Thursday 31 March 2016

Google makes it easier to bring VR to your apps and the web

The challenge of bringing virtual reality to the masses isn't so much recording it as putting it in front of people's eyeballs. How do you plunk VR into an app without resorting to exotic code? Google can help. It's launching a VR View tool that makes it relatively easy to embed VR photos and videos in apps and websites. In software, it's just a few lines of programming with the Cardboard developer kit (which now supports iOS, we'd add). On the web, you only need embedding code like the sort you use for 2D clips.

It's a seemingly simple effort, but it could mean a lot for VR adoption. If it's trivial to add VR to apps and the web, you're more likely to see it used on a regular basis -- not just for the occasional experiment. You'll still need VR gear to make this more than a click-and-drag experience, of course, but it's still an important piece of the puzzle.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Google Developers Blog



Read the full article here by Engadget

Grab your source code for HBAO+ on GitHUB now

GitHUB has been releasing source code for GameWorks libraries on GitHUB since 2015. At GDC it was announced that source code for HairWorks

Read the full article here by 80lvl

Confirmed: Microsoft and Canonical Partner To Bring Ubuntu To Windows 10



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How a hacker snuck a game onto Steam without Valve’s knowledge

"Watch paint dry" exploited now-patched Steamworks vulnerability.

Read the full article here by Ars Technica

Friday 25 March 2016

Cartoons from XKCD creator will appear in high school science textbooks

Teens will get chemistry, biology, and physics explainers from Munroe’s latest book.

Read the full article here by Ars Technica

Government documents reveal Dyson is making an electric car

There might come a time when the image of a vacuum isn't the first thing that pops into your head whenever someone says "Dyson." It seems the company has received funding from the UK government yet again, this time to help finance the development of something much bigger than the 360 Eye: an electric vehicle. The Guardian has spotted a section in the National Infrastructure Delivery Plan published on gov.uk that talks about the project and the government's "£174 million ($245 million) investment."

It has since been removed from the document, which now only references the £16 million ($22.54 million) grant Dyson received for the research and development of battery technologies last week. A Dyson spokesperson also refused to confirm the report. Thankfully, The Guardian has a copy of the whole deleted bit:

"The government is funding Dyson to develop a new battery electric vehicle at their headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. This will secure £174m of investment in the area, creating over 500 jobs, mostly in engineering."

If you'll recall, Dyson snapped up a company called Sakti3 for $15 million back in 2015. Sakti3 was a promising University of Michigan spinoff, which developed batteries with double the life of even the best lithium-ion variants today. This acquisition, the government's battery grant and this new funding could mean Dyson plans to go head-to-head with companies (like Tesla) that make both electric vehicles and their own batteries in the future.

Source: Financial Times, The Guardian



Read the full article here by Engadget

Brussels Bombers Filmed Nuclear Researchers, Hoped To Build A "Dirty Bomb," Expert Says



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Epic: Unreal puts more of a focus on devs' success than Unity and Amazon

Epic: Unreal puts more of a focus on devs' success than Unity and Amazon

Epic Games has claimed that engine rivals Unity and Amazon are more interested in their own profit than the success of their developers.

All three engines – Unreal, Unity and Lumberyard – are free-to-use, but generate revenue through different methods.

Unreal takes five per cent of the revenue earned by Unreal-based games, while Unity makes the majority of its cash from advertising and analytics, and Amazon’s Lumberyard charges devs for their use of the Amazon Web Services cloud platform for multiplayer and online features.

Epic CTO Kim Libreri told Gamasutra that Unreal’s business model marked its preference for supporting devs and encouraging them to make their creations successful, rather than simply aiming to make money.

"If you make a great game and you succeed, we succeed with you,” he said. “I think that is the greatest motivator.

“We really are focused on our customers. It's important for us that they make great games and they're successful. It's very pure. Very simple to understand.

