Valkyrie
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IHMC's Atlas robot can navigate its own way through tight spaces
Some of the biggest challenges for machines are tasks that are simple for humans. From mathematical puzzles like the famous traveling salesman problem to combining inputs from various senses, there are many functions that us dumb humans excel at but robots or AI struggle with. But robots are catching up at last, judging by this new video of the humanoid robot Atlas.
NASA's $1 million robotics contest will prep Valkyrie for Mars
NASA has formally opened registration for its Space Robotics Challenge, and to win a cut of the $1 million prize purse, researchers have to help prep Valkyrie for Mars. Also known as Robonaut 5 (R5), Valkyrie is the six-foot-tall, 290-pound humanoid robot the agency developed for deep space missions. It could be sent ahead of astronauts to prepare their habitats and make sure their final destination is safe to live in, or even to places too harsh for the human body. Participating teams will have to program a virtual R5 to complete a series of tasks that the robot will likely have to deal with after a dust storm wreaks havoc on Mars.
This is how Oculus will sell VR to the masses
By Nathan Ingraham and Aaron SouppourisA big question has followed Oculus around since its Rift unveil back in June: How will it persuade the public that virtual reality is ready for primetime? Today we have the answer: Oculus VR has announced that Eve: Valkyrie, CCP's multiplayer dogfighting shooter, will be a pack-in with every pre-order of its upcoming VR headset when it launches in early 2016.
ICYMI: Robotic cats, Kickstarter fails and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-54028{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-54028, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-54028{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-54028").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: In today's cautionary tale, the recordbreaking drone company Zano Drone is going belly-up after shipping only 100 of the roughly 15,000 drones ordered. Hasbro's latest foray into robotics has us all shouting from the tallest meowtain, because they've launched companion cats that purr and meow and are generally fantastic. NASA's latest robot is less cuddly but perhaps has more scientific importance: The humanoid Valkyrie, weighing in at 210 pounds, will be shipped to US colleges where AI students will develop programs for NASA's upcoming Space Robotics Challenge.
NASA sends its Valkyrie humanoid robots to college
NASA wants to send its 6-foot-tall, 290-pound humanoid robot R5 (which also goes by the more intimidating name "Valkyrie") to Mars and other extraterrestrial locations. The agency originally designed the R5 for search-and-rescue missions, though, so to prepare the machine for a future of exploration in harsh environments, it's sending two units to college. One will go to MIT, specifically to the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and the other to Northeastern University in Boston. The institutions were chosen from among the groups that joined DARPA's Robotics Challenge, and each will receive $250,000 per year for two years to finance their research.
PlanetSide 2 reveals its newest vehicle, the Valkyrie
SOE has today revealed the Valkyrie, the first new vehicle added to PlanetSide 2 since last year. What's the Valkyrie? Packed with a front-facing turret for up-close-and-personal air support, the Valkyrie is a fast-attack gunship that serves as a nimble transport for up to six soldiers (pilot, forward gunner and four rumble seat passengers). Whether it is flying over the dense swamplands of Hossin or through the narrow canyons of Indar, this fast-moving versatile aircraft is sure to change the war on Auraxis. In the making-of video below, Senior Art Director Tramell Isaac explains the process by which the developers conceptualize and then "jazz up" ship models.
Prototype NASA robot will burrow through sheets of alien ice
When it came to life on Mars, NASA might have struck out, but it's got a good feeling about Europa. The agency is working on a probe designed to scan its vast oceans for signs of alien life, but there's a problem, namely the thick layer of ice that covers the moon's surface. That's where VALKYRIE comes in, a torpedo-shaped robot that'll suck up water, warm it and fire it back into the ice to quickly and easily drill through the layer. Once the hardware reaches its destination, it'll release a swarm of smaller 'bots that'll map the geography and hunt for alien microbes. There's still a few issues to work out with the gear, like the fact that it can't properly change course while tunneling, which would be pretty essential if it were to come across a rock or other blockage. Then again, given that we won't be ready to launch a mission to Jupiter's moon until the early 2020's, NASA's got some time to fix the problems.
CCP aiming 'to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life'
CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson closed this year's GameHorizon conference with a 30-minute talk focused around EVE Online's history and its future. Petursson starts at the very beginning with CCP's 1997 founding and carries it through the present day in which the firm employs 400 people at studios ranging from Reykjavik to Shanghai to San Francisco to Atlanta. He doesn't shy away from what he refers to as the company's "turbulent times," but he also says that CCP's mission -- "to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life" -- will continue well into the future. You can watch the full presentation after the cut.
