But of course there’s new TV spots featuring a little more new footage. What else would you expect while we have just a handful of more days before The Force Awakens hits theaters?
There’s a little new footage here showing off plenty of action, including some sweet new moves from the Falcon.
Hit it!
5 days to go.
Fans of Chris Roberts’ space everything simulator get their first significant slice of gameplay with the launch of Star Citizen alpha 2.0, which should push the world’s most crowdfunded anything past the $100 million mark.
A bunch of little playable things becomes several massive playable things in Star Citizen alpha 2.0. Players basically get a sector of space to explore, bringing with it the first taste of things like multi-crew ships, first-person combat and wandering outside in space without one of those pricey ships.
The main crux of the new gameplay takes place around a planet called Crusader, because in the future planet names are pretty cool. Players start off on a space station and from there can wander outside, hop into a ship alone or with other people, and then fumble with the controls until they crash into the deck. At least that’s been my experience so far.
To my credit, I’ve also jumped off the space station, spiraling off into nothingness while trying to use my suit’s thrusters to help me not die. The results have been mixed. Last time the game crashed on me before I found out if I made it. Cliffhanger!
Most exciting airlock ever!
Those who make it off the station can do all of the things on this bullet-list that came with the official announcement.
- EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) – drift out of your ship’s airlock and venture into the void of space and back
- 20+ random encounters – combat and exploration (lost wrecks and abandoned space stations)
- Quantum travel – travel in ships through the vastness of space at 0.2 the speed of light
- New flyable ships including the Constellation, the Retaliator and the Vanguard.Large world tech – explore extremely large expanses of space seamlessly, without loading screens
- Locations to explore:
- One planet (Crusader)
- Three moons
- Three distinct space stations
- One repair/restock station
- Nine comm arrays
- Wreckage to scavenge and never-ending battles in the Yela asteroid belt
- …and much more
If you plan on picking up a ship and playing, be sure to read up on both the full update features list and the known issues post, so you don’t get surprised when the crab in the hangar fishtank doesn’t animate properly.
I’d love to do a video, but between the really choppy framerates and the random crashes I can’t seem to get one done. I will keep trying.
In the meantime, the current crowdfunding total for Star Citizen is $99,942,530. Hopefully some of that is going towards fixing that crab.
Contact the author, Space Fahey at fahey@kotaku.com or follow him on Twitter at @bunnyspatial.
Finally, after a couple of months worth of work, it’s time to finally try all of this armor on to see how it all works together.
First, I’ve made some minor fixes since last week:
I’ve repainted the helmet: the matte black paint I used wasn’t correct, so I’ve used some glossy black that I found. The matte black will serve as a good primer, and I’ve been able to take care of some of the masking issues.
I’ve reglued a couple of snap plates that had come loose in the shoulder bells - I’d used hot glue thinking that they didn’t need to do much other than to hold on, but as soon as I put them on, they came right off. Back to goop.
I also put a snap in the middle of the abs and one in the belt, to make sure that the belt didn’t slide down. This’ll keep it firmly in place.
Next, I went and trimmed down the belt a bit more. I’d been too conservative with it the first time around, and after some feedback and looking at it again, it needed to slim down a bit more.
Lastly, I redid the strapping between the kidney and abs, making each one a bit shorter: it tightens the two together a bit, and makes it fit better. I think I need to redo the suspenders and tighten them up a bit: I’m toying with the idea of cutting them and adding in a way to make them adjustable, but that’s something that can come later.
Finally, I didn’t end up cutting the abs plate in half to lengthen it: I found that if I adjusted the straps and put them on correctly, the two things should fit together a bit better. There’s some more minor improvements that need to be done here: the chest and back can probably stand to be adjusted, which means that I’ll need to pop them apart and redo them. That’ll give me a little more space to work with.
After all that’s completed, it’s time to put it on.
Armor needs to go on in a certain order. It’s always fun to see first-time troopers start to put their stuff on: you’re confronted with a bunch of choices. Even so, this new armor is slightly different from my older stuff, so it’ll take some getting used to.
Here’s the order that I use:
Here’s the first test fit:
It’s nice to finally put it all on. It’s a bit of a trip from the box of plastic that this started out as.