"Obviously cloud-hosted games are making profit out of the cloud hosting component of it. That's great, but it's not quite the same metric as being a successful game. If a game is not efficient, and uses more cloud resources, that still is in the interest of somebody who's selling cloud services.

"If somebody's making money through advertising attached to a game, that's still not the pure – the game has to be great and selling great numbers for us to be succeeding the best, so it is pure."

CEO Tim Sweeney echoed Libreri’s liberal use of the word ‘pure’ when describing Unreal's focus on studios.

"We make engine technology purely as developers succeed,” he said. “And we profit from the success alongside them

"Our model is probably the purest of them all. We profit from five per cent royalty on the revenue from games built with Unreal.

“You pay relatively unproportionately to the value you're getting out of the engine and we have an incentive to help everybody to succeed in proportion to their potential."



Read the full article here by Develop Feed

Rust-Based Redox OS Devs Slam Linux, Unix, GPL



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Self-Driving Cars Should Be Legal Because They Pass Safety Tests, Argues Google



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Thursday 24 March 2016

Meeting the expectations of today’s connected passengers: On-demand, real-time, end-to-end

Passengers, spoilt by availability of user-centric apps on their smartphones, are raising the bar for airline apps to become more relevant. In response, airlines are looking at trends such as on-demand, real-time and end-to-end to further evolve their digital offerings.

Read the full article here by airlinetrends.com

Try before you buy » Aircraft cabins as showrooms

This article also appears in the March/April 2016 edition of Onboard Hospitality Magazine By Raymond Kollau, airlinetrends.com DATE As ancillary revenues have become a major revenue source for airlines – if not the lifeline for many – airlines are thinking of more ways to derive revenue from all phases of the customer journey. For example, […]

Read the full article here by airlinetrends.com

Thursday 17 March 2016

Google is looking to sell off Boston Dynamics

Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc, has decided to put its robotics division, Boston Dynamics, up for sale, according to a report from Bloomberg News. Per a pair of anonymous Google employees familiar with the matter, Alphabet executives are apparently no longer willing to invest in a division that does not have an immediate revenue stream.

The trouble began almost immediately after Google bought the robotics company in late 2013. While the marquee Replicant project was folded into Google X, company's advanced research group, the rest of Boston Dynamics was not. What's more, the Boston Dynamics team reportedly had continuing difficulties working with Google's other robotics engineers in California and Tokyo.

The situation worsened after Google reformed itself into Alphabet and focused more heavily on making its various sub-companies more attractive to investors. But with a public fearful that robots are coming to take their jobs, freedoms and even their lives -- combined with Boston Dynamic's lack of viable products -- Alphabet's executives began to see the division as a liability. "There's excitement from the tech press," Google communications director, Courtney Hohne, wrote in an internal email that Bloomberg obtained. "But we're also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans' jobs."

As such, momentum for spinning off the robotics division has been growing for months. "We as a startup of our size cannot spend 30-plus percent of our resources on things that take ten years," Larry Page's advisor and former Google senior vice president, Jonathan Rosenberg, said during an internal meeting back in November. "There's some time frame that we need to be generating an amount of revenue that covers expenses and (that) needs to be a few years."

There's no word on where Boston Dynamics will eventually land. Bloomberg speculates that the Toyota Research Institute and Amazon could be potential buyers, though neither company has confirmed their interest.

Source: Bloomberg



Read the full article here by Engadget

Tuesday 15 March 2016

Sennheiser's 3D audio for VR feels totally natural

Sennheiser announced its 3D audio platform AMBEO back at CES this year, and today at SXSW I got a chance to try a VR demo and see how it sounds. Using a standard pair of headphones and a stock Gear VR, I was transported into a church where a lone piano player was seated a few feet in front of me. As she began to play, I looked all around the virtual room -- and the audio mix adjusted on the fly, no matter how I moved, to keep the piano's audio rooted exactly where it should be in the virtual space.

