games


Kayaks and Space Stations – a great gaming weekend

Microsofts Game Pass is a great way to get to experience games that you may not have noticed before or to try something completely new. As a subscription you get access to a 100 or so games, in a library that has everything from AAA games to quirky indie’s and also a lot of great retro content.

This weekend I noticed Observation appear on the list by No Code studios and originally released on the PC in May 2019. For me that month is a bit of a blur after the concussion in April so my gaming slowed a bit. Still I was glad to bump into the BAFTA winning experience on Saturday. Now I play a lot of games, I also have written some slightly out there Sci-Fi with Reconfigure and Cont3xt, top that with have watched lots of great mind bending sci-fi movies and shows and read a few books too, and I have to say Observation was up there with some of the best off all those experiences. It had a 2001 Space Odyssey, Moon and Gravity etc feel to it and the story was well slotted into that. As a game the control of a corrupted AI trying to help the remaining crew member but only able to access the ship systems through cctv cameras and an occasional use of a roving sphere was fantastic. The art direction, the tweaks on the camera feeds, the odd outages and secondary systems to access all added to it. So much so that I played it most of Saturday and then Sunday again. It is not a really long game, not a RDR 2 or anything, but its doesn’t need to be as it is certainly longer than any film. The emotional involvement and intrigue as too what was going on was truly engrossing. No spoilers, but it’s suitably trippy. It is certainly one of the best games I have played for story and inventive presentation.

Observation
Observation

My other notable gaming experience was the launch of nDreams Phantom:Covert Ops for my Oculus VR rigs (Quest and Rift S). This introduces a really innovative approach to VR movement and to stealth action games. You play sat on a chair as you are a special ops soldier in a stealthy kayak. You control the boat with your hand controllers by gripping the two ended paddle with each hand and pushing down into the water on alternate sides of the boat. You are trying to sneak into a waterlogged compound and have a variety of ways to get passed guards and their spotlights. Sat on you boat you have various weapons and devices strapped to you and it. The paddle locks onto the left of the boat, a pistol is on your chest, a machine gun on your back, and a sniper rifle on the right. A set of binoculars sits just in front. Using these, some quiet paddling, hiding in reeds and finding tunnels you work your way in. Like all stealth games you don’t want to get into a full on fire fight, but if you do you can survive. Sat in the kayak at the start you can almost feel the water and the damp air. The paddling (despite not having a pole to link both hands) seems to get the shoulders going, especially if you are trying to quickly cross a dark, but open body of water having distracted a guard shooting a light out. The game also is cross play with the same save game and unlocks on quest appearing as the ones I unlocked on the Rift S. The only disadvantage to this is not being able to have more than one save game for other family members to play, a problem across the Oculus range as they are single facebook account machines. Anyway, love it, well done all just up the road in Farnborough, a revolutionary game and really good fun. Check out the official video below.

Phantom Covert Ops

Addicted to bass – Woojer haptics

Sometime last year I backed the second incarnation of a haptic feedback vest the Woojer Edge. Today it arrived and it is quite a piece of kit. No fancy unboxing video from me, not photos, though it was a nice box, but I just ripped it open like I was 5 and it was Christmas. Not please, I backed it, it means I paid for it, so there is no product placement or anything here. I like tech and gadgets and haptics it something I am very interested in anyway.

Woojer edge

What does it do? I hear you ask. It turns sound into more of an impact on the body of the wearer. In particular the more bass notes and sounds, crashes and bangs. You wear it like a regular laptop back with a solid back panel, which can also incorporate a rick for a laptop to be work with it. I didn’t go down that option, yet. It connects to any audio source via a variety of means, bluetooth (which I have not used yet) 3.5mm or usb-c connectors. You attach everything to the small round control panel on the picture above. Then you connect your headphones to it, or you mirror audio, double bluetooth etc. Again I stuck with a 3.5mm connection to get to the experience.

