Xbox 720 and PS4 to be first truly 3D capable consoles?

 

Microsoft’s expected Xbox 720 and the suspected PS4 will be the first truly 3D centric games consoles, Codemasters’ Paul Jeal has suggested as the F1 2011 game is released in the UK

The long awaited Xbox 720 release date and Sony PS4 launch could see the first generation of truly 3D enabled consoles land, industry expert and BAFTA award winning game developer Paul Jeal has revealed.

Speaking exclusively with T3 ahead today’s F1 2011 release date, Jeal, Senior Producer on the high-speed Codemasters franchise, suggested 3D capabilities were not likely to be heading to next year’s Formula 1 release as the developing house holds out for the next-generation of home consoles before jumping into bed with the extra-dimensional technology.

“We’re working through the steps at the moment for F1 2012 and trying to work out where it lies,” Jeal said. “I’d be surprised if 3D went in; it’s at quite an early stage. When the next-generation of consoles come out, perhaps 3D will be ranked up top, until then we’ve still got a lot of game related feature ideas we want to get in for next year.”

Whilst Jeal is unconvinced by the inclusion of 3D technologies in F1 2012 he was keen to outline areas he thought the Formula 1 based series could benefit from it in the future.

“I think if we use it in the right places with bits of damage or debris flying out of the screen it could work. Perhaps it’ll help you gage the braking distances better with the car in front.”

Are you looking forward to snapping up F1 2011 ahead of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix or waiting for one of the year’s other upcoming premium titles? Let us know via the comments box below.

Sony hints at PS4 reveal

Sony has hinted it may reveal its next generation PS4 console at a media event in New York City on February 20th
 

Sony's next gen gaming console, the PlayStation 4, may be revealed as early as this month if the industry buzz is anything to go by. The Japanase tech giant sent out a raft of invitations to an event in New York City on February the 20th.
However, a video - embedded below - released by Sony heavily teases that the PS4 reveal may be in the offing. The company also tweeted last night on its official feed, inviting attendees to 'see the future'.

 Naturally the video and tweet have sent the gaming media and blogosphere into something of a tizzy. This has been helped in no small part by a quote from Sony spokesman to Reuters about the event saying, ""we will be talking about the Playstation business," although neither he, nor Sony has explicitly confirmed any plans to reveal the PS4.
However, The Wall Street Journal has run an article in which it claims that "people familiar with the matter" have confirmed the PS 4 will indeed be revealed on February 20th.The event takes place at 6pm EST, which is 11pm local time.
Who needs E3, eh? And one has to wonder what Microsoft is making of all of this...

Muscle-zapper forces gamers' own hands against them

TALK about a hands-on gaming experience. A device for smartphones that sends jolts from a game right into the muscles in your hands has been created to give you a real white-knuckle feel for the action on your screen.

Instead of using motors that drive the vibrating "rumblers" inside phones and game-console controllers, the new system uses two small wired electrodes attached to your forearm to electrically stimulate nerves, making your hand muscles contract.

Developed by Pedro Lopes and colleagues at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, the feedback system uses electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to mimic the signals that the central nervous system sends to activate muscle groups. Such technology is often used to rehabilitate the muscles of people with varying degrees of paralysis.

The new system creates a strong, painless contraction - in your palm flexor muscle, say - that makes you tilt the phone. "The user then fights that contraction using another muscle to oppose it, so they feel they are fighting a force," Lopes says.

In tests, 10 people played a specially designed video game - in which aircraft had to fight against a strong wind from a giant wind turbine - and compared the new technique with the smartphone's conventional rumbler. "All of them preferred our mobile force-feedback over traditional vibrotactile feedback," Lopes claims.

Because the system has no motors, the researchers say the prototype will be easy to miniaturise and build into a simple add-on for a smartphone, tablet or portable console. And it uses far less power than traditional vibrating motors, he says, so it will not drain a device's battery as quickly.

Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has developed haptic touchscreens for tablets and phones. He notes that beyond medicine and muscle training, EMS has been mainly brought to the fore by artists like Daito Manabe of Japan, who used it to set his facial muscles twitching alarmingly to music.

"As far as we know we're the first to apply EMS to force-feedback in mobile gaming," says Lopes. The system will be demonstrated at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris, in April.

Apple patent turns every stranger into an ATM

(Image: Fuse/Getty)

You're starving but the cafe won't take cards and you've got no cash. Not only that, there isn't an ATM in sight. That sandwich might have to wait...
A new Apple patent, published today, might help save your lunch. It describes an idea for an app that lets you use nearby strangers as mobile ATMs.
The idea for what Apple calls an "ad-hoc cash-dispensing network", is that you launch the app and tap in how much you need. The software uses your location details and broadcasts your request so that everyone else with the app in the vicinity is notified of your predicament.
When someone agrees to stump up the money, you are told their location, and go and pick up your cash. Other iterations of the idea include a map in which would-be bankers are indicated with either a star to say they have accepted your request, a question mark to say that they haven't or a cross to say they have declined.
Ratings could also come into play, with ad-hoc "bankers" given a score to say how satisfied - or not - other users have been with their service. Then you can filter your request to only ping others who have been given a certain rating or above. All depends on how desperate/hungry you are.
Once you've met your creditor, you confirm on your iPhone that the transfer has taken place and your iTunes account is debited. The incentive for would-be good Samaritans to help you out is that a small service charge is also taken from your account and credited to theirs, as well as the cash that you have taken.
Apple doesn't lose out either, of course, it also takes a little slice of the service charge for hooking the two of you up. The patent describes a scenario in which $50 is transferred between two parties. Apple snaffles $5 as a service fee, while the person who provided the cash nets $3. A price worth paying if you're in real need, perhaps.

