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Amazon's kid-centric Glow video call device is now widely available in the US
Amazon has announced that the kid-focused Glow is widely available in the US, complete with books, visual arts activities, play options and more.
Mercedes' latest high-tech concept car is a throwback to 1901
Many of Mercedes' concept cars are focused squarely on the future, but its newest example goes back in time even as it aims to go forward. The automaker has unveiled a Vision Mercedes Simplex concept car that hearkens back to the 1901 Mercedes 35 PS, billed as the "first modern car," while relying heavily on modern technology. The absence of a gas engine (the powerplant is described only as an "alternative drive") is really the least surprising thing here -- it's the cabin and nose that are the real standouts.
Projection is the ideal medium for Gustav Klimt's electric art
Austrian artist Gustav Klimt is celebrated for his boldly-colored paintings that marry portrait, decorative, symbolic and abstract art forms. Nowadays, they sell for vast fortunes at auction, making it difficult to see a comprehensive collection in one place. A brand new Paris exhibition space called Atelier Des Lumieres (meaning "Studio of Lights) is showing many of his paintings in a whole new way, by projecting them on 35,000 square feet of space including the walls, floors and ceilings.
Real-time tracking and projection mapping keeps getting better
Japanese creative studio P.I.C.S. have set a mindbending new standard for real-time tracking and projection mapping with their latest visual creation, EXISDANCE. The technology has been around for a while, although it arguably first captured the mainstream public's imagination at the Grammy's last year, when a red bright lightning bolt appeared on Lady Gaga's face during her David Bowie tribute.
'Toki' uses 3D printing and projection to represent time
Akinori Goto is a stop-motion animator who has translated his art to work with modern materials and techniques. Goto creates smooth movement by passing simple light through highly complex wire mesh sculptures. He's one of several artists picked to exhibit their work at SXSW this year, and his installation, Toki, is one of the most impressive on display.
3D projections turn trees into divinities
That is not a photoshop, it's the work of French photographer Clément Briend. Shot for the series Cambodian Trees, the image was created by using multiple projectors to turn trees in Phnom Penh, Cambodia into light sculptures. Briend's 3D projections are created quite organically. He starts with an idea, and then slowly works on the projection points by hand until what you see above takes shape. The sculptures (the whole series is available on his site) depict divinities and other supernatural beings. Animism and magic are part of Cambodian -- and much of South East Asian -- culture, and Cambodian Trees plays with those themes. By casting these forms onto trees within urban landscapes, Briend connects the natural with the magical, and the city to the spiritual. The Big Picture is a recurring feature highlighting beautiful images that tell big stories. We explore topics as large as our planet, or as small as a single life, as affected by or seen through the lens of technology.
Watch code and projections bring a paper sculpture to life
Paper art doesn't have to be flat and lifeless... just ask Aristides Garcia. The artist recently created an interactive sculpture, Tesela, that uses a combination of 3D projection mapping and tesselation algorithms to cast real-time, viewer-influenced patterns over 103 paper pyramids. The effect is a bit hypnotic, as you'll see below -- it's as if the paper has suddenly become a living landscape. You sadly can't see this in person at the moment (Garcia debuted it at a Berlin exhibit in August), but it still shows that the right technology can liven up just about anything, even if it's made from dead trees.
A giant rat bird was the closest I got to 'The Last Guardian'
Well, I got to tease it with a giant pink ball. To promote The Last Guardian, which is very much happening and also very not playable (so far) at the Tokyo Game Show, the team at genDesign hooked up a 20-foot screen with a projection of the lovable / grotesque (delete as applicable) Trico. The feathery giant rodent is projected at fictional life-size, while two hidden depth cameras pick movement of anyone near its cage. We seemed to get the best reactions when the organizers brought out that aforementioned pink ball to catch its attention. It still roars a lot, which only scares the crap out of you the first... twelve times. It's a simple little technical demo that doesn't reveal anything more about the game, but it's better than watching similar gameplay videos again. Hand me a controller.
