Epic Games is using the Game Developers Conference (GDC) to give an advanced preview of the latest additions to its Unreal Engine VR Editor, which allows creatives to build worlds in a virtual reality environment using the full capabilities of the editor toolset combined with interaction models designed specifically for VR world building. The goal is to officially launch the new VR Editor by April 17.
Mike Fricker, technical director at Epic Games, told UploadVR that working directly in VR provides the proper sense of scale necessary to create realistic, believable worlds, while the use of motion controllers means artists and other non-programmers can build environments with natural motions and interactions.
Epic’s own Robo Recallteam used the VR Editor to build out the free pack-in game for the Oculus Rift with Touch, which also makes its complete debut at GDC this week.
“As soon as they started using it, they realized what the most beneficial use cases were to them,” Fricker said. “Inspecting and tweaking was one of them, but sometimes they just want to throw in things really quickly and see it at scale without having to constantly take the headset off and on.”
The Robo Recall team had a direct impact on the new VR Editor that everyone will have access to in April. Fricker said the team needed little power user features like the ability to snap objects right to the ground instantly without having to go grab them from a menu and move them down to the ground.
“They asked us to give them the power to use these additional features so that they can stay in VR longer,” Fricker said. “That’s not to say that we’re trying to replace desktop. If they’re going to go and do blueprint scripting or material editing, you can get to that stuff in VR and you can make some progress if you knew you were going to tweak something or make a quick change to something. If you’re going to develop a function library or a new game system, you’re probably not going to do that in VR today. But the fact that you can go and see it and inspect it without having to leave VR, that’s the feedback that we got from the team.”
Developing inside VR not only opens things to all members of a team, it also speeds up the development process.
“It’s much faster to navigate a scene in VR than it is with the desktop, where you’re constantly using the combinations of the mouse and keyboard and modifier keys to orbit around an object and zoom the camera around,” Fricker said. “In VR, it’s one-to-one. I know exactly where I’ll end up at any point. Once you get used to it, it’s super fast.”
Lauren Ridge, tools programmer at Epic Games, said they’ve put in safeguards to ensure developers don’t get sick working within VR. For example, you can only move in rotation towards one direction. Not a single Epic user has ever had any motion sickness problems while in the VR Editor at the studio, where high-end PCs ensure a fast framerate.
“We have various levels of safeguard settings that will do things like turn on a grid for my tracking space or dissolve the sky into grayness,” Ridge said. “For example, in real life, I don’t have the ability to grab the world, turn it like a steering wheel and see the sky change. To some people, that’s instantly not good, so we’ve looked at all the different cases people have and added safeguards for them. You also can’t tip yourself over.”
Ultimately, the VR Editor has been designed to allow creatives to do whatever they want. Epic showcased a complicated scene set on a beautiful beach during its GDC Keynote, which includes a surfing mini-game as well as a sea plane flying overhead. Moving the plane to a higher altitude is done in seconds by grabbing the plane and moving its trajectory.
“We’ve been improving things since last year, which was the equivalent to our early access,” Fricker said. “We know that navigating 3D spaces is really fun and fast in VR, so that’s another cool thing that we’re excited about.”
The GDC beach demo also shows how easy it is to access the Unreal editor UI in VR to change settings or change what types of plants you’re painting down for foliage painting. The brush has been improved and makes things like undo and redo more accessible with a quick action.
Simulate mode allows developers to see how objects act when physics are attached. Ridge shows rocks of different sizes accurately falling off a cliff that overlooks the beach.
“This means you can use physics as an art tool,” Ridge said. “When you move the rock around gravity will act on it. You can also trigger gameplay events.”
The demo shows accurately built wooden 2x4s being snapped together into a staircase for a wooden hut on the beach.
“We also added more precise snapping tools,” Fricker said. “That’s about having things look organic and natural, but we also wanted a way to have really precise interactions with objects.”
Epic is taking advantage of VR, which offers more degrees of freedom with motion controllers than when using a traditional mouse and keyboard.”
“If I paint using different pressure on the trigger of the motion controllers, it’ll paint different strengths of the rock material down,” Ridge said. “This is cool because the editor already had various painting and fluid creativity features, but then being able to use those with motion control suddenly made them way more accessible. I can instantly get the bird’s eye view and see how it looks all in the scene and then jump down to see the player’s view of it to make any changes.”
