RED reveals a smaller 8K sensor for its Weapon camera
RED has revealed a new sensor called the “Helium” for its ultra-high megapixel 8K Weapon cinema camera. The chip will be 29.9mm wide (slightly bigger than Super-35), considerably smaller than the company’s 40mm VistaVision sized 8K Dragon sensor. It still has the same 8,192 x 4,320 pixel count, however, giving it a pixel pitch of a miniscule 3.65 microns. RED President Jarred Land says the sensor is “way ahead of schedule,” and will be available to buyers of its $60,000 Weapon camera “in the coming months.”
Reduser moderator Phil Holland tells Engadget that the 8K Weapon will be available with both the VistaVision-sized Dragon sensor, first announced last year, and the smaller Helium chip. While the larger Dragon chip fills a certain niche in high-end cinematography, the new sensor may be more popular, since it works with most motion picture camera lenses. There’s no word yet from RED on light sensitivity, noise or other characteristics of Helium — while smaller pixels normally make cameras noisier and less light-sensitive, Holland says “you might be surprised.”
Land added that the new sensor would “take pressure off our Dragon sensor lines, and allow those to completely focus on Raven and Scarlet-W sensors.” He revealed that a new camera, called the Epic-W, would also use the Helium chip. So far, very few of of the Dragon 8K sensors have shipped, though Red recently announced that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 would be shot with an 8K Weapon.
By way of introducing the sensor, RED handed a Helium-equipped, custom-built Weapon 8K camera (dubbed “Bayhem”) to director Michael Bay, who plans on using it on Transformers: The Last Knight. Just to make sure we’d know it’s his, the camera is packing a “Devastator Green” Transformers body.
Via: No Film School
Source: Reduser Forums
Twitter will livestream the Democratic and Republican conventions
Twitter isn’t limiting its livestreaming to major sporting events. The social network has revealed that it will stream both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, which respectively start on July 25th and July 18th. The coverage (technically provided by CBSN) will be available through both the web and Twitter’s official mobile apps, and won’t require an account to start watching.
Like it or not, the events themselves may well be foregone conclusions when both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have enough delegates to clinch their nominations. However, this is still a big deal. Many people are likely to turn to Twitter to comment on the conventions — now, they can watch it in the same place. Twitter is no doubt using this to reel in some sorely needed new users, but it’ll help everyone if it widens exposure to the electoral process.
Via: Wired
Source: CBS News
The joyful death of the Philly Game Forge
Whenever a developer at the Philly Game Forge finished a project and shipped it off for the harsh scrutiny of the wider world, everyone would gather around, raise a glass and recite the following chant:
The code is done
The tweets are sent
The game is out the door
So now we’ll drink
And drink and drink
And then we’ll drink some more.
This chant offered camaraderie for the developer and a dash of self-deprecating humor before a flood of public attention, but mostly it signaled the end. The end of a game’s development. The end of months — or years — of work. The end of an era.
On Thursday, June 30th, the chant signaled the end of something even larger: the Philly Game Forge itself.
For four years, the Philly Game Forge was the hub of independent game development in Philadelphia, and it was a regular meeting place for anyone interested in video games. Dozens of developers worked out of the space daily, and it hosted a weekly public meet-up called Philly Dev Night. More than 100 developers, artists and enthusiasts showed up to each event, on average. The Dev Night hosted regular game jams, and over the years, numerous independent studios sprouted up around the city, rooted in relationships seeded at the Philly Game Forge.
Philly Dev Night hosted one game jam a month, challenging local developers to build something from scratch and present it to the community for judging. Sometimes these games would become something larger, such as commercial products, or spark ideas for new features in existing projects. The jams were a chance for developers to flex their creative muscles and try new things. Roughly six games would come out of each Dev Night jam, meaning the Forge spawned 72 games a year from this monthly meetup alone.
Some of these games went on to be featured at major festivals like SXSW and IndieCade. The post-Dev Night success stories include Monster Want Burger, SoulFill, Henka Twist Caper, Tailwind, the card games Resistor, Mahou Shojo and These French Fries are Terrible Hot Dogs, plus the board game Yomi’s Gate.