Woojer have a calibration video on youtube which steps you through putting your audio source up to maximum, you don’t have to worry as the Woojer is the volume control for the head phones too and not a straight pass thru of the same max volume. I did this first on my mac and the range of impacts, vibrations and buzz it gave right away made me jump. It is not just a big single bass kicking you. They then direct you to a youtube playlist of tunes with a lot of complex beats that happen to drive the Woojer really well. You have, like any audio system, an up and down control on the impact and effect, cranked right up it can almost be painful, they suggest a lower value that is not a distraction, so you sort of blend to meet your ears and eyes. I had also gone full tilt in using my full over ear and in ear Nuraphone headphones that are balanced to my hearing profile by an app. They are always quite an experience in their own right. They balanced nicely with the bass they deliver around the ear and the body smacking of the Woojer.

Next up, it was over the Oculus Rift S and the PC. After the inevitable update to both oculus and windows I completely encased my head with the over ears and the VR headset and dived into the old favourite beat sabre. Wearing the Woojer felt a little more clunky as 2 of the 9 feedback speakers are in the should strap just above the armpit, but to be honest I forget that detail almost right away. The banging tunes and the frantic sabre action were awesome. Though, for beat sabre I think the beauty is the flow of the sword play almost without any resistance, but this was a borderline thing as it’s really rather visceral.

A couple of those levels and I swapped over to Pistol Whip. I deliberately put it on no fail so I could see what happened in various situations. I dived into the newest map, Religion, not even stopping to swap to the baba yaga guns from John Wick. It was eye blasting, ear blasting and chest lastingly good. The kick from shooting the guns of both the hand controller rumble and the boom the body feels combined with the music and also the definite impact if you get shot was very impressive. I have written a lot about virtual experiences and feeling and remembering them, and I certainly will not forget those first few shots in Pistol Whip. Then the gamer brain takes over, and I was lost in the level. Pistol Whip and Beat Sabre are great flow generators. I got to the end of the level (no other chose as no fail on :). I then had to figure out which bit to unlock and take off first to extricate myself.

I was not sure what the impact on the brain and body was for long term use. Just as some VR experiences can make you feel a little woozy (for many its a no go altogether) bass also makes your stomach rumble and nerves tingle. I remember when the original Battlestar Galactica film was show in sensurround in the cinema in the late 70’s. They used huge bass sub woofers to provide another kick (it was a great film but this was trying to out do the previous years Star Wars). Lots of people couldn’t cope and would leave the theatre feeling ill. I do remember the galactica flying slowly past on the screen as an 11 year old me felt his lunch gurgle, but stay put.

Post Woojer, I feel some tingly buzz, but it’s not horrible, more like one of those shiatzu neck messages have been at work. I will of course experiment on some more things. Looking forward to engines on spaceships in elite and no mans sky. Also there are some great games in my library that really need another look and this is a great excuse. I also will be seeing what its like being on the Oculus Quest and not tethered, probably using lighter in ear headphones. I think it might be cool to watch a few films, like John Wick, Star wars or even…. the original Battlestar Galactica… Ooooh! L8rs…..

Keeping sociable with tech

I was recently invited, as chair of BCS animation and games specialist group to partake in a BCS webinar on cultural enrichment and staying sociable with IT. Between us we discussed Art, volunteering and social engagement and of course games. Take a look, you may find something that interests you, helps you or your friends and family. I definitely need a haircut !

Teenager bestowed with great honour from EA games

Way back in the mists of time I wrote how utterly ridiculous the EA lock down of accounts was that effectively removed any parental control in favour of a lazy and restrictive approach. This post “A mess with Origin, EA and Xbox” has been the most commented and read post of all of mine here on Feeding Edge, it was in 2014, its now 2020 and still it gets comments from annoyed parents wondering what the heck is going on.

Yesterday Predlet 2.0 turned 13. He was both looking forward too, and then greeted by, a coming of age with the EA online system of bureaucracy. On sparking up Need for Speed he was informed he qualified for a magical teen account. After a bit of email address admin my side we managed to accept it.

