Quake 4

Aspyr Media announced Quake 4 for Mac OS X, to be released in early 2006 as a universal binary, compatible with both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. For descriptions of the Earth in (science) fiction, see Earth in fiction. There have been major issues with frame-rates for the console adaptation, earning it the award for Most Aggravating Frame Rate / Best Slideshow in the GameSpot.com Best and Worst of 2005 list. See Spaceship Earth and Gaia theory.. Quake 4 was released at the launch of the Xbox 360 and is Xbox Live compatible. Earth has also been described as a massive spaceship, with a life support system that requires maintenance, or as having a biosphere that forms one large organism. Nonetheless, a few days after release the majority of reviews gave Quake 4 scores of 80-90%. A photo taken of Earth by Voyager 1 inspired Carl Sagan to describe the planet as a "Pale Blue Dot".

Websites and magazines such as IGN and UGO praised its single-player campaign, graphics and Hollywood voice-acting, but complained that its multiplayer — the Quake series' biggest selling point — was far too similar to that of Quake III. The technological developments of the latter half of the 20th century are widely considered to have altered the public's perception of the Earth. Reviews of the game have mainly been positive. Surveying, the determination of locations and distances, and to a somewhat lesser extent navigation, the determination of position and direction, have developed alongside cartography and geography, providing and suitably quantifying the requisite information. Coverage of this tournament and the World Series will be exclusively by The CPL's Official Media Partner, GotFrag. Cartography, the study and practice of mapmaking, and vicariously geography, have historically been the disciplines devoted to depicting the Earth. Many top names such as Johnathan Wendel and Sander "Vo0" Kaasjager (current Painkiller champion) will be in attendance. Prior to the introduction of space flight, this belief was countered with deductions based on observations of the secondary effects of the Earth's shape and parallels drawn with the shape of other planets.

256 competitors will meet up in this epic World Series qualifier event. In the past there were varying levels of belief in a flat Earth because of this, but ancient Greek philosophers and, in the Middle Ages, thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas knew that the Earth was a sphere. The first Quake 4 tournament for the CPL was held from December 14 to 18, 2005 in Dallas, Texas. Since Earth is rather large, it is not immediately obvious to the naked eye viewing from the surface that it is an oblate spheroid, bulging slightly at the equator and slightly flattened at the poles. Quake 4 has been chosen by the Cyberathlete Professional League as the official 1vs1 game for their upcoming 2006 World Series event. In Norse mythology, the Earth goddess Jord was the mother of Thor and the daughter of Annar. All of these weapons appear in at least one of the other Quake (except for the Dark Matter gun) games and are for the most part similar to their counterparts in those games. As the patroness of fertility, her element is Earth.

The following weapons are included in the final version of Quake 4. The Chinese Earth goddess Hu-Tu is similar to Gaia, the deification of the Earth. One prominent bot is Jarad "TinMan" Hansen's SABot (a.k.a Stupid Angry Bot) and Alpha Omni-bot which perform very well on the retail multiplayer map packs as well as user-created custom maps. Earth has often been personified as a deity, in particular a goddess (see Gaia and Mother Earth). User-made bots for practising offline for users with only Dial-up connection or filling LAN servers are being developed by many dedicated fans of the game. The United Nations is primarily an international discussion forum with only limited ability to pass and enforce laws. Quake 4 came without any bots for multiplayer game. There is a worldwide general international organization, the United Nations.

One of the changes to the network code is a move from the per-polygon hit detection system used in Doom 3 back to using hit-box system like most other online first-person shooters such as other Quake games and Counter-Strike. Independent sovereign nations claim all of the land surface except for some segments of Antarctica. The network code has been altered from Doom 3, allowing for larger numbers of players on each server (Doom 3 has a four player restriction, whereas Quake 4 has a standard 16 player limit). Earth does not have a sovereign government with planet-wide authority. Like the previous Quake games the multiplayer has a client-server architecture. There are 267 administrative divisions, including nations, dependent areas, other, and miscellaneous entries. Notable new additions to play are the ability to send shots through the teleporters and the advancement of the game physics provided by the new technology including the ability to bounce grenades off of the jump-pads. The southernmost is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, in Antarctica, almost exactly at the South Pole.

