Month: September 2019

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  Two GoPro cameras were mounted in the Cessna 172 plane that I flew over the Seattle area. I had never flown a real plane before. I had only played the new Microsoft Flight Simulator for about an hour; that was my only training. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

RENTON, Wash.—This month's Microsoft Flight Simulator world-premiere reveal event, held at a hangar just outside Seattle, was designed for two types of people. The first is the plane enthusiast, the kind of person who purchases pricey equipment in order to recreate the experience of piloting aircraft. Members of the new game's lead development team, Asobo Studio, were on hand to speak about reviving the decades-old MSFS brand and the inherent scrutiny those fans will direct at any rebirth.

The second type is me, a person who has logged very little time in one of those pricey, realistic flight-sim cockpits, let alone flying a real plane. I didn't even grow up playing MSFS, Janes, or other classic flight-sim series. Nobody in my family held aviation in esteem. For all the notes I took at the event about rotational weather systems, drag coefficients, and friction models, I got the feeling Microsoft and Asobo wanted to bowl me over with something a bit more specific and literal with its new Microsoft Flight Simulator, slated to launch on Windows PCs in "2020."

My MSFS kiosk was set up with a pre-loaded virtual flight opportunity: to take off in a Cessna 172 from the Renton Municipal Airport, then simulate flight around the cities, forests, and valleys of the Seattle area. Hours later, I would do the exact same thing... in real life, in a real Cessna 172, as the pilot.

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  Your combatants in this Unmatched play through: martial arts legend Bruce Lee... [credit: Nathan Mattise ]

AUSTIN, Texas—It should have been obvious. But when I approached the Mondo Games rep at Fantastic Fest about playing a round of Unmatched—the recently released spin on deck battle board games—I quickly stood paralyzed by choice. Should I use the Jurassic Park raptors? What about Alice of Wonderland fame? Or maybe Robin Hood?

“You should definitely play Bruce Lee,” the rep suggested, directing me to a different board. And with that, our battle commenced: the greatest martial arts fighter of all time against… the mythical King Arthur? Huh?

When “deck battling” gets mentioned, most minds probably go to the classic collectible trading card games: Magic The Gathering, Pokémon, The Star Wars Customizable Card Game, The Star Trek Customizable Card Game, etc. These games developed cult followings for their combinations of complex strategy, varying play styles, and multi-faceted gameplay. But they also alienated other gamers because the process of acquiring cards could get expensive—and building a successful deck required significant thought and time.

Enlarge / It still has a notch! (credit: Samuel Axon)

Like the iPhone XR before it, the iPhone 11 is the default iPhone. It's priced where flagship phones used to be priced, and it offers almost all the same features as the expensive iPhone 11 Pro models that also launched this year.

Apple's iPhone lineup today is stacked with great phones at varying price points, though. So where does the iPhone 11 fit in?

That's what we'll be looking to answer in this review. And we're dubbing this a mini-review because we recently published an in-depth article on the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max, and last year we published a full review of the iPhone XR. This year's changes from the iPhone XR to the iPhone 11 are quite modest, so today we'll focus on how this phone is different from this year's flagships and its direct predecessor.

Enlarge / Nuclear rockets could be used to cut the travel time to Mars in half. (credit: NASA)

Just north of the Tennessee River near Huntsville, Alabama, there’s a six-story rocket test stand in a small clearing of loblolly pines. It’s here, in a secluded corner of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, that the US Army and NASA performed critical tests during the development of the Redstone rocket. In 1958, this rocket became the first to detonate a nuclear weapon; three years later, it carried the first American into space.

The tangled history of nukes and space is again resurfacing, just up the road from the Redstone test stand. This time NASA engineers want to create something deceptively simple: a rocket engine powered by nuclear fission.