ESPN has a great article on the phenomenon known as Madden Football–along the way, the game helped shape the entire industry.
Interesting story on NPR’s All Things Considered on how parts of Steven Spielberg’s 2002 movie, Minority Report, have come to pass, way ahead of time (the movie was set in 2054). The story features personalization of advertisements, the prediction of crime, and the floating screen computer interface all featured in the movie.
(Via The Future According To ‘Minority Report’ May Be Now : NPR.)
It’s the beginning of a brave new world. An autonomous robot at Duke took a bioposy (using a turkey breast and a grape) using real-time 3D ultrasound scans.
Wow, Google is making a big move into the social gaming space with it’s investment in Zynga. One wonders if Zynga might consider broadening it’s horizons beyond Facebook? Of course, Google has yet to get it’s facebook competitor off the ground.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/10/google-secretly-invested-100-million-in-zynga-preparing-to-launch-google-games/?goback=.gde_138591_member_24632691
New software, developed by Xiaolin Wei and Jinxiang Chai of Texas A&M University in College Station, tracks humans in video footage, and creates 3D models of them. This new technology is expected to bring motion capture to the masses without the need for high-end equipment.
(Via Animated 3D models extracted from single-camera video – tech – 10 July 2010 – New Scientist.)
“IDEO Labs – Amazing 3D Immersion Technology
Interesting movie of an end-user experiencing a fully immersive 3D environment. A great example of how the body may be “tricked” into believing virtual objects and environments are real.
An article published today about troubles at Linden Labs, the home of Second Life, including layoffs, desertion of strategic companies from virtual space, and a stagnant user base.
HIRO III lets you feel what you see on screen: “
Researchers in Japan are developing a ‘haptic interface robot’ — the HIRO III, a robot hand that can transmit realistic sensations of touch to a user’s fingertips.
The user straps their fingers into a robot hand. Through the haptic interface the user can sense tactile sensation including the textures of surfaces, size of virtual objects and a sense of weight.
All this is embedded in a 3d display that also renders the user’s hand–positioned just as it is in real world. It is thought this accurate rendering will enhance the realism of the experience.
The developers anticipate its use in in applications such as factory work and for aiding medical procedure.
(Via KurzweilAI » News.)
A professor at University of Essex compared physical ability of gamers with atheletes. I agree with much of the article feedback, the researcher picked an extreme example (10 hour/day gamer) to conclude they have the fitness level of a 60 year old smoker. The good news, his extreme gamer candidates are happy and have great reaction times.
Here is the the Telegraph article.
As a way to promote the Steam platform for the Mac, Valve is giving away the popular 3D puzzle game, Portal, until May 24.
So hop over to the Steam web site and download without delay. I never played it before. It has an interesting game mechanic with nice graphics for the era in which it was developed.