Football helmet offers a glimpse of what the future of the NFL could look like

Why it matters to you

The sport’s future resides in protecting players’ brains and this helmet hopes to help that cause.

We live in an age in which everything from thermostats to fridges to, yes, toilets are becoming “smart.” Football helmets, however, haven’t yet joined the fray.

Sure, they transitioned from the pieces of padded rubber they were a century ago but, with the exception of the radio so a select few players can hear play calls, there’s a lot more they could do.

That is where Gridiron Labs, a Los Angeles-based design studio, founded by veteran creative director Dane Storrusten, comes in. Having previously worked with sports franchises and brands in various capacities, he recently headed up a new project designed to come up with a case study showing how helmet manufacturers can step up their game in the next 10 to 15 years.

More: This smart anti-concussion football helmet was created by a 19-year-old student

“The football helmet is one of those iconic, high-opportunity areas that acts as much more than just protective headwear, but one of the most prolific brand vehicles in any sport,” Storrusten told Digital Trends. “There are a lot of projects out there addressing only concussion safety — which is absolutely vital to the survival of the game and a topic our case study assumes is priority — but not much innovation around other aspects like usability, branding, or how the helmet becoming the next wearable, connected, device to enhance player and fan experiences.”

For their case study, Storrusten and collaborators looked at everything from new materials like graphene and nanocellulose to the growing ubiquity of small, ultra-tough embedded HD cameras, capable of taking a licking and keeping on ticking. You can read more details of the case study here, but it offers up intriguing possibilities like head-up displays able to provide information on other players or health stats, smart ventilation systems, impact sensors, and front and rear onboard cameras able to capture the game from every direction.

So will these innovations be coming to NFL screens, college football, or even Kickstarter anytime soon? Unfortunately not. There is a reason it’s a study based on football in 2030 — and it’s not because Gridiron Labs is shipping out finished units in the next six months.

“We have a prototype underway just to test out some of the fan experience aspects [such as the] digital display shell and HUD visor, [but] the rest is really just a fun, but realistic, forecast of what we may be able to expect from helmet manufacturers over the next decade,” Storrusten noted.

One thing is for sure, though: If everything Storrusten predicts comes true, football may be set to get even more exciting and immersive. And, hey, if any team owners read this and feel inspired, you know who to contact!

WD PR4100 NAS review

Research Center:
WD PR4100 NAS

In this age of digital media, it’s incredibly important for creative professionals — especially photographers and videographers — to build backup solutions into their workflows. One bad hard drive or power surge can wipe out an entire project, and this is simply not an issue that anyone wants to deal with – especially if it’s a project for a client or campaign.

Online cloud systems can be a great option for those with small or infrequent backup needs, but for anyone doing a lot of work, or needing to transfer large individual files, these offerings can be too slow and unreliable, and they may not address the potential security issues.

More: Iomega’s new four-drive NAS handles up to 8 TB

What’s the option for creatives who transfer 4K video or RAW photo files? It’s network attached storage, or NAS, an external hard drive/server category that pushes far beyond storage, with features useful for a variety of purposes. Take Western Digital’s PR4100, which is designed specifically for the sort of uses that creatives need: it’s a tool designed to make backing up and managing versions of your data easy, with redundant network connections and power plugs. It’s ideal for those who need an advanced, trustworthy backup solution.

Storage device with a brain

The PR4100 revolves around a quad-core Pentium N3710 processor with 4GB of DDR3L RAM, which is upgradable to 16GB of RAM if you decide that 4GB is insufficient for your needs. This is a huge advantage over other NAS units that do not feature upgradable RAM modules, as it allows for strong performance. RAM is available from any retailer that stocks computer parts; just be sure to buy standard laptop SODIMM units of DDR3L and you’ll be good to go.

The unit comes with three USB 3.0 ports for connecting other drives to the PR4100. For example, you can connect and back up the contents of a portable hard drive, memory card reader, or digital camera simply by pressing a button to initiate the process. It also has dual Ethernet ports and dual power ports (in case one fails). Dual power ports are handier than you’d think: imagine connecting the unit to some sort of a battery backup or UPS to keep it running in the event of a power outage. The PR4100 constantly monitors the power into the unit, and it automatically switches over to the secondary outlet if power to the primary outlet fails or is interrupted (assuming you have something plugged in there, of course). The PR4100 only comes with one power adapter, however, so if you want to use the second port you’ll need to buy another adapter from WD.

