I reviewed Star Trek Into Darkness back in May 2013, and although I gave it an 8/10, as a Trek fan, it didn’t live up to my wants and needs as a long term Trek fan!  But reading through that review, I don’t know if I’d give it 8/10 now, but anyway, I did, so it stays and let’s look at Star Trek Beyond!

The USS Enterprise crew explores the furthest reaches of uncharted space, where they encounter a new ruthless enemy who puts them and everything the Federation stands for to the test.

Let’s kick off with the Memorial for Anton Yelchin though, and this film has a LOT of Chekov in it and it feels great for it!  He plays Chekov brilliantly in Beyond, younger than in teh original series and rather a ladies man aswell, one scene on the Enterprise, as Kirk is doing a captain’s Log (monologue) we see Chekov being kicked out of a young ladies cabin, bare chested and top in hand and throughout the film, you get the sense he is rather the ladies man, more so than even Walter Koenig Original Series portrayal of Chekov.

He is a highlight throughout this film, he was fantastic to watch and he will be missed.   I sincerely hope they DON’T recast Chekov and give him a great send off!

Right, let’s get into the review, and just as I did with Into Darkness in 2013, let’s look at the good and the bad…

As with Into Darkness, and 2009’s Star Trek, this film looks gorgeous.

Simon Pegg has done a great job on this script, I was invested nearly completely from the beginning and it was a character showcase from beginning to end!

The characters have a banter and friendship that comes across easily on screen and in some ways, is more solid than in the original series.

Where as Into Darkness bought Section 31 into the reboot universe, this one brings the Enterprise series in, with NX class ships shown off and even the Enterprise uniform blue jumpsuits (a personal fave of mine).

Now the bad points…

To be honest, most of my points that niggled me in Into Darkness still stand…

but let’s reiterate them again…

Why is the interior of the Enterprise like a huge power factory now, instead of the clean small rooms we are used to from the original series and the TNG series like TNG, DS9 and Voyager.  The rebooted Enterprise warp core is fecking huge and looks like a turbine, not the sleek, throbbing beast we are used to from the old universe.

Why is the Engineering deck so fricking huge?  Yes the warp core is 7 decks high, but why is it in the middle of a refinery?

The shuttlebay, why does it look like an aircraft hanger (which in theory it should) and not like the clean bay from the original universe?

The outside of the Enterprise, I don’t like it, I’m sorry, I really don’t…   I know this is a new alternate universe, but why change the design, even subtely?  Bring it upto date yes, but the DS9 episode, “Trials and Tribbleations” proved that a CGI’d original series Enterprise looked fantastic, the Constellation class Enterprise, considering it was designed and built in the 60’s is a beautiful design, why is the reboot version looking like a whale?!?

 

Physics…   Throughout ALL the series and movies, we’ve heard that going to warp IN a solar system is bad…   but both of the reboots have done this, all the ships going to warp in earth Orbit…

ok, lets get into the story then…

“SPOILER ALERT”

The film kicks off as Star Trek should, with a captains log, but this is a captain that knows he shouldn’t be in the centre seat.  Kirk (Chris Pine) knows he’s there too early, he knows he joined starfleet on a dare (unlike Kirk prime (William Shatner) who joined following his dad into service), he has a crew, MUCH younger than they were in the prime universe and in a way, it shows.  They are much more hot headed, more impulsive and get into scrapes a lot easier than Captain pike or even, Kirk Prime would have been.

Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) are having relationship issues and everyone knows it. Leadign to a very real, very human crisis of concience for Spock after the passing of Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy) and a beautiful quiet memorial to him.

McCoy (Karl Urban) is the father figure on the ship, giving sage advice aswell as being the bar tender.  What really gets be in Karl Urbans portayal of Bones is actually the closest to the prime universes Bones (DeForest Kelley), as he was already older and more experienced, not only as an officer, but as a practiced Doctor.  In fact, karl Urban holds a lot of this film together, plot twists always revolvoe around his character to one degree or another, from McCoy and Spock being stranded together while Spock is injured, to McCoy and Spock leading a raid to free the Enterprise crew and keeping Kirk from doing something stupid (like quitting starfleet) or out of his depth and really enjoying flying an alien fighter jet. This may have something to do with reports that Urban, as he had little to do in Into Darkness, nearly didn’t return to the film, but he was a main plot part all teh way through.

