Take a good look at the HTC Vive Pro and VR wireless adapter

The Vive Pro is a beefed-up version of HTC’s original VR headset, adding integrated 3D audio and high-res OLED screens displaying 2880 x 1600, with a pixel density of 615 pixels per inch, an upgrade from 1080 x 1200 and 448ppi. The headset also addresses some of the first iteration’s fit issues, adding a new headstrap with a sizing dial that helps redistribute weight, so it’s not all collected at the front of the headset.

The attached headphones flip up on either side like wings, but when they’re actually in use, they create a snug and immersive VR environment. The Vive Pro features dual front-facing cameras and two microphones, too.

The Vive Pro works with existing HTC VR systems, including the original base station and SteamVR tracking 1.0 (and their updated versions, of course). Players will be able to pair up to four base stations to create a play area of 10 ft x 10 ft.

HTC has a clear market in mind for the Pro: hardcore VR enthusiasts and businesses that want the most powerful experiences possible. The Pro will be on sale as a standalone headset, no tracking equipment included, this quarter. A package complete with base station 2.0 and controllers will be out later this year. HTC doesn’t plan to stop selling the original Vive in 2018 — the Pro is simply a more powerful option for serious users.

Edgar Alvarez / Engadget

In line with this vision of a dual-Vive future, HTC also revealed a wireless adapter that works with both of its VR headsets. This thing uses Intel’s WiGig technology to make the headsets wireless, and it’s due out in the summer.

Pricing for the Pro and the wireless adapter will be announced closer to launch.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Watch Intel’s CES 2018 keynote event right here at 9:30 PM ET

The first official keynote speech of CES will come courtesy of Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, who will surely discuss “how data is transforming the world around us,” autonomous vehicles and AI, but there’s a significant elephant in the room. This speech comes just days after the Meltdown and Spectre CPU exploits were revealed, and surely the exec will want to address his company’s response. Watch what happens with a live video stream embedded below (or read along on our liveblog) that starts at 9:30 PM ET.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Live from Intel’s CES 2018 keynote

Once again, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich is ushering in the beginning of CES with a major keynote. This year, the big focus is on data and it’s “power to transform the world.” But we also hope that he says more about how Intel plans to tackle the fallout from Meltdown and Spectre. We also expect to hear plenty about how Intel is using data in its artificial intelligence initiatives. And of course, the company will likely highlight some of its upcoming products. In particular, we hope to see Krzanich demo machines using the new 8th generation Core CPU with AMD RX Vega M graphics. Join us at 6:30pm PT/9:30pm ET when the keynote kicks off.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

CES 2018: Philips and Razer Team Up for Game-Activated Hue Lights

Philips and Razer today announced a new collaboration that allows Philips’ Hue line of lights to integrate with Razer Chroma-enabled devices.

When using a device that features Razer Chroma, which includes everything from the Razer Blade line of laptops to Razer Chroma keyboards, gaming controllers, and mice, allowing your Philips Hue lights to react to whatever game you’re playing.

You can choose to set each bulb to a preferred color or sync all of your lights with one touch using Razer’s Synapse 3 hardware configuration software.

With Chroma Studio, you can also create different lighting effects across all Synapse-enabled devices that extend to Hue lights or use pre-configured effects like cascading waves or fire.

Razer says that its Razer Chroma devices and Hue lights are able to provide a fully immersive gaming experience, activating with game cues. When there’s a flickering lamp, for example, the lights in the room will flicker, or when you score a kill, you’ll be rewarded with a unique lighting scene.

Game developers can use Razer’s Chroma SDK to built lighting effects that will impact Hue and Chroma devices, and many games have already adopted support, like Overwatch, Quake Champions, Factorio, Killing Floor 2, and more.

Tags: Philips Hue, Razer, CES 2018
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Whill’s new electric wheelchair is fast, light, portable, and available now

Power mobility device maker Whill is kicking the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) off in style with the debut of its stylish new Model Ci electric wheelchair — a newer, lighter, more versatile model of its already impressive accessibility vehicle. Called the Model Ci, Whill’s stylish new personal electric vehicle is about as far from the antiquated scooters and wheelchairs of yesteryear as a Tesla Model X is from a box cart.

The Model Ci packs a lithium-ion battery allowing it to travel 10 miles on a single charge, with top speeds of five miles per hour, meaning the equivalent of a gentle jogging speed. Navigation is primarily carried out using a joystick in the right armrest, although you can also make like you’re James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies and drive it using a smartphone. (You can additionally use your smartphone to check how much battery you have left.)

It’s not just the control mechanism that’s smooth, either. The Model Ci features specially designed “omni-wheels” which employ multiple rollers for a powerful drive its creators describe as a “glide,” letting you navigate proficiently whether you’re on undulating city streets, off-road terrain, or just maneuvering in the comfort of your own home.

