70050983
submission
trawg writes:
It’s been more than 10 years since Mozilla released version 1.0 of Firefox, one of their first steps in their mission to “preserve choice and innovation on the Internet”. Firefox was instrumental in shattering the web monoculture, but the last few years of development have left users uninspired. Perhaps it is time to move on to the next challenge — ensuring there is a strong Thunderbird to help preserve a free and open email ecosystem.
58200113
submission
trawg writes:
Programming legend Michael Abrash has announced that he has joined the Oculus team to work on the Rift VR headset as Chief Scientist, and will be once again working with John Carmack to bring VR to life. His post covers a lot of ground, including the history of his quest for VR, and ends with his explanation of why he thinks the Facebook acquisition is ultimately a good thing — they have the engineering, resources and long-term commitment "to solve the hard problems of VR".
58100011
submission
trawg writes:
Facebook have just announced that they're acquiring VR headset maker Oculus for $2b. Oculus have made an announcement explaining that the two companies are "culturally aligned with a focus on innovating". They go on to say "we want to contribute to a more open, connected world; and we both see virtual reality as the next step".
57873741
submission
trawg writes:
At GDC in San Francisco today, Epic's Tim Sweeney announced a bold new model for the Unreal Engine, their powerful game development environment. The new approach allows everyone from indie developers to large studies to get full access to every part of their toolkit for $19 a month — including the full source code of the engine which will be made available on GitHub — with a 5% royalty on revenue. While it's not being released under an open source license — it will be available under an "Unreal Engine 4 license" — this change gives game developers a strong incentive to consider the switch.
50234085
submission
trawg writes:
Microsoft's recent IllumiRoom concept video showcased what the future could be like if you combined an Xbox One, Kinect and a projector system, promising a new type of gaming experience. Unfortunately, speaking at an Xbox One press demo at Gamescom recently in Germany, the head of product planning for Xbox One Albert Penello revealed that IllumiRoom probably won't be made available as a consumer product:
"I wouldn’t expect you’ll see that,” Penello said. “It’s very, very cool tech but it’s, like, for a consumer, it requires projectors and things. It’s really super-neat if you’re in the lab and you’ve got Microsoft money and you could totally set up this awesome lab, but... we looked at it, but for an average customer it’s, like, thousands of dollars."
48311117
submission
trawg writes:
A new Australian study on the effect of violent video games on Australia has just been published, failing to find any evidence that playing video games affects prosocial behaviour. The study compared groups who played different types of games, including notably violent titles like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty, as well as non-violent titles like Portal, comparing their behavioral response through a simple pen-drop experiment. In a follow-up interview, the researcher noted his perspective on how violence might affect people has changed since he started the research:
I’ve played video games for most of my life and got into this research because I couldn’t believe that violent video games could make me do something I didn’t want to do, that is, be aggressive. My attitude has changed somewhat. These days I find it totally plausible that violent video games could influence people’s behavior, but the real question is whether their influence is harmful, and I’m not yet convinced of that.
