Kitty Hawk’s Flyer isn’t the flying car you were promised

That flying car startup Google’s Larry Page is backing? It’s finally showing its hand… and the company’s initial product is both more and less than what you might expect. Kitty Hawk’s first publicly demonstrated vehicle, the Flyer, isn’t so much the flying car of sci-fi fame as a recreational vehicle. The one-seat, propeller-driven vehicle is meant for a short flight across lake when you’re at the cottage, not commuting to work — that Jetsons-like future isn’t here yet. You won’t have to wait long to get it, though. Kitty Hawk expects to start selling the Flyer by the end of 2017. This will be a practical reality within months, in other words. You can already put down $100 to sign up for a $2,000 discount on the finished machine.

Page’s investment wasn’t just focused on this one product, of course. Kitty Hawk notes that there are several prototypes in the works, and this is more a “vision of the future” than the sum total of its plans. The focus on over-water flights is intentional — it’s meant to reassure Federal Aviation Administration officials worried that unlicensed pilots will be flying over populated areas. The company wants to work with the FAA to enable more ambitious vehicles, but it would rather play it safe in the early stages.

Kitty Hawk might want to hurry. Airbus may test a more practical flying car by the end of the year, Ehang wants to fly passenger drones in the summer, and personal jets are becoming viable. While the Flyer may become an honest-to-goodness product relatively quickly, it’s not the people carrier that others are promising. Kitty Hawk may need to move fast if it wants to fend off its flying car rivals.

Via: New York Times

Source: Kitty Hawk

DJI’s first-person goggles look to the future of drone flight

The new DJI Goggles put you in the cockpit of a quadcopter, giving you a first-person, VR-like experience in the real world. The goggles have a couple of screens through which you can see whatever the drone’s camera is pointing at. You can even control where the camera is pointed simply by moving your head. While we were able to take a quick test-drive of this immersive headset last summer, the company’s been rather coy about sharing specifics. Now, though, DJI has revealed a more detailed set of features for its goggles, as well as information on the new Ronin 2, an image-smoothing gimbal rig for professional filmmakers.

The DJI Goggles display a 1920X1080 image in front of each of your eyes, which is like having two HD displays strapped to your face. The company says that wearing the goggles is like looking at a 216-inch home theater screen set about three meters away. You can wirelessly connect to a Mavic Pro or Phantom 4 drone and use head movements to control both aircraft yaw — the spin around its center axis — as well as camera tilt. Up to two goggles can connect to the Mavic Pro drone, so you can share your aerial adventures with a friend, too.

DJI has also improved its new three-axis camera stabilizer with the new Ronin 2. The update is aimed squarely at filmmakers like Ethan Hawke, who used the original Ronin to film his biopic Blaze. The gimbals on Ronin 2 have more power, says the company, which gives them more torque to carry larger cameras. The carbon fiber monocoque frame is light and sturdy, and DJI has improved the ability to connect cameras and accessories via the Ronin 2’s integrated power and data ports.

The Ronin 2 will be available in the second quarter of this year, while the $449 DJI Goggles start shipping after May 20, 2017.

Source: DJI Goggles, DJI Ronin 2

Legendary car designer Fisker unveils his new luxury EV in August

Henrik Fisker has already dropped a few hints about his EMotion luxury electric car, but you now know when you’ll get to hear the rest. The automotive design legend has revealed that his namesake company will formally unveil the EMotion on August 17th. Not that you’ll have to wait too long to know what the fuss is about, as Fisker is already spilling the beans on key details.

Fisker’s company has already said that it’s aiming for a 400-mile range (using graphene supercapacitors instead of lithium-ion batteries, Fisker explains to Business Insider) while mustering a 161MPH top speed. It’ll have the camera and sensor hardware needed for eventual self-driving capability, too. The EMotion will be priced like a top-end Tesla Model S, Fisker says, so that superior range will carry a premium.

Not that the automaker is ignoring the mainstream. The EMotion is considered the precursor to an eventual “entry” car that theoretically undercuts the roughly $35,000 pre-credit prices of the Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3. Whether or not it arrives as promised will depend heavily on the EMotion’s performance, of course, but there’s a real chance that this vehicle avoids the pitfalls that sank both the Karma and Fisker’s original incarnation.

Fisker EMotion: Coming soon in Aug 17, with a 400 + EV range. Very exciting times! pic.twitter.com/c6bn3RrDFD

— Henrik Fisker (@FiskerOfficial) April 23, 2017

Via: Business Insider

Source: Henrik Fisker (Twitter)

Google automatically translates local reviews when you travel

We all use user-generated reviews to figure out what points of interest are worth checking out. If you’re traveling in a country where you don’t speak the language, however, the reviews you rely on are usually in the local tongue. Google has a new feature to help you out. The company will now automatically translate reviews into your native language without any effort on your part.

When you use Google Maps or Search to find a place you’re interested in, the reviews will be translated on the fly into the language you have set on your phone. You’ll see a parenthetical note that the review has been translated, but that’s it. No more pasting unfamiliar language into a translation app or — heaven forbid — using a pocket phrasebook to find that sweet photo spot in Italy or the best shawarma place in Istanbul.