“With its modern design, the Model Ci challenges today’s conventions with a product that, due to its futuristic appeal, eliminates the stigma and adverse psychological impact that affects people who use mobility devices,” Satoshi Sugie, CEO of Whill and a former Nissan designer, said in a statement. “The result is not just freedom of mobility, but freedom from the self-consciousness often associated with a wheelchair or scooter.”

Another impressive feature of the lightweight Model Ci, which tips the scales at just 115 pounds, is its ability to easily break into three modular components for easy packing in the back of a car. Last but not least is the fact that, unlike so many of the exciting products and innovations we cover at CES each year, there is no lengthy wait for the Whill Model Ci. It is available now for $4,000.

With that combination of pluses in its corner, it’s no wonder the Whill Model Ci has already scooped up a 2018 Best of CES Innovation Award.

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Cortana gets an unexpected roommate on Windows 10 PCs: Alexa

Well, this is awkward. Looks like Amazon’s Alexa isn’t content to be only on  TVs, smart speakers, smartphones, and even earphones. Now she’s got her sights set on some new digs, and this time it will mean vying for users’ attention with another virtual assistant: Microsoft’s Cortana.

Just how bad this cat fight will be remains to be seen, but here’s what we do know. Alexa will be making an appearance this year on Windows 10 PCs made by HP, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer, in the form of a stand-alone app. She’ll be able to listen for her wake word (Alexa, Computer, or Echo) and respond to queries just as she does via Amazon’s Echo, and the myriad devices that already support its assistant.

While it’s true that Microsoft and Amazon have discussed the possibility of Cortana and Alexa being friendly enough toward each other to have a conversation now and then, that’s a far cry from the two assistants actually occupying space on the same device.  Some have speculated that this move is matter of survival for Windows device makers, who desperately need a way to control smart home devices, something which Cortana hasn’t really mastered. Alexa, on the other hand, has seldom met a smart home gadget she couldn’t whisper commands to. Yep, she’s got mad skills in that department.

Where will Alexa be showing up first? “Select Acer Aspire, Spin, Switch, and Swift notebooks,” according to PCWorld, “as well as Aspire all-in-one PCs beginning in the first quarter of 2018. Asus will add Alexa to select ZenBook and VivoBook notebooks in 2018. HP will add Alexa to its $549 Pavilion Wave, a compact, small-form-factor desktop with Alexa built right in.”

This surprising news should make Apple a bit nervous, too. Apple’s way ahead of Microsoft in terms of home automation thanks to its HomeKit efforts, but that’s largely been an iOS-specific implementation. If Siri doesn’t show herself to be as good a listener as Alexa, will it be long before Amazon builds Alexa yet another new home, this time on MacOS?

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MIT’s new ultrafine, ultrastrong fibers could make future body armor tougher

Right now, materials like Kevlar are the gold standard when it comes to tough textiles used in applications such as body armor. But materials scientists are busy searching for its possible successor. Previously we’ve covered some innovative ultra-strong materials such a foil-thin graphene shield which can repel diamonds and artificial spider silk able to absorb the majority of an impact.

Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed their own next-generation tough material: polyethylene nano-fibers, which possess astonishing levels of strength and toughness, despite being just billionths of a meter thick.

“Stiff, strong, and tough ultrafine polethylene fibers that rival the best high performance polymer fibers, but with diameters less than one micrometer, [have been fabricated by us] for the first time by a new process called ‘gel-electrospinning,’” MIT professor of chemical engineering Gregory Rutledge told Digital Trends. “Currently available high performance polyethylene fibers like Spectra and Dyneema are already among the stiffest and strongest fibers, on a per weight basis. However, these new fibers are one to two orders of magnitude smaller in diameter and, pound for pound, can absorb even more energy without breaking.”

The nano-fibers were created by modifying an already existing technique called gel spinning. This involves extruding a polymer gel through a die and then mechanically drawing it in a second, heated stage. In the case of the new “gel-electrospinning” process, this extrusion and drawing is carried out in a single stage using electrical forces, rather than a mechanical approach.

Courtesy of the researchers, MIT

At present, it’s still too early to demonstrate real world applications, although Rutledge said that these may include lightweight, flexible, wear-resistant textiles and clothing, as well as soft body armor for military or civilian uses, or possible components for lightweight composites. In all of these applications, the benefit is from the inherent low density of the new fibers and their exceptional toughness, alongside their high stiffness and strength. “The performance of composites are enhanced by the high surface area of the fibers, which can improve bonding to the matrix, and the small distances between the fibers, which further promotes toughness,” Rutledge continued.

The first-of-their-kind fibers have been produced only in Rutledge’s lab at MIT, currently in very small quantities. “We have many challenges to solve before they can be scaled up for commercial production, but we are working on it,” he said. “The gel-electrospinning process is an important step in this direction.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the Journal of Materials Science.

