Space junkies vr: Space Junkies Reviews — OpenCritic

Przed premierą uruchomionych zostanie kilka faz testowych, w tym otwarta beta na wszystkich platformach. Gracze mogą się zarejestrować do udziału w testach zamkniętych, pod adresem: https://betasignup.ubisoft.com/sjreg/LogIn.

Gracze, którzy chcieliby zagrać w  Space Junkies  przed oficjalną detaliczną premierą, mogą zagrać już w pełną wersję gry  Space Junkies Arcade , która jest dedykowana dla automatów i dostępna w ponad stu salonach gier VR na całym świecie. Przed premiere, 19lutego, odbędzie się też zorganizowany przez Virtual Athletics League międzynarodowy turniej, przygotowany przy współpracy Ubisoft, Springboard VR i HP. Najlepsze drużyny z uczestniczących salonów gier będą rywalizować o pulę 4500$ w gotówce i nagrodach. Więcej informacji o Space Junkies Arcade i uczestnictwie w turnieju znaleźć można pod adresem valvr.com/space-junkies-international-tournament.

90,000 space flights, virtual reality and Yosemite — Teletype

The last day in San Francisco was the most intense and amazing. I visited the NASA base, saw how satellites are made, went to Google’s secret laboratory, where they test new virtual reality helmets, visited the Twitter and Airbnb offices, and even managed to get to Yosemite Park and watch the sunset there! And all this in one day! It’s a very fulfilling journey. I envy myself.

01. Moffett Federal Airfield, owned by NASA. Aircraft appear here infrequently — mostly military planes and police helicopters, but for some time now also business jets from Google management. US Air Force 1 also comes here when the President wants to visit the San Francisco Bay Area. For example, Bush Sr. flew here.

02. Engines are tested here.

03. This gigantic hangar is called «Hangar No. 1» and is considered an example of mid-century modern architecture. It was built in 191930s as a boathouse for the reconnaissance airship USS Macon, which also served as an «aircraft carrier» (could carry biplanes). The airship was one of the two largest airships in the world filled with helium, so the hangar also turned out to be huge — 345 meters long, 94 wide and 60 high.

In November 2014, NASA signed an agreement with Google’s subsidiary Planetary Ventures to lease Moffett Federal Airfield for 60 years. The agency itself plans to save on airfield maintenance due to this, and at the same time receive $ 1.16 billion a year in rent.

04. The agreement provides for the restoration and preservation of Hangar No. 1, which is one of the main attractions of Silicon Valley. The same applies to hangars No. 2 and No. 3. In addition, Planetary Ventures committed to creating an educational institution where people can learn about the heritage of the airfield and the role of technology in the history of the valley.

05. Since 2012, the hangar has been standing without external panels, but it is still regularly used. Now various scientific conferences and parties are held here, for example, the Science Awards are held here, which attracts the entire scientific elite.

06. Half of the NASA base will now be hosted by Google for at least 60 years, or rather the semi-secret division of Google X, which is engaged in promising developments: builds satellites, develops artificial intelligence, recently bought Boston Dynamics, which develops robots. All these units are now being transferred to San Francisco.

07. In the meantime, various aircraft and other equipment are scattered around the NASA base. The NASA Research Park incubator works here: they give you the territory for a pittance by local standards, but you must represent a high-tech business.

08. Aquila Space startup works in one of the small hangars (in fact, it’s just a garage). These are 17 people who are engaged in the production and maintenance of small spacecraft, designed mainly for remote sensing of the Earth.

09. The project is only six months old.

10. He develops the Corvus-BC satellites.

11. The body of the new satellite: 3 holes for cameras and one for the transmitter. The body is made of aluminium.

12. The satellite is equipped with smart solar panels.

13. Cameras will be here

14. Transmitter

15. This is a model of the first satellite, two of which are currently orbiting the Earth. The next, as promised, will be equipped with solar panels of the new generation. The cost of one such satellite is only 1 million dollars, although usually the cost of a spacecraft starts from $100 million, and the current analogues of this satellite generally cost $800 million. The screen shows where the two satellites launched into space are now flying.

17. Receiving antenna. This is where satellite data comes in. As you have already noticed, the satellites are equipped with a camera and a transmitter. To put it simply, they fly around the Earth and send photos to the data center (they can take pictures in different spectral ranges). The constellation of satellites launched by Aquila Space is expected to take pictures of the Earth every day at a resolution of 20 meters per pixel, with the pictures coming in real time. They will be of great benefit to meteorologists, rescue services, police and so on. With their help, you can engage in agricultural and urban planning, monitor changes in water resources and predict natural disasters.

18. Singularity University is part university, part business incubator. His goal is to solve the urgent problems of our time and accelerate the development of mankind.

