Source: Planet Half Life

 

Bit-Tech has an interesting article about an upcoming major upgrade to the Source engine. The Source engine was developed with modularity in mind so that new technologies can be implemented rather easily. The next big upgrade will take advantage of multi-core processors, a rather new advancement in personal computing.

 

The article goes into detail about practical applications other than performance gains. There are a few videos and slides from a presentation given by Valve that really show off the potential of this upgrade, such as interactive particle systems. Become informed about the powerhouse behind the Half-Life 2 games, read through all six pages of the article!

 

Expect the multi-threading update to the Source engine to come out before Half-Life 2: Episode Two, which is scheduled to be released at the beginning of next year.

 

Link.

I so cannot wait for this Source upgrade to come out. HL2 looks so good on my system as it is, but the settings still have higher to go. I really cant' wait to see this game with it's settings pushed higher

Got an e6600 So looking forward to this upgrade. Granted, do they *really* need to do this? I mean any dual core rig will be able to play source fine with HDR effects and everything on high.

 

With my rig i am able to run 1680x1050 with everything on high and HDR effects and still get over 100FPS average. Granted, the new effects such as the rain will definitely add to the atmosphere of the game. I just hope they do not make it a Dual Core only set of features. There are still many single core processors that should/could run the new effects

Along with that, get the dual core patch for win XP:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=896256

Interesting, I may have to look into this. I'm running into some unique problems on my system I never experianced before. Sometimes, my computer don't seem to run as fast I feel it should. I'll give that update a try when I get home in about an hour.