Futuremark has launched a new API Overhead feature test for its 3DMark benchmarking utility, with the test allowing users to test performance differences between DirectX 12, DirectX 11 and Mantle API.

Windows 10 Technical Preview users on build 10041 and the latest video drivers from Windows Update will now be able to access the test through 3DMark Advanced or Professional Edition. To test the DirectX 12 features, users must have DirectX 11-compliant hardware with at least 4GB RAM and 1GB video memory. To run Mantle tests, you need AMD hardware that works with the Mantle API.

Developed in collaboration with AMD(NASDAQ:AMD), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), the test’s objective is to determine the “relative performance of different APIs on a single system.” Essentially, you’ll be able to gauge how your current system performs with DirectX 11, and the differences in performance when using DirectX 12.

The API Overhead test works by sending a call to the GPU to draw an object on the screen, which is handled through the API. The more efficient the API, the more number of lines that can be drawn on the screen. The number of draw calls is increased with every iteration, with the final result calculated based on the maximum number of draw calls per second achieved by an API before the frame rate goes under 30 fps.

With DirectX 12 slated for commercial availability later this year, Futuremark’s test offers users a way to check how their current configurations will be able to handle Microsoft’s new API.

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In an interesting turn of events, Samsung (KRX: 005935) has decided to counter Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) lawsuit against Samsung and Qualcomm with a suit of its own against Nvidia in Virginia District Court. All of the legal documents are not publicly available yet, so anyone interested to see details of this filing will be forced to head on over to legal360 to get the details of the case. According to them, Samsung alleges that Nvidia and Velocity Micro infringe upon 8 patents of their own that they have filed in the past. Those patents are:

5,860,158 – Cache control unit with a cache request transaction-oriented protocol
6,282,938 – Method for rolling a metal strip
6,287,902 – Methods of forming etch inhibiting structures on field isolation regions
6,819,602 – Multimode data buffer and method for controlling propagation delay time
8,252,675 – Methods of forming CMOS transistors with high conductivity gate electrodes
6,804,724 – Analog/digital display adapter and a computer system having the same
7,073,054 – Computer system and method for booting up the same
5,777,854 – Integrate flexible contacts grounding system for a computer system chassis
6,262,938 – Synchronous DRAM having posted CAS latency and method for controlling CAS latency

This lawsuit appears to be almost as frivolous as Nvidia’s suit against Samsung and is structured similarly. Samsung is essentially going after Nvidia in this lawsuit, but is simultaneously going after one of Nvidia’s partners who utilize that technology in order to make it pay for its lawsuit against Samsung. Nvidia’s original lawsuit was a clear jab at Qualcomm and pulled Samsung into the lawsuit because they are one of Qualcomm’s biggest customers and the leading Android smartphone manufacturer.

The interesting thing is that Samsung claims that Nvidia is also making false claims about its products (where it competes with Samsung). The company specifically outlines that it is falsely advertising the Shield tablet, which Nvidia claims to have the world’s fastest mobile processor. However, according to Samsung, they state that ‘standard benchmarking tools’ show that the tablet’s performance isn’t as fast as Samsung’s own Exynos 5433 SoC, which is in the Galaxy Note 4. Interestingly enough, if you go to Futuremark’s website and check the PCMark for Android benchmark the four fastest devices are all Nvidia Tegra devices, including the HTC Nexus 9. What’s interesting is that Samsung didn’t go after HTC and the Nexus 9 even though it uses an Nvidia Tegra K1, indicating that they probably don’t want to burn that bridge by suing them. Also, if you go to Rightware’s Powerboard, which measures their own benchmark (Basemark OS II) Nvidia-based devices are 2nd and 3rd fastest after Apple’s A8X in the iPad Air 2 showing that Samsung’s Exynos chip is nowhere near the fastest according to industry standard benchmarks. You can also go to Kishonti’s GFXBench tables and once again Nvidia-based tablets take the top spot, nullifying any of Samsung’s own claims.

