The Wii U finally has its own shadow puppet simulator
After more than a year of being available on Steam, Shadow Puppeteer is ready to take its adventure over to the Wii U. The award-winning independent title, developed by Sarepta studio, will be hitting Nintendo’s console on January 28th for $15. Shadow Puppeteer brings with it what’s described as a strange but beautiful world, which you can explore on your own or through a local co-op mode. Above all, Shadow Puppeteer’s arrival on Wii U is a great sign for indie gamers, a community we know Nintendo’s trying really hard to reach.
Source: Nintendo
For VR to be truly immersive, it needs convincing sound to match
I’m staring at a large iron door in a dimly lit room. “Hey,” a voice says, somewhere on my right. “Hey buddy, you there?” It’s a heavily masked humanoid. He proceeds to tell me that my sensory equipment is down and will need to be fixed. Seconds later, the heavy door groans. A second humanoid leads the way into the spaceship where my suit will be repaired.
Inside a wide room with bright spotlights I notice an orange drilling machine. “OK, before we start, I need to remove the panel from the back of your head,” says the humanoid. I hear the whirring of a drill behind me. I squirm and reflexively raise my shoulders. The buzzing gets louder, making the hair on the nape of my neck stand up.
Then I snapped out of it. I removed the Oculus Rift DK2 strapped on my face and the headphones pressed on my ears and was back on the crowded floors of the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. But for a few terrifying seconds, the realistic audio in Fixing Incus, a virtual reality demo built on RealSpace 3D audio engine, had tricked my brain into thinking a machine had pulled nails out from the back of my head.
“There’s a little map in your brain even when you’re not seeing the objects,” says Ramani Duraiswami, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland and co-founder of VisiSonics, the startup that licensed its RealSpace 3D audio technology to Oculus in 2014. “If the sound is consistent with geometry, you’ll know automatically where things are even if they’re not in your view field.”
The premise of VR is to create an alternate reality, but without the right audio cues to match the visuals, the brain doesn’t buy into the illusion. For the trickery to succeed, the immersive graphics need equally immersive 3D audio that replicates the natural listening experience.
There are a couple of ways to capture and play back 3D audio. By making binaural recordings on a dummy head with microphones for ears, one can create a clear distinction between left and right sounds. Musicians like Beck and Bjork have experimented with the format. Meanwhile, a YouTube community has been using binaural audio for the sound of whispers and hair snipping since 2010, a brain trick that has reportedly helped some of its followers overcome insomnia and anxiety. But live-action 360-video creators have been toying with “ambisonics,” a technique that employs a spherical microphone to capture a sound field in all directions, including above and below the listener.
But in simulated VR—like gaming, for instance—where the visual setting is predetermined, 3D audio is best created on a rendering engine that’s capable of attaching sound to objects as they move through the setting. So, a drilling machine that’s out of sight can feel like a torture tool when it’s at the back of your head.
This object-based audio technique uses software to assign audible cues to things and characters in 3D space. But it isn’t a new invention. Dolby Laboratories has been employing the same technique for Atmos, a four-year-old adaptive sound technology that brought immersive audio to cinemas.
Back in the ’70s, when Dolby first launched a multiple-speaker setup called surround sound, the technology was based on fixed audio channels. The idea was to direct audio to speakers placed at prescribed locations. So if someone in a scene screamed on the right side of the screen, the sound was sent to a speaker in that area of the theater—or living room, even. This changed the way people experienced movies in their homes.
Indeed, movie audio has been mixed specifically for this way for decades now. While it led to the rise of 5.1 and 7.1 home theater systems, the same technique didn’t always work for cinemas that didn’t follow the same speaker locations. For movie theaters, then, Dolby needed a more flexible format.
“The content creators wanted more freedom in terms of where to place the sound. They didn’t want to think in terms of channels,” says Joel Susal, director of Dolby’s virtual reality and augmented reality business. “Dolby Atmos gives sound designers a 3D canvas to design a soundscape that they want.” It offers object-based audio that isn’t tied down to fixed speakers. It’s also a scalable technology, meaning it can be used for movie theaters, home speaker systems and even headphones. And while Atmos’s flexible sound environment was intended for movie theaters, its immersive capabilities also make it a natural fit for VR.
