violet mir:ror connects all your stuff via rfid

technabob — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:21:34 +0000

This new device uses RFID technology to connect your physical possessions with the digital world. Cool.

Violet (the makers of those quirky Nabaztag USB rabbits) is about to unleash Mir:ror, a small puck-shaped USB gadget which acts like an interface between your everyday belongings and your computer.

For example, you could place an RFID tag on an umbrella, wave it over your Mir:ror, and your computer would display the current weather forecast. Hold up your cocktail shaker to open the latest drink recipes. Place your remote control on it, and bring up tonight’s TV schedule. The connections you create between the real world and the digital world are only limited by your imagination.

To use the Mir:ror, simply place a tagged object on top of the device, and it’ll automatically execute a task on the machine that you’ve synced up with your items. The Mir:ror can instantly identify many objects with built-in RFID tags, but you can tag pretty much anything you want with their colorful identification stamps (called ztamp:s). Violet’s new web site lets you set up all your devices and applications to work with the Mir:ror.

Violet expects to release the Mir:ror in the US on October 27th, and you can order the $69.99 starter kit (including Mir:ror, 3 ztamp:s, 2 nanoztag rabbits, and an additional skin for the surface) over on Dynamism.

[photos via Neteco]

microsoft working on massively multiplayer fps tech

technabob — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:24:45 +0000

The gaming world is full of MMORPGs, games that feature interaction of hundreds or thousands of players. However, these games usually don’t put them all in the same place at the same time, and don’t have hundreds battling each other at the same time. Because of bandwidth constraints (especially upstream), it’s been impossible to pull off high speed games like first-person shooters and racing games that have more than about 16 or 32 simultaneous players without severe lag problems.

Now Microsoft Research is working on a solution to this problem. The project, codenamed “DonnyBrook” is developing a system that enable FPS games to have hundreds of players duking it out on the same map at the same time.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The way they pull it off is by calculating the handful of players that you have a tendency to focus on (as well as things like frequency and recency), and only update every frame of those players’ data. For players that you’re not “paying attention to”, the data updates less frequently. The players that you’re not focusing are simulated locally by a “bot” with AI that’s influenced by those players movements. As soon as you start paying attention to those other players, the data updates more frequently for them as well.

At this point, it’s just a research project, but hopefully the tech will find its way into some commercial FPS in the future. There’s a little more detail on how it all works in this presentation.

[via on10]

technabob » connection

violet mir:ror connects all your stuff via rfid

microsoft working on massively multiplayer fps tech