Let’s be honest here, Nvidia’s original patents are already fairly questionable and generic in terms of scope and clearly indicate the company’s desire to license their GPU IP and force others to do so as well, especially if they’re competitors like Qualcomm. Nvidia burned the bridge with Samsung as a result of this suit and now Samsung is lodging an equally ridiculous lawsuit against Nvidia in hopes of possibly canceling out Nvidia’s lawsuit. It isn’t quite clear what either company hopes to achieve here, but the end result will hurt consumers and very likely drive up legal costs for all of the companies involved, which will impact profits for some smaller companies like Nvidia and Velocity Micro.

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Futuremark, a privately held Finnish company, was acquired by UL (Underwriters Laboratories). The strategic move by UL into the software development industry gives it a leg up in meeting increased demand for performance data.

Futuremark bench marking company is now part of Underwriters Laboratories.

We are accustomed to looking for the assurance of the UL label on anything that uses electricity or supplies power. Now the integrity of that company will stand behind the efforts of Futuremark.

The UL symbol assures us that our Christmas tree won’t catch on fire.

Stephen Kirk, VP and GM of UL Consumer Technology Division said: “Software quality is a significant driver of product safety and performance and we believe that benchmarking is an important way to help our customers to improve the performance of their products.”

Global competition to improve product performance and the need to differentiate products has driven market demand for benchmarking services. Futuremark has built its reputation for quality testing of desktop computers, notebooks, tablets, and smart phones over the past 17 years. UL has been around for 120 years and has become a premier global safety science company.

The UL symbol promises your refrigerator won’t short out and allow your food to spoil.

UL plans to expand the range and depth of Futuremark’s benchmark offerings by investment in the company’s product development. Partnering with UL will allow Futuremark to offer its products and services in the Asian market. Asus headquartered in Taiwan and Beijing-based Lenovo are already involved in their program.

Asian made products seek UL approval. Futuremark hopes UL will encourage more Asian manufacturers to utilize its benchmarking software.

Jukka Mäkinen, Futuremark CEO, said that the company has seen its software adopted by the European Commission as well as national governments. Many of the world’s leading technology companies have joined their Benchmark Development Program. Although proud of what Futuremark has done on its own, Mäkinen said, “With UL, we’re in an even better position to achieve our goals.”

UL and Futuremark pride themselves on not being influenced by third parties. “Both UL and Futuremark have a longstanding tradition of neutrality and independence,” Kirk at UL professed. “I think this common cultural trait makes the two companies a great fit for each other, our employees and our customers.”

Mäkinen said, “We will be able to create more benchmarks with more features for more platforms. Our benchmarks will also benefit from UL’s labs, quality assurance, and marketing. But most important of all, we will continue making benchmarks with integrity within an organization that values neutrality as highly as we do.”

UL backs up their concern for consumer safety with a survey. In The Product Mindset 2013, the company found that 92 percent of the surveyed manufacturers and 73 percent of the surveyed consumers agree that product safety is a priority that is becoming more important. However, 58 percent of the consumers believe that manufacturers need to improve product safety.

Concern for safety is indicated by our use of surge protectors – ones that have the UL certification.

UL hosted a seminar at the WTconference 2014 in Taipei on Wearable Technologies featuring product testing and certification saying since wearable devices use a variety of wireless and mobile communication technologies, this also forms a key factor in product differentiation. UL proposed three main keys for successful wearable device suppliers. Maxi Tsai, business development manager for UL’s Consumer Technology Division said: “Manufacturers should have a well-planned strategy for the three aspects including the compliance of national regulatory requirements, the delivery of exceptional product quality and performance, as well as the creation of the most delightful user experience,”

Benchmarking wearables only increases the impact of Futuremark on the industry. The company cooperates with many of the world’s leading technology companies to develop industry standard benchmarks that are relevant, accurate and impartial. Results submitted by millions of users are stored in the world’s largest and most comprehensive hardware performance database which is maintained by Futuremark. This information helps consumers make informed purchasing decisions.