One challenge, the Profit Jam, gave teams one month to create their games and two weeks to sell them; the team that generated the most profit won. Some groups raked in thousands of dollars.
And this doesn’t count the work developers did during the day, creating and supporting games like Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony, Domino!, Dragon Fin Soup and Monsters!
Despite these successes, lack of funding forced the Forge closed its doors for good late last month. Its founders held a massive goodbye party on the evening of June 30th, where members read speeches on stage, signed a giant Game Forge poster, danced all night and said goodbye to a space that many of them called home.
“I cried. A lot,” recalls William Stallwood, one half of Auditorium studio Cipher Prime and co-founder of the Philly Game Forge. “In fact, I couldn’t even stay all night; it was just too emotional for me. Sometimes, it’s incredibly hard to see how the things you do impact other people. I never knew or realized what an impact the things we’ve been doing have had. I’m so incredibly grateful to have been able to travel this beautiful journey in my life.”
On that massive poster covered in doodles and goodbyes, one person left a simple message: “The Forge saved me.” These words resonated with Stallwood on a deep level.
Game Forge and Cipher Prime co-founder Dain Saint had a similar reaction to the high tide of emotions at the farewell party. Saint says he’s a naturally stoic person; he feels comfortable wearing a calm, apathetic facade.
“But damn if I didn’t cry during the closing party,” Saint says. “And it wasn’t even the loss of the space that did it — it was the stories of success and inspiration. On that signed poster, Andy Brown said, ‘Because of the Forge, I never gave up,’ and I’m tearing up now just thinking about that. How amazing is that feeling? That’s something only teachers and parents get to feel, and I’m lucky enough to get to feel it now.”
Flyclops, the studio behind Domino!, was the first company to grow up and graduate from the Philly Game Forge, and Stallwood estimates it’s the highest-grossing game studio in Philadelphia. Domino! has more than 1 million installs on Google Play alone, plus it’s available on both iOS and Facebook.
The Forge was a force to be reckoned with in Philly. Stallwood says Dev Night began with just 10 people or so, but it blossomed into a booming, productive party.
“This is incredible for the only US city that doesn’t have a AAA game studio in or around it,” Stallwood says. “While not really known, Philly really is an indie-dev powerhouse.”
Game Forge’s power stemmed from more than its Dev Nights. It was a place for meeting people, asking questions, teaching others and taking chances. Multiple members describe Game Forge as a creative paradise in what had previously felt like the game-development desert of Philadelphia. They recount stories about feeling alone and lost in the city as a burgeoning developer — until they discovered the Forge. Its community pulled some members from the clutches of depression, it propelled some into careers as developers and it served as a second home for even more.
Crucially, the Forge demonstrated that independent development was possible in Philly.
“Everyone was so friendly and always willing to help, which was the opposite of what I expected game dev to be like. …As for the party? I’ve never cried more in my life. It’s not the tears of graduation, or of a goodbye party. They’re the tears of losing a friend.” – Mila Pokorny, Deerfox Games
“The most substantial thing I did in the Forge was Global Game Jam 2015. I spent that weekend rising early and going to bed late, spending all the time in between at the Forge, working nonstop alongside other artists and programmers to slap together a game. It was one of the best weekends ever.” – Tabitha Arnold, artist
“It helped get me out of my shell, and encouraged me to constantly improve my work and constantly contribute back to a community. …The Game Forge is the reason why game devs in Philadelphia have a community at all.” – Nick Rome, Dev Night host
“The Philly Game Forge was, more than anything, a beacon of hope that making games was a real thing you could do.” – Jake Vander Ende, Spriteborne
“After the Forge was established, the game development community just seemed to evolve. Games reached new levels of production and the community reached levels that it would take much longer to reach individually.” – Shawn Pierre, Origaminc, Philly Dev Night co-founder
“The Philly Game Forge, and by extension Dev Night, is how I got into game development at all. Will and Dain and the rest of the Forge regulars pointed me in the right direction and gave me the confidence and the drive to start Ghost Crab Games.” – Chris Hoopes, Ghost Crab Games
“Without it I wouldn’t have my job, many of my friends, and most of the games I’ve made. …Philadelphia has no major game studio and only a few successful smaller studios; the Forge served as place that tied the small community together into something much more dedicated than you might find in other cities.” – Camden Segal, independent developer
“It was a creatively fruitful place with some of this city’s best minds. It was a place I went to for a safe haven to work on the things I care about the most. …I was heartbroken to hear the Game Forge was closing.” – Nicole Kline, Cardboard Fortress
The Philly Game Forge didn’t close down due to lack of interest or love. It was a simple money issue — Stallwood and Saint funded much of its operations themselves via their studio, Cipher Prime. Other studios at the Forge, including Flyclops and Final Form Games, helped out too, but in the end, it wasn’t enough to keep the lights on.
