Flying cars - the Jetsons are go; Star Citizen updates including a really cool graphics webpage

Here's some news of cool stuff so my posts this week aren't all disheartening.

Here's a video of a testflight of a car that turns into a plane and back again!




 __________________________breaking like a boss___________________________________________


Here's a: really cool webpage showcasing a data-based (interception, hacking, courier, transfer) spaceship from Star Citizen.

If you're logged in, it has a nice personalisation showing your profile as the only one not yet eliminated! =P There's also a nifty 'decrypt page' button to reveal the unscrambled data on the webpage. =)

Also, release 13 or Arena Commander v0.9.2 has been released: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14258-Arena-Commander-092-Released

Star Citizen claims Guiness World Record - Most Crowdfunded Project Overall

Hey guys, I (kind of) got into the Guiness Book of World Records!!! (well CIG did, but I backed Star Citizen so ... =P)

Guiness Book of World Records 2015, page 17:
- Flash/HTML version
- SEO version

And this was when Star Citizen had raised $39.6 million back in March, and it's now over $55 million!!! Note that sponsorships and subscriber monies do NOT count towards the total you see on the funding goals webpage.

In the latest Letter From the Chairman, Chris Roberts describes CIG's budgeting planning, and how 'feature-creep' is actually part of the agile development process, with "creeped" features coming after Persistent Universe v1.0 release, although others may come before that since they're able to with increased funding, like higher fidelity ship models.
Go agile! (I'm glad I'm being taught Agile at my current uni, whereas I in the previous one I only touched waterfall/Vmodel. Maybe it's because I switched from hardware to software, but the idealogy should be taught/learnt anyway!)

You can also see other crowdfunded projects (also on page 16, it's a double page spread), including the pebble smartwatch (which came out before all the latest watches like Samsung, Sony and Apple's current-gen offerings). It features e-ink which is cooler and less battery draining than LED/LCD but is monochrome. I wrote about both Star Citizen and Pebble last year here. 

1st interview published online

So another Star Citizen post. With a very Linux-y twist. Here's all the previous SC related posts.

1st interview published on web-@CzenStar:New Org Profile: #StarCitizen's own #Linux User Group http://t.co/TJms4Iur0n pic.twitter.com/7FwhkDlNVB
— V C (@pd_12) August 9, 2014

I've blogged a bit before but never have had anyone blog about me (I think ...)
Here's my first interview published online! It's about our 'org' (i.e. clan, guild, outfit, etc. in the Star Citizen universe) called "Linux Users Group", based on the LUGs around the world. (Link is to Australia, VIC LUGs but hey, that's where I am =P)

Obligatory iframe for this momentous (=P) occasion:


It'd be great for anyone interested in Linux to join our LUG org! It'd also be cool to see you in the Unofficial Linux Thread. Hope to see you around the verse!

P.S. recently re-watched some Firefly (among other things) on my new 1080p 3D TV setup with 5.1 =3

Space Update 16/7/2014

Quick Space Update =D

 

AITC installs Wombat XL

Close to (my) home, Australia is finally moving along in the space industry with our first satellite testing facility at the Australian National University! The last time I was there they didn't have the Wombat vacuum tank in the big testing room. Let's see if I can upload a picture of what I saw (great view!): on second thought, he's some pics from the AITC from when we toured there!

The room where the Wombat XL Space Simulation Facility now sits

Dang, that view (Canberra's pretty!)

Crane in the clean room

Clean room

soon-to-be vibration platform

Sometimes moving images around is so difficult, even in this WYSIWYG blogger editor I would rather LaTeX. (html layout formatting is horrible imho)
ANU hopes to test their HDLT plasma thruster there. (Past research students in the group have said their previous conclusions were "need bigger vacuum chamber", so here it is! =P)

SpaceX launches 6 OrbComm satellites, gets aproval for Texas private launch site, and passes 3 flights EELV requirement

100% mission success. Reusability testing was good (again) up until splashdown.