Epic has also partnered with Disney’s Pixar Animation Studio to have Unreal Engine 4 and the VR Editor support Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) 3D graphics pipeline. Epic showed the coral reef from Finding Dory and characters Crush the sea turtle and Mr. Ray the manta ray running in UE4.
“The cool thing here is that we don’t need any other separate tools to go from USD to what you’d see on screen with this demo,” Ficker said. “USD is a pretty big deal to the film industry and other non-gaming uses, but it has some special powers that make it equally awesome for games too.”
Pixar wants to add more plug-ins for creatives beyond Autodesk Maya, so UE4 now opens up new opportunities for companies working in VR.
“As more plug-ins appear, more people will begin using this format,” Ficker said. “USD has a really elegant set-up for just describing a scene in its entirety with all the information you need to uniquely instance specific things along with dealing with complex animation.”
“We know the film industry will like it,” Ridge added. “We will increasingly use USD here. Hopefully, we will keep working with Pixar to make it awesome for every use case we can imagine. Right now we are working on USD import, but at some point we will probably be able to generate USD files as well.”
Augmented reality is a tough trick to pull off in the real world, and one only need to look at things like the Google Glass to see how hard it is to make wearable technology that both enhances life digitally without awkwardly intruding on the real world. The WatchThru is a concept created by a team of researchers from University of Bremen, Google, and Hasselt University that offers a different spin on AR with an intriguing expansion to traditional smartwatches: a second transparent display for augmented reality interactions.
The research team has a couple of interesting use cases for the additional screen. For example, having the glass show a directional arrow to help navigate around a campus, while a more traditional map display is...
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hits theaters later this year, and part of the oncoming wave of toys and tie-ins that Disney will be launching is this truly spectacular Star-Lord replica helmet. For $100, you’ll get a light-up version of the glowing helm from the film complete with sound effects. Oh, and it’s also a fullyfunctional Bluetooth headset. So you can not only look like Star-Lord, but rock out in true Peter Quill style.
Do they sound good? Probably not. At the end of the day, it’s still a plastic toy helmet. But like the $100,00 diamond headphones, the Star-Lord helmet isn’t about specs. It’s about style. Throw in a fancy leather duster and some boots, and you’re basically Chris Pratt.
Unity launched its Editor VR service in an alpha form late last year, and the engine-maker appears to be pretty happy with the results so far.
Editor VR is an in-VR section of the larger Unity engine that lets you edit virtual scenes in games and more. Taking to the stage at the company’s GDC 2017 press conference this morning, Principal Designer on the Labs team, Timoni West, revealed that the platform has had over 6,000 downloads since its launch. That might not sound like a huge amount, but given the platform’s alpha phase it’s a good start. Some of those users have already contributed code back into the platform’s code base too.
The Unity Labs team is developing an XR Foundation Toolkit to help #VR creators design, prototype & test experiences. We’ll share more soon.
West then showcased some of the Tools that are now included in the alpha version. These are creative apps and middleware that are imported into the Unity engine, to literally provide developers with more tools to make VR experiences. They include animation apps like Tvorii, and ProBuilder, which allows you to build, texture and edit meshes inside VR.
The company wants yet more Tools, though, and to encourage developers to contribute their work, Unity is hosting a competition with an undisclosed cash prize and a chance to showcase at May’s VR and AR-focused Vision Summit.
Unity isn’t just leaving the development of Editor VR up to the community, though. West’s biggest announcement was its own Tool, the Cross Reality Foundation Toolkit (XRFT). This was described as a “framework” for just about anyone interested in working in VR, AR and MR, allowing them to “get up to speed” without starting from scratch.
“We want to give you the building blocks for interaction and locomotion,” West said, “and everything else you need.”
Included in the XRFT will be elements like cross-platform controller input, customizable physics systems, AR/VR-specific shaders and cameras, object snapping and building systems, debugging and profiling tools, and support for all major VR and AR platforms. The toolkit will be released as an open-source beta “over the next few months.”
It sounds like this could be the next big step in Unity’s plan to make VR development accessible to everyone and anyone.
À l’occasion du MWC, Sony dévoile le « Xperia Touch », un projecteur révolutionnaire qui rend n’importe quelle surface tactile.
Oubliez votre iPad et les autres tablettes tactiles, car Sony vient de dévoiler une nouvelle innovation qui devrait faire parler d’elle. À l’occasion du MWC (Mobile World Congress) à Barcelone, Sony a dévoilé le Xperia Touch, un projecteur innovant capable de transformer n’importe quelle surface en écran tactile.
