Software : Best Google cardboard apps and games |
- Best Google cardboard apps and games
- A university in Sydney is turning scientists into Minority Report agents
- Explained: How to use Apple Maps with public transit directions
- How to disable Continuity call forwarding from an iPhone
| Best Google cardboard apps and games Posted:  HTC Vive vs Google Cardboard The best virtual reality tech we've seen is HTC's Vive, but it's going to be expensive, require a high-end PC, and won't be out until the end of the year at the earliest. Google Cardboard, meanwhile, is the worst virtual reality tech we've seen, but on the plus side, it's available right now, it's cheap to buy (and even cheaper to make), and requires nothing more than a recent smartphone to work. So, given that all you need is a bit of cardboard, some scissors and a spare morning to become the owner of a virtual reality headset, here is TechRadar's top 10 Google Cardboard apps you should try. Shadowgun VR Shadowgun wants to be the Android equivalent of Gears of War, and while it falls way short of the Xbox third-person shooter, it's still pretty decent. Shadowgun has popped up on pretty much all the major Android platforms, from smartphones and tablets to dedicated gaming devices like the Ouya and the Nvidia Shield. The VR version is really just a one-level tech demo, but it's still one of the most graphically impressive games available on portable VR. Think of it as a free demo for the (hopefully in development) full VR game. Free, Requires Bluetooth Controller Proton Pulse If you have an aversion to bright colours and thumping techno music, stay away from Proton Pulse. If, however, you spent a good chunk of your youth in nightclubs (or maybe still do), then you'll get a kick out of this psychedelic puzzle-action game. It's a bit like a 3D version of Pong or Breakout, but instead of using a controller, you simply look where you want the paddle to go. It's rough around the edges, but there's plenty of invention in the 50 levels, and the meagre price is helping to fund development of the highly promising VR shooter, Vanguard V. Virtual Real Porn An unwritten rule of the tech industry, apparently, is that any new format's success depends on the backing of the porn industry. While the major porn studios aren't yet jumping on virtual reality, the current trailblazer is a company called Virtual Real Porn, which has more than 60 videos available for Google Cardboard. There's no way that Virtual Real Porn will be picking up any AVN awards, but the studio has quite a diverse selection, some of which is actually way more female-friendly than traditional adult entertainment. If you're of legal age and have an open mind then it's worth checking out - we guarantee it's the one virtual reality experience your friends will actually want to hear about. €5.95 (Around £4.19, US$6.53, AU$8.83) (15-day trial) Jack White: THIRD-D Rock 'n' roll auteur Jack White is one of the names you'd expect to have a VR concert at this early stage, and as long as you like his music, you should check out his Google Cardboard app. It contains three songs from two different venues, and gives you the option to skip between them by tilting your head clockwise or counter-clockwise. The video quality isn't great, the audio quality isn't much better, and it can often be quite difficult to get a good glimpse at White on stage. However, it's a strong indication of how immersive watching music concerts in VR could one day be. YouTube There are plenty of video apps for Google Cardboard, but let's face it - YouTube is the main way people watch video content these days. Thankfully, Google has been quick to update its YouTube Android app to be Cardboard-compatible, with a small number of videos viewable in 360 degrees thanks to head tracking. There's not a lot of content available right now, but technological pioneer Björk is one of the early adopters with her video for Stonemilker. Avicii's Waiting For Love video is a little more visually interesting, however. Expect more 360-degree videos to keep coming and in the meantime keep an eye on this playlist. Chair In a Room It's clear that certain genres work better than others in VR -- the "sitting down in a spaceship" genre seemed to be a popular choice for early VR pioneers. But as more devices come out and more game makers create content for them, the horror genre is becoming extremely popular. Chair In a Room doesn't do anything that different from modern horror games like Outlast and Amnesia, where tension ramps up from unreliable flashlights and creepy sound effects. Yet the immersive effect of VR makes this game all the more chilling - it genuinely isn't for players of a nervous disposition. Free, Requires lenses VRSE It's still early days for Google Cardboard, which means there are lots of glitchy apps that lack polish. VRSE is different: it's a company set up by filmmaker Chris Milk, who has directed cool videos for musicians like Kanye West, Beck and Arcade Fire. VRSE's aim is to create a hub for storytellers who want to share content and explore the realms of VR. Current highlights include Milk's own Evolution of Verse short film and the poignant Clouds Over Sidra, a documentary about a 12-year-old girl who lived in a Syrian refugee camp for 18 months. InMind VR InMind VR is to Google Cardboard what Wii Sports was to the Wii - a game that anyone can pick up and play. You play as someone who has shrank in order to fix someone's body from the inside, a bit like in the movie Innerspace. Once inside the patient's brain, you fix broken neurons, which turn from red to green when you focus your sight on them. It's not a million miles away from the underappreciated Xbox 360 classic Child of Eden, only sadly without the trippy music and visuals. However, it's simple to pick up and play, completely free, and if you like it, you can support the developer's next game InCELL via in-app purchases. Village If there's one thing we've learned about virtual reality, it's that exploring virtual words is vastly more interesting than 2D ones. Village isn't a game, but it's a strong indication of how compelling it would be to have an Animal Crossing-like experience in VR. In this proof of concept, you walk through the streets of a cartoon village, observing farmers, animals and the environment. You can change the time of day and even the seasons, but that's about it. It's twee enough to be enjoyable though, if only for a limited amount of time. War of Words VR You've probably never thought about what it would be like to experience Siegfried Sassoon's controversial poem 'The Kiss' in virtual reality, but thankfully developer Burrell Durrant Hifle did. With the help of BBC Arts, Hifle's new game, War of Words, drops players into a battlefield during the First World War. Sassoon's poem references preparing a rifle for battle and bayoneting your enemy, both of which are visually represented in this VR experience. It's beautifully drawn in a stark style, but it's a shame there isn't more interactivity. If anything, it's probably the VR experience that will most appeal to your older relatives. |