Flight 10 of Falcon 9 was good. All six ORBCOMM satellites deployed on target.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2014

Rocket booster reentry, landing burn & leg deploy were good, but lost hull integrity right after splashdown (aka kaboom)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2014

Detailed review of rocket telemetry needed to tell if due to initial splashdown or subsequent tip over and body slam
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2014

They got approval for their first private spaceflight facility. It even has a wiki page! This allows SpaceX to"provide SpaceX an exclusive launch site that would allow the company to accommodate its launch manifest and meet tight launch windows." Especially that rapid reusability time - land on your own launchpad, recover, reintegrate, refuel, launch without worrying about range clearance blocking you because it'd be planned already.

Also, USAF certifies SpaceX's Falcon9 3 successful flights, amid the legal battles they have had.

UK Spaceport and user roundup

Astronomy Agregator does a good UK Spaceport and reusable/SSTO/Sub-orbital round-up of the Spaceport's users and critique.
Speaking of my favourite space outlets (apart from the big ones like NASAspaceflight, spaceflightnow, space.com) I haven't been on AA or ParabolicArc or Spacevidcast in a while. I'll be happy to get back into it! =)
Spacevidcast's new show is now called TMRO ("tomorrow") and are on Patreon, so support them, because they do really great weekly shows!

Space Games

Space genre games have seen a resurgence, imho in no small part due to Star Citizen's rocketing success, and a lot of them are on Linux =D Here's updates from the biggest 2 (and my personal favourites) space games!

CIG at RSI.com on StarCitizen surpasses $48 million in funding and has almost 500k Star Citizens at time of writing! All the stretchgoals!! It doesn't look like we'll get the bagel carrier mentioned in an old WMH episode xP but we do get complete alien languages with the hiring of linguists!!!

Kerbal Space program is releasing 0.24 soon and has prepped this FAQ for us. After the NASA-partnered 0.23.5 Asteroid Redirect Mission update (with a stock asteroid grapler/claw), this is a welcome update with funds, reputation and contract functionality to further enhance the career mode! No longer will you build with unlimited money and have no repercussions of killed kerbonauts! =P I hope those interstellar mods and life support, real communication link, KOS and MFD mods still work ... Would love to do a full mission in first person!


Hurray for indies and startups! (All news items today have had a connection to this theme). Especially newspace! =)

Gaming Update & Arena Commander launched for a couple of weeks!

LoL, Dota 2 and SC2 are now collegiate sports.

Dota 2 nears 10 million prizepool money, which includes USD$8.4 million from compendium and compendium point purchases. That's $33.6 million of total compendium related revenue, and $25.2 million for Valve from compendium related revenue alone! This is getting big, just like TF2 hats =P
Current PrizePool:

Btw, Steam Summer Sale is on, get them daily/flash deals! Isthereanydeal.com is also a great website to track your wishlist and if it goes on sale on many different storefronts - it saves heaps of browsing time! 
You know Valve is doing something right when they release things gamers want (Steam Cloud, Cross platform SteamPlay, Dota2, TF2, SteamOS-Linux) and aren't shy to get it properly done and delay releases according to Valve Time, much like CIG does with Star Citizen and their DFM release. =P


Speaking of, the Star Citizen DogFighting Module has been released (launch trailer here)! It's named Arena Commander (as a in-universe combat sim game). Currently it's at v0.8, check the above link for the planned version update roadmap. Some interesting stats and tutorial videos for different control devices (m+kb, joystick) released ~24hrs after the DFM release.
Also, the most watched Star Citizen streamer on Twitch - Nyaandere - streams almost daily! (Pretty punny username if I may say so myself).