There was also a big upset in the news about Sulu (John Cho) being openly gay in the film.  Now I actulaly really liked the way this was portrayed, we also know fromt eh prime universe that he has a daughter, adopted or otherwise, who grows up to join starfleet and end up as the helmsman of the Enterprise B in Generations…  “It wouldn’t be the Enterprise, without a Sulu at the helm!” Kirk prime exclaims.  But the very simple scene where Sulu meets his boyfriend/husband is beautiful, a nice simple cuddle and walking off with their daughter to spend time together on Sulu’s shore leave was not only tastefully done, but actually made sense.  A lovely little flash later in the film that i really liked was Sulu having a photo of his daughter on the helm, I dunno if that would be ok, but apparenlty Kirk is fine with it.

Ok, there are LOADS of new characters in this film, but lets just go over the main bad guy and the main good guy thats not a member of the crew…

First up (and HUGE SPOILER WARNING!!!), Krall (Idris Elba) turns out to be a brilliant throw back to the Enterprise era of Star Trek and is actually a NX class starship captain who was classed as MIA and has been living off the life energy of other species while he builds an army to destroy the Federation for abandoning him and his crew?   Ok, I might feel that way too in his situation, but he’s a SOLDIER, he knew the risks, especially as a MACO captain pressed into the role of an NX class starship captain.   Krall (really Captain Balthazar M. Edison of the U.S.S. Franklin, NX-236 and one of the first Warp 4 starships before the launch of the Enterprise NX-01 Warp 5 starship) seemed to have come to the conclusion that Earth Space Forces (later starfleet’s) ideas of peaceful exploration over conquering other races was a sign of weakness that needed to be destroyed.  A strange reaction, but it’s the centre point for the film, although it’s never REALLy explained how he got his regenerative powers or the technology his army are using, which urked me a little.

Next we have Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) and alien who’s parents were killed by Krall, allowing her to escape.  After escaping him, she finds the derelict Franklin and make it her home on the planet, scavenging parts from other crashed ships Kralls forces destroy in orbit.  She finds Simon Pegg’s Scotty in his escape pod (well, hollowed out photon torpedo) and saves him from other scavengers.  She’s a great character, but you never really feel like you know where she learned to fight or how she learned to make all the tech she has, even from the scrap.  thanks to the music library ont eh franklin she has an appreciation for good music, which also makes a cheesy moment near the end of the film and gets an amused smile from Chris Pines Kirk, but yeah, I never really felt overly invested in her character, hopefully she’ll be back in the next one though, maybe as a love interest for Scotty.

Ok, the script for Beyond was written by Scotty actor Simon Pegg, and it sometimes comes across cliched and almost a little rushed in places.  I enjoyed the film as an action film and romp, but I don’t feel liek this new crew could live upto a series as long as most series are now.  Of course we have Discovery coming early in 2017 and we know Star Trek “4” is coming, maybe in 2018/9, ut although this IS Trek, it’s not the Gene Rodenberry Star Trek I grew up loving, it’s still mising the exploration and especially the science that we love from the series…  and this is bourne out by the larger than needed refinery looking engineering decks, rather than the clean original series or functional TNG/Voyager starship engineering decks.  It’s a workable film and I’ll happily add it to my movie collection, but it doesn’t excite me like the series and original movies, but this is certainly the best of the three reboots!

One thing I did love and bought a slight tear to my eye though, was a scene of Spock going through Spock Prime’s personal items and the main one being a photo of the original cast, one that I actually have on my desktop, so I’ll share it here too to finish this review off…

A bold 8 out of 10, but i could take it or leave it, rather than rewatching religiously

~Lone

Apple are dropping support for Quicktime, a plugin for viewing and streaming video, on Windows on account of no longer being useful.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has confirmed it'll no longer update or support Quicktime 7 for Windows.

Way back when, QuickTime was a requirement to run iTunes, as the Quicktime code was used in part to provide the music streaming capabilities of the software, which resulted in many people who had iPods – and later, the iPhone – installing the plugin to their Windows PCs when they wanted them to properly work with their computers. As Apple notes on its support page, however, this situation changed in later versions of iTunes, and Quicktime has not been a requirement to run iTunes since October 2011.

