illusion
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Researchers develop a computer that's fooled by optical illusions
Say you're staring at the image of a small circle in the center of a larger circle: The larger one looks green, but the smaller one appears gray. Except your friend looks at the same image and sees another green circle. So is it green or gray? It can be maddening and fun to try to decipher what is real and what is not. In this instance, your brain is processing a type of optical illusion, a phenomenon where your visual perception is shaped by the surrounding context of what you are looking at.
David Copperfield: 'I come to CES to get inspired'
CES is many things to many people. For the most part, it's the grease that keeps the mechanics of technology running for the rest of the year. For some, though, it's a veritable treasure trove of potential magic. Literally. David Copperfield, a stalwart on the Las Vegas strip and legendary magician isn't just a fan of the show; he walks the floor every year looking for technology he can use in his illusions. Naturally, he wouldn't tell us exactly what he's incorporated into his act, but we bet it's more magical than a voice-activated trash can.
Pyro Mini turns your boring old wrists into flamethrowers
In 2014, magic retailer Ellusionist released a device called Pyro that shoots fireballs from your wrist. Now, a year later, the brand is releasing a smaller, more capable version of its predecessor; meet the Pyro Mini. The new device is half the size of the original so it's far less noticeable when strapped to your wrist. It doesn't require disposable batteries either, trading in triple A's for a microUSB charger. Like the original, the mini uses a remote with a 30ft range to trigger individual fireballs or two at once with the new Burst fire feature. Let's face it, two is always way cooler than one. Pyro Mini managed to upgrade almost every feature it offers all the while slashing the price of the unit to $147. If you want to impress friends, family or just to pretend you're a badass supervillain, you can grab a Pyro Mini via the Ellusionist's website.
Shoot fireballs from your wrist with Pyro
Who hasn't dreamed of having the ability to shoot fireballs from our hands? Thanks to a new device from magician Adam Wilber, you can do just that. The appropriately named Pyro is controlled with a remote switch from up to 30 feet away and tucks under your sleeve to remain hidden. Worn on the wrist like watch, the gadget can shoot four fireballs, one from each of its four barrels, a distance of 10 feet before needing to be reloaded with flash paper. Pyro is currently sold out, but shelling out $174 will secure one when the new stock arrives December 17th. If you're not into practicing illusions, at least now you won't have to hold a Roman Candle during those real-life flamewars.
Mage glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for mages. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Mages have no new glyphs but seem to be the masters of musical glyph chairs, namely Icy Veins and Cone of Cold. If you currently have both, you will have both, so get both just to be sure. Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Arcane Power becomes Arcane Explosion Arcane Blast becomes Arcane Power Frost Armor becomes Armors Fireball becomes Combustion Icy Veins becomes Cone of Cold Mana Shield becomes Counterspell Ice Barrier becomes Deep Freeze Living Bomb becomes Fire Blast Frostfire becomes Frostfire Bolt Cone of Cold becomes Icy Veins Mage Armor becomes Mana Gem Blast Wave becomes Remove Curse Dragon's Breath becomes Spellsteal Deep Freeze becomes Water Elemental Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Slow Fall becomes Arcane Language Conjuring becomes Conjure Familiar Molten Armor becomes Crittermorph Arcane Barrage becomes Illusion Arcane Missiles becomes Loose Mana Pyroblast becomes Momentum Arcane Brilliance becomes the Porcupine Armors becomes Rapid Teleportation It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Verizon gets new prepaid plans, adds Jetpack hotspot to contract-free lineup
And just like that Verizon has revamped its prepaid pricing structure. Starting tomorrow, May 1st, the carrier will be offering unlimited talk and text packaged with 1GB of data for $80 a month. The new offering will be available first with the Samsung Illusion, a disappointingly 3G handset, though, one that wont demand a two year commitment to Big Red. Verizon is also adding the Jetpack MiFi 4510L LTE mobile hotspot to its contract-free offerings for $130. Prepaid plans for the 4G wireless hotspot start at $15 for 250 MB a week, but quickly climb to $60 and $90 for 3GB and 10GB, respectively. For more info check out the PR after the break.
Samsung Illusion dispenses with the mystique, available on Verizon November 23rd for $79
Ice Cream Sandwich, quad-core, LTE -- sure, those are the delectable specs most mobile geeks currently crave in a handset. But for the average Joe Consumer, 3G plus modest internals makes for a more than adequate phone. Good thing then Verizon finally pulled Sammy's Illusion out of its Big Red hat. The 3.5-incher -- officially announced today -- packs a single core 1GHz Hummingbird processor, Android 2.3, 3 megapixel camera, 2GB of storage, WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0. It's set to hit the network's online shop this November 23rd for $79 on contract, but if you can manage to hold off for one more day, that price drops down to free until the 28th. Unfortunately, those looking to snag this modest piece in-store will have to mark their calendars for a January 2012 debut. Follow past the break for the official presser.
