Star Citizen fans you could also be playing Nexus 2 ... spread the word if you love Space Sims!

Nexus 2 the sequel to Nexus 2 Jupiter Incident is one of the finest games you may never get to play. For it's creation is going to depend on us funding it`s creation through Kickstarter  atm that funding looks woefully short of the intended 650k target. 


So if like the rest of the PC verse you just threw down for Chris Roberts Start Citizen then for pc gamings sake spread the word and pledge something for Nexus 2 : The Gods Awaken. 

Nexus the Jupiter Incident is quite the most awesome space based game ever ..with some of the most awesome mods ever... really ...  to not see a sequel would be criminal so come on PC gamers it is going to be a long time before we see  Homeworld, Star Citizen or another Tie Fighter game and even less likely that we see Freespace return. To turn away from the chance to play the sequel to one of the greatest PC space sims ever would be criminal ..sell your consoles ...sell your brothers /sisters copy of FIFA now (whilst its still worth $20 ) ask pater and mater to back the game, get your emo or hipster tribe riled up  and chip in , tweet , facebook and talk to the person sitting next to you on the bus .. the world needs another Nexus game... 

Incidentally Nexus is a game that rocks when played with touch ...whether running on an Atom powered tablet like the joojoo or high end gaming pc : check it out 

Now can you imagine the sequel running on your i7 powered Win 8 tablet this Christmas... is that not worth $20 of your Fifa or COD money? ... We  have 16 days to decide... the future of PC Space Gaming rests on a knife edge ... 

Spread the word on twitter , facebook , Steam , every where ... 

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@Kotaku :You could be playing :Nexus 2* check out Nexus The Jupiter Incident with pen and touch on a Windows 8 tablet..

* that is if the  kickstarter initiative for Nexus 2: gets funded ..... So why great @Kotaku, @Edge and Gametrailers et al are you not plugging this game?

The great Dishonored  and Firaxis Xcom Enemy Unknown sit unpacked in my Steam folder... but these are not the games I am looking for as I utilise my gaming time ... no.. this weekend I am playing Nexus The Jupiter Incident ..why ? Because I need to remind the world how this is the finest space naval combat sim ever made and that it is so frakking awesome ..erhh so say we all on Windows 8 played with pen and touch and how you should all be supporting or getting those who should be supporting to support the kickstarter initiative for Nexus 2:

And having murdered the English language yet again in my blog ( a subliminal antithesis to the hoity toity oh so up itself serious game journalism the reading of which, usually in Edge magazine ,damaged my formative gaming years and thusly leaves me minded to use as much gibberish to describe games as possible lest the whole gaming world goes the way of Edge..)

Quite literally don't take my words for it just check out the video below of me playing Nexus TJI on an i7 4gb Intel HD3000 Lenovo X220T running Windows 8 RP with all settings maxed out and playing with pen and touch ... now tell me you don't want a sequel to this to grace your soon to be Windows 8 surface or tablet or desktop tablet or table ... I am going to continue making vids of game play this weekend on tablets and playing with the ST1080 hmd in 3D if I can get a 
Tridef 3D profile ... so here is the second video ..

Don`t hesitate spread the word and  back Nexus 2  on Kickstarter !

get on to Kotaku and the rest and lets get this funded or it will be an Angry Bird Christmas again......!

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@GameTrailers @edgeonline wake up to Nexus 2 : check out Nexus The Jupiter Incident played in ghost free 3D on smd ST1080

And I continue my one gamer mission to get people to wake up to the awesomeness of Nexus 2 , using the awesomeness of Nexus The Jupiter Incident... yes I know for some of you it was before you entered gaming with the Wii and 360 .. but hey you wanna play PC games now dontcha .. you want those Steam bargains dontcha...? Well get on over to kickstarter and lend your support for Nexus 2 and here is it`s prequel played in tridef 3D , ghost free 3D using Windows 8 , an i7 X220T with Intel HD3000 and the wonder that is the siliconmicrodisplay ST1080 .. To view set your ST1080 , HMZT1 HMZT2 or 3D display device to above below and enjoy the light show ... incidentally out of shame I started playing the mission and stopped being Kubrick with the 3D camera spins .. but if you have the means to view the video and pics in 3D you are in for a treat so get over to Kickstarter support Nexus 2 and @edgeonline and the rest of you why are you not covering this ....? I am playing on a 180g wearable ghost free 3D 100 inch display imagine what that is like people , with Oculus Rift round the corner , and 4K hmds coming next year with ouya and kinect to control these games ..you know you want Nexus 2 ... !

