woah

Failed backflip in VR: http://imgur.com/iRA0guj there was apparently a loud crash followed by laughter

This is the first thing that came to mind when I played Longbow too. Likewise with the spy game Budget Cuts. There are so many things about Thief that make VR + motion controller support a must. I don't expect that we'll see it in this mod because implementing it is a lot of work, but I really want to see a VR Thief game some day. My understanding is that if developers use Valve's OpenVR API, then it should work for other headsets too: "The OpenVR API provides a game with a way to interact with Virtual Reality displays without relying on a specific hardware vendor's SDK. It can be updated independently of the game to add support for new hardware or software updates."

I haven't heard great things about vorpx but I will have to try this at some point. Just got to try my Vive this weekend and VR is absolutely incredible. A proper Thief game in VR is a must.

For the time being I'm just watching ebay but let me know what you want to let it go for. Not sure where you'd be shipping out of but I'm in the US.

Will be happy to see the GTX 970 fall in price. I just ordered a Vive but now I need a capable GPU. The 970 is basically the minimum for VR but for the time being it'll have to suffice. According to Valve there will also be a substantial performance increase for multi-GPU setups when games start taking advantage of the multi-GPU stereoscopic rendering extensions.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/225840/ Version 5.0 of Sven-Coop, a cooperative mod for the original Half-Life, came out last week and now it is a standalone game (Valve gave them the goldsrc source code). This makes the mod 17 years old. The full half-life single player campaign is included too. I've been playing it for the past week and to be honest it's the most fun I've had with a game in years. I played the very early releases of the game way back and this new update is making me feel like a kid again (in that it's been a while since I've had this much genuine fun with a game and also I keep losing track of time and finding myself up at 1am). And I'm happy to see that a lot of newbie players are looking past the dated graphics and giving the game a chance. Lots of people on the servers that have never heard of a "jump-duck" Anyways, I highly recommend it. There are apparently some serious bugs, but I've been running the game via WINE and opensource ATI drivers without any issues. Word of advice though: avoid servers with lots of players--there are only a few maps where a packed server works well. And if you're playing the single player campaign, I wouldn't play with more than 3 other people. If they're all friends, even better. The team plans to continue development of the game and it seems that they want to try implementing some interesting things in the goldsrc engine. They've already added a scripting language for map makers and server admins that allows one to change almost every aspect of the game.

I ended up buying it while there was still a sale. However, like Goldwell, I will probably wait until they finish Xen before I play through the single player again

I'm considering buying this. I played the very first release (don't recall how many years ago it was) and I found that while the initial levels were spectacular, the latter levels felt rushed and inconsistent in quality. If there's been significant refinement to those latter levels since that initial release, I'd be more inclined to buy it since I was kind of left with a bad aftertaste.

This is spectacular! I really want to shoot one of those water arrows

I would love to have the option of halting senescence and a secret hope of mine is that science will permit me to do so, but at the same time the idea that the universe is the product of a human-like being/intelligence and that there is "meaning" to it (a human construction) is something I find underwhelming and disturbing.

Just want to say that I'm in the same boat as you Flanders but haven't really found anything I like after I giving up my CRT many years ago (too hard on the eyes). The next technology I plan to try is OLED and LG is coming out with some new panels this year. I will probably wait until next year since the price will likely be too high this year and since I want to see if the displays suffer from burn in. edit: Of course I've been saying this for many years now.

It's a pretty good list, and nice to see Thief 2 up top (would be 1st for me). Of course my personal list would be much different, but I only have one real gripe: CS:GO should be substituted with CS 1.6 (or let's say "Goldsrc CS").

Very cool! I look forward to your impressions. Affordable OLED monitors are taking their sweet time to come to market and perhaps this will be a better option. Also, how does the response time compare to CRT displays? Even nowadays every time I play an FPS on a good CRT monitor it makes me feel like I've been gaming on a flip-book for the past 10+ years or so.

Check out the Alien: Isolation thread http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/16615-alien-isolation/

Good news, looks like the black smear issue has been mostly fixed with the latest prototype.http://www.roadtovr.com/notes-on-crescent-bay-fresnel-lenses-fixed-black-smear-light-ray-artifact-and-more/ I can't tell if this is a general problem with OLEDs or just something with Oculus's hardware.

