simulation

The patient driver: Gran Turismo 5

The PlayStation 3 doesn't have many marquee exclusive games this fall, but one its most-anticipated and delayed games has finally arrived on store shelves: Gran Turismo 5. The PS3 update to Sony's long-running hyperreal car franchise has endless vehicles and unparalleled physics, but can it compete with the faster, more action-packed racing games that have flooded the market since?

Scott: As racing games have evolved over the years, physics has gotten more impressive, controls tighter, speeds faster, and presentation positively hyperkinetic. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is the perfect example of the adrenaline-rush racer, a drift-crazy takedown-fueled game filled with rage and competitive social leaderboards. It's three shots of espresso mainlined in your eyeballs, and a heck of a lot of fun.

Gran Turismo, once the proud owner of the best-racing-gaming-ever title, is a different sort of car game altogether. If Sony's new Gran Turismo 5 were a war shooter, it would be The Thin Red Line of video games. Realism, patience, focus--and education. It's a meditation on automotive technology. No running from one event to another--instead, smooth jazz and a series of menus that look like they were taken from a car dealer's wall calendar. Is it uncool? Compared to games like Need for Speed, yes, but is that the point? GT5, a game that Polyphony has been developing for as long as the PlayStation 3 has been released, is a living car catalog, and as its name broadcasts, a "driving simulator."

To that end, it's also the only game of this generation brave enough to have you race a Honda Civic at 55 miles an hour. This game's not afraid to go slow, if slow means realistic. Speeds vary greatly--in bonus NASCAR races, the hyper pace feels shocking. Switch to a kart-racing mode, and the experience shifts again. Racing old Volkswagen minivans around the Top Gear test track is completely absurd, yet faithful to the experience. Braking is clumsy but necessary, just like driving a real car. … Read more

Lexus ad shows the world's most advanced simulator

The latest effort in driver and passenger safety for Lexus is to eliminate accidents. To do this, Lexus technicians employ the largest and most advanced driving simulator ever built.

The driving simulator, in Higashifuji, Japan, uses a high-definition imaging system to provide a full 360-degree environment of roads around the vehicle. The driver sits in a pod that is about 15 feet high and 56 feet in diameter. Inside the dome is an actual Lexus, mounted to a turntable. The pod itself runs along a set of interlocking full-motion tracks in a football-field-size room. It can tip forward or backward … Read more

You need a very steady hand!

Glass Tower 2 is a physics-based arcade puzzler with some similarities to falling-block video games and the tabletop classic Jenga.

You start each level with a precarious tower of glass blocks--blue ones, which you need to break, interspersed with red ones, which you need to drop safely to the bottom of the screen. You get points for every blue block you break, and you lose points and a life (out of 10 lives to start) for every red block that falls over the side. The challenge comes in choosing which blue blocks to break, and how quickly, as you try … Read more

T-Mobile teases the G2 smartphone

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded: T-Mobile announces G2 with Google Microsoft Flight Simulator returns Microsoft's Arch Touch mouse Google Sync for Outlook 2010 Yahoo! Mail gets iPad app

Buzz Out Loud 1294: Web: there's an app for that (podcast)

Turns out the Web is dead. Nope, sorry, Chris Anderson from Wired said so, and that's just the way it is. Nevertheless, we discuss. Also, the Chrome OS is about to hit the tablet world like a meteor, you're only getting half the broadband you're paying for, and Microsoft Flight Simulator is back! Darren and Rafe are so excited! Molly and Jason are also here!

Microsoft makes a return to Flight

One of the casualties of last year's layoffs at Microsoft was the Aces game studio responsible for the company's long-running Flight Simulator game.

At the time, Microsoft promised that the flight simulation franchise would continue in one form or another. This week, Redmond confirmed that it is indeed following through with a new title: Microsoft Flight.

The game is in its early development stages, with an alpha version nearly ready for internal testing, according to Kevin Unangst, a senior director in Microsoft's game unit.

The company is offering few details on Flight, but Unangst said that it … Read more

Burning through 2010 just a little faster: Madden 11 hands-on

It's often been argued that Madden, EA's premier exclusive sports franchise, has had nowhere to go with its yearly editions--that users are paying for glorified "roster updates." Though it's true that many of Madden's yearly tweaks have bordered on the nearly invisible to those who weren't hard-core fans, EA Sports has taken a decidedly opposite approach to Madden 11's improvements.

Here, we look at the console version of Madden, specifically on the Xbox 360. Read here for our take on the iPad version.

Scott: "Simpler. Quicker." These are advertised on the box boldly. Clearly aware that the video game version of football has become a little like gridiron Street Fighter, with too many moves to explain without hours spent on proper training, much less the 40 seconds between plays, the emphasis in this year's Madden has clearly been placed on streamlining and mainstream appeal. Is that a smart idea, and more importantly, does it work?

Edging toward simplicity is not a trend limited to Madden. Shooters, RPGs (Fable III, in particular), and casual games have all been boiling down their interfaces, removing text and icons, and making complexity easier to grab in a shorter period of time. … Read more

Dentistry simulation android is all smiles

Aspiring Japanese dentists can now look forward to honing their skills with a robotic simulator, where mistakes won't have serious consequences.

Developers at Showa University and robot maker Tmsuk say Hanako Showa, designed to look just like a 5-foot-tall Japanese woman, is the first of her kind in the world.

Offering realistic treatment scenarios, she can open and close her mouth, turn her head, and say "Ouch! It hurts!" She can also interact verbally with students, answering questions like, "Are you OK?"

But why a female robot? An English-version press release (PDF) from Tmsuk has … Read more

Honda driving simulator monitors your road skills

Honda Japan has announced a fully remodeled driving simulator to promote safer driving, featuring high-resolution LCDs with computer graphics, a moving seat for a more realistic experience, and feedback about users' driving skills.

The latest simulator features high-definition 42-inch LCDs, image and text explanations of and advice about road hazards, as well as two- and six-axis motion options. A touch-panel display allows for easy operation.

Users can select driving simulations at nighttime, in fog, and on the highway as well as regular urban environments. While there are other vehicles on the simulated roads, it seems there are no pedestrians.

Honda … Read more

Panasonic Blu-ray player incorporates 19th-century audio tech

My expectations heading into the Panasonic press event on Wednesday in New York City were pretty low. I'm the audio guy and most of the hubbub was focused on new plasma and LCD displays, and Blu-ray players.

I sat there, eyes glazing over, as Panasonic spokespeople prattled on about "exciting" new advances in Viera Link and PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus technologies--good times for me! But then something amazing happened: they mentioned sound quality! Trust me, that doesn't happen very often at these things, so I was all ears.

First, the new DMP-BD85 Blu-ray player features an HDMI Jitter Purifier, which, according to Panasonic, "affords clear, robust bass sounds faithful to the original." That sounds like something the PR department dreamed up, but it may be useful. We'll see.

Then they said the DMP-BD85 uses a Digital Tube Sound Simulator to produce the warm sound quality associated with vacuum tube amplifiers! What? They even had a small plastic display box fitted with three small tubes to illustrate the concept. DMP-BD85 owners can select between the "sound" of three different tube effects over the HDMI and 7.1-channel analog audio outputs (or turn off the effect and hear unprocessed sound). They didn't mention it, but this sort of sonic enhancement probably won't be compatible with Dolby or DTS soundtracks. That leaves DVDs, Blu-rays, and CDs encoded with PCM audio.… Read more