Pre-order Modern Warfare 2 (November 10, 2009 Release Date).

My initial opinion of the New Xbox Experience from a usability perspective is: FAIL. The wannabe Cover Flow effect looks okay, but is terribly flawed. You can only see the highlighted item and the ones behind it. You can’t see any of the previous items, as they are off the left side of the screen. Terrible for navigation, and terribly inefficient use of space — you can only see a few items on screen at once; not easily scannable. Instead of using the bumpers to switch menu “blades” as before, the new menu layout now depends on the d-pad for primary navigation which is super FAIL. The inaccurate d-pad easily skips up and down when trying to scroll left and right, which means it jumps to a different menu group when i’m flipping through my friends list. In fact, the bumpers and triggers are now inconsistently used for “paging” and jumping in different areas of the dashboard in ways that mostly clash with how it used to work. I guess it all doesn’t matter much to me because, i’ll be using the old-school menu brought up by the Guide button — simple is elegant. This kinda crap really annoys me, because big bad Microsoft has to have had some UI experts telling them this stuff. Or am i way off? Eye candy is generally worthless, but especially at the expense of functionality.

While installing the replacement lamp, i discovered that my TV’s HDMI inputs have video lag. I’ve had my Elite 360 hooked up via HDMI since i got it. And that explains why it seemed everyone else was in God mode on Call of Duty and Halo. I was always 5 frames behind (about .17 seconds), so they literally were shooting at me before i could even see them. Unfortunately the SXRD’s Game Mode which minimizes lag by turning off video processing is only available on analog inputs, which also means a slightly softer picture. So i switched to component cables with Game Mode on, and now i’m back in real time. I can finally keep up in Team Deathmatch. I knew i couldn’t be that bad.

I also discovered while digging in my Elite box that i never opened the Forza/Marvel game pack that came with the system. I have two games that i’ve never played yet. Happy Christmas.

You can put the XBOX control panel in 480P. Remove any disc you may have in the drive and go to the main screen (the one shown in this photo). On the controller, Hold down both triggers and at the same time press down on both analog sticks after a second you should see the screen change. To confirm it worked you can press the DISPLAY button on the SXRD’s remote and it will say 480P. To put it back just do the same thing again. This works only if you have the XBOX LIVE update. If you never have used XBOX live it may or may not work.

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update: Force Dynamics offers custom equipment. And Race Sim Central even has a forum for race simulation gear.

another update: Here’s why a custom version of GT4 probably won’t happen.