Prompt #10: Recognizing the Truth

Guozhuoyan Zhang


One of the most famous rumors in computer science field is that the logo of Apple Inc. is referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing.

Alan Turing was an outstanding British computer scientist in 20 century. He was the founding fathers of computer science and artificial intelligence. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron claimed that Alan Turing was a remarkable man who played a key role in saving this country in World War Two by cracking the German Enigma code.

Turing was also a very famous homosexual. And he was accused for homosexual and obscene acts in 1952. He was convicted by the UK government without arguing and decided to have chemical castration instead of going to the prison. In 1954, he was lying dead on his bed. And an apple with a bite was founded upon the bed's head. The cause of death was cyanide poisoning of the apple. UK government judged it as committing suicide.

While Stephen John Fry who is a famous presenter in British was asking the issues that Turing’s death has inspired Apple’s famous once-bitten l
ogo to Steve Jobs, Jobs said: “God we wish it were. It's just a coincidence.” The designer Rob Janoff and APPLE are all repudiated that Turing’s death does not have influence on the design of the logo.

In 1977, Rob Janoff was taking responsibility for designing APPLE’s logo without any payments. After manufacturing the first prototype of Apple II, Jobs and his team decided to abandon the old APPLE logo which was a complicated Isaac Newton pattern. Jobs wanted a logo design to be distinct and abstract.

In order to look for the inspiration, Rob Janoff bought a huge amount of apples and cut them into pieces. He was staring at apple’s cross section for a long time and inevitably had a bite on it. Finally a monochromatic and complanate Apple with a bite came out to his logo design.

Jobs was very happy to see this design but he thought it could be more colorful even it might not save printing cost. Jobs was decisive and he thought the color was the key to give humanization to the company.

Rob Janoff has tried every kind of color design for the logo, and finally he was inspired by a piece of triangular prism. He painted the logo with the colorful color which was scattered by the prism. And Steve Jobs accepted his design.

citation:

http://futurismnews.tumblr.com/post/72319648696/know-your-scientist-alan-turing-alan-turing-a
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/dd/ec/18/ddec1832fb3e67a0ac2e2e098d97a668.jpg
http://cdn-1.famouslogos.us/images/apple-logo.jpg

"Logos that became legends: Icons from the world of advertising". The Independent (UK). 4 January 2008. Archived from the original on 3 October 2009. Retrieved 14 September 2009.
"Interview with Rob Janoff, designer of the Apple logo". creativebits. Retrieved 14 September 2009.
"Turing and the Apple logo". 25 July 2015. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
"Science & Environment – Alan Turing: Separating the man and the myth". BBC. Retrieved 23 June 2012.

The Auto Parking Technology.

Chen Dai

If one day you see a car run by himself, which means there is no one in the car. Do you feel surprise? or scare? Since you hear the ghost boat, but you never heard the ghost car. Infect, do not be scared, this is a new technology which help the car parking automatically. This tech is still improving but basically, it is usable.




Basically the technology is using the sensor to calculate how to park. Just like the picture shows on the left side. With the good sensor the car will calculate the distance and the angel rightly. By this way the car can park automatically.

One thing needs as a condition, which is the parking place. People need the assistant of the parking place. the car needs enough information to park. Just like where is empty in the parking place which need the assistant of the parking place.

For now A8L have the ability already, and you will see more ghost car in the future.


Cite:
1. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/self-parking-car1.htm
2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-kzLgfUXaQ
3.http://www.mensjournal.com/gear/cars/no-gimmick-car-tech-self-parking-20121023
4.https://www.google.com/search?q=A8l&biw=1600&bih=778&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwio7dr_8PjKAhVGWh4KHd6DA-sQsAQIKA#imgrc=CPK9Cv7ZrS7nDM%3A

Self-Driving Cars

By: Matthew Manross

Im sure we've all seen self driving cars in movies and tv shows.  But exactly how far are we away from seeing self driving cars in our everyday life? The answer may not be as far away as you would think.

