Pop CultureOctober 16, 2015

Gaming: First Encounter with the Techno-Christ – Watching the Birth of a Star in the Oculus Rift

Contributing writer

Suspended above the sun I witnessed the creation and destruction of the stars. An astral dust condensed and formed a molten core, pulling smaller fragments of space rock into its enhanced and growing gravitational field. From behind a distant moon, an asteroid streaked through deep space, hurtling into the burgeoning planet and smashing it into a thousand scattered pieces. Soon they began again to coalesce but I was not there to witness, having been transported into a forest of dendritic branches on the edge of a neuron. It was some really trippy shit.

There’s a subset of hardcore futurists out there who believe we are currently witnessing the birth of a technological messiah through the uterine mediums of artificial intelligence and virtual reality. After a couple hours with an Oculus Rift, I think I count myself as one of them.

The Rift looks like the blacked-out ski goggles the American military straps prisoners with en-route to Guantanamo Bay. It’s hooked up to the computer via HDMI and tracked with a webcam device attached to the monitor. Comfortable straps secure the device to your head. It apparently doesn’t come with anything to help scrape your jaw off the floor after the skyscraper you’re perched upon collapses and sends you spinning to the pavement though.

The latest iteration of the Rift is the Developer’s Kit 2. It’s the last model before the Rift goes on the market in Q1 2016, and so the vast majority of games and virtual experiences available have been designed for free by indie developers. Praise be to these industrious craftsmen, for they are the pioneers of the virtual frontier.

On the eight floor of a building on Short Street I met with a few of these midwives of the singularity. They were masquerading as fourth year software engineering students in a 12-week Comp Sci course. An exercise bike sat in front of a bookcase filled with tomes like The Science of Fractal Imagery by Peitgen Saupe and G D Smith’s Numerical Solution of Partial Differential Equations. They made me feel nauseous. A motion capture camera sat atop the bookcase, aimed at the exercise bike. Both were rigged to an impressive computer tower; black steel with handles. After filling out several forms and a waiver I mounted the exercise bike, strapped on an Oculus and some headphones and started to pedal.

Tour de Tune is an exergame like Wii Fit, just way better. Imagine Guitar Hero crossed with Mario Kart in outer-space. The bike’s resistance was calibrated by the BPM of the music I selected and the holographic, techno-track adjusted accordingly to represent the difficulty. Obie Trice’s Adrenaline Rush got the heart pumping with a few heavy sections and a couple of descents. Bleed by Meshuggah turned the track into a near-vertical climb. I rode three six-minute sections, two with the Oculus and one without. Two flat whites into the day, my heart rate was a brisk 170 almost immediately.

It didn’t matter though, because the combination of visual and audio input created an immersive experience so powerful I was able to ignore the burning in my thighs and the heaving in my chest. I charged forward, strangely desperate to drive my score up into the thousands. I’m not totally sure how the scoring system operated, I just know the harder I pedaled, the faster it went up. And so I did, and that’s something that just doesn’t happen in exergames, which are generally absolute shit. There’s something about the experience which makes a mundane muscle cramp irrelevant in the exploration of a new and unmapped space.

I asked the group if this was the dawn of the singularity, if we were finally about to transcend our fleshy bonds and glide away into a virtual existence. They said no, it’s going to be a long time before it gets much better than it already is. I told them that was disappointing, that they were a little cynical compared to me. They said it was because they actually know how hard it is to get anywhere with this kind of technology. It was a fair point. But, unfettered by the obligation to actually make any of it happen, I’m free to dream.

I see a future where children learn about the genesis of life by watching it happen, where it’s possible to see a giant squid battle a sperm whale from the perspective of a barnacle. I imagine a time where travel to far regions of the universe is a matter of strapping on your goggles and hitting the couch. And, in my more paranoid moments, I wonder if it’s already here, and all I need to do is take off my goggles.

This post, like all of our gaming content, is brought to you by the internet mages over at Bigpipe.

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Pop CultureOctober 16, 2015

Television: Capturing the Survey Castle – Chronicling Jono and Ben’s Lake Taupo Crusade

Don Rowe

Contributing writer

At the height of survey season, Jono and Ben made an attempt to cross Lake Taupo in an inflatable castle. Don Rowe watches from the sky.

Some time around the year 180 AD an explosion in the Pacific turned the sky over eastern China red. The violent upheaval threw over a thousand cubic kilometres of earth into the air, covering much of New Zealand’s North Island in a 200m deep layer of ignimbrite and spreading a thick ash blanket as far as the Chatham Islands. Nearly 2,000 years later, a couple of radio jocks floated across the crater in a bouncy castle. This is the story of that journey.