Empire State Building projection shines a light on endangered animals
If you were hanging around midtown Manhattan this weekend, you may have noticed some exotic animals projected on to the side of the Empire State Building. What was that all about? As it turns out, that was one of the more ambitious examples of tech-powered advocacy in recent memory. It was Projecting Change, a collaboration between the Oceanic Preservation Society and Obscura Digital that used striking imagery to highlight the plights of endangered species, such as snow leopards and manta rays. The piece relied on 40 stacked projectors to beam 5K video on to the legendary New York City skyscraper. At 33 floors tall, the resulting image was clear within about 20 blocks' radius -- you could have had a good view at 14th Street. There's sadly no talk of repeating the event in the near future, but there are replays both on YouTube and Discovery if you want to see what happened. [Image credit: Joel Sartore and Ron Robinson/Obscura Digital]
Laser projection creates galloping horse movie on the clouds
A bright green horse was projected across the sky over Nottingham late last month. It wasn't a Bat-Signal-style projection that was made from a searchlight on the ground. Instead, the silhouette of a rider on a horse was projected directly onto the clouds from a Cessna 172 aircraft that flew over the city in the UK. Artist Dave Lynch created the first of its kind mobile projection with a zoopraxiscope, a movie projector that made its debut back in 1879. He repurposed the historical device and swapped its original light source with a laser for precision and efficiency. The display wasn't clear from the ground, but viewed from the plane it looked like a horse galloping through the dark clouds.
NHL team projects Nintendo-esque 'Bolts of Steel' game on ice
We've seen 3D projections on basketball courts and arena floors before, but the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning just took the game up a notch. Before the team's Eastern Conference Finals game on Tuesday, it used the playing surface to project a "Bolts of Steel" (get it, lightning bolts) game simulation inspired by the Nintendo classic Blades of Steel. We surmise they opted for another name not just for copyright purposes, but because the franchise didn't exist until 1992. While the video you'll see after the break is a render/demo, a Deadspin reader caught the thing on tape during the pregame festivities, so you can have a look at was it was like for those in attendance. Perhaps if the Bolts advance to the Stanley Cup Finals, they'll let a couple of fans duke it out for some nachos.
VizeraLabs reupholsters furniture with the power of light
Looking for the perfect chaise longue? That's no easy feat even on the best days, but the process is made even trickier since stores rarely seem to have their full collections on display. That's precisely the problem a San Francisco startup called VizeraLabs is trying to tackle, and its team has built a curious little projector to help. You see, instead of displaying reruns of Doctor Who on your wall, it's used to project different fabrics and finishes onto whatever surface it's pointed at, be it a wall or an armchair.
New smartphone chip will beam high-definition holograms as early as 2015
Just imagine: a smartphone that projects 3D holograms into thin-air. If you can wait until the end of next year, and if you can believe the claims being made by a well-funded company called Ostendo, then your next handset could be capable of just that. Thanks to breakthroughs by the Californian display startup, 5,000ppi projectors the size of Tic Tacs are now powerful enough to control the color, brightness and angle of individual beams of light across one million pixels. Just one chip is said to deliver a usable image, but adding additional chips provides scope for even more complex and detailed images. The Wall Street Journal was treated to a demo involving six chips which beamed green dice spinning in the air and noted how "consistent" the motion appeared, irrespective of where it was viewed from.
Capcom plans to sell 3.9 million more copies of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
Alongside Capcom's financial report for the 2013 fiscal year yesterday, in which it revealed an increase in net income by 15.9 percent year-over-year, it also offered some projections for the upcoming financial year (ending March 31, 2015). Given the continued success of its Monster Hunter brand, Capcom projected sales of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate to reach 3.9 million units in North America, Europe, Japan and other Asian countries. The game will reach the west in early 2015. Additionally, Capcom reported that its strategy for mobile includes the launch of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on iOS this month. The PSP game went free for PlayStation Plus users in March. Capcom also plans to launch another mobile game in the series this year called Monster Hunter Smart. The company noted strategies for PC in Japan and other parts of Asia, namely by introducing the beta phase of Monster Hunter Online as well as Breath of Fire 6 this summer. The latter was announced in August 2013 for PC, iOS and Android, whereas the former is the result of an April 2013 partnership between Capcom and Tencent to bring the free-to-play MMO to PC players in China. Lastly, Capcom mentioned plans to "develop titles exclusively for online games," specifically mentioning Deep Down for PS4, a free-to-play game first announced in September. [Image: Capcom]
This enormous gas tank is now a wondrous, isolating work of art (video)
Once it stored enormous quantities of blast furnace and coal gas, but these days the Gasometer Oberhausen is a 385 foot tall cylindrical art gallery. Since the early 90s, the gargantuan storage tank has been host to more than a dozen art exhibitions, and its latest display puts its own absurd size front and center. 320° Licht plays on the gallery's tar-black walls, projecting optical illusions that make the surface appear to warp and bend. "This experience is based on the vastness of the Gasometer," explains project sound designer Jonas Wiese. "We tried to work with that expression to make the space bigger and smaller, to deform it and change its surface over and over while not exaggerating and overwriting the original effect of the room." According to the installation's creators, that effect is dwarfing. Viewers are left feeling small, even lost.