Si on avait déjà pu découvrir un aperçu de ce produit à l’occasion du SXSW l’an dernier, le projet « Xperia Touch » semble plus mature que jamais puisque ce projecteur devrait être commercialisé dès le printemps 2017. Le Xperia Touch est capable de créer une surface tactile de 23 pouces qui utilise une caméra et un capteur infrarouge pour détecter vos mouvements qui correspondent à des clics ou à des swipes.
Le Sony Xperia Touch entend bien révolutionner des industries comme le gaming, l’éducation, le streaming ou encore la cuisine. Un bel objet qui fonctionne sous Android et qui enclenchera peut être une nouvelle ère dans l’univers des nouvelles technologies.
The scale for awesome things you can do in VR keeps increasing. First, I could see a dinosaur as if it were really there as it walked towards me, perhaps sniffing right in front of me as he pondered a potential meal. Then I could punch dinosaurs with position-tracked controls, realistically defending myself should they choose to attack. Now? I can kick dinosaurs. In the face. And it’s awesome.
A month ago we saw developer Cloudgate Studio experiment with full-body tracking on the HTC Vive, using two controllers for hands and another two strapped to your feet. The result was a surprisingly accurate approximation of your full body inside VR. At the time the developer noted that it would implement the Vive’s new Tracker peripheral, switching out the controllers on the feet, as soon as it possible. Well, now it’s done that and it looks something like this.
A build of Cloudgate’s Island 359 was on display at this year’s Mobile World Congress using these two makeshift add-ons, which hooked under the laces in my shoes. A belt with another tracker tied around it went around my waist, something the developers said it would implement in last month’s video for a touch more accuracy.
As the game booted up I was instructed to stand with my feet in some green outlines, with a mirror in front of me. Once I was alligned I saw the floating hands and feet transform into a full avatar in seconds, with no other calibration needed. The first time I did this I ended up with strange, elongated gorilla arms (I don’t think I was holding my hands in the right place), but the second time it worked much better. I could look down and see my body, and my arms would follow my hands — for the most part — in a realistic fashion.
There were the expected occasional glitches, with arms getting out of sync, but Cloudgate has only had the Trackers for a few weeks and with a consumer roll out of Vive Trackers not happening until later this year it’s got plenty of time to iron it out even more.
Actually playing Island 359 with this tracking was a lot of fun. In last month’s video we saw the developer kick items over. Here, I was lashing out at dinosaurs with my feet and sending them flying. Smaller dinosaurs would run up to me, and I’d stomp down on them, killing them instantly (yes, there was a guilty pleasure to it). For larger dinosaurs I’d sweep my leg into them. The tracking might have been a little glitchy, but it didn’t fail me.
As I continued to play I got a little more confident with what the tracking could do. I was attacked from behind and instead of turning around to deal with the problem I simply kicked my leg backwards, then turned to find an enemy crumbled on the floor. It made the game’s action more versatile and liberating than it already was.
The key to this small breakthrough is giving players options. At $99.99, not every Vive owner is going to buy a tracker, let alone three or more of them. But Cloudgate’s work isn’t essential to the Island 359 experience, it’s additive. It’s already playable with just your two regular Vive controllers, this just makes it that bit more immersive.
But sharing this work and letting other developers implement it into their own games could create a scalable VR experience that doesn’t fragment the user-base because it does’t leave anyone out.
We’re still some months from finding out just how big of an impact this use of Vive’s Trackers will be, but I’m willing to bet a lot of enthusiasts will be ordering at least three units when it finally starts to roll out.
Update: AirMech Command is now available for Oculus Rift with Touch support, HTC Vive, and OSVR platforms. The game can be downloaded on Steam for $19.99 with support for all three headsets, as well as gamepad or tracked motion controller input methods.
Original Story: Remember AirMech Command? It was one of our favorite launch titles for the Oculus Rift last year, showing what VR could do for the real-time strategy (RTS) genre beloved by many a PC gamer, and it’s coming back soon in a big way.
Carbon Studios, the team behind the game, released the below trailer, showcasing an update for AirMech Command that will add Oculus Touch motion controller support. This version of the game is also going to launch on the HTC Vive ‘very soon’, according to the video’s description, though no date has been given yet.
Motion controller support doesn’t appear to be a quick addition here like it is in other previously gamepad-only games such as Lucky’s Tale. You can use either Touch or the Vive wands to issue commands on the battlefield, like selecting units, pointing to where you want to move them, and targeting enemies to attack. The game’s UI is fully compatible with the controllers, too.
