Feb 11
A shiny new city recently opened in northern Virginia’s Caroline County. It has a school, a church, a mosque, a subway station, and even an embassy that, at five stories, may be the county’s tallest building. But nobody lives there.
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Jan 13
I’ve had a few opportunities to play with the Oculus Rift head-mounted VR display over the last year or so, but most of the demonstrations I’ve tried have focused on gaming applications. On the other hand, Ford is using this technology to help designers visualize the interiors and exteriors of new vehicles.
The demonstration, which used a combination of a rare full HD prototype of the Oculus Rift goggles, along with VRED industrial design software from Autodesk allows wearers to sit in a full-scale virtual model of a vehicle.
When wearing the Rift, your can sit inside the vehicle and look around to see every minute detail of the car or truck’s interior, and you can also look at it from outside.
While the demonstration I tested out didn’t let you actually walk around the vehicle, the version being used at Ford’s Design Center is capable of this.
Even if virtual reality doesn’t provide the tactile feedback of working with clay models or prototype vehicles, it does permit designers to test out vehicle layouts at very early stages, as well as to quickly test modifications. As the Oculus Rift continues to improve, and gets closer to a final commercial build, I can only imagine these sort of simulations getting more and more realistic.
Dec 19
If archaeology was once about digging through dirt, it is increasingly—like almost every other profession—about programming computers. Bernie Frischer, an Indiana University "archaeo-informaticist," has came up with a new theory about two Roman monuments. His finding are based on 3D reconstructions of the monuments using video game technology and calculations of the sun’s position 2,000 years ago.
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Nov 23
You need to see how incredibly awesome Disney’s new animated snow technology is. They created it for Frozen—their new (non-Pixar) 3D animation feature. This video presented at the latest Siggraph shows how it works:
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Aug 31
To make sure Google’s Project Loon is more internet via balloon than pie in the sky, the search giant turned to data simulations. Loon Rapid Evaluator Dan Piponi’s goal was to determine the possibility of a “nicely spaced flock of balloons” to provide reliable airborne internet. Proper spacing is key for this because if the gaps are too wide, coverage will be spotty — the opposite of what the initiative is hoping to achieve. He iterated “hundreds” of times using publicly available wind info to visualize how different stratospheric factors would affect balloon travel and found that yes, they could indeed be evenly distributed. Piponi posited that in the future, the balloons could have information about what other balloons are doing around them and adjust spacing on their own, accordingly. If you ask us, that sounds like the internet of things is taking to the clouds.
Source: Project Loon (Google+)
Aug 29
SimCity for Mac arrives with issues that prevent installation and gameplay (update: issues resolved)
Posted in: Today's Chili
SimCity for Mac is finally here, and needless to say, many have waited years for this day. Unfortunately, the arrival isn’t going terribly smoothly for some, with user complaints ranging from installation issues to the game running only in a windowed mode. Put simply, SimCity for Mac is unplayable for some, and it’s an unfortunate situation that’s eerily reminiscent of its launch on the PC. A Maxis spokesperson tells us that its live support team is actively working with players that’ve encountered trouble, and for what it’s worth, installation of SimCity for Mac went off without a hitch on our end. In other words, don’t lose hope; if you’re looking to avoid potential frustration, however, you might want to give the developers a chance to iron out these launch day issues.
Update: Maxis has issued the following statement about the issues:
“We are pleased to advise that the installation-related issues some players experienced with SimCity on Mac have been resolved.”
Filed under: Gaming
Via: TUAW
Source: EA forums (1), (2)
Aug 12
I love indie games. There’s just a sort of a creative freedom, ingenuity and singular artistic vision in many of these games that makes them often more fun than the big blockbusters. One unusual little indie game that recently popped onto my radar screen was Cart Life. It’s actually been around for a couple of years, but it’s new to me.
The game dusts off the old lemonade stand type sim of the 1980s and breathes fresh life into it. Cart Life was developed by Richard Hofmeier, and offers a retro style befitting its gameplay.
The game puts you in charge of the livelihood of one of several citizens of a fictitious city, and asks you to build and operate their various street vending businesses. But these characters not only have business goals to meet, they each have needs and addictions which must be fed, as well as unique personality traits. It’s as much about money management and business skills as managing risk and reward for your sims.
Cart Life is available as a free download for Windows PCs here. Richard also offers a deluxe edition with a bonus game, soundtrack MP3s and a bonus playable character for just $5(USD). There’s also a fan-made Mac port available here.
[via The Atlantic Cities]
Aug 05
The splines of SimCity for Mac have been reticulating for longer than many mayors would like, but that’s about to change come August 29th, when the game officially hits online servers for download. The release of the Mac version — which costs $40 for the standard edition, or $60 for the deluxe version — allows EA to finally make good on its promise of cross-platform, multi-player city building. If you happen to own both a Mac and a PC, you’ll find that one purchase allows you to download both versions from EA’s Origin store. Naturally, we’re crossing our fingers that SimCity for Mac will have a smoother launch than its PC counterpart, but it seems that we’ll have a definitive answer by month’s end.
Filed under: Gaming
Via: Joystiq
Apr 30
While we’ve seen supercomputers break records before, rarely have we seen the barrier smashed quite so thoroughly as by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Sequoia supercomputer. Researchers at both LLNL and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have used planet-scale calculations on the Blue Gene/Q-based cluster to set an all-time simulation speed record of 504 billion events per second — a staggering 41 times better than the 2009 record of 12.2 billion. The partnership also set a record for parallelism, too, by making the supercomputer’s 1.97 million cores juggle 7.86 million tasks at once. If there’s a catch to that blistering performance, it’s not knowing if Sequoia reached its full potential. LLNL and RPI conducted their speed run during an integration phase, when Sequoia could be used for public experiments; now that it’s running classified nuclear simulations, we can only guess at what’s possible.
Mar 06
I’d be willing to bet there are huge number of gamers out there who have fond memories of playing previous SimCity games back in the day. I know I spent many an hour building a giant city only to destroy it with a rampaging monster or some other catastrophe. It’s been 10 years since we’ve seen a new game in the SimCity franchise. EA has announced that the new SimCity game is now available at retail stores across North America and as a digital download via Origin.
This game has been one of the most widely anticipated launches of early 2013 and brings the game play we all remember along with significantly updated graphics and capabilities. EA says that everything is intelligently simulated in the new SimCity.
EA says that everything from the Sims in the city down to every kilowatt of power is intelligently simulated thanks to the powerful new GlassBox Engine. The game supports multiple city game play across regions giving players a larger field than some previous titles that limited you to a single city. The new game allows players to manage and play up to 16 cities at a time.
Each of the 16 cities can have a different specialization. A player’s individual cities can share services and trade resources. The cities can choose to help each other or hinder each other depending on the player’s mood. This is also the first SimCity game to support multiple player gaming with a players decisions for their cities impacting the city and the region. The game supports real-time updates and pushes updates to players with new challenges and achievements.
You can download SimCity Limited Edition for $59.99(USD) or the Deluxe Edition, which includes French, German and British city sets for $79.99 over at the SimCity website now.
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