With the release of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, the dawn of consumer virtual reality is upon us. I suspect we have not even seen it’s real abilities yet. As the technology evolves, it will change the way we game for sure, and a whole lot more. One of the biggest problems with today’s VR systems are the wires that connect you to your gaming rig. Sure, you could go with one of the smartphone-based VR headsets, but they can’t keep up with the computing power of a desktop PC.
To solve this problem, HP’s Omen gaming line will soon offer a high-end PC that’s wearable as a backpack. It is designed for walking around in virtual reality without the wires. It’s weird that this kind of news seems so normal these days. Such is our brave new world.
This backpack PC is a work in progress at the moment. Apparently HP will start testing some demo units in about a month. The specs are pretty similar to other VR-ready desktop PCs. Nothing shocking here. There’s an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, up to 32GB of memory, and a graphics card of some sort. It is all packed within a slim backpack that weighs under 10 pounds. The waist belt holds two batteries that power the CPU and graphics card individually.
So the idea is that you plug this into your headset or other VR gadget and you walk around and do your thing. Hopefully this rig will be a bit better than just having a laptop on your back. It should be less prone to overheating for example. Or so we hope. It should be comfortable too. And tough, because people really get into VR games and fall over stuff. The batteries only last about an hour, but you can swap them out for new ones, and a smaller third battery stops the PC from shutting down during the change.
If you want to use it as a boring old computer, you can: thanks to a wireless display, mouse, and keyboard that are part of the package. It will be interesting to see where companies go with this kind of gear.
Smite, a popular action multiplayer online battle arena, is going to exit beta and launch on PlayStation 4 tomorrow. Those who haven’t heard of Smite before only need to know that they will like this game if they like action, games that are easy to pick up and are tuned for competitive play, games that are better and faster than other MOBAs while also happening to be free.
More than 20 million players have entered the Battleground of the Gods and many more will when this game arrives on the PlayStation 4 tomorrow.
Players can become a God from ancient mythology in this game, like Zeus who is the Greek God of the Sky or Kukulkan, the Mayan Serpent of the Nine Winds. All deities have their unique fighting styles, weapons and “earth-shattering powers” to defeat their enemies.
Smite has already been available in beta on the PlayStation 4 and millions of gamers have tried it so far. Some changes have been made since the beta was released. Smite is now optimized to run at 60 frames per second, new Divine Trophies have been added as well as new Game Modes that include 5v5 Clash and Siege.
New content will be introduced for Smite every two-to-three weeks, so players will often find something new awaiting them in the Battleground of the Gods. Smite launches on the PlayStation 4 tomorrow.
It was only over a week ago that the release date for Gran Turismo Sport was revealed, and it was confirmed that the beta for this game has been cancelled. More information about the title will be disclosed as the release comes near and while there’s no confirmation on this just yet, it appears that Gran Turismo Sport may not have an offline career mode.
It merits mentioning here that this game isn’t a proper sequel to the previous Gran Turismo title, the sequel is still in the pipeline, and GT Sport has already been described as a “Prologue type experience” by series director Kazunori Yamauchi.
Several slides detailing the campaign mode have been posted on GTPlanet forums. They reveal that the campaign is divided into Beginner’s School which features driving lessons, a Circuit Experience that allows players to familiarize themselves with tracks, Mission Challenge that requires players to meet specific goals and Racing Etiquette where players learn about the teachings of sportsmanship.
The online multiplayer is called Sports Mode, and that’s the end of it. Surely one must ask where the offline career mode has gone, has it not been included on purpose?
It certainly appears to right now even though none of this has been officially confirmed as yet. We’ll update when we find out more about this.
The Witcher 3’s second major expansion has been anxiously awaited by players across the globe. It was only last week that the official trailer for The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine expansion was released. This expansion was due to release in Q1 this year but it had to be delayed to the first half of 2016. The expansion appears to have gone live early for Xbox One owners who own the expansion pass for this game.
Xbox One owners who have the expansion pass for The Witcher 3 can play Blood and Wine starting today. It has been released early on Microsoft’s console, the expansion is going to be officially released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC tomorrow.
The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine is already available for pre-download on all of the aforementioned platforms for players who have the expansion pass, or those who have pre-purchased this expansion. Even though they can download it today the content will remain locked until tomorrow.