 
Alternate Launch Trailer, the one I prefer - especially with the lovely Bach Prelude 1 =P

Everyone has single player (free-flight, Vanduul swarm) access if you have the Alpha or "Arena Commander module" access. Most recently they've updated it with Hangar Patch 12.3 (which is still v0.8 for Dogfighting module/Arena Commander version numbers).
Want to know if you have multiplayer access? Check your UEE Citizen Record # on your Citizen Dossier like so https://robertsspaceindustries.com/citizens/pd12
Then match it up with the roll-out updates on https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13947-Arena-Commander-Multiplayer-Roll-Out-Begins

Also because a lot of people have been complaining that the ships' handling doesn't "feel right" CR (Chris Roberts, project director) has written up this lovely post full of the details of how they simulate and model the flight physics. It's beautiful! (And therefore obligatory iframe which doesn't work atm, someone tell me why):

Star Citizen (finally) Officially Confirmed for Linux by the man himself!

YES, Star Citizen (finally) Officially Confirmed for Linux by the man himself!!!

"... by the way, we'll gonna be supporting Linux."

"We'll be on Linux ... we like it. I think most engineers will tell you that they prefer Linux ... to Windows actually, especially in the back-end server world."

1st quote is at 21:45 (already skipped to in that video link above.
2nd quote is at 45:20 (question & answer). CR (Chris Roberts) also says "all the major engines are supporting Linux" at [47:25]. =)


Here's another great video of Linux love and DRM hate (with an interesting developer's opinion on piracy) from last year's PC Gamer panel with more indies and game devs at PAX:




Click here for a brief history of speculation of Star Citizen on Linux on my part.
And here for an article about the rise of Linux (including gaming on Linux).

Here's also a new blog I discovered covering gaming on Linux which updates fairly frequently (multiple articles per day) as opposed to steamonlinux.com
It's like Phoronix but for games! (Since Michael is a self-professed non-gamer).

BREAKING: CryEngine on Linux Officially CONFIRMED (and therefore Star Citizen =P)

Yes, after years of speculation, Crytek has announced that CRYENGINE will finally officially build natively for Linux.
Here's the excerpt pertaining to Linux:

During presentations and hands-on demos at Crytek's GDC booth, attendees can see for the first time ever full native Linux support in the new CRYENGINE.  The CRYENGINE all-in-one game engine is also updated with the innovative features used to recreate the stunning Roman Empire seen in Ryse – including the brand new Physically Based Shading render pipeline, which uses real-world physics simulation to create amazingly realistic lighting and materials in CRYENGINE games.

I first learnt about his when someone posted to the Star Citizen forums of a thread I was following. 
Obligatory Phoronix post. 

My speculation history to date:
Just recently Star Citizen advertised Kingdom Come: Deliverance which utilised the same CRYENGINE and promises a Linux port.  It's triply funded on Kickstarter now!
Remember in this post I talked about that Linux programmer position they were hiring for Frankfurt (Crytek HQ) as proof of "almost fully official" Linux builds? Filled.
Or that time Chris Roberts said in the 24 hour livestream for Star Citizen that they can't say anything about non-Windows builds yet but Linux (and Mac) users will be "pleasantly surprised"?
And then me wondering about it here?
And these posts were a year after I read Phoronix' article back in 2012 where I first speculated about CryEngine on Linux. Of course, at that time I thought the more the merrier, but in 2013 Star Citizen changed that thought into "Come out on Linux already!"

Linux is complete with gaming rant
Yes, you're getting another (slightly reworded) one ;P
With Valve's SteamOS, Steam on Linux and Source, Unity, Unreal and CRY Engines being native on Linux, games ARE moving en-masse to the Linux OS. This is welcome news, since gaming, and atm, only one particular game -Star Citizen- is the only thing holding me back from never booting Windows on my laptop.
Games I also like and play on Linux are: Dota 2, KSP, Guns of Icarus Online, L4D2, TF2, X-series, Bastion, Killing Floor, Gemini Rue, Dust, Monaco, Surgeon Simulator, and an ever increasing amount of games, indie and big-publisher alike. I find if I'm looking at a game purchase/Humble Bundle, availability on Linux is a deciding factor. I also find I can usually get a good old game on Windows that wasn't built for Linux working on Wine. Especially with WineHQ database and PlayOnLinux. =P

The past year has been - and the next few years will be - very interesting for Linux =)

_________________________________________________________________

Star Citizen Update!

