Two Legacy of Kain games are being re-released, but for the Evercade retro handheld console.
The Legacy of Kain Collection will include both Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on one giga cart priced £22.49.
The collection will release next month and will be available to pre-order from 30th August. It's compatible with all Evercade and Super Pocket devices.
The iGaming industry has grown massively in the last two decades. Enhanced by the rise of smartphones, and further augmented by the rapid advancement of digital technology, online gambling is fast becoming more popular than physical casinos. With every type of card, table, and slot game available to players, it’s easy to understand the allure.
Just as it is with physical casinos, slots are proving to be among the most popular games at most online casinos too. The majority of players are happy to just find random ones that perhaps have a cool theme or graphics. However, more savvy players know that things like a slot game’s RTP and volatility are factors that can help develop a playing strategy to give yourself a higher chance of winning. If you’re curious, here’s everything you need to know about how they both work.
If most players understood how RTP worked, they’d likely make it their go-to method of choosing which slots to play. In fact, in the pursuit of searching for slots that have higher-than-average payouts, many knowledgeable players look out for those outlets identified as highest RTP slots to play. The reason is that RTP simply stands for “Return to Player” and is an indicator of the percentage a slot machine pays out in comparison to the amount a player wages.
For example, if a slot game’s RTP percentage is 90%, that means it pays out $90 for every $100 wagered by players over time. Slot games, whether in an online or physical casino, all feature a built-in RTP percentage. The great part about it is that if a player knows its RTP score, they can discern which slot games will give them a greater chance of a payout.
RTP scores for slot games typically range between 80% and 95%. However, there are also many slot games that feature RTP percentages that exceed 95%. Once most players realize this feature of slot machines, it becomes difficult for them to ever go back to simply playing or choosing slot games completely by fate.
Once a player is actually aware of RTP, it’s natural for their next question to be how to check for it in a game. Fortunately, since RTP isn’t some great secret that casinos try to keep from their customers, checking it is relatively simple. This is because most games simply display the information or freely provide it for players to see.
Even if the particular slot game you’re playing doesn’t display the information you’re looking for, a quick google search can probably do it for you. For example, if you google “Cleopatra slot game RTP”, the results will let you know that it has an RTP of just over 95%. If you have to rely on Google for a result, try to check multiple sources to ensure you can trust the results. If you can’t find any online information, fortunately there is another way you can figure out the RTP of a game.
RTP may sound too good to be true, but it actually really is as simplistic as it sounds. Lucky players have famously had huge wins at slots, making the pursuit of things like slots with high RTPs a constant endeavor for some. In order to calculate a slot game’s RTP for yourself, all you need to do is to keep track of your wagerings and winnings. Once you know them, simply divide your total winnings by the total you staked.
That simply means if you won $50 from betting a $100, the slot game’s RTP is 50%. The higher the RTP level, the more frequently you can expect it to provide payouts. Despite RTP working as a great indicator of a game’s likelihood of paying out, there is no guarantee of a win since there are, of course, other factors that must also be taken into account.
While RTP is a relatively easy concept to understand, it’s only one factor to consider when trying to understand which slot game can give you the highest edge. The reason for that is because slot games also rely on another indicator known as volatility.
Another relatively simple concept to understand, slot volatility refers to how often and how much a slot machine pays out. Ever been to a casino with an older person and seen them become almost obsessive about wanting to wait to play a particular slot machine, even if that one is busy and there are tons of other ones available to use?
You might have even heard them say something like they’re waiting for the machine to “warm up”. While it may have all seemed like weird gambling superstitions, chances are that person actually understood the concept of volatility in slot machines and wanted to take over a certain slot machine after another player because that may have statistically actually given them a higher chance of winning something.
A slot game’s volatility can range from high to low. The rule of thumb is that the higher the volatility, the less frequent the payouts. However, while all this may seem like a hack to help give players an edge over the casino or game developer, keep in mind that volatility isn’t just some huge loophole overlooked by them to their detriment. Far from it, it is actually a carefully thought-out and curated feature that helps ensure players have a fair chance to win, while the casinos and developers of online slots can still maintain a profitable endeavor with them.
The volatility of a slot game is generally designed to fit into a five-part spectrum. That spectrum provides for slot volatility that ranges between the following:
Most people will want to go for slots that feature low volatility. The reason is because these slot games pay out the most often. However, there is a caveat to all this since low volatility slots may pay out more often, but usually pay out in smaller amounts.
In contrast, high volatility slots pay out very rarely but when they do, they usually pay out large amounts that can be very lucrative to lucky players. Between these differences in volatility, and RTP thrown in, slots still remain extremely difficult to develop a foolproof strategy for winning with them. However, knowing how they both work does still help a player glean a statistically greater chance of a payout.
