hammerhead
Latest
Razer reveals Hammerhead Pro earbuds with ANC and THX audio
Razer's latest true wireless earbuds offer active noise cancellation and THX-certified audio for $200.
Razer's Pikachu wireless earbuds are stored in a Poké Ball
These earbuds are the cutest, like no one ever was.
Razer's first true wireless earbuds include a low-lag gaming mode
Razer couldn't resist hopping on the true wireless earbud bandwagon, and it's unsurprisingly putting a gaming spin on its offering. The company's newly unveiled Hammerhead True Wireless earbuds will look very familiar between the stem-equipped buds and battery charging case, but they promise to kill much of the lag you sometimes see with Bluetooth audio -- important when you're playing games or watching videos. The Hammerhead uses a "customized" Bluetooth 5.0 link that even includes a gaming mode with latency as low as 60ms. That's not "lag-free," as Razer claimed, but it shouldn't be jarring.
Big Data VR app allows researchers to 'browse' genomes
Earlier this year, Epic Games (the folks that made the Unreal Engine) held a $20,000 competition that challenged VR companies to create programs that could help users better tackle the valuable, albeit unwieldy, figures in Big Data sets. For its entry into "The Big Data VR Challenge" Hammerhead VR submitted The Genome Browser, a virtualization that will allow researchers to, quite literally, browse through an organism's genome and access a library of data (generated by the Wellcome Sanger Institute) at each gene.
Hammerhead LED-based bike navigation keeps you on the righteous paths (video)
Developer Hammerhead Navigation thinks it has the solution to safer cycling: LEDs. It created a bike-mounted tool that does everything with its flashing diodes: turn-by-turn navigation, suggests crowd sourced-paths (via Strava and MapMyRide) and will even point you to the nearest Citibike exchange. The unit pairs with your iPhone or Android's GPS to help find invisible bike trails through your city, and supposedly it can function without a data connection -- perfect if you're a desert cyclist. A $75 pledge ($70 if you act fast) will get you one gizmo, or a $140 promise will get you two. You like to spoil your riding buddy now and again, don't you?
Pure Luxury takes DARWINmachine's Hammerhead PC, adds primo parts and lifetime warranty
Does this badass gaming rig look familiar? It should -- it's basically a DARWINmachine Hammerhead HMR989 with some sweet, sweet cherries on top. In an attempt to live up to its name, Pure Luxury's pimped it out with an Intel Core i7-990X processor, 12GB of pricey Kingston RAM, two NVIDIA GTX 580 graphics cards, two 128GB SSDs, 2TB of magnetic storage, and a Blu-ray drive for good measure. The company claims the killer combo can boot in four seconds, and run Call of Duty: Black Ops at 1920 x 1200 resolution with 8xMSAA at 285fps. All of those components plug into an ASUS Rampage III Gene motherboard and a 1.2 kilowatt modular power supply to juice the blood-red monster machine, and there's a lifetime warranty with 24/7 phone support. Should any of those expensive parts fail, Pure Luxury says it'll replace them with equal or better performing components and foot the shipping bill too. Of course, all this luxury doesn't come cheap -- you'll drop $9,500 before you see one of these puppies shipped to your house. Makes the original $2,900 Hammerhead look downright affordable, no? %Gallery-118728%
DARWINmachine Hammerhead HMR989 gaming rig looks ferocious, can attack your desk for $2,900
The giant PC gaming rigs of the last decade are so passé. Hot this year are sleeker, more cut models, models like the DARWINmachine Hammerhead HMR989. It looks like a crazy casemod but it's actually a custom-built rig you can order, priced at $2,899 and sporting a vertically mounted NVIDIA GTX460 graphics accelerator, a 2.8Ghz Core i7-860 processor, a combination of SSD and platter-based storage, and a power supply left hanging on the side. It's all aluminum and resin sheets and lovely, though we could probably do without the blue LEDs. %Gallery-114947%
New Mass Effect 2 DLC 'Overlord' welcomed in June
Overlord, the next content expansion for Mass Effect 2, was apparently revealed yesterday at Electronic Arts' European showcase event in London. According to Gamerzines, ME2 director Casey Hudson described the DLC as "five levels set across one story on one planet," with players battling through a laboratory (and occasionally piloting the Hammerhead tank) to defeat an artificial intelligence. There is currently no price nor official release date. Hudson also announced that no new squad mates would be added in the DLC, nor would there be in any future DLC. We'll be sure to update as soon as EA makes a formal announcement with more details. Update: The official Mass Effect 2 website has posted a more detailed description of the scenario (reproduced after the break), along with the price: 560 MS/BioWare points ($7). [Via VG247]
Mass Effect 2 'Firewalker' DLC coming March 23
Commander Shepard can pick up the keys to the Hammerhead hover tank on March 23, the official release date of the Firewalker pack. The new wheels, er, propulsion things are the latest piece of free Mass Effect 2 DLC. Available through the game's Cerberus Network, the pack includes five missions that utilize the new vehicle -- which will hopefully handle a little better than the first game's infamous space car. (Of course, a drunk krogan successfully engineering a geth self-destruct algorithm was more likely to yield success than the Mako's control system ... ) %Gallery-70022%
Mass Effect 2's 'Hammerhead' vehicle demoed on GameTrailers TV
We know that some of you are less than excited about the return of vehicular gameplay to the Mass Effect franchise -- we still have vivid nightmares about our time behind the wheel of the Mako from the original game. However, your position will probably be reversed by last night's episode of GameTrailers TV, which showed off the Hammerhead vehicle which will arrive in the upcoming "Firewalker" DLC for Mass Effect 2. It is, in a word, rad. In two words? Totally rad. Check out Chapter Four of the episode to see the Normandy SR-2 crew's new toy in action.