So they just reached $40 million and every backer who pledges/pledged before the $42million mark will get a special Galactapedia (Hitch Hiker's Guide, if you will) viewer. They'll also get a TOWEL! HAHAHAHAHA!!!! xD

Also, since I've done an SC update on this blog, a lot of things have happened - they're at patch 11.1 with OR support in the Hangar Module; check out the stretch goals, which are just examples of the ways SC improves with the money and were usually planned long ago.
Also check out their new monthly reports (link to Feb 2014) for those of us who don't have time to follow every website post.

And they now have 3 update videos every WEEK:

• Monday - 10 for the Chairman where Chris Roberts answers 10 questions from subscribers (monthly pledgers of $10/$20).
• Wednesdays - Wingman's Hangar (now moved to Wednesdays; the original development update show). 
• Fridays - The Next Great Starship, a kind of reality TV show featuring a competition for teams to make the next starship in Star Citizen with the judging and feedback of some folks from CIG (Cloud Imperium Games, RSI's real-world company name)!

Also Jump Point print copies are available, they look gorgeous! They're also a great example of how the folks at CIG tend to over deliver on promises and are always looking for the good of the game and the players - they promised 4-6 full colour pages of magazine format development updates for monthly subscribers and now they're averaging 50 pages a month! They've released some past Jump Point sections  to everyone before, check it out on their website (link goes to all slideshows in Comm-Link)! Check all their WIPs and Jump Point stuff at the link.

Can't wait to try the Dog Fighting Module after PAX East in mid-April!


Last Updated: 2014-03-16 06:39:53 AM AEDT; corrected Jump Point frequency to "monthly", added a few links.

Oculus Rift VR

Oculus Rift. (OR)
VR's big comeback. Or at least the biggest name in VR these last couple of years.

The set up OR of the day - we played on a laptop

I was, and still am extremely excited by the immense possibilities the OR brings to VR and can't wait to see how things will develop in the future!
Especially with Star Citizen "coming out" at the end of this year. This VR/AR headset has so many different applications that VR/AR comes with including remote tele-operations, education, entertainment media including games, videos, etc.

I was able to try the OR thanks to a fellow Computer Science student, after I participated in his research at the CSIRO/RSISE in ANU. He said many people experienced nausea and couldn't take more than 10 minutes with the OR on, but surprisingly, I didn't want to vomit at all, and quite enjoyed it! This might have been partly due to my biggest disappointment - being able to see the pixels and pixel borders after the LCD screen's light passes through the OR's lenses. The lenses let your eyes see the screen from individual perspectives creating a 3D experience, as well as helping you be able to focus your eyes to infinite distance while being able to look at the light from the screen.

Here are some photos:

Always RTFM first right? I like Friendly Manuals.

Includes 3 different lenses for near-sighted people. Otherwise, you can wear your glasses inside/under the headset.

 Le treasure chest. And headset.

 Side - angle views. The viewing angles on the display were pretty darn good.

Too bad you can clearly see the black pixel borders when you put on the goggles through the lenses. It's worse than it appears in this photo with my camera.


An OR with one lens cap (left) taken off.








And a close up of that area below:

I think the biggest thing going for the OR is that it makes you feel like you're there. This makes for just the wonder and awe of exploring the world that you're now in - when you wear the headset - to be quite a delight.

The biggest problem I had that broke the immersion was seeing the black pixel border lines, I hope this will be fixed in future higher resolution versions. It also alerted me to having to try before I buy the consumer version, since I definitely wouldn't spend $300 on the immersion breaking and awfully low-res to the point of blurriness (720p screen divided into half for each eye) dev-kit as a consumer product.

