Category: Technology

The same quality and durability that allows Lego bricks to be passed down from one generation to the next also allows the brightly colored building toy to be weaponised in the worst way imaginable: inside a foot-tracking cannon that deliberately sends the pieces sliding underfoot as someone walks by.

Adam Beedle is seemingly a glutton for punishment when it comes to kids’ toys. After building an automated turret for a Nerf blaster that sends foam darts hurtling right towards the face (their face, in particular), Beedle has constructed another weapon of mass annoyance. This time, it’s a camera-equipped, custom-designed blaster that greatly increases its target’s risk of stepping on one of the most painful objects known to humanity: the Lego brick.

If you’re not wincing in pain at the idea, take a moment to watch Beedle’s very unscientific experiment to find the most painful Lego brick to step on (don’t worry; he doesn’t enlist any unsuspecting friends or family to endure this torture). Although it was a simple one-stud brick that caused the most pain, Beedle instead designed and 3D-printed their elastic band-powered launching mechanism to fire standard two-by-eight bricks, which are still no picnic to accidentally discover underfoot.

A basic computer-tethered webcam attached to the launcher and powered by the OpenCV computer vision library specifically targets the human foot, although given the limited image quality of the cam, the addition of red socks greatly increases the cannon’s accuracy. When a foot is targeted, the cannon sends the plastic bricks sliding across the floor towards it, creating a minefield of pointy studs and sharp plastic edges.

If you’ve got roommates notorious for sneaking into the kitchen and stealing your food, a contraption like this guarantees you won’t have roommates for much longer.

Tower of Fantasy launch times are still set for tomorrow, August 10, but players have dug into its in-depth character creator early by preloading the game, and they’re already making some impressive virtual cosplay.

Tower of Fantasy lets you save, share, and vote on custom avatar models, and there’s even a gallery managed by a popularity contest of sorts. Open the character creator, click on the lobby, and then open the Popularity Vote tab to view the most-liked models. Above, you’ll find a snapshot of the front page of this tab at the time of writing.

Cycling is an endurance sport and shares many similarities with other endurance sports. One of those similarities is how much an audio distraction can help performance. For some that will mean passing the hours with audio books or podcasts. For others it will mean matching intensity with just the right music. Whatever your need, there are tons of headphone options. With our list of the best headphones for cyclingwe’ve tried to narrow that down and one of the brands we included was Adidas.

As with all of our buyers guides we are constantly assessing new options. If you are riding outside, it’s important to be able to hear your surroundings. Being able to use a single earbud from a pair of true wireless headphones is an excellent solution and with that in mind we tend to keep track of new products. When Adidas announced the ZNE 01 ANC we jumped at the chance to try them out. The product lands right in the heart of the most competitive space for headphones. If you are looking for true wireless headphones for cycling it’s likely they are on your radar and now we are ready to cover the details as they relate to cycling. Keep reading to see what we think works and what doesn’t about the Adidas ZNE 01 ANC true wireless headphones.

Design and aesthetics

If you’re in the process of a big desktop upgrade and you’re looking for a little future-proofing, look no further than MSI’s latest power supply. The MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 (rolls off the tongue, don’t it?) is the first PSU model sold to consumers that offers full compliance with Intel’s new ATX 3.0 standard. ATX 3.0 power rails, or adapters to comply with them, might become a necessity as soon as the latter part of this year, when power-hungy next-gen graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD are expected to use them.

Even so, the Ai1300P is a bit of a splurge. As the name implies, it’s a massive 1300-watt unit, capable of delivering up to 600 watts to beefy, power-hungry PCIe 5.0 graphics cards using the new 12VHPWR (12+4 pin) power rail. Older, backward-compatible PCIe 4.0 cards should work fine too, so long as you get a compatible power rail. For a technical breakdown of what’s new in the ATX 3.0 standard, check out PCWorld’s exhaustive guide here, or watch our interview with Intel PSU guru Stephen Eastman below.

In addition to the 12VHPWR rail, the Ai1300P boasts no less than six older PCIe outputs, double 8-pin CPU raise, and four rails for SATA connections. MSI’s announcement page (spotted by WCCFtech) doesn’t say when the new power supply will be available, or for how much. Our guess: “soon” and “a lot,” respectively.

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Image: Google

Cloud streaming, like Google’s Stadia, could be the killer feature of the company’s upcoming mixed reality headset. Google has already laid the foundation for it.

At the I/O developer conference in May, it presented an impressive new Google Maps feature: With Immersive View, Maps users can immerse themselves in a detailed 3D version of well-known cities on their smartphones and even virtually examine the interiors of restaurants and pubs.

The 3D graphics come from the cloud and use Google’s Stadia infrastructure. Google dubbed the new streaming service Immersive Stream for XR. A trailer released to accompany the announcement shows various application scenarios that resulted from Google’s cooperation with BMW and other companies.

Immersive stream for VR and AR headsets in the pipeline

Now Google is working on headset support, writes Google blog 9to5Google. The service is expected to support OpenXR-compatible VR and AR headsets and offer VR and stereo AR modes. The news comes from an immersive streaming spotlight Google held last week.

