Month: September 2018

French train-building company Alstom built two hydrogen-powered trains and delivered them to Germany last weekend, where they’ll zoom along a 62-mile stretch of track that runs from the northern cities of Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervörde, and Buxtehude. The new trains replace their diesel-powered counterparts and are the first of their kind, but they are likely not the last. Alstom is contracted to deliver 14 more hydrogen-powered trains, called Coradia iLint trains, before 2021.

Nintendo’s Labo system was designed for use with cardboard, but LEGO designer Vimal Patel (like, he actually works at LEGO designing) has other ideas.

He’s taken (via Gamasutra) some of Labo’s existing cardboard tools, like the piano and handlebars, and built them out of LEGO Technic instead. Which is more complicated and less accessible than Nintendo’s original idea, of course, but also way more durable.

A number of incipient future technologies such as solid state batteries, Level 5 autonomy, and augmented reality simply await the breakthrough moments that will enable mass-market scalability. The last one of those took another step closer to its breakthrough with news of

Porsche

leading an $80 million Series C investment round for six-year-old Switzerland-based AR startup WayRay. The German carmaker was joined in the augmented reality play by

Hyundai

, JVCKENWOOD, China Merchants Capital, a group of sovereign wealth funds, and Alibaba Group, a previous investor.

Porsche

tied up with WayRay earlier this year on an AR project during Startup Autobahn, a European initiative devoted to automotive innovation. Sounds like the cooperation proved fruitful, with Porsche saying, “Their innovative ideas and products have great potential. We are convinced that on this basis we’ll be able to offer our clients customized Porsche solutions,” and putting its money where its windshield is.

Blue chips have apparently backed the company because its AR solution is better than others out there, being smaller than competitor units, adaptable to any make and model, and usable over a much wider field of view, easing the strain on a driver’s eyes.

Hyundai

said it wants to use the technology in its cars, and for applications beyond vehicles like an entire AR ecosystem incorporating smart buildings and smart cities.

On the mundane safety side, the AR system could highlight crosswalks, warning signs, parking spots, construction zones, and provide more precise navigation directions all within the driver’s natural line-of-sight. Porsche, unsurprisingly, is thinking about the performance aspects and widening the suite of digital services it can offer to customers. A short video and a series of graphics showed how a potential WayRay system could enhance the driving experience, especially on track. The Porsche driver not only gets an image of the ideal driving line laid down ahead of him, he could get prompts for braking and turning, a “ghost” car acting as rabbit to show him where he gains and loses time, lap times, track position, and more.

As much as this kind of feature makes sense for the Porsche brand and the new

Cayman

GT4 owner working to hook up his personal best at his local track, WayRay’s possibilities seem like an even better boon for hypercar buyers. This would get the

Bugatti Divo

or

Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro

buyer much closer to his car’s limits than he’d otherwise get before investing years in paid instruction and practice laps. Whenever this AR hits mass adoption, it might spell the end of Nürburgring crash compilation videos, though.

WayRay, with more than 250 employees in four countries, does

80 percent of its work in-house

, from R&D to prototyping, including the development of polymers for the windshield display and new laser technology. In 2015 we

heard about WayRay when it was called Navion

and WayRay was the name of the

aftermarket

augmented reality product Navion was working on. In addition to the name change, the startup has refocused on OEM equipment instead of aftermarket solutions, the CEO saying automakers are lining up to integrate the technology, and that’s where the money is.

The firm says it will invest its cash infusion in more R&D, to build a factory in Germany to manufacture finished units, and expand its AR offerings into nascent automotive sectors like

autonomous vehicles

, as well as fields beyond automotive such as smart homes and construction.

Heads up displays for cars alone

are projected to be worth $1 billion by 2023.

Related Video:

Posted by

Nathan Kirsch |

Tue, Sep 18, 2018 – 9:18 AM

We aren’t able to publish our own benchmark results on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 280 until September 19th, but it appears benchmark results are being posted by game developers. Over the weekend it looks like Square Enix posted some of their numbers to the Final Fantasy XV benchmark result site. Please keep in mind that Final Fantasy XV is a GameWorks title. Let’s take a quick look at Square Enix’s results at 1440p and 4K resolutions with the “High” image quality preset.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti tops the 1440p performance chart with a substantial lead over the NVIDIA Titan V ‘Volta’ card. We believe this is without NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) as that is not available in the public benchmark. NVIDIA says that DLSS will boost frame rates even higher rather than using TXAA. The AMD Radeon RX Vega has half the performance of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti according to this chart.