Knowing about the concepts of RTP and volatility can definitely help you give yourself a statistically better chance of winning at a particular slot game. However, there are other variables that all go together at any given time, so there’s never a guarantee of a win. One of those is the fact that licensed and lawful slot game operators, whether online casinos or physical ones, must ensure fairness.
To do this, slot games are designed using Random Number Generator technology (RNG). This basically ensures that every player has a fair shot at winning. It does so by ensuring randomness in the way the game generates the results of every spin. Since it’s the player who ultimately decides the value of the bet, and things like how many lines to play, every spin is unique.
Factors like these, plus how long a player plays for, how much they wager in total, and how they choose to split that total wager into smaller individual bets, all have an impact on a player’s chances. In the end, despite the RTP and volatility of a slot game being things that are nice to know about, a plethora of other factors ultimately always work together to ensure slots mostly remain a game of chance.
It is still possible, and advisable, to have a betting strategy when playing slots. However, this is mostly to ensure responsible playing and to safeguard a player against spending more than they intended to. At the end of the day, betting strategies can prolong a player’s game, but ultimately, like RTP and volatility, can never account for a guaranteed win.
Gaming continues to astound us with how it adjusts to take advantage of the latest technology. Some technology analysts would likely argue that pioneers in gaming have helped both industries succeed, constantly pushing each other and striving for innovation and creativity.
The global success and standing of the gaming industry have led to groundbreaking developments in the industry from around the world. AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) are the two latest developments in a long line of incredible advancements we’ve witnessed in gaming this century.
VR: Is it a fad, or is it here to stay?
It would be fair to say that VR has had a slow start. It hasn’t exploded right out of the gate and thrust into the global spotlight in the way AI has, for example. However, it would be unfair to compare technological development in AI, which could become the most dynamic, dangerous and significant human invention of all time, to other technologies.
There are increasingly practical uses for VR, and perhaps the most relatable one is in casino gaming. While the casino industry is booming, there is a clear distinction between those casino gamers who want to play at a land-based casino and those who prefer to play their blackjack and poker via a digital platform. One main concern among traditional players is that a digital casino can’t replicate the feel and aura of a land-based alternative, especially for those who prefer to receive any prizes they win in person.
However, this is where VR is now becoming a potential game-changer, with many figures in the land-based casino industry beginning to pay much closer attention to how the technology is embedding itself within the sector. Multiplayer VR is now incorporating digital elements into land-based casino gaming.
VR technology in console gaming
Companies such as Sony and Microsoft are also developing gaming titles that cater to VR players. However, there are some key challenges when it comes to adoption, cost and the quality of virtual depictions.
Some figures within the gaming industry believe that the colossal investment and involvement from companies like Apple and Meta mean that the development of virtual realities will ramp up in sophistication in the years to come.
Ultimately, this would mean the metaverse could soon become far more engaging, immersive and lifelike. If this prediction becomes reality, there could be a serious shift in casino gamers moving to VR casinos, along with a more significant number of home console gamers seeking out VR headsets to take their gaming into a unique, brave new digital world.
Challenges and positives of AR gaming
There’s a slight but crucial difference between VR and AR. While VR relies on an entirely digitally-designed setting, augmented reality blurs the lines between real life and gaming. AR may begin with the backdrop of real streets or imagery, but then it adds computer graphics to operate within the real world as we know it. VR, in contrast, does this from scratch, although it might take its influence from real-life places.
AR could put the right game developer on the road to riches, and there have been promising pockets of AR games. From 2016 onward, however, countless games have tried to break into the market, and many have not succeeded.
AR and VR must overcome challenges to find a foothold
The same challenges plague AR and VR gaming at the moment. While there might have been more positivity surrounding VR gaming over the last 18 months, there are still issues to address when it comes to cost, overall accessibility, and ultimately, interest.
Tens of millions of gamers worldwide enjoy console gaming, and there isn’t the drive or demand for VR to take over in a similar way. The technology does not have an edge or a landmark title that is causing the world to pay attention yet, and until it does, AR and VR will sit on the sidelines. This isn’t because the technology is poor; there simply hasn’t been a title yet that has truly grabbed gamers in the same way many landmark console games have.
If the cost drops significantly and the quality of the technology improves dramatically, it could also drive a lot of change. Right now, however, gaming companies are simply too sidetracked by more profitable and popular ideas.
China has approved a number of new mobile games for release, most notably Marvel Rivals, Rainbow Six, Dynasty Warriors, and Final Fantasy 14 Mobile.
According to Niko Partners, a total of 15 games were approved yesterday (2nd August), including the still-as-yet-unconfirmed Final Fantasy 14 mobile port.