“We’re a small studio and have been having some financial and health issues,” Stallwood says. “Ultimately, we realized we could run our game studio or run the Game Forge. We had to make a very hard choice, but we ultimately chose to keep running Cipher Prime the best we can.”
Stallwood says the remaining studios were hesitant to take on the financial burden of running the Forge, and a little help from local universities or the government could have gone a long way.
“I don’t think it struck me until we were closing what it was we had actually accomplished,” Saint says. “It’s very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day organization, planning and logistics. So when you come up for air and see hundreds of people really feeling the loss of something you’ve had a part in creating, you have to look back and appreciate it.”
After four years of friendships, support, game launches and failures, the goodbye party was heartbreaking yet joyful for most attendees. It was the very definition of bittersweet.
The end of the Game Forge doesn’t signal the end of independent development in Philadelphia. It helped cultivate a rich community of video-game enthusiasts and professionals, and they’re not going anywhere. Philly Dev Night is still alive and well; it just needs to find a new home. On July 7th, the first Thursday without the Game Forge, developers met up for happy hour at the Independence Beer Garden. They jokingly called it the “first Dev Night in exile.”
That’s the same sense of humor, the same self-deprecating, warm tone that was found in the Forge’s finished-game chant. The Philly Game Forge lives on.
MakerBot didn’t mislead customers about broken replicators
A Minnesota court has dismissed a class-action lawsuit brought against Makerbot that said the company had knowingly-produced dodgy 3D printers. The firm was accused of fraudulently misleading both investors and customers after talking-up the fifth-generation hardware. As we now know, devices were shipped with broken extruders that easily clogged, but Makerbot refused to acknowledge a problem or engage with complaints. Judges didn’t shower the company with praise, but said that while there was some evidence that executives were behaving badly, evidence wasn’t strong enough to suggest serious wrongdoing.
Investors believed that the company’s leadership had committed securities fraud by saying that the printers in question were of good quality. The court responded by describing the statements as “non-actionable puffery,” the sort of easily-ignored, meaningless goodwill-generating business speak that CEOs often say. In addition, the court found that while there was some internal discussions about failures, nobody could pinpoint what the root cause of the problem actually was. Sadly, it’s not the picture of mustache-twirling evil that the company was made out to be.
Unfortunately for Makerbot, it’s not as if it can just put the case behind it and get back on with its life as if nothing’s happened. The company has struggled to keep the lights on, and incoming CEO Jonathan Jaglom was forced to run an aggressive program of cost-cutting. So far, the firm has fired 36 percent of its workforce and closed its high-profile Brooklyn manufacturing facility. Instead, production has been moved overseas and there’s no indication that the doom and gloom is going away any time soon.