AirMech Command is the next iteration in Carbon’s franchise. It offers single, multiplayer and co-op modes along with 13 maps, 60 units and even a Spectate mode for those that just want to watch. Even a year on, it’s one of the meatier VR experiences you can have right now.
Sadly, there isn’t any word on if the game could come to PlayStation VR (PSVR) just yet. We’ve reached out to carbon to ask about a possible version for that headset, as well as if Vive and Rift players will be able to play together.
When it launched last year we labelled AirMech Command as “a brilliant combination of the RTS and MOBA genres” that “uses VR in some really inventive ways that not only improve the game as a whole, but doesn’t feel forced or restrictive.” Hopefully these latest updates will bring the game to an even wider audience then before.
En Chine, le réseau social WeChat semble vouloir concurrencer Amazon Go en dévoilant son propre concept de magasin connecté et mobile
Visiblement, le concept d’Amazon Go semble bien inspirer nos amis chinois. WeChat, le réseau social le plus populaire dans le pays, vient de dévoiler un partenariat avec la startup BingoBox pour mettre en place des magasins automatisés et sans personnel… à la manière d’Amazon Go.
Ce point de vente du futur n’est pas seulement automatisé : il est également mobile. Ces petites boutiques seront en effet conçues pour être déplacées facilement d’un endroit à l’autre. Tout fonctionne ensuite grâce à des QR Codes : pour rentrer dans le magasin, pour s’identifier et enfin pour payer. Une initiative surprenante quand on sait que le QR Code est un peu tombé à l’abandon en France. En Chine, il reste malgré tout très populaire et permet à WeChat de proposer une alternative sérieuse et plus mobile à Amazon Go. Wait and see.
Les technologies de réalité virtuelle (VR) rencontrent un réel succès depuis plusieurs années dans les communautés de développeurs et progressivement, les applications sortent des labos avec des casques destinés au grand public et commercialisés par les plus grandes marques high tech. Nul doute que cette industrie émergente représente l’une des prochaines grandes révolutions technologiques du 21e siècle. Mais l’immersion totale dans un monde virtuel n’est pas encore atteinte et représente le plus grand challenge pour les acteurs du secteur. Les solutions répondant à l’immersion virtuelle de la vision ou de l’ouïe ont atteint un stade surprenant de développement, mais aucun mécanisme de déplacement en revanche se rapproche si près de la réalité pour l’instant.
Les chercheurs se posent donc plus que jamais des questions autour des mécaniques de déplacement dans la VR. Nous sommes limités à la fois par l’espace disponible dans l’environnement réel, par notre corps (fatigue physique, sensation possible de nausée, anxiété) ou encore par le prix des appareils. Mercredi 15 février, nous recevions, à l’occasion du premier Virtual Wednesday, Damien Doury (développeur et game designer VR) et Stanislas Chesnais (CEO de 3dRudder) chez NUMA pour échanger autour des solutions hardware et software développées actuellement pour répondre à cette problématique.
Software
Roomscale
Cette technologie permet de se déplacer dans l’environnement réel et de traduire les mouvements dans l’environnement virtuel. Bien que l’immersion soit forte, cette solution requiert en revanche un espace important pour se déplacer et chacun ne bénéficie pas d’une large pièce chez lui, ce qui pose une contrainte supplémentaire pour les développeurs de contenus.
Running in place (RIP)
Contrairement au roomscale où le joueur se déplace dans la pièce, les technologies RIP permettent de garder une position fixe en courant sur place ; la direction étant contrôlée par l’orientation du casque. Cette solution résout le problème de l’espace mais la position et le sens de déplacement ne prend pas en compte la position à la fois de la tête et du corps. Des solutions émergent comme PocketStrafe, qui permet grâce à un téléphone glissé dans la poche de prendre en compte la position du corps.
Le D-pad (directional pad)
Le D-pad est un joystick qui permet de contrôler le déplacement dans le jeu sans solliciter le mouvement réel du corps. Cette technologie est simple et peut aussi être utilisée avec un clavier d’ordinateur. En revanche elle peut aussi déclencher une sensation désagréable de nausée, le motion sickness, car l’équilibre est perturbé dû à un différentiel entre la vue et l’oreille interne.
