Gizmodo: next gen

Japanese Media Vehicle is Virtual Reality in a Capsule

Elaine Chow — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 01:30:00 EST

This “media vehicle,” recently shown at an IT exhibition in Tokyo, looks like something out of Ghost in the Shell and is the coolest thing I've seen all day.

Riders enter the vehicle by popping open the top and entering what looks like a futuristic cockpit. A large spherical display covers the upper body while a bottom area allows your legs to move freely on a special track.

The machine, which is a prototype, can only handle a weight of up to 60kg (132 pounds). According to the reporter, being inside felt like living in a large video game. Uh, where can I sign up to try this thing out? [Robot Impress]

True Next Gen Wii Coming in 2011

Elaine Chow — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:25:16 EDT

A true “next generation” Nintendo console, tentatively referred to as the Wii HD, will hit the market in 2011, according to the folks at What They Play. The site claimed that Nintendo is currently showing early presentations of Wii 2.0 to the game development community, and that Miyamoto's new device will be based on completely new hardware and will contain HD visuals, digitally distributed content and expanded storage.

The sources said the transition will be similar to “the shift from Game Boy to Game Boy Advance,” meaning key elements (such as Wiimote-game interaction) will stay the same while the core hardware gets taken to a new level. Nintendo's not commenting, but What They Play pointed out that R&D spending at the company has more than tripled—from $103 million to $370 million—since the Wii was released two years ago. Be still my fluttering heart. [What They Play]

Japanese Scientists Extend Flash Memory Lifespan to Hundreds of Years

Kit Eaton — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:17:00 EDT

Scientists in Japan have worked out a new technique for improving the lifespan of flash memory devices from around a decade currently to hundreds of years. The new ferroelectric NAND flash technology can do rewrites 100 million times, versus the 10,000 or so of existing tech, and can be scaled down to 10nm—one third the size of next-gen conventional flash. Furthermore, the ferroelectric chips use a "wear leveling" system to even-out the usage of memory cells, and can even disable bad cells without killing the whole chip. Plus it uses a rewriting voltage of 6 volts versus the 20+ volts of current chips. Sounds like a promising, long-life, low-power future for solid-state drives. Though as with all these advances it'll be a good while 'til we see actual products. [VNUNet]

Microsoft's HD Photo Is Official JPEG Successor, Redubbed JPEG XR

Matt Buchanan — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:20:04 EDT

Microsoft's HD Photo standard is now officially tapped to become JPEG's successor by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, but it'll be known as JPEG XR.

XR stands for extended range, given the wider color palette and finer gradations it can show. Other benefits include in-camera imaging processing support and, supposedly, better compression. Besides losing its Windows-y name (in a former life, it was Windows Media Photo) it's dropping proprietary control by Microsoft to become as neutral as JPEG is now. Though support's already built-in to Windows Vista, it'll take a year to get standardized, at which point large-scale adoption will probably start picking up steam. [Cnet via Electronista]

Panasonic's Second Generation Blu-ray Player is Slightly More Affordable

Jason Chen — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:00:36 EDT

Clocking in at a solid $599, Panasonic's DMP-BD10A is their second venture into Blu-ray territory. The newest model has 7.1 surround, Dolby True HD and dts-HD, EZ-Sync Panasonic integration with other Panasonic components, and upconverts regular DVDs to 1080p via HDMI.

We're not sure shelling out $599 for a standalone player is wise seeing as you can get a PS3 for the same price, but there's got to be more features on Panasonic's DMP-BD10A than a PlayStation. Right? Right? At least this comes with five free movies. – Jason Chen

Press Release [Panasonic via Crunchgear]

Next Gen Consoles Held Up by Last Gen Disc Speeds

Mark Wilson — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:00:17 EDT

Last Friday, I spent the morning visiting Volition. They are the game developer responsible for the Descent series, Red Faction, Summoner, The Punisher and the upcoming Xbox 360 title Saints Row.

Adam Pletcher is a Volition veteran and technical artist on Saints Row. He translates artistic vision into strings of code and is concerned with the 360's number-crunching power every day. What does he see as the biggest technical problem in the new system?

"The streaming stuff."

"The Xbox 360 is a wonderful machine and we can do a ton more, but one thing that hasn't changed is the dvd transfer speed," Producer Jacques Hennequet explained. "It's become the new soundbarrier."

And his colleagues agree. With all the worry about graphics chipsets and processor cores, no one questioned the transfer speed of DVD. Sure, Sony has talked about blu-ray until they've become blu in the face, but early blu-ray players aren't significantly faster than standard DVD: the same speed players we will see in the PS3. Can DVD technology get faster? Blu-ray can. Theoretically 12x blu-ray could reach transfer speeds of 400mb/s while 16x DVD only clocks in at 21mb/s.

But such is a moot point. Sony and Microsoft cannot simply put faster drives into their existing console platforms. The very idea of performance-based upgrades applies to PCs, not game consoles.

For my final interview of the day I spoke with Randall Turner, Engineering Architect on Saints Row. (I hope that's his title - a very loud fan from a PS3 dev kit really messed with my audio). Before video games, Turner worked for the military developing software for multiprocessing computers, his area of expertise.

"The amount of data we need to display one building [in Saints Row] is 4 times that of Xbox - maybe more, actually," Turner explained, "...probably more like 8 times as much."

And all that data has to come from somewhere, Turner explained. Even with games like Saints Row utilizing 90% of the 360's processing power, even with advanced development tools not available to true first generation 360 titles, even with more efficient coding that programmers are bound to design, titles on the 360 (and PS3 for that matter) will always be limited by the narrow bandwidth of DVD technology.

"What I see as potential solution is in the next, next gen, [is] an increase in ram that is so enormous you can store gigabytes [in the ram]," Hennequet said.

I asked if a bigger hard drive might be a solution - even in this generation of consoles. "Even the hard drive is not going to be fast enough," he replied.

But despite the bandwidth limitations, Volition feels optimistic for the future of the Xbox 360 platform.

"We have tons of room to grow," Turner promises. "From first to second generation it's not even hard."

We'll see what he says in three years. – Mark Wilson