That all said, there’s minor improvements to be made, the first of which was a snap plate that popped while I was suiting up. The chest / abs needs to be better resolved, and there’s some other things that I’ll do some work on in the next couple of days before The Force Awakens hits theaters. (Are any Vermont io9 readers going to the Thursday night screenings at Essex Cinemas?)
Now, time to show this to the folks in my garrison: they’ll be able to point out other issues before I submit this for approval.
It’s not that you’re not observant. It’s just the folks at GameXplain are hyper-observant, which is why they notice things like trash strewn in the streets and Midgar’s window-to-AC unit ratio.
While I agree that it’s best we think of the upcoming Final Fantasy VII reboot as a separate game from the original
Things like the extra ammo clips Biggs is packing, further defining his role in the revolutionary group Avalanche. Or the Shinra troops checking out the train before the group arrives, suggesting they’re expecting an attack of some sort.
For me the biggest thrill is that damn Guard Scorpion cutscene. It always bothered me that such a big enemy just appeared out of nowhere. Now it gets the intro it deserves. Makes me want to lightning the hell out of it.
What else does GameXplain see that you missed? Did you catch Cloud and Barret battling side-by-side in a place the didn’t before, or the fact that Cloud already has access to the “Summons” option of the menu in the gameplay footage? Did you see anything they missed?
To contact the author of this post, write to fahey@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @bunnyspatial.
Pick the apples. Wash the apples. Chop the apples into a mash. Crush that apple mash to pump out the juice in a press. Boil the apple juice. Jar the apple cider. Drink the apple cider. There’s nothing like making it yourself. Or watching people make it in the video below and then buying apple cider at the store.
Here’s behind the scenes:
Scattered hand bones, severed arms, cracked skulls: if one thing is clear from this Neolithic burial pit, it’s that some some serious shit went down 6,000 years ago.
Circular burial pits like the one shown above were common during the Neolithic period in Central and Western Europe some 6,500 to 5,500 years ago. But rarely do graves from this time hint at so much brutality. This one, a 6.5 foot (2 meter) deep circular pit excavated in Bergheim, France, includes several complete human skeletons (colored differently in the upper right) strewn atop a pile of left arms and hand fragments that appear to have been hacked off their former owners by axes.
The archaeologists behind the discovery suspect that the two men, one woman and four children buried at the top of the pit were killed during some sort of violent raid. The origin of the severed limbs below remains unknown.
“For a long time, Neolithic societies were considered relatively egalitarian and peaceful,” archaeologist and lead study author Fanny Chenal of INRAP told Gizmodo in an email. “But since several years a lot of research has shown that it was not the case.”
That research now includes an epic pile of carnage, which promises to stoke a longstanding debate over the use of circular burial pits. Some researchers suspect these pits are the remnants of storage silos that people stuffed full of bodies deemed unfit for proper burials. Others say the pits were dug for wealthy individuals, whose servants and slaves would have been murdered and tossed in the grave along with.
Now, it seems the pits could have played a third role in Neolithic society: vaults for trophy limbs chopped off people who were killed or mutilated during raids.
“Bergheim is the first discovery which allows to clearly link human deposits in circular pits and violence, probably armed conflicts,” Chenal said. “It’s a very important result, but it raises more questions than it answers.”
My only question—would time-traveling to the Neolithic period be fun?—has been answered loud and clear.
[Read the full study at Antiquity h/t Science News]
Follow the author @themadstone
Images: Chenal at el. 2015
There’s a new trailer for Sherlock’s Victorian special out, and it shows off a whole bunch of new things, including its titular bride!
This looks exciting, because there’s the potential for a supernatural tilt to this story. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories have had a lot of fun with this, often presenting what could be a supernatural occurance as an elaborate hoax. It’ll be interesting to see what they do here.
Astronomers are comparing it to Jupiter’s red spot: a forever storm large enough to swallow three Earths. Except this monster tempest appears to be raging on a star.
