Reality

Your Raspberry Pi Pico Could Soon Be Online

Home News (Image credit: Phil Howard @Gadgetoid) The $4 Raspberry Pi Pico may be great value, but it had to lose something in order to keep the price low, and that was WiFi. Sure, we can hack our own solution, but Pimoroni’s upcoming Pico Wireless board, demonstrated by Pimoroni employee Phil Howard (better known as… Read more

HTC may announce two new Vive VR headsets on May 11th

HTC is planning to unveil two Vive virtual reality headsets at its ViveCon 2021 conference that’s happening on May 11th and May 12th, according to Protocol. While the original Vive and Vive Pro headsets were associated more with gaming, the high-end Vive Pro 2 and Vive Focus 3 Business Edition will reportedly be aimed toward… Read more

YouTube announces new originals starring Will Smith and Alicia Keys

YouTube announced a new slate of original series today that includes some huge stars at the top of the lineup. Will Smith will star in a six-part reality series about fitness and “returning his body into the best shape of his life,” and a four-part series will go behind the scenes with Alicia Keys as… Read more

Upgrades to the US Army’s night vision technology make darkness into a video game

The US Army’s Lancer Brigade showed footage of the world as seen through the latest in night vision technology, and it’s a major improvement on the familiar blurry green visuals. By swapping the standard green tubes for white (along with other tweaks), the new Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binoculars (ENVG-B) clearly show people and objects outlined… Read more

Facebook acquires the developers of VR military simulator Onward

Facebook’s Oculus division has snatched up yet another popular virtual reality game developer. On Friday, the company announced it has acquired Downpour Interactive, the studio behind the hit multiplayer military simulator Onward. “We’ve seen great success with Onward on the Oculus platform for several years — first on Rift and more recently on Quest,” Mike… Read more

The math isn’t adding up on forests and CO2 reductions

More evidence surfaced this week that shows that forests are struggling to do humans’ dirty work when it comes to climate change. Although companies and countries are increasingly relying on forests to draw down their planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions, the math isn’t adding up to show big benefits. California might have oversold the success of… Read more

How the video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. inspired a wave of real-world Chernobyl tourists

A virtual world leads to IRL excursions By Darmon Richter Apr 29, 2021, 12:32pm EDT Illustration by Alex Castro At the entrance to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, 35 years on from the worst nuclear disaster in history, a yellow souvenir van sells T-shirts, key rings, and glow-in-the-dark “Chernobyl condoms,” all branded with gas… Read more

Would you pay $30 a month for a faster web browser that eats less battery?

No matter how much web browsers improve, it feels like they can’t keep pace with everything we want to do. Open one too many tabs on a few-year-old laptop, and your fan starts spinning, your battery life dips, your system starts to slow. A faster or cleaner PC might fix it, but a startup called… Read more

Apple’s iPhone 12 and Mac sales skyrocket despite ongoing pandemic

Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup maintained enormously strong demand from consumers from January through March, according to the company’s fiscal Q2 earnings posted today. Apple reported record March quarter revenue of $89.6 billion, up 54 percent year over year. The iPhone took in just under $48 billion, jumping up by 66 percent from a year ago…. Read more

Oppo Find X3 Neo review: Can it compete?

(Pocket-lint) – There will always be those who clamour for the latest specs, studying all the latest flagships to ensure that when they eventually part with their hard-earned cash it goes on the device that has the top numbers. Those phones will come with the highest resolution screens, the latest processor, and the most cameras… Read more

These are the winners of the 24th annual D.I.C.E. awards

The D.I.C.E. awards have returned again this year, awarding developers for their hard work on some of the best games released last year. This time around, Hades takes home the GOTY trophy, and a bunch of PlayStation exclusives were also highlighted. As far as PlayStation exclusives go, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us Part… Read more

HTC now lets you directly buy Vive repair parts through iFixit

HTC has partnered with iFixit to make its Vive virtual reality systems more repairable, selling a list of screws, cables, adapters, and other standalone components directly to consumers. In a blog post, HTC says the move is aimed at helping people whose headsets are out of warranty or potentially no longer being sold. iFixit also… Read more

Apple will now let you add virtual lasers and confetti to your Clips videos

Apple now lets you add augmented-reality lasers, confetti, and more to your Clips videos, thanks to an update to the short-form video app. The feature, called AR Spaces, will let users with LIDAR-equipped Apple devices (so far, that’s the iPhone 12 Pros and iPad Pros from 2020 or later) add room-filling effects that can interact… Read more

Skoda Enyaq iV 80 review: Smooth operator

(Pocket-lint) – Flick your eyes over the Skoda Enyaq fast enough and, shocker, you might kind-of mistake it for a Tesla Model X from certain angles. No, there’s no crazy gullwing doors here. No, there’s not quite as much real-world range either (it’s not far off, on paper, at least). But, heck, the Skoda doesn’t… Read more

Oculus has turned on wireless PC streaming for the Quest 2

Oculus is turning on its Air Link PC streaming feature for the Quest 2 virtual reality headset. Air Link is part of the Oculus v28 software update, which recently started rolling out to Oculus headset owners. Facebook Reality Labs head Andrew Bosworth says you can find the feature if you’re running v28 on your PC… Read more