The news adds credence to a recent rumour that Final Fantasy developer Square Enix had linked up with Tencent to develop a mobile version of its fan-favourite MMO, Final Fantasy 14.
Crystal Dynamics' beloved dark fantasy action-adventure series Legacy of Kain could be poised to receive the remaster treatment, if newly sighted branding at Comic-Con is to be believed.
As spotted by a user on Resetera, logos for an unannounced "Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered" were included on display plaques accompanying statues of game characters Kain and Raziel at this week's Comic-Con San Diego show.
A Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver graphic novel prequel, The Dead Shall Rise, was recently announced by Dark Horse Comics, and GameSpot has now received confirmation from the publisher's VP of product development and sales that this is due to release in August.
It looks like the Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver games could be getting the remaster treatment. An attendee at San Diego Comic-Con was looking at a set of figures based on characters from the series when they saw that the plaque accompanying the figures was labelled with the words "Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered" alongside the logo for Crystal Dynamics. I suppose if you throw a coin enough times, one day it will land on the side with the head of a jawless vampire on it.
It looks like the Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver games could be getting the remaster treatment. An attendee at San Diego Comic-Con was looking at a set of figures based on characters from the series when they saw that the plaque accompanying the figures was labelled with the words "Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered" alongside the logo for Crystal Dynamics. I suppose if you throw a coin enough times, one day it will land on the side with the head of a jawless vampire on it.
Limited Run Games has announced that 20 new-old games will be released in physical form, including Fear Effect, Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, Starship Troopers: Extermination, and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus.
As part of its LRG3 2024 showcase, the distributor confirmed not only the 20th anniversary edition of Beyond Good & Evil, but also physical releases of classic PS1 games Gex Trilogy, Tomba Special Edition and Tomba 2, Fear Effect, and more – much, much more.
In true LRG style, the Limited Run Games editions of the following games will be released in physical form only, including:
Amazon has unveiled its Prime Gaming lineup for June, along with the usual monthly bonuses for Prime members.
This month's collection features seven free titles that Prime members can download and keep forever. The most popular of which is Star Wars Battlefront 2, supported by six indie titles including Genesis Noir and Mythforce.
The full list of free games with Prime in June will include:
Sony has announced next month's PlayStation Plus games.
From 4th June, all PS Plus members will be able to get their hands on the following three games:
Then on 11th June, those on the Premium tier will also be able to get their hands on the following PS2 games, as part of the Classics Catalogue:
Deep in my heart I know that Hall of Fame-type accolades are largely just a way of dressing up a way of marketing your awards show/museum/whatever, but I also like to occasionally cast away the cynic in me and imagine a world in which this industry’s most important games and creators are rightly recognised, celebrated and preserved rather than being locked away in the vault of billion-dollar companies and left to rot. Imagine!
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we celebrate one of the best characters in the Uncharted series, and perhaps in games; we live out our Star Wars fantasies; and we try a new Metroidvania in a well regarded series.
What have you been playing?
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.
Many moons ago, Microsoft once had its eye on the Sony-published LittleBigPlanet series.
Speaking with MinnMax, Mark Healey - who co-founded LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule back in 2006 - revealed that during the early stages of the game, the Xbox maker was "on the prowl" and was "kind of trying to steal" the studio from going with Sony.
"The funny thing is, we actually didn't have anything in writing to say that we were actually going to continue with [Sony] or that they even owned what we were doing, is my memory of it," Healey said of LittleBigPlanet, before sharing more on Microsoft's poaching efforts.
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we celebrate one of the best characters in the Uncharted series, and perhaps in games; we live out our Star Wars fantasies; and we try a new Metroidvania in a well regarded series.
What have you been playing?
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.
Many moons ago, Microsoft once had its eye on the Sony-published LittleBigPlanet series.
Speaking with MinnMax, Mark Healey - who co-founded LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule back in 2006 - revealed that during the early stages of the game, the Xbox maker was "on the prowl" and was "kind of trying to steal" the studio from going with Sony.
"The funny thing is, we actually didn't have anything in writing to say that we were actually going to continue with [Sony] or that they even owned what we were doing, is my memory of it," Healey said of LittleBigPlanet, before sharing more on Microsoft's poaching efforts.
In a past article SemiAccurate mentioned the Altera Max 10 FPGA seen on Intel Birch Stream boards.
Read more ▶
The post Why is there an Altera FPGA on QTS Birch Stream boards? appeared first on SemiAccurate.
When SemiAccurate saw the Birch Stream boards at MWC, there was something we noticed.
Read more ▶
The post Intel Birch Stream Boards Speak From The SIde appeared first on SemiAccurate.
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we celebrate one of the best characters in the Uncharted series, and perhaps in games; we live out our Star Wars fantasies; and we try a new Metroidvania in a well regarded series.