I could also feel a bit of latency or probably judder, although it's being worked on, and I think my head naturally compensated by moving my head slower. (Valve is supporting Oculus Rift and aren't manufacturing hardware for now, preferring to be a platform where OR users will seamlessly launch apps and games from). Unfortunately, this must also be checked out before I buy for gaming purposes, as when you're desperately looking around the cockpit for that hostile spacecraft, you don't want your vision to be blurry and laggy, creating more nausea or noobplay.


A little Carmack envisioning a SoC (running Android) 4K integrated headset/future OR:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/18/oculus-rift-john-carmack-interview/


And most recently:

CES 2014 (Crystal Cove) updates:

• 1080p OLED (still not sure that's enough resolution after the lenses)
• New Positional tracking via IR-LEDs on the OR and an external camera on your monitor. 
• Lighter, smaller
• Lower latency, via OLED & technologies as talked about in the video in the link below
• Apparently winner of "Best of CES 2014"
• Still aimed to price accessibly at ~$300
• No release date but 2014 "big year" for OR

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/09/the-oculus-rift-crystal-cove-prototype-is-2014s-best-of-c/
So apparently they sold 55k units, with only 7.5k units sold during their Kickstarter!

For those worried about nausea, with positional tracking, it might be better. Someone does a write-up of their pleasant experience with Crystal Cove after previous nausea with the old version:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/10/oculus-rift-crystal-cove-prototype-hands-on-at-ces-2014/

AMD Mantle

Having announced all their new value/bang for buck Volcanic Island cards - with one being reviewed by Phoronix here - AMD/ATI have now announced their new Graphics API Mantle.

It pretty much replaces OpenGL and DirectX, giving developers a closer, lower level access to the graphics card chips and such. This being similar to NVAPI and Glide from 3dfx. Firstly heard it from Star Citizen, which will be supporting it, characteristic of it supporting all cool advancement in PC technologies like the Oculus Rift. What this means is considerable improvement in GPU utilisation, and hopefully a Linux client via Mantle. There could also be a PS4 version if Sony lets CIG do their stuff on it, how they like. Here's some more info:


However, John Carmack (now at Oculus VR) says OpenGL can reach that (9x faster draw calls) performance, when utilising extensions from nVidia. Speaking of Oculus, a post about that should come somewhat later. =)

There should be a lot more info released during the AMD Conference on the 11th-13th this month.

Ubunchu ch.08 and PSA: Sudo powers

Here's a double release of art projects geared towards new(ish?) users/discoverers of Linux and the Ubuntu distribution.

Ubunchu chapter 8 typeset by me took a year (lol, I had no schedule and it was very on-off, next time I'll schedule it properly so I don't forget what I was doing). It's my first official type-setting/translation manga release, hope you like it. =) I was going to try and perfect it but because the project dragged on so long I thought I should just try and quickly push it out and release/ship it.
Ubunchu is about a school club in a Japanese high school which is tinkering with Ubuntu.
Read the whole series (and a better synopsis) here: ubunchu.net
My latest release (ch8): on google drive - zip of PNGs (click File -> Download),

        Shared folder here - DL in PDF (recommend you DL the zip of PNGs instead and use MComix to read get MComix1.00), 

        and on the ubunchu website (when it gets uploaded there someday).

Getting to work on an open sourced manga/project like this one is pretty nice. Especially without having to clean 'scans' using levelling, and other more sophisticated techniques. xP All of it was done in GIMP which is open source and is also available on windows due to GTK magic (but it feels nicer on my Kubuntu). I've never used photoshop properly (to a certain extent) but I can say GIMP is competitively advanced and has nice plugins too. Mostly used Blambot's fonts - free for non-commercial use.