The premise of VR is to create an alternate reality, but without the right audio cues to match the visuals, the brain doesn’t buy into the illusion.
With more players now tackling the problem of 3D audio, everyday consumers might soon have the chance to experience it for themselves. But there’s a lingering challenge: Maintain the cues that the brain needs to localize the sound so the illusion remains intact. The human ears pick up audio in three dimensions. The brain processes multiple cues to spatialize that sound. One of the most basic indicators is proximity. The ear closer to the source picks up sound waves before the other; there’s a gap in the time that it takes to travel from one ear to the other. The distance also changes the audio levels. Together, these differences help the brain pinpoint the exact source of the sound.
But the same cues don’t apply to all directions. Sounds that emerge from the front or the back are more ambiguous for the brain. In particular, when a sound from the front interacts with the outer ears, head, neck and shoulders, it gets colored with modifications that help the brain solve the confusion. This interaction creates a response called Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF), which has now become the linchpin of personalized immersive audio.
Capturing a person’s HRTFs is the equivalent of fingerprinting. Everyone’s ears are unique, so the imprint of one person’s anatomy on a sound is completely different from the other. It’s the reason generic dummy head binaural recordings don’t have the same effect on everyone. Likewise, they don’t always work for VR either.
To solve the VR audio problem, scientists have been experimenting with ways to measure individual audio modifications so that the brain can localize simulated sounds with immaculate precision. So far, the norm has been to place small microphones inside the ear to pick up modifications. Then, a technician plays a sound from a specific point in space. The thing is this process essentially covers only one position. To cover an entire soundscape, the speaker would need to be placed in hundreds of different spots and the sound variations would need be recorded for each location. As you can imagine, the technique is tedious and can take hours. But VisiSonics, the startup behind the Oculus Rift’s audio technology, found a solution: Swap the speakers with microphones.
At the company’s research lab at the University of Maryland, there’s a sound booth covered in 256 tiny, disc-shaped microphones. The researchers place an earbud-shaped speaker inside your ear to play the sound of birds. The chirping hits the array of microphones that record the audio modifications. Unlike other testing methods, which account for each possible location one by one, VisiSonics’s patented technology picks up all the audio cues simultaneously, allowing them to measure a person’s unique audio imprint within seconds. “We can [do this] in a lab but we want to … set it up in every Best Buy,” says CEO Gregg Wilkes.
A bespoke 3D audio experience feels like putting on prescription glasses for fuzzy eyesight. Unlike stereo sound that’s designed to stay trapped inside your headphones, personalized sound feels far enough outside your head for you to forget that you have a headset on. This kind of realism is essential to VR, but apart from a few musical experiments and obscure art projects, 3D audio has largely lived inside research labs for the last few decades.
Similar to older binaural recordings, the newer 3D audio format is best suited to headphones. It doesn’t convert easily into a realistic soundscape over speakers. In the absence of a head-tracker, the listener is required to sit fairly still to stay inside the illusion. The restriction has held the technology back from reaching movie watchers at home. Now, with VR headsets about to hit shelves, immersive audio is moving to the forefront of sound technologies. At CES earlier this month, Sennheiser brought out a suite of 3D audio technologies called Ambeo, which included a VR microphone that captures ambisonics and an upmix algorithm that converts stereo tracks into a high-quality 9.1 sound experience.
Innovation in this space isn’t limited to big audio companies either. Ossic, a San Diego-based startup, has a set of 3D audio headphones, which will make their debut on Kickstarter next month. The company claims to have sensors that can automatically calibrate the headphones to your ears for personalized audio. In addition to the hardware, Ossic also has a rendering engine that creates object-based sound for virtual experiences like the HTC Vive demo Secret Shop, which relies heavily on audible cues to guide the viewer through the game.
Despite the high-quality demos available now, audio for VR is still a work in progress. But for now, the combination of 3D audio and head-tracking makes VR complete. Without accurate audio cues, if you strap on a headset and look in one direction, you run the risk of missing the humanoid on your right. “Audio, from an evolutionary perspective, is the thing that makes you turn your head quickly when you hear a twig snap behind you,” says Susal. “It’s very common that people put on the headset and don’t even realize they can look around. You need techniques to nudge people to look where you want them to look, and sound is the thing that has nudged us as humans as we’ve evolved.”