Despite not being relevant for iTunes any more, Quicktime continued to be useful to serve up video on the web. However, with HTML5 encouraging browsers to support video directly as part of the standard language of the internet, having a separate plugin for the ability now appears redundant. The combination of these two factors appears to have encouraged Apple to have made the decision to no longer support the plugin on Windows.

The announcement comes a week after the Department of Homeland Security recommended Windows users uninstall Quicktime because of potential security holes, making Quicktime potentially vulnerable and use of it on Windows PCs a major security risk (these flaws do not affect the Mac OS version, which remains in support). Given its status as a potential security threat and the lack of any updates coming from Apple, many sources now recommend that Quicktime is removed from all Windows PCs as soon as possible.

For those who are unsure how to, Apple's official support pages offer a guide for how to remove Quicktime from Windows PCs. Apple have been reached for comment to confirm the Wall Street Journal's report.

This article originally appeared at Technically Motivated

Nintendo rose a fair few eyebrows in technology circles, as well as here at Sanitarium Towers, when it announced the 3D Classics line – classic games from older consoles such as the NES and Game Boy with a 3D graphic upgrade, offering a unique way to show of the power of the Nintendo 3DS handheld. While the idea has its merits, with a number of classic Nintendo titles getting the 3D Treatment – and persuading SEGA to join in and do the same to some classic SEGA titles – it has to be said that there are actually very few titles that have had the 3D Classic treatment.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could take a NES game of your own choosing, and add 3D? If you’ve found yourself thinking that, you may want to check out Geod Studio’s new project, 3DNes – a work-in-progress Unity-based emulator that, as the name suggests, converts NES games into 3D.

Considering the simplicity of NES games, translating them into 3D is actually a difficult task. Unlike SNES games, which have four background layers, NES games have a single layer for the entire background. Imagine a diorama or a board game – everything in the background is printed on one board, while all the sprites – like your character the ground, enemies, items – are all just pieces on top. To allow the entire game to look 3D, 3DNes uses an algorithm that analyses the flat background and cuts it up into the pieces that make it up, then attempts to turn each piece into a 3D Object. The software is even clever enough to turn round objects into spheres or tubes, so for example, a ball will actually look like a ball instead of just a circle.

Exactly how well this works depends on the game in question, with things getting messier as the backgrounds get more complex. Games like my favourite franchise, Mega Man are translated well and benefit greatly from the effect, but games such as Contra or Castlevania somewhat struggle. Perhaps the best-emulated game is the original Super Mario Bros., which the developer admits was the main focus of the emulator and the most tested, which may explain the gap in quality between it and other games.

This having been said, Geod Studio hopes to improve the number of games that work well through subsequent beta releases, with head of the project Trần Vũ Trúc aiming for one-tenth of the entire NES library as his marker for success. He also suggests that there might be the potential for users to individually tailor the emulator for certain games, but is quick to state this is not currently the case, as he wants to ensure there’s “a strong emulation engine as the backbone” first.

At the moment, the emulator exists only online, as a WebGL game playable through the Unity Player. This means it only properly supports Mozilla-based browsers, such as Firefox or Seamonkey. It’s also extremely unstable, particularly when not using a AMD Graphics card, and may fail to go beyond loading the ROM, or even fail to work at all. However, Trần states that future releases of the emulator will be made available as software downloads, so it should only be a matter of time before we all get to try it properly.

This article originally appeared on Technically Motivated.

This week, Microsoft has touted a new initiative that they’ve said will unify platforms, making it easier to for developers to release games on both PC and Xbox One. But at least one major developer isn’t thrilled with Microsoft’s plans.

In an opinion piece published in The Guardian this morning, Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney absolutely railed against Microsoft, calling upon other developers to fight against the corporation for “moving against the entire PC industry.” Specifically, Sweeney criticized Microsoft’s new Universal Windows Platform, which allows developers to build games and apps that can run across all of Microsoft’s hardware including Windows 10, Xbox One, and any Windows-branded tablets and phones.