Also would be nice to get a Wacom tablet/ergonomic mouse/SteamController (check out this demo vid!), I get RSI with at least my index finger when using conventional mice. Currently use a trackball for everyday use, but gets annoying since it doesn't have a scroll wheel. Steam controller definitely looks promising since my HKD20 PS-like controller definitely has bad resolution, and I don't imagine my PS controllers or the XBox ones will be much better. Although having fond memories of my Saitek joystick (which is so old it used a serial or parallel connection), I might use that for Star Citizen, although I'll have to test the Steam Controller first, like how I tested the OR. Which reminds me, Oculus Rift post coming soon =)

[Linux is complete with gaming rant]
With Valve's SteamOS, Steam on Linux and Source, Unity, Unreal game Engines being native on Linux as well as CryEngine soon, games seem to be moving en-masse to the Linux OS. This is welcome news, since gaming, and atm, only one particular game (Star Citizen, which has gained 4mil in crowdfunding since I last blogged about last month - 1.5mil of which was from the last 4 days) is the only thing holding me back from never booting Windows on my laptop. It's on CryEngine 3, so can't wait for that to build natively for Linux.
We've got Dota 2, KSP, Guns of Icarus Online, L4D2, TF2, X-series and an increasing amount of games, indie and big-publisher alike natively on Linux already or coming. I find if I'm looking at a game purchase/Humble Bundle, availability is a deciding factor. These next few years will be very interesting for Linux =)

[/rant]

Here's the PSA (it's related to Ubunchu ch.8), sad to say I learnt this the hard way one too many times:




_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Came across an interesting blenderguru post about why and how Blender's UI is broken and the principles of making good UI, how Blender can be fixed. The folks who made Unity should have a look =P [Sincerely, KDE/XFCE user]

UPDATE: Blenderguru made a video with suggestions, here it is!


=)

Valve and AMD reveals

So Valve has revealed their SteamOS a couple of days ago which is based on Linux, so it's pretty much a Linux distro. It will be a living room entertainment OS, so think console+xbmc combined. It is also free and open source!
Today, they also revealed SteamBox, and are offering 300 beta units for testers to be randomly selected, as long as you earn the Steam Hardware badge level 2.Unfortunately, actual specs are not disclosed, although they are saying the system is open, and you can upgrade individual components (like a PC!), as well as being free to install any OS on it or turn it into a robot! Gotta love Valve and their open/hacker/community culture. First open console since the PC =P. They are also claiming to have different boxes available in 2014 from different vendors, so PC and linux gaming seems to be ever on fire and advancing, thanks in no small part to Valve! [S2] (companion cube). It's great to see games like Dota 2, L4D2, Kerbal Space Program, X3: Albion Prelude and Guns of Icarus Online (and hopefully the Crytek 3 Engine soon) on Linux!
In a couple of days, Valve will reveal something else. Using symbols 'O' as the SteamOS reveal, and '[O ]' as the SteamBox reveal, they are revealing something along the lines of 'O+O'. They've already suggested streaming video from your gaming PC to the steambox via LAN, and family sharing for games, but it could be something different. Check the reveal here below in 33 hours:



AMD has revealed their newest line of GPUs at every price point, and personally I'm rooting for them as they are actually supporting open source linux driver development. Unlike a certain competitor which only releases binary blobs, although they run alright. In the livestream other game devs were also featured as were a lot of audio technology.
Check out Star Citizen's Chris Roberts at 1hr 44minutes of the livestream and some new hangar module features! (And an Aurora take off sequence in the new trailer demo!). It's also set to break 20 million in crowdfunding within 24 hours. See you in the 'verse!

Watch live streaming video from amdlivestream at livestream.com

Star Citizen Hangar Module!!! (Patch 3)

Star Citizen, currently at >USD18mil in crowdfunding, getting past the halfway point of the ambitious Ubuntu Edge's goal. I've been screenshot-ing the daily pledge amount graph so analysis can be made later, but currently it's averaged >1mil/month since March, and in the 7 days during Hangar reveal it raised >1mil.

So after reading this forum thread detailing how someone ran Star Citizen's Hangar Module (a pre-pre-alpha) on a DirectX10.1 card, I was totally excited because before I thought I might need an eGPU. Star Citizen runs on CryEngine 3 and officially needs DX11 (and probably some high OpenGL level once Crytek supports Linux - hope they get a good hire). However, now I can wait for later to buy a new rig/Graphics card and get the best bang for buck =D Will probably be using a desktop > laptop to play this intense game though.

