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Boxing in virtual reality: Dear reader,

2019-11-04T16:01:53.534Z


For three days my upper arms hurt - in the middle of vacation. Every time I lifted my suitcase, I sensed that I had taken over boxing. My virtual opponent "Ugly Joe" I could indeed knock out, in the long run was my ...



For three days my upper arms hurt - in the middle of vacation. Every time I lifted my suitcase, I sensed that I had taken over boxing. Although I was able to knock out my virtual opponent "Ugly Joe", in the long run my ego-hau-just-once-on-the-beat technique was a mistake. Three fights of no more than three laps on "The Thrill of the Fight" were enough to get me to my physical limits - and to make the next day from the supposed professional boxer to the sore muscle jitter.

MIRROR ONLINE

Opponents in view: This is how you experience the game

"The Thrill of the Fight" is an action-rigged virtual reality boxing simulation that has just been released for the Oculus Quest these days - and has since garnered praise from Quest owners. For other VR headsets, the game has been available for some time. However, some of them carry the risk of tripping over the cable that connects devices like the Oculus Rift to a PC while flipping the opponent over. On the other hand, the quest is wireless, with the glasses on the head and two controllers in the fists. On playing surfaces from two times two meters in size you can move freely.

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With a large playing area: A round of "The Thrill of the Fight" in the garden

What looks unspectacular on screenshots is through the headset experienced the most physically intense VR workout so far. If you are clever enough, you can avoid striking your opponent with your head, for example by running around or dodging. For me personally, no other VR game in so short a time has so much fun and pain as "The Thrill of the Fight" prepares. And that, although dangerous hits of the opponent only lead to the graying out of the field of vision instead of bruises.

Also noteworthy is the boxing simulation because it is essentially a one-man project. This probably explains why developer Ian Fitz has focused almost exclusively on the fighting itself. In any case, you have to do without an elaborate staged story in the "Rocky" style or a lot of trappings. There are only simple training options, such as the punching bag and Speedbag. Even multiplayer matches are missing, so you fight in the long run only against different strong, exclusively male computer boxers.

But "The Thrill of the Fight" with a price of just ten euros is a bargain - especially if you factor in the fitness factor. For this price you get even in cheap gyms only half a month of training, as I know as a customer of one of the big chains. At the moment, however, I find it difficult to decide when to go back to the gym. Because I'm already back in the last VR boxing fight in the bone.

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Snowden and start-ups: The Web Summit starts in Lisbon

ANTONIO COTRIM / EPA-EFE / REX

Web Summit in Lisbon

By the way, my colleague Sonja Peteranderl can do better boxing than me - in reality and thus probably in VR too. She's in Lisbon right now to cover Europe's biggest web conference, which starts today. By Thursday, 70,000 participants are expected at the Web Summit. Large corporations such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon provide insights into topics such as robotics and autonomous driving, but many start-ups are also present. Among other things, a performance of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is expected by video switching.

Strange digital world: hated Navi
by Judith Horchert

Our family recently sat in the car, the loudspeakers drumming - as so often - children's music, this time "The Cat Paw Dance Game" by Fredrik Vahle. "Look, the cat dances alone / dances and dances on one leg", it peacefully pervaded the car. Just when it threatened to be exciting again ("the hedgehog came to the cat ..."), the music suddenly became quieter all by itself. A woman's voice came in via the smartphone: "Turn right in 200 meters, then keep left".

Because with every route, the Navi fades the music short, much to the displeasure of the child in the back seat, which is three years old and whose displeasure is awakened accordingly quickly. At the first music break, it could just be so dominate, but when the next instruction interrupted the cat song again, sounded from behind a shrill and angry scream: "Man Google, now it's finally quiet!"

App of the Week: "Gwent - The Witcher Card Game "
tested by Tobias Kirchner

CD project

"Gwent" is a lavishly designed and beautiful card game that some may know from the role play "The Witcher". The players draw cards based on the warriors and creatures from the adventures of the sorcerer Geralt of Riva. Compared to other virtual card games like "Hearthstone", "Gwent" is a bit more beginner-friendly. His mechanics are quite unique, with various rows of cards consisting of melee, ranged, and siege.

As is usual in the genre, there are numerous cards that can be collected, as well as bonus packages for which real money can be spent. Who wants to be successful in "Gwent", but also comes without additional purchases. An Android version of the app will follow in spring 2020, variants of the game for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One have already been released.

Free, from CD Project, with in-app purchases: iOS

Foreign Link: Three tips from other media

  • "A network of 'camgirl' sites exposed millions of users and sex workers" (English, three reading minutes)
    "TechCrunch" reports a data leak with comparatively sensitive information: A database that was not even password protected could retrieve information about users of "Camgirl" sites belonging to a Barcelona company. Details of the activity on the platform were also visible, as well as private chat messages.

  • "Handmade Pixels: Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity" (English, 238 pages)
    So-called indie games à la "Braid" and "Undertale" have long been more than a niche phenomenon in the world of video games. The game researcher Jesper Juul has dedicated the development scene beyond large game companies now a substantively profound, but intelligible written book. Also on the basis of many interviews Juul reflects on what hides behind the big scene adage words like "indie" and "authentic".

  • "Inside the Icelandic Facility Where Bitcoin Is Mined" (English, two minutes of reading plus photos)
    Iceland is a favorite location for crypto-entrepreneurs specializing in the mining of digital currencies like Bitcoin. "Wired" shows impressive pictures of photographer Lisa Barnard, who was visiting a very large Icelandic mining facility called Enigma. Also the SPIEGEL was already there.

I wish you a nice week

Markus Böhm

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Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2019-11-04

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