Players at Quakecon reported the multiplayer gameplay to include elements similar to those in previous Quake and Doom games. The northernmost settlement in the world is Alert, Ellesmere Island, Canada. Multiplayer modes are Deathmatch, Team-Deathmatch, Tournament, and Capture the Flag. See also space colonization. This turn of events allows for more gameplay changes including the ability to understand Strogg communications as well as advancing the story. Out of those only twelve humans have ever walked on a world other than Earth: the men of Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17, who walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Around a third of the way through the game events lead to Kane being captured and then partially "Stroggified" — that is, turned into a Strogg — but the process is interrupted by marines and is not completed so that Kane retains his free will. In total, about 400 people have been outside Earth (in space) as of 2004.

Gameplay features include vehicle based combat with several vehicles introduced throughout the game and squad based combat on occasions where Rhino Squad fight alongside you, including medics and technicians in your squad which can heal you or repair your armor. During the exchange there are more, and sometimes others are also traveling briefly above the atmosphere. The marines' mission is to secure the planet Stroggos, homeworld of the Strogg but their ship is shot down and that is when the action begins. The station crew is replaced with new personnel every six months. The protagonist of the first Quake was codenamed Ranger in Quake III.) Kane is a member of a military unit known as Rhino Squad. Two humans are presently in orbit around Earth on board the International Space Station. (Kane is the first directly named protagonist in the Quake series; in the Quake II intro the Marine in the craft is referred to as Bitterman in the line before launch and the name is also written on the crashed craft. Coastal areas constitute the highest density.

The game follows the story of a marine named Matthew Kane. It is estimated that only 1/8th of the surface of the Earth is suitable for humans to live on - 3/4 is covered by oceans, and half of the landmass is unsuitable, being desert, high mountain, etc. The Quake 4 single player mode continues the story of Quake II pitting the player against a cyborg alien race known as the Strogg. Nearly all humans currently reside on Earth: 6,411,000,000 inhabitants (January 5, 2005 est.). . Most of the growth is expected to take place in developing nations. It, like its predecessor, is not related to the first Quake in any respect other than name and logo. On 25 February 2005 the United Nations Population Division issued revised estimates and projected that the world's population will reach 7 billion by 2013 and swell to 9.1 billion in 2050.

The story of the series jumps from Quake II to Quake 4 because Quake III Arena has a plot unrelated to Quake II; it is focused on online multiplayer and a very limited single player mode that is essentially the multiplayer played against computer controlled bots. Long-term climate alteration due to enhancement of the greenhouse effect by human industrial carbon dioxide emissions is an increasing concern, the focus of intense study and debate. A special DVD Collectors Edition also exists, including promotional material and the game Quake II with its expansions. Large areas are subject to man-made pollution of the air and water, acid rain and toxic substances, loss of vegetation (overgrazing, deforestation, desertification), loss of wildlife, species extinction, soil degradation, soil depletion, erosion, and introduction of invasive species. Quake 4 went gold early October 2005 and was released on October 18, 2005 for the PC and later for the Xbox 360. Many places are subject to earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, sinkholes, floods, droughts, and other calamities and disasters. Raven Software has collaborated with id Software, the usual developers of Quake games in the past, and for this game, id Software supervised the development of the game as well as providing the Doom 3 engine upon which the game was built. Large areas are subject to extreme weather such as (tropical cyclones), hurricanes, or typhoons that dominate life in those areas.

It was developed by Raven Software and distributed by Activision. Irrigated land: 2,481,250 km² (1993 est.). Quake 4 is the fourth title in the series of Quake FPS computer games. The exploitation of non-renewable resources by human civilization has become a subject of significant controversy in modern environmentalism movements. Some of these resources, such as mineral fuels, are difficult to replenish on a short time scale, called non-renewable resources. Elevation extremes: (measured relative to sea level).

Ocean currents, particularly the spectacular thermohaline circulation which distributes heat energy from the equatorial oceans to the polar regions, are important determinators of climate. Precipitation patterns vary widely, ranging from several metres of water per year to less than a millimetre. Two large areas of polar climates separated by two rather narrow temperate zones from a wide equatorial band of tropical to subtropical climates. Terrestrial biomes lying within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles are relatively barren of plant and animal life, while most of the more populous biomes lie near the Equator.