The graphics here look amazing!! And I loved the holo-table and being able to sleep in my RSI Aurora! =D I played this on low settings with a resolution of 1280x720 but I'm guessing my FPS was below 10. Maxed my GPU (GT330M) on my Samsung R580-JS02AU with i5-520M and 8GB DDR3.

Originally my GPU was overheating at ~100C and decided to turn my computer off when that happened (although I don't know how I was doing constant 105C while gaming last year before I took apart my laptop and cleaned it, reducing temperatures by ~20C (should make a post about that sometime with all the pics =P).
This time, I opted for the quick airduster into the fan intake, ejecting some dust and that seemed to cool the GPU down 10C so it hovered around 90C during gameplay.
Was doing dual screen 1366x768 and 1280x1024 had Star Citizen windowed at 1280x720 and used Greenshot. Afterwards I realised I could've just used FRAPS and got FPS data. -Facepalm-.

Here is a link to my album, and a slideshow of shots I took:

Star Citizen Hangar Module Test, Patch 3, 8/9/2013

Ubuntu Edge ... Final Hours

While I posted about Ubuntu Edge before, It's at the final hours (17) of the campaign and with only 12.25mil and just under 20mil to go, it doesn't look very likely this crowd-funding campaign will reach its goal.

At the discounted price of $695/phone, that is now 46k units instead of 40k units, which is a decent manufacturing run, although I'm not sure on the exact numbers in the economical analysis of these things.

Spec-wise, and functionality-wise it trumps anything in that price-range, Xperia Z or HTC One. Unfortunately, probably due to inadequate advertisement/social media-ring and just not enough people ready to upgrade/commit (a lot of the early adopters may have already bought something this year like the previously mentioned phones), the campaign won't be breaking crowd-funding records like Star Citizen's record breaking crowd-funding dollars.

Still, 12mil is pretty respectable, it was 11mil yesterday and comes close to the 14.6 mil that Star Citizen had when I posted about Ubuntu Edge before (see previous blog post link). Right now Star Citizen has a whopping 15.7mil and growing everyday. Hangar module comes out 24th August at GamesCon, so can't wait to see the news and test it.
I hope they release something like an OpenGL version soon because apparently it'll be DirectX11 and my GT330m doesn't have that support T_T. Also, recent look at ATI's open source driver support leans me towards getting an ATI graphics next time. These nvidia binary blobs sometimes screw up and took me an hour to get my 319 driver working with Linux 3.8 and jockey -_-.



P.S. So for Systems Engineering Analysis (ENGN2226) I get to look at nanosats woot.

Ubuntu Edge - Wow Canonical!

This is one high-end early adopter phone. And the internets are talking about it.
They want to smash Star Citizen's current USD$14.6 million record in crowd-funding by raising $32m, which roughly translates to 40,000 units.
As they say on their indiegogo page, they want to do this like a Formula 1 thing, (so prototypes or betas on a testing ground if you will) instead of the million unit scale of normal consumer phones.

They're also trying to get into the market like Google - not technical mobile phone makers but 'advisors'. I just hope they don't force Ubuntu Unity on people =/ (which they won't because they haven't turned evil right?)

It's (almost) Fully Official!!! -CryEngine on Linux

Steam for linux just reported that Crytek are hiring Linux Devs to maintain their Linux support for CryEngine. 
Yep, this means more quality games on Linux and Star Citizen for Linux almost 100% confirmed. 

Hmm interesting to note they prefer C++ as the OO language ..

Is this the announcement that Chris Roberts was wanting to make but couldn't make just yet that would happily surprise Linux and Mac gamers?

Phoronix's article here. Apparently the source Phoronix had for the early CryEngine Linux rumour was recommended to Valve by Phoronix!
Previous CryEngine Linux rumour post here.

