The OmniWear Arc is a haptic neckband for serious gamers

There’s a lot to keep track of in a game like Counter-Strike. You need to know your location, where your teammates are, your ammo supply and most importantly — where your enemies are. With all these sights and sounds coming at you, it’s easy to miss something, which is why OmniWear is looking to offload some of that cognitive load to another sense: touch. The Arc neckband, launching on Kickstarter today, vibrates to let you know where your opponents lurk, ensuring you don’t miss a thing.

Haptic feedback — using vibration to enhance a virtual experience — is nothing new in gaming world. The past two decades have brought us products like the Rumble Paks for Nintendo 64 and DS and Sony’s line of DualShock controllers for the PlayStation. But the majority of titles use haptics as an add-on, making an impact feel a little more real or to startle you during an intense moment. Even if the haptics were keyed to the appearance of an enemy, they didn’t offer much in the way of information, especially not where the danger was coming from so you could act on it.

OmniWear attempts to tackle that problem with the Arc, a band that goes all the way around your neck. There are eight vibration motors placed around it, making 360-degree location tracking possible. If an enemy appears behind you, you’ll feel a vibration on your back. If they approach from the left or right, well, you get the idea. The idea is that you’ll become more aware of what’s happening around you, without taking your eyes off the action to look at the mini-map all the time.

The Arc is currently compatible with Counter-Strike and League of Legends, but the company plans to expand that list. The team can add new games easily enough because they’re not dependent on developers building support into their titles. Instead, the Arc uses an interesting workaround to function with various titles.

The Arc doesn’t actually connect to your computer at all — it connects to a mobile app on your phone instead. Clip your phone onto your monitor and open the program, which will “read” whatever’s going on in the game by watching the screen just like you would. In Counter-Strike and League of Legends, this is accomplished by pointing the phone at the mini-map itself, and the program translates the data into vibrations. It buzzes when an enemy first appears and is smart enough to keep track of which opponent is which so it doesn’t buzz again. The OmniWear team thought about having it buzz more often but decided that created too much feedback — enough to easily overwhelm a player.

I’d agree with that, as my brief time with the prototype neckband was marked by a persistent series of buzzes from all sides, with the vibrations a tad stronger at the nape of my neck. However, the final version should produce a consistent sensation that you can customize, with an option to adjust the strength of each individual motor. CEO Ehren Brav tells Engadget that this was added because gamers adore customization, likening it to a mouse with adjustable weight.

Although Brav says he’d love for gamers to never have to look at the mini-map again, I found that the Arc didn’t provide enough information to make this possible. I knew there were enemies off to my right, but I didn’t know how far away they were or which door they were standing behind. I still needed the map to gauge the exact level of danger I was in and which way I had to go to deal with it.

Still, the Arc made it possible to look at the map less often, leaving my eyes and ears open to focus on other things. It’s also easy to see how this can be applied in other industries, which OmniWear has considered — bicyclists and football players alike would benefit from the heightened awareness this kind of haptic feedback can bring. They can learn to avoid danger, or if they can’t, at least prepare for impact, which should have the happy consequence of reducing injuries.

If you don’t play Counter-Strike or League of Legends sit tight — new titles will be added before the device launches in September of next year. But if you’re already sure you need an in-game “spidey sense,” the Arc hits Kickstarter today for $150, with backers getting first priority to suggest more games — whether it’s their favorite FPS, MOBA or something else entirely.

Source: Kickstarter, OmniWear

‘Football Manager 2017’ will simulate the effects of Brexit

With Football Manager, developer Sports Interactive has always tried to make the most authentic manager simulator possible. Juggling transfers, training and match tactics — it’s a deep, addictive blend of strategy, statistics and luck. For the latest version, Football Manager 2017, the team is going one step further by including the British EU referendum. The UK will trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017, beginning its separation with the EU. It could have financial and legal repercussions for the football industry too, which Sports Interactive is keen to emulate. The problem is that until it happens, predicting the exact consequences is tricky.

The UK will, after all, need to negotiate the terms of its new relationship with Europe. Miles Jacobson, director of Football Manager, told the Telegraph that multiple scenarios have been modelled out. As you play the game, you’ll be notified two to 10 years in that trade negotiations are now underway. Later, you’ll be told that the UK has come to one of three possible agreements; “soft Brexit,” allowing free movement of workers, “hard Brexit,” which would categorise EU players (currently outside the UK) in the same way as players based outside the EU; an exemption of footballers as “entertainers,” making work permits simple to obtain.