Here`s your moments of space gaming Zen :first Nexus TJI in 3d

und a tech demo of Nexus 2 :

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David Braben's Elite Dangerous highlights all that's bad about Kickstarter

There is a little buzz around the announcement of David Braben's latest Elite Dangerous, but don't go rushing for your credit cards just yet, in amongst the self praise and incomplete account of the genesis, rise and fall of Elite as a brand is the launch date of March 2014. 

Simply put there is no reason to pony up in advance for a project from one of the old gen of ego driven developers.

I can't stand this sort of use of kickstarter where without any tech, a screen shot of a mock up of a title is used to take your money and hold it for an indefinite period, promising a release date by which time the design teams delicate egos will have imploded, or you can get the game in a Steam,Desura or humble bundle. 


Take a look at Brabens record, Elite deserved praise in the good old days but that was a team effort, that team does not exist any more and all the sequels were disasters. Go try them out and see for yourself, I mostly boot them up to see if anyone has managed to release a working patch ...

A true sequel to Elite has been promised for almost a decade, there are pages of full of Edge magazine extolling Elites 4th coming .. it never happened. The due date for this new  Elite project is 2014, if you are good with people holding on to your money for that amount of time then great. 

But consider, would you pay your favourite band up front for their next album 2 years in advance or with an indefinite release date? What do you mean you never pay for your downloads?

The gaming industry is in a far more mature state today than it was at the time of Elites first coming. There is a high turn over of coding teams, which filters out the egomaniac developers .The likes of Braben and our hero Molyneux come from a time of promising the world or universe to gamers, looking for sales on the wings of long past faded success and almost always failing to deliver. I have no trust that Elite Dangerous will be the game claimed or delivered on time.. take a look at the delays on Frontier and Frontier II, as well as considering Elite 4 which Dangerous is has been in development longer than Duke Nukem Forever was ..


Kickstarter for me is a place to back trust, I trust Doublefine, I trust Palmer Luckey and the coders behind Nexus TJI.  I just don't trust Braben to deliver .. far easier to wait for the game to release and get it on Steam, Desura, PSN, XBox live or IOS/Android..

If Elite Dangerous is a AAA multiformat game it will need considerably more funding than the current kickstarter run , especially if it is going to launch as far off as March 2014.. by which time Republicans and Democrats will be campaigning for 2016 ...

For a space trading sim to have sustained funding for a period of 2 or more years just does not seem possible. Elite is a great brand , but it has been wrecked by the Svengali behind it. Now if Ego Soft were handling coding and design.....

Lastly consider how many alternatives there are to Elite , whilst Bell and Braben were arguing , the competition caught up and superseded them . This is what is wrong with much of the games development world , developers are more notable for who they are and their ego fits than the games they inevitably fail to deliver letting down  both developers and gamers in the process. 

If there is no Elite in 2014 , who cares we have a couple of decades of games from Ego Soft ,Volition ,the brothers Roberts, Lucasfilm et al and lately the indie coders on Steam, Desura and of course iOS and Android.

For all these reasons and more I will pass on funding Braben`s latest.. you get my money when the code is finished and the game runs bug free.. 

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Technical Illusions let the Wookie win with CastAR projecting a new hope for AR and VR HMD fans sick of Oculus Rift "Ad" Nausea

Back in 1977 or even here and now in 2013  the entire might of George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic could not reproduce the Episode IV holographic Star Wars chess experience for you in your life size Corellian freighter replica/shed  ...

With Technical Illusions' CastAR  head mounted display we may just be on the way to getting our holographic Star Wars Chess set or have the ability to go all Tony Stark with our design projects...with our very own AR Pepper Potts along for ride....hmmh.. and this.....is naturally why I backed them earlier last  week (that was sarcasm Palmer)

Following a well chronicled and daring escape, from The Valve Empire and freed from the chains of GabeN the Hutt (amicably), Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson have been leading their own growing HMD rebellion as Technical Illusions.  One that offers a new hope to AR and VR fans everywhere..not least those currently suffering Rift Nausea type I and II* ..