[Image credit: VisiSonics]
‘Halo: Reach’ runs poorly on the Xbox One
The Xbox One’s backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games has largely worked as promised, but there’s now one glaring exception. Microsoft has confirmed reports that Halo: Reach (aka one of the 360’s biggest titles) runs much slower than you’d expect. While talk of it being “unplayable” is extreme, Bungie’s shooter fell from a largely steady 30 frames per second on the original hardware to the mid-teens — enough to throw you off during intense action scenes. Others report audio glitches, too.
Microsoft says it’s working on a fix, but it’s not certain when that will arrive or how well it’ll work. Either way, the debacle illustrates the challenge of emulating highly customized console hardware: even if you largely get it right, there are bound to be a few games that slip through the cracks. It’s no wonder that Sony is being cautious with its own compatibility plans.
Louis Vuitton’s 2016 collection, as modeled by ‘Final Fantasy’
She might have already been decked in Prada (and er, moogles), but Final Fantasy XIII‘s often-reheated hero, Lightning, is now the face of Louis Vuitton’s incoming collection early next year. This all comes direct from the Instagram account of the fashion house’s Creative Director, Nicolas Ghesquiere. Watch Lightning wield an LV purse like a “Blue Steel” Buster Sword in the animated teaser after the break.
A video posted by 🆖 (@nicolasghesquiere) on Dec 25, 2015 at 1:38pm PST
Via: Polygon
Source: Instagram
Spend an afternoon with the ‘Sonic’ charity marathon
The fine folks at Respawn Point are in the middle of a non-stop, seven-day Sonic the Hedgehog marathon, livestreamed on Twitch and benefiting UK charity Special Effect, which helps people with disabilities play video games. The stream started on December 27th and runs through January 3rd. Respawn Point’s stream team is playing a lineup of historically significant Sonic games, starting with 1991’s Sonic the Hedgehog and including notoriously awful installments like the 2006 Sonic disaster.
“We’re all fans of the Sonic franchise here, and while we’ll be sure to suffer through a few of the more notorious games, the highs of the better entries are worth it,” Respawn Point says.
This is the group’s fifth Sonic charity marathon, though the team took a year off in 2014. Now, they’re back in action and happy to be so, ringleader Zack Harrot said during today’s livestream.
“It feels great,” Harrot said, responding to a question I dropped in the Twitch chat. “We never wanted to take a year off, it’s just from time to time, sadly, real life does get in the way of things like this. …Even during that year off, I tried to find ways to fit it in in other places, but it just didn’t happen. It’s always the highlight of my year, honestly. And while it’s difficult and kind of stressful to put together at times, I always have a great deal of fun. We all do.”
The Sonic marathon hopes to raise at least $2,000 for Special Effect by January 3rd.
Source: Respawn Point
The best gaming headset (for most people)
By Dennis Burger
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. Read the full article here.
After more than 100 hours spent researching and testing 37 gaming headsets in all, plus more hours of long-term comfort testing than could reasonably be counted, we think the Kingston HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset is the best gaming headset for most people. It’s beautifully built, comfortable on a wide variety of heads, and excellent in sound performance, especially for the price. In fact, you won’t get find much improvement unless you spend more than double what the HyperX Cloud costs. This model is also incredibly comfortable—you can easily wear it for hours on end without any appreciable cranial distress. It’s a clear winner.
How we tested
Testing one of our top picks, the Sennheiser GAME ONE.
In reading user reviews of gaming headsets, you’ll note that even the most highly rated model will usually have some number of one-star reviews proclaiming it to be the single worst headset in the history of ever, so our primary goal was to find a headset that no one could reasonably hate. As such, our testers agreed on a veto system: If any of us outright loathed a particular model due to issues of comfort, construction, or sound quality, we cut it from the running with no further discussion.
With that agreed upon—and considering that 87 percent of Wirecutter readers who responded to our recent survey about gaming headsets are primarily PC gamers—we began digging through all of the headsets in three large chunks grouped by price (below $100, $100 to $200, and $200 and above), setting aside models that fell egregiously short in any significant way as compared with others in their price range. Once we had our potential top picks in each category, we went on to use them in extended gaming sessions with two different PCs, during which we sometimes wore the same headset for as many as nine hours at a stretch.