The object in question, W1906+40, belongs to a class of relatively cool celestial bodies known as L-dwarfs. Despite their low temperatures, some L-dwarfs fuse atoms and produce light—and are therefore classified as stars. Others, known as brown dwarfs, are considered “failed stars” for their lack of fusion. Based on its age and average surface temperature (about 3,500ºF), this particular L-dwarf is likely to be an actual star.
Which is fascinating, because we don’t think of stars as objects that have stormy weather. This one does.
W1906+40 was originally spotted by NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey in 2011, and later, by the Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler was built to spot planets by looking for transit events—very faint dips in starlight that occur when a planet speeds around its parent star in our line of sight. When astronomers imaged W1906+40 with Kepler, they noted a periodic dip in starlight, but it didn’t look like any planet we’d ever seen.
At first, astronomers thought they were looking at a sunspot—a region of heightened magnetic activity on the star’s surface. But follow-up infrared observations with the Spitzer telescope revealed something much weirder: a colossal, cloudy storm, composed of tiny mineral particles.
“We don’t know if this kind of star storm is unique or common, and we don’t why it persists for so long,” said John Gizis of the University of Delaware, Newark, lead author on a new paper describing the find. To begin answering these questions, Gizis and his colleagues are now using Kepler and Spitzer to hunt for other stormy stars.
It’s one of those unexpected discoveries that highlights just how diverse the cosmic landscape is—and that we’re nowhere close to understanding all of its mysteries.
[Read a pre-print of the study on arXiv h/t NASA]
Follow the author @themadstone
Top: Artist’s illustration of star W1906+40, with a dark stormy region depicted at the top. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
After introducing a whole bunch of neat cast members such as Patton Oswalt, Jonah Ray, Felicia Day, the Mystery Science 3000 has ended, raising a record-breaking $5.76 million dollars.
In addition to the Kickstarter, Joel Hodgson was able to raise $600,000 for a total of $6.3 million, which will fund an additional 14 episodes.
You did it: you brought back MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000! Thanks to you, MST3K will be able to shoot FOURTEEN NEW EPISODES next year, including a new holiday special!
We can’t wait.
Jeff Goldblum spent 20 years getting the planet ready after Earth was first invaded: now, the aliens are back. The first trailer for Independence Day: Resurgence has arrived!
The trailer for this looks like it’ll be quite a bit of fun, with all the beats of the original, and then some. We’re treated to the original film’s iconic speech, along with a montage of scenes showing off just how much has changed in two decades. In the years since, it looks like humanity has adopted the alien’s technology into our own, but even though we’ve been getting ready for another invasion, it isn’t quite enough.
Here’s the full trailer:
Independence Day: Resurgence will hit theaters on June 24, 2016
Volkswagen has big plans for the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show next month, and those could include the virtual cockpit
http://jalopnik.com/audis-virtual-...
The video below comes from The Truth About Cars, which they claim to have received through “less-than-official channels”:
Footage shows something brand new to the Golf—a full TFT display for the driver, something we’ve seen in cars like the 2016 Audi TT. In addition to the display, the video shows an updated infotainment unit and what looks to be a wireless charging mat in the center console. Fancy.
Since VW mentioned in a statement that the manufacturer has some new “developments in electromobility as well as the next generation of connectivity” under wraps to be unveiled at the show in Las Vegas, we’re sure to see a high-tech Golf—potentially the concept above—sometime soon.
More from the VW statement:
For instance, Volkswagen will give quite a clear glimpse of the latest developments in in-car infotainment that are on the verge of being launched onto the market. This will see innovations such as the Golf R Touch concept car finding their way into Volkswagen’s broad product portfolio.
That video could feature exactly what they’re talking about. We’ll just have to wait another month to find out.
Contact the author at alanis.king@jalopnik.com.
For this weekend’s Sunday Matinee, we’re going to the moon in 1950’s Rocketship X-M! A mission to the moon goes wrong when the expedition of four men and one woman ends up on Mars instead.
Once they arrive at Mars, they discover a long-lost civilization that was destroyed by atomic warfare, and which has reverted barbarism.
The film was produced and directed by Kurt Neumann, and stars Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, John Emery, Noah Beery, Jr., Hugh O’Brian and Morris Ankrum.
Sit back, enjoy and weigh in on the comments!