Xbox One owners are lucky in this regard. Those who have the expansion pass just need to go to My Games and Apps, followed by The Witcher 3 where they will see the DLC ready in the “Ready to Install” panel. They just have to download and install, and they can start playing The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine right away.
There have been quite a few rumors about Xbox One VR lately even though Microsoft hasn’t confirmed anything just yet. Many are looking forward to the company’s press event at E3 2016 to see what it has in store for us. The official E3 2016 website isn’t helping to contain rumors as a new Xbox One VR category has been added to the website, and four developers have already been registered under it.
This surely isn’t helping rumors about Xbox One VR, so speculation about Microsoft’s approach to virtual reality will continue until E3 2016 when the company takes the stage and hopefully says something about its VR ambitions for Xbox One.
Developers that have already registered under this category include 3DRudder, Readily Information Company, Rebellion, and Maximum Games. Rebellion is the developer that made the Battlezone VR remake for PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift, so it’s likely that it could be a potential VR title for Xbox One.
Keep in mind that all of this is just pure speculation at this point in time. There’s no concrete evidence to support the theory that Microsoft is going to make some Xbox One VR-related announcement at E3 this year, we can’t really be sure until the event itself.
Recent rumors have suggested that Microsoft is working on a more powerful version of the Xbox One codenamed Scorpio which will have support for both 4K and virtual reality, it’s expected to arrive in 2017.
Sony has gradually been bringing some of the most popular PlayStation 2 titles over to PlayStation 4. Its current console doesn’t quite support backwards compatibility like the Xbox One does but Sony has been playing its part in carrying over PS2 titles to PS4. Primal is next in line, it’s a PlayStation 2 classic that was released back in 2003. It’s going to be available for the PlayStation 4 tomorrow.
Primal is a PlayStation 2 game that was first released some 13 years ago. The title will involve players in a search for a loved one, only that they have to search for them in a frightening world of demons and darkness. Sounds quite fun, doesn’t it?
An enhanced version of this Guerrilla Cambridge action game is going to be released on PlayStation 4 tomorrow. It’s going to be sold digitally in North America through the PlayStation Store.
Those who enjoyed playing it years ago on the PlayStation 2 might enjoy a bit of nostalgia when they get it for PlayStation 4. It can’t hold a candle to the games of this generation, but that’s not the intended purpose of this exercise to bring PS2 games to PS4 anyway.
Primal is going to be available for PlayStation 4 starting tomorrow, those who are interested can get it online from the PlayStation Store.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama urged Americans to remember the nation’s fallen service members on Memorial Day and to honor their memories by taking better care of their families and loved ones at home.
The president delivered short remarks on Monday after a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.
“Here, at Arlington, the deafening sounds of combat have given way to the silence of these sacred hills,” Obama said. “The chaos and confusion of battle has yielded perfect, precise rows of peace. The Americans who rest here, and their families, the best of us, those from whom we asked everything, ask of us today only one thing in return: that we remember them.”
“Those who rest beneath this silence, not only here at Arlington, but at veterans cemeteries across our country and around the world, they didn’t speak the loudest about their patriotism. They let their actions do that. Whether they stood up in times of war, signed up in times of peace, or were called up by a draft board, they embodied the best of America,” the president added.
Obama also urged Americans to honor the dead by making sure service members are welcomed home with jobs and good health care.
His call to action comes amid renewed criticism of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has been under congressional scrutiny due to a heavy backlog of benefits claims and canceled appointment times. Robert A. McDonald, the secretary of the VA, came under fire last week after he compared the waiting times for veterans receiving care to standing in line at Disneyland.
The president said the nation still needs to do more on that front.
“For us, the living, those of us who still have a voice, it is our responsibility and our obligation to fill our silence with our love and gratitude and not with just our words but with our actions,” Obama said.
“Truly remembering, truly honoring these fallen Americans means being there for their parents and spouses and children,” he continued. “Truly remembering means that after our fallen heroes gave everything to get their battle buddies home, we have to make sure they get everything they have earned — from good health care to good jobs. And we have to do better. Our work is never done.”
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Oscar Wilde’s story – his rise and fall – remains fascinating. His plays were the toast of London and his 1895 masterwork The Importance of Being Earnest, was being staged at the time of his scandalous trial.