E3 2014: Hands-on with EVE Valkyrie and a chat about Legion
Why does the guy who gets motion sickness keep getting sent out into space!? Someone on Massively's staff is really looking out for you guys and gals with weak stomachs because once again I was sent to chat with CCP about EVE universe stuff and take an Oculus Rift for a spin at this year's E3. Spoiler alert: I managed to keep down my breakfast and have fun. First up was EVE Valkyrie, the virtual reality game that this time last year was still known as EVR. While the game looked a bit familiar, there were certainly some differences. First is the addition of Rán (it sounds like "roun"). Rán is sort of the first Valkyrie and your trainer, acting as sort of your flight instructor and mission debriefer, who helped give me a sense of setting. EVR was fun before, no doubt, but it was a stripped-down flight simulator (not a bad thing). Having a narrator makes it feel more like a game. The addition of some brighter and bolder colors helps boost immersion too.
E3 2014: EVE: Valkyrie gameplay trailer brings war to the stars
EVE: Valkyrie may still be in the pre-alpha stage, but that doesn't mean that CCP came to E3 empty-handed this year. On the contrary, the studio delivered a gameplay trailer with a couple minutes of in-game footage from the VR space dogfighting sim. In it, you can see combat between fighters as they use missiles and cannons to engage in aggressive diplomacy. The camera's constant tilting illustrates how the Oculus Rift headset will offer the player an unrestrained field of view during the experience. Check it out after the break and let us know what you think!
EVE Evolved: Growing the EVE Universe
For much of EVE Online's early history, the playerbase saw consistent organic growth with no end in sight and developer CCP Games was able to stay laser-focused on its single game. The EVE universe has even had to grow several times to accomodate the increase in players, most notably with the opening of the drone nullsec regions and Apocrypha's addition of 2,499 hidden wormhole systems. EVE has survived the launch of countless high-profile MMOs in its lifetime and even weathered the monumental industry shift toward free-to-play business models, but it hasn't been plain sailing. While subscriptions have reportedly grown year-on-year, EVE's average concurrent player numbers haven't really increased since 2009. The active EVE playerbase isn't really growing, so it should come as no surprise that CCP has been trying to expand the EVE universe on other fronts. Though the first attempt with console FPS DUST 514 was an unmitigated disaster, EVE players still seem quietly optimistic about its PC reboot as EVE: Legion. Dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie has also piqued the interest of the emerging virtual reality community and has the potential to introduce EVE to thousands of fresh faces. EVE's Creative Director Torfi Frans Olafsson even hinted during Fanfest 2014 that EVE Online, Valkyrie and Legion might all share a single login and that characters may eventually be able to switch between games at will. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at why I think a shared login could be a stroke a genius, and interview EVE's Creative Director and Valkyrie's Executive Producer to find out what the future holds for the EVE universe.
EVE Evolved: Eleven years of EVE Online
It seems that every year another few MMOs have closed their doors or convert to free-to-play business models to stay afloat. EVE Online has always enjoyed a level of insulation from these market trends elsewhere in the genre, and just last week on May 6th it celebrated its 11th year of year-on-year subscription growth. Following on from my previous column celebrating the EVE Evolved column's sixth year of operation, this week I'll be summarising all the major EVE news stories throughout the year. It's been a big year for EVE fans, one that many of us can be proud to have been a part of. The EVE community turned its financial wizardry toward the real world and raised over $190,000 US in relief aid following a typhoon hitting the Philippines, and CCP even built a monument dedicated to the community. Several massive player battles once again put EVE on the global media's radars, and the Odyssey and Rubicon expansions revitalised the game for explorers and PvPers alike. But not everyone can hold his heads up high this year, with details of more cyberbullying within EVE coming to light and several players being banned for defacing the EVE monument in Reykjavik. In this anniversary retrospective, I summarise all the major EVE news from the year in one place and take a look at what the future may hold for the EVE universe.
Massively's hands-on with EVE Valkyrie on the Oculus Rift DK2
At last year's EVE Fanfest, the press and attendees got a rare glimpse into something other than CCP's major IPs -- a virtual reality tech demo produced by a handful of developers during their down time. Originally codenamed EVR, this VR dogfighter on the original Oculus Rift development kit drew a surprising amount of attention and went on to win several awards at E3. It's now been a year since that project first sprouted legs, and last week at EVE Fanfest 2014 it sprouted wings as well. Now named EVE Valkyrie, what started as a side-project has become one of CCP's key intellectual properties and the poster-child for virtual reality gaming. The game's success now ultimately relies on the adoption of VR tech and the appeal of its gameplay, both of which are still open questions at this point. I got some hands-on time with the latest build of Valkyrie during Fanfest to see how the game and the technology that powers it have come along in the past year, and I was pleasantly surprised. Read on to find out how Valkyrie has changed in the past year and for a first look at the new Oculus Rift Development Kit 2.
Stick and Rudder: How Star Citizen is turning the game industry on its ear
When this column began, the first thing I talked about was Star Citizen's then-unique development model and how important it was both for fans and the game industry as a whole. Over a year later, the jury's still out on whether or not Cloud Imperium's opus will bring balance to the Force and give starving hardcores a home of their own. It's already safe to say that Star Citizen has turned the industry on its ear, though.