When you move up to a 4K display the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti still tops the chart with the RTX 2080 performing just below the Titan Xp. These are impressive numbers and show just how powerful the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 are. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition card better be performing well as the card is available for pre-order at $1199!

We don’t use this benchmark tool on Legit Reviews as Square Enix has noted that it suffers from LOD and stuttering issues. The benchmarking tool does not contain fixes that are included in the retail game. It’s still valid to use to compare cards, but it’s not really representative of what you’ll see in the shipping game title.

The benchmark also suffers from stuttering; both of the issues will be addressed in the shipping game.
While the settings in the benchmark are largely pre-selected for simplicity’s sake, the final game will feature highly customizable settings with On/Off options… (1/2)

— Final Fantasy XV (@FFXVEN) February 6, 2018

The tiny, thin pair of prongs used on plugs in North America and in other parts of the world are nearly impossible to jam into a power outlet if you can’t see what you’re doing. Ten One Design’s new Stella plug improves on the design with something we’ve never seen before: a built-in flashlight that automatically turns on near outlets to light the way.

There are bleeding-edge technologies that promise to one day free us from not only having to find a power outlet when we start panicking about a device’s dying battery, but cords and cables altogether. Ossia’s Cota technology, for example, can wirelessly deliver power to electronics the same way wifi delivers internet to your phone and computer. But a practical mass rollout of such a system is still years away.

The reality is that cords, plugs, and physical power outlets will be with us for many decades to come, so even the smallest of improvements or innovations that make plugging in our gear less of a hassle are welcome. The surprisingly useful addition of a simple LED flashlight to its plug isn’t the only thing that makes Stella a worthwhile upgrade; Ten One Design’s execution is nearly-perfect.

The $35 cable is designed to replace the section of cord that connects your laptop’s power brick to a wall outlet, and is currently available in versions for both Apple and PC laptops—but I’d make sure to double-check the compatibility of your machine if you’re buying the Stella for a non-MacBook device.

I tested the Stella with an older MacBook Pro, and swapping out the brick’s standard power cord for Ten One Design’s upgrade was as simple. The Stella does look a little different than the power cord Apple includes with its MacBooks; trading a thick rubber sheathing for a braided nylon shell. But I much prefer how the Stella looks, and the braided cable is actually more flexible, so it’s easier to wind around the power brick when cable wrangling.

The business-end of the Stella—the part that actually plugs into an outlet—is only just slightly bulkier than Apple’s. But it can still easily squeeze into a crowded power bar, and Ten One Design has made the braided cord exit the plug at a 45-degree angle which the company claims will help reduce stress and damage at the connection point.

It looks like a perfectly normal two-prong plug, but inside the Stella is additional hardware similar to what you’d find inside a non-contact voltage tester, tools electricians use to detect the presence of a live wire without actually having to touch it by detecting the surrounding electrical field. The Stella incorporates a simplified version of this technology to automatically activate an LED when power is detected. It’s not quite as sensitive as the tool an electrician would use, but I found it was able to detect a power outlet from as far as a couple of inches.

The Stella uses a non-replaceable battery to power its low-energy LED that Ten One Design claims will work for at least a decade—well past the life of any laptop. But while the LED is certainly bright enough to illuminate an outlet when it’s a couple of inches away, it’s in no way usable as a flashlight. You’ll want to treat it more as a last mile tool (or in this case, a last inches tool) that can save you from having to blindly try to jam a plug into an outlet in the dark, but you’ll need to know where that outlet is first.

Is the Stella a must-have upgrade? If your laptop spends its entirely life sitting in one place, then the answer is no. But if your laptop never leaves your side, joining you on business trips and hotel stays where you’re constantly plugging and unplugging your computer into strange and different places, then there’s a strong case to be made for the upgrade. But I actually run into this problem far more often with my iPhone’s charging cable, so if Ten One Design ever manages to squeeze a smart LED into that tiny wall wart, I’ll be first in line with my credit card.

README

• What seems like a novelty feature becomes genuinely useful the first time you have to reach under a dark desk to plug in your laptop.
• At $35 it’s more expensive than Apple’s $19 replacement power cable, but far more functional.
• Currently only available for laptops, which is disappointing.
• A nylon braided shell around the cable is more flexible and easier to wind than the one Apple includes.
• The power brick connector on the Apple version of the Stella includes a handy pop-out cord clip to help with cable wrangling.
• You never need to swap batteries, but the low-power LED is dim and really only useful a few inches away from an outlet.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

September 18, 2018 at 08:33AM