Facebook is developing an App that Will Make Hiding Impossible

Bangalore: The most popular trend in Facebook these days is hiding from your family. Teenagers block their family members by categorizing them under a group which has limited privileges. With the new app that Facebook is developing, teenager’s nightmares will come true.

Do you remember the days when your parents would ask you, “honey where are you going, it’s getting dark?” and you would make an excuse about going over to your friend’s place to complete your science project, well that’s not going to work anymore because now, you parents won’t have to ask you where you are going anymore. They can monitor your whereabouts with this new app that Facebook is developing – Ahhh!

The app is reportedly being developed by engineers from Glancee, a startup that Facebook acquired in mid-2012. The social networking giant is reportedly due to release the app by the middle of March. The app will help users find nearby friends and family. Now if you think that light bulb in your head has come on and you can simply switch off the app then be prepared to hear your dad saying – Aha, Gotcha! The app will continue to track a user's location even when the app isn't open.

You hate Facebook for some things but you will also love it for those very things – because you can monitor your friends and family too. This application has the potential to make an honest man and woman out of its users, even though, there is a question of how well will it be accepted by the market? Apple's Find My Friends and Google's Latitude already allow users to track each other's locations but introducing such a function in a social media network can be a huge breach to one’s privacy.

Meet The Greenest Supercomputer In The World, Powered By Intel And Nvidia

Bangalore: After a number of PCs and tablets going green, supercomputers too seem to be making inroads into this territory; and are cutting on the power consumption with respect to performance per watt, reports ZDNet.

The super computer developed by Eurotech, and controlled by the non-profit consortium CINECA, a group made up of 57 Italian universities and institutions, is said to be the world’s greenest supercomputer, and named as Eurora. It claims to mange 3,150 megaflops per watt, if compared Beacon supercomputer at the National Institute for Computational Sciences and University of Tennessee, the current leader of the Green-500 list, which only manages 2,499.44 megaflops per watt, making Eurora as the world’s greenest supercomputer.    

The supercomputer is based on Eurotech’s Aurora node hardware, and consists of 64 nodes, with each node consisting of a pair of Intel Xeon E5-2687W processors, two Nvidia Tesla K20 GPU accelerator cards, an Altera Stratix V FPGA, 16GB DDR3 RAM, and a 160GB solid-state drive. Each node is about the size of a notebook and it’s capable of executing 1,700 gigaflops per second. Each of the nodes is 30 times more powerful that a regular desktop PC, yet 15 times more power efficient.

Eurotech uses a unique liquid cooling system that allows a compact yet performance based design, packing in 256 Tesla K20 accelerators and CPUs in a single rack while delivering 350 teraflops of peak performance.

If single rack alone is considered, it will rank among top 100 supercomputers in the world, according to Top500 list. Eurora, with 9 racks would deliver over 3.1 petaflops of performance, in turn securing its place in top 10 most powerful supercomputers of the world.

Eurotech estimates that Cineca will save 2.5 million kilowatt-hours in energy, which translates into a saving of $500,000, and eliminating 1,500 tons of CO2.

Nokia would 'consider any option' for tablet OS, says chief Stephen Elop

Nokia's chief Stephen Elop dropped a big hint regarding the company’s position on the choice of operating system for an upcoming tablet, saying it will consider any option for a tablet OS. When pressed about the rumoured Nokia tablet and whether the company would consider producing an Android-based tablet, Stephen Elop told reporters in Sydney, "We would consider any option (Android or Windows). It is important to note that the opportunity for companionship is something that any user is looking for. So, when you think about the Lumia 920, running on Windows Phone, having a Windows tablet or PC or Xbox is something that will give us the opportunity to have a pretty integrated experience. Our first focus on what we look at is clearly in the Microsoft side," the Australian Financial Review reports. Possible? Nokia announced last week that it would be holding a press conference on the opening day of Mobile World Congress later this month in Barcelona. At the event, Nokia is rumoured to be unveiling a Windows RT tablet sporting a battery-equipped keyboard cover. Other specs of the rumoured tablet include HDMI and USB connectivity and a 10.1-inch HD display. The battery cover will also have a kickstand for the tablet and two additional USB ports for mice or other input devices. The company’s chief also said that while Nokia had not made any announcements about a tablet, it is waiting for Microsoft's success, or lack thereof, with the Surface, to inform how and when it could enter the market. "We are studying very closely the market right now as Microsoft has introduced the Surface tablet, so we are trying to learn from that and understand what the right way to participate would be and at what point in time," he was quoted as saying by AFR. Elop also said that 7-inch and larger display tablets have an equal place in the market. If and when Nokia does launch a tablet (or maybe two considering that earlier statement), it could add some strength to Nokia's portfolio of Windows products. Its Windows Phone 8 Lumia devices already have Office baked in and a Windows tablet with similar functionality will increase its market share as well as offer a product competitive with iPad or Android tablets. Neither iOS nor Android have a full-fledged Microsoft Office app, although alternatives do exist in the respective app storefronts.   Microsoft last week launched its latest version of Office for the desktop and Office 365, with the notable omission of any iOS support, which is anticipated to arrive early this year. Besides the tablet, rumours hint that the company may show up at MWC with another PureView Windows Phone 8 device (with allegedly a better sensor than the 41-megapixel Nokia 808 PureView) alongside the follow up to last year’s flagship the Lumia 920.