* Rift Nausea : can now be separated into two distinct types : 
Type I : defn : nausea caused by use or the mere thought or memory of use of an Oculus Rift device and Type II : nausea caused by sufferers of Rift Hype,Tagging,Trolling and having to listen to Hare Riftnas chant "this will be fixed in the consumer version" 

We are around 2 to 3 years into the evolution of the consumer head mounted display. Even with all the hype and usual venture capitalist vultures encircling the ripening field of HMDs, the vast majority of the public that live outside tech and video game shows, remain nonplussed. And most "professional" reviewers have so little time with their review or show units they do not know how to categorize, let alone even set them up optimally..as for what they are for ..it is still a mystery to many..including their developers..John Carmack just discovered the possibilities of Android..for HMDS....fascinating...

So where then does CastAR fit into the evolution of the HMD?

The future of the head mounted display lies in combining both VR and AR .. This requires a radical HMD design and Technical Illusion's CastAR HMD is going to get there sooner than others....

The following highly technical  video (thanks to a friend for the vision) illuminates the road to AR and VR...

Hmmh..it will be interesting to see if Oculus start recruiting Japanese school kids ...for Rift Prototype 3 (of?).. Oi Oculus ..leave them kids alone.. 

In 2013 a fully functional HMD one that does what you want it to..remains more science fiction/fantasy than fact..

CastAR is another Kickstarter promoted product ... but this one  is different ...and so are we...For as you read this, in a post Oculus Rift hype world, people are actually savvy to the limitations of so called VR headsets and also to the whole Kickstarter experience. And so  I took some time to look over this Kickstarter offering..before jumping on the bandwagon..or writing about it..


Virtual Reality ... is a nice idea...but in 2013/14 that is all it is ...to the people that matter.. the end users...and a HMD accessing or software creating  it is as far off now as it ever was ...hyping VR does generate revenue for click hungry media though...like it did back in the early 90s..

But this does not mean we cannot get real about the state of HMDs and what they CAN do as opposed to what they MAY do in the future ... when they discover McDonald's is good for you...around the same time the first joint Chinese/Indian Mars bound astronauts set foot on Martian soil ..taking us along for the ride and having us experience those first steps with them through VR or be there with them through AR...on our sub scleral retinal projecting implants.. or Rift prototype 37 of ?...mustn't be biased to one form of HMD now ..should we ?

We know Zeiss, siliconmicrodisplay and Sony are evolving the HMD in a commercial not prototype space, in Sony's case with more than one HMD. We also await GLASS's mass arrival..And the entrance of Microsoft and the likes of Samsung mayhaps even Apple when Johnny Ives has some spare time with the diamond  chamfering machine  after finishing up on the iPad Air .. 

All these companies offer very different devices, that are intended to compete for a single space ...not your room or under your TV ..but your head ..

Some are VR, some are AR with a bit of VR .. but none are AR and VR 

All are largely singular personal experiences.

There exists then a space for a device that does both AR and VR and is multi user oriented and CastAR ticks all these boxes and comes with a wand...or wands..what happens when we cross the "streams" is going to be one of my first tests....

The combination of AR and VR in one device elevates this device beyond simple man cave trophy or youtube revenue TVRKING object...

So what in my experience of HMDs stands out about CastAR ? 


let's look at CastAR through raw resolution, Display , 3D generation and othe HMD usage lenses ... 

Resolution 
For VR Is 720p enough?For twin display HMDs raw or native resolution is not as relevant as the size of the pixels, a native 800 by 570 resolution Cinemizer OLED hmd can throw up a 3D 1080p scaled image that is more impressive than a native 1080p or 720p HMD ..like the ST1080 or HMZ series.. it does this through among other things a pixel density 7 times that of an Apple retina display.  Very few people are aware of this  because very few people use four different types of HMD regularly...

It does this also through maintaining a 16:9 screen ratio : the golden ratio for all your media to date

The CastAR can use this 16:9 screen ratio with a native or raw 720p 1280 by 720 resolution on each of it's custom pico projectors ...