Anthony Thurston/Digital Trends

Anthony Thurston/Digital Trends

Anthony Thurston/Digital Trends

Anthony Thurston/Digital Trends

We tested the four-bay version, which can accommodate up to four hard drives and up to 32TB of total storage. There is also a dual-bay unit, the PR2100, which supports two drives but is otherwise virtually the same.

The PR4100 can be purchased as a bare unit ($500) that you can populate with your own drives, or you can purchase a unit with four WD Red drives pre-installed (they’re designed specifically for NAS use), up to 32TB. The biggest capacity comes with the biggest pricetag, of course: With 32 terabytes of storage, the NAS sells for $1,650. Installing drives is incredibly easy, of course — it’s literally plug and play — and you get an extra year warranty on the hard drives beyond what you’d get from the store. So unless you already have brand-new drives sitting around, or you have a preference for a certain brand, it makes more sense to buy the pre-populated unit.

The unit has a blue LCD screen above the drive bay doors, which displays information about the status of the drives and the enclosure itself. We found this helpful when we wanted to check on the unit without having to access the web portal.

Performance and use

Setting up the PR4100 is about as easy as it comes. If you purchased a pre-populated unit you simply take the PR4100 out of the box, plug it into the wall with the supplied power adapter, and connect it to your router with the supplied Ethernet cable. Once this is done, it is just a matter of accessing the drive via the WD web browser-based portal and setting up a WD Cloud account.

The PR4100 is quite loud on startup; you can hear the drives spinning up and the fan at the rear of the unit. This mostly dies down once the unit has cycled through its startup procedure. The drives are very audible when being accessed, so this is not something you’ll want on your desk or in a location where noise could be a concern.

WD Sync software is included for automatic file backups.

Unfortunately, the PR4100 (and most NAS units, in general) doesn’t offer Wi-Fi as a connectivity option, so you’ll either need to set it up close to a router or pull a long Ethernet cable. While this isn’t good news for those who want to go wireless, Gigabit Ethernet provides a fast, reliable connection, which is crucial if you are transferring massive amounts of data. Your devices, however, can access the PR4100 on the network provided the router is wireless, of course.

A highlight of this device is its cloud capabilities. Once you have the PR4100 connected to the Internet, you can access the data you have on it from anywhere and nearly any device. If you are out at a client meeting, for example, and they want to see the latest sketch of your project, you can pull it up quickly – on a computer or the MyCloud mobile app – on a phone, tablet, or laptop.

But connection speed depends on the quality of the network – both the one in your home, office, or wherever, and your Internet access. This means that transfer speeds can vary quite a bit depending on a variety of situations.

More: Seagate’s Barracuda Pro 10TB is the biggest consumer hard drive yet

In our case, we transferred a 1.5GB video file to and from the PR4100, using Wi-Fi. Using an AC wireless connection, the PR4100 achieved a maximum data transfer speed of around 43MBps, but the actual average speed fluctuated, so it was slower on average. In all, it took us roughly 1 minute and 20 seconds to transfer this file.

We attempted the same test using a hardwired Ethernet connection and hit transfer speeds that fluctuated around 115MBps. The hardwired connection was much faster, as you’d expect, so those looking to get the best transfer speeds out of the PR4100 will want one. We also tested with a powerline wired connection, and we don’t recommend it: transfer speeds capped out at 5-6MB/s.

This connection speed also varies greatly when connecting to the unit from an outside network, like a hotel or coffee shop. For what it’s worth, we connected to the PR4100 through our cell phone hotspot and were able to get around 25MBps.

The PR4100 isn’t all work and no play. In a home entertainment environment, it can act as a media server, for example. For testing, we set it up as a Plex server, streaming movies to multiple Roku boxes, desktops, and laptops throughout the home. We found that the unit had enough juice to handle four streams simultaneously without any issue. Any more than four and the unit would take longer to load a stream and even stutter on with weak connections. But for most homes this should be plenty. The PR4100 also supports DLNA and iTunes media streaming to compatible devices.

The Photographer’s Friend?

What the PR4100 isn’t good for is primary storage that you need to access frequently. It’s really meant to function as a backup solution. We wouldn’t recommend storing something like an Adobe Lightroom catalog on it, or files that you plan to work on, for example; that’s better served with a desktop-class external hard drive connected directly to a computer. It makes more sense to have your archived images or files stored on the PR4100 –data that you may need access to from anywhere, but only occasionally.