On land, biomes are separated primarily by latitude. The biosphere is divided into a number of biomes, inhabited by broadly similar flora and fauna. This biosphere is generally believed to have begun evolving about 3.5 billion (3.5×10⁹) years ago. The planet's lifeforms are sometimes said to form a "biosphere".

Earth is the only place in the universe where life is absolutely known to exist, and some scientists believe that biospheres might be rare. Maritime claims: see United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Coastline: 356,000 km. Land boundaries: the land boundaries in the world total 251,480 km (not counting shared boundaries twice).

Area:. Continents, Oceans. Biggest geographic subdivision. Time Zones, Coordinates.

Map references:. Earth also has at least one co-orbital asteroid, 3753 Cruithne. This hypothesis explains (among other things) the Moon's relative lack of iron and volatile elements, and the fact that its composition is nearly identical to that of the Earth's crust. The most widely accepted theory of the Moon's origin, the giant impact theory, states that it was formed from the collision of a Mars-size protoplanet with the early Earth.

This allows total eclipses and annular eclipses to occur on Earth. The Moon is just far enough away to have, when seen from Earth, very nearly the same apparent angular size as the Sun (the Sun is 400 times larger, but the Moon is 400 times closer). This remains a controversial subject, however, and further studies of Mars—which shares Earth's rotation period and axial tilt, but not its large moon or liquid core—may provide additional insight. Planetary scientists who have studied the effect claim that this might kill all large animal and higher plant life.

One pole would be pointed directly toward the Sun during summer and directly away during winter. If Earth's axis of rotation were to approach the plane of the ecliptic, extremely severe weather could result, as this would make seasonal differences extreme. Some theorists believe that, without this stabilization against the torques applied by the Sun and planets to the Earth's equatorial bulge, the rotational axis might be chaotically unstable, as it appears to be with Mars. Paleontological evidence and computer simulations show that Earth's axial tilt is stabilised by tidal interactions with the Moon.

The Moon may dramatically affect the development of life by taming the weather. As the Moon orbits Earth, different parts of its face are illuminated by the Sun, leading to the lunar phases: The dark part of the face is separated from the light part by the solar terminator. As a result, it always presents the same face to the planet. The same effect on the Moon has led to its tidal locking: Its rotation period is the same as the time it takes to orbit the Earth.

The gravitational attraction between the Earth and Moon cause the tides on Earth. The natural satellites orbiting other planets are called "moons", after Earth's Moon. With the exception of Pluto's Charon, it is the largest moon in the Solar system relative to the size of its planet. The Moon, sometimes called 'Luna', is a relatively large terrestrial planet-like satellite, whose diameter is about one-quarter of the Earth's.

. The Earth is sometimes referred to as the Third Planet from the Sun because, of the nine planets of our solar system, Earth is the third closest planet to the sun. For other eras, see precession and Milankovitch cycles. In modern times, Earth's perihelion is always about January 3, and aphelion is about July 4 (near the winter and summer solstices, which are on about December 21 and June 21, respectively).

Also, the rotational velocity varies, a phenomenon known as length of day variation. The polar motion is quasi-periodic, containing an annual component and a component with a 14-month period called the Chandler wobble. In a reference frame attached to the solid body of the Earth, its rotation is also slightly irregular due to polar motion. These motions are caused by the differential attraction of Sun and Moon on the Earth's equatorial bulge, due to its oblateness.

In an inertial reference frame, the Earth's axis undergoes a slow precessional motion with a period of some 25,800 years, as well as a nutation with a main period of 18.6 years. The Hill sphere (sphere of influence) of the Earth is about 1.5 Gm (930 thousand miles) in radius, within which one natural satellite (the Moon) comfortably orbits. The orbital and axial planes are not precisely aligned: Earth's axis is tilted some 23.5 degrees against the Earth-Sun plane (which causes the seasons); and the Earth-Moon plane is tilted about 5 degrees against the Earth-Sun plane (otherwise there would be an eclipse every month). Viewed from Earth's north pole, the motion of Earth, its moon and their axial rotations are all counterclockwise.

When combined with the Earth-Moon system's common revolution around the Sun, the period of the synodic month, from new moon to new moon, is 29.53 days. Earth has one natural satellite, the Moon, which revolves with the Earth around a common barycenter, from fixed star to fixed star, every 27.32 days. The orbital speed of the Earth averages about 30 km/s (108,000 km/h), which is enough to cover one Earth diameter (~12,700 km) in 7 minutes, and one distance to the Moon (384,000 km) in 4 hours. From Earth, this gives an apparent movement of the Sun with respect to the stars at a rate of about 1 °/day, i.e., a Sun or Moon diameter every 12 hours, eastward.

