One of gaming's most used engines is now free

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/02/unreal-engine-4-free/

Created in Unreal Engine 4

Game development is expensive. It's not a question of the tools costing too much; game engines like Unity and GameMaker Studio offer free versions, and paid versions aren't far out of reach. That's a recent development, though. When the last generation of game consoles (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii) ruled the roost, the Unreal Engine was both ubiquitous and costly. Its latest iteration, Unreal Engine 4, is widely used, but has taken a sideline to free offerings from the likes of Unity. The engine's maker, Epic Games, isn't sitting idly by and letting the competition take over, though: as of this morning, Unreal Engine 4 is free for all to use.

So what does that mean? It means anyone that wants it has full access to the entirety of Unreal Engine 4's tools. You could create your very own game, or maybe an architecture project, or maybe...well, we don't really know. It's kinda up to you. If you're looking to make money on said project, you're free to -- Epic asks for a revenue share "after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter."

That revenue share comes to five percent of gross revenue -- a dramatic departure from the subscription model Epic announced last year at the Game Developers Conference. But is it enough to compete with Unity?

Developers Engadget spoke with expressed skepticism with the company's business model, saying their development engine choice is a measure of its ability and the developer's past experience more than the price argument. In so many words: it's not about being free, but about being an effective tool.

More than price, devs we spoke with expressed concern about having to re-configure how they work based around a different engine from what they've been using (primarily Unity). So, is it worth re-writing tools and creating new workflows to use Unreal Engine 4? That's a question you'll have to answer yourself. But hey, at least it's free!

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD

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Scientists take the first ever photograph of light as both a wave and a particle

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/image-of-light-as-a-wave-and-a-particle-2015-3

For the first time ever, scientist have snapped a photo of light behaving as both a wave and a particle at the same time.

The research was published on Monday in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists know that light is a wave. That's why light can bend around buildings and squeeze through tiny pinholes. Different wavelengths of light are why we can see different colors, and why everyone freaked out about that black and blue dress.

But all the characteristics and behaviors of a wave aren't enough to explain everything that light does.

When light hits metal for example, it ejects a stream of electrons. Einstein explained this back in 1905 by suggesting that light is also made of particles and that those particles of light smack into the metal electrons like billiard balls and send them flying. The insight eventually won him the Nobel Prize, but scientists were not happy about being forced to conclude that light can behave as both a wave and particle.

It's been over 100 years and every experiment with light that any scientist has ever performed proves that light either behaves as a wave or that light behaves as a particle, but never both at the same time. No one has glimpsed both states simultaneously until now.

But you need a source of light to take a photo, so how do you take a photo of light itself? Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne in Switzerland captured the weird split personality of light by using a new photo technique.

First they fired laser light at a tiny metal wire. This trapped waves of light on the wire:

Then they fired a stream of electrons alongside the wire. The light waves on the wire are made of light particles called photons, so the electrons ricocheted off the photons, causing some electrons to speed up and some to slow down. The changes in speed show up as energy blips that can be visualized.

The researchers put the wire under a huge microscope that can see electrons, and snapped a photo of it. The bottom layer of the image shows where the particles of light are and the top layer shows what the light looks like as a wave:

"This experiment demonstrates that, for the first time ever, we can film quantum mechanics — and its paradoxical nature — directly," Fabrizio Carbone, one of the researchers who worked on the study, said in a press release.

Carbone said the imaging technique could help advance the development of quantum computers — ultrafast computers that take advantage of other strange properties of light particles.

You can watch a video description of the experiment below, from École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) on YouTube:

SEE ALSO: Particle accelerator that found the Higgs boson is getting ready for a second run — here's what it could find

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MediaTek's standard lets your devices share their hardware

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/01/mediatek-crossmount/

There are plenty of standards for sharing your media collection between devices, but what if you want to borrow a device's camera or display? MediaTek thinks it has an answer. Its new CrossMount standard lets devices share their hardware and software when they're on the same WiFi network, letting you use whichever components make sense in a given situation. You can use your phone's mic to dictate voice commands to your TV, for example, or use your phone's webcam for a video chat on your tablet.

CrossMount is an open standard based on the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) standard you probably have in some of your existing gear, so it might be easy to implement when it's available in the third quarter of the year. A few big East Asian TV and mobile device makers have already hopped on the bandwagon, including Changhong, Hisense, Lenovo and TCL. With that said, it's hard to know if anyone else will bite. There are still a lot of other companies that haven't signed on, and big names like Samsung or LG may prefer to use in-house tech for any device sharing.

