Darkworks introduced its TriOviz for Games SDK yesterday during GDC , and while TriOviz technology has been around for years in Hollywood, it wasn’t until today that this same technology debuted for console and PC titles. Essentially, this software wrapper enables standard 2D video games to be viewed in 3D on a traditional 2D display, and we were able to sneak an exclusive look at the technology today at the company’s meeting room. We were shown a European version of Batman: Arkham Asylum on Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and we were given a set of specialized glasses (which were passive, unlike NVIDIA’s active-shutter 3D Vision specs) in order to enjoy the effect. So, how was it?

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Darkworks shows off TriOviz for Games 2D-to-3D SDK, we get a good look

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You’ve learned all you need to know about commenting and our tagpages , so it’s time to have some fun. Come join the conversations in #whitenoise . More

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I was talking with Matt and he wanted to know the exact meaning of Darth Vader’s famous words: “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force .” That’s why I made this chart. More

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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Mitchell, who couldn’t care less if you have a problem with his question. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com . “I just got a new laptop and am looking for a WiFi detector. The catch is that I want one that will tell me if the network it is detecting is open or not

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Ask Engadget: Best (useful) WiFi network detector?

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Dubbed a ” nested skyscraper ,” this building is a concept design which is intended to be particularly good at resisting the effects of earthquakes and other natural disasters. What really gets my attention though is that robots are required for construction. More

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The Hifiman HM-801 looks like an old portable cassette player, but apparently it might just beat out most music players in sound quality. At least that’s what CNET though when they had a listen . They even found it worth $790. More

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On November 19th, 2006, Nintendo launched its fifth home console to the world. The Nintendo Wii was both ridiculed and praised for its unique controller system — the Wiimote — which detects movements in three dimensions. Three and a half years later, the Wii has dominated the market, shattered sales records, and put its two main rivals, Microsoft and Sony, on the defensive. Both companies are responding with motion-based controllers of their own though. Microsoft has generated some big buzz with the revelation of Project Natal , a new camera-based system that requires no controller, just the movement of your body to function.

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Gaming Faceoff: Project Natal vs. PlayStation Move

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HP spent $40 million on their new ” Let’s Do Amazing ” ad campaign. For those big bucks they managed to get Rhys Darby of Flight of the Conchords and Dr. Dre. And an odd sense of humor

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Even Dr. Dre Is In HP’s $40 Million "Let’s Do Amazing" Ad Campaign [Hp]

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Mobile manufacturer and platform market share stats for the US are in for the month of January thanks to comScore, and as usual, they tell a fascinating (and somewhat unpredictable) story of what’s actually going on at the cash registers. Motorola — which has long since fallen off its high horse on the global stage — still maintains a commanding presence in the American market by representing some 22.9 percent of all subscribers, though that’s down 1.2 percent from October 2009; that’s particularly interesting in light of the Droid’s success, and a possible sign that smartphones still aren’t on the cusp of dominating the phone market overall. Samsung recently touted the fact that it had held onto the States’ overall market share crown, though Sammy was undoubtedly referring to sales, not subscribers — in other words, there are still a ton of legacy RAZRs out there inflating Moto’s stats. Turning our attention to smartphone platforms, BlackBerry OS, iPhone, and Android all saw gains, while Windows Mobile and Palm both saw significant downturns.

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Android’s American market share soars, WinMo pays the price

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Before listening to the explanation for this project, I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but once I realized that the 64 flashing squares on the Arduino-powered display would let me play Mario, it was time to get supplies. More

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There are six iPad configurations to choose from and some helpful guides explaining which you should get. We thought we’d keep it simple and explain our feelings in nearly decent haiku. More

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Fresh off having the most popular music video in YouTube/Vevo’s history (“Bad Romance” with 140 million views and counting), Lady Gaga’s latest – “Telephone” – featuring Beyonce, has made its debut on the Web. The video is choc-full-o Lady Gaga shock value, and at more than 9 minutes in length, could probably classify as a short film. Dating site PlentyOfFish somehow managed to get prominent placement (fast forward to 4:27 if you’d rather skip the rest of it). Early indications are that “Telephone” will be every bit as popular as recent Gaga hits, with the song, its participants, and even a string from its URL already dominating trending topics on Twitter ahead of its official premiere on E! later this evening. It also briefly took Vevo — YouTube and the record labels new music video website — offline.