It wasn't a terribly dramatic demo, but it didn't need to be. All Sennheiser really needs to show is that when I turn around, the piano's audio felt like it was coming from behind me instead of in front of me. That simplicity belies the complex engineering needed to make this work. It starts with a virtual reality microphone the company is producing and expects to launch this year. It looks like a fairly standard mic, but mount it to a 3D camera and you'll be able to record audio that moves along with your video.

Then there's all the post-processing needed to make this work. Sennheiser is working on a suite of tools to let you mix the audio and sync it up with the video as needed, though that will come a bit later than the mic's planned Q3 2016 launch.

That combo of hardware and software means AMBEO really is a platform for making VR more realistic using Sennheiser's particular audio expertise. It's something VR sorely needs, and the demo I saw today made me think back to all the VR demos I've tried this far and wonder how the audio worked in them. It certainly wasn't something that stood out to be, because I was too busy being awed visually. But as VR filmmaking inches closer to the mainstream, audio solutions like this are entirely necessary.

It's entirely different technology than Samsung's experimental Entrim 4D headphones I tried yesterday. Those use electrical impulses to stimulate your ear into feeling a sense of motion, but the audio was bog -standard. However, combining those two technologies would likely yield some of the most immersive VR we've seen thus far. That said, as realistic and natural as this demo was, it was also very basic. I'm looking forward to seeing full 360-degree audio in much more sonically complicated demos than what I tried today.



Read the full article here by Engadget

NVIDIA’s SDK 3.1 advances Real-Time Game Rendering and Simulation

NVIDIA announced availability of the NVIDIA GameWorks software development kit (SDK) 3.1, which introduces three groundbreaking graphics techniques for shadows and

Read the full article here by 80lvl

Introduction to Docker and Kubernetes



Read the full article here by Envato Tuts+ Code

It's Possible To Get The Nexus 7 Running On A Mainline Linux Kernel

With an effort led by John Stultz at Linaro, developers have managed to get a Google Nexus 7 tablet running on a mainline Linux kernel...

Read the full article here by Phoronix

Monday 14 March 2016

Forget split screen—Android N code hints at a “Freeform Windows” mode

Remember those "Desktop Android" rumors? Android N has a hidden multi-window mode.

Read the full article here by Ars Technica

Some of the best adventure games ever are now playable on Raspberry Pi

It’s Pi Day, so naturally the Raspberry Pi Foundation has a little gift for Raspberry Pi owners. No, it’s not new hardware, but rather news that you can now play some of the all-time best point and click adventure games on the diminutive board. The popular adventure game emulator ScummVM has now been ported over to the Raspberry Pi, allowing users to enjoy some of the greatest games from the early 1990s. SEE ALSO: Raspberry Pi 3 launches! 10x faster, 64-bit Quad-Core CPU, built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Supported games you can download and play include Beneath a Steel Sky,… [Continue Reading]

Read the full article here by BetaNews

80 Days dev releases Ink scripting language for free

80 Days dev releases Ink scripting language for free

The tech that underpins critically lauded narrative title 80 Days is now available for everyone to use.

Developer Inkle Studios has released the Ink scripting language on GitHub under the MIT open-source licence.

It also served as the foundation for the outlet’s previous series of Sorcery titles.

Ink’s compiler has been rewritten in C# to allow for its integration with Unity.

Inkle has also released a tutorial to introduce devs to the writing-focused tool.

“Every one of our games has had one piece of technology that has remained constant, a bedrock that has enabled us to write literally millions of words of highly branching narrative: our proprietary scripting language, Ink,” said Inkle.

“We've been hard at work on the latest version of the language, improving the elegance of its syntax and adding powerful new features.

“We can't wait to see what other game teams and individuals will build with it.”