Not that MediaTek is putting all its eggs in one basket -- it has a few chips in store as well. The darling is the MT8173, a 64-bit processor that's supposedly the "highest performing" CPU you can get in a tablet. It mates two high-end Cortex-A72 cores with two low-power Cortex-A53 cores to deliver about six times (!) the performance of last year's MT8125, or enough to handle 4K video with ease. And fans of mid-range phones might like the MT6753, an eight-core 64-bit Cortex-A53 processor. Neither is available just yet, though. The MT6753 won't reach devices you can buy until the second quarter of the year, while the range-topping MT8173 isn't poised to show up until the second half.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Tablets, HD, Mobile

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Source: MediaTek

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HTC's Grip fitness tracker is a promising, puzzling first step

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/01/htcs-grip-fitness-tracker-is-a-promising-puzzling-first-step/

We're not entirely sure why HTC decided it needed to make a fitness tracker, but it did, and it has. The end result is the HTC Grip, a device that looks more than a little like one of Nike's FuelBands, but does so, so much more. HTC gave us a peek at an early, incomplete version of the product in Barcelona, but here's the rub: I couldn't connect it to my phone in hopes of testing some of its more smartwatch-y features like notifications and canned responses. Still, venture on for a first peek at what HTC and its pals at Under Armour have cobbled together.

Once you turn the Grip on, you can't help but fiddle with that curved P-OLED screen - it's monochrome and relatively low-res, but it's plenty legible (especially in the shower, I'd wager). Actually touching that screen to navigate is a bit more problematic, as it seems to prefer long, slow touches to quick, jerky ones. That doesn't sound like much of a problem... until I started taking the kid gloves off and trying to interact with it the way I would any other touch screen. The gulf in sensitivity is just jarring enough that you actually have to slow down and think about how you're using the Grip - considering that HTC wants this to become an integral part of your life, that might be a problem.

On the plus side, the waterproof material making up the Grip's body is surprisingly comfortable, though I've got to wonder just how nice it'll feel when it's pressed up against my skin mid-marathon. Speaking of working in motion, the Grip also seemed to accurately monitor my steps, which was honestly about all I could do with it. Too many of the Grip's best features just aren't ready for testing yet, but one thing seems clear: The Grip has potential. Whether or not the finished product lives up to it is another question entirely, and one we hope to answer soon.

Filed under: Mobile

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Mozilla is bringing Firefox OS to flip-phones and sliders

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/01/mozilla-is-bringing-firefox-os-to-flip-phones-and-sliders/

Mozilla has always positioned Firefox OS as an alternative platform for entry-level smartphones, but now it's targeting the feature phone market too. At Mobile World Congress, the company announced a new partnership with LG and carriers Verizon, Telefónica, KDDI and U+ to create a fresh range of flip-phones, sliders and touch screen "slate" handsets. Firefox OS will look a little different on these devices -- Mozilla says the group is developing a "more intuitive and easy-to-use" software experience for their planned launch in 2016. It promises to balance the simplicity of feature phones with basic smartphone functionality, such as email, web browsing and music playback.

Firefox OS devices are already available in a ton of emerging markets, but Mozilla clearly isn't content with its global presence just yet. The non-profit has signed a deal with Orange which will take its web-centric smartphones into 13 new markets across Africa and the Middle East: Egypt, Senegal, Tunisia, Cameroon, Botswana, Madagascar, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Jordan, Niger, Kenya, Mauritius and Vanuatu. The move will bring the grand total for Firefox OS up to 40 regions and 17 different handsets within the next 12 months.

Remember how Mozilla was working on a $25 Firefox OS smartphone? We're yet to see a consumer device with that super-affordable price-tag, but Alcatel OneTouch has managed to get awfully close. The company is debuting a new phone today called the Klif, which Orange will sell exclusively for $40 with special data, voice and text bundles. If the design looks familiar, there's a reason for that: the Klif is actually a rebranded Pixi 3, which can be bought with either Android, Windows Phone or Firefox OS pre-installed.

Mozilla has never released sales figures for its Firefox OS platform, so it's difficult to gauge how well it's faring against the growing armada of low-end Android devices, as well as Microsoft's Asha line-up and other feature phone remnants. The company is clearly committed in the near-term though, as it also teasing new Firefox OS updates today that will add multi-core processor support, new privacy features and NFC-enabled payments. The decision to develop Firefox OS flip-phones and sliders is certainly unexpected, but there's a method to the madness; in a world of near-identical touch screen smartphones, a reimagining of older form factors could help Mozilla stand out from the competition.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Mozilla

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