More: Sonos owners can now stream their music library throughout their homes via Plex

That said, we did test running an Adobe Lightroom catalog off the PR4100. As expected, there were some slowdowns, particularly when loading up images. But it was still useful, despite the delays. If you needed to access a Lightroom catalog remotely, this would work — but it wouldn’t match having a Lightroom catalog on your computer or connected external HDD/SSD.

The PR4100 supports cloud storage systems like Dropbox and Adobe’s Creative Cloud, allowing you to backup data to and from those services on your PR4100. This is a great way to achieve a little redundancy with your files (having them saved not only on your personal cloud, but also offsite). This capability, while not perfect, is beneficial for photographers and videographers who need to be able to access images or video while traveling but don’t want to lug around a bevy of external drives. For photographers, this would be access to RAW files or a Lightroom catalog; for videographers maybe it’s access to your clips and being able to stream them via the Plex app. The possibilities here are great for traveling creatives.

For backup, WD includes two software options, Sync and Smartware Pro. The Sync software is more like a file history backup: you tell the software what files or folders you want synced with the PR4100 and then the software does all the lifting. If you accidentally delete a file, the software will automatically pull the most recent version back from the PR4100 into your synced folder. It can keep a specific file or folder in sync as well, which may be too simplistic for some, but if you work within its limits you can have fast access to your data on your computer. One example of this: keep the folder that your Lightroom Catalog is in synced with the PR4100. That way you have fast access to it on local storage, but can also access it remotely. For Mac users, you can bypass the included software and utilize Time Machine in MacOS.

The Smartware Pro software is more advanced than Sync and gives users more control over what is being backed up to the PR4100. You can set your files to be synced automatically (so that the PR4100 always has the most up to date version of a given file) or you can set up the PR4100 to back up your files at set intervals (hourly daily, weekly, etc). Smartware Pro is definitely more of your traditional data backup solution, compared to the simpler file/folder based sync software.

With Plex support, it’s is as good of a home entertainment server as it is an office server.

The app isn’t difficult to use, but accessing data can be tricky if you don’t recall where you saved it on the device — an issue you can have with any cloud data service, of course. If multiple people (family or coworkers) need to access the PR4100, you can set them up with their own accounts, which then also separates out special folders for them to use. Navigation of the app is simple and snappy, especially on the same network as the PR4100. If you are accessing it externally, you may have a few slowdowns or hiccups, but overall the experience is painless. WD really did well in this regard.

You can’t manage the PR4100 completely from the mobile app, but you can add users, see the storage utilization, and view recent activity. If you do want to update your Plex server or install one of the various other available apps (WordPress, Dropbox, Joomla, PHPBB, PHPMyAdmin, etc.), you’ll need to access the PR4100 control panel from a web browser. It would have been nice to have complete management access from within the app, but what you can do is sufficient for most people.

WD PR4100 NAS Compared To

Plextor M8Pe

WD Blue 1TB SSD

Intel SSD 750 Series

Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim…

LaCie Porsche Design hard drive

Samsung T3 Portable SSD MU-PT2T0B

Transcend SSD370

Crucial BX200 960GB

Toshiba Q300 480GB HDTS748XZSTA

Samsung Portable SSD T1

ioSafe Solo G3

ioSafe Rugged Portable

HP MediaSmart EX487

Corsair Flash Survivor (8GB)

Crucial Gizmo! 256MB

Another thing to consider is the security available with this NAS. When you initially set up the unit and choose which RAID configuration to use, you choose whether to encrypt your drives. Add to that the ability for individual user accounts to access only specific parts of the PR4100, and this is more than secure enough for most uses. WD also has an Antivirus app that you can install onto the PR4100 that scans and monitors the data on the drives to prevent infections.

Our Take

The PR4100 is an incredibly solid NAS: It’s powerful and upgradable for professional use, while at the same time simple enough for non-techies. And the latter part is a key piece to this product: It just works, and be it for home or office, or a little bit of both, the PR4100 offers an experience anyone can enjoy.

Is there a better alternative?