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Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s “Telephone” Premieres on Vevo [VIDEO]

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Most electric bikes are fairly sordid affairs, little more than an ordinary bicycle with a motorized hub , a strap-on battery pack and regenerative braking capabilities (if you’re lucky). Not this HMK 561 electric bicycle concept, which took home an iF Design Award for some seriously forward thinking. It’s not just the stylish forward rake of this juiced cruiser that’s innovative, it’s the frame — composed completely of a conductive carbon fiber weave that allows the bike’s body to not just pass electricity to the motors, but actually store it like a giant capacitor. Factor in integrated lights and a pinch of that aforesaid regenerative braking at each axle, and you’ve just about got the bicycle of our dreams.

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HMK 561 electric bike concept seats you on the battery, makes you significantly more attractive

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When it was announced, I said that the Form 2 sex toy looks like a Millennium Falcon . Manufacturer JimmyJane wrote saying that they agree, which is why they created this side-to-side comparison between the Form 2 and Han Solo’s ship. More

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Sony’s been pretty tight-lipped about its ultra compact DSLR camera concept, but someone did share screenshots of what appears to be a rather nice menu system designed for a touchscreen. It looks like it’ll gives almost complete control to fingers. More

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We’ve always said AMD should go after the gaping hole between netbooks and thin-and-lights by releasing a low-power platform with solid graphics abilities, and it looks like the company’s finally coming around — AMD’s John Taylor just told us that the chipmaker will be releasing a netbook-class Fusion CPU / GPU hybrid codenamed “Ontario” with integrated DX11 graphics sometime next year. If Ontario sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it leaked in the past — it’s a part of the “Brazos” platform built around the low-power Bobcat core . Of course, AMD has been promising Fusion chips of all stripes for years now without a single shipping part , so saying that a Fusion chip will get it into the netbook game in 2011 is mildly amusing — while AMD’s definitely turned things around, it’s still incredibly late to the low-end party, and Intel’s solidly beaten it to the hybrid CPU / GPU punch with the Core 2010 and Pine Trail Atom chips. Add in the fact that NVIDIA’s Optimus -based Ion 2 chipset seemingly offers the extended battery life of Atom with the performance of a discrete GPU, and we’d say the market niche Ontario is designed to fill may not actually be so niche when it finally arrives. We’ll see what happens — a year is a long, long time.

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AMD to finally take on netbook space with new Fusion chip… next year

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If you partake in Wii fitness regularly, you probably know that there is only one thing keeping you from having a full-fledged, muscle-building, vein-popping work-out experience: limited range of push-up motion. Thankfully, this push-up bar attachment lets you dig deep . More

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It used to be that jailbreaking your iPhone was a long, involved process , but worth it for the freedom . We’ve reached a new age, though, where emancipating your phone is as simple as plugging in an iDongle. Liberty! More

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We knew iPad pre-orders were starting tomorrow , but know we know exactly when all you lovable crazies have to stumble out of bed and transmit your credit card numbers to Steve’s brain: 8:30AM ET, or 5:30AM on the West Coast. We generally recommend a bed shaker alarm clock , but hey, let’s not pretend we haven’t all turned a few long nights into tomorrow with our old friends Jackie D and Mistakes. See you on the other side, chochachos. iPad orders start at 8:30AM tomorrow morning originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

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iPad orders start at 8:30AM tomorrow morning

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There are a lot of iPhone games. Most of them are crap. A significant fraction are good. Few are great. Even fewer are great and original.