What have you been playing?
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.
Many moons ago, Microsoft once had its eye on the Sony-published LittleBigPlanet series.
Speaking with MinnMax, Mark Healey - who co-founded LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule back in 2006 - revealed that during the early stages of the game, the Xbox maker was "on the prowl" and was "kind of trying to steal" the studio from going with Sony.
"The funny thing is, we actually didn't have anything in writing to say that we were actually going to continue with [Sony] or that they even owned what we were doing, is my memory of it," Healey said of LittleBigPlanet, before sharing more on Microsoft's poaching efforts.
In a past article SemiAccurate mentioned the Altera Max 10 FPGA seen on Intel Birch Stream boards.
Read more ▶
The post Why is there an Altera FPGA on QTS Birch Stream boards? appeared first on SemiAccurate.
When SemiAccurate saw the Birch Stream boards at MWC, there was something we noticed.
Read more ▶
The post Intel Birch Stream Boards Speak From The SIde appeared first on SemiAccurate.
The accelerating buildout of solar farms on Earth is already hitting speed bumps, including public pushback against the large tracts of land required and a ballooning backlog of requests for new transmission lines and grid connections. Energy experts have been warning that electricity is likely to get more expensive and less reliable unless renewable power that waxes and wanes under inconstant sunlight and wind is backed up by generators that can run whenever needed. To space enthusiasts, that raises an obvious question: Why not stick solar power plants where the sun always shines?
Space-based solar power is an idea so beautiful, so tantalizing that some argue it is a wish worth fulfilling. A constellation of gigantic satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) nearly 36,000 kilometers above the equator could collect sunlight unfiltered by atmosphere and uninterrupted by night (except for up to 70 minutes a day around the spring and fall equinoxes). Each megasat could then convert gigawatts of power into a microwave beam aimed precisely at a big field of receiving antennas on Earth. These rectennas would then convert the signal to usable DC electricity.
The thousands of rocket launches needed to loft and maintain these space power stations would dump lots of soot, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants into the stratosphere, with uncertain climate impacts. But that might be mitigated, in theory, if space solar displaced fossil fuels and helped the world transition to clean electricity.
The glamorous vision has inspired numerous futuristic proposals. Japan’s space agency has presented a road map to deployment. Space authorities in China aim to put a small test satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO) later this decade. Ideas to put megawatt-scale systems in GEO sometime in the 2030s have been floated but not yet funded.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory has already beamed more than a kilowatt of power between two ground antennas about a kilometer apart. It also launched in 2023 a satellite that used a laser to transmit about 1.5 watts, although the beam traveled less than 2 meters and the system had just 11 percent efficiency. A team at Caltech earlier this year wrapped up a mission that used a small satellite in LEO to test thin-film solar cells, flexible microwave-power circuitry, and a small collapsible deployment mechanism. The energy sent Earthward by the craft was too meager to power a lightbulb, but it was progress nonetheless.
The European Space Agency (ESA) debuted in 2022 its space-based solar-power program, called Solaris, with an inspiring (but entirely fantastical) video animation. The program’s director, Sanjay Vijendran, told IEEE Spectrum that the goal of the effort is not to develop a power station for space. Instead, the program aims to spend three years and €60 million (US $65 million) to figure out whether solar cells, DC-to-RF converters, assembly robots, beam-steering antennas, and other must-have technologies will improve drastically enough over the next 10 to 20 years to make orbital solar power feasible and competitive. Low-cost, low-mass, and space-hardy versions of these technologies would be required, but engineers trying to draw up detailed plans for such satellites today find no parts that meet the tough requirements.
Not so fast: The real-world efficiency of commercial, space-qualified solar cells has progressed much more slowly than records set in highly controlled research experiments, which often use exotic materials or complex designs that cannot currently be mass-produced. Points plotted here show the highest efficiency reported in five-year intervals.HENRI BARDE; DATA FROM NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY (RESEARCH CELLS) AND FROM MANUFACTURER DATA SHEETS AND PRESENTATIONS (COMMERCIAL CELLS)
With the flurry of renewed attention, you might wonder: Has extraterrestrial solar power finally found its moment? As the recently retired head of space power systems at ESA—with more than 30 years of experience working on power generation, energy storage, and electrical systems design for dozens of missions, including evaluation of a power-beaming experiment proposed for the International Space Station—I think the answer is almost certainly no.
Despite mounting buzz around the concept, I and many of my former colleagues at ESA are deeply skeptical that these large and complex power systems could be deployed quickly enough and widely enough to make a meaningful contribution to the global energy transition. Among the many challenges on the long and formidable list of technical and societal obstacles: antennas so big that we cannot even simulate their behavior.