The DT Accessory Pack

WD 3TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable external hard drive

$180

Ugreen Ethernet Extension Cable Network Cat6 extension patch cable

$5.59

Energizer USB 3.0 SD card reader

$20

The PR4100 is WD’s top of the line NAS right now, and it faces stiff competition from the likes of Drobo, Synology, QNAP, and Netgear. Whether there are better alternatives depends on your desired use; if you’re looking for a Plex media server, then the WD is your best option right now with built-in transcoding. But if you are simply looking for a personal cloud of data storage, other options will work just as well and will likely be cheaper. The PR4100 has simple setup and ease of use on its side. If you are a creative pro, you want a product that requires no fuss and works out of the box.

How long will it last?

The PR4100 is built solidly and the WD Red drives that it uses are known for their reliability and longevity. This unit should last for years, although hard drives can fail. Here’s where RAID’s redundancy comes in handy: Even if a drive goes down, replacing it is easy and the unit will continue to function with minimal performance hits. Expect a very long life.

Should you buy it?

We think that the PR4100 is a great option for creative professionals and home users who want or need the advantages of a personal cloud and home NAS but don’t necessarily have the techy background. If you fall into that category, then yes, the PR4100 is a product that we recommend.

WD has built a product that lives in the crossroads of performance and usability, being powerful enough to handle the workloads required of a pro with the simplicity required to set it up and use without help or hassle.

T-Mobile has a brilliant plan to stay ahead of Verizon’s LTE network

T-Mobile has a plan to keep its LTE speed crown, and it involves Wi-Fi (sort of).

During its fourth quarter earnings call this week, T-Mobile’s CTO Neville Ray brought up something that the company has been working on since 2015: LTA-U, which stands for Unlicensed.

Though T-Mobile is ostensibly tied with Verizon for best network in the U.S., beating it in speed in many markets while trailing in overall coverage, it said that it has no intentions to stop investing in its LTE network, which currently covers some 314 million Americans. In addition to continuing to roll out low-band 700Mhz spectrum in major markets like Chicago, San Francisco and New York City, T-Mobile intends to use unlicensed 5GHz spectrum to augment downlink speeds in more congested markets.

The initial call to action came all the way back in January 2015, but nothing has happened in the interim as the rollout of supported chipsets from Qualcomm, and devices from third-party manufacturers, have been held up by complaints to the FCC from various lobbying groups looking to prevent interference with existing Wi-Fi signals, which increasingly use that same 5GHz spectrum. But Ray said that the deployment of so-called Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) will happen in 2017 into 2018, and T-Mobile’s customers, which are already disproportionally running LTE devices, stand to benefit greatly, and that the Wi-Fi interference problem is both overstated and likely to be overcome with cautious planning.

Presented without context, because T-Mobile.

Ray also brought up T-Mobile’s proliferation of small cells in densely-populated markets as a way to alleviate congestion. The company has deployed over 1,000 small cells across the country, and plans to at least double that number in 2017, mainly to prepare for 5G — which is coming — but also to facilitate the transmission of those unlicensed 5GHz airwaves, which travel shorter distances than typical cellular signals.

T-Mobile’s network advantage comes from pushing users to more spectrally efficient technologies before its competitors. Specifically, over 65% of the company’s postpaid customers are completely off the 3G network, relying on LTE for both voice and data. He said that 70% of the company’s entire spectrum allotment across Band 2, Band 12 and Band 66 uses LTE, and that will increase to 80% as it refarms existing 3G airspace. Of course, Verizon is not just sitting out of the unlicensed LTE space altogether, but like its rivals at AT&T and Sprint, it is at least a year behind deploying the technology to the public.

Over 65% of T-Mobile’s postpaid customers are completely off the 3G network.

T-Mobile also said that, in light of its decision to allow T-Mobile One customers to stream HD video across its network, it would keep SD streaming as the default, and only anticipates a single-digit percentage of customers to actually enable the higher-bandwidth option.

For all of its bluster around T-Mobile One, zero-rating, net neutrality and undermining the competition, T-Mobile’s network strategy appears to be as robust as any of its competitors. It was the only carrier in the Big Four to have year-over-year growth in wireless service revenue and postpaid net customer additions, and it believes that by emphasizing unlimited while rewarding customers that don’t overrun the network — a recent “Uncarrier” announcement — it can continue to gain customers, add to the bottom line, and spur competition.

T-Mobile responds to Verizon’s unlimited plan by rolling back its dumbest changes

Facebook is launching a new app for Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TVs

Facebook may be coming to a TV near you.