19. It attracts students and entrepreneurs from all over the world interested in topics such as biotechnology, artificial intelligence, space, overcoming poverty and water scarcity, and so on. Since 2008, more than 100 innovative startups have been born within the walls of the university.

20.

21.

Impression of the day — HTC Vive virtual reality glasses. Listen, this is something incredible. That’s where the future is! You put on glasses, put on headphones — the computer tracks your movement around the room. You can crouch, walk around the 3D world, and it’s all so real that it’s hard to believe that you’re in a small room in the Google test lab.

You can walk around 3D cities in Google Earth, you can fly in space, you can walk in mountains, you can paint with virtual brushes right in the air, and it all feels 100% real.

22. I met with Andrey Doronichev, he works with Google in virtual reality. By the way, you are probably familiar with his developments. It was he who came up with the mobile app for YouTube. It is he who is one of the authors of Google Cardboard glasses, which allow you to make a budget virtual reality helmet based on a smartphone.

23. By 2013, it became clear that smartphones had already become quite commonplace, and Andrey decided to look for some more interesting direction. He was attracted to virtual reality. He got acquainted with the Oculus project and started developing budget virtual reality glasses Google Cardboard. The first Cardboard was basically a joke. Andrey and his team created the entire project in literally 8 weeks, but when they presented it, «everything exploded,» as he says.

Over a million copies of these glasses have already been made. The team made the design open, that is, anyone can produce such glasses. Cardboard has become a very simple and cheap way to introduce everyone to virtual reality.

After the success of Cardboard, Google has taken VR seriously. Andrei explains that even at the dawn of cinema, work began on immersing the viewer in the process: first there was a black and white picture, then sound, then a color picture, then IMAX, 3D, and so on. And virtual reality makes your experience more natural, because it completely deceives your brain.

24. Now the second version of Cardboard has already appeared, which is not yet sold anywhere. It differs from the first one in that it is easier to assemble, and it has a much larger lens. In the future, the box should be replaced by ordinary glasses that will project the image directly onto the retina.

The operation of the device is simple: you download the Cardboard VR application to your smartphone, insert it into the box, and you can use it. With Cardboard, you can travel the world through Google Earth, watch videos «on the big screen», visit museums, viewing art from any angle, study panoramas taken with the camera of your own smartphone, and so on.

In addition to the glasses, the team came up with the Jump stereoscopic camera, which is an array of 16 GoPro cameras arranged in a circle. But special software glues the image from the cameras using virtual reality images.

Another project is Expeditions, which syncs images from a group of Cardboard devices. With it, you can, for example, organize school trips to other countries.

25. Bicycles of Google employees near the cafeteria)

26. Let’s move on!

27. There is a severe drought in California, and many water bodies have dried up. Here you can clearly see how the water level dropped.

28. About half of the state is now experiencing «exceptional drought.» Local media are panicking, saying that if this continues, local cities will become empty, and people will leave to live in other states or even in Mexico in search of better conditions.

29. Fountains have been turned off in many cities and lawns have been watered.

30. Traveling in a Volvo V60 Cross Country.

31. There have always been Volvos in my family. I myself drive (very rarely) a C30, my wife a S60. Progress does not stand still. The V60 Cross Country has a bunch of useful bells and whistles. For example, the cruise control itself keeps a distance, and the high beam automatically turns off at night when an oncoming car is driving. If you travel long distances, it is incredibly convenient.

32. Sunset in Yosemite Park.

33.

34. Yosemite is interesting because this area was originally created as a national park. This is an entire ecosystem that is not torn apart by interspersed human settlements, large highways or other obstacles.

35.

36. The park appeared in the middle of the 19th century thanks to tourists: the authorities quickly realized that they could earn money from the wild. After the opening of the Transcontinental Railroad, there were even more tourists, and in 1890 Yosemite Valley and its environs received the status of a national park. Now the park has amazing biodiversity due to the fact that the territory has not been affected by human activity for many years.

37.

38.

39. Tomorrow we will continue.

Traveling in the USA:
Day 1: New York, almost like Ufa
Day 2: New York, many faces
Day 3: New York that you have never seen
Day 4: New York, our in the city
Day 5: New York, time to go
Day 6: Arlington, the best city in the USA
Day 7: Walking around Washington DC
Day 8: Detroit, dead city
Day 9: Bad Detroit
Day 10: Chicago: mine favorite city USA
Day 11: Chicago yellow-black
Day 11: Good Detroit
Day 12: San Francisco: gays, programmers, trams and drug addicts
Day 13: San Francisco — a paradise for programmers
Day 14: San Francisco: Stanford and a little …
Day 15: San Francisco: my very own beautiful post

Sponsor Corner

The HotelTonight app helped me find a hotel in San Francisco.