Bringing the weather right to your tabletop, this incredible box simulates sunrise, sunset, clouds, rain and even thunderstorms based on real forecasts, letting you see expected conditions in a dazzling new way.

Designed by Ken Kawamoto, the Tempescope puts a world’s worth of weather right in front of you, downloading details from the internet then recreating those effects inside a clear plastic box, including sunshine, fog or even the pulsing illumination of a lightning storm (as seen in the video below).

The project is open source and interested parties are welcome to download the design schematics in order to create their own, or can wait for a crowdfunding campaign later this year to buy a unit instead. The deployment is also versatile – you can select your own city and time delay, reflecting either current conditions outside or near-future forecasts for wherever you want (letting you keep in touch with weather at home or in your favorite city).

The post Temposcope: Desktop Device Recreates Weather Forecast first appeared on Gajitz.

Pigeons may get a bad rap because of their dirtiness and their general propensity for being pests, but we’d still gladly take their ability to fly high above ground level. A new simulator developed by researchers at University College London’s Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) lets humans borrow the ability to fly just like a pigeon, if only for a brief time.

Using Google Earth and a Microsoft Kinect sensor, the simulator tracks body movements and translates them into bird navigational movements, allowing users to get a literal bird’s eye view of London. Flapping the arms like wings takes the user higher while dropping the arms causes a loss of altitude. Leaning to one side or the other changes the direction of the flight.

Although the simulator looks like great fun to use, the CASA team say that there is a practical purpose for it: it is part of a public outreach program to raise awareness of the college’s urban modeling work. That’s all well and good, but we aren’t nearly as interested in learning about their program as we are in taking the controls and cruising over London.

The post London Flight Simulator Gives You Temporary Ability to Fly first appeared on Gajitz.