Read the full article here by Develop Feed

Friday 11 March 2016

'Serious Sam 1' Engine Released As Open Source



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1,000 Vector Mini Icons Free for Download

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Thursday 10 March 2016

Google Looks To Open Up StreamExecutor To Make GPGPU Programming Easier

Google developers are looking at starting a new LLVM sub-project around parallel runtime and support libraries for GPUs, CPUs, and other platforms. As part of it, they are also looking to open-source their StreamExecutor that wraps around the CUDA and OpenCL runtimes...

Read the full article here by Phoronix

Wednesday 9 March 2016

Work Past Jealousy by Asking for Advice

Jealousy and envy can be nasty feelings, but manage them the right way, and you can actually use these feelings to your advantage . Next time you feel envious of someone, move past it and learn something in the process by asking that person for advice.

Read more...



Read the full article here by Lifehacker

TreeSheets: a smarter way to organize your data

TreeSheets is a freeform data organizer, which developer Wouter van Oortmerssen describes as "the ultimate replacement for spreadsheets, mind mappers, outliners, PIMs, text editors and small databases". Okay, yes, that is a little over-ambitious, but van Oortmerssen -- a software engineer at Google, who formerly worked at Crytek on the original Far Cry -- knows what he’s doing, and TreeSheets delivers far more than we expected. The program is compact, open-source, and available for Windows, Linux, and (in beta form) OS X. Installation is quick and hassle-free. New documents start with a blank grid. This works much like a spreadsheet,… [Continue Reading]

Read the full article here by BetaNews

Google Docs now exports to ePub format

Google Docs has a new option allowing your documents to be saved directly to the ePub format. All you have to do is click File > Download as > EPUB Publication. EPUB documents are widely supported across most ebook readers, so this could be a good choice for sharing your work with others. The format isn’t as well supported on Windows, but Cool Reader is an open-source cross-platform viewer which handles ePubs and many other formats: FB2, MOBI, PDF, more. Google’s official announcement of the update is here.

Read the full article here by BetaNews

Epic, Nvidia, Sumo and Team 17 back new Leeds University development degrees

Epic, Nvidia, Sumo and Team 17 back new Leeds University development degrees

The University of Leeds has partnered with a number of games firms to create brand new degrees dedicated to battling the development sector’s “skills crisis”.

The new courses include an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in High Performance Graphics and Games Engineering, running for four and one years respectively. They will begin in 2017.

Nvidia, Epic Games, Sumo Digital, Team 17, Barog Game Labs and Weaseltron are among the companies supporting the educational initiative.

The MEng and Master’s courses will include a focus on contemporary APIs, such as Vulkan and DirectX 12, as well as examining “the foundations of graphics and renderers”, to give students a deeper understanding of development technology.

Students will analyse engine development and learn how to map to hardware, while also learning the toolset of the technologies.

They will also be schooled in use of complex VFX, including simulation of cloth, fur and hair, as well as animation and modelling behaviour, such as crowd simulation.

The university’s research environment includes access to high-powered desktop systems and Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, plus VR hardware such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

"There are plenty of high-level university courses that teach students how to develop games, but there are very few in the UK and indeed the world that deliver anything like the level of technical skills that are needed to innovate with graphics, simulation, low-level performance and engine development techniques,” commented Simon Barratt,  Barog Game Labs director and UKIE board member.

“There’s an urgent and growing skills crisis – that’s why we were keen to work with the University of Leeds to help put a programme together that we know will produce graduates with the technical skills the industry demands. As an employer, this is exactly the type of course we need to produce the next technical innovators.”

David Duke, head of the School of Computing and professor of computer science at the University of Leeds, agreed: “Gaming is such a fast-paced sector and continually benefits from rapidly evolving computer technologies. It needs graduates with the right mix of deep academic knowledge and hands-on experience who understand how to generate new levels of visual realism and effects on cutting-edge hardware platforms and write the rendering engines that will power the next generation of games.”