His is now a familiar story.
Bosie Douglas, Wilde’s young lover, bullied him into bringing a libel suit against his loathsome father, the Marquess of Queensberry, who accused him of being a “sodomite.” When it became clear that various rent boys would support the claim, Wilde dropped his suit. He was then charged with “gross indecency,” and, with the threat of jail imminent, given time to flee England.
Wilde holes up at the Cadogan Hotel as his friend Robbie Ross (Cal MacAninch) begs him to leave. Bosie (Charlie Rowe), still pushing his own agenda, wants him to stay and fight. Wilde, known to be pompous and arrogant, is, in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss, now at BAM’s Harvey Theater, a kinder, gentler Oscar: still witty and clever, but more reflective and melancholy.
Noting how many young men are en route France in the wake of the scandal, Wilde muses: “Opera will be stone dead.”
Wilde is played to perfection by Rupert Everett, who channels the legendary writer at every turn — his wit, charm, exasperating ways and inexplicable Bosie obsession. His sharp, rueful performance alone is worth the price of admission.
The play is Hare’s thoughtful meditation on why Wilde chose to stay, since his inaction will lead to ruin. By act two, a shattered, broke Wilde is in Naples, inexplicably reunited with the ever-demanding, delusional Bosie, busy flaunting his boy toy.
Hare tries to reconcile Wilde’s public and private selves, to determine why he participates in his own downfall. (Wilde did not martyr himself for homosexuality at his trials, but stood for personal privacy.) The conniving Bosie, beset by daddy issues, is perceived as indifferent to Wilde’s fate. His concerns, first, and foremost, are for himself.
How did such a clever man, gifted at peeling the artifice from the aristocracy, allow himself to be used in such a spectacularly horrible fashion?
The Judas Kiss, which enjoyed a successful run at the Hampstead Theater in London, isn’t so much a dramatic effort as a compelling examination into the complexities and contradictions of Wilde.
The tension in act one is intense, thanks to Neil Armfield’s tight direction, but ultimately, it is more about the inexplicable decisions that altered his life.
The play showcases the wonder of Wilde — and mourns the loss of his considerable talent. The instinct for self-preservation — if not for himself and his genius, then his children — is appallingly MIA.
And always, there is the scheming, self-involved Bosie. Rowe is well cast; he captures Bosie’s manipulative ways, as well as his hair-trigger temper, with precision.
It’s been 116 years since the great playwright’s death — yet Hare’s The Judas Kiss reminds us that the ill-fated alliance proved Wilde right: “Each man kills the thing he loves.”
In Wilde’s case, it’s himself.
Photo: Richard Termine
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Facial expressions are important parts of how we communicate and how we develop impressions of the people around us. In “The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals,” Charles Darwin proposed that facial expressions evolved to quickly communicate emotional states important to social survival. He hypothesized that certain facial expressions are innate, and therefore universally expressed and recognized across all cultures.
In 1971, psychology researchers Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen tested Darwin’s hypothesis. They enlisted members of the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea, who at the time had little contact with Western culture, to do an emotion recognition task. An interpreter read stories about emotional events to members of the tribe, such as “her child has died, and she feels very sad.” The Fore were then asked to match photos of Americans’ facial expressions to the story. The researchers also took photos of the facial expressions of the Fore people and showed them to Americans later.
People from both cultures showed the same facial expressions for six “basic” emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise) and were able to recognize their meaning in others. This is strong evidence that certain emotions are evolutionarily based. In the decades since, research has continued to support Darwin’s hypothesis: for instance, showing that congenitally blind people display the same spontaneous expressions as sighted people. Indeed, facial expression may be one of the only universal languages.
So where does that leave people with facial paralysis? As a psychology professor with Moebius syndrome, a condition involving facial paralysis, I’m personally and professionally interested in what happens when the face is no longer the primary means of expression. My Disability and Social Interaction Lab at Oregon State University has been investigating this question.
Kathleen Bogart’s Disability and Social Interaction Lab presenting research about Moebius Syndrome Awareness Day. Author provided
Acquired facial paralysis from an illness or an injury is far more common. Bell’s palsy, acoustic neuroma, Lyme disease, stroke, multiple sclerosis, ear infections, injury to the facial nerve and others can all lead to facial paralysis. Bell’s palsy, which typically affects one side of the face, is the most common. While it’s usually temporary, approximately 15 percent of people with Bell’s are left with paralysis that does not improve.
