General Gaming Article

Leap Motion Controller Mount for Oculus Rift Now Available

Posted: 31 Aug 2014 08:37 PM PDT

Company is also working on embeddable "mega sensor" for future VR headsets

Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Oculus Rift virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD), recently told GamesIndustry International that VR may not become mainstream for quite some time to come. One of the things currently holding VR back, per Luckey, is the use of traditional controllers, which he feels are far from ideal for VR. However, as we wait for the ideal VR input to materialize, the list of controller alternatives for VR aficionados to experiment with keeps on growing. The latest addition to it is the Leap Motion Controller.

Leap Motion, Inc. has introduced a Leap Motion controller mount for the Oculus Rift. Called the VR Developer Mount, this $20 contraption allows the company's eponymous motion-sensing camera to snap onto the Oculus Rift.

"If virtual reality is to be anything like actual reality, we believe that fast, accurate, and robust hand tracking will be absolutely essential," the company's CTO David Holz said in a blog post Thursday. "We believe in the concept of other specialized controllers as well, but our hands themselves are the fundamental and universal human input device."

The VR Developer Mount will help developers make the most of a new API that for the first time gives them access to raw infrared from the Leap Motion Controller: "When mounted directly onto a head-worn display, these [infrared] images become stereoscopic windows into the world around you. What it sees, you see."

"This expands the tracking space to be in any direction you're facing. You can reach forward, turn around, look up and down, and the tracking follows you wherever you go. Because our device's field of view exceeds that of existing VR displays, you'll find it can start to track your hands before you even see them."

Holz also revealed that the company is working on a next-generation "mega sensor" that will be offered directly to VR OEMs for embedding in their HMDs. Codenamed "Dragonfly", the new sensor will come with "greater-than-HD image resolution, color and infrared imagery, and a significantly larger field of view."

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Alienware Outs New Area-51 Gaming Desktop

Posted: 31 Aug 2014 04:59 PM PDT

New Triad chassis is the most outré thing to come out of Alienware's stable in recent times

Alienware is bringing back its Area-51 desktop PC and it's nothing like the previous iterations, having received a pretty radical makeover. The 2014 edition Area-51 gaming rig is what can best be described as the love child of a hexagon and a triangle. Perhaps that is why the company has chosen to call the new hexagonal chassis the "Triad."

But what is so special about the new Triad chassis? Per the company, there is more to the design than meets the eye. The angled design is said to be better at heat dissipation as compared to the average rectangular chassis. This is because it affords "a large space for hot air to escape where a traditional, rectangular chassis only leaves a small space between it and the wall." Further, this design is meant to enable easier access to both the front I/O panel and the rear portion.

There is no word yet on the price and availability of the new rig. But it's a slightly different story when it comes to specs. While the exact specifications are unknown, the official product page contains this technical outline of the Area-51: "The Alienware Area-51 ushers in a new era of performance with 6-core and 8-core Intel Core i7 Extreme processor options [read our Haswell-E review] that come factory overclocked and made possible with the new Intel X99 Express chipset alongside 2133Mhz DDR4 memory — up to 32GB in quad channel. Do insane, intensive multitasking like rendering video or extreme performance 4K gaming at your leisure. Experience a custom balance of solid-state and hard drives, enabling the performance of SSD with the storage capacity of HDD. Plus, 802.11ac – the latest wireless protocol – prioritizes streaming video and gaming, so lag is reduced."

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