Read the full article here by Develop Feed

Tuesday 8 March 2016

Lionsgate developing mobile VR game based on Now You See Me



Read the full article here by Polygon - Full

Kinect lets you see yourself in VR game

What do you get when bring together the cutting-edge virtual reality (VR) of the HTC Vive system and the Kinect for Xbox One’s unparalleled ability to track multiple people in three-dimensional space? You get an experience that allows you to see not only what another player is doing in the VR space, but also to...

Read the full article here by Kinect for Windows Product Blog

Sunday 6 March 2016

'Metal Gear Solid' fan remake bites the dust

When a fan remake of a popular game dies, it tends to die quickly. Either the effort required is too much for a group of part-time volunteers, or the original developer's lawyers shut it down over copyright issues. And unfortunately, the team behind the recently revealed Metal Gear Solid remake Shadow Moses is learning this first-hand -- the creators have abruptly shut down their project for "reasons beyond our control." It's not clear just what those reasons are (we've reached out to both sides for comment), but the phrasing suggests that copyright might play a role.

There is a glimmer of hope, as the group says it has "some other news" in the pipeline. The odds aren't high that you'll get a full-on revival of Shadow Moses, but we wouldn't rule out something emerging from the ashes, such as a close-enough game that incorporates Metal Gear's stealth action without treading on Konami's copyrights. Let's just hope that whatever arrives lasts longer than its predecessor.

Via: Kotaku

Source: Shadow Moses (Facebook)



Read the full article here by Engadget

Friday 4 March 2016

Epic co-founder: Microsoft is plotting to monopolize game making on Windows 10



Read the full article here by Polygon - Full

Tim Sweeney accused Microsoft of monopolising game development

In The Guardian, Sweeney has summoned the industry to fight Microsoft and its Universal Windows Platform (UWP) strategy which he says damages both

Read the full article here by 80lvl

Raspberry Pi 3 Is Looking Towards Upstream Kernel Support

With the Raspberry Pi 3 64-bit ARM $35 development board that launched earlier this week, there is working open-source kernel code for this new board powered by the Broadcom BCM2837 and it's looking like it hopefully won't be too long before the support is mainlined...

Read the full article here by Phoronix

Thursday 3 March 2016

Mozilla unveils Firefox OS based IoT projects

Mozilla announced four Firefox OS to Connected Devices projects, including a home automation system, an AI agent, a voice interface, and a “SensorWeb.”

In December, when Mozilla announced a halt to development and sales of its open source, Linux-based Firefox OS mobile distribution, the company said it was already shifting the HTML5-focused open source Linux OS to Internet of Things projects. A month ago, Ari Jaaksi, Mozilla’s SVP of Connected Devices posted a blog entry noting progress on projects such as its Vaani voice interface. Jaaksi has now revealed more details on Vaani and three other projects, and invited open source developers to pitch in.

Read more

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Read the full article here by Tux Machines

Oculus Founder: Rift will come to Mac if Apple “ever releases a good computer”

Even high-end Mac Pro GPUs aren't powerful enough for VR, Luckey says.

Read the full article here by Ars Technica

Quantum Break requires Internet connection for streaming cut scenes on PC

Single-player game puts videos in cloud to save disc and hard drive space.

Read the full article here by Ars Technica

Google Says Angular 2 Will Support Python, Java



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Wednesday 2 March 2016

Chromium OS su Raspberry Pi 3 e Zero

Il progetto “Chromium OS for Raspberry Pi” è nato con l’obbiettivo di eseguire un porting completo del sistema operativo di Google sulla nota board ARM in versione 2, i lavori sono poi proseguiti anche se l’azienda californiana sembrerebbe intenzionata già da diverso tempo di voler fondere Android con ChromeOS.

La community di questa distribuzione Linux continua quindi ad esistere e, di recente, sono stati annunciati nuovi porting e un rebranding del progetto in “Chromium OS For All SBC“.

Il team ha intenzione di eseguire il porting di Chromium OS su diverse single board tra cui anche …

The post Chromium OS su Raspberry Pi 3 e Zero appeared first on Edit.



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