Facebook thinks you need more of its app in your life, so it’s starting to roll out a new TV-centric app for set-top boxes like Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, as well as the Apple TV.

This is all part of Facebook’s evolving plans for its video platform, which was announced at the Code Media conference by Facebook’s VP of Partnerships, Dan Rose. The conference is sponsored by Recode who first reported this news.

Rose described how Facebook imagined users might use this new Facebook app to catch up on all that Facebook content they missed during the day:

“A lot of people when they’re watching video on News Feed during the day will save it for later because they don’t have time to watch that three-minute video. Now it’s easy to go on your TV if you want to do that at night.”

The new app will begin launching over the next few weeks, and will offer Facebook users a new way to digest video content from their favorite content creators. As reported earlier by Recode, Facebook is also looking to pivot away from paying publishers from posting live video and instead encouraging content creators to post longer, premium video content.

While there’s no denying that videos dominate the news feed these days, we’re not sure if Facebook on TV is a top priority for most people. But we sure are curious to see how Facebook continues to develop its video content strategy moving forward. No word on when an Android TV version will hit, if ever.

BlackBerry’s Notable app lets you quickly annotate screenshots

BlackBerry may not be making its smartphones anymore, but it’s still producing productivity-focused apps.

To help extend the excitement of the forthcoming BlackBerry Mercury, the company has launched BlackBerry Notable for BlackBerry Hub+ users. The app allows you to annotate screenshots before opening them up in other applications, or you can start with a blank canvas. You can draw, add text, and make collages. It’s a fairly simplistic app that looks and functions a bit like Google Keep. As an added bonus, you can program it to open up with a gesture or the press of a hardware shortcut key.

At present, the app is only available for BlackBerry device users, including the DTEK60, DTEK50, and the Priv. The company says the app will eventually come to other devices with a subscription to BlackBerry Hub+, but you don’t have to wait: there are already plenty of apps in the Play Store that offer similar functionality.

Are you a Netflix cheater?

In an effort to help you determine how unfaithful you are, Netflix has released a “Netflix Cheating” test.

Netflix recently announced that “Netflix cheating is on the rise globally and shows no signs of stopping”, claiming 46 per cent of users have done it and 81 per cent have done it more than once. What does that even mean? Well, it’s when one part of a couple watches a movie or skips ahead in a series they were supposed to watch together.

• READ: Netflix hidden tips and tricks: Master your binge watching

Now, to bring awareness to the issue (and just in time for Valentine’s Day), Netflix has released a test that asks whether you have “cheated” on your viewing buddy by streaming a program ahead of them, how often you committed the act and when (like while your partner is at work), and whether it was premeditated or spontaneous.

Pocket-lint

Netflix said 80 percent of cheating is an impulse decision, and 45 percent of cheaters never confess to the act. It surveyed subscribers in 29 countries and found instances of cheating everywhere, with Brazil having the highest number of cheaters (at 58 per cent), while the Netherlands had the lowest (at 27 per cent).

But, no worries: Netflix also found that many of us are in open Netflix relationships. Forty-six per cent of people surveyed said Netflix cheating wasn’t a big deal to them. Phew.

AI is learning to speed read

As clever as machine learning is, there’s one common problem: you frequently have to train the AI on thousands or even millions of examples to make it effective. What if you don’t have weeks to spare? If Gamalon has its way, you could put AI to work almost immediately. The startup has unveiled a new technique, Bayesian Program Synthesis, that promises AI you can train with just a few samples. The approach uses probabilistic code to fill in gaps in its knowledge. If you show it very short and tall chairs, for example, it should figure out that there are many chair sizes in between. And importantly, it can tweak its own models as it goes along — you don’t need constant human oversight in case circumstances change.

Gamalon’s technology is already in use, although you probably wouldn’t notice. Bloomberg notes that the AI is currently helping companies like Avaya correct ambiguous data like names and addresses within a matter of minutes. However, the fledgling outfit isn’t shy about this being used for image recognition and other machine learning tasks. You could have a personal AI that you train yourself, for instance, and it’s easy to see this as helpful for robots that may need to account for the many, many object variations that they’ll encounter in the real world.

Via: Bloomberg

Source: BusinessWire, Gamalon

‘Outlast 2’ is all about documenting your own mental breakdown

Philippe Morin wants to break your brain. As a creator of the grotesque, critically acclaimed horror series Outlast, he delights in dissecting the psychology of terror and dreaming up new nightmares for video game fans.