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The ThinkPad T480s isn’t the best laptop of CES, but it has a place in my heart

We’re only eight days in to 2018, but it’s already shaping up to be an awesome year for laptops. We’ve seen versatile 2-in-1s like the Samsung Notebook 9, powerhouses like the HP Spectre x360 15-inch, and affordable traditional laptops like the Asus Zenbook 13. You’ll hear a lot about these laptops, and more, at CES – but there’s one you likely won’t hear much about, even though you should: the Lenovo ThinkPad T480s.

Admittedly, I have a soft-spot for the T-series. A Lenovo ThinkPad T41 put me through college, and I still sometimes use a T420s as my zen PC, which I break out whenever I want to write without distraction. Every T-Series laptop has prioritized simple, functional traits that don’t grab headlines, but do make a laptop nice to use. Anti-glare displays. Good battery life, with the option to buy an extended battery for insane endurance. And, of course, that iconic keyboard.

Even I concede, though, that the T-Series has struggled lately. It slipped into a middle-ground between the big, powerful laptops, and super-portable ultrathins. Lenovo’s X1 laptops became the flagship.

But never fear, T-Series faithful. This year’s T480s is the laptop you’ve been waiting for.

Let’s talk weight. The T480s starts at 2.9 pounds despite its 14-inch screen. That’s almost as light as the last generation of Dell XPS 13, and lighter than Apple’s MacBook Pro 13. It’s also just four-tenths of a pound heavier than the X1 Carbon, and lighter than the X1 Yoga.

Its size is impressive, too. The system is just .7 inches thick, 13 inches wide, and 9 inches deep. It’s not setting records, sure, but it’s again only slightly larger than the X1 Carbon. Do you really care if your laptop is .6 inches or .7 inches thick? Really?

Likely not. What you might care about, though, is the T480s’ performance. It supports up to 8th-gen Intel Core i7 processors, like every other laptop announced at CES 2018. That doesn’t give it an edge over anything else, but it’s a big leap all the same. The two extra cores available in the latest Intel mobile hardware make a difference in the most demanding applications.

It also offers up to 24GB of RAM and, better still, optional Nvidia MX150 graphics. As I’ve said before, the MX150 is a surprisingly capable chip. It adds some extra go if you need a GPU for productivity, and makes the occasional Overwatch break a lot more enjoyable. The old T470s didn’t offer discrete graphics, not even as an option.

What’s not to love? Seriously – why wouldn’t you want this laptop? It’s thin. Its fast. It has a great keyboard and plentiful screen options. It even hits up to 13.5 hours of battery life. The retail price of $1,269 isn’t higher than its competitors, and Lenovo is known for frequent sales.

You’ll see flashier laptops in 2018. Laptops with gold finishes. Laptops with displays brighter than the sun. Laptops made from the same stuff as your running jacket. That’s all fine – but before you get wrapped up in the hype, remember the T480s. It could serve you better, and longer, than the new hotness.

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Bosch is using cameras, streetlights, and sensors to make cities more livable

Living in a big city comes with a long list of advantages and an equally long catalog of disadvantages. Gridlock, pollution, and the never-ending search for a parking spot are all part of the second set. Bosch is using clouds, cameras, and sensors to whittle down the disadvantages without taking away the advantages — you’ll still be able to buy a burrito at two o’clock in the morning.

“We need a new conception of the city. One key factor here is technologies that make cities smart and worth living in. In the long run, cities without intelligence will not survive but succumb to gridlock,” predicted Bosch board member Stefan Hartung ahead of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Bosch is ahead of the curve when it comes to making cities smarter, and it has a few tricks up its sleeve as it looks toward the future. It’s already working with 14 major cities including San Francisco, Berlin,  and Tianjin, China, and it’s planning on expanding the list of partnerships in the coming years. Notably, it provided San Leandro, California, with nearly 5,000 LED street lights and developed a way to remotely manage them. They’re only turned on when needed, a solution which will help the city save about $8 million over the next 15 years.

Streetlights, like much else, will become connected. They’ll turn into the city’s eyes — and also its nose. Sensors integrated into the light posts monitor the quality of the air while cameras keep tabs on the traffic flow. Using vehicle-to-infrastructure communication technology, they redirect motorists if they detect a traffic jam on a particular street. Bosch hopes to launch the technology in the near future. It’s not as far-fetched or complex as it sounds.

“Using surveillance cameras and what we call video analytics, we’re able to see objects like pedestrians, cars, and bicycles. If we work with a smart intersection we can start doing some things like turn on and off warnings for walkways, alert drivers that there are bicycles in the bike lanes, and prevent traffic jams,” Frank Sgambati, Bosch’s smart city whiz, told Digital Trends.