At 720p native 16:9  we can scale even 1080p res content , games,movies , videos: NO WARPING required = no NAUSEA and no overheads for your GPU..or CPU...


So for VR content we are sorted, as long as the display or the projected display does not suffer from flicker or Rift lag,Rift latency or Rift blur or screen door..which it should not ...from what I can see ..

And as long as the VR clip on does not attempt to warp or magnify the image/field of view to one where these issues start surfacing ..as they have done with rival HMDs.

As for AR and projection , the distance from you and the reflective surface should mean you see none of the screen door or visible pixel nonsense that plagues the Rift .. 

Re the competition by September 2014 there will be native 4K dual screen HMDs , that is true 4K res per eye ..These will cost though and frankly I can't wait to save up ...siliconmicrodisplay had a 4K protoype almost two years ago you would be using  right now if not for the false VR dawn of Riftmania...  

Others will move to 1080p and beyond by that date as well...

Cost

CastAR is going to cost around a third of such devices and less than a Rift at retail , around a fifth of a  Google GLASS . Throw in all the additional add  ons though and it starts to get expensive....


Ergonomics and Weight 

Ergonomics and fitting ..   CastAR pops on like a pair of shades .. until I release my Brain Internet Display Interface (BINDI) this is the ideal that all HMDs should aim for .. Currently the only HMD that comes close to this is the Cinemizer OLED..

How the fitting and ergonomics change with the addition of the VR clip on will be interesting to see.

The target weight for the CastAR is 100g ... this is an ideal weight for any HMD .. atm the ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED hover around 180g .. anything over this and you are headed for complications that spout from ergonomics and weight issues..

You should never have to "tolerate" or learn to tolerate your HMD .. if you designed one that requires this in your end users ..you failed...try again...

Power 

CastAR appears to be powered through a USB connection ...hallelujah ... let freedom reign.. the smd ST1080 and Cinemizer OLED run from one USB connection ...and CastAR will do the same .. 

VR and AR  and  projected AR?   Yeah baby....

I have yet to see how the VR clip on works , but two 720p  projected/reflected displays should do well. 

Issues will arise if the clip on contains optics that seek to magnify the image to give a large field of view ... and if that field of view is to be warped a la the Rift .. which may lead to possible Ruft like nausea issues.

Myself I prefer a smaller FOV but crystal clear like the Cinemizer OLED and SMD ST1080 ...if the VR clip on gives a 100 inch display , this is pretty awesome and with the improved detail and lack of screen door/ visible pixels over the Rift design 

A Refreshing lack of Optics  

Well okay not total lack ... but there is far less work being done by your eyes here than  with other HMD designs .. And one of the claims for the CastAR is nausea free operation for AR use at least.

Head Tracking 

I have probably more experience of using head tracking with HMDS than most people , head tracking that works , being key.. a faster head tracker that has no application ... is just that ... a faster headtracker that has no application ..or use ...

Technical Illusions have their own head tracker solution. Currently I see it applied to moving around the reflective  surface for AR use...  I cannot say much till I try it out . But the light weight of the CastAR means it will be incredibly easy to combine with other forms of headtracking , say a Zeiss Cinemizer OLED head tracker which requires no additional software .. . I use one with a pair of shades often to control legacy 2D desktops .. and with other HMDs like the Rift and ST1080.. for VR

It should also be possible to combine forms of motion sensing with the updated Kinect in addition to the native head tracking.

Video Input 

HDMI  : we should be able to connect any source of HDMI to the CastAR... including Android, iOS and console 

3D generation : currently CastAR 3D generation as far as I can see is limited to Side By Side 3D 

However I can see this technology being adapted (okay I intend to adapt it) so we could  for different types of 3D .. and have the possibility of frame packed, over under or interleaved .. all running from Tridef 3D from your PC ..or your ...Android/iOS device... 

The Rebirth of Isometric gaming .. 

We could throw console 3D content at the Cast AR ... Final Fantasy Tactics ..(PSONE) just became holographic... and of course do the same from your iPad .. AR  Plants V Zombies  or roasting some AR projected sheep in projected AR  Powermonger , Syndicate Wars  .. wait .. Knightlore , and Alien 8 .. Batman and Robin ... (the Zx Spectrum versions) ..Diablo ...StarCraft  ... okay so you see why I had difficulty not not backing the purchase of two units? 

