Light Start – Nike HyperAdapt, BMW tease, Baidu driving, and Doom MP

Nike’s self-lacing shoes? Those would be the HyperAdapt 1.0, expected this year

Nike, Back to the Future, self-lacing shoes… blah, blah, blah. Where the hell are they? Oh, wait, there they are. Nike are teasing their HyperAdapt 1.0 shoes, which they’re calling their “first performance vehicle for adaptive lacing”. Sounds fancy enough but in practise your shoes are just tying their own laces. Pop in your foot, a sensor in the heel tightens the laces and then you can fine-tune the snugness with exterior buttons. HyperAdapt 1.0 is going to launch towards the end of the year but there’s a catch – you need to be a Nike+ member in order to be eligible to snag a pair. We suspect that American residency would be advantageous too.

Source: Nike

BMW teases a lot of things, like an X7 and a convertible i8

Oh BMW, for a company that makes such epic vehicles you sure know how to bullet-proof a press release, don’t you? Seriously, check out the link below. Then come back here so you don’t need to hack your way through it. Back? Cool. BMW are teasing a couple of things, like iNEXT, which is going to bring changes to the company’s i-models. How? It will “raise premium individual mobility to previously unknown levels.” A convertible i8 is on the cards (no, we haven’t seen it yet), as is an updated i3. Also coming? How does a super-sized BMW X7 sound? And a little something called the M2? These are all teasers, after a fashion, so look for more details a little later. The hard data just isn’t available. Yet.

Source: BMW

Chinese search giant Baidu to start testing self-driving car in the States

You’re not a tech company these days unless you’re working on your own self-driving car. That must be while Chinese search and tech outfit Baidu are going to be conducting self-driving vehicles tests in the US, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The announcement comes by way of Stanford and Google researcher Andrew Ng, who is Baidu’s lead on the self-driving car tech. They haven’t said where the tests are being conducted but since they’re headquartered in California (Stateside, anyway) and the weather’s good…

Source: Wall Street Journal

Where’s the Redeemer? Snatch a quick look at Doom‘s 9 multiplayer maps

Bethesda aren’t going to like this but their preview trailer revealing the nine multiplayer maps for Doom, which is set to launch on 13 May, puts us in mind of one very specific game. The first Unreal Tournament, in fact. There’s just something that recalls the Leandri Foundry and Facing Worlds in the gore-spattered, multi-level jump-cuts. That’s far from a bad thing but we suspect that Doom will make Excavation, Infernal, Helix and the other maps experiences that only a fight against the forces of Hell can truly explain. For a full run-down of the incoming maps, hit up Bethesda’s explainer below.

Source: Bethesda Softworks