Games and gear

Permission to board the simulator

Battle stations! The U.S. Navy has upped the stakes in the battle of the training simulators with the commissioning of its 550-foot USS Trayer Battle Stations 21.

The Trayer, dry-docked at a mock pier in the $82.5 million USS Iowa training complex in Great Lakes, Ill., simulates an Arleigh-Burke-class destroyer and some of the adventure and hard work that goes with sailing the Seven Seas.

BTS 21 is part of a 10-year, $763 million "recapitalization" of training facilities that will set new standards in simulation technology by using video screens, smells, vibrations and sound effects to … Read more

Novint Falcon brings "3D touch" to your PC

At last night's Digital Experience event here in New York, I got a chance to sit down with the Novint Falcon--a device that allows you to "feel" and control games in 3D, using force feedback.

The technology is quite impressive--it actually creates the illusion that you are interacting with objects on your screen in 3D. In one of the demos, you use the Falcon to control a virtual hand that interacts with a variety of giant spheres. Each sphere was composed of a different material. Using the knob on the Falcon, you control your virtual hand and &… Read more

AMD rolls out next-gen ATI graphics cards for the masses

ATI's Radeon HD 2600 and Radeon HD 2400 lines make their debut today. You can expect five basic variants. Some repackagers (Sapphire, Asus, etc.) may offer options with different amounts of RAM. Others might appear only in systems from PC vendors, rather than on store shelves. The basic variations include:

256MB (GDDR4) Radeon HD 2600 XT - $149 256MB (GDDR3) Radeon HD 2600 XT - $129 256MB (GDDR2) Radeon HD 2600 Pro - $99 256MB Radeon HD 2400 XT - $79 256MB Radeon HD 2400 Pro - $59

These midrange and budget 3D cards fall in the same price … Read more

Accessories that go a Wii too far

To all the makers of insane Wii accessories, we say thank you. Why? Because we were on the verge of actually thinking that the "Bass Fishing Wii" sounded like it actually made sense, but then the latest entries to the market jolted us back into reality.

The cooking utensils featured on Gizmodo--complete with "frying pan, knife, fork and spatula"--are disturbing indications that people have gotten a wee too close to the Wii. These, by the way, come hot on the heels of the screw-on pool cue.

If people must spend all their waking hours with … Read more

Nintendo announces WiiWare

Pretty soon the Wii's online store won't be just for Virtual Console games and Opera. Nintendo just announced WiiWare, a Wii software creation service for indie developers. Smaller game companies will be able to use WiiWare to produce downloadable games to distribute and sell over Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel.

Nintendo's move has shades of Microsoft's XNA Studio Express initiative, in which the Xbox community can create games and potentially make them available for play on the Xbox 360 or on Windows machines.

This is more than welcome news for Wii owners, who have been experiencing … Read more

Nicole Kidman has a 'Brain Age' of 52

Nintendo fanboys are now officially in love with Nicole Kidman. Starting last night, she began appearing in TV ads for the sequel to Nintendo's incredibly popular DS game, Brain Age.

Kidman on the Brain Age series:

"I love the concept that Nintendo is reaching out to new audiences with its self-improvement products like Brain Training. Most importantly, I've quickly found that training my brain is a great way to keep my mind feeling young."

Interestingly enough, this campaign is being launched only in Europe with no announced plans to bring it across the pond. One would … Read more

Download now, or pay later for Wii surfing

Be sure to hook your Wii up to the Internet and download the Internet Channel soon. That's the deadline for downloading it for free.

So, what exactly is the Internet Channel? It's the feature that lets you use your Wii to browse the Internet from your television with the Opera Web browser.

Right now, the download for using the Internet-surfing feature is free for the life of the machine. But Opera released a "final" version of the feature in April, and soon you'll have to pay for it. As of July 1, anyone wishing to … Read more

A 'Second Life' parody you can't miss

OMG! If this isn't the funniest thing ever, I'm not sure what is.

Following on the lovely "Get a First Life" takeoff of the virtual world Second Life, some crafty folks have produced a YouTube video that shows a real-world take on what life in Second Life is like.

You have to watch it, and if you've never been in Second Life, you might not get it. But if you've ever spent even a minute in that virtual world, you'll probably snort your milk out your nose. Check it out.

Look, Ma. No wires.

While the new Tivoli Wi-Fi radio streams Real Audio Internet radio via Ethernet or Wi-Fi and can even stream songs from a PC network, that doesn't help when it comes to your iPod.

The TuneStik for $60 from Digital Lifestyle Outfitters combines an FM transmitter and radio frequency remote control. It lets you wirelessly play and control your iPod through any radio within 40 feet.

For when you are not by your Tivoli and need to use the car, the TuneStik has a clip-on cradle to hold the remote to your steering wheel.

The Wii goes fishing

Being old enough to have watched the original SNL--before it was called SNL--we've always had a special place in our hearts for bass. So we may well have a skewed perspective on the the "Bass Fishing Wii" game coming out of Japan (of course).

Kotaku says the game has six stages and takes place in locales around the world, including the Grand Canyon. (We had no idea that bass fishing was so big there.) It sounds pretty boring to us too, which is why Kotaku speculates that Chisato Morishita--a "former race queen model"--was hired … Read more