Pioneer shows off see-through projection tech for Minority Report-style signage
If Pioneer has its way, basic window-shopping might soon freak you out thanks to its latest see-through projection prototype. The tech features 80 percent transmittance levels -- supposedly much higher than transparent IPS LCD tech -- meaning bright images can be beamed onto the panels without blocking the view of objects behind. Even blacks from the rear-mounted projectors are see-through, and Pioneer envisions the tech being used one day for digital signage and improved vehicle HUDs. We're all for the latter, but the signage demo in the video after the break kind of makes us feel like ads in our head aren't far behind.
Bot & Dolly's Box takes CG into the real world (video)
Remember Bot & Dolly's awesome Kinetisphere from Google I/O 2012? Today the San Francisco-based design and engineering studio released Box, a film of the first ever synchronized live performance featuring projected 3D computer graphics, robots and actors. Imagine two Kuka industrial robots moving walls around and a projector displaying CG onto them in complete sync. Add a second projector aimed at the floor. Now introduce an actor and capture the entire scene with a 4K camera mounted on a third Kuka robot in sync with the other two. The result is a mind-blowing experience that takes CG into the real world. Flat walls transform in to 3D cubes, objects levitate and teleport -- it's magic. In fact, it's even more impressive in person. The company believes that "this methodology has tremendous potential to radically transform theatrical presentations". We briefly talked with Tarik Abdel-Gawad, Creative & Technical Director and Bradley G Munkowitz, Design Director (of Tron fame) about the technology behind the performance. The project uses two IRIS and one SCOUT robotic motion control platforms (based on Kuka robots) plus two powerful high-resolution projectors. Bot & Dolly's in-house software, which integrates with Autodesk's Maya, is used to synchronize and control the performance. As such, the work serves "as both an artistic statement and technical demonstration." See the video for yourself after the break.
Live from the Engadget CES Stage: an interview with Texas Instruments' Frank Moizio (update: video embedded)
Love tiny projectors? Boy have we got the conversation for you! We'll be speaking with Texas Instruments business manager, DLP Pico Projection, Frank Moizio, who will be showing off new devices featuring the technology and discussing the company's new architecture and the outlook for pico projectors in the future. January 9, 2013 12:30 PM EST Check out our full CES 2013 stage schedule here! Update: video embedded
Samsung estimates $8.3 billion in profits for Q4, brags about phone sales
What's the lion's share look like in sales numbers? About 500 handsets a minute, according to Samsung. The Korean hardware giant flaunted the sales estimate in its Q4 investors guidance, where it says it expects to see $8.3 billion in profits when the official earnings report drops later this month. That's just shy of double what it reported over the same period in 2011. Sammy contributes the growth to a plentiful supply of regional variants of handsets like the Galaxy S III and Note II, as well as high demand for its display technology. The streak may not keep forever though, according to Reuters, analysts are predicting a first quarter slump without a new Galaxy S phone for the spring. We'll have to wait for the full earnings release to see how things pan out, but it doesn't look like the firm will be hurting for cash any time soon.
Samsung makes $7.4 billion in Q3 profits, surpasses expectations
Samsung set the bar a little lower than the final mark when it told investors its expectations earlier this month, posting $7.4 billion in operating profits for Q3 and $5.97 billion in net income. This handily bests the $7.28 billion profit it told investors to expect, nearly doubling what it made over the same period last year. Why the jump? You can blame the Galaxy S III, which increased shipments "significantly due to global expansion," the company says. Indeed, smartphone sales are credited to Sammy's quarter over quarter leap in revenue. Consumer electronics sales also boosted profits a fair deal, achieving "industry leading profitability" in the TV market, according to Samsung, who cited growth both in the consumer space, and in the sales of OLED panels for televisions, tablets and high-end smartphones. The company's semiconductor sales, on the other hand, dropped by eight-percent in the face of weak PC demands. Samsung expects demand for PC DRAM and other high value-added chip products to remain weak, but optimistically notes that the sector is still profitable, and may pick up as new devices come to market. Got the basics? Great -- dive into the details and charts at the source link below, or read on for Sammy's official Q3 press release.