As an example of how it can work – this is what happened in my current game last night. pic.twitter.com/x1DhFYN1IJ

— Miles Jacobson (@milesSI) October 18, 2016

The hard Brexit option will have the biggest impact on aspiring managers. Players living outside the UK would need to apply for a points-based work permit, regardless of whether they’re inside the European Union. That could make some transfers difficult, and force virtual Mourinho’s to consider British alternatives. “If we already had these rules in place, players such as N’Golo Kante and Dimitri Payet would not have been able to gain work permits to move to the Premier League,” says Jacobson.

Football Manager is all about the details. The game’s player database is so good, for instance, that clubs now use it as a real-life scouting tool. That authenticity is what drives football fans back to the game, even when they’re struggling to pull together a couple of wins. The inclusion of Brexit is just another way Sports Interactive is trying to make the game feel more realistic — a small touch, perhaps, but one that fans should appreciate.

Source: Telegraph

Valve says it’s not responsible for ‘CS:GO’ gambling

Earlier this month, Washington state told Valve to stop allowing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) gun skin transfers through Steam. The state’s Gambling Commission argued that Valve was facilitating a “large, unregulated black market,” and gave it until October 14th to explain itself. Yesterday (three days after that deadline), Valve responded, vehemently denying any wrongdoing.

In a copy of a letter to the Commission, sent by Valve to Engadget, the company’s legal counsel Liam Lavery says there’s “no factual or legal support” for the allegations. “As we have explained on multiple occasions, Valve is not engaged in gambling or the promotion of gambling, and we do not ‘facilitate’ gambling,” Lavery states. “We were surprised and disappointed that the Commission chose to publicly accuse Valve of illegal activity and threaten our employees with criminal charges.”

The counsel then goes on to explain how Steam works, and what the function of gun skins is in CS:GO. “In-game items, such as virtual weapons, music packs, or decorative stickers, are common features in computer games. CS:GO customers can purchase skins, or receive them as random drops during game play. They are part of the game.”

Lavery does accept that gambling sites are using Steam to transfer in-game items, and also utilizing its account authentication systems. It doesn’t want to turn off those services, though, as they are used by lots of Steam customers and partners for perfectly legitimate reasons. “We do not believe it is the Commission’s intention, nor is it within the Commission’s authority, to turn off lawful commercial and communication services that are not directed to gambling in Washington,” Lavery says.

The one gray area for Valve is transaction fees. Although the company makes no money from straight skin transfers, it does get money from its Marketplace. “Valve [receives] a small transaction fee in Steam Wallet funds for Marketplace transactions,” Lavery explains. That’s the place within Steam where users can sell in-game items for Wallet funds, that they can then use to buy games. This means that Valve could feasibly be making money from transactions related to gambling, albeit without its knowledge.

Valve has sent cease-and-desist letters to over forty gambling sites and has shut down the Steam bots of them all. It accepts that it doesn’t know all of the gambling sites, and that it’s not able to detect “cleverly designed bots.” Whenever it can identify a gambling site and the corresponding Steam account, it can enforce its user agreements to shut them down.

“We would be happy to cooperate with the Commission, Lavery says, “if it is able to identify more skins gambling sites that are illegal in Washington and the Steam accounts through which [they] operate.” Despite offering to work with the gambling commission to shutter illegal activity, Valve seems bullish about its legal stance here. “If there is a specific criminal statute or regulation you believe Valve is violating, please provide a citation. We are not aware of any such law that Steam or its games are violating.”

We’ve reached out to Washington state’s Gambling Commission for comment on Valve’s response.

Origin PC shows that slim gaming laptops are on the rise

Don’t worry, folks — just because gigantic gaming laptops are in the spotlight doesn’t mean that PC makers have forgotten about thin-and-light machines. If anything, they’re gathering momentum. Origin PC has unveiled a new version of its EVO15-S laptop that’s slimmer and lighter than its predecessor (0.69 inches thick and 3.96 pounds, to be exact) while packing much more graphics power. The 15.6-inch rig is still using a 6th-generation quad Core i7 processor, but jumps to NVIDIA’s GTX 1060 mobile graphics — you can play modern games smoothly, including some VR, without lugging an ungainly machine around.

This is a straightforward gaming portable apart from the slicker profile. In base trim, you’re going to get a 1080p display, a 256GB solid-state primary drive, a 2TB secondary drive, 16GB of RAM and a gaming-friendly, multi-color backlit keyboard. You’ll have to pay a steep price for the new system — it starts at $2,083. Having said that, the price might be justifiable if it lets you consolidate your PCs and take Overwatch on the road.

Source: Origin PC