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When iPhone Games Approach Art, and When They Don’t [IPhone Apps]

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Apple fanatics will be able to place their iPad orders at 5:30 AM Pacific time (8:30 Eastern) tomorrow, Friday, March 12th. The pre-orders will be available through Apple.com , and are expected to ship in the United States next month — April 3rd to be precise. The Unofficial Apple Weblog learned about the pre-order time after it asked Apple for the information in an e-mail. Let’s assume you’re the sort of person who wants an iPad ; if so, you can still wait for the launch date and pick up an iPad at your local Apple store (or at Best Buy a little bit after launch). However, there’s a possibility that it will sell out and you’ll be left hanging.

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iPad Pre-Orders Begin at 5:30 AM PT on March 12th

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It’s that give-it-to-the-government time of year again, and we want to hear about your favorite tools for making the taxman’s sting a little less severe. More

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We already got a look at Microsoft’s little XNA show-and-tell as relates to Windows Phone 7 Series, but our colleague Andrew Yoon over at Joystiq had a chance for longer sit-down with Xbox Live general manager Ron Pessner and XNA Game Studio manager Michael Klucher at GDC today, and he’s been kind enough to share the interview with us. The main topic of conversation was the company’s plans regarding Xbox LIve and, specifically, how it would be integrating it into Windows Phone 7 Series. And believe us, there was plenty to discuss — including the sweet science of porting games from Zune HD to 7 Series phones (“it’s 90, 95 percent code reuse…

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Talkin’ Windows Phone 7 Series gaming with Microsoft at GDC

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What do b-boys, random celebrities like Mark Sanchez, Andy Samberg and Hillary Duff, and the Black Eyed Peas have to do with 3DTV ? We’re not sure either, but that didn’t stop Samsung from mixing them up during its “worldwide launch event” yesterday in NYC. Check the video (embedded after the break) for the above revelation about 3D from the JIMP troubador himself, but what was going through the heads of our friend Jimmy C and the BEP when this picture was taken?

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Caption Contest: 3D is a mind blow, everyone can agree on that

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John Battelle was on a Wi-Fi-enabled fight with United Airlines last night, and he decided to use videochat to say goodnight to his kids. Unfortunately, a flight attendant told him it was illegal. More

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If you just can’t wait to buy an iPad, or rather, can’t wait to reserve your slot to buy an iPad, you may be getting up early tomorrow: Pre-orders start at 8:30am EST Friday. That’s 5:30am, Pacific. More

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Our favorite text expansion app for OS X updates, the latest build of Chromium adds Aero Peek support for tabs, and the inventor of the cellphone prefers Android. More

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Sony has just confirmed with us that PlayStation Move cannot support 4 players in its full configuration. More

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We knew virtual camera systems are starting gain traction, particularly in the world of cinema and within James Cameron’s little set of toys, but it’s pretty wild to see one in action. NaturalPoint is showing off its OptiTrack motion capture system at GDC, a budget-friendly multi-camera setup (if $6k is your idea of budget-friendly), but it also has a prototype of sorts of its upcoming virtual camera system. The camera’s orientation and movement is actually tracked in the same way a motion capture suit is, and if you’re in the same tracking space as a motion capture actor you can do “real” camera work with a live 3D rendered preview of the action. The shoulder-mounted camera has controls for virtual tracking and dolly moves, along with zoom, and has zero problem delivering that shaky handheld look that’s all the rage in visual effects these days

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OptiTrack mixes motion capture with a virtual camera for delicious, Avatar-esque results

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If you’re a gamer, you might have heard about yesterday’s news about the PlayStation Move , Sony’s answer to the Wii Remote and Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal motion controller. In a demonstration yesterday, the company showed off the device, which utilizes remote-like controllers and the PlayStation Eye camera to capture your movements and turn them into actions on the screen. We’ve seen plenty of screenshots and heard a lot about the controller’s capabilities, but we wanted to find out for ourselves whether it really could make the PlayStation more competitive with its counterparts. That’s why I decided to take the system for a test drive here at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California. Did it live up to expectations?

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PlayStation Move: We Take It For a Test Drive [VIDEO]

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