causes atoms and molecules to move around, it is not too surprising that a high temperature can destroy magnetic properties. Now researchers at the University of York have found heat can make a material a magnet, which has implications in magnetic storage.
All traditional hard drives use magnetic ‘hard disk’ platters to magnetic store information, an electromagnetic headers to flip the bits on the platters from 0 to 1, and vice versa. Magnetically flipping a bit is not easy though, so researchers have already tried heating the bit to enable faster flipping. Though the writing is easier, it still takes around 1 ns to happen, thereby limiting the maximum write speed of the drive. By just using heat though the researchers have found the process can be accelerated to just a couple thousands of a nanosecond; roughly 500 times faster. In terms of an actual transfer speed, we are talking about terabytes of data being written every second. All of this is also accomplished with much less energy than the electromagnets found in a modern HDD too.
This technology may not enter a consumer product anytime soon though, and maybe not ever. Other techniques of quickly and efficiently writing information to a hard disk have been in development for a while and will likely reach the market before this can catch on; especially as the lasers needed for this are about a meter long at the moment. However, in areas where speed is needed more than a compact size, or use optical signals already, this could still prove useful.
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| Posted at 05:30PM PST by CheeseMan42
Cooler Master has announced the Elite 361 rotatable chassis. The Mini-Tower form factor case will be able to fit a full-sized ATX motherboard, allowing users to fit their favorite motherboards into the interesting looking case. The case will look at home in both horizontal and vertical configurations, with a rotatable logo and movable rubber feet. The case will also support six 3.5" hard drives, seven expansion slots, and multiple 80mm and 120mm fans.
Fans of first-person shooters and tower defense games got their wish when Sanctum launched last year. Combining both genres in a clever mix, Sanctum allows you to play with up to three other friends across a variety of levels. The game appeals to both FPS and tower defense lovers, which should basically mean everybody can enjoy Sanctum. A sequel is on the way, as Sanctum 2 has been announced for a 2013 launch. The original is a PC-exclusive, however Sanctum 2 will be available on the consoles too. The PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade would be the likely options for Sanctum 2, in addition to the PC version. Very few other details about Sanctum 2 have been revealed so far, but at least a sequel is on the way.
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| Posted at 05:11PM PST by Guest_Jim_*
Both AMD and Intel have been developing and selling CPUs with GPUs built in. This integration allows for cheaper and more efficient systems, as a dedicated GPU is not needed, but their designs are not perfected yet, at least according to North Carolina State University researchers.
The purpose and potential of CPUs and GPUs are quite different, with GPUs better at performing simple calculations and CPUs better at more complex problems. For some math, such as linear algebra, the GPU is far superior to the CPU, but for operations that require flexible data retrieval and decisions, the CPU is the best choice.
Despite the cores’ proximity on the new chips, they are not utilized as though they were on the same silicon. What the researchers propose, and have tested, is having the CPU aid the GPU by loading data the GPU will need into the shared L3 cache. This allows the data to be accessed much faster than if the GPU had to call it from off-chip memory. The average speed increase was 21.4% in the testing, but it reached as high as 113%.
No word on when this might be incorporated into processors, but one of the co-authors of the study is from AMD, and it was funded in part by AMD as well. The paper is to be presented on February 27 at the International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture.
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| Posted at 05:09PM PST by CheeseMan42
Thermaltake has announced that it is adding several power supplies to both the Toughpower and SMART PSU lines. The Toughpower line will be adding supplies with output capacity of 550W, 650W, and 750W. All three of these PSUs are 80Plus Gold certified. Active CLAMP circuitry will provide for high efficiency and low power loss, and also features protection against short-circuits, over voltage, and under voltage, among other unwanted circumstances. The SMART series will receive 750W and 850W units, both of which will feature modular cables allowing you to use only what you need. The two SMART series PSUs are 80Plus Bronze certified, and will be kept cool with the presence of a 140mm cooling fan.
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| Posted at 02:19PM PST by Guest_Jim_*
Wouldn't it be nice if some of that energy lost as heat from your computer, phone, or anything else really, be recaptured and used? Researchers at MIT have something that may lead to just that, but not only for our electronics, but also solar panels and space missions.
