Skyrim becomes the latest game to receive a VR hack – this time with a treadmill g21

Today's jaw-dropping VR hack comes not from the Oculus Rift, but the Virtuix Omni – a sort of half baby walker, half Moonwalk simulator. Between the device, the glasses and the Kinect sensor, we see some amazingly responsive (as prototypes go) tracking of Skyrim being played. Just think, a No Fast Travel playthrough could end up an effective exercise regime. This is the second video showing the device running in Skyrim. You can see the first here. Just beware: the head-tracking sensitivity hasn't been tuned for this one. Watching the pronounced head-bob can double as a simulated motion-sickness experience. According to the device's about page: "The Omni is the first locomotion device that is affordable for household consumers, fits in a living room, and above all, enables the user to walk freely and naturally in virtual environments." Virtuix is currently prepping a Kickstarter to ensure its launch. (via Reddit)

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The Free Webgame Round-Up g21

I hope you're enjoying the lousy Smarch weather, but in the unlikely event that you're getting tired of our permanently grey skies and biting cold, here are some browser games you can play from the comfort of your own home – or someone else's. So bolt the doors, close the curtains, raise the drawbridge and prepare yourself for bombsx1000, a game made for monkeys, the world's worst piano player and a very Deusexy FPS. Enjoy! Bombermine by persons unknown Play it online here. If you look closely, you can just about spot my pun-tastic username. A massively multiplayer clone of Bomberman that lets up to 1,000 (and occasionally even more) players fight it out on the same huge map. It's still in beta, there's no music, and it's more than a bit glitchy, but Bombermine captures the brilliant grid-based strategy that makes Hudson Soft's game such an enduring multiplayer classic. Just the thing for when you have 999 friends over to stay, and you're looking for something to keep them busy. (Via IndieGames) simian.interface by vested interest Play it online here. I'll run your tests, but I'm doing it for Science not for these delicious digital bananas. I haven't seen a simian interface since Steve Jobs' short-lived Apple Macaque, but this beautifully minimalist puzzle game brings me right back. I don't want to ruin how this works – also, I'm not entirely sure I could describe it – but this is a game that does lovely, clever things with just the mouse. Smart, gorgeous and with a wonderful soundtrack, simian.interface has the whole 'marmoset'. …Marmoset. Because monkeys. (Discovered via IndieGames) The King of the Wood by allen Play it online here. The world is fleshed out with the occasional cryptic doodad, including this mysterious, heavily-pixellated GIF. The King of the Wood is self-deprecatingly described by its creator allen (like Cher, he doesn't need a second name) as "a short fps that rips off deus ex and blade runner and many other things", but I'd say it has its own minimalist, understated style. You're sent on a mission to hunt down an android – no, not the phone – with one of those nifty guns that has a bullet counter welded onto the side. The resultant brief story is effectively told, and surprisingly rich in atmosphere; over on TIGSource allen mentions a few ideas for possible follow-ups, and I'd urge him to attempt them post-haste. Drop A Beat, Giuseppe! by Major Bueno Play it online here. Major Bueno's game is an attempt to raise awareness for the horrific dangers of concert pianism. I am very bad at being a bad concert pianist, which must mean I'm… the greatest concert pianist of all time. But before I dash off to a life of fame and glory and a series of calamitous misfortunes, I should probably tell you about Drop A Beat, Giuseppe! It's a wonderfully silly browser game about a terrible pianist (played by you), who has to dodge various missiles thrown by understandably outraged members of the audience. If you're quick, you can actually bounce some of them back, but your initial tactic should be to leg it, so they don't smash up your ivory pride and joy. You leg it left by randomly mashing the keys on the left side of the keyboard; you leg it right by… well, you get the idea. (Spacebar lets you rebound missiles with the cover of your piano, which is how you start bagging yourself some points.) Drop A Beat, Giuseppe! is exquisitely drawn and joyously stupid – plus, as with Frog Fractions, there's a bit more to it than meets the eye…

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Uni of Leeds takes liquid cooling to its logical conclusion: total immersion g21

