Hasta La Gadget!

The Porsche 918 Spyder is like no other hybrid on the road, promising Bugatti-like performance in a package capable of better fuel economy than a Toyota Prius. Here’s an exclusive look at how they build their 887-horsepower, $800,000 flagship plug-in hybrid hypercar.

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DuPont’s managed to work its way into just about every home and place of business here in the US of A, but despite this nationwide proliferation, we haven’t seen the Delaware-based chemicals giant making waves in the consumer electronics space. But with home wraps, plastics and body armor on lockdown, it’s as good a time as any to venture into CE. Through a partnership with the Power Matters Alliance (PMA), the company will soon begin embedding Powermat’s wireless charging tech within its Corian solid surface, a synthetic granite alternative often used for countertops and installed everywhere from kitchens and meeting rooms to hospitals and research labs. As a notable first step, DuPont has joined the PMA, and could soon be playing a key role in charging up your gadgets on the go. We’ve seen Powermat demo its own tabletop charging concept at CES, but with DuPont now on board, it shouldn’t be long before we begin to see seamless Corian installations pop up in public spaces, and perhaps even some homes.

Filed under: Wireless

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John Hodgman is the world’s foremost expert on all things canny and uncanny, and everything in between. And today marks the release of Ragnarok, his one-hour comedy special about the apocalypse, via Netflix. To celebrate, we talked to him about the meaning of apocalyptic stories, and why he doesn’t love zombies.

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The dream of wearing a lightweight headset, like the Oculus Rift, in order to simulate physical presence isn’t limited to the imaginary worlds of video games. One man’s vision is that of immersive TV shows, movies and live sports. In fact, David Cole, co-founder of Next3D and an industry veteran who helps content creators and providers produce and deliver 3D, has been using his Rift dev kit to bring TV and film to life since the kits started shipping in March. The company is combining its video processing and compression technology with its experience in content production and stereoscopic delivery to offer what it’s called Full-Court.

Next3D hopes to leverage its existing relationships with creators and providers to assist them in jumping into the world of live-action VR content. This includes both pre-recorded and live broadcasts. We wanted to see this firsthand, so we jumped at the opportunity to witness the creation of content and experience the results. This trial run of Next3D’s stereoscopic, 180-degree field-of-view camera rig, and the post-processing to adapt it to VR, was part of the production of the paranormal investigation show, Anomaly, at Castle Warden in St. Augustine, Fla. Being nearby, we braved the perils of the haunted surroundings to tell you about what we hope is only the beginning of virtual reality content.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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At Intel’s Computex keynote earlier today, the chip maker teased that it expects embedded 3D depth cameras to arrive on devices in the second half of 2014. Luckily, we got an exclusive early taste of the technology shortly after the event, courtesy of SoftKinetic. This Belgian company not only licenses its close-range gesture tracking middleware to Intel, but it also manufactures time-of-flight 3D depth cameras — including Creative’s upcoming Senz3D — in partnership with South Korea-based Namuga. Read on to see how we coped with this futuristic piece of kit, plus we have a video ready for your amusement.

Filed under: Peripherals, Intel

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