Look at Outlast 2. Morin’s latest project — due out for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this spring — promises to play with the idea of isolation in unexpected ways. The game throws players in the middle of the sprawling Northern Arizona desert, but the setting isn’t designed to generate the feeling of freedom. If Morin gets his way, this vast environment will make players feel claustrophobic, crushed by all the open space and consumed by fear of the horrors it might be hiding.

“This time we could afford to pursue a little more thoroughly the psychological layer,” Morin says. “Internally what we’ve been saying is, the first Outlast was meant to take away your physical integrity, and the second Outlast will take your mental integrity.”

Morin is a veteran game designer who’s worked on major franchises including Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted, but recently he’s made a name for himself as a master of horror. He’s a co-founder of independent Montreal studio Red Barrels, the home of Outlast.

The original Outlast is a first-person, exploration-heavy game that hit PC in late 2013, followed by a debut on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2014. It follows a journalist as he investigates a dilapidated psychiatric hospital overrun with homicidal former patients who have been subjected to inhumane experiments in nanotechnology.

Players have a video camera equipped with night vision, allowing them to peer down dark hallways with an eerie green light and capture written journal entries pertinent to the story. The game features winding basement passageways, tight corridors guarded by monstrous killers, severed limbs and buckets of blood. It’s tense, gory and terrifying the entire way through, as is the follow-up Whistleblower DLC mission.

A particularly memorable scene from the original Outlast (Image credit: Red Barrels)

Outlast was a grand success for Red Barrels, but it wasn’t the game Morin thought it would be. For one thing, it’s more reliant on jump scares and disturbing imagery than it is on a compelling narrative. Red Barrels was a new, small studio, so tight budget and schedule constraints meant the team had to ditch some of the game’s more complex themes.

“A lot of things came out the way we intended to, but we also had to make a lot of choices based on timing, schedule and budget,” he says. “So that psychological layer — we wanted that to be a part of the first Outlast, but sometimes you have to go with the flow and the game just becomes whatever it wants to become.”

Outlast 2 is Morin’s chance to get psychological horror right.

The sequel ditches the cramped corridors of Mount Massive Asylum for a vast desert landscape dotted with dusty cornfields, cactuses and craggy mountains.

The game’s mechanics have evolved as well: The camcorder isn’t just a night-vision flashlight this time around. Instead of finding written documents with the camcorder and reading them later, players will actually record segments of their gameplay and be able to rewatch scenes complete with the protagonist’s commentary.

The story itself weaves in religious imagery and supernatural elements like giant, undulating tentacles that burst through the ground to suck the protagonist down a well.

At one point, the main character finds himself in a Catholic school, chasing the ghostly image of a young girl he once knew down the abandoned hallways. Spoilers: Before their game of cat and mouse can finish, that little girl is also plucked out of sight by a bunch of demonic tentacles.

This scene might be something Morin calls a “what the fuck?” moment.

“I think what we like to do with the series is just bring players into this very uncomfortable zone where they — internally we call it the ‘what the fuck?’ moment,” he says.

Usually, Morin explains, horror games begin with a scene that makes players ask, “WTF is going on?” Outlast certainly has this moment in the first few minutes, but Morin says he would have liked to see it repeated a few more times throughout the game.

With Outlast 2, Morin made sure there are plenty more WTF moments sprinkled throughout the 10-hour horror fest.

“We wanted to make sure with the second game, every hour or so you would get that ‘what the fuck?’ moment at least once, to keep on renewing the feeling of insecurity and take you out of the comfort zone,” he says.

These WTF moments are a large part of Outlast 2’s attempts to manipulate players’ emotions. Morin wants to make players feel powerless and uncomfortable, but he isn’t relying on jump scares alone to achieve these effects. One thing he learned while working on the original Outlast was the concept of “less is more,” at least as it applies to horror.

The deadly cornfields of Outlast 2 (Image credit: Red Barrels)

“You’ve got to leave room for the player’s imagination before you hit them with something,” he says. “It’s something we have to remind ourselves constantly because it’s kind of the opposite of what you learn as a game designer. In most games, you want to throw a lot of stuff for the player to do so they’re almost over-stimulated, and when you’re working on a horror game, you have to unlearn all these things. Especially if it’s the kind of horror game where it’s about making the player feel powerless.”