Where once water-cooling your PC meant straying into a world of techy frustration and possible b0rking of expensive components, now it is a mainstay of mainstream gaming/performance PCs. I'm kinda hoping the same becomes true of the sort of liquid-cooling setup the University of Leeds is trialling in its School of Mechanical Engineering. The guys over at Bit-tech are reporting the UK-based company Iceotope is working in partnership with the university on a new form of cooling for large-scale server networks. It uses a form of total immersion cooling utilising a non-conductive liquid, called Novec, which is around 1000 times more efficient at transferring heat than air. Total immersion is exactly what it sounds like. Each of the servers is submerged so that the Novec liquid is in contact with the entire system. The heat from the components is transferred into the liquid with the warmer liquid shifting to the top of the cabinets. A pump then moves a secondary coolant liquid from the base of the server cabinet around to a passive cooler at the top of the server. Here the heat is transferred from the Novec liquid to the secondary coolant on a different loop. The secondary coolant is simply water which then passes through more heat exchangers on the way down from the top of the cabinet which in turn shifts the built-up heat to an external loop. The huge amount of electricity that is currently used to keep massive server farms cool – including the air-conditioning systems in the actual server rooms themselves – could largely be offset using this total immersion system. Iceotope reckon that this system draws just 80W to cool around 20KW of server kit. This is not a new idea though. Back in 2006 PCFormat ran a feature with some tech-savvy Dutch folk who decided to create an oil bath for their PC. Using standard, shop-bought peanut oil – a good electrical insulator as it turns out – Ebo Eppenga and friends submerged everything bar the PSU and HDD in a plastic bin full of oil. This oil-bath is going to feel so good… Total immersion cooling has also made an appearance in a commercial sense too, with US company Hardcore Computer releasing the Reactor in 2009. The PC chassis housed all the components submerged in a non-conductive liquid. Though not to any great effect, apart from making the machine feel all, y'know, sci-fi. It sure is going to make future upgrading a little messy – and my test rig is going to need a lot of work to get it to this point – but the promise of totally silent, cool computing is still rather tantalising. It's unlikely to become quite as mainstream as water-cooling is now – but if you could fry chips from the heat of your overclocked CPU…

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Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s Revolution spreads to PC g21

It may not quite be the "Revolution" CoD's critics would like, but Blops 2′s latest DLC pack seems to be at least a minor skirmish in the war for interesting additions to established games. Sure, it's just a few additional maps, but, er, one of them's in a skate park? And there's a gun, I guess. Okay, so the Revolution DLC is pretty much business as usual. But it's a business that seems to work, and those interested can now find the latest map-pack on PC. A trailer runs through the various contents it brings, backed by AC/DC's Ace of Spades. No, I'm not sure why either. Revolution is available on Steam for £11.49. You can also buy a Season Pass for £34.99, containing Revolution, along with three upcoming DLC packs as they're released (months after the 360 version). For more details, check out Michael Gapper's complete run-down of everything to be found in Revolution.

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Metro: Last Light release date announced, arrives in May g21

And sigh of relief. While the various new owners of THQ's properties were always going to forge ahead with those games already close to completion, there's something about seeing a firm, solid release plan that takes the edge off the uncertainty that's plagued the period. Today, Deep Silver announce that Metro: Last Light will launch May 14th in America and May 17th through Europe. While any release date is great news, it's still a delay from the original planned March launch. Koch Media CEO Dr. Klemens Kundratitz explains the delay: "The new release date is the ideal way to strike the balance between bringing the best out of Metro: Last Light and not keep the fans waiting longer than necessary. We won't leave that time unexploited and will work closely together with 4A Games to make the game even better. It will receive all the attention it deserves." I've got big hopes for this. Despite some rough edges, it was an excellently bleak and atmospheric shooter – a sort of linear S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with some great pacing and enough variety to keep it consistently engaging. Judging from the game footage 4A dropped back in December, Last Light should be a faithful follow-up.

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Cyberpunk 2077 devs considering multiple languages, requiring translator implant g21

It's still early days in the Cyberpunk 2077 development process – what with CD Projekt RED also having a 100+ hour fantasy RPG to tackle. Not that it's stopping them from sharing some of the details they've been kicking around internally. Speaking to dubscore.pl, CD Projekt RED's Sebastian Stepien reveals the developer's plan to record all NPCs in their original, intended language – with an translator implant acting as your in-game Babelfish. "Decisions are not yet made, but we are thinking about some kind of system which could tell more about the game world," Stepien says. "The idea is to record everything in its original language. If there are, for example, Mexicans in the game, they will speak with slang. All performed by Mexican actors." "Then a player could try a translating implant, and according to its level, he will get better or worse translation." Stepien goes on to say that the move would help solve a fairly big believability issue – that Polish actors trying to ape LA slang just wouldn't sound convincing. Certainly it would be fantastically atmospheric. And while a steadily improving translation sounds like a lot of work, it's a clever touch that would potentially gel perfectly with the theme. Thanks, Reddit.

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