What I meant is that if the focus of the Rift's development shifts, or it tries to encompass the capabilities needed for both... There's bound to be tradeoffs or compromises. And when that happens, usually everyone loses.

Cameras (And it would have to be plural if it were to keep stereo vision) would add weight and bulk to the front, never good for an HMD. There's also price considerations...especially if they somehow come up with the perfect camera solution and create a product that's the best of both worlds... I'd expect the price to increase by 50%, at minimum. Whereas right now, at the pricepoint of a high-end GPU or a monitor, I think it's about perfect for what it is and will probably ensure very good sales.

(And that's not even taking into account the fact that Facebook might try jacking up the price anyway, even on the devkits, just to turn a profit.)

According to the information on the website, the camera pictured with 'DK2' is used to augment the head-tracking system.

At any rate, being that it looks like a pretty standard little webcam thing, I can't imagine it would provide any suitably high quality video to the wearer, which would be a step backwards in AR, or at the very least, standing still. I mean, the point is to overlay the Augmented Reality over something near as good as you see without the device, or better, no? (Besides, one camera? No stereo.)

But obviously, the USB accessory ports offer the opportunity for something to be developed down the road. Off the top of my head, it occurs to me that someone (Not me since I can't afford a devkit) could come up with something based on the guts of two of those Chinese keyfob cameras, with 120-degree sensor/lens modules mounted to the front of the Rift at IPD. I got one for FPV flight with a quadcopter, and for a $50 camera that easily fits in the palm of your hand it shoots pretty damned good 720p video.

I really don't see how the Augmented Reality application and Virtual Reality gaming markets overlap, beyond the need for a head-mounted display. The Rift would have to have cameras to do AR and that would entirely warp its purpose.

Though I'm certainly open to the idea of it as an add-on, since it looks like DevKit2 (Which I want one of so badly to experiment with drone telepresence and stuff) has USB accessory ports on it...I could see attaching something like a stereoscopic Kinect to the front. But I think everything's screwed if the hardware gets redesigned to try and serve two very different purposes.

The kind of people who actually would have the means, motivation, and wherewithal to do this probably face at least as much risk and danger in their everyday hobbies and activities. (Serious tinkerers and the like who play with electricity, fire, chemicals, metalworking tools, lasers, plasma cutters, etc. day in and day out.)

It's when the technology goes 'As Seen On TV' and Joe Six-Pack can buy himself an "Easy-peasy dew-it-yerself brain-zappery kit" that the question of safety truly becomes relevant.

Can you think of a better way to force us to stop being so goddamn lazy and actually expand out into space?

Yeah, nice try. But I was in the beta too, and the only things this game has in common with CoD is the developer, and that it's an FPS.

And the game was never 32 players. It would have been unplayable. The reason it's 6v6 plus bots-- and really, this is the genius of it --is that they wanted players, the Titan Pilots, to feel special in-universe (By having them surrounded by 'ordinary' infantry) and make them feel completely badass (By making the infantry easy to mow down a squad at a time.) without making actual players take on these other roles.

The other aspect the bots represent is making it so players of any skill level can contribute; you don't have to be able to take out other pilots, you can go around and take out dozens of AI troops instead. It's not as efficient, but it still earns points and XP, and all the weapons have Grunt/Spectre killing challenges.

If there were more than 12 players, Titan combat would be a complete clusterfuck, or they'd have to limit access to the Titans. And who the hell would want to play if they don't get a 6-meter-tall walking death machine?

Again, this goes back to making the players feel special in-universe; They are Titan Pilots. They are Elite Badass Motherfuckers. The AI infantry can be heard saying stuff like "Hey, it's a pilot! About time!" or "Did you see that! That pilot jumped right on the back of that Titan!"

There's more nuance in the Titan cockpit entry sequence than there is in the entirety of any Call of Duty game, so why don't you just stick to telling kids on Xbox Live about how you fucked their mom, you ignorant fuckwit.

I like this line of thinking. I mean, there's fish and lizards and stuff out there that live for hundreds of years... Why not humans?

I for one think that a longer life might be the key first step to that bright-shiny technological future we've been promised; Imagine what some of the greatest minds of our time could accomplish with an extra hundred years, or even an extra sixty.

Besides... Future generations should have a better life than us, otherwise what was the point?

Whatever the rationale for the uncompressed audio, I've got a 3.20GHz hexacore, and it has trouble sometimes. A couple rounds I've had the audio completely cock up from what I can only describe as it trying to play too many sounds at once...then just playing broken bits...then completely breaking down, requiring me to tough it out until the audio is reinitialized with the start of the next round.

I'd also like to note that it took me about 45 minutes to download the whole game, and a whole hour and a half for the installation...most of which was spent extracting the audio.

That said, the game is abso-fucking-lutely amazing and I love it. I need to fix the cooler on my other 6870 so I can put it back in, SLI the suckers, and turn the graphics up to 11. :D

Personally, I'm still a Newtek Lightwave 3D devotee due to its ease of use and intuitiveness compared to other packages, but I use a lot of Autodesk's more industrial design oriented software like Inventor...

It was really only a matter of time before something like this happened, though. I mean how long did people think Autodesk was going to try and maintain three competing 3D modelling and animation packages under the same roof when only one of them fits into their overall software suite ecosystem?

Oh OF COURSE you don't render the goddamn emdashes correctly, the ONE TIME I don't click 'preview'.

This news makes me really sad. Ghostbusters shaped an incalculably large portion of my childhood. :(

Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day are two of my all-time favorite comedies (My top-top probably being Grosse Pointe Blank) in fact I just watched Ghostbusters the other night on my new bigass TV, and was considering watching Groundhog Day... (And now, definitely will tonight.)

One of my favorite moments in Ghostbusters is when Egonâ" in a complete deviation from his usual demeanor, and out of all the people present â"ends up being the one who jumps Peck shouting "YOUR MOTHER!" when he accuses them of being responsible for the explosion at the firehouse. It's something that always stuck out in my mind as being particularly funny.

I guess now I know why the Amazon Instant Video viewer app isn't available to any normal Android device... Bugs me because I already have an Android set-top box that flawlessly plays 1080p video, not just streaming stuff, but like h264 and whatnot... And it only cost me $25 unlike the $100+ I'm sure Amazon is going to charge.

Fining and/or locking up the people pointing lasers at planes is all well and good, but so far-- at least as far as I'm aware --any such incidents have just been people being jackoffs. And yet pilots getting blinded by lasers, especially on approach and landing, is a real hazard. It's only a matter of time until someone does it 'seriously', like in a coordinated attempt to down a plane.

So why aren't there countermeasures? Protective filters in the windscreen, or special filtering glasses for the pilots, or somesuch? I wonder if there isn't something to be done with liquid crystal and active or passive sensing equipment that could automatically polarize the cockpit windows at the angle required to cut the light down as much as possible. Kind of like those auto-darkening welding masks, but you'd still be able to see through it.

It's a program to make hardware self-destruct 'into dust', and it's called 'VAPR' and _nobody_ tagged the article 'Vaporware'? Come on, people!

One mobile site that I often visit that doesn't suck is Texas Instruments'. I rely on it heavily for reference materials and stuff. They also have an Android app that covers all the reference stuff, and the component-finding for your particular application, but as of yet you can't order samples from the app like you can from the site.

It's awesome having an idea at 2am, loading up the site on your tablet, tracking down the smallest microcontroller with all the GPIO you need, then the support chips (Motor drivers, LED controllers, battery managers, etc.), and ordering free samples you'll have by week's end...all without leaving the comfort of your bed. :]