We wouldn’t want to operate most of our devices – cameras, smartphones, or laptops – without UL certification.

User reactions to the acquisition of Futuremark by UL have been positive including this one with a plug and for, and opinion on, Futuremark’s product: “Congratulations! I hope this means existing FM staff remain and have more time to focus on improvements upon 3DMark, it’s great but it could be even better.”

That user can rest assured. UL has stated that all employees will remain at Futuremark as a part of Underwriters Laboratories.

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With its PC-based benchmarking utility often considered to be the standard for gauging the performance of a system, Futuremark is looking to new form factors with the launch of PCMark, a benchmark tool designed for Android handsets.

As is the case with its desktop benchmarking suite, PCMark comes with a series of tests that determine how a device will function in real-world usage. Targeted as a better benchmark for smartphones and tablets, PCMark focuses more on the performance of the device than singling out an individual component. The benchmark utility is free, coming without any advertisements or content that has to be unlocked.

PCMark currently comes with the Work benchmark, which tests the performance and the work battery life of a device. In our tests with the OnePlus One, we managed to get an average score of 3759, with the test broken down into the following categories:

The battery life test came in at an average of 7 hours and 40 minutes. Along with the benchmark scores, Futuremark’s utility gives users a detailed rundown of the hardware their device is toting. Furthermore, there is a device leaderboard that highlights the fastest devices currently available today. High on that list is the Galaxy Note 4, which comes with an Exynos 5433 SoC, along with other Samsung-made devices like the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet and the Galaxy Note 3. PCMark for Android can be downloaded from here.

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The people at Futuremark have been quietly keeping their new PCMark for Android benchmark fairly quiet. They technically did already announce the benchmark, without any NDAs, but they haven’t quite fully launched the benchmark to the public, only making it available to select press for a preview. We’ve had an opportunity to test this new benchmark and take a look at exactly what it tests and how it tests the devices.

The first and foremost thing you need to know about PCMark is that it is not 3DMark, which is already available for Android. 3DMark’s goal is to inform you purely about the device’s performance in 3D applications, with a specific focus on 3D gaming. It does not take into account daily usage or what kinds of applications you would be using on your phone throughout the day. During it’s testing PCMark for Android tests web browsing, video playback, writing (texting), and photo editing. Considering most people’s phone usage, these four tests would very likely represent a vast majority of most users’ usage of their phones unless they constantly keep Facebook and Twitter open all day.

The PCMark for Android benchmark comprises of the ‘Work Performance’ benchmark which actually tests and scores the ability of the smartphone or tablet to execute these tests and the ‘Work Battery Life’ test which essentially tests the battery life of the device, stopping at 20% of the device’s battery life to determine exactly how much battery life the device is capable of achieving. Of course, at 20% many smartphones and tablets go into power saving mode so they will likely show lower performance but better battery life. In fact, the great thing about PCMark for Android is that we can now see a direct comparison between a device’s performance and it’s battery life. And it of course comes as no surprise that some of the devices that do the best in PCMark for Android’s performance test doesn’t necessarily do so great in the battery life test and vice versa.

So, what we’ve done for you is to combine PCMark for Android’s top 10 battery life devices and taken their performance numbers down so that you can see which devices sacrifice the most performance for battery life. In the future, once PCMark for Android opens up to the public, we’ll get an even better idea of which devices sacrifice the most and which devices don’t.

