Event Coverage: Asus India's ROG Tournament 2 (Mumbai)- Day 1

[The Sorcerer]

Asus India did setup an Mumbai-only ROG gaming event. It didn't catch my attention because I was under the impression What actually caught my attention was the second event:

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Major brand names- Asus, Nvidia, Kingston, Roccat- tied up with DSK and GameSpace Lan centre in Andheri West, Mumbai- all togther for a 2 day Mumbai only event. Really great initiative and really nice way to promote gaming. I had to be there to see what's up but one of the Asus folks pinged me and I said "Yeah, sure why not!".

Morning: 10AM to Afternoon 4PM:
I've been/participated in many city tournaments so the first that comes in my mind is that it wouldn't matter much to miss the first few hours. Despite the horrible traffic, crowd, dust and...traffic, I managed to reach at Citi centre at about 10.45ish. Most of the things were setup, there were some Asus guys and they have already done the basic setups on the registration-cum-Demo table.

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Yes!! Pretty good setups, but we'll get back to those later.

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Asus and Game Space guys were setting up the systems to be playable with COD4 and FIFA 10. There was a bit of a conversation about FIFA 11 and why there's a white guy posing on a poster for and lan event in Mumbai, India (members from couple of forums atleast talked about it). This taken about 2 hours or so, because the Demo systems AND the lan centres that need to be prepared. 2 teams taking care of their own thing, but Asus decides to take me in (temporarily- without pay- unless you deem a free T-shirt and a veg sub as a pay for a Hard day's work media coverage+ Asus man+ PITA on occassions+ some guy occupying space around the lan centre).

Few people were already there but registration was started so it was all good:

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Cable mess and morning chaos is the sign of good luck (apparently) in any lan events. Not much pressure but there few walls and obstacles- basic electric wiring, system not booting up, one of the system in the lan centre had a BSOD and well, for some strange reason the second Demo system was not able to run COD4. Yikes? Maybe! But Crysis: Warhead was on one system (reserve your hatred/skepticism of its "glory") and Need for speed: Hot pursuit- in 3D.

About the 2 systems being setup:

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Demo System 1

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Demo System 2
Demo system 1 is powered with Asus 3D Monitor and Nvidia 3D Glasses:

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I think the monitor is an Asus VG236H panel which includes NVIDIA 3D Vision Kit. Just a simple observation as I had an opportunity to wear Sony's 3D glasses- Sony' glasses were heavy, but these were light and it does the job. If the games are 3D ready and you have armed your 3D ready monitor like this one with these glasses from Nvidia, 3D Glory. This was something that caught many people/non gamer's attention.

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Meanwhile back in the lan centre..

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Practice time was given till the time we got substantial amount of clans and players for COD4 and FIFA 10.

Things picked up and the games have begun (Yeah, that BSOD was solved quickly):
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One common thing I heard is that they don't have a view screens to watch the games being played via spectator mode, well Asus guys put couple of screens out- 1 for Fifa 10 and for COD4:

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There was a good number of clans (COD4) and players for FIFA 10 enrolled for the event, which was not bad since many are busy with exams and preps.

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Techenclave's own "Toolius" was there. We seem like good people, but we ain't. Things we do for Company labelled Tees (as I said in my ranting blog ones- giveaways rule the show!!!)

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He wasn't the only one- we both strapped on the tees. My designation got a little bit bigger when I did that.

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We played NFS with the 3D glasses. Looked good enough. Toolius found it "blurry" so I explained him that if people who usually get high and see blurry images when they're not supposed to, they will see clear image if the actual scene is blurry. He laughed it out, but it turned out to be true!!!

Good times, been a while since I talked to him. He told me about what he was doing and it was very very exiciting to see toolius doing some crazy stuff. Will talk about his new initiative once I get it for evaluation.

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Some were planning (with an ipad) and some really lost. Many were defeated so that few will win. Tomorrow is the finals and the cheques are waiting for he name of the champion (and for the amount):

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Tune in and standby for DAY 2 coverage: The Finals

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[Ishu Gupta]

Cool stuff. Makes me wish I was there.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[The Sorcerer]

Hey, you'll never know. If people show interest for such events, we could have it on a fairly regular basis. Not sure if they would do it on other cities.

No GTX 560 Ti on display .