Companies today are already slowly implementing some technology to their cars that advance us towards self driving cars. You've probably seen commercials for cars that apply the breaks before you do. This small change is a small step towards self-driving cars on a large scale. Many more small changes will be added to the cars we see today before any final product of a self-driving car comes out.

One huge benefit of self driving cars is helping the old/impaired. Many of us would agree that at a certain age, people just shouldn't be driving. But with the introduction of the self-driving car, older people could go on with their everyday activities without endangering their or anyones life. This could also apply to those people who may be physically impaired.

Google is one of the first companies to try and develop the 100% self driving car. The picture to the right is a example of google's self-driving car prototype. Google has been able to successfully have the car drive around for hundreds of thousands of miles. So when exactly could we see these cars out on the streets? Google claims to have a final product as early as summer of 2016. Although there are still much more testing that needs to be done before these cars hit the markets.

A self-driving could also save lives. We all know humans are not perfect and make plenty of mistakes, especially when it comes to driving. With all of our new gadgets today, it makes driving very distracting. Studies show that "94% of all car accidents in the U.S involve human error". With self-driving cars, the number of accidents will significantly decrease. People will be able to talk, text, and play games as much as they want while the car drives itself. Another study showed that "Deaths from traffic accidents—over 1.2 million worldwide every year". The introduction of the self-driving car could save millions of lives all around the world.


Works Cited

"Google Self-Driving Car Project." Google Self-Driving Car Project. Web. 14 Feb. 2016. <https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/>.

Image credit

"Google Self-driving Cars to Hit the Streets in the US This Summer." 2015. Web. 14 Feb. 2016. <http://www.techetron.com/16048/google-self-driving-cars-to-hit-the-streets-in-the-us-this-summer/>.

Shenmue 3

Guozhuoyan Zhang

Everyone knows that GTAV has sold for over 50 million copies [1]. Let us hypothesize that there is a game which possesses the same game pictures, music and scenes comparing with GTAV. And the only change of this game is related to its core gameplay. It becomes completely terrible to play and only sold for one million copies [2]. That is what Shenmue was.

The fundamental difference between Shenmue and GTA is that players can do nothing except exploring the main story in Shenmue. You can drive, rob, make some money for a living and even enjoy American lifestyles (though it is about bay guys) in GTAV. However, Shenmue owns nothing except the main story. As a sandbox game, it has a wide and broad world which possesses more elaborate details than GTAV did.

Someone might heard that ordinary Non-Player-Characters in GTAV has their own schedules and personalities. But Shenmue’s are greater than those. Every NPCs in it has their background stories, lives and elements related to many side quests. However, players cannot do any interactions with the NPCs in Shenmue except greeting with them. The rest of the things that players can do is to hang out and watch some scenes. Also there are numerous little games which were like triathlons of GTAV in Shenmue, but they has less richness. Assassin's Creed I has lots of common points comparing with Shenmue’s design. It also owns nothing except the main story. Making some sneak attacks on guardians is exactly what players can only do in AC1. No, actually Shenmue did worse than AC1. You cannot climb the wall like an assassin and enjoy the beautiful views. Going for a walk in a 1980s East Asian city is what Shenmue offered to players’ experience. The core of Shenmue is just like learning some experiences from Japanese businessman’s retired life.

In other words, most of the elements in Shenmue’s content are only designed for constructing a realistic atmosphere without any interactions with players. This kind of luxurious game design thought could only be driven by Yu Suzuki’s status and reputation. Any other game companies could not imagine that this game would come true.

Shenmue’s level of game graphics [3], conception and design scale are far more than any other games at that time. People thought that Shenmue was not only a 3A game, but also it would make the present game industry evolve into a higher generation comparing with FF7 and Super Mario. Nonetheless, the result of Shenmue’s failure was going to be disastrous. It directly led SEGA (which was one of the strongest company at that time) to bankruptcy. SEGA would not exist if not for the money donation from Isao Okawa.