PCMark For Android Chart

If you’d like to see the fastest Android devices using PCMark for Android, head on over to this page. And if you want to see which devices have the best battery life, check out this page. Judging from the results on those pages, neither of the top devices are surprising since Nvidia has some very powerful processors, but their battery life isn’t necessarily the best. The Tegra 4 powered SHIELD Portable is capable of being the #1 because it does not have to downclock at all due to having active cooling, allowing it to run full throttle all the time. Additionally, the Xperia Z products seem to have the best battery life of the bunch, however, the full line Xperia Z3 series of tablets and smartphones haven’t been tested for battery life yet, so there’s a good chance they will capture the top. But you can already see that the Xperia Z3 Compact retains its reputation as the best battery life smartphone on the market.

We haven’t been given an exact date of when PCMark for Android will become public, but it may come as soon as next week and by then there’s a very good chance we will be able to test it out on the new Nexus 9 (with 64-bit Tegra K1) and Nexus 6 (rumored to have Snapdragon 805). It will also be interesting to see how the battery life of devices like the Nexus 5 will chance with the Android L release as well.

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Futuremark has always been on the cutting edge of graphics benchmarks and today represents a continuation of that leadership with their new 4K gaming benchmark. This new benchmark is a 4K version of their popular Fire Strike benchmark, which is the company’s most graphically intensive benchmark that is part of their 3DMark graphics benchmark suite to date. It goes by the name of Fire Strike Ultra, which is an update to the Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme tests that most users are used to. Fire Strike Ultra renders the original Fire Strike benchmark at a much higher 3840 x 2160 resolution, quadruple that of what the original benchmark was designed for (1920 x 1080).

Today’s Fire Strike Ultra announcement also indicates that Futuremark believes that the future of gaming benchmarks will need to include 4K benchmarking because of the increased prevalence of 4K displays for gaming. The benchmark itself will be included with an update to the 3DMark benchmark for anyone with a professional license, but if you have a basic version of 3DMark you are going to need to pay for an upgrade, which is a little disappointing. Fire Strike Ultra will also require that you have at least 3GB of VRAM on your graphics card as there’s a very high chance that it will run out of memory if you don’t. In many 4K games with higher graphical settings we have found that cards do in fact exceed 3GB of VRAM usage, which would explain Futuremark’s recommendation. Obviously you can still run a 2GB card, but it will very likely suffer horrendous frame (score) drops due to running out of VRAM.

Below are the differences between the Fire Strike, Fire Strike Extreme and Fire Strike Ultra settings in all three of the Fire Strike tests in the whole benchmark.

Fire Strike Graphics Test 1

Fire Strike Graphics Test 2

Fire Strike Combined Graphics and Physics Test

There is already a pretty sizable Fire Strike Ultra hall of fame leaderboard where you can see what hardware is getting the highest clocks with this less-than-day-old benchmark.

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Futuremark has today announced their new 3DMark DX11 benchmark called Sky Diver. Futuremark’s announcement of the new Sky Diver DX11 benchmark is clearly a pre-announcement ahead of Computex Taipei next week, which we’ll be covering for you from Taipei.  This makes Sky Diver the fourth benchmark as part of the 3DMark suite of benchmarks slotting in as the 2nd most strenuous test that 3DMark will offer cross-platform to PC and Mobile users ranging from smartphones all the way up to gaming desktops. Sure, it means that there’s yet another test to run, however this is a high-end test specifically designed to be able to run on gaming laptops and mid-range desktops and maybe even the ultra-highend tablet.

With the introduction of 3DMark Sky Diver, here’s how Futuremark’s 3DMark tests break down for different classes of hardware top to bottom (DX11 feature level 11 all the way down to DX11 feature level 9).

3DMark Tests:

Fire Strike, for high performance gaming PCs (DirectX 11, feature level 11)

Sky Diver, for gaming laptops and mid-range PCs (DirectX 11, feature level 11)
Cloud Gate, for notebooks and typical home PCs (DirectX 11 feature level 10)

Ice Storm, for tablets and entry level PCs (DirectX 11 feature level 9)

Futuremark will also be showing Sky Diver at Computex at multiple companies’ booths including ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, Galaxy, Inno3D, and G-Skill from  June 3 through June 7th. This will likely become the standard GPU benchmark for laptops where Firestrike is too strenuous and Cloudgate isn’t stressful enough. Anyone that has ever run both benchmarks would know that there is a huge gap between the two different benchmarks in terms of stress on the GPU and system as a whole, so it makes total sense that they would come out with it. We will be sure to include this test in our future benchmarks and to add it into our GPU benchmarks for middle to low end GPUs where Firestrike is may not be very useful.

