Light Start – Level glasses, Blizzard streaming, virtual Mars, and Ubi cans free games

Level’s glasses are basically wearable tech for your face

How often do you leave your wristband at home? Thought so. And how often do you leave your glasses at home? Probably a whole lot less (in our case it’s because we can’t find the front door without them on). American eye-care outlet VSP is teaming up with the Center of Body Computing, from South California, to trial Level. Level used to be called Project Genesis but, along with the proper name, it has gotten a lot more defined — Glasses frames that pack in a bunch of sensors, including an accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer, Bluetooth, a battery pack, wireless charging (but you can’t wear them while you’re powering them up), and a Find My Glasses feature. Translation: It’s a fitness band for your face, which also makes sure you won’t be able to lose the damn things. Now the trial just needs to finish so that VSP and The Shop (who actually make them) can get these things to market. Sadly, there’s no ETA yet.

Source: Engadget

Now you can stream Overwatch (or other PC-based Blizzard titles) direct to Facebook

Who needs Twitch, right? Why not just stream your Blizzard antics, whether it’s Overwatch, Diablo III, World of Warcraft or any of the other excellent titles spawned from Blizzard’s Hatchery directly over Facebook? That’s a thing now. The rollout began over the weekend, to the States, Australia, Asia and surrounds, and should hit more of the planet soon enough but you’re going to need a Windows PC in order to link your Blizzard account with your Facebook page (for simple streaming). In the works is Mac support, too, and there is also talk of using Facebook credentials for Blizzard logins at some point. Now you need to ask yourself why you want your grandparents to watch you being slammed by that Zerg rush for the 9000th time…? Eh, we’re sure that Blizzard knows what they’re doing. Or Facebook does.

Source: The Verge

A year-long humans-on-Mars simulation just ended (and everyone has retained their sanity)

Right, so we want to send people to Mars. But we’ve also seen a whole lot of films where sending folks into space for long periods doesn’t work out so well. So tests are in order and the six folks involved in the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) have just completed theirs. Which involved six people living in a dome together for a year. The test showed that people would be able to endure the conditions that would be forced on them by a stay on Mars for extended periods. Though an actual Mars stay would be a lot tougher, the participants subsisted on the sorts of food you’d expect astronaughts to consume and were only allowed to leave the dome when clad in an actual space-suit. Plus, you know, simulated emergencies and so on. There are more isolation tests on the way but a manned mission to Mars… that’s looking better and better.

Source: Gizmodo

Several free-to-play Ubisoft games are going the way of the Dodo

If you’re fond of Ubisoft’s roster of free-to-play games then we’ve got some not-so-good news for you. Some of these titles are going away. Ubisoft has made a range of announcements and Ghost Recon Phantoms, Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, and Might and Magic Duel of Champions are all being shuttered. Another title, EndWar Online, is also getting its online servers shut down. Differing reasons are being offered for each title but it all boils down to money, at the end of the day. Free-to-play games can only be maintained while they’re generating cash. If they start costing the company money then it’s time for something else to take its place. Farewell, free games. We barely knew you (and that was the problem, apparently).

Source: Gamasutra