The problem, Sweeney wrote, is that with UWP, Microsoft has created a closed ecosystem where developers must use the Windows Store and go through Microsoft’s certification processes to release games on that platform. Sweeney said he sees this as contrary to the spirit of PC development—a huge blow for Microsoft, as Epic is one of the biggest companies in the space. Epic is best known not just for their developer toolset, the Unreal Engine, but for creating the popular Xbox franchise Gears of War, which Microsoft purchased in 2014.

“They’re curtailing users’ freedom to install full-featured PC software, and subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers,” Sweeney wrote.

Microsoft disagrees with this assessment. Windows vice president Kevin Gallo told The Guardian in a response to Sweeney’s op-ed that Microsoft is not, in fact, building a closed platform. “The Universal Windows Platform is a fully open ecosystem, available to every developer, that can be supported by any store,” he said. “We continue to make improvements for developers; for example, in the Windows 10 November Update, we enabled people to easily side-load apps by default, with no UX required.”

Sweeney had criticized Microsoft for making it difficult and confusing to install UWP-developed apps outside of the Windows Store, pointing out that any user who wants to do so would have to dig through a series of convoluted menus and options. “It’s true that if you dig far enough into Microsoft’s settings-burying UI, you can find a way to install these apps by enabling ‘side-loading,’” Sweeney wrote. “But in turning this off by default, Microsoft is unfairly disadvantaging the competition. Bigger-picture, this is a feature Microsoft can revoke at any time using Windows 10’s forced-update process.”

The whole op-ed is brutal and worth reading, encouraging developers and customers to fight against Microsoft’s new initiative.

“As the founder of a major Windows game developer and technology supplier, this is an op-ed I hoped I would never feel compelled to write,” Sweeney wrote. “But Epic has prided itself on providing software directly to customers ever since I started mailing floppy disks in 1991. We wouldn’t let Microsoft close down the PC platform overnight without a fight, and therefore we won’t sit silently by while Microsoft embarks on a series of sneaky manoeuvre aimed at achieving this over a period of several years.”

Of course, all of Epic Games otehr games, the new Unreal Tournament, Paragon, etc are ONLY available through Epic’s own launcher, which also make you wonder if this is a case of pot and kettle…

What do you think?

AMD have been surprisingly quiet in recent weeks, seemingly pinning much of its business plan this year on its upcoming Zen line of processors; but it seems the time is being spent very deliberately and cleverly, with a heavy focus on Research and Development to improve its CPU Technology further. And if the most recent leak, which comes courtesy a CERN engineer who gave a talk at the IT Technical Forum on market trends concerning data centres, is to be believed, it may be about to pay off in a spectacular fashion.

Basing his claims on what evidently seems to be information supplied to CERN by AMD themselves, the engineer stated that Zen CPUs will benefit from Symmetrical Multi-Threading, which would seem to be AMD’s own version of Intel’s Hyper-Threading. More shocking, however, is that CPUs in the Zen line will apparently feature up to 32 physical cores in a single package, though this is spread over two 16-core modules within the same die – effectively two chips in one.

If that wasn’t enough, Zen will also apparently support 8-channel DDR4, meaning a computer with one of these monsters installed could feature 8 separate RAM cards. Assuming an 8GB card in each slot, this means a potential maximum of 64 Gigabytes of DDR4 RAM.. excuse me while I pick my jaw off the floor.

The CERN engineer also reiterated previously leaked information about the Zen CPUs, which mainly focused on the point that these new CPUs are said to be able to handle 40% more instructions per clock than the current Excavator cores. Sadly, this was really all the information there was to glean from this leak – there is no news of a release date for any processor within the Zen line; and it is reasonable to assume that this monster processor is likely to wait to later in the launch cycle. For the first processor out of the gate, it is suggested that the line will start with the FX desktop CPUs – which are only expected to come in the now-standard 4, 6 and 8-core variants.

AMD appear to be seriously upping the game for CPU manufacturers and going far beyond anything done before if the claims are to be believe (and if you can’t trust an engineer at one of the major centres for scientific and technological research, who CAN you trust?). Could this spark some rivalry with the other major player in the scene, Intel? One thing’s for sure – this should only be good news for the processor market and its customers.