Here I offer a road map of the potential chasms and dead ends that could doom a premature space solar project to failure. Such a misadventure would undermine the credibility of the responsible space agency and waste capital that could be better spent improving less risky ways to shore up renewable energy, such as batteries, hydrogen, and grid improvements. Champions of space solar power could look at this road map as a wish list that must be fulfilled before orbital solar power can become truly appealing to electrical utilities.
For decades, enthusiasm for the possibility of drawing limitless, mostly clean power from the one fusion reactor we know works reliably—the sun—has run hot and cold. A 1974 study that NASA commissioned from the consultancy Arthur D. Little bullishly recommended a 20-year federal R&D program, expected to lead to a commercial station launching in the mid-1990s. After five years of work, the agency delivered a reference architecture for up to 60 orbiting power stations, each delivering 5 to 10 gigawatts of baseload power to major cities. But officials gave up on the idea when they realized that it would cost over $1 trillion (adjusted for inflation) and require hundreds of astronauts working in space for decades, all before the first kilowatt could be sold.
NASA did not seriously reconsider space solar until 1995, when it ordered a “fresh look” at the possibility. That two-year study generated enough interest that the U.S. Congress funded a small R&D program, which published plans to put up a megawatt-scale orbiter in the early 2010s and a full-size power plant in the early 2020s. Funding was cut off a few years later, with no satellites developed.
Because of the physics of power transmission from geosynchronous orbit, space power satellites must be enormous—hundreds of times larger than the International Space Station and even dwarfing the tallest skyscrapers—to generate electricity at a competitive price. The challenges for their engineering and assembly are equally gargantuan. Chris Philpot
Then, a decade ago, private-sector startups generated another flurry of media attention. One, Solaren, even signed a power-purchase agreement to deliver 200 megawatts to utility customers in California by 2016 and made bold predictions that space solar plants would enter mass production in the 2020s. But the contract and promises went unfulfilled.
The repeated hype cycles have ended the same way each time, with investors and governments balking at the huge investments that must be risked to build a system that cannot be guaranteed to work. Indeed, in what could presage the end of the current hype cycle, Solaris managers have had trouble drumming up interest among ESA’s 22 member states. So far only the United Kingdom has participated, and just 5 percent of the funds available have been committed to actual research work.
Even space-solar advocates have recognized that success clearly hinges on something that cannot be engineered: sustained political will to invest, and keep investing, in a multidecade R&D program that ultimately could yield machines that can’t put electricity on the grid. In that respect, beamed power from space is like nuclear fusion, except at least 25 years behind.
In the 1990s, the fusion community succeeded in tapping into national defense budgets and cobbled together the 35-nation, $25 billion megaproject ITER, which launched in 2006. The effort set records for delays and cost overruns, and yet a prototype is still years from completion. Nevertheless, dozens of startups are now testing new fusion-reactor concepts. Massive investments in space solar would likely proceed in the same way. Of course, if fusion succeeds, it would eclipse the rationale for solar-energy satellites.
The U.S. and European space agencies have recently released detailed technical analyses of several space-based solar-power proposals. [See diagrams.] These reports make for sobering reading.
Proposed by: John C. Mankins, former NASA physicist
Features: Thin-film reflectors (conical array) track the sun and concentrate sunlight onto an Earth-facing energy-conversion array that has photovoltaic (PV) panels on one side, microwave antennas on the other, and power distribution and control electronics in the middle. Peripheral modules adjust the station’s orbit and orientation.
Proposed by: China Academy of Space Technology
Features: Fifty PV solar arrays, each 200 meters wide and 600 meters long, track the sun and send power through rotating high-power joints and perpendicular trusses to a central microwave-conversion and transmission array that points 128,000 antenna modules at the receiving station on Earth.
Proposed by: Ian Cash, chief architect, Space Solar Group Holdings
Features: Circular thin-film reflectors track the sun and bounce light onto a helical array that includes myriad small PV cells covered by Fresnel-lens concentrators, power-conversion electronics, and microwave dipole antennas. The omnidirectional antennas must operate in sync to steer the beam as the station rotates relative to the Earth.
Proposed by: Thales Alenia Space
Features: Nearly 8,000 flexible solar arrays, each 10 meters wide and 80 meters long, are unfurled from roll-out modules and linked together to form two wings. The solar array remains pointed at the sun, so the central transmitter must rotate and also operate with great precision as a phased-array antenna to continually steer the beam onto the ground station.
