Logitech has been expanding its product line in several directions, moving up to pro-gamer gear and down to basic, yet robust, mice and keyboards. But it's also been moving beyond the desktop computer market, like buying wearables and sport headphone...
Mankind has always dreamed about experiencing flight like the birds do. We’ve come a long way, but flying planes, even hang gliding, still doesn’t capture what it is like to actually be the bird. Well, Birdly gets us several steps (er, flaps) closer.
Birdly is a full-body simulator developed by the Institute for Design Research at the Zürich University of the Arts. The idea is to recreate the flight of the red kite, a large bird of prey. It uses a combination of an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, sonic feedback, and a fan that simulates the wind while you are soaring where eagles dare.
The demo has been making the rounds across the globe and one of it’s stops recently was at the Google Fiber booth at SXSW 2015. The technology has a long way to go before we truly know what it’s like to be a bird, but this looks like one small wing flap for man and a giant wing flap for mankind.
Thus far, in human history, humans have done the vast majority of the flying of planes. Even the drones that our government uses to spy on and explode things are actually more like really, really advanced remote-control planes. There’s still a dude sitting down with a joystick, he’s just wearing stained khakis, he’s at sea level, and he’s sipping a latte, rather than being strapped into the plane. Perhaps that’s going to change soon, as KAIST, a Korean institute and one of the world’s best tech colleges, just unveiled this little dude: PIBOT.
PIBOT can take to the virtual skies with near perfect reaction times and near perfect inputs, meaning that this is probably a better pilot than most, if not all actual pilots. Of course, that is right up until the moment when a situation is encountered that he isn’t programmed for, but we all know it’s only a matter of time until the machines take over anyway.
PIBOT can also fly a real plane, and KAIST is working on that video as you read this.
Don’t have the money, skills or father for a functional flight simulator? Dogfight Boss can help you feel the need for speed with its cardboard jet fighter cockpit. Dogfight Boss founder Lukas Homola based the cockpit’s structure on the F-22. He and his friend went to a museum to take photos of the cockpits of vintage planes, and then used the images to create high resolution textures.
The full-sized cockpit can accommodate standard office chairs. It comes in two joystick configurations: one with the joystick stand in the middle and one with the stand on the right side. The cockpit has a ribbed frame for durability and can easily be assembled or disassembled. Because it’s made of cardboard, you can easily cut out some of the parts if you want to make room for a monitor or some other peripheral.
Here’s more on the cockpit from Lukas:
Dogfight Boss plans on releasing different cockpit styles in the future – e.g. airliner, spaceship, train, F1 – but they need to get this model off the ground first. So do some of that pilot stuff and pledge at least £299 (~$500 USD) on Kickstarter to get the full-sized cockpit as a reward. Some of the lower pledge tiers offer a PDF template of the cockpit or its kid-sized version, while the higher pledges offer customization.
Custom PC builder Maingear had something pretty nifty up its sleeve at Pepcom tonight: versions of its desktops configured to run Saitek's flight-simulation hardware -- in this case, with a full cockpit setup. In partnership with Mad Catz, the company developed configurations of its Potenza, F131 and Shift desktops optimized to work with the Saitek line of flight-sim systems.
Tonight we saw the Shift paired with some pretty heavy-duty hardware: we're talking 18 USB connections for the full Saitek cockpit. Maingear's pro-certified system packs a Core i7 CPU clocked at up to 3.9GHz and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 graphics (with four GPUs), and with an experienced pilot behind the wheel, that translated into a smooth landing in Flight Simulator X. Maingear says the whole setup -- hardware controls plus the Shift desktop -- will go for $5,500 starting tomorrow. That's the top-of-the-line configuration, mind you; if your piloting aspirations are more modest, you could opt for the more affordable Potenza, which starts at $1,000. Check out a video demo below.
The Ariel Atom is arguably one of the greatest bangs for the buck in terms of sports car performance, so it's no surprise that the automaker has paired up with Motion Simulation to design a particularly special simulator for both hardcore fans as well pro racing drivers and pilots. The TL1 has the world's first 180-degree spherical projection unit (technically, three projector screens acting as one) to give you that advance view of the apex without display bezels getting in the way. Its seat not only adjusts to fit different breeds of cars and aircraft but, if you opt for it, tucks in a motion transducer that will properly jolt you when you hit a bump in the road. What may please extra-serious racing game fans the most is the off-the-shelf nature of the computer needed to drive the TL1 properly: as long as your graphics hardware can handle the extra-wide 5760 x 1200 resolution, any typical Windows XP or Windows 7 desktop will do. The real question is whether your wallet can handle it, as the £11,500 ($18,573) PC-less starting price will make it tempting to buy a real Atom instead.
Most garages are filled with cars, tools that are collecting dust, and odds and ends that you do not want to throw away but do not necessarily want to keep inside the house. This man has a full size Boeing 737 flight simulator in his!
A fresh concept it's not, but a fresh look? Yeah, we'll take that. California resident, air traffic controller, pilot and all-around gentleman James Price has converted the actual nose of a 1969 Boeing 737 into his own personal flight simulator. According to the man himself, he "gutted" the bird, installed "all new" parts, slid it into his garage and... well, took a few minutes to show it to the world. While pretty much any flight sim owner would claim that his or hers was "just like the real thing," it's hard to deny that fact with this one. We're told that it took some three years to complete, and the end result leaves no doubt of James' toiling. Head on past the break for the vid.
Logitech has been expanding its product line in several directions, moving up to pro-gamer gear and down to basic, yet robust, mice and keyboards. But it's also been moving beyond the desktop computer market, like buying wearables and sport headphone...
