Lego’s ‘Minecraft’ clone arrives February 17th

The overlap between Minecraft’s brick-building fun and Lego’s actual plastic blocks was bound to happen sooner or later. Last summer, Warner Brothers rolled out an early version of Lego Worlds on Steam Early Access in order to gather feedback from players before launching the final version. Today, the company announced that official launch will happen early next year. Lego’s take on Minecraft’s construction techniques is set to arrive on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam on February 17th.

During the course of the game, you’ll be able to customize a character, drive an assortment of vehicles and build pretty much anything you want. You’ll interact with other characters and “an expansive range of items” on the way to becoming a Master Builder. There’s even a zombie invasion you’ll need to take care of for a farmer.

Of course, this digital take on the toy blocks means there’s a lot less clean up when you’re done building whatever it is you set out to construct. When Lego Worlds arrives in February, PlayStation 4 owners will be privy to an exclusive Lego Agents DLC that includes characters, vehicles and weapons. For now, take a look at the teaser trailer down below.

Source: Warner Bros. (Business Wire)

Why are dinosaurs everywhere in VR?

There’s a key scene early in Jurassic Park when the visiting scientists see their first dinosaur in person. Paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) clamber out of their Jeep as they stare at the majestic brachiosaur looming above them. “It’s a dinosaur,” Grant stammers in disbelief. His reaction matches the audience’s: After a lifetime of looking at fossils and picture books, here, in the flesh, is a real, live dinosaur. We’ll never experience this ourselves, but virtual reality can convincingly take us face to face with these extinct creatures.

That’s no coincidence. When done right, VR’s ability to convey presence — the feeling of actually being somewhere — is unrivaled by any other medium. Nowhere is that more apparent than when you’re craning your neck to take in the size of the zebra-striped brachiosaur lumbering through a tar pit in Crytek’s Robinson: The Journey. Same goes for ducking under a bellowing tyrannosaur stomping through a museum hall in an Oculus tech demo. Some 65 million years later, developers love to resurrect nature’s most fearsome creatures in VR. But why?

“Dinosaurs have an epic sense of scale that immediately makes you appreciate the potential of VR,” Derrick Hammond, an environmental artist at Oculus, tells Engadget. For example, one of the experiences in Oculus’ Dreamdeck sampler is set in a museum late at night. The marble hallway is lined with fossils, and a poster proudly proclaiming “Rex Lives” hangs above a relatively small T. rex skull. Then a menacing growl and thunderous footsteps echo in the distance. You’re frozen in place while a hulking version of the real thing stomps toward you, teeth bared, letting out a room-shaking roar that echoes off the museum’s stone and glass. It comes closer, towering over you, allowing an intimate look at its murderous maw before walking over you and offering a view of its pebbled underbelly.

“We made sure that the T. rex gets right up in your face and looms over you so that you could really feel the size of it,” Hammond said. Spielberg doesn’t have a thing on this.

Interacting with one of history’s largest apex predators in VR is very different from playing Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter or passively watching Jurassic Park, though. Your brain inherently knows that you’re playing an old game or watching a movie. “[It’s] so much more powerful than seeing them as a 2D representation on a television screen or monitor,” Hammond said.

Crytek’s Elijah Freeman agrees. When his team was researching potential projects, they discovered that scale and verticality look their best in VR. “It gives you that sense of immersion when you look up to see something large and gigantic,” he said. Hence, going forward with Robinson, a game that finds the player crash-landed on an alien jungle planet where feathered velociraptors are as common as leopards, a juvenile T. rex is a constant companion.

“We made sure that the T. rex gets right up in your face and looms over you so that you could really feel the size of it.”

While we still have grizzly bears and giraffes today, they don’t inspire the same kind of awe. You can watch them pretty much anytime you turn on Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel. In contrast, seeing an extinct creature “in person” that you’ve only read about or whose skeletons you’ve seen in museums is almost therapeutic. Witnessing a brachiosaur rear up on its hind legs because you ordered your pet T. rex to roar at it, for instance, immediately transports you back to childhood — a time where anything felt possible if you imagined hard enough.

“It’s the experience that I’m seeing something that no one else gets to see,” Freeman said. “Maybe interacting with an elephant [in real life] could be a cool experience, but you’re risking your life to do it.”

Hammond added that one of the big selling points of VR is the ability to “experience anything, anywhere.” That pitch is a big part of getting people to latch onto the medium. “Dinosaurs offer so many different qualities that fulfill that promise by letting you stand next to a creature you feel as familiar with as an elephant or giraffe but could never actually see at the zoo or in your lifetime,” he said.

Freeman said having a robust narrative adds to the medium’s transportive nature and helps further sell the illusion. We already know what dinosaurs are and why they went extinct. And, thanks to a lifetime of scientific research and pop culture, we have a general idea of how they should act, be they peaceful herbivores or fearsome predators.

A velociraptor from Robinson: The Journey.