I read Phoronix's article on the CryEngine port before, but although I do have more than 50% confidence in Phoronix, it was still the only source I could find on the net before I got excited at the Wii U getting support.
To me, I think Phoronix is like the Parabolic Arc of the computing world (and Parabolic Arc the Phoronix of the space world). Great early fan-news blogs!

Linux is totally picking up pace =3

Star Citizen wows everyone (funding, backers, economy!)

 Funding Update

This week has been o.O for Star Citizen, pushing through the 12mil and 13mil and looking to push through 14mil in the next 24 hours (they're 40k away).

On the 29th June (pre-livestream), the numbers were $10.926mil and 198k citizens.
After the livestream, we were at $11.7mil and 200.3k citizens
On the 5th July, we were at $12.9mil and 206.5k citizens.
At writing, we are at $13.9mil and 210.5k citizens.

This whole grace period after the new website, and 24 hour livestream has generated >$3mil in just 1 week; now the grace period is over, LTI (lifetime insurance, no need to periodically insure your ship ingame with ingame credits) ships are now no longer available (unless you're an original campaign backer, who are able to get LTI and packages till November 2013).

With the hangar module coming out in late August, and dog-fighting module coming out December this year, Star Citizen seems like it will never run out of momentum =P Still, there's almost 1.5 years till final release, but if it takes $21mil to fund this game (as Chris Roberts has approximated), we're 2/3 of the way there already.

The ECONOMY

It's the economy, guys =)
Seriously though, we know Valve hires economists for their micro-transactions and in-game cosmetic items, but I wonder if CGI has hired any just for their universe economy and future micro-transactions. This preliminary sketch of the universe economy simulation/modelling and the physics - rigid body simulation and detail they have in this game remind me of those physics modelling we did with Mathematica/Matlab and step sizes xD.
This is like my dream game come true, achieving all I ever wanted a spacesim to be like: persistent universe, walking around instead of stuck in a cockpit, MMO, player actions affect universe, good simulation and detail -nerdgasm-.

Check out its full glory below:

FYEAH - Star Citizen On Linux woot!

I know I've posted some rumoury stuff about CryEngine 3 on Linux but:
Here is a 24 hour livestream past video from twitch on their 1st channel, go to 4:46:51 and enjoy a non-announcement about an announcement they can't make yet that will make Linux and Mac owners "happily surprised" ;P


Watch live video from roberts_space_ind_ch_1 on TwitchTV

Youtube version: (go to 16m48s)

Now this comes over a year since the rumour about a native port of CryEngine 3 on Linux =3
Thanks to the lurkers on the 24hr livestream chat for filling us in! =)


Also, here's some links to Chris Roberts on Linux support for Star Citizen questions on Campaign Reddit's AMA:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12grru/i_am_chris_roberts_creator_of_wing_commander/c6ux0x3
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12grru/i_am_chris_roberts_creator_of_wing_commander/c6v1fep


This news comes after this poll during the original fundraising (including kickstarter). You'll find that 21% of votes wanted Linux support! (And 8% for Mac).
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12760-Poll-Additional-Stretch-Goals

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Also, since I've last posted on Star Citizen on this blog (but have been filling my FB with it =P) CGI's SC is now the most funded crowdfunding project of all time. It surpassed the pebble watch, and make sure you check out the 300i commercial! Fully in-universe an in-engine =)


This 2nd video was released as a director's cut during the 24 hour livestream:

CryEngine 3 on Linux?

So I'd be super hyped if CryEngine 3 did come on Linux - mainly because of Star Citizen.
And there's quite a bit (21% of voters) of support for it over at RSI's Star Citizen

Now, since DirectX is a MS product, and trawling through a few forums seem to suggest that non-MS consoles (ie PS3/4 and Wii/Wii U) must therefore use OpenGL. (I still don't have a concrete answer on this, there is lots of talk about Wii U having DirectX 11 capabilities, but no concrete answer from a reputable source - general forum-poster consensus is that it uses OpenGL)

If that is the case, then this: Cry Engine 3 fully supports Wii U should mean something. Possibly something very shiny.