Source: Adafruit
Samsung’s 4TB SSD is built to replace your hard drive
It’s not hard to get a capacious solid-state drive if you’re running a server farm, but everyday users still have to be picky more often than not: either you get a roomy-but-slow spinning hard drive or give up that capacity in the name of a speedy SSD. Samsung may have finally delivered a no-compromise option, however. It’s introducing a 4TB version of the 850 Evo that, in many cases, could easily replace a reasonably large hard drive. While it’s not the absolute fastest option (the SATA drive is capped at 540MB/s sequential reads and 520MB/s writes), it beats having to resort to a secondary hard drive just to make space for your Steam game library.
Of course, there’s a catch: the price. The 4TB 850 Evo will set you back a whopping $1,500 in the US, so it’s largely reserved for pros and well-heeled enthusiasts who refuse to settle for rotating storage. Suddenly, the $700 2TB model seems like a bargain. Even if the 4TB version is priced into the stratosphere, though, it’s a good sign that SSDs are turning a corner in terms of viability. It might not be long before high-capacity SSDs are inexpensive enough that you won’t have to make any major sacrifices to put one in your PC.
Source: PCWorld, Amazon
Twitter code determines the most exciting goals of Euro 2016
The just-finished Euro 2016 tournament had its share of exciting goals, but how do you decide which ones were the most thrilling? If you’re Twitter, you leave it up to code. The social service has posted an interactive chart that shows the most exciting goals from the football/soccer tourney as judged by a peak detection algorithm sifting through tweets. It didn’t just count the sheer number of tweets in response to a goal, either — each goal counts as a percentage of a game’s tweets, so group stage matches carry as much weight as those from the knockout rounds.
Using those criteria, the results aren’t entirely what you’d expect. While late goals were more likely to have people on the edge of their seats, it wasn’t necessarily the game-clinchers or big teams that had everyone enthralled. Éder’s tournament-winning goal for Portugal produced only middling excitement. The most captivating goals were from underdogs like Northern Ireland (during its first win in a major tournament), Wales (in its quarter-final victory over Belgium) and Iceland (when it stunned Austria in the group stages). We’re sure that some human fans would beg to differ with the findings, but they’re still worth a look if you’re curious about how your favorite moment stacks up.
Source: Twitter Interactive, Twitter Blog
Cozmo the tabletop robot will be user-programmable
Cozmo, a diminutive robot companion, packs some impressive technology and will be far more customizable than originally expected when it’s released this fall. Anki announced on Monday that Cozmo will launch with an SDK, enabling users to leverage it as a programming platform as well as an adorable sidekick.
The SDK will initially be released as a beta and geared towards power users — hackers, makers, roboticists and the like — Anki co-founder Hanns Tappeiner explained to me at a recent demo. It will be Python-based and open source, allowing users to quickly develop the code and give Anki valuable feedback before the finalized SDK is made available to the general public and third party developers.
The development kit itself is being designed to minimize the amount of coding knowledge users need in order to program their Cozmos. In fact, a large portion of Cozmo’s software engine is handled behind the scenes. For example, you can write a single line of code that tells Cozmo to approach one of its blocks and then pick it up. What you don’t see, however, is the hundreds of lines of code that drives the robot’s machine vision, path navigation, emotive expressions and all the other low level functions that that simple command entails.
The SDK is certainly granular enough that users can dictate each of those low functions if they want, but you won’t need a PhD in machine learning if you want to teach your Cozmo some new tricks. Basically, if Cozmo does it, you’ll be able to edit it.
Scientists dream up a power station staffed by bacteria
If The Matrix is to be taken as a serious manifesto for the future of technology, then living organisms are a great source of potential energy. Now, a team at Oxford University has given some weight to the idea after successfully simulating a biological power station. Researchers used computers to model the behavior of bacteria as it swam around a liquid suspension. When they subsequently added a network of donkey wheel-like structures, the bacteria began moving in predictable patterns around the wheels. The motion was sufficient to generate tiny amounts of energy that could be used to power microscopic gadgets.
Admittedly, we’re still a long away from this even becoming a lab experiment given the complexity and scale that’s involved. But technology like this could eventually be the power source necessary for small gadgets where self-sufficiency is important. The team discusses the idea of using the bacterial turbines for self-assembled devices that can’t be tethered to traditional power sources. Although we’ll probably have to have a serious discussion about the ethics of using living organisms, no matter how small, as a replacement for the battery. Especially since they won’t be plugged into a VR simulation of the real world to keep them distracted.