In a series of published and unpublished focus groups and interviews, my colleagues and I found that people with facial paralysis reported hearing all sorts of “interpretations” of their appearance. Strangers asked them if they had just gotten a Novocain shot, if they were having a stroke, or if the condition was contagious, deadly or painful. Some people made connections to the person’s character, assuming them to be unfriendly, unhappy or even intellectually disabled.
Making a first impression
In landmark research published in 1993, psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal asked strangers to view short (six- to 30-second) silent video clips of high school and college teachers while they were teaching. The strangers then rated their impressions of the teachers’ personalities, based on their nonverbal behaviors – things like expressions and gestures. Today this sort of research using very short experiences to form judgments of individual behavior is called thin slice research.
The strangers’ ratings were remarkably similar to teaching effectiveness ratings from the teachers’ students and their supervisors who knew them and their work very well.
Our social world has an overwhelming amount of information, but numerous thin slice studies suggest we can navigate it efficiently based on a “gut” reaction. People’s first impressions are surprisingly accurate in predicting many social characteristics: personality, depression, even gayness.
Are facial expressions learned or innate?
While facial expressions aren’t the only thing that go into a first impression, they are a pretty big element. So basing our impressions of others on their facial expressions is usually an effective strategy. However, the accuracy of impressions breaks down when people encounter someone with facial paralysis. At first glance, a person with a paralyzed face may look unfriendly, bored, unintelligent, or even depressed. And indeed, people with facial paralysis are often mistakenly ascribed these characteristics.
People with facial paralysis compensate
My own research has found that many people with facial paralysis increase expression in their bodies and voices, something I call “compensatory expression.”
In a 2012 study my colleagues and I video-recorded interviews with 27 people with different types of facial paralysis. Research assistants (who were unaware of our hypotheses) watched the interviews and rated the vocal and bodily expressivity of the people with facial paralysis.
Interestingly, we found that people with congenital facial paralysis, like Moebius syndrome, used significantly more compensatory expression than people with acquired facial paralysis. For instance, they used more emotion words, vocal inflection, laughter, gestures and head and body movements. They were also louder and more talkative.
It’s possible that people with congenital facial paralysis are better adapted, perhaps because they navigated early developmental milestones with facial paralysis.
People who acquired facial paralysis after birth, but have lived with it for a long time, may also adapt well. However, our early data suggest that there may be a unique adaptation advantage for people with congenital conditions.
Facial expressions play such a critical role in forming first impressions, so what does that mean for people with facial paralysis?
In a series of experiments, we showed thin slice videos of people with disorders that affect facial movement, including facial paralysis and Parkinson’s disease to strangers. We asked the strangers for their first impressions based on the videos.
People with severe facial movement impairment were rated as less happy and sociable compared to people with mild facial movement impairment. Participants also had less desire to form friendships with them.
Our results across these studies have found that there is a very large bias against people with facial movement disorders.
Crucially, participants rated people with facial paralysis who use a lot of compensatory expression as happier and more sociable than those who use less, regardless of the severity of their paralysis. We are developing communication skills workshops encouraging the use of compensatory expression for people with facial paralysis.
In another thin slice study, Linda Tickle-Degnen along with Kathleen Lyons found that even clinicians with expertise in facial movement disorders viewed people with facial movement impairment in negative ways.
This indicates how hard it is to override the natural human tendency to form impressions based on the face. And for clinicians, it is of special concern. Their facial expression bias may be a barrier to rapport or even clinical judgments of depression and pain in patients with facial paralysis.
Raising awareness can help
In a recent experiment, we found initial evidence that raising awareness improves how people perceive facial paralysis. Some participants read a few educational paragraphs about facial paralysis (much like the information in this article), and some were not given any information about facial paralysis. Next, all participants watched thin slice videos of people with facial paralysis. The participants who read the educational information rated people with facial paralysis as more sociable than those who did not read the information.
We are continuing to develop educational materials for clinicians and the general public to raise awareness and reduce bias.