Electricity made this way,
NASA reckoned in its 2024 report, would initially cost 12 to 80 times as much as power generated on the ground, and the first power station would require at least $275 billion in capital investment. Ten of the 13 crucial subsystems required to build such a satellite—including gigawatt-scale microwave beam transmission and robotic construction of kilometers-long, high-stiffness structures in space—rank as “high” or “very high” technical difficulty, according to a 2022 report to ESA by Frazer-Nash, a U.K. consultancy. Plus, there is no known way to safely dispose of such enormous structures, which would share an increasingly crowded GEO with crucial defense, navigation, and communications satellites, notes a 2023 ESA study by the French-Italian satellite maker Thales Alenia Space.
An alternative to microwave transmission would be to beam the energy down to Earth as reflected sunlight. Engineers at Arthur D. Little described the concept in a 2023 ESA study in which they proposed encircling the Earth with about 4,000 aimable mirrors in LEO. As each satellite zips overhead, it would shine an 8-km-wide spotlight onto participating solar farms, allowing the farms to operate a few extra hours each day (if skies are clear). In addition to the problems of clouds and light pollution, the report noted the thorny issue of orbital debris, estimating that each reflector would be penetrated about 75 billion times during its 10-year operating life.
My own assessment, presented at the 2023 European Space Power Conference and published by IEEE, pointed out dubious assumptions and inconsistencies in four space-solar designs that have received serious attention from government agencies. Indeed, the concepts detailed so far all seem to stand on shaky technical ground.
The high costs and hard engineering problems that prevent us from building orbital solar-power systems today arise mainly from the enormity of these satellites and their distance from Earth, both of which are unavoidable consequences of the physics of this kind of energy transmission. Only in GEO can a satellite stay (almost) continuously connected to a single receiving station on the ground. The systems must beam down their energy at a frequency that passes relatively unimpeded through all kinds of weather and doesn’t interfere with critical radio systems on Earth. Most designs call for 2.45 or 5.8 gigahertz, within the range used for Wi-Fi. Diffraction will cause the beam to spread as it travels, by an amount that depends on the frequency.
Thales Alenia Space estimated that a transmitter in GEO must be at least 750 meters in diameter to train the bright center of a 5.8-GHz microwave beam onto a ground station of reasonable area over that tremendous distance—65 times the altitude of LEO satellites like Starlink. Even using a 750-meter transmitter, a receiver station in France or the northern United States would fill an elliptical field covering more than 34 square kilometers. That’s more than two-thirds the size of Bordeaux, France, where I live.
“Success hinges on something that cannot be engineered: sustained political will to keep investing in a multidecade R&D program that ultimately could yield machines that can’t put electricity on the grid.”
Huge components come with huge masses, which lead to exorbitant launch costs. Thales Alenia Space estimated that the transmitter alone would weigh at least 250 tonnes and cost well over a billion dollars to build, launch, and ferry to GEO. That estimate, based on ideas from the Caltech group that have yet to be tested in space, seems wildly optimistic; previous detailed transmitter designs are about 30 times heavier.
Because the transmitter has to be big and expensive, any orbiting solar project will maximize the power it sends through the beam, within acceptable safety limits. That’s why the systems evaluated by NASA, ESA, China, and Japan are all scaled to deliver 1–2 GW, the maximum output that utilities and grid operators now say they are willing to handle. It would take two or three of these giant satellites to replace one large retiring coal or nuclear power station.
Energy is lost at each step in the conversion from sunlight to DC electricity, then to microwaves, then back to DC electricity and finally to a grid-compatible AC current. It will be hard to improve much on the 11 percent end-to-end efficiency seen in recent field trials. So the solar arrays and electrical gear must be big enough to collect, convert, and distribute around 9 GW of power in space just to deliver 1 GW to the grid. No electronic switches, relays, and transformers have been designed or demonstrated for spacecraft that can handle voltages and currents anywhere near the required magnitude.
Some space solar designs, such as SPS-ALPHA and CASSIOPeiA, would suspend huge reflectors on kilometers-long booms to concentrate sunlight onto high-efficiency solar cells on the back side of the transmitter or intermingled with antennas. Other concepts, such as China’s MR-SPS and the design proposed by Thales Alenia Space, would send the currents through heavy, motorized rotating joints that allow the large solar arrays to face the sun while the transmitter pivots to stay fixed on the receiving station on Earth.
All space solar-power concepts that send energy to Earth via a microwave beam would need a large receiving station on the ground. An elliptical rectenna field 6 to 10 kilometers wide would be covered with antennas and electronics that rectify the microwaves into DC power. Additional inverters would then convert the electricity to grid-compatible AC current.Chris Philpot
The net result, regardless of approach, is an orbiting power station that spans several kilometers, totals many thousands of tonnes, sends gigawatts of continuous power through onboard electronics, and comprises up to a million modules that must be assembled in space—by robots. That is a gigantic leap from the largest satellite and solar array ever constructed in orbit: the 420-tonne, 109-meter International Space Station (ISS), whose 164 solar panels produce less than 100 kilowatts to power its 43 modules.
