Month: March 2016

It's not a Rebel ship, swear!

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LOS ANGELES—Up until this week, the space-exploration video game No Man’s Sky has existed mostly as a promise of infinite possibility. Years of teaser videos and excitable ramblings from lead designer Sean Murray have hinted at a game that looks beautiful and seems incredibly big—but which might not add up as a game. You get into a spaceship, and you fly from one procedurally generated planet to the next. And then… what?

On Tuesday, Murray and the rest of the Hello Games design team brought their game’s near-final build to a trippy Los Angeles studio space, intent on answering that very question. They were forthcoming with more gameplay and more details than ever before—including the announcement of a June 21st release date on both PlayStation 4 and Windows PCs—and they even handed controllers to us to explore the game however we saw fit.

Yet while our combined hour of chaperoned demos and free-to-roam gameplay was illustrative, it was also frustratingly distant. The more we learn about this game, the more questions we have.

Sure, roller coasters are fun and all. Visually, though, looking around at the sky and the track and the back of other passengers' heads and the massive amusement park parking lot can be a bit dull. Samsung and Six Flags Entertainment are teaming up to try to fix this apparent problem, equipping roller coasters at nine North American parks with Gear VR headsets that will sync their virtual worlds to the usual thrill ride movements.

This seems like a best-of-both worlds solution to the sometimes sickening disconnect between apparent virtual-world motion and real-world motion in seated VR experiences. By timing a pre-planned VR experience precisely to the predictable dips, turns, and loops of a roller coaster, passengers' bodies will actually feel the same movements that they're seeing in the 360° virtual world flying by on their headset screens. It certainly sounds like a step up from the usual theme park "simulator" rides, which simply tilt and bounce the cabin to fool the body into the sensation of screen-matching movement.

The revamped coasters also seem like a smart way for a massive chain like Six Flags to use its size and space to build onto consumer-grade VR, creating an experience that even early adopting users can't recreate at home. They're not the only ones with the same kind of idea; outfits like VRcade in Seattle are working to build arena-sized virtual playspaces, with untethered headsets and real-world barriers that correspond to the virtual environment.

(credit: Amazon)

Amazon wants its voice assistant Alexa to be a major part of your entire home. The company just launched a new product that makes this setup easier to achieve: Amazon's Echo Dot is a miniature version of the original Echo with nearly identical features but a smaller speaker so you can connect it to your preferred audio system.

The device looks like a shrunken Echo, as it's a short, cylindrical gadget with that characteristic blue ring around the top. If you're not familiar with Echo, that ring shows you that Alexa is always listening, so you can ask it questions from across the room and Alexa will answer. Just like the original Echo, you can ask Dot to do things like check the weather, summon Uber, control smart devices around your home, and play music.

Music is the key to Dot. The original Echo has fairly powerful speakers, making it sufficient for listening to music in any room you decide to place it in. But Amazon didn't make the Echo with the best speakers in the world—the company created Dot so you can connect your favorite speakers or audio system to it via an included audio cable or Bluetooth. This lets you control your preferred speakers using Dot by commanding it to play music from places like iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify, and others.

Several years ago, Ars looked at the role of neuroscience in crime. Since then, the scientific community has continued to learn about how brain abnormalities or dysfunctions can affect reasoning and behavioral traits, and certain gene variants like monoamine oxidase have been linked to violent behavior.

But correlation isn't the same as causation, and many of those correlations fall well short of 100 percent linkage. So, while biologically reductionist arguments like "my brain made me do it" can be appealing, scientists know that in the real world things are a lot more complex.

Nevertheless, neuroscience is increasingly being used as evidence in the criminal justice system. Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, has now conducted a systematic study of how neuroscience ends up being used in the courthouse.

You might think the Volkswagen group would be wise to keep a low profile at the moment, in the wake of the devastating diesel engine emissions scandal that has yet to play out to its conclusion. But no, the news from the Geneva motor show is dominated by VW group in the shape of its new hypercar, the Bugatti Chiron.

The replacement for the remarkable but frankly absurd Veyron is all the more remarkable, not least for managing to get built at all in a time when VW has pledged to restrict itself to essential, core activities. It’s remarkable, too, in that it takes virtually every Veyron metric and bests it.

The Bugatti Chiron

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Bugatti Chiron

The Chiron is (slightly) longer and wider, significantly taller, and about 150kg heavier than the Veyron, despite weight-saving measures including the use of a full carbon composite structure, a carbon intake manifold and engine cover, titanium brake callipers, and a titanium exhaust system.