It looks like something astronaut Van Gogh would paint from space, but the image above isn’t an impressionist’s creation—it’s a slice of the North Atlantic Ocean, with a bit of post-processing to accentuate the confluence of physics and biology.
Captured on September 23rd, 2015 by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite, the blue green spirals above are dense algae blooms: waters laden with the microscopic photosynthetic critters that produce half the world’s oxygen.
Algae blooms can be quite striking on their own. But after this image was compiled using red, green and blue bands from VIIRS, as well as chlorophyll data, it was processed to highlight the swirling motion of eddy currents. These currents bring cold, nutrient-rich waters from the deep ocean to the surface—feeding the tiny plant creatures that ride them like surfers on a tremendous wave.
Earth is a masterful artist indeed.
Follow the author @themadstone
Galaxies far far away often seem much more exciting than this one: fascist Empires ruled by ancient sorcery cults, giant space slugs, endless disposable droids. But when you get down to it, many of the planets in the Star Wars universe aren’t so different from our own.
Chris Jones wanted to see how the planets and moons featured in the original Star Wars trilogy stack up against real planets in this galaxy. Turns out, many of them are quite comparable in size to places in our solar system. Endor is Mercury after a massive global cooling campaign, Hoth is Mars before all the water evaporated, and Bespin is a gas giant not so different in size from our Saturn. Yavin Prime seems to be in a class of its own, though—who knows—maybe it’s similar to one of those fabled brown dwarfs lurking in the far reaches of our solar system
Alderaan, a terrestrial planet with plant life, mountains and oceans, is ominously Earth-like, with a diameter of 12,500 km compared with our Blue Marble’s 12,742 km. Fortunately, the citizens of Earth don’t have to worry about a Death Star being built anytime soon—that particular weapon of mass destruction is just too damn expensive.
Here’s the full breakdown:
Images via Space-Facts / Chris Jones and reproduced with permission
Dreaming of a white Christmas? NOAA released a graphic that charts out the probability that you’ll have some snow on December 25th, based on historical norms.
I don’t know about you, but looking at my Facebook ‘Memories’ feature, and I’m seeing that on this date over the last couple of years, we’ve had snow on the ground, a lot of it. I’m holding out hope that we’ll get some before too long.
NOAA’s graphic shows the “climatological probability of at least 1 inch of snow being on the ground”:
This map is based on the 1981–2010 Climate Normals, which are the latest three-decade averages of several climatological measurements. This dataset contains daily and monthly Normals of temperature, precipitation, snowfall, heating and cooling degree days, frost/freeze dates, and growing degree days calculated from observations at approximately 9,800 stations operated by NOAA’s National Weather Service.
[NOAA]
“Fire in the Hole” brings the gang, which now includes cop and former skeptic Amanda Fisher, face to face with a new adversary: the Michigan militia. But of course, one particularly persistent Deadite comes out to play, too. And a character we were pretty damn sure would return does exactly that.
Spoilers!
In need of weapons ahead of their imminent return to Ash’s haunted cabin, the group ventures into the backwoods in search of Lem and his militia buddies. They prove not very difficult to locate—thanks to the shredded corpses and barely-alive bodies wailing in pain along the way. As we saw last week, Lem was unable to escape a certain evil hurricane that followed him from the diner, and he’s been picking off his comrades since he came back. These suspicious survivalists wouldn’t be too stoked on a gang of random visitors anyway—and the situation is made way worse when they decide that Ash and company are responsible for Lem’s condition.
Kelly and Pablo manage to run into the nearby wilderness, with camouflaged goons in hot pursuit. Though Kelly is more confident in her fighting skills than Pablo (who’s wondering what his signature weapon should be ... uh, rusty chain?), they make a good team—and they’re able to turn the tables on the heavily armed rednecks with gore-gushing flair ... especially when one of those rednecks turns out to be a Deadite. TCB!
Ash and Amanda, meanwhile, are handcuffed together and tossed into a network of underground storage rooms, where Deadite Lem lurches in angry pursuit. The confrontation builds to a spectacularly fiery dance of propane, highway flares, and one well-aimed pick axe, but the most memorable part of these scenes is Ash’s incessant flirting with Amanda, aka “Babycakes.” And eventually, after really seeing him in action, she goes from disbelief that he’s hitting on her in a time of crisis (“There’s no bad time! I’m old-school, baby!”) to actually kinda falling for the guy.