Samsung Illusion gets pictured on Verizon, convincing us it's not a figment of our imagination
We can't put all of our focus on Verizon's LTE lineup, lest we forget that there's plenty of 3G phones that need some attention too. The one shown above is a leaked image of the Samsung Illusion, also known to some as the Viper or the SCH-I110, a conceivably lower-end Android device with Gingerbread. It's difficult to pin down any more hard details on the device, as the components inside the phone seem to be even more of a hallucination than the phone itself; speculation, however, points to at least an 800MHz CPU, a 480 x 320 HVGA smaller-screen display and a few eco-friendly features (as indicated by its Sustainable Product Certification). Persuaded yet? Yeah, we didn't think so.
Marco Tempest's magic show uses iPods to deceive and delight
Marco Tempest calls himself a "technoillusionist" -- he combines magic tricks with the technological artistry (and occasionally the black-turtlenecked panache) of Steve Jobs. We last saw him hacking through an augmented reality illusion; this time he's using three iPods to enable his trickery, as he offers a video essay on deception, lies, and magic. It's sort of like his take on F For Fake, with more touchscreens: see him call out liars, declare himself an honest magician, and lift a smiley face out of the display and into real life, all in the video above.
Tactile Brush uses sensory illusions to let you feel games, movies
Poor arachnophobes -- it's bad enough that 3D movies can make it look like swarms of eight-legged freaks are pouring out of the screen, now Disney wants you to feel the creepy crawlies, too. In a presumed effort to one-up those "4D" chairs used at Shrek's castle down in Orlando, the company has been working on what it calls Tactile Brush -- a chair with an array of 12 vibrating coils that are able to simulate anything from the sensation of speeding around a race track to the delicate drip of rain on your back. Two techniques are used: apparent motion, which triggers two motors in quick succession to create the illusion of something moving over your skin, and phantom sensation, in which two stationary vibrations are felt as a single tingle between the two points. Disney researchers demoed Tactile Brush at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver using a racing game, but hope to bring it to amusement park rides and movie theaters -- which, in the right hands, should lead to more screaming and at least a few pairs of wet pants.
Touch pad prototype works without movement, makes fingertips feel like they're sliding (video)
This comes from the same touchy-feely Kajimoto lab in Japan that brought us the tactile kiss transmission device and we totally see where they're going with it: maximum sensation, minimum effort. You only have to exert the gentlest of pressures on this prototype touch pad and it zaps your fingertip with little electrical signals, mimicking the feeling of sliding your finger over a surface. We imagine it's a bit like the little red pointing stick in the middle of a Lenovo ThinkPad keyboard, for example, but with the addition of "position-dependent data input" to create the illusion that your finger is actually touching different areas of the screen. For now though, if you don't mind stretching a finger to your old-stylee mouse or trackpad, then check out the video after the break.
Who you gonna call? Irene's Spirit haunts your iPhone or iPod touch
Irene's Spirit [US$1.99, iTunes Link] puts a fortune telling spirit into your iPhone or iPod touch (with the exception of the first generation iPod touch) as long as you're running OS 3.0. Forget the Magic 8 Ball or Ouija Board. That's kid stuff. Irene doesn't use a 20-sided die or easily pushable planchette to give you an answer. Her answers come from the other side. The other side of what I'm not so sure, but who cares when she is dead accurate. She will make you wonder if ectoplasm will void your warranty. I had my son ask Irene a question and he totally lost it when she told him the name of his dead grandfather. After two more passes, he got skeptical and figured out what was happening. I should have stopped while I was ahead. Yes, it's an illusion. I was very impressed with the best tutorial system I've seen in any app. Being an instructional designer, I know that chunking instruction and requiring feedback periodically is the best way of transferring information. Irene's Spirit is a textbook case of how to get it right. With a bit of practice, operating the illusion is easy and distracting your audience is helped by lot of vibration noise and weird looking scrolling screens that look like something out of The Matrix. I thought that it was a well designed, easy to learn trick that will be a hit at birthday parties, but only good for one or maybe two questions before we more skeptical grownups get wind that something's up. I had a good time with it as a casual app, and really think it's worth a look. Take a look at this video and see Irene in action.
Invisibility cloak modified to make you see things that aren't there
The ever-evolving tale of the invisibility cloak makes us want to hang our heads in our hands sometimes, so fraught with frustrations does it seem. Well, another chapter's been added to the tome: researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have devised a way to extend the invisibility principle, allowing an illusion to sit in place of the invisible object. So, say you wanted to use an invisibility cloak to mask the presence of your bottle of beer on the table, the new concept -- or 'shroud of lies' as we call it -- would enable you to make it appear that there was a glass of water sitting there, in place of the beer. So how does that work, exactly? Normal, every day invisibility cloaks bend light around a central cavity, whereas the team has now worked out mathematical rules for bending light in other ways, allowing a material to be designed to bend light in the exact way a spoon would, so that the light hitting the material would distort, making it look like a spoon was there. Theoretically, all of this is rather simple and quite sound, though it turns out that there are numberless mechanical obstacles standing in the way of producing such devices. The new illusion-producing device would have to be capable of working without interfering with the invisibility cloak itself (which, if you recall, also can't properly be said to exist). There's no word on when any of this will ever come to fruition of course, but we remain always hopeful.