It means I will no be able to validate easily if EA ever get off this blanket removal of any parental choice, which I should imagine forces many parent to help their kids lie about their age on online accounts. Simply to make life easier for EA.

Predlet 2.0 will remember EA doing this for a long while, whilst he is overjoyed at coming of age in the eyes of a games company, he, and his friends are not as big a fan of EA as a brand as they might have been.

All for controls on what can and can’t be used online by minors, but equally it is ultimately parental controls that should be the key, so that from an early age we can help kids come to terms with the online world through guidance and openness.

Good luck parents.

The Northern lights virtual and real

The end of a very busy travel year in 2018 which included work trips to Barcelona, Madrid, Santa Clara, Boston, Shenzhen / Hong Kong and holidays to Japan and Portugal ended with a holiday trip to Sweden and up into the arctic circle in search of the Northern Lights.

This trip was a birthday president for my wife from back in August and I had booked the IceHotel for a couple of nights and then a trip to Abisko mountain (one of the best places in the world to see the Norther Lights.

Like all natural wonders, especially ones that depend on weather conditions we were not certain to see the lights so it was really interesting that serendipity kicked in just before we set off not the trip and wonder Forza Horizon 4 released its DLC – Fortune Island just before we set off. In this expansion the scenery is a remote crazy island north of Scotland and amongst other things, as night draws in you are treated to a wonderful display of the northern lights. So I took a few screen shots to take with me on holiday almost as a lucky charm.

Forza horizon 4 northern lights
Forza Horizon 4 Northern Lights
Forza horizon 4 northern lights
more Forza Horizon Northern Lights

Before the full northern lights trip to Abisko the Ice Hotel near Kiruna was our destination. (No kickbacks of benefits here but the trip was booked through Discover The World)

We stayed our first night in the IceHotel 365 where out room was at -5C, we did have a warm bathroom out back but spent the night in a thermal sleeping bag sleeping on reindeer skins on ice in a victorian themed room.

Ice hotel room
Ice Hotel 365
Ice hotel room
Ice Bed

This was quite an experience, yes its cold, but its quite nice sipping champagne from ice goblets in an icy work of art.

Ice hotel room
Goblets

I had to apologise to the hotel in the morning though as I sat on this Ice Chair and it decided to break as I leant back gently on it.

Ice hotel room
Ice Chair

It was -25C outside in the morning, so the Hotel felt tropical

-27c on frozen lake
iced up

Whilst there was a tiny bit of light (more of a dusk) we were far enough north for it to always be dark, as my sun cycle on the Apple watch showed

Untitled
watch

We had a great trip out on the snowmobiles from here on the night we slept in a warm hotel room, which was a good call I think!

On this trip we did see or first inkling of the norther lights which as you can see is not the most spectacular picture ever.

Northern lights
Faint northern lights

However, things improved greatly when we headed up to Abisko for the night, with a cable car up to the top of the mountain a nice meal and wine, then we heard shouts of “wow look at this” from one of our fellow travellers. He dashed in with a photo, that I thought was, like my earlier one at the start of this post, from a game or a fake. Eventually we finished eating and donned our polar suits and stepped outside. It was pretty amazing.

Northern lights
Northern Lights Abisko
Northern lights
Northern lights
Northern lights
Northern lights

The complete set I took are below and here on Flickr in a group (yes I am sticking with Flickr with a pro account)

Northern Lights Abisko 2018

All the photos are taken with an Iphone App “Northern Light” that helps set the exposure and camera settings, this is because they lights do not look this green to the naked eye, but you need to have a long exposure to see them on a camera, which enhances the green, and other colours sometimes.

What you see is a greyish wisp of cloud hanging in the sky that as you look at changes shapes and swirls, fast enough to notice its changed not slow enough it does not seem to. The guides suggest that it takes 30 mins of darkness for you nigh vision to kick in, but any light then resets that. We were all busy taking picture then looking at them so maybe we did not see the colours quite as much as possible if there is no light, but it was like an instant version of sending pictures to be developed, you see a swirl, you snap, you look and see more of this intense green blast on the screen. Look up and it’s a different shape.

