Lifeboat Foundation

Watching glasses-free 3D on a TV is no longer an outlandish concept, but that hasn’t been true for movie theaters. How are you supposed to create the same parallax effect for everyone, whether they’re up front or way in the back? Researchers at MIT CSAIL and Israel’s Weizmann Institute for Science finally have a practical answer. Their Cinema 3D tech creates multiple parallax barriers in a single display, using lenses and mirrors to deliver a range of angles across the whole theater. And unlike previous attempts at large-scale glasses-free 3D, you don’t have to take a hit to resolution.

You won’t get to forego the unwieldy eyewear for a while. The prototype is only slightly larger than a pad of paper, and uses 50 lens/mirror combos to achieve its 3D effect. You’d need a far bigger and more intricate system to make it work at the local movie house, which might make it prohibitively expensive. However, it’s imaginable that a future, optimized version might find its way into theaters and spare you from one of the biggest hassles in modern moviegoing.

Continue reading “Scientists create glasses-free 3D for the movie theater” »

Interesting…

The SETI concepts now called ‘Dysonian’ are to my mind some of the most exhilarating ideas in the field. Dysonian SETI gets its name from the ‘Dyson spheres’ and ‘Dyson swarms’ analyzed by Freeman Dyson in a 1960 paper. This is a technology that an advanced civilization might use to harvest the energy of its star. You can see how this plays off Nikolai Kardashev’s classification of civilizations; Kardashev suggested that energy use is a way to describe civilizations at the broadest level. A Type II society is one that can use all the energy of its star.

In the film 2010, director Peter Hyams’ 1984 adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2010: Odyssey Two (Del Rey, 1982), we see an instance of this kind of technology at work, though it has nothing to do with a Dyson sphere. In the film, a dark patch appearing on Jupiter signals the onset of what Martyn Fogg has called ‘stellification,’ the conversion of a gas giant into a small star. Rapidly replicating von Neumann machines — the famous monoliths — increase Jupiter’s density enroute to triggering nuclear fusion.

Continue reading “Making Jupiter into a Star” »

Nintendo fans may be anxiously awaiting next March’s supposed NX launch (and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), but the Japanese gaming giant has a little something up its sleeve in the meantime: a re-release for the iconic NES. Dubbed the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition, the console comes in the form of a miniaturized, HDMI-equipped take on the original and comes with 30 games built right in. Said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime:

We wanted to give fans of all ages the opportunity to revisit Nintendo’s original system and rediscover why they fell in love with Nintendo in the first place. The Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition is ideal for anyone who remembers playing the NES, or who wants to pass on those nostalgic memories to the next generation of gamers.

Players will even be able to pick up a second controller for just $10 USD when the revamped NES drops this fall. And best of all? The mini console will only run you $60 USD.

Continue reading “Nintendo Is Bringing Back the NES This Fall” »

2016 has been called the year that virtual reality becomes a reality, as some of the most anticipated devices will be made available on the consumer market. From Magic Leap (valued at over $1 billion) to Oculus (acquired by Facebook last year for $2 billion), there’s plenty of interest in the market, and ample room for it.

Though virtual reality is often depicted as an experience for the recliner or gaming chair, a number of VR enthusiasts want us to rethink how we engage with the technology. Instead of sitting around, they’d like to get us moving and looking beyond the go-to medium of gaming. Developers of these new devices consider fields like military training and healthcare as valuable places for mobile virtual reality to be applied.

Leading this approach is a Kickstarter VR company called Virtuix, whose treadmill-like device Omni encourages users to get upright and active. The reason to develop such a device felt like a natural evolution to Virtuix’s former Product Manager, Colton Jacobs.

“If I am walking in the virtual world my avatar is actually walking…”, he says, “…then the body’s natural reaction is, I want to stand up, I want to be walking with this avatar as if I’m actually there.”

Continue reading “Virtuix Omni Provides Virtual Worlds in Which to Walk, Run, and Jump” »

If you’ve been online at any point in the past week, you’ve probably come to realize that Pokémon Go is in the midst of a full-fledged internet takeover. It’s the top app in the iOS App Store, and just yesterday, it was revealed that people are using Pokémon Go more than they are social media apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

But it turns out it was more loved than any of us realized, as by certain metrics, Pokémon Go is more popular than one of the main pillars of the internet: porn.

This weekend, video game industry analyst ZhugeEX discovered that according to Google Trends, people are searching for Pokémon Go more than they are for pornography. Take a look at the data for yourself here, or check out the screenshot below:

Imagine your chest tightening as you struggle for for breath. There’s no cure for it, and it will most likely be a hindrance to your day-to-day life.

This feeling is familiar to the 300 million people worldwide who suffer from asthma. In the US alone, one in 14 people has asthma, and ten of them die from asthma every day.

For children, relying on symptoms to determine whether an asthma attack is about to happen is particularly difficult. Not only is it harder for them to articulate their discomfort, it’s less likely that they will be able to attribute it to asthmatic symptoms.

Continue reading “This Mobile Game Helps Children Prevent Asthma Attacks” »

The Allen Brain Observatory is open for business, revealing what’s running through the mind of a mouse as it sees patterns of light and dark, pictures of butterflies and tigers – or even the opening scene of Orson Welles’ 1958 classic film, “Touch of Evil.”

The online repository of 30 trillion bytes’ worth of brain-cell readings represents the latest scientific offering from the Allen Institute for Brain Science, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It follows through on a $300 million pledge that Allen made more than four years ago.

Continue reading “Allen Brain Observatory peers into the minds of mice as they watch movies” »

Blaming the US and israel for cyber warfare?!

Alex Gibney’s new film “Zero Days” charts the terrifying history of cyber warfare, focusing in particular on the attack that the U.S. and Israel allegedly launched against the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran.

Continue reading “Should We Blame the U.S. and Israel for Cyber Warfare?” »

We’re really excited to be working with the Toronto International Film Festival on a three-day event called POP showcasing some of the most inventive VR creations… and it’s coming up very soon — Friday, July 15th through Sunday, July 17th at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. Tickets are on sale now, and we’d love to see you there.

Let’s talk about what you’ll see when you’re there. The theme of this POP event is empathy and real-world storytelling — how VR can really impact your view of (and connections to) the world. We have more than a dozen pieces that you can try.

Continue reading “Here’s what you’ll see at TIFF and The Verge’s VR showcase this month” »