Mass Effect 2 'Firewalker' DLC coming late March, includes Hammerhead vehicle and 5 missions
BioWare has detailed another dose of Mass Effect 2 DLC, dubbed the "Firewalker" pack. The upcoming release includes five missions featuring the Hammerhead vehicle, according to an update on the Cerberus Network page, part of the official Mass Effect site. BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk described the Hammerhead as a "hover tank," during a recent interview with Joystiq, adding, "It's not a wheeled vehicle, so it's going to have a bit of a different control scheme" than did the much-maligned Mako vehicle featured constantly in Mass Effect 1. On the website, the Hammerhead is promoted as "a heavy assault vehicle that hovers over the battlefield at up to 120 kilometers per hour [75 mph] and features a guided missile system ensuring accuracy even during aggressive maneuvering." In other words, it's everything the Mako wasn't -- and it's optional. The Firewalker DLC pack is scheduled for a "late March" release and will be accessible free of charge through the Cerberus Network in-game delivery system. Of course, nothing's really "free" when it's got Cerberus' shady name attached to it, is it, Mr. Illusive Man? [Thanks Runyon C!]
WarCry interviews EVE Lead Designer Noah Ward about the CSM
EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management (CSM) is the title's first attempt at having elected representatives work with CCP Games on improving the game as well as the company's relations with its player base. The initial idea behind the CSM was that it would act as an oversight committee on behalf of the players, in the wake of the 'T20 incident' when a CCP developer unfairly provided a player corporation with certain resources. But this first CSM is largely tasked with improving the transparency of CCP's inner workings, while shaping the game to better fit the play styles of their constituency. The CSM has met online in recent weeks, and with mixed results, but they've now met in-person in Reykjavik, where they also had face-to-face time with the creators of EVE Online.Jordan Deam from WarCry interviewed EVE Online dev Noah Ward (aka CCP Hammerhead) about what this experiment in 'democratic community management' has yielded thus far, and what it may yet become. The interview focuses heavily on the dynamic between players wanting features added to the game and the undertaking necessary on CCP's part to make these changes a reality. Factional warfare has only just been realized in the game and was four years in the making. Ambulation, or 'Walking in Stations', is slated for a launch in the coming months, after three years of being in the pipeline, Ward said. Have a look at the WarCry interview, and decide for yourself if the CSM is living up to its potential, and if CCP is recapturing the transparency of a small, independent game company as it grows into a much larger entity.
HammerHead Tac-Strobe Flashlight: for police, military, and emergency raves
It's not every day you see a company lead off a product feature list with "Intrinsically Safe = No," but that's just what the folks at FoxFury have done with their new HammerHead Tac-Strobe Flashlight, and that just about makes it impossible for us to ignore. If that's not enough to sell you on it, however, you can rest assured that the flashlight also boasts a "highly stylized design," to say nothing of 320 lumens of brightness (or 4,019 candle power) and a "Turbo-Strobe" feature that promises to be "very disturbing" for anyone looking into the light. All that can be yours right now just under $300, with a weapon mount set to follow for an unspecified price in June.
EVE Trinity: Boost patch to bring balance to the EVE force
Once in a blue moon random EVE developers will brave the frontlines and answer cries in space. No preparation, no scriptwriters, nothing but the ums and ughs that lead Capsuleers to the path of enlightenment! These adventures are known as the Live Dev Blogs. This trip focuses around EVE Trinity's aftermath. Mindstar MC's the event, directing questions to Hammerhead, EVE's Lead Game Designer and Zulupark, whom holds a Game Designer a title. If you missed out on the live version CCP recorded it and has posted it on their website -- our heroes drone on for about an hour.I started transcribing the Live Dev Blog and then my brain exploded at around the second sentence. I quickly realized it was going take days, no years, to extract and present the information in type. Luckily, an EVE player by the name Jameroz is a better transcriptionist than I. If audio isn't your deal, you can read the text in full here. Jameroz is also accepting any ISK compensation since it took him all day to transcribe this. I listed the worthwhile points after the break if you don't want to slog through the audio or the full text.