Shenmue series possesses two specific enlightenments to the future game industry:

① It proved that simulated reality full 3D sandbox games are feasible.
② Sandbox game needs to find the core gameplay methods by utilizing game content adequately.

The main beneficiary of those enlightenments is likely to be GTA series. At the age of Shenmue, GTA (it was still 2D) was a shocking and antisocial game which was required to deleted any illegal elements in it. It was very lucky that ROCKSTAR insisted on doing a special GTA so we could witness GTAV’s great success now. No matter how antisocial GTA would be, it provided players a colorful experiences.

-What shows will we enjoy tonight?
-I’m so sorry but I can’t let out the news. However, some of the shows are extremely vulgar.
-That is what I want!

Assassin's Creed is the material for teaching by negative example. The first generation of this game’s series was definitely a Shenmue with climbing wall function and random battles. It was criticized by a lot of people in game industry. However, UBISOFT has the advantage of advertising and there was no limitations of game consoles. Assassin’s Creed sold and developed successfully.

Frenchmen of UBISOFT are looking for core gameplay changing after they made the game. They finally found out the naval battle gameplay for Assassin’s Creed III and it attracted players [4]. In other words, UBISOFT owns more resources and money than SEGA does, otherwise AC series would disappear quicker than Shenmue.

Yakuza’s game content shrunk drastically comparing to Shenmue [5]. However, Yakuza did a great job on corrections of Shenmue’ failure. On the one hand, it has massive sums of battles which won’t make players feel bored while finishing the main story. On the other hand, the scale of the game world in Yakuza is smaller than Shenmue. There are only several streets which are related to the main story and little games are designed. Basically Yakuza is like an action role-playing game. In addition, it has changed the system of battle which was switched from VR warrior mode to SPIKE OUT ACT. Yakuza is easy to understand and more lively than Shenmue.

Someone might feel confused that Shenmue was such a boring game to play, but why there are still so many crazy fans of it? [6] First of all, it is about some game feelings. In 1990s, SEGA has the same position as Nintendo in North American game market. Many veteran players would not reconciled to SEGA’s sudden failure and they are always trying to make up something with their feelings. Second of all, it is about Shenmue’s atmosphere. In some persons’ views, Shenmue contains eastern Buddhist mood everywhere.

Has a porcelain cup, slightly skim the leaves on top of it and taste the tea gently. The garden’s pear flowers outside the window are blew away by the breeze and fall into the water.

Citation:


Fan art inspired by M. Huber's epic Shenmue 3 
http://shenmuelegacy.tumblr.com/post/121832184598/fan-art-inspired-by-m-hubers-epic-shenmue-3

1. Karmali, Luke (9 October 2013). "GTA 5 Currently Holds Seven Guinness World Records". IGN. Ziff Davis. Archived from the original on 9 October 2013. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/09/gta-5-currently-holds-seven-guinness-world-records

2. "Microsoft Announces Leading Sega Games for Xbox: SEGA-AM2 and Sonic Team Are Developing Popular New Titles for Xbox". Microsoft.com. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
http://news.microsoft.com/2001/10/11/microsoft-announces-leading-sega-games-for-xbox/

3. "The Greatest Graphics of All Time". IGN. March 17, 2009. Retrieved May 2, 2014.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/03/17/the-greatest-graphics-of-all-time-3

4. "Assassin's Creed Review // Xbox 360 /// Eurogamer". Eurogamer.net. November 13, 2007. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/assassins-creed-review?page=3

5. Linneman, John (7 February 2016). "Kiwami is the next best thing to a Shenmue". EUROGAMER.net. Retrieved 11 February 2016.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-hands-on-with-yakuza-kiwami

6. "Slacker Backer Campaign!". Shenmue3 Official Website. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
https://shenmue.link/order/

Numerous Clouds of Suspicion about VR Games

Guozhuoyan Zhang


The most cited myth is that you have underestimated the capacity of Virtual Reality just as people had underrated the adoption rate of computers.

