Except...

The report sensationalises the presence of 'adult' material in virtual worlds, citing numbers to the effect that approximately 2/3^rds of the 30 or so worlds they looked at contained material they deemed both sexually and violently 'explicit' (more on this below). The point seems laboured so as to distract from the fact that, in their own words, very few of these worlds actually had mature content that was easily to get to for 'ordinary' or 'standard' user accounts. Even for the one or two that did, it was had at the end of 'tricking' the registration process into doing what was needed to get at it in whatever that form took - taking advantage of poorly implemented account set-up protocols to outright falsification of information ("identity fraud" for want of a better way to put it). The point seemed missed that this shows a sense of willfulness to be doing something that shouldn't be done, to keep at the various systems to try and find ways around them.

This leads to "Mapping the Risks" supposing (they don't 'suppose', they actually 'state' this) that Virtual Worlds are to blame for user dishonesty and as a result should be the ones to take steps to combat this (read that as "the ones to be blamed/take responsibility for it"). As above, the latter part of that is laudable in that yes, it's in the best interests of Virtual Worlds to effectively 'look after' their user base because they're the bread and butter of the business. But, just how far does/can that go when, as the FTC report itself repeatedly admits, there are limits to how much is possible with current technology - using various forms of ID checks are only so good as to clarifying whether the ID itself is valid, not the person using it; it can just as easily be used by the parent or a child to validate an account, anywhere, not just in a Virtual World.

And this seems to be the whole point missed in these discussions of accessibility, biased as they are by partisan political ruminations. They arm the uninformed parent just as readily as the misinformed politician with talking points and sound bites and nothing ever actually gets done, except for expedient finger pointing and litigious ambulance chasing. No one ever seems to stop to ask just who these miscreants are that muck about online or indeed why they do it; you could be forgiven for thinking that all minors with access to a computer and the Internet try logging in to services they're not supposed to, pretty much finding a way around all sorts of validation systems in the process.

I'm not necessarily conspiratorial by nature but my spidey-sense is telling me that this will be used as self-justification for further control directly over the Internet (as it's lead to in the UK through the Digital Economy Bill). Or, indirect control over an individuals access to it via something like biometrics; neither of which solves the fundamental problem of people (kids) doing things they shouldn't be doing. Issues of this nature always seem to end up with the same question being asked "where are the parents in all this mess?".

A FaceBook group is also available for those interested that will keep members up-to-date with the latest news on events; currently they're hosting a free class on Saturday the 5th Dec so prospective parents and students can find out what's going on. Drop by if you're interested in getting into game development and are in the area.

In the UK specifically, MW2 is reported to have shifted 1.7 million units in its first five days, grossing it nearly £70 million (£67.7 million), firmly trouncing GTA IV, the previous record holder (£40 million).

Is Modern Warfare a "pop culture phenomenon" as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick suggests? Not really, pop culture involves a bit more than a game simply selling well.

• Shader compiler no longer crashes when the log is not writable.
• Game/editor will run without having to first check for existing script files.
• Windows XP: Emissive lights causing purple lighting have been fixed.
• Windows 7: Added new SpeedTree binaries to address OS-specific issue.
• Added check to confirm GPU meets minimum requirements.
• Implemented fix for some SpeedTree trees causing crashes.
• Added fix for invalid characters being allowed in journal files causing database corruption.
• Incorporated fix for making a game in non-English and then running it on another non-English machine.
• Installer
  • If a prerequisite fails to install, the install will still continue and warn at the end.
  • Enhanced the check for a valid install path.
  • If the installer is skipped, the EULA comes up once.
  • Fixed CZE install not finding the EULA.
  • Fixed problem if temp install folders were deleted between install and uninstall.
  • Fixed problem if maps were named in non-ASCII characters.

For more details and downloads go to the Unreal Developers Network.

1) Write and use a special material shader script that turns off backface culling which forces the engine to render both sides of a surface - examples can be found here, here and here.

2) Duplicate a polygon and invert the face (normal) to the effect that you have two polygons back-to-back, one facing forwards, the other backwards.

When to use which option

Simple models work well with option "2". So if you were creating a tree sprite or billboard, simply duplicating and inverting faces would provide a quite and inexpensive way to create such objects. More complex or numerous objects benefit from option "1" - grass sprites for instance where there is a need to render a lot of double-sided surfaces, but care has to be taken to make sure you're not 'wasting' too much in the way of CPU resources rendering surfaces you wouldn't otherwise see (as well as taking into consideration issues with 'overdraw' and 'fill rates').

Speaking of which, Tiga (a UK trade association) recently released the results of a survey it took of it's members over the question of piracy. The results are quite interesting and go so far as to suggest the picture of the problem painted by the media and big studios isn't quite as reflective of the whole industry as they'd like us to think;

Firstly, the majority of video games developers (60%) see piracy as a problem for their business and most also see this as a constant or increasing problem for their business going forward (90%). However most developers view the actual threat of piracy to their business survival as low (60%) with only 20% ranking the threat as medium and only 10% considering the threat to be high (10% had no view).

Secondly, when asked about the Governments plans to tackle piracy through slowing down or cutting off the broadband supply of pirates, developers had mixed opinions, with 50% agreeing this was a good idea and 50% disagreeing.

Finally, developers are pragmatic and proactive in finding solutions to deal with the threat of piracy. 50% said they are considering different ways of doing business as a consequence of piracy, with 75% of that 50% citing digital distribution, subscription based services and/or ad supported free games as the ways they would or could change their business models.

If you want to develop and deploy or in any way commercially 'gain' or 'exploit' the use or presence of the UDK, then you're going to need to read through the license requirements for UDK before going any further - it's not cheap. Epics licensing is very switched on so they end up taking what must be a cumulative 30% + of any GROSS income before taxes and expenses have be accounted for. And you don't have to make, distribute or sell a game or any form of interactive media for licensing payments to kick in; based on the wording of the license, if you got paid for teaching or training people to use UDK you'd also be liable for fees. Hmm, I wonder if Epic would send a bill to Google to claim a share of Ad revenue generated as a result of UDK videos uploaded to YouTube...

So be warned, installing Easy Tree Generator may be infecting your computer systems without you knowing it, I just hope you didn't donate or buy it.

1. Check to make sure you're using the correct importer, there are two versions which are not backward/forward compatible; if you try to import a Collada file originally created using the 1.3 specifications, using the 1.4 import script version won't work.

2. Check your layers to make sure the mesh hasn't appeared in a layer that was selected at the time of import, importing Collada (or any models for that matter) models don't always default to layer "1".

3. Check the model in a model viewer or other third party 3D app to make sure it's sound.

If all the above still result in a broken or incomplete import than it's likely the mesh is corrupted in some fashion and will need to be re-exported from the source or possibly converting into another format (with the potential loss of any animations, materials and UVW maps).