Magic Leap was about to release a revolutionary technology, an augmented reality. This is actually years away from being completed and at this moment it is inferior to other virtual reality like Microsoft’s HoloLens.

Everybody believed that Magic Leap was going to release an innovation because the company posted a demo that was quite misleading. This happened last year. Now a report was completed about the product that this company is going to release. The report discovered that the demo was fake and the product is far away from being released.

This is not the only problem that this company has. They also experience some trouble when it came to miniaturizing the AR technology to a pair of glasses. The CEO of the company mentioned that the product was ready despite these problems.

The biggest problem for the company now is that they made people believe that they will give a revolutionary product and they failed to do so. They have received funds from Google and Alibaba. Both giant companies which invested in a start-up they believed to make great things.

Nobody is now sure about the future of the start-up because a lot of people are complaining about the fact that they were misled into believing that there will be an innovative technology and the company wasn’t able to provide that.

Now the image of the company is not as great as it was because they used to make YouTube videos to demonstrate how great was their AR tech but people found out that some of those videos were not real. For instance, one of those videos was actually made by a visual effect studio named Weta Workshop.

Due to all of these Magic Leap might lose some of their sponsors and they might not be able to release any products. They still have some trouble getting the fiber scanning display to really work. This fiber technology was the only thing that made this product better than the rest. All in all, let’s hope that Magic Leap will solve its issues and will be able to develop some better products in order to keep its sponsors happy.

What is your opinion about Magic Leap?

Image source: Wikipedia

Due to the major scandal surrounding the new space exploration survival video game, some retailers found themselves in the position of offering No Man Sky’s refunds to players that exceeded the two-hour limit stipulated in the refund policy.

According to Steam:

“The standard Steam refund policy applies to No Man’s Sky. There are no special exemptions available.”

This translates into “our policy dictates that if you spent more than two hours playing a video game, then you like it, hence, you will not get a refund after 2h+ of gaming. “

However, there are some who played the indie “Space Skyrim” for weeks and decided that they are not pleased with the final product and asked for a full refund. It seems that those who moved fast enough and coordinated their refund requests with the enormous backlash managed to get their money back.

A possible explanation for the sudden change of heart may lie in the dizzying number of refund applications. From now on, the only players eligible for getting their money back are those who were not at all impressed by the features of the game in the first two hours of playing.

The official motives that generated the fallout are extensive technical issues, missing features, and misleading advertising. Ironically, on the same official Steam page where the announcement about the refund policy was posted, the developers kept the trailers featuring amazing content that cannot be found in the final version of the game.

No Man’s Sky refunds will be offered only to those who explored the “unlimited” galaxy and convinced themselves of the unsuitability of the game in less than two hours. Those who decided to keep on playing may be faced with another surprise as the DLCs may not be free anymore.

Players complaint that the game, who should have featured lots of playing options, is just about survival, and the graphics and overall gameplay do not compare with the product that was promised to them.

Hello Games, the indie company responsible for the No Man’s Sky project is now forced to either admit to a shameful failure or try to make the space simulator survival exploration game the wonder that was presented in the teasers.

Image source: Flickr

Hello Games just released the Survival trailer for No Man’s Sky, thus completing the overall sneak peek at the four major categories of the upcoming action-adventure survival. Now players are eagerly expecting the launch of the game.

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival video game developed by indie company Hello Games for Windows and PlayStation 4. The game will feature a science-fiction infinite procedurally generated galaxy. In other words, players will have the opportunity of exploring countless worlds in an ever-changing universe.

The game is meant to simulate, as best as it can, a real scenario in which earthlings gain the capability of building powerful, technologically-advanced spaceships able to explore an infinite universe.

In order to appeal to a broader public, the developers created four main categories; each focused on a different skillset. For the adventurous spirits, there is the Survival mode, for the savvy businesspeople they created the Trade option, the warriors will focus on the Fight category, and the curious romantic spirits will have the opportunity to Explore.

 

The fourth and final teaser trailer for the video game is the one depicting the Survival mode. Players are taunted with images of a world where enormous dinosaurs roam in a radiation-filled environment, deserted planets where the toxicity levels are too much for the equipment to handle, and giant insects and other deadly lifeforms stalk around the carnivorous vegetation.

When playing the Survival mode, gamers will have to survive extreme conditions like toxic atmospheres, acid rain, dangerous radiation levels, extreme temperatures, hostile robots, and massive blood-lusting creatures all while keeping the equipment in working order.