| A university in Sydney is turning scientists into Minority Report agents Posted:  This week, the University of Technology Sydney released a new multimedia room called the Data Arena, to help researchers look at data in ways that haven't been possible before. Imagine standing in a perfectly circular ten-meter-wide room surrounded on all sides by four-meter-high projector screen walls with a closable screen-door, creating a seamless 360º viewing platform. Then add in six stereoscopic 3D projectors powered by a rig running nine high-quality Nvidia graphics cards and a 16 speaker surround sound system, and you might get an idea of what this 20K display looks like in real life.  Not a lonely VR experienceSprinkle on top a set of remotes that look like miniature molecular models and allow up to 20 people to interact with the display, and this Data Arena becomes as close as the real world gets to Minority Report or the Holodeck from Star Trek. The man behind the Data Arena's curtain, Ben Simons, was a former head of visual effects at Dr D Studios and worked on animated films like Happy Feet and Mad Max: Fury Road. So the fact that the Data Arena looks like a futuristic film set is partially understandable. But despite how impressive this multimedia cocoon looks, what is most interesting about the Data Arena is the open source software UTS built to run it. The life of numbers This software has been specifically designed to turn copious amounts of spreadsheet data - something that the scientific community has no shortage of – into larger than life interactive visual displays. To demonstrate, UTS has already let some of its researchers at it, including Cynthia Whitchurch, an associate professor of microbiology at UTS who studies the migration of mycobacteria. Whitchurch and other UTS researchers have been able to use the software to visualise the movement of bacteria across a flat surface, stating in a launch interview that, "The Data Arena has been able to provide us with a powerful visual tool that allows us to interact with our data in a way that we haven't yet been able to do." The screen is the showpiece for the open source application that the university intends to make available to researchers around the world through GitHub. This will allow users to run their own research through the 3D modelling software virtually on any computer. The limitations of the computer running the virtual machine software will, however, often only run a scaled back model of the data, meaning the Data Arena has a place as a more powerful tool for researchers to fully explore the parameters of the complete data models in real time. |
| Explained: How to use Apple Maps with public transit directions Posted:  Apple Maps has come a long way. Although its early reliability wasn't great, Apple has done a lot to bring the service up to speed, making it a pretty solid option now for use as your go-to mobile map. As with most of Apple's software it has good design, smooth performance, and relative ease of use, as well as Siri integration. However, there's one thing that it has yet to fully embrace: public transit info. This information is scheduled to be added with iOS 9, but there's actually no need to wait: you can make Apple maps work with public transit info right now. The trick to accessing public transit info via Apple Maps is to make it work in conjunction with other apps already installed on your iPhone. It's a built-in feature of Maps, but that functionality might not be obvious unless you know where to look. When you search for or touch a specific location in apps and select the navigation option (by touching the car icon) you'll see three options across the top: Drive, Walk, or Apps. When you click that last option, Apps, you're offered the chance to see your route in an alternative app, and you'll also be presented with several options from the App Store. When you select an app in this manner, your starting and destination points should transfer over (so you won't have to enter that info over again), serving as a workaround to get public transit directions through apps such as Google Maps, Transit, Here, or other options. This feature also works great when you want more info than Apple Maps provides - it works especially well with Google Maps (which tends to have generally the most accurate directions and a lot of extra details that still aren't found inside of Apple Maps) and Waze, which provides a cartoonish interface that works well for navigating through traffic and keeping tabs on your friends. Though it's not as nice as built-in public transit info, the apps-inside-the-app feature is a convenient workaround for now. Even after iOS 9 hits, Apple's transit pledge may not make its way to your specific city right away, so this procedure could still be a useful option for many months to come. If nothing else, it's a pretty good method for discovering new map apps - something Apple is always happy to facilitate.
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| How to disable Continuity call forwarding from an iPhone Posted:  The ability to answer iPhone calls from your other Apple devices can be pretty convenient, but it can also be intrusive at times. We'll show you how to disable the call-forwarding Continuity feature that was introduced in iOS 8. QuestionLike a lot of Apple users, I own multiple Apple devices — an iPhone, an iPad, an iMac — and I tend to have them all on the same wi-fi network. But I don't like having phone calls sent to my iPad or iMac, especially when I'm trying to work! How do I disable that aspect of Continuity, so my iPhone doesn't push the calls to my other devices? AnswerThe recently introduced Continuity features, which allow you to smoothly transition between all your Apple devices running iOS 8 or OS X Yosemite, can be very useful, but sometimes it can give you more than you've bargained for. Fortunately, this one is easy to fix if you know where to look. To deactivate the forwarding of calls to your other devices, navigate to Settings > Facetime on your iPhone. From there, turn off iPhone Cellular Calls and your phone will no longer push calls to other Apple devices. |
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