But that romantic spark will have to wait awhile to catch fire. After the quartet is reunited and the militia stands down, agreeing at last that “In this war, everybody’s on the same side,” Ash—who’s come to care an awful lot about his ragtag posse—allows himself a rare solemn moment. “Good job staying alive,” he tells the group. “Keep it up.” The group thinks they’re heading together to the cabin to kick some serious Deadite ass, but when they turn around, Ash is gone like the wind—clearly having decided he didn’t want any more of his loved ones to be killed fighting his battles. Since none of them know exactly where the cabin is, it’ll take some work picking up his trail.
Elsewhere, we see Ruby rise from a charred pile of wood at the brujo’s farm. So Ruby isn’t exactly human, but she’s not a Deadite, either. What’s her deal? We still don’t know exactly who/what she is, and why she wants the book so badly, but she’s able to defy death to keep going after it. When she gets to her car, she realizes Ash’s hand is gone ... but her super special knife, which we glimpsed way earlier in the season at Kelly’s house, is still in its glove-compartment hiding place. She speeds away. Can a confrontation at the cabin be far off?
Speaking of the cabin, Ash is going to have at least one member of the Deadite welcoming committee awaiting his arrival: his hand, which we see skittering through the forest to the cabin’s front door in the episode’s final shot. YES!
Science fiction has been huge this year with books like Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson and movies like The Martian. NPR takes a look at the new crop of science fiction stories that shoot for realism.
Over on Uproxx, Mike Ryan suggests today is the best day ever to be a Star Wars fan. The reason? With the film premiering tonight, press screenings happening Tuesday and reviews posting Wednesday, it’s officially the last day the movie can be any and everything you want it to be. Read about it here.
Contact the author at germain@io9.com.
So... that fight scene. THAT FIGHT SCENE. What a shame that there’s only one episode left. Badlands took several episodes to really get going, and now that it’s finally crazy good, the season is almost over. Which leads me to a humble plea: AMC, please bring this show back for a second season. Spoilers ahead.
The brawl in this past episode was the most satisfying part of the series so far. Maybe one of my favorite TV moments of 2015, actually? Again, we are never treated to fight scenes like that on television
And then M.K. cutting himself so he could unleash the beast, and save Tilda himself? Yup, all the martial-arts-romance feels. These two are like Romeo and Juliet
The reason why this fight scene was effective was because it was a violent manifestation of complex web of relationships between Sunny, Minerva, M.K., and Tilda. Make no mistake, this battle was the most climactic, important one so far, and one of real consequence to the plot. It was the most deft instance of the show matching the story’s drama with the intensity of the acrobatic battles.
We should also praise Aramis Knight and Ally Ioannides for their work on this show. Not only are the teen actors battling adults and keeping up with them in the physical aspect of the project, but I like their acting as well. Speaking of performances—Marton Csokas, who you might remember as Lord Celeborn from Lord of the Rings, kills it as Quinn. But, from a critical perspective, Quinn’s flatly evil, antagonistic function is still boring for me. Does he have zero redeeming qualities or what? Then again, I guess it’d make any battle with him more satisfying, as we’d clearly be rooting for whoever his foe is, whether it’s the Widow, M.K., or Sunny. Or all three?! Maybe throw Ryder, Jade, and Lydia in there, too. Make it a House of Blue Leaves-type showdown, but leave the bad guy solo instead of the hero.
Last week, a post appeared on Daniel Wu’s Facebook page announcing that Into the Badlands had been renewed for season two, but apparently that was untrue, and the post was clarified. It’d be a shame to not renew the show now, because it’s finally ramping up to something that can be a real marquis show for AMC—not to mention it’s so unlike anything that’s on TV right now. (Or has been, since Kung Fu in the ‘70s.)
Fingers crossed. What’d you guys think of last night’s episode?
Photo by James Minchin III/AMC
Email the author at bryan@gizmodo.com, or follow him on Twitter.