Earth orbits the Sun every 365.2564 mean solar days (1 sidereal year). From Earth the main apparent motion of celestial bodies in the sky (except meteors which are within the atmosphere and low-orbiting satellites) is the movement to the west at a rate of 15 °/h = 15'/min, i.e., a Sun or Moon diameter every two minutes. It takes the Earth 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds (1 sidereal day) to rotate around the axis connecting the north pole and the south pole.
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The geologic component layers of the Earth are located at the following depths below surface:.
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The biosphere is a tiny layer in this composition and is usually not considered part of the physical layers of the Earth. Its components are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the crust, the mantle, and its core. The Earth consists of several atmospheric, hydrologic, and mainly geologic layers. .

Although a link to such Indo-European languages has not been proved, several Semitic languages have similar-sounding words for Earth: aard in Arabic, irtsitu in Akkadian, araa in Aramaic, erets in Phoenician (which appears in the Mesha Stele), and ארץ (arets, or erets when followed by a noun modifier) in Hebrew. tierra in Spanish). Taking into account metathesis, we can find cognates of the word Earth in the Latin terra and in the modern Romance languages (i.e. It is derived from Old English eorðe.

The root also has cognates in extinct languages such as ertha in Old Saxon and ert (meaning 'ground') in Middle Irish. Examples in modern tongues include aarde in Dutch, Erde in German and arde in Arabic. The English word Earth has cognates in many modern as well as defunct - including ancient - languages. Besides words derived from Terra, such as terrestrial, terms that refer to the Earth include tellur- (telluric, tellurion, from the goddess Terra's alternate name, Tellūs) and geo- (geography, geocentric, geothermal; from the Greek goddess Gaia).

Its astronomical symbol consists of a circled cross, representing a meridian and the equator; a variant puts the cross atop the circle (Unicode: ⊕ or ♁). Earth is sometimes known as Terra in some languages, after the Roman goddess Terra. Scientific evidence indicates that the planet formed around 4.57 billion (4.57×10⁹) years ago, and shortly thereafter (4.533 billion years ago) acquired its single natural satellite, the Moon. It is the largest of the solar system's terrestrial planets, and the only planetary body that modern science confirms as harboring life.

Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Other: 30% (1993 est.). Urban areas: 1.5%. Forests and woodland: 32%.

Permanent pastures: 26%. Permanent crops: 1%. Arable land: 10%. The land-based ecosystem depends upon topsoil and fresh water, and the oceanic ecosystem depends upon dissolved nutrients washed down from the land.

Earth's biosphere produces many useful biological products, including (but far from limited to) food, wood, pharmaceuticals, oxygen, and the recycling of many organic wastes. These ore bodies form concentrated sources for many metals and other useful elements. Mineral ore bodies have been formed in Earth's crust by the action of erosion and plate tectonics. These deposits are used by humans both for energy production and as feedstock for chemical production.

Earth's crust contains large deposits of fossil fuels: (coal, petroleum, natural gas, methane clathrate). Highest point: Mount Everest 8,844 m (2005 est.). Lowest point overall: Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean −10,924 m [1]. Lowest point on land: Dead Sea −417 m.

42 nations and other areas are completely landlocked (see list of landlocked countries). Note: boundary situations with neighboring states prevent many countries from extending their fishing or economic zones to a full 200 nautical miles (370.4 km). Territorial sea: 12 nautical miles (22.2 km) claimed by most, but can vary. Exclusive economic zone: 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) claimed by most, but can vary.

Exclusive fishing zone: 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) claimed by most, but can vary. Continental shelf: 200 m depth claimed by most or to depth of exploitation; others claim 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) or to the edge of the continental margin. Contiguous zone: 24 nautical miles (44.4 km) claimed by most, but can vary. Note: 70.8 % of the world's surface is covered by water, 29.2 % is exposed land.

Water: 361.132 million km². land: 148.94 million km². Total: 510.073 million km². 5100 to 6378 km - Inner Core.

2890 to 5100 km - Outer Core. 100 to 700 km - Asthenosphere. 35 to 2890 km - Mantle