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Francisc Kurko, Romania – PALIT GeForce GTX280 graphics card, signed by Jen-Hsun Huang

Winners of 3DMarkVantage retail licenses are:

Radu Neagu, Romania

Boris Romac, Croatia

Jonathan Worrel (Furious Fandango), United States of America

Ivan Faj, Croatia

Nikola Peruncic (McPingvin), Croatia

Chad Hudson (Dragoon1101), United States of America

Nenad Miodrag (nmiodrag), Croatia

Goran Gjura (spikeygoran), Croatia

Eyvind Niklasson, Sweden

Joza Habijan, Croatia

In the end, I wish to congratulate each and every one for competing in PALIT Folding Challenge 2008. I am pleasantly surprised at the effort placed by all members of this small team. Also, bear in mind that the new giveaway is already planned, and this time I will focus on giving as much prizes as possible, with several tweaks in the contest rules. Rest assured, everything that I do will be global, so no exclusions. Everybody is welcome in the group, and as the new site starts to grow, you can be sure there are plenty more surprises. For starters, we’ll make sure that we have a dedicated place for all folders on the site, in the form of site section and forum section.

All winners need to contact me at FoldingChallenge@gmail.com with their shipping address, so that I could organize shipping of prizes.

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PALIT Multimedia Folding@Home Challenge 2008

(Yes, I know it’s a long name, sorry ;))

I’ve set up a page on this blog that has all the details about the challenge, and I invite you to join in.
The awards are (hopefully) tempting – Palit GeForce GTX280 board signed by no other than Jen-Hsun Huang, triple-C of nVIDIA Corporation (Co-founder, Chairman, CEO) and 10 licenses of 3DMarkVantage Advanced Edition. There are no territorial limits, so you can join in from anywhere

I want to express my gratitude to David Makin from PALIT Multimedia North America, Oliver Baltuch, President of Futuremark Corporation and Andrew Humber from nVIDIA Corporation. More details about the contest are available on the link above – or just click here.

UPDATE: No, I am not competing for the board. I was asked this in couple of e-mails, and to make matters clear I’ve updated the rules as well.

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Meet the NIA

This is"the" NIA. Device is much smaller than people think. Quite portable.

NIA itself comes in a white, mysteriously labeled box (“Advanced Biotechnology for Gaming”), and is consisted out of headband with three carbon-fiber electrodes, NIA USB box, USB cable, CD and a manual. USB cable was long enough, but after some problems, I decided to use my 9-foot EMI-shielded USB cable from Hiper. The headband is without any doubt, least sleek part of the package. Rubber-band with residues of glue on electrodes left the impression of ultra-cheap part from mainland China, not of eye-opening device. There are three carbon-fiber diamond-shaped sensors at the front of the band, and two additional ones at the very end of rubber band, ideally positioned just above your ears. First three sensors pick up your electrical signals, while side sensors are picking up muscle contraction, such as swallowing, moving your teeth, eyebrows and so on. Through time, you will learn to use all of these reactions to control more and more controls with your face, rather than mice or a keyboard.
The rubber band will also leave a mark on your forehead after hours of long use, but in a sense – it is the ultimate geekdom. If somebody asks you on the street: “what is this mark on your forehead?” and your answer is: “Ah, nothing special. Those are marks from sensors that I use to control computers” – your status as computer-deity is nothing else but guaranteed.