Téléportation
Pour contrer cet effet de nausée, les ingénieurs ont imaginé un système de téléportation. Grâce à une visée laser, on peut imaginer se déplacer rapidement dans l’espace. En revanche, c’est une technique critiquée d’une part car elle casse l’immersion et d’autre part car elle peut parfois permettre aux joueurs de tricher en esquivant furtivement des attaques par exemple. D’autres variantes de la téléportation permettent d’améliorer cette solution, comme la téléportation “glissée” ou encore lorsque le joueur “tire” le monde autour de lui (solution particulièrement utilisée dans les jeux de stratégie).
Hardware
Exosquelette
L’avantage de l’exosquelette est qu’il permet d’ajouter le toucher, un input qui s’ajoute à la vision et à l’ouïe. Ceci permet d’enregistrer les mouvements (outputs) qu’il est ensuite possible de bloquer mécaniquement pour simuler la présence d’un objet dans l’espace virtuel.
Omnidirectional treadmill
Apparue en 2014, l’idée de ces appareils est de permettre une expérience en VR complète dans un espace restreint. Grâce à des tapis à friction faible et des chaussures spéciales, le mouvement réel est traduit dans l’environnement virtuel.
Autres technologies
Ces solutions hardware sont des solutions dites full scale. Mais d’autres acteurs ont pris le parti de fabriquer des produits plus légers ou plus facilement accessibles par les utilisateurs. On retrouve des combinaisons traditionnelles couvertes de capteurs, des technologies de reconnaissance de mouvement par vidéo ou encore des joysticks adaptés aux pieds. C’est le choix de 3dRudder que l’on peut utiliser assis et qui évite la sensation du motion sickness en conservant la sensation de déplacement dans l’espace.
Plusieurs solutions pour plusieurs applications
La technologie des casques VR est déjà bien développée et un standard s’est progressivement installé (par le jeux de deux lentilles qui convergent vers un écran scindé). A côté, les solutions aujourd’hui sont nombreuses en ce qui concerne les mécaniques de déplacement. Les standards peinent à s’installer car ces différentes solutions répondent en fait à plusieurs applications spécifiques.
Les designers et développeurs d’applications VR se sont tous penchés sur la question du déplacement. Ils ont créé des solutions hardware et software transcendant la condition humaine. Mais, si ces modes d’interaction répondent de plus en plus au problème d’équilibre et de fatigue, ils sont peu intuitifs ou naturels. Surtout, ils créent des ruptures d’immersion, élément essentiel de ce médium. Les technologies évoluent rapidement et permettront progressivement d’imaginer une immersion totale.
Keeping all your arts and crafts gear neatly organized is easier than ever with the ultimate craft station cabinet. The discreet wooden cabinet opens up to reveal a plethora of customizable shelves, drawers, and slots designed to house a wide range of gear.
Snap is now selling Spectacles online in the United States. The funky $129 Snapchat sunglasses with a built-in camera were announced in the fall, and for a while they were pretty hard to get, but the company has now closed up the pop-up shop in New York City. It’s also putting the traveling vending machines on hold — though Snap says the “Snapbots” will still show up in “surprising” locations in the future. Customers are limited to six Spectacles purchases per household when ordering via the web.
It’s not a surprising move — Snap let loose that it wanted to “significantly broaden the distribution of Spectacles” when it filed for an IPO a few weeks ago — but it is basically a necessary one. While the Snapbots were an exciting experience,...
MIT announced today that it’s developed a speech recognition chip capable of real world power savings of between 90 and 99 percent over existing technologies. Voice technology has, of course, become nearly ubiquitous in mobile devices, thanks to the exponential growth of smart assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Home – but the new chip could help branch out in much simpler… Read More
En Suède, le studio Flyte a mis au point STORY, une horloge design et minimaliste qui fonctionne grâce à un système de magnétisme.
Envie d’une horloge originale pour décorer votre salon ? En Suède, le studio Flyte a imaginé STORY, une horloge magnétique et minimaliste vraiment pas comme les autres. STORY prend la forme d’une horloge en bois circulaire qui n’utilise pas d’aiguilles pour indiquer l’heure.
L’horloge STORY en action
Grâce à un système de magnétisme, une boule métallique lévite sur l’horloge pour vous indiquer l’heure. Et si vous avez besoin de connaître l’heure exacte, il est possible de la faire apparaître au centre de l’horloge. Un concept très design qui a visiblement séduit bon nombre d’internautes ; le projet a largement dépassé son objectif financier sur Kickstarter. Pour en savoir plus, rendez-vous sur la page de STORY.