Our pick
Goodies like swappable velour ear pads, as well as mobile and airplane adapters, make our top pick that much sweeter.
Our testers agreed that the Kingston HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset is the right headset for most people due to excellent long-term comfort, great sound quality for the price, a light weight, and exceptional build quality. It simply offers the best combination of comfort and performance for the money of any headset we tested.
Overall, the Hyper X Cloud didn’t suffer from the bass problems that so many of the other tested models did. Its frequency response is as accurate and true to life as you could hope for from a headset that costs less than $100. Perhaps most important, we found it less fatiguing for long gaming sessions than any other headset in its price range; in fact, only the much more expensive Sennheiser GAME ONE seriously outmatched it in that regard. The HyperX Cloud features genuine viscoelastic memory foam in its ear pads, not the cheaper foam found in many headsets and headphones. Plus, when we fitted it with its mobile adapter cable and paired it with an iPhone 5s, it performed admirably.
If the Kingston HyperX Cloud is unavailable, our runner-up pick is the updated HyperX Cloud II Gaming Headset, which offers several upgrades but costs a bit extra.
For audiophiles and marathon gamers
Sennheiser’s GAME ONE isn’t as feature packed as other headsets, but its performance makes it the best pick for audiophiles (Alduin the World Eater not included).
If you’re more discerning when it comes to sound quality (with movies, music, and games alike), or if your gaming sessions run a little longer than the norm, check out the Sennheiser GAME ONE, which was by far the favorite headset for all our testers thanks to its stellar audio performance, exceptional long-term comfort, and fantastic noise-cancelling microphone.
Note that the GAME ONE benefits from a good bit of extra amplification, which means it may not be the best pick if you game only on consoles. In our tests it didn’t truly reveal all of its nuances, especially its powerful bass capabilities, until we connected it to a Sound Blaster DAC/amp—in other words, the more power you give it, the better the GAME ONE sounds. If you don’t want to add a sound card to your rig, or if you aren’t a PC gamer, we recommend the Sennheiser PC 363D instead.
For gamers on a budget
A compact folding design, sturdy construction, and strong performance make Creative’s Draco HS880 the best pick for gamers on a tight budget.
If our top pick costs a little more than you’re willing to spend, consider the Creative Draco HS880 Gaming Headset. All of our testers agreed that it’s an absolute steal at its MSRP, and it’s positively irresistible at its current $45 price on Amazon. The Draco HS880 is not quite as great-sounding as our top pick, but it is hard to beat in comfort and build quality.
If you must have wireless
Although none of our testers could find a single wireless headset that they would willingly spend their own money on, the SteelSeries H Wireless Gaming Headset stood out for having the best sound of the wireless models we tested, along with solid construction and virtually zero latency. Unfortunately, it suffers from a terrible microphone.
Wrapping up
The gaming headset market is incredibly contentious, and one person’s favorite is likely to be another’s least favorite. That said, we can’t imagine anyone disliking the Kingston HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset, especially for the price. If you’re willing to spend a little more money, the Sennheiser GAME ONE is an absolute revelation. For gamers on a tight budget, the Creative Draco HS880 Gaming Headset performs better than any cheap gaming headset has a right to. And although our testers couldn’t find a wireless headset that they would own personally, we recommend the SteelSeries H Wireless Gaming Headset if you hate wires, despite its overly sensitive microphone.
This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.
‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ hits PC in January, Steam says
The PC version of Rise of the Tomb Raider is due in January, according to the game’s Steam listing. Square Enix has yet to confirm a date for the desktop launch of its latest Tomb Raider installment, though in July it announced the PC and Windows 10 editions would drop in “early 2016.” The PS4 version should release in late 2016. We’ve reached out to Square Enix for clarification on the Steam listing.
Rise of the Tomb Raider launched on Xbox One and Xbox 360 in November. Square Enix wrangled a deal with Microsoft making the game exclusive to Xbox platforms for a year, a move that surprised many fans when it became public knowledge in August 2014. Though the definition of “exclusive” in this case was murky at first, Square Enix eventually laid out its launch plans.