This is just another in a line of features Google’s added lately, including a location-sharing feature that you might actually use and tappable shortcuts for its various apps.

We lived through the history of evolution in VR with ‘Life of Us’

It’s easy to criticize virtual reality for being isolating and a bit anti-social, but there’s a lot of potential for connection with shared VR experiences. One good example is Life of Us, the latest entry from the VR studio Within and director Chris Milk. It lets you and a friend (in my case, our Reviews Editor, Cherlynn Low) relive the story of evolution on Earth. And while it’s relatively short, we found it to be fascinating.

We started out as single-celled organisms floating around in primordial soup. That was trippy enough, but things got even weirder when we realize we could talk to each other through the HTC Vive’s microphones. Thanks to some audio processing, our voices ended up sounding high-pitched like characters from Alvin and the Chipmunks. It was a bit annoying at first, but it helped to make us feel like we were actually tiny organisms.

As soon as we got our bearings in the microscopic world, we were transformed into prehistoric fish. Right after that, we turned into small dinosaurs (my guess is that we were a pair of Dilophosaurus, due to the neck frill) running away from a T-Rex. At that point, the experience built up momentum and we just kept moving. We jumped off of a cliff and became fire-breathing pterodactyls (they didn’t do that, we know), and we were both surprised to find we could flap our wings in virtual reality.

There’s probably some sort of philosophical commentary about the need to keep racing as we evolved, but mostly it just made for a frenetic and immersive experience. Our playthrough was also projected onto a large screen at the Tribeca VR arcade, which also gave us a sizable audience for our evolutionary adventure. The sense of shared discovery throughout Life of Us was fascinating — like when we both realized we could breathe fire — but it was even more fulfilling when I realized I we were effectively putting on a show for the crowd.

Eventually, we turned into apes running through a forest, flinging tiny monkeys that climbed onto us. And we got to relive our actual urban lives as virtual humans running through a city, with briefcases overflowing with seemingly infinite sheets of paper. (Just like actual New York City!) The experience culminated in a robot dance party — which, personally, feels like a pretty optimistic view of our potential future.

Life of Us isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it’s a solid experience that shows off how VR lets you easily step into new roles. And while it would be interesting enough on its own, it’s even better as a shared experience. It feels like the difference between seeing a movie on your own, and seeing it right next to a friend. There’s room for connection, even when you’re wearing headsets and blind to the world.

Follow along with all of our Tribeca 2017 coverage here.

Disney’s projection tech turns actors’ faces into nightmare fuel

Disney is taking scary clown makeup to the next level. It’s using a new projection system to transform the appearance of actors during live performances, tracking facial expressions and “painting” them with light, rather than physical makeup. Called Makeup Lamps, the system was developed by a team at Disney Research, and it could potentially change the way stage makeup is used in future theater productions.

Makeup Lamps tracks an actor’s movements without using the facial markers common in motion capture, then it displays any color or texture the actor wants by adjusting the lighting. It can make someone appear older by creating “wrinkles” on their face, for example, or it can paint their face in creepy clown makeup, à la Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. And all of it is done in real-time.

A similar technology was used earlier this year during Lady Gaga’s performance at the Superbowl. Nobumichi Asai, creative director of Japanese visual studio WOW, was brought in to create a red lightning bolt on Gaga’s face during her David Bowie tribute. The attention that performance received has helped the technology become more mainstream.

Latency — the time between generating an image that matches the actor’s pose and when the image is displayed — is a big challenge to live augmentation, of course. Large amounts of it will cause the projection and the actor’s face to appear out of sync. Disney’s research team combated this problem by limiting the complexity of its algorithms and employing a method called Kalman filtering, which uses measurements over time to make predictions and minor adjustments.

“We’ve seen astounding advances in recent years in capturing facial performances of actors and transferring those expressions to virtual characters,” said Markus Gross, vice president at Disney Research. “Leveraging these technologies to augment the appearance of live actors is the next step and could result in amazing transformations before our eyes of stage actors in theaters or other venues.”

Source: EurekAlert

‘Breath of the NES’ is a retro ‘Zelda’ fan project destined to die

While you wait for something else to play on your Switch (might I suggest looking into TumbleSeed?), you could kill some time with Breath of the NES. As the name suggests, the fan-project was inspired by Nintendo’s 8-bit Breath of the Wild prototype that the company divulged during a GDC panel earlier this year. This isn’t a straight facsimile though. Developer WinterDrake has added modern lighting and shadows (the fireflies are particularly impressive), while keeping gameplay mostly familiar.

Trees can be cut down and eating apples replenishes your health, for example. But WinterDrake tells Kotaku that they aren’t afraid to throw in a few personal tweaks — especially when it comes to the ways you can kill enemies.

“For example, one of the original items in the game is a ‘Byoki Berry,’ which the game tells you is poisonous to humans. However, if you drop a Byoki Berry near some Octorocks, they’ll flock to it ignoring everything else, allowing you to trap them, kill them or sneak by.”