The ISS has been built and maintained by astronauts, drawing on 30 years of prior experience with the Salyut, Skylab, and Mir space stations. But there is no comparable incremental path to a robot-assembled power satellite in GEO. Successfully beaming down a few megawatts from LEO would be an impressive achievement, but it wouldn’t prove that a full-scale system is feasible, nor would the intermittent power be particularly interesting to commercial utilities.
NASA’s 2024 report used sensitivity analysis to look for advances, however implausible, that would enable orbital solar power to be commercially competitive with nuclear fission and other low-emissions power. To start, the price of sending a tonne of cargo to LEO on a large reusable rocket, which has fallen 36 percent over the past 10 years, would have to drop by another two-thirds, to $500,000. This assumes that all the pieces of the station could be dropped off in low orbit and then raised to GEO over a period of months by space tugs propelled by electrical ion thrusters rather than conventional rockets. The approach would slow the pace of construction and add to the overall mass and cost. New tugs would have to be developed that could tow up to 100 times as much cargo as the biggest electric tugs do today. And by my calculations, the world’s annual production of xenon—the go-to propellant for ion engines—is insufficient to carry even a single solar-power satellite to GEO.
Thales Alenia Space looked at a slightly more realistic option: using a fleet of conventional rockets as big as SpaceX’s new Starship—the largest rocket ever built—to ferry loads from LEO to GEO, and then back to LEO for refueling from an orbiting fuel depot. Even if launch prices plummeted to $200,000 a tonne, they calculated, electricity from their system would be six times as expensive as NASA’s projected cost for a terrestrial solar farm outfitted with battery storage—one obvious alternative.
What else would have to go spectacularly right? In NASA’s cost-competitive scenario, the price of new, specialized spaceships that could maintain the satellite for 30 years—and then disassemble and dispose of it—would have to come down by 90 percent. The efficiency of commercially produced, space-qualified solar cells would have to soar from 32 percent today to 40 percent, while falling in cost. Yet over the past 30 years, big gains in the efficiency of research cells have not translated well to the commercial cells available at low cost [see chart, “Not So Fast”].
Is it possible for all these things to go right simultaneously? Perhaps. But wait—there’s more that can go wrong.
Let’s start with temperature. Gigawatts of power coursing through the system will make heat removal essential because solar cells lose efficiency and microcircuits fry when they get too hot. A couple of dozen times a year, the satellite will pass suddenly into the utter darkness of Earth’s shadow, causing temperatures to swing by around 300 °C, well beyond the usual operating range of electronics. Thermal expansion and contraction may cause large structures on the station to warp or vibrate.
Then there’s the physical toll of operating in space. Vibrations and torques exerted by altitude-control thrusters, plus the pressure of solar radiation on the massive sail-like arrays, will continually bend and twist the station this way and that. The sprawling arrays will suffer unavoidable strikes from man-made debris and micrometeorites, perhaps even a malfunctioning construction robot. As the number of space power stations increases, we could see a rapid rise in the threat of Kessler syndrome, a runaway cascade of collisions that is every space operator’s nightmare.
Probably the toughest technical obstacle blocking space solar power is a basic one: shaping and aiming the beam. The transmitter is not a dish, like a radio telescope in reverse. It’s a phased array, a collection of millions of little antennas that must work in near-perfect synchrony, each contributing its piece to a collective waveform aimed at the ground station.
Like people in a stadium crowd raising their arms on cue to do “the wave,” coordination of a phased array is essential. It will work properly only if every element on the emitter syncs the phase of its transmission to align precisely with the transmission of its neighbors and with an incoming beacon signal sent from the ground station. Phase errors measured in picoseconds can cause the microwave beam to blur or drift off its target. How can the system synchronize elements separated by as much as a kilometer with such incredible accuracy? If you have the answer, please patent and publish it, because this problem currently has engineers stumped.
There is no denying the beauty of the idea of turning to deep space for inexhaustible electricity. But nature gets a vote. As Lao Tzu observed long ago in the Tao Te Ching, “The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.”
The Rabbit R1 is the second major gadget to launch this year as basically a portable device for interacting with cloud-based AI features. Unlike the Humane Ai Pin, the Rabbit R1 has a display that provides visual information. And with a $200 price tag, it’s a lot easier for forgive its shortcomings than the $699 […]
The post Lilbits: Rabbit R1 handheld AI device runs Android (but its head is in the cloud), LastPass is an independent company again, and other tech news appeared first on Liliputing.
There are 25 games leaving the PlayStation Plus subscription service next month, including some of the best Final Fantasy games.
