Effing Hail, The isometric infographic game!

"Effing Hail" is a cool web game you play in your browser from Intuition Games!  The isometric animation is very reminiscent of the Royskopp video for "Remind Me".  You control the wind to hold the hail in the air so it continues to grow in size before releasing it to crush the objects below.

Found on Information Aesthetics and a bunch of Tweets on Twitter!

Halo 3 HeatMaps

A while back Bungie.net, the makers of the Halo series of games, started tracking data on their servers about how their different online multiplayer maps are preforming.  They converted the data on kills and deaths in the multiplayer games into heatmaps, and then started publishing the maps online for everyone to see.

The advantages to players are that you can see places to avoid (areas with the highest deaths), and the locations from where the most kills come from.  The map above shows the total data for the map called The Pit.  But you can narrow down the information based on the type of weapon used.  For example the map below shows the locations of the kills made with the sniper rifle.  Meaning that shooting from these locations have been the most successful.  (Also helpful if you keep getting killed by snipers and can't find them)

"Heatmaps are the Doppler Radar System of Death in Halo 3. We're tracking encounters, weapons used and their results in a given game, collecting that data and sharing it with players visually. The key here is 'the darker the red, the more frequent the deaths (or kills, depending on the parameters)'," Bungie explains in its weekly update.

The Evolution of Game Controllers

Damien Lopez has hade two great images showing the evolution of game controller design over the last few decades.  He also created another one showing the evolution of portable game systems.  This was supposedly the link to Damien's page, but its not working for me.

Thanks Dániel for sending in the link.

The Convergence of Film and Gaming

From Trendone.de in Gemany, a potential look at the future merging of film and gaming into a complete immersive experience.  High-res image available here.

Thanks Alwyn for sending in the link!  Also found on digg.com

Chess: Watch the Artificial Intelligence

This is really awesome.  Thinking Machine 4 has an online chess game that lets you watch the computer evaluate all of the future moves in real time each time its the computer's turn.

When the machine (Black) is thinking, a network of curves is overlaid on the board.  The curves show potential moves--often several turns in the future--considered by the computer. Orange curves are moves by black; green curves are ones by white. The brighter curves are thought by the program to be better for white. 

I found this posted by Nathan on Simple Complexity.

How Star Wars Changed the World

The original Star Wars has certainly gone on to produce more than just sequels.  It has created the people and the technologies that are now considered the best in the industry.  Michelle Devereaux created this family tree for Wired magazine back in 2005 and I love how the line colors indicate people, technologies and company connections, but the tree is organized into movies, sound, effects and technologies.

I actually believe the tree is incomplete.  I think Star Wars had far greater reach and influence that what Michelle mapped out here.

It all started with a band of rebels who wanted to help a farmboy follow his dream.  Three decades later, the Star Wars empire has grown into one of the most fertile incubators of talent in the worlds of movies (Lucasfilm), visual effects (Industrial Light & Magic), sound (Skywalker Sound), and videogames (LucasArts).  Along the way, some of the original Lucas crew has gone on to become his biggest competitors.  This chart maps the people, companies and technologies touched by the Force. - Michelle Devereaux

Thanks Alwyn!

The history of olympic medals

 

Grace Lee is a Junior at Parsons, the New School for Design in New York City.  She went back and visually laid out all of the medals won be every country in every Olympics since Athens in 1896.  Across the bottom it also shows how many nations participated each year and how many athletes were involved.  This was a project in her Information Design class, and she did a fabulous job!

The games have always brought of this world together in peace, leaving behind any racial or cultural boundaries.  The Olympic games create a time when the world can be smaller and united as a human race, rather than separate nations.  With the summer games in Beijing, China, and the upcoming games in Vancouver, Canada, the Olympic games will continue to be a time of friendly competition.

Thanks Grace.  I love how this project turned out.

By popular request I have uploaded the full PDF version here.

NFL TV Distribution Maps

 

 

I found mention of these NFL Maps on Daring Fireball.  Each week, you can see which parts of the country will be broadcasting which games.  Sadly you can't see "why" the networks chose the regions they did.

Olympic Wrap-Up

To complete the week of Olympic Infographics from the NYTimes.com, they have created a page to summarize all of the infographics they created.  They've been adding to it every day, so it won't actually be complete until the Olympics are over.

Beijing Air Quality Index

NYTimes.com is also tracking the Air Quality Index by day during the Olympics using a heatmap style graphic.  There's definitely more pollution and particles in the air than most of the participants are used to.  So far, there have been a couple of days in the 90's, but didn't cross over 100 into the "unhealthy" range.