Horror is a strange genre where creators actually want their audiences to feel disgusted, uncomfortable and terrified. Powerless. Despite these inherently unappealing advertising qualities, the market for horror games is strong heading into 2017.

Gaming’s horror industry has been steadily expanding since the release of Amnesia: The Dark Descent in 2010. Amnesia proved there was an audience for horror games in the modern era, but at the time there simply weren’t many other similar games on store shelves (yes, people still went to stores to buy games in 2010).

More recently, the genre has been bolstered by popular, mainstream titles like Outlast, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Layers of Fear, Until Dawn and even the PT demo, a project from Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro that rose to cult status after Konami suddenly cancelled the full game (Silent Hills) in 2014. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard came out at the end of January — complete with PlayStation VR support — and within weeks, Capcom had shipped more than 3 million copies of the game worldwide.

Perhaps Outlast entered the market at a fortunate time, but it succeeded because it’s a heart-pounding, polished horror experience. Outlast’s success gave Morin a chance to breathe, grow his team and plot the sequel he really wanted.

The desert isn’t always dry in Outlast 2 (Image credit: Red Barrels)

Morin and the Red Barrels crew chose Arizona precisely because it was so different than the asylum, and they craved a challenge. The team spent roughly a year tweaking the landscape until they found a “sweet spot” where the open canyon felt as claustrophobic as the halls of a fortified, bloody hospital. This was a necessary creative step.

“I think it’s important, whether you are working on a new IP or a sequel, you gotta find ways to put you as a developer a bit on edge, so that you don’t feel too comfortable,” Morin says. “Because that stimulates creativity. You have to give yourself these challenges, even if you don’t have any idea of the solution.”

In making Outlast 2, Morin purposefully designed a scenario where he would be challenged, lost and out of his comfort zone — just like his players will be.

‘Rocket League’ blasts into 4K with PS4 Pro support

With the launch of the PlayStation 4 Pro in November, Sony promised a more powerful console with a boost in framerates and resolution pretty much across the board. Of course, that shiny new hardware doesn’t do much good if the games themselves don’t support those 4K resolutions. Now, with the impending release of the PS4’s 4.50 system update, some of the biggest titles are ready to officially support the Pro in all it’s 4K Ultra HD glory.

First up, wildly popular hot rod soccer game Rocket League announced PS4 Pro support will arrive in an update coming on February 21st and push the game to 60 frames per second at 4K resolution in every arena for single and two-player split-screen games. In three or four-player mode players should hit that all-important 60 fps, but Psyonix can’t guarantee those framerates in every single arena.

As for the rest of the platform’s marquee titles, support varies from game to game, but expect Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Hitman, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Fallout 4 to get improved textures and sharper renderings. According to Guerrilla Games, Horizon: Zero Dawn will even be able to render minute details down to the stitching on lead heroine Aloy’s clothing. And for fans of more lifelike motorsports, Gran Turismo Sport will finally be able to accurately show off the proper Ferrari red. Gamespot is keeping a running tally of supported PS4 Pro games, but even if your favorite title didn’t get the patch, any game can still get bump in framerate thanks to the PS4 Pro’s new Boost Mode.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Facebook videos in your News Feed soon autoplay with sound

The age of scrolling through your Facebook News Feed past mercifully silent autoplaying videos is over. The social media giant is showering its users with unasked-for love by automatically triggering sound when hovering over a movie, and will soon begin rolling out the change it started testing last August.

In a blog post, Facebook portrays the change as a quality of life improvement: People just expect sound to play when they show interest in a video, and this makes the experience more seamless. It also makes sure advertisement audio hits your ears. Fortunately, it won’t play on phones set to silent, and you can opt out of autoplaying sound permanently by toggling off “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound” in Settings. Facebook is planning a slow rollout that will eventually be global by the end of the year, the company told Recode.

Facebook added improvements to the mobile video experience, too. Now after a few seconds of watching, vertical movies will automatically fill the screen until users scroll away. Folks can also drag the video down to a corner to keep it playing in a picture-in-picture format while they continue scrolling through their feed — or as they navigate out of the app if they’re using an Android device.

Finally, if you wanted to watch Facebook videos on your smart TV, now’s your chance. The social media company made an app that’s debuting on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV, and will open up to more platforms in the future.

Via: Recode

Source: Facebook newsroom