In our focus groups, the most common comment from people with facial paralysis was a call for greater public awareness. They know firsthand that people are confused by their facial difference. They often wonder if they should explain it to others, but to do so every time they meet someone new would be awkward and burdensome. Widespread awareness would reduce the need to explain their condition, and would educate others to pay attention to the compensatory tactics they use to communicate their emotions.
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It’s a phrase that resonates as we remember the warriors, the heroes, the veterans, those we continuously applaud, and particularly on Memorial Day, for their service. In his 400th commemoration year, being celebrated in every country of the world by the British Council and the UK’s GREAT campaign, we are reminded yet again of how it is often Shakespeare who has the phrase and the insight for our common feelings. “Age shall not wither her” he writes of Cleopatra, another victim of a world at war who takes her own life after her lover Antony has died after his military defeat at Actium.
It’s extraordinary how Shakespeare’s echoes and perceptions inform the progress of important events during our year. He spoke to us, in celebration, at Twelfth Night and, politically, at the Ides of March. He’s pointed up with wit and wisdom the follies and fallibilities of the US primaries and of other world happenings, some tragic, some less so. Shakespeare will inspire us through midsummer nights, through the autumn (“the sere, the yellow leaf”), through winters tales and “Christmas gambolds.” But it is on this Memorial Day, as it will be on November’s Veterans Day, that the greatest weight of Shakespearean feeling can transfigure the aching of our loss.
There are more of Shakespeare’s plays than not that are gripped by gruesome national and international conflict. Each of the English and Roman histories tells a war story. All the great tragedies are circumscribed by civil or European war. Even in a clutch of the comedies, the shadows of past warfare threaten the present mirth and present laughter. But it is not the tactics of battle or the disposition of troops that cause Shakespeare to return repeatedly to the exigencies of war. For Shakespeare warfare distils the most human of stories, created of the experiences that most test the defining virtues and vices of the human spirit at its most bestial and at its most evolved – the virtues of courage, honor and magnanimity, the traumas of cowardice, anger and savagery.
War’s panorama of human initiative and response provides the infrastructure, sometimes sanctified, sometimes violating, of the societies and civilizations that Shakespeare explores. In Coriolanus and Julius Caesar it is militarism that ultimately defines and defends The State. In the “Richards” and “Henries” it is civil war that determines the character and mission of the evolving British enterprise and its contiguities with Western Europe. And in Troilus and Cressida the iconic war between European Greece and Asian Troy–the war in which worlds, literal and metaphoric, were won and lost–both posits the formative Western myth while, in Shakespeare’s cutting cynicism, simultaneously undermining it through subjection to human hypocrisy, egoism and callousness.
On this Memorial Day, however, it is the nexus Shakespeare draws between war and remembrance that is most potent. On the night before the decisive battle of the Hundred Years War between Britain and France, it is memory, and the anticipation of future Memorial Days, that is the most emotive feature of Henry V’s pep talk to his alarmingly outnumbered troops, to his “band of brothers.” Yes, that treasured US military phrase, too, is Shakespeare’s.
“For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile.”
Prince Hal, now King Harry of England rallies his men, with contingents from Wales, Scotland and Ireland as well as England, on the night before the onslaught. To command the present, he foresees the future. No denial here; death is likely and they are all probably “marked to die.” But this truly is a death “devoutly to be wished,” as Hamlet, written at the same time as Henry V, would have it. This would be a death of “honor”, that noblest military prize and the one most scorned by Harry’s eventually spurned mentor Jack Falstaff. And honor lasts, honor matures in the memories of nations and descendants such that Henry, even before the battle is fought, can predict the commemorations of future Memorial Days.
“And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by From this day to the ending of the world But we in it shall be remember’d;”
And those of us who commemorate,
“Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon St Crispin’s Day.”
That other great military leader, Othello, in his last words before he dies says, “I have done the state some service, and they know’t.”
Those that have fought in battle, who bear its scars and who have seen their comrades pass, can only truly share their memory with their bands of brothers and sisters. As “we that are left grow old” we cannot share, we cannot remember. We can only honor, only bow the head and thank them for their service. As of Shakespeare’s oldest warrior, the dead Lear, “we that are young, shall never see so much, nor live so long.”
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Facial expressions may be a universal language. Where does that leave people with facial paralysis? Icerko Lýdia via 