Oubliez les horloges traditionnelles
Le studio Flyte…
… nous dévoile STORY…
… une horloge pas comme les autres…
… qui a remplacé les aiguilles…
… par un système de magnétisme
Un concept à découvrir de toute urgence sur Kickstarter !
Destroying a planet is easy if you’ve got a Death Star (and even easier with Starkiller Base) but here on Earth we have a slightly tougher time. In our case, it’s up to the visual effects team at Industrial Light and Magic to destroy entire worlds, building cities and mountains up inside their computers, before knocking them down with humongous lasers.
ILM’s latest video shows how it did exactly this for Scarif and Jedha, two of the planets featured in last December’s Rogue One. The famed visual effects studio’s techniques are shown in layers, starting with a mesh that builds the basic shape of a CGI scene, before structures, textures, and effects like water are added on top. From there, ILM unleashes hell, adding explosions, clouds of...
It's faster: TensorFlow 1.0 is incredibly fast! XLA lays the groundwork for even more performance improvements in the future, and tensorflow.org now includes tips & tricksfor tuning your models to achieve maximum speed. We'll soon publish updated implementations of several popular models to show how to take full advantage of TensorFlow 1.0 - including a 7.3x speedup on 8 GPUs for Inception v3 and 58x speedup for distributed Inception v3 training on 64 GPUs!
It's more flexible: TensorFlow 1.0 introduces a high-level API for TensorFlow, with tf.layers, tf.metrics, and tf.losses modules. We've also announced the inclusion of a new tf.keras module that provides full compatibility with Keras, another popular high-level neural networks library.
It's more production-ready than ever: TensorFlow 1.0 promises Python API stability (details here), making it easier to pick up new features without worrying about breaking your existing code.
Python APIs have been changed to resemble NumPy more closely. For this and other backwards-incompatible changes made to support API stability going forward, please use our handy migration guide and conversion script.
Higher-level API modules tf.layers, tf.metrics, and tf.losses - brought over from tf.contrib.learnafter incorporating skflowand TF Slim
Experimental release of XLA, a domain-specific compiler for TensorFlow graphs, that targets CPUs and GPUs. XLA is rapidly evolving - expect to see more progress in upcoming releases.
Introduction of the TensorFlow Debugger (tfdbg), a command-line interface and API for debugging live TensorFlow programs.
New Android demos for object detection and localization, and camera-based image stylization.
Installation improvements: Python 3 docker images have been added, and TensorFlow's pip packages are now PyPI compliant. This means TensorFlow can now be installed with a simple invocation of pip install tensorflow.
We're thrilled to see the pace of development in the TensorFlow community around the world. To hear more about TensorFlow 1.0 and how it's being used, you can watch the TensorFlow Developer Summit talks on YouTube, covering recent updates from higher-level APIs to TensorFlow on mobile to our new XLA compiler, as well as the exciting ways that TensorFlow is being used:
Click herefor a link to the livestream and video playlist (individual talks will be posted online later in the day).
Vacuum forming is a manufacturing technique that’s been around for a while. You take a heated sheet of plastic, press it down onto the object you’d like to make a mold of, and then use a vacuum to suction down the sheet of plastic to accurately capture the exact details. It’s a pretty analogue process for the most part, but the Vaquform is a Kickstarter project that hopes to add some digital technology to the mix, while also promising to bring an industrial level of quality to a more consumer-friendly form factor at a lower price.
The Vaquform’s digital smarts come in the form of a IR probe for monitoring the temperature of the plastic and preset settings for different material thicknesses and types, making it relatively easy to just...
It’s no secret that graphene is a pretty incredible super-material. Discovered in 2004, graphene is, simply, a layer of carbon atoms that is only one atom thick. It is ultra-light, yet it’s 200 times stronger than steel (some even claim that it is the strongest material on Earth). It’s electrically conductive but biodegradable, and it can be formed into practically any shape imaginable.
Until recently, graphene could only be made in extremely tiny quantities with much difficulty and at a high cost, but according to a recent study published in Nature Communications, heating soybean oil to 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 degrees Fahrenheit) can cause carbon atoms to arrange into a one-atom level thick sheet. This method cuts graphene production costs ten-fold and is a simple and fast one-step solution, but it couldn’t produce graphene in great enough quantities.
A physics professor stumbled upon an explosive technique to create larger quantities of graphene, but the material wasn’t as high quality. Other researchers tried building graphene into different shapes, and they discovered one that allowed graphene to retain its amazing properties on a macro-level. That’s another major breakthrough, but one that will do us little good until we can make graphene on a larger scale.