I think the several hours of display we got was pretty much as good as it could possibly be. The entire group was in awe of it, and you can see, like many natural wonder, why it yields do many tribal folklore stories of ancestral ghosts, magic fox tails and gods battling.

So the real thing was definitely better than the virtual but the virtual you can see with the naked eye. It is also fascinating that every image we or film shown of the Northern Lights its effectively an image enhancement of the real thing. In reality its a subtle and ethereal thing rather than a full on fireworks display to our naked eye, but both are equally wondrous and fantastic.

I nearly forgot to mention another funny piece of detail in the Ice Hotel room artwork. I only just about noticed it, but on one of the bedside tables was an ice glass carved and placed, but it seemed to have something in it. Very clever 🙂

Ice false teeth on bedside cabinet
Icy False Teeth

The joy of exploration in game virtual worlds – Forza Horizon and Read Dead Redemption 2

Game worlds just keep getting better and better. The time and effort that goes into the environments in free roam games is certainly worth it, as a consumer and gamer. Two examples of free roaming but very different game types and narratives are Xbox’s racing game Forza Horizon 4 and the western epic follow up from the creators of GTA V, Read Dead Redemption 2.
Forza is about racing cars around, hundred of types, lots of customisation, on and off road. In Horizon 4 this time environment has moved to the UK. The huge game area represents areas of the UK, with cotswolds, lake district, Edinburgh all blended into the experience. It is not a 1:1 of the UK, but it doesn’t need to be. Also the game engine represents time of day changes and each week the seasons change which radically changes the look and feel of the game. There is also an incredible set of radio stations to listen to as you drift, speed, jump and crash around. You don’t have to stay on the roads either. The cars, as usual, feel great, but its augmented by the arcade madness of of os the challenges, of which there are many!
With all these free roam games the scenery is really important, the sense of wonder and space that they give really adds to it, hence you can just go for a drive as a digital tourist, not even engaging with the challenges of the game.

Also you can custom paint the cars, as I have often written and talked about.
Here the scenery is into winter, with a wonderful sky and my custom scooby with Choi and Reconfigure decals hurtling along. Pretty much anything you can see you can reach.

Forza Horizon 4 Scooby Snow

Here I am parked up at one of the houses that acts as a base, but the sky is the star in this photo. Remember this is a razzing around in a car game!

Forza Horizon 4 Sunset

The simulation elements of the cars are realistic but the antics don’t have to be. As you can get a lot of air

Forza Horizon 4 Jump

Forza Horizon 4 Bikes

The attention to detail in the sky and environment is just wonderful though

Forza Horizon 4 Sky trails

With Red Dead Redemption 2 the environment is even more detailed and huge. It also is even more key to the experience as you are a person in it, not a car razzing around. You trot around on your horse, or walk. It is full of wildlife and plants and trees of all sorts. Like Forza the night and day cycle, and weather fronts make a big difference. The immense map area transitions from mountains to plains, from desert to forest, swamps, lakes and rivers also feature. Once again if you can see something off in the distance, you can usually get there. The work id populated with lots of other characters and your gang help you drive the story forward, if you want to that is. It is fun just to go off on an adventure, just to see what you can find.

Here, as on of the initial camps the gang forms to get the story going you can see rich vegetation but off in teh far distance snow capped mountains.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Rich vegetation selfie

After a long ride you can find yourself up in those mountains (Making sure to change into a warm coat so you don’t freeze to death!)

Red Dead Redemption 2 mountain selfie

On the way, or in other adventures you get to see sights like this waterfall

Red Dead Redemption 2 waterfall

Dramatic skies

0_0-6Red Dead Redemption 2 sky

Even double rainbows !