They are: Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy 9, Final Fantasy 10 and 10-2, Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age, and Final Fantasy 15: Royal Edition. There's also spin-off World of Final Fantasy.
The 25 games will all leave on 21st May and includes the brilliant Abzu, The Artful Escape, The Messenger, Jotun, and more.
In a past article SemiAccurate mentioned the Altera Max 10 FPGA seen on Intel Birch Stream boards.
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The post Why is there an Altera FPGA on QTS Birch Stream boards? appeared first on SemiAccurate.
When SemiAccurate saw the Birch Stream boards at MWC, there was something we noticed.
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The post Intel Birch Stream Boards Speak From The SIde appeared first on SemiAccurate.
It looks like someone was showing off the Birch Stream boards early at MWC 2024.
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The post QTS Shows Off Birch Stream boards at MWC appeared first on SemiAccurate.
There are 25 games leaving the PlayStation Plus subscription service next month, including some of the best Final Fantasy games.
They are: Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy 9, Final Fantasy 10 and 10-2, Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age, and Final Fantasy 15: Royal Edition. There's also spin-off World of Final Fantasy.
The 25 games will all leave on 21st May and includes the brilliant Abzu, The Artful Escape, The Messenger, Jotun, and more.
In a past article SemiAccurate mentioned the Altera Max 10 FPGA seen on Intel Birch Stream boards.
Read more ▶
The post Why is there an Altera FPGA on QTS Birch Stream boards? appeared first on SemiAccurate.
When SemiAccurate saw the Birch Stream boards at MWC, there was something we noticed.
Read more ▶
The post Intel Birch Stream Boards Speak From The SIde appeared first on SemiAccurate.
It looks like someone was showing off the Birch Stream boards early at MWC 2024.
Read more ▶
The post QTS Shows Off Birch Stream boards at MWC appeared first on SemiAccurate.
Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 leads the 2024 BAFTA Games Awards with 10 nominations, including Best Game, as it celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.
BAFTA today released the shortlist of nominees for this year's awards, with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 receiving nine nominations, Alan Wake 2 receiving eight nominations, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor both receiving six.
The coveted Best Game will be awarded to either Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Dave the Diver, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, or Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
It's evident in one of the very early scenes, a flashback where two children (the central character, Cloud, and another main character, Tifa) sit by their village well at night and make a promise together as stars shine overhead. A woman named Elmyra cries at her kitchen table, reading a letter that tells her that her husband has died in a war. Two former friends, Barret and Dyne, try to talk over the trauma of their loss in a prison. A serene gondola ride during a date, fireworks exploding outside while Cloud and a flower girl, Aerith, peer out through the window. 'I want to meet...you,' she tells him, even though they have already travelled together for a while. He doesn't understand, and he won't until it's too late.
There's the death of a main character too, one that resonated to the point of almost defining the legacy of the entire game in itself. Tetsuya Nomura (the character and battle visual director, and the person who made the call to kill said character) explained that he wanted to convey how it feels to hurt, to suffer loss. As a nine-year old watching the scene at night while my older sister played the game, I don't think I really grasped that hurt completely, even though I still found it saddening. Perhaps, like Cloud on the gondola, I wasn't ready to understand.
Final Fantasy 7, which was made by Square before their merge with Enix, is still a masterpiece. The surprisingly deft storytelling contains one of the best examples of unreliable narration in the video game medium. The music resounds with character, tender and soft in 'Flowers Blooming in the Church', exhilarating in 'Still More Fighting', while 'You Can Hear the Cry of the Planet' is somehow both ominous and soothing. The pre-rendered backgrounds have a real sense of atmosphere and character; there is the honeycomb warmth of Costa del Sol, for example, and Cosmo Canyon is the colour of autumn leaves.
When SemiAccurate saw the Birch Stream boards at MWC, there was something we noticed.
Read more ▶
The post Intel Birch Stream Boards Speak From The SIde appeared first on SemiAccurate.
It looks like someone was showing off the Birch Stream boards early at MWC 2024.
Read more ▶
The post QTS Shows Off Birch Stream boards at MWC appeared first on SemiAccurate.
Superhero movies are in a weird place right now, especially at Marvel’s house of ideas. Even as recent films struggle to land with audiences like the surefire hits of old, the studio is ready to look ahead with the heightened interest in what’s on the horizon. But part of that horizon includes navigating the murky…
The Sony PlayStation Portal is a handheld device that looks like a portable game console, but it’s not positioned as a standalone device. Instead, Sony markets the Portal as a PlayStation 5 companion that lets you stream PS5 games from your console. That’s all you can do with it… officially. But unofficially? A small group of […]
The post Sony’s $200 PlayStation Portal handheld game streaming device hacked to run native code (like a PSP emulator) appeared first on Liliputing.
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