Getting that information to motorists is another story. There are several possible solutions.

“We’re working with OEMs to pipe the data right through your traditional navigation screen. We could also work with cities by sending information to digital signs. You could also receive the information on your smartphone but then we get into the distraction question,” Sgambati commented.

The way city-dwellers park will soon change, too. Community-based parking sounds utopian, but it’s real and it’s right around the corner. Using ultrasonic parking sensors, cars automatically scan the size of the gap between two parked vehicles and detect if it’s big enough to qualify as a parking spot. The data gets stitched in real time onto a digital map that other connected cars have access to. They can then direct drivers to the nearest suitable spot, which saves the time and hassle of driving around the block.

How does a car know the difference between a parking spot and a driveway? That’s one of the challenges Bosch must overcome.

“What we need to do is build the backbone. We’re literally doing the mapping on our own, with some partners, so we can determine what’s a real parking spot. We’ll then create a digital map stored in the cloud and continually updated as more and more vehicles participate in the program. We’ll have the service available to OEMs by the end of the year,” Sgambati explained.

Bosch has already started testing community-based parking in some German cities, including Stuttgart, and 20 American cities, including Los Angeles, Miami, and Boston, will test the technology this year. And for those who don’t like parking on the street, the German firm joined forces with Mercedes-Benz to build an automated valet parking service. The Mercedes-Benz museum in Germany is currently testing the system.

What about non-traffic-related issues? There are plenty of those to solve, too, including air pollution. Bosch worked together with Intel to develop a microclimate monitoring system named Climo that analyzes 12 parameters important to air quality, including carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide. The firm points out its system is appreciably smaller than comparable systems, which are about the size of a shipping container, and a tenth more affordable, though pricing hasn’t been announced yet.

Similar technology helps cities monitor rising water levels to reduce the damage caused by flooding. Bosch’s monitoring system relies on ultrasonic sensors and cameras to track a river’s water level. The firm’s cloud receives and processes the information, and it sends out an alert if it detects that critical thresholds have been exceeded. City officials, business owners, and residents get enough prior notice to prepare for an imminent flood.

In other words, it’s cloud versus cloud. But soon, if Bosch has its way, having a cloud over your city won’t necessarily mean yet another rainy day.

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The best monitors announced at CES 2018 so far

Confused by all the monitors announced at CES 2018? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Here are the five best monitors unveiled at CES this year, the only ones you really need to pay attention to. Most have HDR, and a few have some other, very welcome bells and whistles like 65-inches of screen real estate. That’s right, let’s get started.

Nvidia’s BFGD monitors

All right, seriously — even if monitors aren’t really your thing, check these out. Nvidia announced out a new lineup of gaming-centric desktop monitors over the weekend, and let’s just be honest here. These things are pretty much all the monitor you’ll ever need. In fact, they’re probably more than you’ll ever need.

The Nvidia BFGD monitors all have features you only find on top-end monitor offerings: 120hz refresh rate for liquid-smooth gameplay, Nvidia G-Sync to make sure your video card and display work together nicely, 4K resolution, and of course support for HDR. And that’s just the beginning. They also feature quantum dots for super-sharp color reproduction — and did we mention they’re all a massive 65 inches? Yeah.

BFGD stands for big-format gaming displays, and these products definitely fit that description. You can expect to see BFGD displays from Acer, Asus, and HP later this year. They’re still a ways out, though, so release dates and pricing haven’t been announced.

LG 32UK950

If you don’t need a lightning-quick refresh rate, and just want some absolutely lovely screen real estate, come take a look at LG’s 32UK950. Simple, elegant, straightforward, the 32UK950 is a 32-inch 4K display with HDR support, and one of LG’s new nano IPS display panels. LG boasts the display is capable of hitting 98 percent of the P3 color gamut, and with that nano IPS panel, those colors aren’t just going to be accurate, they’re going to be vibrant and tack-sharp.

LG 34WK95U

Maybe 32-inches of 4K HDR display real estate isn’t enough for you. You want a display that’s a little extra. For that, let’s have a look at the LG 34WK95U, LG’s new premium ultrawide. This massive 34-inch ultrawide features a 5K nano-IPS display panel, and of course, HDR. On top of all that, the display features a borderless edge-to-edge design so the screen just seems to melt into the background.

Lenovo ThinkVision P32U

If you’re looking for something a bit more professional, and a bit less flashy, the Lenovo ThinkVision P32U might be a good alternative. A spartan, black-clad display with a nice thin bezel and no external frills. Well, one frill — it has a bright red cable management bracket. Other than that, it features a 32-inch 4K display with capable of hitting 99.5 percent of the AdobeRGB spectrum, according to Lenovo. It should hit store shelves in March for a reported $1,350.

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