In some places, Lake Taupo is over 150 metres deep. That’s more than enough to swallow a plane, a bouncy castle and any of the idiots on board either craft. I considered this as we bounced across the lake’s windswept surface in a converted Cessna floatplane, the air sucking and clawing at the void where the right door should have been. “There’s a bit more drag without the door, eh Tonya?” said the pilot Neil, opening the throttle and leaning forward to see over the nose of the plane.

We were headed in search of the Wascally Waft, a Bugs Bunny bouncy castle fixed with a small Yamaha outboard motor and crewed by Rock FM jocks and Jono and Ben hosts Jono Pryor and Ben Boyce. The Waft had been afloat since predawn on a long-awaited, much delayed 40km ‘castle crusade’ from the southern tip of the lake to a red carpet landing just near the Hole in One Challenge in Taupo Bay.

Contrary to the sheltered waters of the launching point at the Lakehouse in Waihi Bay, conditions outside the cove were considerably more difficult. By 11am, the tiller extension arm had snapped, there were rumors on shore of a smoking generator, and Pryor’s stomach contents were feeding the lake’s famed supply of brown and rainbow trout. It made for perfect entertainment; dicey, but without too much chance of an actual drowning. Adversity is important of course, because nothing pisses kiwis off more than someone succeeding without any difficulty at all.

But why face the terrors of the deep aboard such a vessel? Why brave freezing conditions, turbulent waters and the scorn of the analysts in the TV3 comments section (“two of nzs biggest dickheads doing something that was stupid before they even set sail” and “I hope their hooks puncture the floating bouncy castle , and the sinkers pull them under LOL”)?

Well, because it’s survey season, and as Pryor told Newsworthy – “We are soulless, shameless radio and TV presenters. We did this for publicity.”

Survey is the six week process whereby radio stations attract heightened public attention through stunts and marketing, capture the extra ears it generates in a survey and then refine it down into a tidy statistic which can be exchanged for the lifeblood of entertainment media: advertising revenue. It’s a time of corporate-funded madness. A time where, with the right hype, two guys in a bouncy castle can climb atop a heap of virtual corpses and be the number one trending topic on Twitter for most of the day.

From the sky, Lake Taupo’s 600 square kilometre surface is immense and unrelenting. We tacked southwest in the small high-wing, hugging the shoreline. Our cargo included a photographer, a bucket of KFC, two Pepsis and myself. “During landing you’re connecting with the surface at around 100kmh” said Neil over a crackling intercom. “The water’s getting pretty hard at that speed.” I wondered what speed a body falling from several hundred feet would hit at, but before I could ask we spotted a flotilla of several boats surrounding a small yellow speck far below and began our descent.

After skipping across the surface, the plane drifted alongside the Waft, clipped a mounted GoPro with the wing and all but dislodged it. The Waft was secured by a rope and the KFC drop went ahead, Cocaine Cowboys style, the pilot balancing on the float and handing over first the chicken then the drinks. Pryor, identified as captain by his gold-trimmed captain’s hat, received the goods and proceeded to pour scalding potato-and-gravy slush into his mouth and down his chin. “Ahh, it’s so good, but so hot,” he screamed to the sky.

But this wasn’t only the world’s most expensive KFC delivery. A cameraman from their primetime television show climbed aboard, perching himself nervously in the seat near the missing door and the plane took flight once more, struggling slightly with the added weight. A few broad circles and a passenger exchange later, and we were back on shore awaiting the arrival of the Waft. I sat in my car reading The Count of Monte Cristo for a while, ate a KFC snack burger and then made my way to the landing zone as the flotilla came into view.

The most exciting thing to happen in Taupo for the last 2000 years, around 500 faithful Rock listeners had gathered on the shore, lining the red carpet and perching on Rock FM beanbags beneath Rock FM banners. Rock Roadies milled about like heavy metal oompa loompas, cooking sausages, serving V’s and generally looking like bogans. The Rock FM blared from several black utes, and in the carpark a guy showed off his freshly-bagged Holden. On the lake, a guard of honor formed. Surrounding the Waft was a sailboat, a cruise ship, the Huka falls jet, a few jetskis, a tugboat and, in the sky, a sinister drone strapped with a GoPro and malevolent red lights. It was kind of absurd.

As the Waft came into shore, celebrations reached a new level of intensity. Whipped into a froth by the urgings of the Roadies, the crowd bayed for the arrival of their modern day Captain’s Cook. They were also pretty keen to hurl waterbombs filled with champagne, which they did with no concern for friendly fire or collateral damage. To the cheers of the crowd, Jono and Ben ascended the bank on a red carpet, greeted with the key to the city and a live radio cross.

I had seen enough, and made my exit. Heading back to the car, a German tourist stopped me in the street.

“Vwat has happens here?” he asked.

I really struggled to find an answer.

Jono and Ben returns tonight to TV3 at 7.30pm

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