Even though both Oculus and Crytek’s dinosaurs differ slightly from what we saw in Jurassic Park, they largely behave in the same ways. Raptors, despite their smaller stature in Robinson, are still vicious pack-hunters. Brachiosaurs are more concerned with being giant, adorable doorstops and eating plant matter than they are with the actions of puny humans. The T. rex, of course, remains the tyrant king of dinosaurs.

“In this world,” Freeman said, “when you see that, given the story that you already know, it helps make it more believable.”

Maybe that’s why when he played an early demo of the game, Freeman reacted the same way Grant and Sattler did upon seeing his first brachiosaur. The 3D model might not have had any textures applied to it yet, but for the test run, it had been animated to have its head buried in the treetops, chowing food. Until a coworker asked him what he thought, he’d lost himself simply watching the extinct vegetarian strip a tree bare.

“I felt special,” he recalled. “I felt like I got to witness something that doesn’t happen anymore.”

The Morning After: Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Hey there, did you miss us?

Hopefully your Thanksgiving wasn’t too much of a good thing, because we have even more for you today. SF’s Muni went all “Mr. Robot,” AT&T is launching IPTV and there’s big news in the world of nuclear fusion.

Pay $73K or else! (They chose the “or else.”)San Francisco’s MTA suffered a ransomware attack this weekend

The big winners in an SFMTA breach over the weekend appear to be train riders, who got free fares on Friday and Saturday. Due to what the agency is calling a ransomware attack, it turned off ticket machines and fare gates but kept the trains running from Friday evening until Sunday morning. The people behind the attack claim they demanded a $73,000 Bitcoin ransom, but they didn’t get it, and the systems have been restored to service. Now it’s time to find out if they will follow through on a threat to leak MTA data or if that was just a bluff.

Socialization starter kitHoliday Gift Guide 2016: The Entertainer

We are officially inside the gift-giving window, and you probably know someone who loves to invite a few friends over. These gift ideas can cover your friend’s needs for cooking, drinks or entertainment, and on an extremely reasonable budget. But if you forget to wrap that countertop beer system, don’t worry — everyone can still enjoy it when they visit your place.

Sign up now if you want the $35 promo priceAT&T will launch DirecTV Now streaming on November 30th

The latest player in internet-provided TV is AT&T, which is leveraging its recent satellite TV acquisition as the brand name for an over-the-top service that follows in the footsteps of PlayStation Vue and Dish Network’s Sling TV. If you sign up during the initial period, you can lock in a $60, 100-channel package for $35 per month, but that promo price will only be available for a little while. At launch, it will work with Apple TV, Fire TV devices, iOS, Android, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari, while Roku support is due early next year. At the moment, however, it’s missing a DVR feature, CBS and Showtime channels.

Follow the “White Rabbit” December 9th“Mythbusters” alums have a new science-based investigation series

Amazon has resurrected the “Top Gear” crew to form “The Grand Tour,” and soon Netflix will follow a similar path with “Mythbusters.” Former Build Team members Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara will premiere “White Rabbit Project” December 9th, where they will be “ranking history’s weirdest inventions, heists and happenings, and seeing how science makes them possible.” Check out the first trailer here.

The laws of nature might be more flexible than you think
Test can show if the speed of light has changed

An assumption underpinning many theories in physics (including Einstein’s theory of relativity) is that the speed of light is constant. But some scientists think that’s not true, and now they have a prediction that could help prove it.

But wait, there’s more…

• DroneGun jammer disables radio controls from over a mile away
• Tesla’s Autopilot updates start rolling out next month
• Diamonds convert nuclear waste into clean batteries
• A new theory on plasma could help scientists figure out solar flares and fusion power

‘Forza Horizon 3’ weather forecast: snow and blizzards

While the Forza games have dabbled with inclement weather before (rain was the big feature of Horizon 2 expansion “Storm Island” and to the consternation of some, Motorsport 6), snow in driving games as a whole has been mostly avoided. After all, why would you want to struggle maneuvering a car through what feels like wet concrete? Folks who download Horizon 3’s “Blizzard Mountain” expansion starting December 13th will find out.

The pack features some 50 new events and challenges like hill climbs and descents in addition to fresh areas including an “extreme sports snow park.” That’s in addition to a handful of new rides geared toward the snowy conditions on offer, according to Xbox Wire. Standalone pricing hasn’t been announced, but if you pony up for the game’s $35 season pass it’s included that way. The salt in the wound here is that Microsoft found a way to charge for even more DLC in addition to the $100 “Ultimate Edition” of the game. However, if it’s any consolation, there’s a $10 discount for anyone who purchases the Ultimate Edition and this first expansion before year’s end.

If the promise of virtually whipping donuts with a ’65 Ford F-100 Flareside on a frozen lake sounds like your type of party, though, I can’t say I blame you for wanting to check it out. After all, there are only so many times you can play through Grand Theft Auto V’s snowy intro before it gets old.

Source: Xbox Wire