0_0-Red Dead Redemption 2 rainbows

What is amazing is that many of these sights and sounds and experiences are unique to the player. With such a huge world being in a certain place at a certain time adds to the magic of exploration. On top of all that the games have brilliantly designed stories or things to do with set pieces that who the entire world to you in many different ways.

These are not the only two massive free roam games, but they are some of the best of the current crop especially in $K Ultra HD. With Just Cause 4 arriving next week we can expect even more free roam goodness with fantastic gameplay thrown in. The last one was 2016. In it I got to do silly things like this.

You see games, and in particular massive virtual worlds have a whole lot to offer 🙂

Forza and Bond a perfect combination

The upcoming release of the Xbox flagship car brand Forza, with Horizon 4 has given the developers some great fodder to advertise with. Horizon is a free roaming driving game and 4 is set in the UK, apparently with lots of seasonal activity, just like the real thing. You know, rain, and well… rain. 🙂
An actor James Bond car pack brings models of classic Bond cars to the series, complete with some gadgets.
In this brilliant advert, using the actual game engine they have combined the music of Bond, and recreate vignettes of Bond scenes with his car and the bad guys too.
I am a big Forza fan, having advertised my book via it.
Reconfigure book paintwork on a lambo
Also cool stuff collective,feeding edge and eightbar in various ways seeing it grow like this and be this good is awesome. Enjoy.

Stack of new tech to catch up on! Games, watches, Mocap and old age

Yes its been a few months, but as I write for a living about tech elsewhere it is a bit of a busman’s holiday to blog, but I intend to keep going, Sept and Oct were just very busy, travel and more holidays. All that and turning 50 at the end of August! What the hack happened there, where did that come from? Thanks all for all the comments and best wishes on Facebook and Twitter. Plenty more years left yet!

One of my presents was a trip with predlet 2.0 to the NFL game at Wembley, I had got him playing Madden on Xbox and he was all up for the game and how it worked which was fantastic.
NFL london
The game was a weird one full of incredible errors on both sides and the favourites, the Dolphins lost, which was quite amusing. Though all teams were supported, as you can see some cheeseheads in the background.

My kickstarted watch arrived yesterday, the Mykronoz Zetime. Now I do have an Apple Watch, but didn’t;t when this was first an thing to invest/preorder. This swiss based watch is a traditional watch with real hands, a good solid engineered feel to it too. However under the hands is a screen that can display watch faces and information. Regular buttons and/or touch screen interaction work. It paired with my iPhone and its apps so pretty much just works. When you get a message and need to read it the hands file to 9:15 to not obscure the text, then wind back to the time when you exit. It is supposed to have a 30 day battery life as a watch and 3 days burning smartwatch features. Heart rate monitor and movement sensing are all part of it too. I thin it will be more of a posher dress watch or just to show off at IoT conferences 🙂
Just arrived
Mykronoz smartwatch
Mykronoz smartwatch
Mykronoz smartwatch

Today my Enflux motion capture suite arrived too. This top and trousers stretchy contraption has every sensors that track body movement and connect to blender and unity3d on Windows using BLTE. I am not posting pictures of me wearing it just yet, need to loose a few stone first ! However the connection and mocap calibration just worked straight away. I will see how well it works to record Choi, compared to the Kinect experiments of old
Enflux mocap suit
Here is how it records in unity3d

I had an interesting time ate the Augmented World Expo in Munich a few weeks ago too. AR is really getting embedded in a lot of enterprise solutions and the future is rosy for that as the user interface for IoT 🙂
I did get to appear (just) in the Meta headset demo on stage.
I am sitting here in the meta workspace demo #ar #awe2017

Also I got to see and feel the very clever effect of the light field displays from Avegant in a private showing.

On the games front. Wow, we are in the midst of a bumper crop of interesting things. Forza 7 on the Xbox is brilliant as usual, and they have kept the importing of the custom car gfx which means I get to quickly repaint my cars 🙂 Only picture I have handy is a stock paint set in the rain.

