E 55- Project Morpheus, Chinese Anti-Smog Drones, Samsung Selfie Camera, What The Tech | Red Headed Geek Show





We know virtual reality is coming, and it's coming quickly! It used to be something we dreamt about. Not anymore. It is even available for your living room now! A new version of the Oculus Rift released for sale this week. But that isn't why I am ranting, today is all about Project Morpheus, PS4's VR headset!

It goes without saying nothing delivers the feeling of immersion, like you’re inside of another world, able to look around side to side better than VR. Sony Entertainment has actually been messing with Project Morpheus project since 2010. It finally turned into truth thanks to the encouragement, and “enthusiastic response” of other such prototypes (Oculus and others). The headset features an adjustable, 1080p resolution head-mounted display, with a 90-degree field of view. Built-in sensors track the movement of the head in accordance to a PS4 camera. Although it's only a prototype right now, Sony is working on adapting both tracking and control. Additionally, the PlayStation Move gesture controller will work with Morpheus to guide and control the camera; a tactic which will create the natural feeling of being inside the game. Sony intends for developers to start getting involved NOW. Who wants one?

China is a huge source of worry when it comes to pollution. The fog coming from China that's effecting our planet needs to be taken control of. It may never be "healthy" air, but the Chinese environmental ministry is doing something about it. Right now, drones are scouting over the skies of Beijing and other cities to check for smog sources, and to apparently spot environmental breaches. The unmanned aircraft can cover 70 square kilometers in a two hour flight. The country's ministry of environmental protection has only 4 of these, with each device costing around 1.3 million. Their goal is to try and spot the thousands of buildings that don't follow "regulations", and take a picture of them?

Hopefully, the polluting factories can't spot the drones ant quickly turn off their machines to avoid being caught. If so, this will do some good. But lets be real, this is the tip of the iceberg. Additional efforts via China's environmental ministry might be the possibility of using drones to spray chemicals into the air to disperse smog during high pollution times. Spraying chemicals in the air when the air is full of chemicals? That's an interesting one.

What The Tech: A camera JUST for “selfies”? Man! Just when selfies are becoming even more annoying, i.e. the term 'selfie', selfies being retweeted and talked about, and celebrities posting themselves all over the internet; it is just annoying. So, heres something to annoy me even more. The Samsung SX Mini is a selfie catered camera, involving an LCD screen that can flip over 180 degrees.

A wrist phablet? The Rufus Cuff categorizes itself as a wrist communicator, much like large-screened smartphones fall into the ‘phablet’ category. It is basically twice the size of a Pebble smartwatch or Samsung's Galaxy Gear, but overall looks like a big phone attached to your wrist. I doubt these sell.

How about a solar powered toilet that will turn your poop into charcoal like pellets? A team of engineers from the great state of Colorado built the Sol-Char, a toilet that scorches waste via fiber-optic cables, heated by solar concentrators on the roof. The system produces a useful byproduct called biochar, a sanitary charcoal briquette-like material that is supposed to be great for agricultural fertilizer and soil amendment. This is an ongoing effort, yet already received $777,000 in initial funding from the Gates Foundation and additional $1 million in a second round. Its not field ready but the company says its getting there.

Topics: Technology News The Red-Headed Geek Show

Join the conversation!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.