Tech round-up for September 14: Sony reveals two new PlayStation 4 models, how to catch Apple's Music Festival, Morgan movie trailer created by AI, optical illusion demonstrates our perceptual limits

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This week, an optical illusion posted on Facebook shows the limits of human visual perception, Apple’s Music Festival kicks off next week in London, but you can watch it from anywhere, and IBM’s artificial intelligence is smart enough to make a movie trailer. But first, Sony’s got two new PlayStation 4s on the horizon.

Slimmed down PlayStation 4 hits this week, PlayStation Pro coming in November

Hot on the heels of the release of Microsoft’s Xbox One S, Sony revealed last Wednesday (September 7) that it has two new PlayStation 4 consoles ready to go, with the first, a redesigned and slimmer PS4, arriving this week.

The second edition PS4 is some 30 percent smaller than the original, which was released in November of 2013. Priced at Cdn$380, it has a 500 GB hard drive and a slanted design that resembles the original, but with rounded corners.

Then, on November 10, Sony will release the PS4 Pro. This model is actually bigger than the original, the extra size required by the improved processing capacity the hardware contains and the 1 TB hard drive.

The PS4 Pro, which will cost $500, and has improved central and graphics processing units (CPU, GPU), which is how it will support 4K video and will deliver 1080p high-definition resolution for all games. It will also be able to upscale the video for some sources.

The PS4 Pro will not support 4k Blu-ray discs, however. It can only display 4K video from streaming sources.

All PS4 consoles, including the first model, will be supporting high-dynamic range (HDR) video through a software update.

The 4K and HDR video capabilities assume, of course, that you have a television set that can display such images. As much as the manufacturers wish they were, ultra high-def sets aren’t yet ubiquitous.

And just as all Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console, so too will PS4 games be supported by all consoles, including the original, the slim version, and the PS4 Pro.

PlayStation reveals new controller, camera, headset

In addition to two new consoles, at a press event in New York last week Sony also announced new PS4 peripherals, all of which become available this week.

A new version of the wireless controller, the Dualshock 4, shifts the design so that the light from the front-facing LED also emits from the touch pad. This is more than just a cosmetic adjustment, as changing the colour or intensity of the light can be used by developers to provide information, such as the level of health of a character, to gamers.

The new controller, which carries a price tag of $75, will also be able to be used whlie connected to a console with a USB cable as well as wirelessly using Bluetooth.

Also available this week is a new PS Camera, also priced at $75, which doesn’t bring any new functionality, but sports a cylindrical design.

A new wireless headset, costing $200, uses Sony’s proprietary 3D audio technology to deliver a virtual 7.1 surround sound experience. It can be used with a 3.5 mm audio cable or wirelessly, and is constructed with multiple, hidden, noise-cancelling microphones.

Elton John, Alicia Keys, and Michael Bublé headline the Apple Music Festival

Starting on September 18, and going for 10 nights, is the Apple Music Festival at the Roundhouse in London, England.

Elton John opens the event, and Vancouver crooner Michael Bublé performs on September 28. Also performing are Britney Spears (!), Robbie Williams, and Chance the Rapper.

in the past, anyone could watch the festival through iTunes, but Apple’s now keeping the entertainment exclusive to Apple Music subscribers get to watch and listen to the shows live, and afterwards on-demand.

A subscription costs $10 per month for individuals, or $15 a month for a family sub.

Facebook post perfectly demonstrates human perceptual limits

There’s an optical illusion being passed around Facebook this week.

The post came from professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka who lives in Kyoto and works at Ritsumeikan University, and it’s simply a picture of a grid of grey lines. At the intersection of each line is a black dot.

But most people will only ever see one black dot at a time.

Why? It’s because human eyesight is constructed for pinpoint acuity, not peripheral vision. When you focus your eyesight on a point, your brain is kind of creating what it expects is in your periphery. So if it sees grey lines surrounding where you’re focusing, it’s going to create that picture for you, but it misses all the other black dots that end up “hiding” in the picture.

Some people with better than average peripheral vision can actually see more than one black dot at a time.

Kiaoka cites a research paper published in Perception as the source of the illusion.

IBM’s Watson AI crafts movie trailer for Morgan

Well, the movie might not be doing well in theatres, but Moran is interesting for another reason.

The film, a take on Frankenstein that features a creature with artificial intelligence in the role of the monster, stars Kate Mara. And a few weeks prior to being released, a trailer for Morgan hit the Internet that was created by IBM’s Watson computer.

Specifically, Watson was asked to make “the scariest promotional video possible” according to a release. Watson accomplished this the same way any freshman university student would: It watched 100 classic horror movies to understand what makes things scary.

Then the entire Morgan film was loaded into Watson so it could create a trailer. From the press release: “What the research team realized was that Watson had put moments from Morgan into the trailer that other, human editors had not.”

Did Watson create a scary trailer? You decide.

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