Other categories, like Trade, take players into the commercial area of the universe. Skilled businesspersons will be able to make a name for themselves in the specialized market. Firefly fans will have a kick out of this mode seeing as the ship will be the most valuable possession of the tradesperson.

We don’t know if smuggling will be possible, but seeing as the game tries to mimic real-life conditions as best as it can, thrifty players may have the opportunity to make some extra credits.

The Exploration mode hinted at incredible worlds within the 18 quintillion planets where players will encounter a limitless variety of flora, fauna, and even robotic life.

What do you think about No Man’s Sky? Are you eager for the August launch?

Image source: YouTube

Earlier this year, during a Q&A session at Facebook’s headquarters, superstar CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook is currently working on a new feature for their social network: adding a “dislike” button.”

The 1.5 monthly active users asked for a long time for a dislike button. Seeing the magnitude of the situation, Zuckerberg and company decided to start taking the fan demands seriously and finally announced in September that they are working on a “dislike” button.

However, Facebook officials cleared the air regarding the situation and informed interviewers that the button will not exactly be a “dislike” button, but rather an all-encompassing button that will allow users to show their empathy towards the messages that are conveyed by other users in their posts.

Facebook has finally confirmed that the button will have six emoji reactions, through which users can express a wider range of emotions than a thumbs up button can. Now users can express their empathy for bad news such as a breakup, a natural disaster or a loss, without appearing to diss them.

One would say it is more than likely for trolls to start abusing these emoticons and use them in negative ways across the social network. This is not the case, Facebook states that they designed the six buttons in a way that anger cannot be mistaken for hate, and so on.

Chris Cox, chief product officer of Facebok, writes in a posts “As you can see, it’s not a dislike button.” Facebook officials are proud that they are trying to keep their social network less corruptible than others, and they believe that the new empathy button will allow users to express themselves more freely than ever before.

The company says that they have studies which emotions are most commonly expressed through text and ascii smiley across Facebook posts and comments, and designed the six emoji that will allow users to express them easier than ever before.

The six emoticons are: love, laugh, excitement, amazement, sadness and anger. They can be used everywhere, from posts from your friends to the comment section of your favorite pages and so on. However, we still have to wait for the update, as things may change until the official release.

Facebook declared that they have tested the empathy button in two countries so far: Ireland and Spain. These two countries’ friend requests usually do not extend beyond their borders, which makes them very good for Facebook experiments. Officials declared that they will use the feedback from these two countries in order to improve the feature, and that they will release it as quickly as possible to everyone else.

The good news is that empathetic emoji will roll out this year for all Facebook users.

Photo credits: Flickr

Microsoft and Google patent feud has finally come to an end. This agreement is similar to the way in which Apple and Samsung have also finished a long running race in court over legal rights. According to sources in the tech industry, the organizations dropped a series of smart phone and game console-based court cases in the United States and Europe.

As part of this mutual agreement, both software giants will drop all awaiting lawsuits between them that are related to patent violation. Such a relevant case is the one regarding Motorola Mobility. Google bought Motorola Mobility a few years ago, but then it sold it to Chinese company Lenovo.

On separate occasions, Microsoft and Google have decided to work together on several patent problems. They predict a profitable collaboration in other domains later on to benefit clients of both companies.

The fight goes back more than five years ago, when Microsoft opened two lawsuits against Motorola Mobility. It claimed a violation of FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) certification contracts.

Motorola responded with a court action in Europe during the summer of 2011. Only one year later, international authorities discovered that Microsoft’s console gaming system indeed breached several Motorola patents. In a similar way, German officials later decided that Motorola also infringed Redmond’s smart phone patents. This was before Redmond started working with Motorola in the app-patent fight against Microsoft.

This year, after Google sold the Motorola smart phone branch to Lenovo for $2.9 billion dollars, both giants have a new leadership. Further financial terms of this agreement have not been disclosed, but we can only assume that future profits of their collaboration will be divided between these tech giants

The legal issues that have been resolved include cases related to smart phones, video development and wireless technologies. This does not mean that Microsoft dropped its strategy to gather royalties from Android product creators. This lawsuit was started for the operating system’s claimed violation of Microsoft’s legal patents.

It is not certain from the declaration on which aspect both corporations will be collaborating in the future. Experts have already started to see patterns of what is really going on. The two companies decided recently to perform together with other tech innovators, like Mozilla and Netflix, on a royalty-free codec.

Only future will decide if the agreement leads to better results between Google and Microsoft in other domains. A significant negative point for customers has been the absence of a YouTube application made by Google for mobile phones and tablets working on Windows.

Image source: Winbeta.org