Clearly, graphene is going to take some time to figure out. Once we do, though, the material will help enable all kinds of futuristic research. With the potential to create anything from cyborgs to advanced supercomputers, graphene is truly the material of the future.
This is one of the best thing I’ve watched in while. If you ever watched the cartoon or played the game, I suspect that you’ll enjoy watching this quite a bit!
Dungeon Master Joel sets Grant, Greg, Kirran, Eddie, and Gooey on the grandest quest ever to be played in a Dungeons and Dragons game. Full of DM Magic.
Xiaomi (pronounced as shao-mee) is a privately owned Chinese electronics company with headquarters in Beijing. Being the world’s 4th biggest smartphone manufacturer it also develops and sells mobile apps, laptops, and other consumer electronics.
When it comes to the said other consumer electronics, the only thing that would probably come to mind is Bluetooth speakers. However, this is far from the reality, as Xiaomi also produces a wide variety of very different electronics.
The Most Interesting Xiaomi Products
According to IDC, in October 2014 Xiaomi was the 3rd biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world, but, interestingly, in 2014 Xiaomi took over Samsung in the Chinese market, becoming country’s largest. So it might be just a matter of time until they move further up on the global scale.
So what other awesome products does Xiaomi make, except for this amazing transformer tablet (that we are happy to inform you has met the crowdfunding goal by 100%)?
As it turns out, a bunch of different things, all of which have one common trait: very high quality. I’m not over-hyping it a single bit: anyone who ever owned a Xiaomi product can attest to that.
In this article we have collected some of the best Xiaomi products.
Xiaomi Soocare X3 smart toothbrush
A Bluetooth toothbrush by Xiaomi is an interesting device. First, you need to pair the toothbrush with your smartphone via an app, and set it up. You can set the length of a session and add custom tasks, like brushing tongue or massaging gums.
Soocare X3 features a magnetic levitation acoustic wave motor. The frequency of its vibration can reach 37,200 times per minute. A pretty impressive built-in 1000 mAh lithium battery takes 16 hours to fully charge it, however, the brush can operate up to 25 days on a single charge provided you use it for 4 minutes each day.
Xiaomi kettle is made out of high-quality metal, and it also acts as a thermos – the water retains the warmth for up to 12 hours. You can also use it via the app, and set the time when it turns on. Which means you can always have the hot water available when you wake up. The future is here, you guys.
Another product that you probably didn’t expect Xiaomi to have made, yet here it is.
The floral monitor samples the soil, and alerts you if something is needed. You can select the plant from the list, and it will tell you if the soil is suitable. It also alerts you when the plant needs to be watered.
This mosquito repellent is an interesting market to get into. But Xiaomi has repeatedly shown us it is not afraid of taking risks. The MIJIA Portable Mosquito Repeller lasts for up to 15 hours when plugged to Mi Power Bank Pro 10000mAh, and up to 28 hours when plugged to a 20000mAh one.
Its small size and weight make it very portable. But you still need one of those wacky pads that you can buy at stores.
Yeelight is a lot more than you would expect from a desk lamp.
You can pick your favorite out of 16,000,000 colors from the app that also controls the hue and brightness, or by tapping the top (which in its entirety is a touch panel). There are options to turn the light on or off at a set time, switch between 4 colors of your choice, and adjust the speed of pulsation, if you choose to enable it.
Xiaofang is a smart WiFi IP camera that features 1080P Full HD video, enhanced 9-meter night vision, and mobile sound detection. Xiaomi added innovative functions such as multiple camera linking and sharing, special special intruder alarms – it can start recording and notify you when there is movement. It can even detect a sound of a CO2 or of a fire alarm.
The camera has a magnetic base, which helps with mounting it to metallic surfaces. It can be used with a power bank, or it can be connected to a computer via USB.
Xiaomi drone comes with a 4K camera that can record in 30FPS.
For the $500 it is a very impressive machine with all the features that you would expect from a high end drone like DJI (against which it compares pretty well): low battery detection that automatically returns it to the takeoff spot, it can follow the predetermined route, or hover around objects on the map, and it has a real-time location tracking feature that can help retrieve in emergencies.
This smart watch lets you take and make calls, view your text messages, it has a heart rate monitor, etc. etc. Just look at the pic below to get a better idea, because, you know: a picture tells a thousand words.