Illusion PC hides hardware elegantly, still plays Doom
Given the absurdity of the AlphaGrip Handheld Computer, we're pretty stoked to see something fairly snazzy emerge from entries in Microsoft's Next-Gen PC Design Competition. The Illusion PC is a 8.25-inch cube that hides a Mini-ITX motherboard, 200-watt power supply, slot-loading DVD burner and provides room for two internal hard drives. Theoretically, a 6-inch LCD and TV tuner card could also be thrown in, but we're digging the minimalist feel, personally. Hit the read link for a gallery of shots -- heck, the magician even reveals his secret to pulling the whole thing together. Like, that never happens.[Via SlashGear]
WRUP: Final Countdown edition
Considering the big release this week is Master of Illusion, we figured there would be no better anthem to herald the beginning of the magic act than Europe's "Final Countdown." Gob taught us many things, but most importantly he taught us the best magic is done to Europe's masterpiece.So, will you be honing your skills at illusion or do you have some other game you plan on sinking your teeth into? What are you playing?
Character Creation: "I Have a Great Idea for a ..."
C8H10N402: it's the most widely-used psychoactive drug in the world, blocks adenosine - the chemical which regulates your energy metabolism - exhausts the adrenal glands, and can push your cortisol levels high enough that it runs the risk of shrinking the part of the brain necessary for memory. It's also the call sign for Caffeina, one of my newest characters on City of Heroes. The basics of character creation are pretty similar for everyone: first, I create a character concept, and then I play around with various outfits.Now comes the difficult part: picking a name, and testing out different power sets that seem to fit the concept. Occasionally I'll stumble upon a combination that works swimmingly from the get-go, but it usually takes a few builds to come up with a character that I feel fits the model I've built in my head. Occasionally, however, the concept is not able to be built out in a realistic manner, and I hold the character in abeyance, hoping that a future issue will supply power sets or costume options to make the character work.
Scottish researchers reveal cameraphone-enabled 'invisible art'
Granted, we've already seen what wild colors can hide behind a shutter, but now a team of Scottish researchers are hoping to "bridge the virtual and real worlds" by applying invisible artwork to buildings around Edinburgh. Put simply, users who snap pictures of landmarks and MMS them back to the database can receive "an image with extras added to it." Dubbed Spellbinder, the invisible graffiti project uses image-matching algorithms to analyze the image and send back tagged snapshots of the location a user just photographed. Additionally, location projects and "virtual games" are also being looked into, which should thoroughly please both the social networking fanboys and hide-and-seek lovers alike.[Via mocoNews]
kameraflage enables your digicam to see more than you
While we've already seen what tricks cameras can play right before our very eyes, kameraflage is a slightly different flavor of optical illusion. The patent-pending technology exploits the fact that cameras can see a broader spectrum of colors than our meager eyes, and as the creator puts it, "by rendering content in these invisible colors we are able to create displays that are invisible to the naked eye, yet can be seen when imaged with a digital camera." Currently, it's being applied to garments in able to for cameraphone addicts to find surprises all over while pointing their sensors at unsuspecting humans, and the tech will even be on display at the upcoming 2007 ACM SIGGRAPH Unravel fashion show in San Diego. Best of all, custom orders will be fielded as early as September, and if we've got any interested VCs in the crowd, give this man a holler.[Via c0nn0r]
Dancing On The Water clock levitates time
True clock aficionados fully understand that their timepieces do more than tell them just how many grueling hours are left in the work day, and YUnoBI's Dancing On The Water design invites time tellers to gaze at its mirror-image rather than just glancing and looking away. The lacquered enclosure comes in black, red, and gray finishes, and shoots the current time up against a reflective back that purportedly gives off a "floating illusion." Furthermore, the red digits are displayed care of built-in LEDs, and while you may be eager to snap this presumed dust-magnet up as a crafty conversation piece, the ¥68,250 ($573) asking price just might stop you in your tracks.[Via TechDigest]
NTT AT shows off Amaze ART
There's just something delightful about optical illusions, and for as much flak at 3D gizmos take, we're fans of eye-popping art nonetheless. NTT AT has unveiled a zany new product -- dubbed Amaze ART -- which transforms signs and colored blocks into actual objects when photographed. Presumably using technology similar to that found in your average green screen, the "signposts" sport squared sections of color and a drawn image of a particular item; when photographed, however, the card appears to be an actual object as seen above. The company was also displaying a unique (albeit laced with geekiness) set of glasses which featured cubes of varying color that "amazingly became animal heads" when seen through a camera's lens. It's cases like these where pictures offer a good deal more than words, so go ahead and hit the read link for some pictorial elucidation.
