I disagree. Games like Dota 2 and League of Legends are filling sports stadiums and giving out multi-million dollar prize pools these days. If anything, at least in the United States, they are on the rise.
Using feature detectors and descriptors is only half of the solution. If you really want robust image recognition you need to use something like the vocabulary tree developed by Nister[1][2].
One of the coolest approaches I've seen does some cool inference on fully connected Conditional Random Fields via high-dimensional filtering. Amazing results.
I believe the fundamental difference is that the time to get to null-sec in EVE (the actual interesting component of the game that generates strong narratives) takes a significant time investment from the player. Leveling up skills, purchasing ships, and developing knowledge of the game are fairly tedious.
In comparison, you can get thrown into interesting situations from the get-go in DayZ. Basic FPS skills and a little knowledge of the clunky interface are all you need to generate strong player narratives. Whereas you make need several weeks to months to motivate an interesting experience in EvE, DayZ only requires a time investment of a couple hours (maybe).
Sure! My lab focuses on SLAM and 3D reconstruction, especially for robotic applications. We've developed a BSD-licensed C++ (w/ MATLAB wrapper) library with specific applications towards 3D reconstruction problems such as SLAM and structure from motion. It's called GTSAM [1]
We actively maintain and release new features as they are published. While we don't provide a full out of the box pipeline (yet!), there are plenty of examples and documentation which walk you though the math, implementation, and other issues. If you want to read about the graphical models underlying GTSAM, see [2]
Utilizing OpenCV for feature detection and association is pretty much all you really need to add to a program in order to recreate Photosynth using gtsam. I'd also you recommend KAZE features from a former post-doc out of our lab, it's state of the art and recently added OpenCV wrappers[3]. However, it's also trivial to integrate other sensors such as IMUs, GPS, lasers, etc. for full navigation problems.
If you wish to know more about the actual subject, I definitely recommend Hartley and Zisserman's Multiview Geometery Book[4]
I believe that most UAV designs for extra-terrestrial missions are designed around the use of airships rather than more traditional airplane or quadrotor designs. An example of initial research in the area is the Titan Aerobot [1]
As someone who is on the other side of the fence for this program (I'm currently a CS PhD student at Georgia Tech), I can tell you that many of the faculty are excited about online programs. Hopefully the learning process for the faculty goes smoothly and the online students have a worthwhile experience. I know I'm excited to help TA some of the courses!
A brilliant move would be to offer discounts on purchasing a game if the lender kicks you off while you are playing. "Sorry we have to kick you off while you are playing, it looks like the owner wants to play game X right now. Purchase the game for yourself at 10% off and keep playing immediately!"
But let's be clear here. It's from a search that was performed on an employer owned computer from a recently released employee. This is an entirely different narrative than the one insinuated in the original blog post. I'd say the premise was fundamentally flawed to begin with seeing as how she presented zero evidence and only anecdotes from her husband.
Well, it's plausible seeing as how multiple people have reported to be able to play the game while lacking internet connections for up to 20 minutes. Additionally, the methodology of the code seems to fit with several of the changes made by Maxis to improve performance (disabling cheetah speed for example).
I think it's important to note that this actually isn't the Valve branded "Steam box", but actually a similar spec hardware platform to the one Valve is developing internally. It's unfortunate that a lot of the momentum and hype Valve can leverage with their name is being wasted on this particular platform which they have nothing to do with.
Google has been working with one of Steve Mann's previous collaborators[1], Thad Starner[2]. Thad's actually the Tech Lead on the Glass project. As far as I know, he's been wearing AR systems for just as long and does the majority of his research in this domain. I must admit, I'm extremely jealous when I see Thad walking around campus with his Glass.
I'm surprised there was no mention of the Mount and Blade[1] series, which took a serious look at this sort of combat through the use of contextual mouse movements for parries and attacks. I wonder if he's unaware of the franchise, or just didn't feel the need to mention it.
I'm also not convinced that today's odometry based controllers will give you high enough fidelity to model swords convincingly. Any sort of wiimote or kinect based sword/lightsaber game has always seemed very waggle centric without any deliberate movement. Also, I'm not really thrilled about the thought of having to buy plastic swords to swing in my room.