...or "oh my gosh" 10s of millions of kids playing AR Minecraft together ..or VR Minecraft...or just 10 sitting round a table playing the same Minecraft game ..

2D as well as 3D?

The two pico projector/display design should also mean that the CastAR can display 2D content, not just sbs 3D ... so your Windows 8 desktop or facebook page , your Twitter account ..basically let you do what you want to with it. Want a holographic phone call with  the 3D or 2D visage of your favourite celebrities mapped over your friends *or frenemies ..now that's possible...

Refreshing lack of "Celebrity" endorsement

The worst thing about the claimed coming of VR is the clan of self appointed celebrity luminaries endorsing or hyping the field..often with less accuracy in fact far less accuracy or relevance than the anime, referenced above. 

For any HMD to achieve mass uptake, it ..i.e. the product will have to enter a phase of real world self promotion ... without the need for people jumping out of planes , QuackCon speeches deriding competition or Reddit and MTBS3D troll armies (sometimes paid for) to trash rivals in an effort to draw attention away from obvious flaws in your latest prototype HMD ..  Companies are going to have to give users what they want and stop the celebrity VR Hype sermons..though if it generates clicks who cares ..right? 

Well people start to build up a picture of these luminaries delivering hype not product.. talking loudly about issues whilst others quietly go about solving them or walk around them.

CastAR feels different .. so different it seems to have silenced the Hare Riftnas ...for now...wait what am I saying they are already reacting hyping another prototype. 

As a result many people are backing CastAR that have difficulty backing the Oculus Rift..just go read the CastAR twitter feed.

So two to three years into the evolution of the consumer head mounted display we see  competition, collaboration and even a degree or respect between HMD camps coming to the field of HMDs.

Oh there is just one thing ... we have to wait till September 2014 for the CastAR , which they say will be close to retail product .. so none of this running round the video game show circuit for half a decade without releasing a product then.. or having our investment become obsolete as the developers release protohype for their next prototype and promise the world with a fabled "consumer version" 


By September 2014 the HMD scene will look very different to what we have now...CastAR will be one of the devices competing for your VR and AR time.  

A Sony VR HMD and anticipation for the HMZ-T4, a 4th Rift prototype if not retail or mayhaps the end for The Wonderful OVR , possible updates to the Cinemizer  and smd lines.. as well as GLASS being allowed to run free from Google's tentacles..

No one device is going to finalise or standardise VR or AR by 2014.

We are not quite at the Denno Coil stage.Not least because HMDs require tolerable 
hardware and useful  application ..

The application part is going to be decided by the users, not the developers or industry cognoscenti ... it was not so long ago that Apple and games were mutually exclusive ..all it takes is one app ..one useful relevant app 

And this killer AR and VR App,  may not be a game at all ...what VR and AR need is a Google ,twitter or Facebook moment ..where the HMD finally becomes indispensable for day to day use and ceases being just a revenue generation engine for promoters ..

This only happens when enough real world usage data feeds back to engineers/developers/VR philosophers moving  this field forward getting together solving problems instead of mitigating or reporting on them or pinning rosettes on the promise of them being solved by the next show.. or the next prototype...

Technical Illusions CastAR is one  product that can actually evolve the HMD to fit the user, I can see why GabeN and co shelved it .. for a walled garden alternative ... but their loss is the rest of the worlds gain ...and brings much needed competition to the consumer HMD field..

So if you are feeling brave and literally sick from TVRKING your Rift get on over to Technical Illusions home page and back the Kickstarter .... 

Something tells me the wait as a Kickstarter backer of CastAR is going to be far more pleasant and rewarding than that the whole Kickstarter Oculus Rift experience .. 

And Jerry and Rick .. some advice ... over the next year or so you will be asked one question over and over : and when people ask that most annoying question which is  ... "is this like the Rift" ... smile and respond with a resounding and celebratory " No "  and proceed to explain why ... you are going to get sick of this over the next 12 months ..

Oh and send JC some toilet role tubes with his set ... so he can attach them and get back that QuakeCon 2012 HMD feeling... 

I cannot wait to test the CastAR HMD out,though prior Kickstarter experience did have me holding out for a couple of days,  more on this as soon as I  get to try it ..