“The game will be a console exclusive to Xbox One and Xbox 360 for one year after its initial launch, coming to PlayStation 4 in holiday 2016,” the studio said in July.
Via: Destructoid
Source: Steam
‘Take This’ livestream starts today with video game stars, swag
Take This is a non-profit that educates and supports those with depression, anxiety and other mental health issues, with a focus on the video game community. Starting today at 12PM ET, Take This hits Twitch for a two-day livestream starring BioShock creator Ken Levine, popular gaming critic Jim Sterling, Tom Clancy’s son and game developer Thom Clancy, and other famous figures of the industry. Donate during the stream for a chance to win sweet gaming swag, including a signed Octodad poster, an IGN gift pack, a remote-controlled replica of Claptrap from Borderlands or a custom Fallout 4 Xbox One.
The livestream benefits the Take This Scholarship Fund, which helps pay for mental health care for those who can’t afford it.
Video game fans may have heard of Take This while walking the halls of North American PAX conventions: The organization runs the AFK Room, a quiet space open to any attendee who needs a break from the crowds or a safe place to talk about mental health problems. On top of the AFK Room, Take This regularly provides resources aimed at reducing the stigma of mental illness.
http://player.twitch.tv/?channel=takethisorg
Source: Take This on Twitch, Donations
Kid opens PS4 on Christmas day, finds block of wood instead
It’s always a little awkward when a well-intended Christmas gift is a bit off target. But it’s down right cruel what happened to little Scott Lundy from Wakefield, MA. After (we imagine) weeks, maybe months, of anticipation and avoiding the naughty list, Lundy was rewarded with a PlayStation 4 under the Christmas tree. Or so he thought. Instead of unboxing a sick next-gen console (his parents opted for the Teen-rated Uncharted bundle), Lundy found a PS4-shaped bit of wood. What’s worse, instead of a quick start guide to read, the malcontent penned a surly seasonal greeting.
The message? Reportedly the Mature-rated “from c*ck and balls with love.” In case poor Lundy wasn’t sure what this meant, the crudely-nailed-together faux PS4 came with an illustration of the aforementioned anatomical parts scribbled on the underside. Lundy, understandably upset, reacted in a way only a 9-year-old who’s just had everything he knows about Christmas ruined could (tears and alone time). There is, at least, a cheery enough ending to the tale. Lundy’s parents took the offending woodwork to the branch of Target where they’d purchased it, and were given a legit console plus a $100 gift card for their son’s troubles. Whether that’ll make up for the loss of faith in Santa is unclear. Let’s hope next year’s Christmas is made extra special by that other carpenter.
Via: GameSpot
Source: Fox25
[Deal] Save over 30% on the ScreenStick Joystick
We’ve shared a few deals in the past that enhance the gaming experience on mobile devices and we are here again with another one today. The mobile gaming platform is growing extremely quickly and is becoming more and more popular. With more full-fledged games becoming available for our mobile devices, there are always tools and toys that can improve the experience overall.
The ScreenStick Joystick is one of those devices that can vastly improve your mobile gaming experience. Now, this won’t work with every game, but if you’re playing a game that has on-screen movement controls, the ScreenStick Joystick will definitely help. One thing to be weary of, when deciding whether the ScreenStick Joystick is for you; the suction cups attach to the side-bezels of the display. This could obviously cause issues if you’re trying to use it on your phones, but would be perfect for your tablets.
- Game like you’re at home even when you’re on the road
- Get a whole new mobile gaming experience w/ this 2-in-1 gaming & simulator stick
- Attach the stick to your phone w/ 2 suction cups
- Play almost any game w/ an on-screen joystick or d-pad
- Use it for years to come: made w/ high-quality, light & durable alloy
Normally priced at $25, you can head over to the AndroidGuys Deals page and grab the ScreenStick Joystick for only $16.99. With a savings of over 32% this should be on your list if you’re a mobile gamer, and want to step up your game a bit. There’s just something to say about the nostalgia of using a joystick to play video games on our modern devices, and this definitely does the trick.
AndroidGuys Deals: ScreenStick Joystick for Smart Devices
The post [Deal] Save over 30% on the ScreenStick Joystick appeared first on AndroidGuys.
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