Mordor and Assassins Creed follow ups both giving a good deal of baddy bashing and climbing up things. Both huge games and probably never to be finished.

Double Mario on the Switch, first the turn based strategy mashup with the Rabbids, which proved to be far better than I expected and one of my favourites now, and a few days ago Super Mario Odyssey, giving Zelda a run for its money, though obviously more arcade like.

These need their own posts and comments but I think I will wait until the arrival of the Xbox One X in a few days hopefully.

I have had some really nice comments about the books too, still a few billion people to sell them too and a third one to find the time and energy to write 🙂

Nintendo Switch – fancy but fun

Friday my dark grey Nintendo Switch arrived. I had not bothered with the Wii U, in fact it marked the first console I had not bought for a long while. The Switch however, well it looked too good to pass up. Especially the gadgetabulous transforming nature of it. Of course there was also the new Zelda, getting rave previews for being such an engaging open world evolution too. I figured with all the work travels I do now it would be good to have some quality gaming in my backpack.
Nintendo Switch

The Switch is an iPad sized screen with a few buttons on it, but it comes with a docking station that HDMI’s it into the TV. Two small controllers slide and click and slide onto the sides of the screen making it very good for gaming, unlike an iPad where no tactile response, or simply your hands being in the way destroy the experience in anything other than turn based combat. The controllers are also not just buttons, but gyro and vibration sensing with very intricate rumble packs for feedback too. One of the appeals of the controllers is that whilst you can use them together, either on the unit or slid into a joypad frame, they can also be used by two different people. So you have an instant 2 (or more with the various combinations available) player setup on a small screen that can prop itself up on a table with a little kick stand.The clicking and unlocking, changing and switching around is a key part, it feels like a Klingon battle ritual making weapons from their armour

We spent Sunday afternoon playing the party game 1 2 switch in which mini games are presented such as quick draw, or gorilla dancing, the motion elements of the controller being exploited. The games are places facing your opponent, with all the action prompted by audio or vibration cues. Multiplayer face to face with imaginary scenes is a new twist. The Switch screen is just there to show the score afterwards. One very nice example is having to guess how many marbles are in a box, the box is your joycon, as you move it the vibrations feel like a number of marbles bumping into one another. Its very subtle and very clever.

Afternoon of family fun with 1-2 Switch and snipperclips

All these are good fun party games, very Nintendo and I look forward to lots more. However there is serious gaming too. The Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild is just a stunning achievement.

Zelda - Switch
(One of the first views of the sprawling landscape, which is much bigger than this too!)

The environment is huge and varied, the crafting and puzzle solving needed gives a real feeling of adventure. The heart stopping moments when you stamina disc is decreasing but you are climbing higher up a tower and only just make it by the last little blip, it goes on. It has taken from many other games, but kept is Zelda with Link running around saving Hyrule. There are towers to climb to unlock maps (like most Ubisoft free roamers), there are find the area by a photo, there are horses to not just catch but gradually tame, plants to collect and meals to cook with special properties, clothes to buy and dye, paragliding, bow and arrow and I assure a boomerang will turn up soon for me too. Dotted around the land are shrines, more in keeping with the Zelda themes these puzzle rooms let you use your fancy powers (one gained) to move and manipulate the World. Rather like Portal 2 did it makes you think you are stuck, then you try something odd, it works and you feel clever. One puzzle (no spoilers) use the motion controller, and my solution was just smirk inducing, a truly memorable gaming moment.

I had assumed it was all cartridges and no downloads, but its not. All the games are digitally downloadable. I had order Bomberman, Switch 1 2 and Zelda on carts, but Amazon were not able to deliver Zelda on release day so I cancelled it. When the parcel arrived I downloaded Zelda, and I wish the other 2 games had been digital now as the cartridges are so tiny they are annoying. I bought a 200gb memory card as the 32gb in the machine is half full already with Zelda, but that is much better than having to cart carts around. Also the battery is only 3 hours or so playing Zelda, not ideal for long plane journeys, but I will have to test that out later. Either way its a great addition to the console family and has exclusive titles. So thats all fine by me.