Also, there is a special way how people look at you in the lounge. Last week, I was sitting in First Class Lounge in Munich, playing Call of Duty 4 using the NIA. Besides the fact that I was youngest by some 10 years, several guys approached me and ask me what the device is. When I briefly explained what is that, people started asking me where they can buy the device. When they heard about the price, they could not believe it.
The NIA box is quite small and easy to pack. You can feel the vibrations while the device is working, but that’s nothing special or annoying. OCZ did a brilliant job with the design of this one, completely opposite of headband.

How it works?
For starters, NIA is not a mind-reader. OCZ Technology worked hard with Brain Actuated Technologies on creating a gaming device that would read the reaction of your Glance, Muscles, Alpha and Beta waves. Gamma, Delta and Theta waves are not scanned due to desire to keep the price of device under $100,000 ;-).
Now, the hard part: if you think “go straight”, you will not “go straight”. NIA does not work like that, since it cannot translate your thoughts.

NIA measures electrical potentials when you are thinking about going left, right, straight, back and so on. For best possible results, your mind has to be as relaxed as possible, and without disturbances. What you need to do is allow NIA to adjust to you, and think of movements. Also, you have to adjust to NIA – this is a way into bionic computing, and instant gratification is something that will not happen (unless you have a focus-driven mind with high levels of concentration). After a while, NIA’s driver will begin to pick up your signals and move your virtual avatar in the right way. With combined usage of muscles and glands, your movement will become smooth, and shooting, jumping and similar operations will pass in mere milliseconds before they’re rendered on screen.

Experience
First of all, this is a device which you cannot benchmark. Every individual has a brain with unique signature, and it will take different time of adjustment between your brain and NIA. It may sound like rocket science, but Brain Actuated Technologies’ technology works adaptively, and adjusts to signals produced by your brain. Thus, this is no overnight “becoming super gamer” project, rather a timely and sometimes a frustrating experience.
NIA is only intended for gaming, not for your every day Windows experience. But after two weeks of using the device, I decided to try surfing through my site. Scrolling up and down was easy, but point and click is a difficult one, sadly. Back to square one. Today, four months later, I can actually go back and forward through websites, even managed to control switching between tabs. Yes, it is not easy and it still takes me much more time than to use a mouse, but this is a first generation device.
Installing software was easy-peasy, and thanks heaven’s - OCZ released 64-bit drivers. You can turn on and off NIA control at any time by simply pressing the Ctrl+F12 keys. In order to test the device, I used 32-bit Windows XP Pro SP1 operating system and later migrated to 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate SP1.
For the test, I selected couple of my family members:

–    75 year old female (grandma)
–    47-year old female (mum)
–    29 year old male (me)
–    23 year old male (bro)
23 year old - After four days of using NIA, it was a challenge to successfully navigate in 3D games. I was quite surprised to see this subject having so many difficulties and undergoing numerous calibrations, rotating the headband, and still nada. The issue was that the left diode is not touching the forehead completely, and this person has a perfectly normal, average forehead. But in some specific head-types, positioning NIA can be a challenge. After countless hours of calibration, we finally managed to get things going. But the feedback for the device was negative, since my brother felt that he is much faster with a keyboard and a mouse.
29 year old – By some odd stroke of luck, the author of these lines syncs with NIA without any issue. I’ve been covering NIA through the last two years and every event I had a chance to play with NIA – virtual or real foes just fell on the ground. If you’re able to calm down and focus on playing the game, adaptation to NIA should pass in a whim, and it is really easy to adapt the skills. I started playing Unreal Tournament 3 on novice level, and gradually progressed to on-line play. Within a week of using the device, I’ve managed to average 25 kills and 20 deaths on 50-kill limit deathmatch maps. Today, I can say that there is no difference for me if I play with the NIA or on a keyboard+mouse combination. To me, biggest challenge was alternative mode on rocket launcher.
47 year old – My mum sporadically used computers for the past eight years, but did not play 3D computer games. Setting the device proved to be the challenge similar to my bro, but in a matter of half an hour, we managed to get the perfect signal. The game of Pong proved to be quite fun, but mum was an avid fan on Tetris and complained that OCZ could have used Tetris as a training game. Guys’n’girls from OCZ, take note ;). Moving inside the 3D game proved to be a non-issue, sans often jumps (neck muscles were configured as jump). When we moved jumps to teeth and shoot to neck muscles, subject killed herself several times with a rocket launcher. Of course, commenting on the game and playing it at the same time proved to be quite… entertaining. Who says that the Wii is the only “fun for the whole family”?
75 year old – We decided to do something different with the three-quarter century grandma. Given her absolute-zero experience with computers, instead of learning to move on a keyboard/mouse combination, we did the opposite. Subject adjusted to NIA in a matter of minutes, instead of hours. After passing the Brainfingers and Pong training, elderly person started walking inside a 3D level for the very first time. To be honest, we’ve activated only one bot on novice skill level. After “thumbs up” and comments in regards to the late Arthur Clarke, grandma tried keyboard and a mouse. She complained that the commands are too unintuitive and wished NIA back. This is probably the most surprising experience with the computers that I’ve personally experienced, and a sheer witness of how genius the device is. According to her, “I did not believe that I’ll live to see the day Star Trek come to life”. The Original Series, not to confuse with franchise business of today.

