During last week’s E3 extravaganza, Nintendo finally dove deep on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The upcoming installment in the 30-year-old franchise rejects much of Nintendo’s recent history, and embraces a massive scope with complex gameplay systems. This is good news for fans who’ve fallen away from the series, but Nintendo might be asking too much from the Wii U’s limited hardware. Nintendo streamed a significant chunk of the game last Tuesday, and E3 attendees were given the opportunity to play the game for themselves. We’ve only seen a sliver of the immense world Nintendo has promised, but the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Two hundred miles miles in an EV may be the new normal for affordable EVs, not 80-100 miles. Nissan just confirmed that the next-generation Nissan Leaf electric vehicle will get more than 200 miles, since one of the battery packs offered will be a 60-kWh lithium-ion unit. So that makes the upcoming Chevrolet Bolt, Tesla Model 3, and Nissan Leaf all delivering 200 miles on a charge. Nissan’s strategy will be to offer multiple battery options, including one of about 24 kWh as on the current best-selling Leaf that is good for 84 miles on the EPA cycle, or a 30-kWh battery (also offered now) good for 107 miles, and one of 60 kWh that by interpolation would get 210-220 miles of range.
Adobe continues to deliver on its promise of frequent updates to its Creative Suite applications and services with this week’s Creative Cloud update. There is something there for everyone, divided by Adobe into three categories: Adobe Magic, or cool new features and tricks for image, video, and audio processing; Efficient Workflows, or features that help you get your tasks done faster; and Performance improvements. There are some of each in the new version, which is called the Creative Cloud June 2016 release. Of course, the most fun parts are the Magic, so we’ll start there. Photoshop Content-Aware Crop One of the annoying side-effects of rotating an image to straighten out the horizon or for artistic effect is needing to crop it down to only the pixels that are in both the original and desired framing — or fill in the missing portion by hand.
We don’t usually do straight game news on ExtremeTech, but I’m going to take a risk with a post about one that harkens back to a time many ET readers may remember: the heyday of interactive fiction, from companies like Infocom and Adventure International. In addition to owning an Atari 800 as a kid and playing all manner of hardware-sprite-infused 8-bit games and , I also loved IF titles like Enchanter, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Deadline. Games like these had no graphics, sound, or animation; instead, they were entirely text-based, and employed classic storytelling and (as the 80s wore on) increasingly sophisticated natural language processing to provide a rich, fiction-like experience you could actually play using the computer keyboard.
Adding to the cost and complexity of VR has been the need for fixed external sensors to enable positional tracking. Oculus Rift uses one small sensor for human-scale tracking, while the Vive relies on two to provide room-scale VR. 3D imaging pioneer Stereolabs is aiming to change that, by enabling full position tracking — at human-scale, room-scale, and beyond — using its ZED stereo camera and a lot of GPU horsepower. With the right GPU solution, this approach can even be made to work with mobile VR headsets like the Samsung Gear VR. I got to try out a mobile rig with this capability on a visit to Stereolabs’ San Francisco office.
Many news stories about robots have a bit of fun joking about the impending apocalypse when the machines no longer need us. For many people, a more frightening and real possibility is that a robot may be coming for their jobs. It can feel odd to celebrate the admittedly fascinating advances in fields like self-driving cars and manufacturing robots, because these devices are quite likely to replace humans. Still, this is nothing new — automation has been taking over human jobs for as long as we’ve had the capacity to worry about such things as a society. As we approach a new age of automation, what will become of us?
The venerable Apache helicopter (it turned 31 last year) has been paired with unmanned reconnaissance drones to improve its strike capabilities, target acquisition, and information gathering roles. The Manned-Unmanned Teaming or MUM-T, allows the Apache’s crew to control the drones remotely, while simultaneously accessing real-time video feeds. The program has been used in Afghanistan for an undisclosed amount of time, reports. While we’re used to hearing about drones launching attacks on enemy combatants, the AH-64E Apache helicopters still handle the actual combat — their drones are used to gather data, not carry out their own strikes. According to Apache Program Manager Colonel Jeff Hager, upgrading to the “E” variant of the AH-64 has improved combat capability and increased situational awareness.
One of the topics we’ve is the difficulty of continuing to scale semiconductor technology, and the related problem of improving chip performance without increasing clock speed. While Intel and other manufacturers continue to search for long-term solutions to this problem, no known next-generation technology is expected to restart silicon scaling and allow for a return to traditional clock speed gains. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology — one that involves returning to a very old technology to solve the problems of existing methods. Vacuum tubes, according to Dr. Axel Scherer, could be key to improving transistor performance and lowering power consumption.
Need a tiny PC that can still handle a heavy workload? Check out the OptiPlex 3020 Micro desktop PC from Dell. It’s thin, light, and it doesn’t compromise on performance. The best part? You can save over $300 off the sticker price when you use today’s coupon code. (List price: $698.57 — Coupon code: DELL$100) So, what kind of specs are we looking at? The OptiPlex 3020 has a fourth generation dual-core 3.1GHz Intel Core i3-4160T CPU, integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400, 4GB of DDR3 RAM (1600MHz), and a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive. And since it has a VGA port and a DisplayPort on the rear, you’ll be able to plug into just about any monitor or HDTV.
