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Garmin's Fenix 5 Plus watches help you survive mountain climbing
Garmin is no stranger to catering to fans of specific sports with its GPS watches. Its latest wristwear, however, takes that devotion to another level. It's upgrading its Fenix 5 outdoor watches with the Fenix 5 Plus series, whose star attraction is a new Pulse Ox Acclimation sensor that gauges your blood oxygen saturation levels when you're climbing at high altitudes. If you're not coping well with an arduous mountain ascent, your watch will let you know it's time to take it easy.
'Everest VR' will take gamers up a CGI mountain next year
Along with a "mobile supercomputer," NVIDIA dropped off this teaser for Everest VR at its event earlier this week. Made by Sólfar Studios and RVX, it used NVIDIA's GPU to mash up over 300,000 high res pictures of the mountain range to create a 3D mesh and textures that is claimed to be the "definitive" CGI model of Everest. Some of Sólfar's personnel come from CCP where they worked on EVE Online, but this new company is all about creating purely VR experiences, like Everest for PCs and Godling for Playstation VR. I'm not going to climb Everest to find out exactly how realistic the simulation is, but everyone can form their own opinion when the full experience is available next year.
HAL robot suit almost summits with quadriplegic man in tow
In another instance of overcoming physical limitations via the help of robotics, a 43-year old Japanese man has (almost) fulfilled his dream of climbing the 13,741-foot Breithorn mountain in Switzerland. Seiji Uchida, who has been paralyzed from the neck down for over two decades, was able to get within 500 yards of the mountaintop with the help of a HAL (hybrid assistive limb) suit worn by his pal Takeshi Matsumoto. We reported that this escapade was in the works a few months back, and thanks to the (completely legal) strength enhancing device developed by Tsukuba University engineering professor Yoshiyuki Sankai, Uchida enjoyed a first-class piggyback ride up the Klein Matterhorn. Sankai's HAL has been in development for 14 years, and has been dubbed a product of his startup company, Cyberdyne (hasn't this name been trademarked by now?). According to Cyberdyne, the HAL allows someone who can normally lift 220 pounds on a leg press to hoist 396 pounds, an impressive 80% increase. Sankai mentioned the HAL could perform under less-than-ideal weather situations including snow, and that his main goal was to use this Alpine climb to build an even better HAL to assist disabled individuals in achieving their dreams -- quite an uplifting objective, eh?
