Fully Charged: Flappy Bird gets the virtual reality treatment, and why insect paste could be your new favourite food

Home / News / Fully Charged: Flappy Bird gets the virtual reality treatment, and why insect paste could be your new favourite food

Would you wear a skirt made out of Nokia phones?

Setting aside our cynicism for a moment, designer Fyodor Golan has come up with reasonably interesting “feature” on his Lumia skirt: the phones’ screens change colour and shimmer in a unified way when the wearer moves; a special app uses the handsets’ location data to synchronise the movements and the shimmering.

[Source: Luxury Launches]

Oculus Rift puts gamers in Flappy Bird’s feathers

Using the Oculus Rift VR headset, gamers can get a, er, bird’s eye view of the side-scrolling flap ‘em up: rather than watch as we guide a hapless bird fly into pipes again and again, we now fly into those pipes ourselves. In 3D. If that’s not some kind of metaphor for life right there, we don’t know what is. Click the image above to see a gif of it in action.

[Source: PSFK]

Yum! This 3D printer makes snacks out of mashed-up insects

Yes, you read that right: snacks made out of creepy crawlies that have been pulped into a substance that can be pumped through a 3D printer’s nozzle and made into intricate shapes. Insects are high in protein and important minerals, you see, and many predict that with meat due to become an expensive rarity in the not-too-distant future, bug-paste could prove an important food source.

The problem? Most people don’t like the idea of eating insects. And pretty-looking 3D printed creations made of insect flour and water are somewhat more palatable than a plateful of sauteed crickets. But don’t expect to be chewing on shaped bug snacks particularly soon: the substance will probably find a use as animal feed in the medium term while food regulators get their heads around the idea.

[Source: 3D Printer]

READ MORE: Would you eat a 3D printed pizza?

Captain Birds Eye gets #social with Mashtags

If the idea of munching on cricket paste doesn’t appeal to you, maybe the idea of eating emoticons and “social media symbols” made of potato will. And Birds Eye is here to help with Mashtag, frozen potato shapes designed to appeal to the Facebook generation. There’s a hash, an asterisk, an @ symbol and two smilies, so combine them with Alphabites (can you still buy those?) and you can create and eat tweets. We don’t know why you’d want to do that, but you can. Mashtags will be available from 23rd February at Sainsburys for £1.75, and will arrive at other shops from March.

About

Tech journalism's answer to The Littlest Hobo, I've written for a host of titles and lived in three different countries in my 15 years-plus as a freelancer. But I've always come back home to Stuff eventually, where I specialise in writing about cameras, streaming services and being tragically addicted to Destiny.