Thus far, the project was built with Game Maker Studio in a few months. WinterDrake even has plans for when Nintendo will almost assuredly issue a cease and desist letter: they’re going to swap Link and Co. for original characters and keep on truckin’.

“I’m having way too much fun creating this world to just give up.”

Breath of the NES is available on itchio and if you want a peek at what you’re getting before downloading the still-in-development game, that’s what the trailer embedded below is for. Oh, and should you be a musician or pixel artist, regardless of what it’ll be called when the project wraps, WinterDrake could use your help finishing the game.

Via: Kotaku

Source: Micropig Gaming (YouTube), itchio

Unroll.me is sorry-not-sorry it sold email data to Uber

When the New York Times revealed that Apple had threatened to drop Uber’s app over privacy guideline violations, there was a juicy tidbit tucked inside: Unroll.me’s email management service had anonymized Lyft receipts and sold them to Uber to help it gauge the health of its ridesharing rival. Unsurprisingly, Lyft customers weren’t happy — and Unroll.me is apologizing… sort of. Company chief Jojo Hedaya has posted a statement saying it was “heartbreaking” to learn that people were upset after discovering that Unroll.me sells data to make its service free. He believes the company wasn’t “explicit enough” in telling users what it does, and that there will be clearer messaging in apps and the web.

The heads-up is likely to be helpful, and may help you make a more informed decision before you sign up. However, many users (particularly those in the Unroll.me blog comments) see this as an insincere apology. Notice how he’s upset about people being upset, not about the sale itself? That’s what users are angry about — that Unroll.me sold potentially revealing info to a company looking for a competitive advantage. While it wouldn’t be trivial for the service to tear apart its business model, a direct acknowledgment of the real frustrations would have helped.

And as Daring Fireball observes, the statement raises questions about the degree of anonymity. If Unroll.me scrubbed billing info but not the routes people took, for example, that may have given Uber a roundabout way of identifying people (such as drivers serving both Uber and Lyft) based on trip locations. This doesn’t mean that Uber had identifying info or misused it. Rather, the issue is that customers don’t really know what’s happening. No matter what Unroll.me says, its users simply have to trust that the service knows how to fully respect their privacy.

Via: The Verge, Daring Fireball

Source: Unroll.me

Sling TV’s Cloud DVR records your guilty pleasures on Apple TV

Two weeks after Sling TV rolled out its Cloud DVR feature to Android and Roku users, the streaming service is now doing the same for people who own an Apple TV. “First Look,” which was introduced last November, lets Sling TV subscribers get 50 hours of DVR storage by paying an extra $5 per month. Any recorded TV shows or movies can be watched across different devices, regardless of platform, and they never expire from an active account. It’s great for those of you who decided to cut the cord completely, since features like this have traditionally required a pay-TV subscription or some sort of third-party hardware.

Source: Sling TV

Galaxy S8 Preorders Were Samsung’s ‘Best Ever’

Samsung’s trouble with the Galaxy Note 7, which notably caused several fires due to battery troubles and led to a full recall, hasn’t affected demand for its newly launched Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+.

According to a statement released this morning by Samsung (via VentureBeat), Samsung saw 30 percent year-over-year growth in preorders compared to the Galaxy S7. While Samsung did not give specific sales numbers, the company said it saw its “best ever” preorder period.

“We are delighted to see the response to the Galaxy S8 and S8+,” remarked Samsung Electronics America president Tim Baxter. “The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are a result of that recommitment and the market has responded — with a more than 30 percent year-over-year growth in pre-orders versus the record pre-orders we had with Galaxy S7, making it our best ever. The response is humbling, energizing and points to a great launch week. We aim to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the name of a better, smarter, more exciting experience for our consumers.”

The Galaxy S8 shares many features that could potentially be coming in Apple’s 2017 OLED iPhone, including an edge-to-edge OLED display, iris scanning, a rear fingerprint scanner, facial recognition, IP68 water resistance, and camera improvements, though it does not feature a dual-lens setup as the iPhone 8 will.

Samsung’s smartphone is, however, launching without one of its key features — support for Bixby, Samsung’s new virtual assistant built on Viv technology acquired from the original developers behind Siri. Bixby’s English-language launch has been delayed due to performance issues, leaving one of the buttons on the Galaxy S8 non-functional.

Despite the missing functionality, the S8 and S8+ have received largely positive reviews. The AMOLED display is said to be “wonderfully vibrant and sharp,” while the phone itself has been described as “slimmer and more attractive” than the iPhone 7 Plus but with a bigger screen.

Camera reviews suggest the low-light camera performance of the S8 beats the performance of the iPhone 7 Plus, but that’s comparing a new device to a previous-generation device. Rumors suggest a major camera overhaul is coming with the iPhone 8, which appears to feature a dual-lens vertical camera that could result in both better images and augmented reality functionality.

Apple’s iPhone 8 won’t be coming until September, and even then, rumors suggest the higher-end OLED model could be constrained until late 2017 or early 2018.

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and S8+ went on sale on April 21 in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 starts at $750, while the larger 6.2-inch Galaxy S8+ starts at $850.

Tags: Samsung, Galaxy Note 7, Galaxy S8
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