A camera doesn’t lie… right? I saw a video today of some fascinating technology being developed at the University of Washington – close to where I live in Seattle – which takes video footage and seamlessly combines it with photographs to selectively increase the resolution, improve the lighting balance, or do a slew of other changes to the video. It’s called the “Spacetime Fusion Technique”, and while amazing (both the technology and the name they gave it), it also made me think about what will constitute authentic videos in the future. Read more »

I recently picked up a copy of Mass Effect for the PC, and I have to say that it’s one of the most schizophrenic games I’ve ever played. While the game itself is fantastic in many ways, I’ve had a constant stream of logic-defying glitches that have actually made me stop playing out of frustration a few times.

I’ve come to notice that many PC games shipped these days – not just Mass Effect – tend to require one or more patches after its retail release to get it to a respectfully stable point. But because the option of updating a game after it’s released is available to developers, it seems like they often use this as an excuse to put sloppy code out to retail. “It’s playable, yeah, but we can always perfect it later!” Read more »