Life in IoT, Pokemon, AR, Micro:bit, reports and scifi

I has been a few months since I wrote anything here. My new role at 451 Research has kept me doing a lot of writing about a lot of interesting subjects related to IoT. It is an interesting change to be on the receiving end of briefings where people tell me why their implementation or product direction is of interest, yes that’s bit poacher turned game keeper, but it is good to be able to share and build upon all my previous experience. The Internet of Things is huge and diverse, because like the internet it underpins everything. The great thing is it also include how we as people understand what is going on in a system, which lends itself to being able to discuss virtual and augmented reality. I had started to cover some VR and just posted a longer report spotlight on AR when Pokemon Go hit. It was only a matter of time before a mass market awareness thing happened, but few of us knew the form it would actually take. Most of what I write is behind the paywall for our customers, but somethings make their way outside. Firstly our AR report (as this was with @xianrenaud 451 Research IoT research director) made the home page and some free access to all. I was not in a position to write a whole report on Pokemon Go or its lack of real AR, but I did write an analyst note (our briefest piece of content). Which now is also on the homepage and free (linking back to the AR report). The VR report is still locked away but you can sign up for a trial account.
AR and VR also featured in at the end of a recent IoT Webinar on Brightalk that Christian and Brian did. I provided a couple of pictures for that. I take the position that VR is great but it is an extension of current screen technology at its heart. A screen for each eye. AR is a new departure, sensing the world and projection/translucent displays is a whole different ball game and one that had many more industrial and enterprise uses.
VR and AR diverge
Interestingly lots of AR tech is being retro fitted to VR. Nothing is ever clear cut, but its good to spot a trend or find a theory to explore.
Of course my IoT VR and AR experiences blend into the books Reconfigure and even more so the follow up Cont3xt and the adventures are still selling and being downloaded at $0.99 around the World. A few more reviews would be great. In some of my briefings some of the elements I have used start to get a little closer to reality, but it was always supposed to be near real sci-fi.
I have not thrown away my tech hands on approach to things though. Yes there is a lot of writing but the predlets still need to get the opportunity to learn their craft and this morning my/their BBC Micro:bit arrived. A fascinating Arduino like controller but loaded with LED’s, compass, bluetooth and gyroscopes. It will be great to see what they get up to with it. It is a full IoT endpoint when it comes to it.
At last BBC micro:bit #iot
Its not all work, though a lot of my play is work related too. However, we invested in a Wheel for the Xbox One, having had one on the 360. It was part present for predlet 2.0 getting a great school report and a pen licence. This time I also got a proper stand for it the Wheel Stand Pro V2. It makes a huge difference to all the driving games, particularly the rock hard Dirt 2 and Forza 6. Of course there is a prime example of where VR works, and I believe the PC version of Dirt now has headset support. If they sort it out for the Xbox, well I am in 🙂
Just keeps getting better #forza6 #thrustmaster #wheelstandpro
Another addition and a rather fantastic one was my Father’s day present of next generation slot(less) racing with Anki Overdrive. These fascinating cars read the track as they race on it, making any layout they will autonomously drive around mapping the reach first they you get to race using you phone/tablet. Switching lanes and controlling speed and virtual weapons and defences. They are fast and frenetic, and when they go off track they razz around trying to find it again. Watching the robot cars drive is pretty magical too. I know how they work, I know what they are doing, but…. wow. Once again another IoT style twist in the tail. Alluding to where the World is going, first liberating the ideas from play, just like Pokemon Go has.
If you want to see the diverse list of 451 Research reports I have been doing look here, thats not including all the press articles and conferences presenting I have been up to in just a few short months.
If you have anything industrial, enterprise or just plain quirky you would like to talk about please get in touch I am @epredator and do take a look at the books for some summer reading 🙂