I could be wrong, but I have not heard of any ghosting issues with the OLED screens used in VR headsets. As far as I know, OLED screens are significantly better than LCDs in almost every way (except when, e.g., they're in the presence of other bright lights, which is not an issue for VR). Personally, I cannot wait for the day when OLED desktop monitors are affordable--I miss seeing black in Thief games and smooth rotation in first person shooters. Yes, LCDs have improved, but it's always a breath of fresh air when I see a game running on a good CRT (before, of course, my eyes start hurting). As for VR in general, I'm quite excited after seeing Valve's new devices at GDC. Aside from one impression that associated headaches (but not motion sickness) with the device--an isolated experience apparently, their headset itself is on par with Sony's and Oculus's latest (they all have their strengths and weaknesses, of course). However, I'm particularly interested in their Lighthouse tracking system. From developer impressions, it blows away the competition in terms of latency, fidelity, and tracking range. And the good thing is that it is completely open and free--any developer or hardware manufacturer can incorporate it without paying Valve: In addition it is very extensible. Valve says there would be no problem with adding additional Lighthouse boxes for increased accuracy, reducing occlusion, and increasing the volume of space tracked by the system. Likewise, they say that in the future tracking soft-bodies should be possible and it can be used as an inexpensive but high quality motion capture system. It would be great to see VR headset and input developers relieved of the problem of tracking and instead be able to focus on their headsets. However, I'm not sure how well Lighthouse would work for something like finger tracking where occlusion could be a unavoidable issue. Also, on a related note, it seems that dual GPUs will finally pay off. Valve says that in VR games with DX11 stereoscopic extensions (which I assume Vulkan will have counterparts to), the framerate is nearly doubled.

Speaking of UE4, is anyone playing UT4? You can download the game now (if you're on linux, as far as I can tell you've gotta get it off of github). It'll take me a while to get it due to my internet connection but I'm curious what people think. I spent countless hours on the old UTs, but I didn't really like the vehicles in the later versions (I did however like UT2k4's coop mode--"invasion" I think it was called). And what was the problem with UT3 again? I vaguelly recall it looking spectacular but the netcode being awful.

I'll watch The Daily Show and occasional documentaries on PBS such as Nature, Frontline, Ken Burns stuff, recently Earth: A New Wild, etc etc. And very rarely I'll watch a series, the most recent one being True Detective (prior to that one I can't remember any others--it would've been many years ago). I did watch The X-Files when I was very young... As for movies, I'm always on the lookout for good ones but I only end up watching several per year. Every now and then I'll spend 15 minutes "researching" upcoming movies and gradually widdle-away at a list of them as trailers and reviews come out. However, I don't really like having a timeslot dedicated to television on a daily basis. For example, I'd prefer it if The Daily Show were a once a week program. For what programs I do watch I usually try to overlap them with another activity, such as eating or exercising (on e.g. a spin bike). Between television, books, comics/manga, anime (I separate it from "television" since--for me at least--it feels pretty distinct), and gaming, there is just so much media now that I find myself having to be extremely selective. "Keeping up" itself is a sort of stress for me. If I actually wanted to I could easily spend all of my free time just consuming consuming consuming media, but I know I'll quickly get depressed if I don't spend most of that free time engaging my mind in a mostly participatory/creative way. This may be too much of a diversion but it relates to why I try to minimize these sort activities: When I was young I probably spent 90% of my free time just "consuming" in the aforementioned sort of way. At that time (and I can't tell you how insane this sounds to the "me of now"), it really didn't occur to me that engaging one's mind could be so much more rewarding and fulfilling, especially when "instant gratification" was always within reach. The people in my life never encouraged me to behave any differently, and in fact a great many of them discouraged me (sometimes implicitly with e.g. their visible discomfort and distance, and sometimes explicitly by criticizing me). To say the least, this may seem odd, but it can be common in more rural, less culturally diverse areas beset by deep-set insecurities, ignorance, and conservative culture. In combination with the anti-intellectualism and (in at least some senses) "hedonism" omnipresent in American culture, the result is you have these backwater places that are unknowingly stuck in their own "mini dark ages."

vandroid: half man, half van https://www.darkhorse.com/Search/Tommy%20Lee%20Edwards,%20Noah%20Smith

