News By Russell Holly Mar. 20, 2014 4:16 pm
Welcome back to our weekly water cooler chat/trip through this week in the wild world of tech.
This week at GDC the two biggest stories were a result of hardware that you need to strap to your face in order to play and enjoy. Oculus announced the second iteration of its Rift developer kit, putting developers much closer to the finished VR product. While the $349 dev price isn’t necessarily a final retail price, it’s a good guess for what we can expect when the headset finally ships.
Meanwhile, Sony has taken its home theater headsets and added some video game skills into a new device currently known as*Project Morpheus. This PS4-bound VR headset has the potential to be a really big deal for the already incredibly popular game console.
Google casually dropped a huge bomb on the world this week in the form of a wearable tech platform called Android Wear. Everything we know so far about this platform suggests that it is designed to be an extension of your Android phone, allowing you to interact with your existing apps and give you some real hands free capabilities. Motorola and LG both have announced hardware to launch with Android Wear in the form of the circular Moto 360 and the square LG G Watch. While we await things like pricing and expected battery life to know for sure, these look like they could really upset the current state of smartwatches.
Our app of the week takes a page out of the classic rail shooter world and sticks it on smartphones. Smash Hit is already a huge success, but if you haven’t given this game a try now is the time. The game feels more like a classic arcade game than a mobile game, where you journey through glass effects and fire ball bearings at anything and everything. Ammo conservation and accuracy are key parts of your success, but after a few rounds of this free game for iOS and Android you’ll likely have doubled your first score.
If you have a topic you’d like us to discuss on our Geekout, or questions for us during a live broadcast, leave us a message here or on the Google+ page.
More...
This week at GDC the two biggest stories were a result of hardware that you need to strap to your face in order to play and enjoy. Oculus announced the second iteration of its Rift developer kit, putting developers much closer to the finished VR product. While the $349 dev price isn’t necessarily a final retail price, it’s a good guess for what we can expect when the headset finally ships.
Meanwhile, Sony has taken its home theater headsets and added some video game skills into a new device currently known as*Project Morpheus. This PS4-bound VR headset has the potential to be a really big deal for the already incredibly popular game console.
Google casually dropped a huge bomb on the world this week in the form of a wearable tech platform called Android Wear. Everything we know so far about this platform suggests that it is designed to be an extension of your Android phone, allowing you to interact with your existing apps and give you some real hands free capabilities. Motorola and LG both have announced hardware to launch with Android Wear in the form of the circular Moto 360 and the square LG G Watch. While we await things like pricing and expected battery life to know for sure, these look like they could really upset the current state of smartwatches.
Our app of the week takes a page out of the classic rail shooter world and sticks it on smartphones. Smash Hit is already a huge success, but if you haven’t given this game a try now is the time. The game feels more like a classic arcade game than a mobile game, where you journey through glass effects and fire ball bearings at anything and everything. Ammo conservation and accuracy are key parts of your success, but after a few rounds of this free game for iOS and Android you’ll likely have doubled your first score.
If you have a topic you’d like us to discuss on our Geekout, or questions for us during a live broadcast, leave us a message here or on the Google+ page.
More...