Most people would probably automatically dismiss ordering a laptop from AliExpress, which is totally understandable, but a bunch of Russians who did it have positive reviews, apart from a couple that had issues with the backlight bleed (for which $180 was refunded via dispute).
It has a 13.3″ full HD display, a 256Gb SSD, a 720p webcam, and it is thinner than its main apparent rival – Macbook Pro.
With the surge of the smart home appliances and gadgets, the Brilliant Control is a San Mateo, California-based startup’s answer for the all-in-one smart home control panel. The Control is designed to easily replace a conventional light switch, with an installation designed to take no longer than 5-10 minutes. In my mind, the most important aspect about a product like this is… Read More
Pinterest today introduced Lens, a new visual search tool that uses machine vision to detect objects in the real world and suggest related items on the service. Lens, which is now in beta, is a tool inside the Pinterest mobile app that functions as a kind of Shazam for objects. Point it at food, furniture, or even the night sky, and Pinterest will return objects that it believes are related.
In a demonstration, Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp used Lens to detect a pomegranate. Pinterest returned results for pomegranate bread, pomegranate sandwiches, and tips for peeling pomegranates. He described a second use of Lens in which a boy held his phone to the night sky, and Pinterest returned a variety of nighttime landscape photos.
Pinterest is looking to continually decrease the friction from finding something they’re interested in and drilling further into newer products and ideas, and it now has another product to try to close that gap. The company today said it’s launching a new feature that allows users to find and jump to additional products within a photo they’re currently viewing. So, for… Read More
Gita wants to be your personal robot, carrying your stuff from A to B at speeds of up to 22 mph. The two-wheeled creation, which comes from the same people that make the Vespa, can also follow a human or move along autonomously.
Quantum computing is a very complicated subject branch of computer science that could one day radically change the way our computers function. At the forefront of that field is a Canadian company called D-Wave, which created the world’s biggest quantum computing chip last year, with over 2000 qubits (quantum bits) to perform calculations. Now, that chip is finally shipping in a 10-foot-tall, $15 million dollar quantum computer called the D-Wave 2000Q, which is a successor to the company’s earlier 1000Q, which only had half the number of qubits.
Most of the massive structure is taken up by cryogenic refrigerators
The actual chip itself roughly the size of a thumbnail, with most of the massive 700 ft3 structure taken up by cryogenic...
Sport stacking, cup stacking, speed stacking — whatever you call it, this sport is mesmerizing to watch. Vox's Phil Edwards learned the basics about stacking...(Read...)
The hype behind augmented reality tech has been giving a lot of display manufacturers the motivation to rethink how modern displays work. Current optics technologies being used by HoloLens, Vuzix and Magic Leap all rely on a complicated high-end type of waveguide display technology that utilizes lenses with etched structures that capture and diffract light being projected into the edge of… Read More
The Tesla driver killed in a crash while the Autopilot system was activated last year would have seen the tractor trailer for at least seven seconds prior to impact, according to the NHTSA investigation of the accident. This should have given the driver enough time to take “some action,” said Bryan Thomas, communications director for NHTSA, though it’s not known “whether that was enough time to avoid or mitigate the crash.”
The NHTSA investigation report called seven seconds a “period of extended distraction,” and noted that similar crashes generally had a “much shorter time” available for both the system and driver to detect and respond to a pending collision, usually less than three seconds. The report called distractions longer than...
MIT announced today that it’s developed a speech recognition chip capable of real world power savings of between 90 and 99 percent over existing technologies. Voice technology has, of course, become nearly ubiquitous in mobile devices, thanks to the exponential growth of smart assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Home – but the new chip could help branch out in much simpler… Read More
With the surge of the smart home appliances and gadgets, the Brilliant Control is a San Mateo, California-based startup’s answer for the all-in-one smart home control panel. The Control is designed to easily replace a conventional light switch, with an installation designed to take no longer than 5-10 minutes. In my mind, the most important aspect about a product like this is… Read More
Pinterest is looking to continually decrease the friction from finding something they’re interested in and drilling further into newer products and ideas, and it now has another product to try to close that gap. The company today said it’s launching a new feature that allows users to find and jump to additional products within a photo they’re currently viewing. So, for… Read More
The hype behind augmented reality tech has been giving a lot of display manufacturers the motivation to rethink how modern displays work. Current optics technologies being used by HoloLens, Vuzix and Magic Leap all rely on a complicated high-end type of waveguide display technology that utilizes lenses with etched structures that capture and diffract light being projected into the edge of… Read More
