Hasta La Gadget!

An Apple patent for a “3D imaging and display system” staggers out into daylight after seven years buried in the USPTO. Its eyes steadily adjust to the brightness of a Kinect-dominated world and its heart sinks. But then a random guy approaches and says,

“Hey little patent, what’s wrong?”

“I’m obsolete,” comes the sullen reply. “I’m all about detecting user movements in three dimensions, but the competition has that covered. Sure, people might *think* I’ve patented some kind of wild holographic virtual reality stuff too, but my paperwork only mentions that in the vaguest possible terms. There’s no way I can threaten Microsoft.”

“Nonsense!” cries the guy. “Follow me. I know a judge in Düsseldorf.”

Apple ‘3D imaging and display’ patent was cutting edge in 2005 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kinect ownership means you’ve got to keep a good ten square feet of space totally free to play in, and that’s nearly impossible for many inner-city, bedroom and dorm-room gamers. Fortunately for them, Nyko has developed a solution so simple it’s positively genius — clip-on lenses that reduce the distance the Kinect can see, bringing players closer to the TV. After the break you’ll find a video and press release — but more importantly, the Nyko Zoom is available right now for $29.99 in all good retailers, and some of the bad ones too, probably.

Continue reading Nyko’s $30 Zoom for Kinect now shipping to tiny-roomed gamers worldwide

Nyko’s $30 Zoom for Kinect now shipping to tiny-roomed gamers worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we’re getting our game on — and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back — at the end of the month we’ll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides — and hit up the hub page right here!

Let’s be honest, balancing coursework with recreation is just as important as maintaining a balanced food diet — perhaps even more. After you spend countless hours hitting the books, cramming for tests, and writing papers, you’re just going to need something to turn your brain to mush. Don’t worry, we have just the thing: video games. It doesn’t matter how many midterms you have, we’re sure we can find something to help you slack off. Of course, it’s not going to be easy; you’ll have to wait until next semester (at least) to get your hands on the PlayStation Vita, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have options now. Jump past the break — we can probably help you find something to get you through mid-terms with your sanity intact. Don’t want to shell out cash to have fun this semester? Enter our back to school sweepstakes! Simply leave a comment below for a chance to win, and drop by our giveaway page for more details.

Continue reading Engadget’s back to school guide 2011: gaming

Engadget’s back to school guide 2011: gaming originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The PlayStation 3 may have NFL Sunday Ticket but the Xbox 360 still has exclusive access to ESPN3’s slate of games, shows and replays, and today the app was updated with a new look and a few new features. Viewers can designate their favorite sports and teams to bring related content right to the front, while a new mini-guide gives easy access to other streams while you watch. If you’re trying to keep track of more than one game there’s also support for split screen viewing (with independent control of each stream) and upgraded voice control for Kinect owners. Other tweaks include a college football scoreboard to keep track of all the games at once, reminders, live alerts on score changes and the addition of ESPN’s BottomLine. Unchanged is the restriction that you need to subscribe to a TV provider that includes ESPN3 in its package, but if you do have the service (and shell out for XBL, of course) it should be available the next time you load up your console. Check out the YouTube videos embedded above and after the break along with a press release for a runthrough of some of the new features.

Continue reading Xbox 360’s ESPN3 app updated with more voice control, split screen and more

Xbox 360’s ESPN3 app updated with more voice control, split screen and more originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Aug 2011 23:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lookin’ to get your Grown Nerd on? Look no further. We just sat through 1.5 hours of high-brow technobabble here at SIGGRAPH 2011, where a gaggle of gurus with IQs far, far higher than ours explained in detail what the future of 3D face scanning would hold. Scientists from ETH Zürich, Texas A&M, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University as well as a variety of folks from Microsoft Research and Disney Research labs were on hand, with each subset revealing a slightly different technique to solving an all-too-similar problem: painfully accurate 3D face tracking. Haoda Huang et al. revealed a highly technical new method that involved the combination of marker-based motion capture with 3D scanning in an effort to overcome drift, while Thabo Beeler et al. took a drastically different approach.

Those folks relied on a markerless system that used a well-lit, multi-camera system to overcome occlusion, with anchor frames acting as staples in the success of its capture abilities. J. Rafael Tena et al. developed “a method that not only translates the motions of actors into a three-dimensional face model, but also subdivides it into facial regions that enable animators to intuitively create the poses they need.” Naturally, this one’s most useful for animators and designers, but the first system detailed is obviously gunning to work on lower-cost devices — Microsoft’s Kinect was specifically mentioned, and it doesn’t take a seasoned imagination to see how in-home facial scanning could lead to far more interactive games and augmented reality sessions. The full shebang can be grokked by diving into the links below, but we’d advise you to set aside a few hours (and rest up beforehand).

Continue reading Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH, Kinect crowd squarely targeted

Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH, Kinect crowd squarely targeted originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Physorg  |  Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft Research  | Email this | Comments