Hasta La Gadget!

As much as I love playing FPSes on my Xbox 360 and PS3, they’re still not as immersive as they could be on my “puny” 64-inch plasma display. But thanks to simulator technology developed by UniVisual Technologies, you could soon be playing FPSes in an incredibly visceral gameplay arena.

Combining their projection and image warping technologies with a custom 360-degree screen and a 360-degree treadmill from MSE AB, the simulator is able to surround game players with an immersive image that covers their entire field of vision, while at the same time allowing them to actually walk and run through the environment.

The 360-degree setup uses an array of six HD video projectors with short-throw lenses, which have had their images seamlessly blended together and warped using UniVisual’s sophisticated Warpalizer software to match the large curved screen, and to eliminate any areas of overlap, color or brightness distortion. (Check out a cool demo of Warpalizer in action here.)

Under foot is a 3-meter circular treadmill system which determines which way to move based on the player’s foot movements and the game moves its viewport based on the direction of the wireless motion sensors in the gun. Incredibly, the entire system is powered by a single computer running a sub-$500 ATi Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 card.

While similar simulators have been shown off before, UniVisual claims their system is the most complete, cost-effective and ready for market, having already installed one in Mumbai, India for Smaaash Entertainment Center, who expects to launch more centers around India, and possibly abroad down the road. Check out the Mumbai installation in action in the video clip below:

Very cool. Though I wish that they could figure out a way to hide the giant gun reticle in Battlefield 3 to make the environment even more realistic. UniVisual is also developing a smaller version of the system with a 180-degree screen, which uses a set of just three long-life LED projectors. Hopefully, we’ll start to see these sort of immersive simulators show up at entertaiment venues around the world in the not-too-distant future.

People love their smartphones, and it’s hard to remember how we actually managed to get anything done in the past with only our dumbphones. Check out this interesting digital art installation from Japan that highlights smartphones.

Japanese designer Yuri Endo developed Luminogeist as the final phase in his thesis project at IDAS. The installation uses glass prisms which reassemble 3D image components from the mobile displays below. The prisms allow the extraction what’s being shown on the smartphone’s screen, making them look almost like floating holograms. Check it out, it’s pretty cool:

I wonder if this technique could be used with tablets or flat panel TVs to display floating images inside of even larger prisms.

[via designboom]

They all tell you to live life to the fullest and party while you’re young, but they left out the part where you’ll have to deal with the consequences of it all when you’re older.

You probably already know that alcohol isn’t very good for your health. As to what it can do to your outside appearance, a new app called Drinking Mirror is more than happy to show you.

Once the app is fired up, the user is asked to take a photo of themselves or upload an existing photo. The app will then ‘age’ the image accordingly based on the users current rates of alcohol consumption. If you drink more than you should on a regular basis, then don’t be too surprised if the app displays a blobby, pockmarked face that you can barely recognize after the transformation.

The app was developed for the Scottish Government’s “Drop a Glass Size” campaign and is available for free on the iTunes App Store. It’s also available for Android devices on Google Play.

[via C|NET]

Are you the kind of person that’s worried about Big Brother and those CCTV cameras all over the place? So you don’t want your face on camera feeds? Then these specs might be for you.

These glasses fitted with LEDs were created by Isao Echizen and Seiichi Goshi at the National Institute of Informatics and Kogakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. The glasses emit near IR light, which prevents current facial recognition cameras and software from figuring out who you are. The lights are powered by a small battery pack that needs to be transported in your pocket.

Granted, unless you’re going for some sort of Blade Runner look, they’re not particularly chic, but they get the job done. They’re also not exactly what you’d call inconspicuous, so security might still hunt you down, even though they don’t know who you are.

The researchers are working on making these specs a bit more fashionable. They predict that the final model will cost around $1(USD) to manufacture.

[via Slate via DVice]

So not every baby needs to look like ZZ Top, but it’s fun to see them plastered with a huge beard on their faces. Not with a real mustache, of course, because they’ll probably tug at it with a vengeance, but with a virtual mustache added digitally to their photos using the soon-to-be-released Beard My Baby 2.0 app.

End infant beardlessness in your household by signing up to get the app when it hits.

It’s a novelty app that you’ll probably use a couple of times at the beginning and eventually forget about, but hey, by that time, your baby will probably be all grown up and have grown some actual facial hair of his (or her?) own.

You can get the app by making a pledge of $1 on Beard My Baby’s Kickstarter page by February 5, 2013. Pledge $25 or more to get a stylin’ shirt along with the app.