This is a arcade VR machine which was made in Japan 20 years ago. I need to throw cold water on people's ideas of VR technology, precisely because we have witnessed such innumerable failures.

There is no doubt that VR is going to succeed and dominate the human society with the unimaginative scale. However, it still requires several decades of improvement.

Nowadays while we are analyzing the prospects of VR, it is meaningful to focus on its development in 20 years.

Concerning about the Oculus Rift, its high value caused a high price. An expensive price is leading to the marginalization in the market. However, the technology, cost and popularity are not serious and fundamental problems for VR itself. As time goes on, the price of a VR equipment will decrease and become acceptable. But there are still some VR issues that are not related to technology maturity existed.

The most fearful problem that VR games faced is that VR’s control manners are almost incompatible with current games’ control styles.

One of the most core game types of 3D is First Person Shooting Games. However, there is a strange and artificial setting in normal FPS games. The direction of forward motion and direction of aiming are unitive. In other words, the head of a character in the game is always fixed forward. The mouse or the right controller are giving considerations to veering functions of the head and the body in reality world. This kind of design wouldn’t cause any problems in flat panel display age. However, while we are doing VR display, the dimensionality of the head rotation becomes independent. This can result in entire incompatibility in reality world. As a matter of fact, every kind of game type’s control is all having the same wrong settings so far.


Image Credit: www.dragonslairfans.com Namco Cyber Sphere 360 By: DarthNuno

The Future of Gaming

By: Matthew Manross

The gaming world today is becoming more and more advanced with each day. Video games are getting better graphics with each year. So what's the next step for the video game business? Virtual reality could be the answer. But what is virtual reality exactly? Virtual reality is a computer-simulated reality that can be interacted with the use of special electronic equipment in an environment that is seemingly real. Virtual reality basically means "near reality". This new technology could change the way games are played.

There are many devices that can be used for a virtual reality. One of the most known devices for virtual reality is the oculus rift. The oculus rift is "goggles" that you wear while you play video games. While wearing this headset, you can look up, down, left or right, this will change the direction your character is looking in the game. Instead of moving a control stick left of right, you just turn your head. The oculus rift has a release date of early 2016. The success of this device could change how much money and advancement to make virtual reality possible

As a big video game fan myself, I am very excited to see what 2016 will bring for the gaming community. Just imagine in the future, video games are played completely on a virtual level. Games could be played with moving your whole body. This means you could be getting a workout while also playing your favorite game!

Cites

"8 Amazing Uses for VR Beyond Gaming." PCMAG. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.

Image Credits: 

https://dbvc4uanumi2d.cloudfront.net/cdn/4.5.23/wp-content/themes/oculus/img/order/dk2-product.jpg

The VR technology

Chen Dai


Hi, this time I will bring a new world to you, which is the game world. With a new technology VR which is virtual reality technology, the game company bring us another world in game, which just like this.

How to get in to this world is very easy. You can get in to the new world by just using this gear. With the play station you can feel that you are in the new world. You can hear the sound come from one place which means when you turn you head you can still feel that the sound is from some where in that world and the position will not change while you turn your head. One more thing is when you turning your head the image on your scream will turned as well. So just like the real world when you using this technology.


This technology was been told as a future technology before 1950. Can you believe that it comes for more than half century? But now you can use it to enter the new world that you like.

 For now there so many company have the VR project. One of them is Samsung. Different to Sony Samsung using the cellphone to play the image. Since Sony using PlayStation for game the quality is better. But Samsung is easier to carry. But they all good stuffs.







If you are a explorer this new world which is VR will be a good place for you to explore. And right there is the exciting and interesting story.



Cite:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality
http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-playstation-vr/
http://www.samsung.com/us/explore/gear-vr/?cid=ppc-