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NASA

Shuttle Reentry Over the Continental US 139

Posted by kdawson
from the boom-boom dept.
TheOtherChimeraTwin notes that the shuttle Discovery will land at Kennedy Space Center on Monday morning at 8:48 EDT. The craft will make a rare "descending node" overflight of the continental US en route to landing in Florida. Here are maps of the shuttle's path if is lands on orbit 222 as planned, or on the next orbit. Spaceweather.com says: "...it takes the shuttle about 35 minutes to traverse the path shown... Observers in the northwestern USA will see the shuttle shortly after 5 am PDT blazing like a meteoric fireball through the dawn sky. As Discovery makes its way east, it will enter daylight and fade into the bright blue background. If you can't see the shuttle, however, you might be able to hear it. The shuttle produces a sonic double-boom that reaches the ground about a minute and a half after passing overhead."

Comment: Re:Awful (Score 1) 62

by Solra Bizna (#31217226) Attached to: Sony Develops a Universal Game Console Controller

The stick is ideal for games where you need the ability to move both quickly and precisely (say, to whip to the left and shoot the damn torpedo coming at you) with both hands, but not so much on platformers, for instance, where you want to move precisely before jumping to the next spinning, fiery climbable wall while some demonic dream-dad is throwing knives at you.

I played it on PC, with WSAD for movement, and it was still a pain.

-:sigma.SB

P.S. You forgot to mention that the knives were on fire, too.

Graphics

Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83

Posted by timothy
from the nice-of-them dept.
dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."

Comment: Re:He is correct. (Score 1) 465

by Solra Bizna (#30586596) Attached to: Graphic Novelist Calls For Better Game Violence

"Reality isn't fun. If it was we wouldn't play games."

I'll second this and say that those people who want realistic games are a stupid minority who don't understand game design.

I'm a game designer/programmer who still spends a lot of time playing the original Ghost Recon with his friends. Often with respawn time set as long as 60 seconds, or respawns disabled entirely (and ALWAYS limited in quantity). This is a game where at least 70% of all bullet wounds are instantly fatal (and the rest are no joke), and where aiming usually requires you to hold still and aim carefully.

I also play games like Worms 3D, Spaceward Ho!, Harvest Moon, Starcraft, Tetris Attack... pretty wildly varying levels of realism there.

I'll have to say that people who relegate entire other groups of people to "stupid minorities" are stupid minorities who are sure not understanding something, not least of which that other people might have different tastes than them.

-:sigma.SB

Games

The Psychology of Achievement In Playing Games 80

Posted by Soulskill
from the no-you-don't-get-points-for-reading-this dept.
A post on Pixel Poppers looks at the psychological underpinnings of the types of challenges offered by different game genres, and the effect those challenges have on determining which players find the games entertaining. Quoting: "To progress in an action game, the player has to improve, which is by no means guaranteed — but to progress in an RPG, the characters have to improve, which is inevitable. ... It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform — to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master — to improve their skill or knowledge. Say you take a person with a performance orientation ('Paul') and a person with a mastery orientation ('Matt'). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. Paul will complete it quickly and smile proudly at how well he performed. Matt will complete it quickly and be satisfied that he has mastered the skill involved. Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there's still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle."
Image

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus
from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.
Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

Never have so many understood so little about so much. -- James Burke