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Navy Chief: Robot Subs Might Span Oceans. (Someday.)

31.12.69

For now, though, that’s a covet way off. The Navy’s current task force of undersea drones resemble torpedoes in their conspiracy, and they’ve got similar ranges and sensing capabilities — that is, not much. Drone subs are in their Ford Image T phase. In 2010, Greenert’s antecedent, Adm. Gary Roughead, all but begged the contractors, engineers and robotics experts at the Fleet’s science and technology symposium to build him the undersea drone comparable of a Camaro .

So far, not so much. But there’s a new wave of inspect that might expand the range of drone subs.

The mad scientists at the Service of Naval Research point to Rutgers University (full disclosure: my alma mater), which a few years ago sent its yellow drone “glider ,” the Scarlet Knight (yes, it’s yellow for some urge), over 4600 miles of Atlantic High seas, a trip that took 221 days. The Knight, a certain extent funded by the Navy, is electric powered, though, and so it needs to recharge — a chancy proposition in the briny deep. And it doesn’t fall to the depths of the ocean.

Source: Wired News

Nemesis Sub-Terra: Are you feeling scared yet?

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Dr Tennent's day job is as a computer-sphere lecturer in Nottingham. But he is also part of the Thrill Laboratory. This is a collective of scientists, psychologists, sociologists and architects "dedicated to the serviceable pursuit of creating, producing and examining new forms of galvanizing experience", which is just what Merlin and I lack.

Merlin is the UK's biggest theme-store company. It runs attractions from the London Eye to the Blackpool Pagoda, but its main focus is on what it might like to call the triumvirate of fear: Thorpe Park and Chessington Superb of Adventures, both south-west of London, and Alton Towers in northern Staffordshire. These subject-matter parks seek to provide big thrills on an industrial mount, creating an addiction to adrenaline that keeps the crowds coming. The beat way to feed that habit is to reinvent themselves even more often than Madonna and install a big new ride for the start of a mellow.

Nemesis Sub-Terra is Alton Towers' bid for 2012. Edifice for what was code-named the Catacomb Discharge began in September. The new ride is described as "your worst nightmare experimental". But just how thrilling is it? That is what Dr Tennent and I are hoping to find out; it explains why he is now connecting devices to my fingertips to determine stress in the form of micro-beads of swot – the same principle used in lie-detector technology, moral.

Source: The Independent

Game Review: 'Asura's Wrath' too much Movie, not enough game

31.12.69

One of the strangest current movements in the gaming industry has been the reemergence of cinematic games – or perhaps more fittingly, interactive movies.

The genre first appeared over two decades ago with the advent of laserdisc, which allowed developers the storage perception and capability to stream full motion video (FMV). In these games, players keep one's eyes peeled a mini-movie with branching paths and settle on the outcome usually with mini-games or timed button presses.

The “FMV play” genre was at best a bauble; critics and gamers maligned its deficit of meaningful player interaction and sub-par output values.

It’s odd, then, that developers would consider the sort again. The last recent attempt, Quantic Fancy’s “Heavy Rain,” was criticized for its shallow gameplay in defiance of an intriguing atmosphere, impressive graphics and resulting commercial outcome.

Maybe Capcom and CyberConnect2 were attempting to emulate this image with the anime-influenced mashfest “Asura’s Wrath.” The new feign is plagued with that same uninspired, disjointed gameplay, which terminally tarnishes an otherwise stellar cinematic spectacle.

Source: El Paso Inc.