Google is in the news yet again; this time for Google Earth! Students from the Georgia Institute of Technology have used motion capture data and CCTV video feeds to animate Google Earth with live feeds! It's crazy that this is possible, but cool at the same time!

Mmm, real time dynamic maps of the Earth. It seems nowadays that supervillainy just isn't as hard as it used to be. Back in the days of Hugo Drax, you had to be a filthy rich eccentric to ever get to spy on the whole world, whereas today all you need is Google Earth and some Georgia Institute of Technology students. Using motion capture data and the veritable litany of CCTV cameras people have surrounded themselves with, the team have succeeded in mapping and animating the real time movements of cars, people and clouds. A proper unveiling is coming up at a symposium next month, by which point they might have added weather patterns, birds and river motions to that list, but for now you can enjoy the video demo after the break.

Scalable Display Technologies today announced that it has partnered with Realtime Technologies Inc. (RTI) to develop an integrated software solution for seamless visual displays. Under the terms of the partnership, RTI will use Scalables EasyBlend software to incorporate visual edge blending and color matching solutions inside RTIs core product, SimCreator. The demo of the SimCreator looks pretty killer as you can see for yourself below.

The driving simulator system installed at WTI that was developed by RTI uses five Canon SX7 LCOS-based projectors to immerse the driver in a 240-degree horizontal visual environment. Thanks to Scalable Displays EasyBlend, RTIs system is able to offer a stunning, perfectly edge-blended visual display that enables the researchers to conduct realistic safety research before extending the research to test track and open road studies.

AMD and Pixelux Entertainment announced a joint development agreement that is part of the AMD effort to greatly expand the use of real-time physics with graphics through the open source Bullet Physics engine. By encouraging development of physics middleware built around OpenCL and Bullet Physics, AMD and Pixelux offer a route toward physics simulation that spans game consoles, PCs and other hardware platforms. The latest graphics technologies, like the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of GPUs, offer incredible visual fidelity and high performance physics simulation by taking the next step in realistically animating how rendered game objects move, deform and break.

Proprietary physics solutions divide consumers and ISVs, while stifling true innovation; our competitors even develop code that they themselves admit will not work on hardware other than theirs, said Eric Demers, chief technology officer for graphics at AMD. By working with Pixelux and others to enable open support of physics on OpenCL and DirectX 11 capable devices we are taking the exact opposite approach.

As the semiconductor industry begins its transition to the next technology node, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is on track to take its position as the foundry technology leader. On October 1 at the Global Semiconductor Alliance Emerging Opportunities Expo & Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., GLOBALFOUNDRIES will provide the latest details on its technology roadmap for the 32nm/28nm generations and its innovative Gate First approach to building transistors based on High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) technology.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES expects to start volume production of 32nm-SHP (Super High Performance) technology at Fab 1 in the second half of 2010. This technology will employ silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates and utilize GLOBALFOUNDRIES innovative Gate First approach to HKMG, which maximizes power efficiency and transistor scaling while minimizing die size and design complexity when compared to the alternative Gate Last approach. Yield progress continues with 24Mb SRAMs in double-digit natural yields on path to 50 per cent natural yields by year-end.

GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card in CrossFire X @ TweakTown and other reviews from around the web can be found by visiting our forums!

“As our third retail HD 5870 rolled into the labs it was time to check out CrossFire X. Some may wonder what CrossFire X is. Well, it's like CrossFire, but with an X. On a serious note, though, in a single GPU setup it means we're going to be dealing with three cards today. If you're packing a dual GPU setup it tends to mean you're dealing with four GPUs which is something we intend to attack when the HD 5870 X2 shows up on our door step.

Since we already know how a stock HD 5870 is going to perform, we thought it was the perfect time to take CrossFire X for a spin. Unlike our first CrossFire article, because we haven't had a look at what GIGABYTE are giving us we'll take the time to have a look at the package theyre offering before getting into the card itself.”

Today, SanDisk introduced three additions to its line of flash memory cards for gaming consoles, including a Memory Stick Micro (M2) card and gaming pack that will double the amount of storage in the soon-to-be-released Sony PSP Go. The SanDisk M2 gaming cards will be available in up to 16GB, doubling the amount of storage available for PSP go users. Capacities in 2, 4 and 8GB will be available as well.

Many of the new portable gaming systems offer substantial downloadable content for gamers to enjoy, and our gaming memory cards give consumers the added storage capacity they need, said Tim Sutton, product marketing manager, gaming, SanDisk. Downloadable games for the PSP system can consume more than 700 megabytes (MB)2 of memory each, not to mention the large file sizes of movies and TV shows which boost demand for expandable storage.

Last week the folks over at LucidLogix (Lucid) introduced the HYDRA 200 real time distributed processing engine. We've spent the past few days asking questions and getting answers about this agnostic multi-GPU solution from companies like AMD, Lucid and NVIDIA. Read on to see a brief background on the technology and what the companies have to say about it.

At just $259 the ATI Radeon HD 5850 is ready to give any graphics card on the market a run for its money. Our readers that value good minded price versus performance products need to take a look at this mainstream video card to see if it is right for your next system build or upgrade.

AMD's very own self-proclaimed bad boy Ian McNaughton took a direct swing at NVIDIA and The Way it's Meant to be Played program today in a blog post that is worth taking a look at. Ian calls out some issues with several TWIMTBP titles, which is something you don't see being done everyday. If you already own or are thinking about getting Batman: Arkham Asylum, Need for Speed: Shift or Resident Evil 5 then you might want to see what Ian is upset about.

AMD prides itself on supporting open standards and our goal is to advance PC gaming regardless whether people purchase our products. Unfortunately, not everyone shares our philosophy. Nvidia has recently sampled some newly released The Way it is Meant to be Played titles, including Batman: Arkham Asylum, to press in hopes that they would use these titles to benchmark against the HD Radeon 5870 and 5850. There are some known issues with these proprietary TWIMTBP titles.

Our good friends over at Intel and iBuyPower have assembled a killer Gamer Paladin system that we are more than happy to give away to one of our lucky forum members this month! This is your chance to win an Intel P55 chipset and Core i7-870 powered gaming system (aka Lynnfield) for just being an active member of Legit Reviews! We will be giving away this killer system this week, so be sure to check out the link below and make sure you enter!

This system isn't your average system either as it is packed full of high-end components like an NVIDIA GeForce GTX285 video card, 4GB of DDR3 1600MHz memory, LG Blu-Ray player and since Intel is sponsoring the contest you know it has to have an Intel 80GB SSD along inside along with another 1TB hard drive for file storage! All this goodness is packed inside the Chimera Inferno gaming case and Windows Home Premium 64-bit has been installed. Not only will this system look good, but it will also be a solid overclocker and gaming system for one lucky winner here on Legit Reviews.