New Boston Dynamics robot

I can see several things that affect me. The first is that which is enabled by the technology. More convincing graphics, sound, and AI improve the experience (or at least give developers more room to work with). I see a lot of developments here. First, we have the possibility of VR becoming mainstream, a technology which offers a degree of "presence" that we've never experienced before (anyone who's played Alien: Isolation with the DK2 will tell you that it's much more frightening--almost torturously so). In addition, VR is motivating the implementation of "3D sound" again (I say "again" because ... well, see the maddening history of creative audio patents). Oculus is, for example, incorporating support directly into their SDK and designing their headset specifically for it (see here http://www.roadtovr.com/ces-2015-oculus-rift-crescent-bay-designed-audiophiles-heres-matters/). I've chatted with other VR developers and they say that the effect of 3D sound can be so convincing that it's almost (but not quite) a substitute for haptic feedback. And if Alien: Isolation is any indication, I'm hoping developers will start taking AI more seriously. It feels like we've been in a stasis for the past decade where there has been little motivation to improve AI. And not just with making the AI "smart" (e.g. capable of recognizing and reacting to patterns), but making it convincing and unpredictable--something I think the new Alien game did very well. However, independent of the technology, there are several things off of the top of my head that I feel bolster a scary experience. This is in addition to the "obvious" things, like the gamut of sights and sounds which seem to naturally trigger fear in humans: (1) The fear of the unknown and the unexpected: The more unfamiliar I am with what is, for example, stalking me or lurking about, the more it frightens me. I don't mean just in terms of appearance but--and perhaps moreso--in terms of behavior. Improvements in AI play a big role here. When the object of terror is completely revealed and predictable, the sense of terror is greatly diminished. I want to be taken by surprise and, within the scope of believability (e.g. not spawning the enemy directly behind you when other evidence indicated it was on the other side of the map, as that reduces immersion), I want there to be a real chance of death (and the implications of this are unfortunately often considered "unfair" by today's gamers). (2) Immersiveness: Basically that which tricks your mind into thinking what you're experiencing is not fake. Of course, one can always stop and think "this is not real" but when your senses and thoughts are occupied by other things, that sense of the underlying reality can subside. Technology plays a big role here, but even more important (IMO) is engaging the player's imagination through, e.g., a good storyline or a captivating atmosphere. Make the player desire to transplant themselves into this other world. (3) Sense of loss. It may seem "cheap" to, for example, limit the player's saves to checkpoints, but I think it's a good idea. Whenever a player presses the "save" button they are reminded that they are just playing a game--that everything is safe--and it removes one from the experience. In addition, when the sense of "the fear of the loss of progress" is abstracted away to just "fear of loss in general" (of a certain degree) as the mind is occupied by other stimuli, it can act as a rudimentary substitute for the fear of death. (4) Effort: Really, until (and if) we can somehow directly stimulate the brain to produce a certain experience (perhaps it would be necessary to induce pain or, at least to a certain extent, somehow convince someone that death is a possibility), it will require effort on the behalf of the player for something to be scary. I can take any game that I find terrifying and intentionally destroy the experience by simply retaining a mindset of "this is just a game, there are no consequences." Of course this becomes more difficult as the technology and the sense of presence improves, but for the foreseeable future I think all such games will necessitate on the behalf of the user some extent of imagination, playfulness, and intention. This is not to say that a game can't tempt the player into "wanting to believe" or "play along."

After dispatching a Dragon space craft to resupply the ISS, SpaceX made its first attempt at an upright landing of the first stage on an ocean barge. It didn't end well but who knows what would've happened if the grid fins hadn't run out of hydraulic fluid (it's an open system, reduces mass and complexity) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwe10pbVPDQ Still, what an amazing sight. The next attempt will be in 2 to 3 weeks and they're adding 50% more hydraulic fluid (they were off by about 10%)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oecZoJkWu8M

Has anyone else watched this? I typically dislike television series very much (Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad etc etc don't really do much for me) but a friend convinced me to watch this and it's pretty damn good in my opinion. There are "only" 8 episodes (this is probably a good thing though) but it honestly feels more like a movie than a television series. I just finished up episode 4--really digging it. It can be a bit "edgy" and thus a little corny, but if you can get over that you'll probably enjoy it. I was going to post the trailer here but it doesn't really do the show justice. There is a second season in the works but it's a completely removed storyline with different actors, a different setting, and different directors (and I'm pretty sure HBO just nudged them into doing it. I recall the director saying it was his intention from the start to only do one season specifically to avoid "milking the series"--as is so common with television networks these days)

Also agree about the android stuff. The was kind of a waste of time and very anticlimactic. And the ending of the game felt like one big rollercoaster ride: pretty but almost entirely uninteractive--may as well have been one big CG sequence. As for the flame thrower, the few times that I used it the Alien seemed unaffected by it and got me anyway, but maybe if I had played around with it more it would have worked (it made for a good light source in the vents though).