Light Start – Oculus DRM, a R60 smartphone, smart ships, and Long March 7
Brett Venter
Oculus walks back their DRM for the Oculus Rift
First, a spot of background. A short while back, a program called ReVive made it possible for HTC Vive users to play Oculus Rift games using the Vive. And the ReVive software. Facebook-owned Oculus Rift responded by adding a hardware check to Oculus games, something that you should never do to people who use your products using a PC. ReVive fired back by completely breaking apart the Oculus Rift DRM, making it possible to use the ReVive software to play any Oculus title. Even if it wasn’t strictly legal. Which brings us to the present day: Oculus have removed the hardware check from developed-for-Oculus titles, meaning that players will be able to play Oculus games using an HTC Vive headset, by using ReVive. The fully-cracked DRM has since been removed from ReVive, in response to Oculus removing their head from… actually, just enjoy your VR gaming. However you want it to work.
Remember the R60 Freedom 251 smartphone? It launches on 30 June
Perhaps you recall that smartphone from a company called Ringing Bells, who are based in India. The phone was very entry-level but it costs about the same as a modest trip to Steers (R60). Anyway, the Freedom 251 is real, has a release date in India and it’s just around the corner. The handset is going to start shipping to those who pre-ordered it on 30 June this year – quite a feat in itself as we weren’t sure that a R60 phone (that wasn’t just a basic feature-phone) was possible. As it happens, the 4-inch, 8GB storage, 1GB RAM, 8MP/3.2MP camera combination and a 1,800mAh battery are apparently all possible at this price point. Sort of. Ringing Bells will apparently be making a loss on each handset sold, as it costs a bit more to put these together than it does to sell them. Still, the company should see a massive spike in sales later this week.
Rolls Royce: Cargo ships will be navigated by remote control by 2020
Autonomous cargo ships are coming, but first cargo ships are going to make your DJI drone seem like a children’s toy. Don’t take our word for it, though, Rolls Royce, they of the luxury cars and fighter jets, have released a new whitepaper along with the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative (AAWA) where they claim that we’re going to see remote controlled ships by 2020. At present they are “…testing sensor arrays in a range of operating and climatic conditions in Finland and [have] created a simulated autonomous ship control system which allows the behaviour of the complete communication system to be explored,” according to the company’s Vice President of Innovation – Marine, Oskar Levander. After a remote-controlled ship starts er… shipping, we can look forward to autonomous craft that won’t need human intervention. That may take a little longer than the next five years, though.
China successfully launches their new Long March 7 rocket into space
We predict that high-school guidance counsellors are soon going to have to brush up on the off-world career opportunities that will become available to youngsters. This isn’t a space-race so much as it is a concerted push to get the heck off this mudball. China is the latest country to send something new into space, with their new Long March 7 rocket successfully launching over the weekend. It took a bunch of cubesats and a dummy version of China’s crew capsule into space, specifically into low-Earth orbit (LEO) . China are making quick strides in their space ambitions and are expected to launch their own space station by 2022. Long March 7 will act as a resupply vehicle when they’ve got a manned orbital presence of their own, though we’re sure that SpaceX and Blue Origin might bid to run some gear up for China as well. That Mars colony is looking more and more likely…
