Hasta La Gadget!

Last year when I saw YEI Technology’s Unreal Engine demo of their 3-Space Sensors, I mentioned how it might be able to integrate with the Oculus Rift for a more immersive virtual reality experience. Turns out the company had the same plan all along. YEI recently launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for PrioVR, an improved and affordable version of the 3-Space Sensors.

The PrioVR sensors are significantly smaller than the 3-Space Sensors and will also include an input unit. The latter is for plugging in additional external input, i.e. physical controllers such as a joystick or a gamepad. Data from sensors and input units will be sent to a “centralized wearable wireless hub architecture”, which in turn will beam the data to a base station that has a USB output.

PrioVR currently comes in two developer kits: PrioVR Lite includes 11 sensors, 1 input unit, the wireless hub, the base station plus the straps needed to wear all of the electronics. The PrioVR Pro kit adds 6 more sensors and 1 more input unit to the Lite kit. As expected, the kits will come with SDK and API so developers can adapt or build games around PrioVR. YEI Technology also said that “major game engines will be supported” and that they will also release “demo projects and open source code examples.”

Pledge at least $450 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a PrioVR dev kit as a reward. I wonder what gaming companies and console makers think of all these virtual reality hardware. The Omni VR treadmill in particular seems to be in direct competition with the PrioVR. I also find it hilarious that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft seem to have given up on motion-controlled gaming when in fact they popularized it with their respective efforts, especially with the Wii and the Kinect. I guess they weren’t able to connect the dots to virtual reality. Perhaps no one really did until the Oculus Rift hit the scene.

However, while the PrioVR and other VR hardware have immense potential, I think it’s safe to say that we’re still years away from seeing consumer versions of any of them. I think the manufacturers need to sort out who their partners will be and eventually release a complete package for consumers and game developers alike. They can’t expect us to buy various VR hardware separately without knowing which games they’ll work with. Remember, as of now these sensors and headsets are separate from PCs and consoles – you know, the machines that actually run games. If folks are already balking at the Xbox One’s price, imagine how they’ll react when they find out you have to shell out hundreds of dollars for a console or a gaming PC, $300 for the Oculus Rift and then $450 more for the sensors. Holy crap. A subscription-based cloud gaming setup – with free-to-play games – almost makes sense from my wallet’s perspective.

[via PrioVR]

Nintendo remade The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in high definition for their sinking ship the Wii U. Nerdache Cakes on the other hand remade the game’s characters in edible 3D. Her lucky customer had cel shading and ate it.

Nerdache Cakes said that “the whole ship is cake, while the King of Red Lions is carved foam and chocolate.” Mmmm, foam.

Sail to Nerdache Cakes’ blog or Facebook page to see large versions of the images. You can also check out work in progress shots of the cake on the shop’s Instagram page.

[via Endless Geyser of Awesome]

CineFringe Film Festival is a small group based in Edinburgh dedicated to showcasing the work of independent filmmakers from around the world. They are free to enter, but they still need money to operate, which is why they turned to Kickstarter to raise funds for the next three years of their operations. To entice backers, they’re offering DVDs of the 2013 CineFringe Festival short films as rewards. They come in a very interesting packaging.

The short films of the festival are stored in two 8cm DVDs that are in turn stored in a VHS tape. The tape even has a retro paper case.

The tape has been decommissioned, but CineFringe will include a “re-commissioning kit” should you want to use the tape again.

Pledge at least £25 (~$39 USD) on Kickstarter to get this old-fashioned reward. If I were CineFringe they should go wild with their idea to get more backers. A higher pledge should get you the DVDs stored in a VHS tape stored in a Super 8 cartridge. An even higher pledge? Get the DVDs in a VHS tape in a Super 8 cartridge in a 16mm film canister. The highest pledge? How about a Blu-ray disc and digital copies of the films? And a foot massage.

If you’re planning on buying the NVIDIA Shield mainly for its ability to stream PC games, you might want to try out this crude workaround shared by Linus Tech Tips. The great thing about this setup is that you don’t need to have a compatible NVIDIA GPU to stream games from your PC like you do with the actual Shield. The bad thing about the hack is that the quality of the stream will depend heavily on your router and smartphone. But that’s why it’s called a Ghetto Shield.

To make your own portable PC gaming setup, you just need a smartphone running iOS, Android or Windows Phone. Then download Splashtop, a free program that lets you control a desktop computer from a mobile device. That’s right: this “hack” will not only let you play PC games away from your PC, you can do a lot more with your PC using Splashtop and a mobile device. Install the required apps on your device and computer, attach the compatible controller to your PC and off you go.

There are many other remote desktop programs aside from Splashtop, so if you’re more comfortable with another program or if Splashtop isn’t working for you feel free to try its alternatives. The metal sheet that connects your phone to the controller is optional but it will make your setup more Shield-like.

That wasn’t bad at all, considering the actual thing costs $300.

[via Lifehacker]

We’ve featured a sound system called the Transparent Speaker, which really only has a glass case. Two post-doctoral fellows at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) made an actual transparent speaker. It’s stretchable too. But the loudspeaker is not an electronic device; it’s an ionic device.

Instead of electrons, Jeong-Yun Sun and Christoph Keplinger’s speaker uses ions in an electrolyte to transport electric charge. The speaker is made of a thin and transparent sheet of rubber sandwiched between two layers of polyacrylamide gel filled with saltwater. When a high-voltage current is passed through these layers, the rubber sheet acts as a diaphragm. Harvard SEAS reports that this clear device can produce any sound in the “entire audible spectrum”, from 20Hz to 20KHz.

The speaker demonstrates two of the key advantages of an ionic device over an electronic device – transparency and elasticity – but there’s a third benefit: biocompatibility. Ionic devices are easier to incorporate into living creatures compared to electronics. They may also be used to create what Keplinger calls soft machines: “Engineered ionic systems can achieve a lot of functions that our body has: they can sense, they can conduct a signal, and they can actuate movement. We’re really approaching the type of soft machine that biology has to offer.”  

With that kind of potential, it’s not surprising that there have been previous efforts to make ionic conductors for practical use. Harvard SEAS explained that ionic conductors are prone to undergoing chemical reactions – including, uhm, combustion – when exposed to high voltage, and that ions move slower through a circuit compared to electrons due to their size and weight. Fortunately, Sun and Keplinger’s ionic conductor “overcomes both of these problems.” You can read the full report on Harvard SEAS’ website.

[via The Verge]