The service, in its current form, is aimed at enterprise customers. Google cites shopping, tourism, kitchen design, and training as use cases.

It could become more in the future. Google is rumored to be working on a mixed reality headset that could support both VR and AR via passthrough mode (see Project Iris). The report in question says that Google is considering using cloud streaming to compute AR content to get around technical limitations like limited processing power and waste heat. Project Iris is expected to launch in 2024, according to the report.

XR gaming from the cloud

Immersive Stream for XR could become the basis for such a headset feature. With its cloud infrastructure, Google is well positioned and could one day outpace competitors like Meta and Apple. Meta is launching a mixed reality headset in a few months (see Project Cambria), and Apple is expected to launch its first XR hardware early next year.

Meta is working on its own XR cloud streaming under the codename Avalanche and is currently conducting initial 5G tests with US carrier Verizon. Nothing of the sort has leaked out from Apple yet.

Cloud streaming holds enormous potential for tech glasses in general, as it could combine mobility and computing power. Today’s VR headsets are either mobile but lack computing power, or they are tied to a local computer.

The biggest technical challenge is the latency of cloud streaming. This needs to be lower than traditional 2D streaming because too much delay between the VR action and its visual translation into virtual reality can disrupt the experience and cause discomfort.

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SpaceX just got one step closer to the first orbital test flight of its launch system Starship with the successful static fire test of a prototype Super Heavy booster late Tuesday afternoon. That booster, “Booster 7,” was rolled to the launch pad overnight last Friday.

The successful test is a notable milestone for SpaceX, which has been working on its Starship program from its Boca Chica development facility in southeast Texas. It comes just a few weeks after a previous booster test resulted in an explosion at the launch pad — though the damage was clearly not catastrophic, as this same booster was tested today.

Just a single Raptor 2 engine was fired during the test, rather than the 33 engines that will ultimately lift Starship to orbit, and the entire test lasted only a few seconds. During a static fire test, the engines spin up to ignition, but the rocket stays on the pad, so engineers can get a good sense of an engine’s performance prior to an actual launch.

NASA Spaceflight livestreamed the test and captured the exact moment of ignition:

Booster 7 Static Fire! Single Raptor 2. Looked great!https://t.co/JVvjW7OkqS pic.twitter.com/qOrB0cJgtL

— Chris Bergin – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) August 9, 2022

The two-stage Starship is comprised of a Super Heavy booster and an 164-foot-tall upper-stage called Starship. The launch system, which stands at 394 feet in total, is designed to be fully reusable — the only rocket in its class that’s designed for reusability by a long margin. It’s a key part of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s goal to make humans multi-planetary and to spread, in his words, “the light of consciousness” throughout the universe.

Although Musk has postulated a number of possible timelines for the first orbital flight test of Starship, I have most recently estimated on Twitter that “a successful orbital flight is probably between 1 and 12 months from now.”

Image: The Source VR Mod Team

The years of waiting will soon come to an end: Half-Life 2 VR is in the starting blocks and should be even better after the launch.

As the mod team announced on the project’s website, Half-Life 2 VR will be released in September. The mod has already been in a private beta test for months and will soon enter public beta.

“The overwhelmingly positive feedback from our private beta testers over the past few weeks has convinced us that the game as it is now can not only be fully completed from start to finish, but it’s also very enjoyable to do so, and we wish to give you the opportunity to experience it for yourselves,” the mod team wrote.

MIXED colleague Max also participated in the private beta test and found Half-Life 2 VR to be better than the original flat HL 2 experience.

The team is waiting for Valve’s response

It is still unclear whether the project will get the green light from Valve. Without a license, the team can’t publish Half-Life 2 VR on Steam. That would make installation more cumbersome, but wouldn’t hold up the release any further.

“We are still waiting for approval by Valve, and we do not know how much longer that will take,” the mod team’s blog reads. If the approval doesn’t come, the mod will be released outside of Steam.

With the launch of the open beta, the project is not finished, on the contrary. In a roadmap, the team describes what they plan to do next. The team plans to add episodic support, overhaul weapons, improve movement and comfort, and revamp maps, assets, and textures.

“A project as large and ambitious as Half-Life 2: VR is never truly finished. There is a lot that we still want to do, and still want to improve on, to make it the best VR experience we possibly can.”

Big plans for Half-Life 2 VR

For starters, the team wants to bring the two add-on episodes to VR. The majority of the expansions are already playable well, the team said, and after the launch of the open beta, the team plans to look into full VR support for Episode One and Two.

One area of ​​the base game that could use some fine-tuning is the weapons. Many gadgets don’t yet support hand poses, and some animations and effects are still missing or incomplete. “We are working on it and will gradually release updates as we make progress,” it says.

The team also wants to improve controls and locomotion. The developers are thinking about support for teleportation and additional comfort options for vehicles.

The team is also working on revising 3D models and textures thanks to AI upscaling. The improvements are supposed to stay true to the original game. The maps are also to be overhauled and receive improved lighting, more details, and VR optimizations.

Half-Life 2: VR will be free, but requires a Steam installation of the original game.

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