From this small sample of four relatives, it is obvious that NIA has some design challenges to overcome. Mum and bro experienced issues with contact of one of sensors, which was a consequence of rubber headband. Personally, the best design was the “Rambo-style” cotton headband with Velcro adjustment that OCZ used while developing the NIA. Sadly, OCZ discovered that design was uncomfortable after a while, so the company came up with the actual design. Beside the 23-yr old, three subjects had no major issues in adjusting to the device and were able to move inside 3D space. Yes, I will continue to use NIA

Issues? What issues?

If you run into a calibration problem...

...don't become discouraged. Adjust the headband, check for potential EMI issue and shut your cellphone until you see this image ;-)

During past four months, I’ve only experienced two potentially major issues. Firstly, bear in mind that this device is nothing else but a cruder EEG unit. As such, the device proved to be quite sensitive to Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI), and it refused to work in my Lab, surrounded by open configurations. However, notebook or a closed case resulted with no signs of trouble. This is the reason why I moved to Hiper’s USB cable, since I was able to put the NIA box far away from the testbed.
Also, I noticed an issue with cell phones. When cell phone positioned next to the NIA device went through standard network check, I lost control inside the game. Thus, I would recommend that you position the NIA analyzing part as far from EMI sources as possible. Since I haven’t seen any reviews online that mentioned EMI shielding problems, there might be a problem with my device.

Once more, I feel obliged to stress out that the headband is not the most comfortable device on the planet, and it will leave a mark. I hope that 2nd gen device will have a modified rubber band.
Conclusion
At the end, I cannot say that I am done with Neural Impulse Actuator. This device is just fascinating, and I hope that second generation will bring improvements such as negating the need for mouse and start exploring letter recognition support.
OCZ is positioning this device in the gaming segment, next to its line of gaming mice and keyboards. If I have to judge this device as a gaming controller alone, it can offer unique gaming experience, but it will take some time to adjust.
But if you look into this device as an “enabler” or 3D worlds to elderly and disabled people, that’s a whole another ballgame. There is tremendous number of people that were physically stopped from enjoying 3D worlds through their respective disability. NIA enables those people to start playing games and improve their life. And that is something that is not just commendable, but is truly inspiring. OCZ did a brilliant job with this one, and I hope that the company will continue to develop this concept into the future.
There is no Editor’s Choice or 10/10 award for this device. I can only say that you should try it. If you find 100 or so bucks in your budget, don’t think about $90 SideWinder or G9 mouse, or a $100 “gaming” keyboard. This might give you a whole lot more than those peripherals.

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