The researchers have created a photonic crystal that can withstand temperatures as high as 1200 C. Such a high tolerance makes the material potentially suited for a wide range of applications: solar-thermal conversion or solar-chemical conversion; radioisotope-powered devices; hydrocarbon-powered generators; and more. If coupled with a chemical microreactor to generate the heat, the technology could allow a device to run 10 times longer than with a modern battery, of the same size.
Currently the material is just a material and further work will have to be done for it to be used in any commercial product. Luckily though, modern techniques for making computer chips can be used to create the photonic crystal, so when products are designed, they can be produced.
The day has finally arrived, as Bethesda has launched the Creation Kit for Skyrim. The Creation Kit is an incredibly in-depth set of mod tools to let anyone create whatever they want for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. You can have your mod sent to the Skyrim Workshop for anyone to search for and download, and the Workshop also allows for you to subscribe to different mods to always keep them updated for your game. With the Creation Kit also comes the High Resolution Texture Pack, which is a free download separate from the main game. It is a 3GB download and Bethesda recommends your computer exceeds the recommend specifications before you install it. It should overhaul all the textures to turn an already good looking game into something great. You can pick up Skyrim for $40 on Steam until this Thursday, 4PM PST.
With the Creation Kit now available, it should only be a matter of time for the impressive number of created mods to swell to extraordinary heights. You can download the Creation Kit from the Tools section of your Steam Library, although you may need to restart Steam for it to show. Below is the first part of a video Bethesda has made introducing us to the Creation Kit. You can view the second part and the third part as well.
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| Posted at 11:37AM PST by Guest_Jim_*
Terahertz radiation exists at the edge of the far infrared part of the spectrum, near microwaves. This range of frequencies is of great interest to researchers the world over because only water and metal blocks it. This property makes terahertz incredibly useful for communication and sensing devises as the radiation does not adversely affect the human body. From medicine to security and communication, terahertz technology would have a great impact. Before that can happen though, researchers have to be able to control the waves.
Rice University researchers have recently devised a terahertz polarizer that operates on frequencies from 0.5 to 2.2 THz. This is huge compared to other polarizers. The new design utilizes nanotubes that will other block or allow transmission of the radiation based on an external electric field. A nanotube polarizer had been tried before, but was only able to block 30-50%, which isn’t enough. To fix this the researchers made it thicker. The result is a polarizer that can switch from allowing 100% of a terahertz signal through, to blocking 99.9%.
Further improvements to the polarizer can be made, but they will require overcoming an issue all nanotube researchers are having. When nanotubes are grown the sample includes both semiconducting and metallic nanotubes. Only the semiconducting are useful in the polarize, but there is currently no efficient way to either sort out the types of nanotubes, or simply produce one kind instead of both.
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| Posted at 08:25AM PST by edwardquilo
The Start button, that familiar desktop selection first glimpsed in Windows 95, may cease to exist in the final version of Windows 8. As it stands, it has disappeared in the latest Windows 8 consumer build, which can be seen in leaked screenshots replaced with a "super bar." Earlier Windows 8 builds streamlined the Start button to match the Metro interface, but according to reports, Microsoft has been mulling over the decision to scrap the Start button indefinitely. Despite that, the functionality of the Start button hasn't disappeared entirely. It is reported that there will still be a hot corner, which when hovered with your cursor or with a finger swipe, will let you access navigation windows and offer thumbnail previews. This is an effort to provide a more consistent experience between the traditional desktop mode and the Metro UI environment. While this might be jarring to people used to the traditional Start button, the super bar will let users pin favorite shortcuts from desktop applications.
Another gripe some users have with Windows 8 is its apparent focus on touch input and the Metro UI, with the new UI reportedly being an uncomfortable experience when used with a keyboard and mouse, although Microsoft has promised to address that in an upcoming Consumer Preview.