Via: PhysOrg
Source: Oxford University, Science
Latest iPhone 7 Design Renderings Show Stereo Speakers and Larger Cameras
With around three months remaining until Apple is expected to announce the tentatively named iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, detailed renders of the next-generation smartphones continue to surface on the web.
The latest CAD renders, posted on Chinese social media and shared by French website NWE, provide a closer look at the possible design of the smartphones and paint a clearer picture of which features may be included.
iPhone 7 Plus with dual-lens camera (left) and iPhone 7 with larger camera (right)
The 3D renders are consistent with many previous iPhone 7 leaks, showing an iPhone 6s-like design with repositioned antenna bands, no headphone jack, and a dual-lens camera exclusive to the larger 5.5-inch model. Meanwhile, the smaller 4.7-inch model has a larger camera cutout as seen previously.
There is also the addition of a second speaker grille occupying the space that would normally house the 3.5mm headphone jack, corroborating rumors that the iPhone 7 series may deliver stereo sound. At least one render has shown no stereo speakers in the past, however, so the feature’s inclusion is still debated.
iPhone 7 with no headphone jack and two speaker grilles for stereo sound
On the bottom remains a Lightning connector, which is expected to evolve into an all-in-one port for audio output, charging, and accessory connectivity. There is also a traditional looking SIM card slot, which likely rules out a sketchy rumor about the iPhone 7 having dual SIM trays for use with multiple carriers.
Other features consistent with the iPhone 6s include a side-facing power button and pill-shaped volume controls, mute switch, dual-LED flash, and a microphone on the bottom and next to the rear camera.
The renders offer no hints about Apple’s plans to use a flush, touch-sensitive home button, a feature that could be reserved for the tenth-anniversary iPhone with an OLED display and glass casing expected in 2017.
There is also no Smart Connector depicted, despite some earlier rumors claiming the new accessory connector will expand from the iPad Pro to iPhone.
Apple is widely expected to announce the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in September. In addition to the aforementioned features shown in these renders, the smartphones are expected to be slightly thinner with faster Apple A10 processors, 32GB of base storage, improved waterproofing, and faster LTE and Wi-Fi. 3GB of RAM is said to be exclusive to the 5.5-inch model.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
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Manchester City signs its first FIFA eSports player
At this rate the Premier League will need its own dedicated eSports division. Following West Ham United, which signed Sean “Dragonn” Allen back in May, Manchester City has recruited its own FIFA star. Kieran “Kez” Brown is the club’s first eSports signing and will represent the team at both major tournaments and fan events. He’s not the biggest name — his YouTube channel has less than 12,000 subscribers — but he is a competent player. Prolific YouTuber Spencer Owen held a competition earlier this year to recruit a FIFA fanatic into his professional “Hashtag United” team; Brown narrowly missed out, losing to Harry Hesketh in the final.
Manchester City is one of many football clubs dipping a toe into the eSports waters. FC Schalke 04, a top club in the German Bundesliga, bought a League of Legends team formerly known as Elements in May. Vfl Wolfsburg, meanwhile, has signed a few different FIFA players.
Happy to Announce I’m the first e-Sport FIFA player for @ManCity.Something New. Something Different. I look forward to seeing how this goes🙃
— KezBrown (@_KezBrown) July 6, 2016
These moves might seem strange for an industry that’s primarily focused on physical competition — but moving into eSports, especially FIFA, does offer some obvious advantages. The long-running video game franchise is incredibly popular and is one of the primary ways that fans interact with the sport (outside of watching and attending football matches, of course.) Nurturing the FIFA community, both at an amateur and professional level, could nurture the ties that people have to the club. A stronger, larger fanbase will then allow a team like Manchester City to earn more money and ultimately prosper in the actual boots-on-the-grass game.
Source: Manchester City
