video Microsoft recently unveiled some new technology that may bring you one step closer to having that holodeck you’ve always wanted: The MirageTable uses a 3D-video projector to beam images onto a sheet of curved white plastic placed in front of the user. At each end one of Microsoft’s Kinect depth camera sensors is used to track the direction of each person’s gaze as well as to capture the shape and appearance of objects placed on the surface and the participant sitting behind them. Users are also required to wear shutter glasses in order to see the projected image in…

The debate about when art was “invented” is a daunting question for students trained in the method of historical geneology. But looking at some extremely ancient objects from pre-dynastic Egypt, Jerry Saltz poses an interesting possibility: maybe the conception that art was simply to be “observed” is false. Instead, the tacticle experience of utility can shape our understanding of a piece: There are vessels, makeup palettes (that great eyeliner had to be ground and mixed somewhere), game boards, boats, a marvelously whimsical bowl with little feet that is actually a hieroglyph meaning “pure,” and numerous highly observed images of flowers,…

Continuing in the long line of creative applications of the Microsoft Kinect, researchers are developing a new medical application for the device: As part of an experiment at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, Sapiro and Papanikolopoulos set up a series of five Microsoft Kinect sensors in the playroom of a school. There, the motion-detecting cameras recorded the movements of the children, aged 3 to 5, and sent the collected data to a series of PCs. The computers then calculated what children were most at risk for autism based on their hand movements and activity levels. Children whose activity levels differed…

Tuesday in bullet-point form: Portal 2 sales topped 4 million. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is coming this June. Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is coming to Steam. Check out this new Assassin’s Creed 3 trailer. Starhawk is here. That’s all for now! See you on the morrow.

video Like any self-respecting Blizzard game, Diablo IIIhas a massive amount of lore traditionally left out of the primary gameplay experience. To get some of the backstory of how Tristram got embroiled in this whole mess with the devil, check out this wonderful short film from Titmouse, the animation house of Peter Chung of Aeon Flux and Metalocalypse fame. It shows a bit about that whole struggle between hell and earth Deckard Cain is always talking about, and the fateful wrath that the angels fall prey to when first duking it out with the Lord of Darkness. Thanks a lot, angels. Now we’ve got to…

A few weeks ago during a trip back home I went to visit my old high school. Revisiting a place that so singularly defined my identity for a moment in time, I suddenly felt strangely out of place. I scanned my surroundings restlessly until I could lock on to something old and familiar—the office of my favorite history teacher, the courtyard we would pace around in during breaks—before I felt at home again in my own skin. Playing Diablo again after so many years is uncomfortable at first, like stepping into an old skin. I played enough of Diablo to…