PAX Day 4 2/9/13
We got up fairly early as we needed to get packed and check out ready to fly to New Zealand later in the day. After sorting the room out and packing our bags we checked out then left our bags with the hotel and headed off to sample the dreggs of PAX. First up was an panel by Nvidia which also had a raffle where we didn’t win anything (I think Byrnie’s ticket was a digit out at one point) they talked about there desktop cards showed off the nice extra effects in games like Batman Arkam Origins and Assasins Creed 4 Black Flag. In the new batman there were some impressive atmospheric effects with swirling smoke and snow that reacted to the characters as well as some impressive dynamic tessellation tech that allowed footprints in the snow and the like. With AC4 some really nice looking water effects with some approximation of caustics and some lovely translucent shading. After that they looked at the Shield which we tried out earlier in the week showing a port of Oddworld Strangers Wrath which while a nice looking and fun game is somewhat old. They also demoed the desktop streaming function using Dying Light the latest from Techland which is another Zombie game like their last couple dead island and dead island riptide. Probably time they tried something different I think. The game looked pretty nice and the streaming seemed to work pretty well. It’s a nice feature but it feels like it costs a lot to be a fairly run of the mill android tablet + controller and terminal for your PC for some games (they showed a list of supported titles and it’s something like 30 games).
Drive to Wellington 8/9/13
We got up fairly early and had a breakfast of coffee and cereal bars. We packed up the car and checked out of the hotel then headed into town to pick up a few bits for the time laspe rig and the trip. Grabbing a usb stick, a pill box, 2 monster drinks, and 2 diet cokes. After that we went to mcdonalds for breakfast the restaurant had a plane (presumably a mcdonald douglas) with the mcdonalds colours. We’d missed breakfast so I had a mac angus and Byrnie had some chicken thing. After that we headed back to the car and set things up.
Lake Taupo 7/9/13
We woke fairly early and made some coffee. The shower in the room was fairly extreme more pressure washer than shower it was fairly invigorating. With daylight we discovered that the room, which had a nice balcony, had a view of the lake which was just next to the front of the hotel. On the drive in we hadn’t seen it at all due to the darkness. We watched a bit of discovery with deadliest catch and sorted ourselves out. Then a program came on that was called “Top Hooker” it was a fishing competition not some sort of organized prostitution challenge. They really should have picked a better name like top angler or something.