A couple of days post-Super Bowl and we have a gaming review covering the NFL Blitz 2012 Edition title for PS3. Xigmatek might be better known for its cooling products, but in today's roundup we have a look at the company's Midgard II Mid-Tower chassis. Speaking of cooling products, we also have a review on the Cooler Master Gemin II SF524 CPU cooler. There's been a bit of discussion lately in the OCC forums regarding hard drive prices and the effect of the recent flooding in Thailand on the hard drive industry. We also picked up an article titled HDD Pricewatch: Three Months Into the Thai Floods in today's roundup that further examines the situation.
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| Posted at 01:29AM PST by premiumgfx
Ohio-based custom-computer manufacturer AVADirecthas launched its latest gaming laptop dubbed the Clevo P270WM. The new laptop is touted as the 'fastest desktop replacement in the world,' featuring the Intel X79 chipset coupled with Sandy Bridge-E CPUs, such as the Intel Core i7-3960X. In addition to the Intel CPU, the Clevo P270WM packs up to three 9.5" HDDs or SSDs (optional RAID configuration), up to 32GB of quad channel memory, the latest GPUs such as the NVIDIAGTX 580M 2GB with SLI support, and overclocking support. Other features include an HDMI output, three USB 3.0 ports and a 17.3" Full HD LED display. A backlit keyboard makes typing easy in low-light situations. The AVADirectClevo P270WM gaming laptop is available for pre-order now, starting from $3000.00. The base model will include the Intel Core i7 3930K processor, NVIDIAGTX 580M 2GB video card, 4GB of DDR3 memory running at 1333MHz, a 750GB hard drive, and will run on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
The Creation Kit for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is scheduled to launch tomorrow, and Bethesda's Pete Hines said it would include a "special surprise." What exactly that surprise is has not been discussed, but one individual has done some digging to potentially give away the surprise. It appears the Creation Kit will include HD textures for Skyrim, at least according to the Steam Content Description Records. Modders have been improving the textures in Skyrim to give PC gamers something higher resolution than the console textures included, but, if this rumor proves true, Bethesda will have taken the initiative to improve the textures itself. Whether these HD textures will actually be included and at what resolution remains to be seen, but luckily the Creation Kit is scheduled to launch tomorrow when all will be revealed.
Tie-ins to video games are nothing new, with books, comics, and even movies seeking to expand the created universe or provide a new glimpse at it. The Mass Effect franchise is an incredibly popular game series, but it also has some books and comics telling other tales within the universe. Recently, Mass Effect: Deception launched as the latest novel, however, it had a new author instead of Drew Karpyshyn, the man who helped build Mass Effect's history. Fans were eager to check out Deception regardless, but were horrified to see the book filled with canonical errors, such as volus not being in full coverage enviro-suits. The fans lashed out over these grevious mistakes, and now BioWare has apologized for the book and will correct the errors in Mass Effect: Deception. The studio is "taking the matter very seriously," and will get a corrected edition released. When that new edition releases was not revealed, but hopefully the book can finally fit into the Mass Effect universe properly.
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| Posted at 05:28PM PST by Guest_Jim_*
An advantage to large naval ships is the ability to house large and powerful weapons, from missiles to cannons. The Navy has been working on an advanced type of weapon called a railgun. Unlike most guns which rely on a chemical fuel (such as gunpowder), railguns use electricity to create powerful magnetic fields. With the proper setup, these fields can accelerate objects to incredible velocities; in this case the projectiles can reach 4500 mph to 5600 mph.
Much of the research and development had been done by the Office of Naval Research in their own laboratories, but soon they will be testing the first industry railgun prototype launcher built by BAE systems. This device uses 32 megajoules of energy, while Navy’s device was only firing at 1.5 Mj. (A one ton car travelling at 100 mph is roughly one megajoule.) At first the testers are aiming for a range of just 50-100 nautical miles (57-115 miles) but intend on expanding this to 220 nautical miles (253 miles) in the future.
More work will have to be done before these weapons will be found on ships though, as automated reloading and cooling systems have to be developed. The Office of Naval Research though has recently award $10 million contracts to Raytheon Corp, BAE Systems and General Atomics to create pulsed power systems that should allow a for a firing rate of 6-10 shots per minute.
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