EVE Fanfest 2014: EVE Valkyrie demos gameplay, features Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff
Moments ago at EVE Fanfest 2014 in Reykjavik, Iceland, developer CCP Games revealed some exciting developments for its upcoming virtual reality dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie. Among the announcements was the revelation that actress Katee Sackhoff (of Battlestar Galactica fame) will be starring as the voice of Valkyrie faction leader Ran. The Valkyrie faction is a breakaway sect of EVE Online's Guristas pirates that has become a mercenary outfit, using cloning and genetic enhancements to get an edge on the other pirate factions of New Eden. Sackhoff's character will be handing out missions to players in the final game and barking orders in your ear throughout each mission. Read on for our the highlights of the Valkyrie demo and Sackhoff's video missive to players.
EVE Evolved: Six years of EVE Evolved
Six years ago to this exact day, I joined the Massively crew and published the first edition of this column dedicated to the ins and outs of EVE Online. The column has been home to over 300 featured articles since its creation, offering everything from guides and expansion reveals to opinion pieces, fiction, and tales of real in-game events. It's been my pleasure in the past six years to offer the Massively readers a digestible glimpse into the ordinarily somewhat impenetrable world of EVE Online and to introduce new players to the only game (other than Master of Orion II) that's managed to keep me hooked for over a decade. It's been a fantastic year to be a fan of EVE Online, with CCP announcing its long-term vision for deep space colonisation and the game being revitalised through the Odyssey and Rubicon expansions. I've had the opportunity to explore both expansions in this column and to share some hands-on experience with DUST 514 and CCP's upcoming dogfighter EVE Valkyrie. There's been no shortage of opinion pieces this year either, with articles on everything from PvP consequences and twitch controls to whether Star Citizen and Elite are a threat to the sandbox giant. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I round up the best articles from the column's sixth year of operation in one place.
CCP's Valkyrie eyeing 'a really big transformation in how games are built and played'
Eurogamer recent talked to CCP chief marketing guru David Reid about the company's place at the forefront of the fledgling virtual reality movement. EVE Valkryie was the first title to be publicly played on both the Oculus Rift (PC) and Sony's Morpheus (PS4), which puts CCP in the driver's seat in terms of VR game development. "There aren't a lot of white papers and APIs and ways of doing these things yet," Reid explained. "We want to be a flagship game. We're on the cusp, potentially, of a really big transformation in how games are built and played, but we have to do our part to make sure that's worthwhile for everybody." Reid also talks up Valkryie's connection to the economies in DUST 514 and EVE Online as well as its "rock/scissors/paper" game mechanics. "As I go into a battle and I earn skill points and I earn currency, I can translate those to having the capabilities to fly bigger, better different ships and can kit them differently," Reid says. "It's a fundamental mechanic of the EVE universe, in EVE Online and in DUST, and it'll be coming to Valkyrie as well."
CCP still 'excited for friends and colleagues at Oculus'
News of the Oculus-Facebook buyout may have saddened gamers -- including Minecraft maestro Markus "Notch" Persson -- but EVE Online developer CCP is taking the corporate high road. The company, which is polishing a virtual reality action title called EVE: Valkyrie that will be co-published by Oculus, put a positive spin on the future of the Rift without mentioning the $2 billion Facebook acquisition. "We're very excited for our friends and colleagues at Oculus," CCP told Engadget. "We share their vision about the future of VR and gaming and are looking forward to participating in the consumer launch of the Oculus Rift with Eve: Valkyrie." CCP announced at last week's GDC that Valkyrie will also appear on the PlayStation 4 in conjunction with Sony's Project Morpheus initiative.
CCP: EVE Valkyrie is at the forefront of the VR 'movement'
CCP is convinced that virtual reality is around to stay, which is why the studio is pouring its efforts into EVE Valkryie for Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus. In an interview with VG247, Chief Marketing Officer David Reid said that CCP's involvement is a signal that VR is coming back in a big way: "This is just great for virtual reality. It convinces all of us developers that this thing is really going to happen. That it isn't just a fad or a flash in the pan or just one company trying -– it is now a movement. When you have one of the foundational companies of the video game industry getting into this, it really has accelerated the chances of this becoming a very big deal." Reid said that CCP is showing that it is focused on "things that matter to gamers" by pursuing EVE Valkyrie. "We said a vision statement a couple years ago that we want to be a developer that created virtual worlds more meaningful than real life," he said.
PlanetSide 2 video reveals the Valkyrie
SOE Creative Director Matt Higby and his dreamy blue eyes are at the forefront of a new preview video for PlanetSide 2, running down the upcoming features as well as an exclusive look at the Valkyrie aircraft. Higby said that in April, the team will be doing a "large-scale balance pass" and bringing in the missions and implant systems. May will see a Combat Medic update, improvements to outfits, and a resource revamp. The video concludes with a sneak peek of the Valkyrie fast-attack aircraft that will allow a small squad of four to quickly hop from fight to fight. This vehicle will be coming out in the summer, and you can check it out after the break! [Thanks to BabaGraPL for the tip!]
