Welcome to Gravity League – a brand new ball game!
The rules are simple: 2 players, 1 ball, zero gravity – the first player to get 7 points is the winner!
Compete with the best of the best and make your way to the top of the league to become a Gravity legend!
Upgrade your gear in the Gravity store to enhance your abilities on the field – new gloves, balls and stadiums are waiting to be discovered. Online League coming soon!
Gravity League requires one of these VR headsets to work with:
Oculus Quest
Oculus Quest 2
Meta Quest Pro
Gravity League : How To Get It Free!
Make sure you follow these steps to get this game for FREE… for a limited time!
Log into your existing Meta account, or create a new account.
That’s it! It has now been added to your Meta account, and you can download and install it anytime after this.
Please Support My Work!
Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
Credit Card / Paypal : https://paypal.me/techarp
Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
WhatsApp went down globally for about 2 hours in yet another major outage! Here is what you need to know…
WhatsApp Down Globally In Another Major Outage!
WhatsApp went down globally for about 2 hours, in yet another major outage!
At around 3 AM Eastern Time / 3 PM Malaysia Time, WhatsApp users started getting disconnected from the messaging service, leaving them with a perpetual “Connecting” message.
Those using WhatsApp Web or Desktop were struck with the dreaded “Make sure your computer has an active Internet connection” error message.
Meta spokesperson Joshua Breckman acknowledged the problem, saying:
We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, this time, only WhatsApp is affected. Other Meta services, like Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, are still working fine.
Meta also managed to get it back online for most users in 2 hours, during which, people were “forced” to try out alternative messaging services like Telegram, Viber, Line and yes, even WeChat!
We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today. We have fixed the issue and apologise for any inconvenience.
Almost A Year To Last Major WhatsApp Outage!
This new global outage comes almost on the first anniversary of last year’s major outage which took out not only WhatsApp, but other Meta services like Facebook, Messenger, Oculus and Instagram!
That outage, which lasted about six hours, was caused by configuration changes they made to their backbone routers. Not because 13 year-old hacker Sun Jisu hacked them.
It is now believed that the changes were made to Facebook’s Border Gateway Protocol, a mechanism that exchanges routing information to help figure out the fastest route for any request.
Apparently, the changes “withdrew” Facebook services from the DNS system, making it impossible for anyone to connect to them.
Even worse, Facebook ran their own systems through the same servers, so everything from engineering tool, messaging services and even security systems that controlled the key fob locks were no longer accessible.
So their engineering team had to rush to their data centres to manually reset the servers there.
Needless to say, this will be a big wake-up call for their engineering teams, and in the words of Russell Peters – “Somebody’s gonna get a hurt real bad!”
Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
Credit Card / Paypal : https://paypal.me/techarp
Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
The ultimate VR puzzle game – Lose yourself in space with over 70+ challenging puzzles, putting your gray matter to the test – Sit, Solve and Space Out!
Sit
Zero gravity and adaptive controls bring the puzzles to you. Kick back after a long day on your couch or dive right in for a 360 degree puzzle solving experience.
Solve
Hours of puzzling with over 70 thoughtfully constructed levels. Logically connect all the colored nodes to progress and earn stars as you go.
Space Out
Immersed in relaxing and calm environments, the stunning visuals combined with our carefully selected soundtrack will transport you to another world.
How to play
Connect all ends of the colored nodes, strategically choosing your path with the fewest moves possible.
There can be no overlapping of paths and every node must be used to successfully complete the puzzles. It’s simple to learn but challenging to master!
Color Connect : How To Get This Game For FREE!
Color Connect is free to download and keep from the Oculus store, from now until 30 September 2022.
That’s it! You now have the game in your Oculus account, and you can download it and play anytime you want!
Note : This game supports Oculus Quest, Oculus Quest 2 and Oculus Touch.
Please Support My Work!
Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
Credit Card / Paypal : https://paypal.me/techarp
Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Mirewood Manor is a story-driven haunted-house type experience which can be enjoyed solo or with up to three other friends.
In this deep narrative, explore the large estate of the Mirewood Manor, where an unfortunate incident has brought you, our protagonist, into the scene to investigate.
Solve the mystery of Mirewood; learn why and how ghostly figures now haunt not only the manor, but the entire world!
All modes are 1-4 players
A unique and compelling story that clocks in at over 10 hours
Extra modes include Survival Mode and Tour Mode
Mirewood Games, a party mode with a host of fun mini-games
Deep rewards and achievement system
RPG-like elements such as Player Levels and Exploration XP
Mirewood Manor : How To Get This Game For FREE!
Mirewood Manor is free to download and keep from the Oculus store, for a limited time.
That’s it! You now have the game in your Oculus account, and you can download it and play anytime you want!
Note : This game supports Oculus Quest, Oculus Quest 2 and Oculus Touch.
Please Support My Work!
Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
Credit Card / Paypal : https://paypal.me/techarp
Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Facebook and ALL of its messaging and social media platforms went down for about six hours, including Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram!
Find out why they all went down at the same time, and for so long!
Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram + More DOWN!
The entire slew of messaging and social media platforms owned by Facebook was inaccessible for about six hours, including :
Facebook
Facebook Messenger
WhatsApp
Instagram
Oculus
Workplace
The failure also extended to Facebook authentication, which you may be using to log into third-party apps and games, with Pokemon Go and Match Master gamers have reported problems logging in.
This left Twitter as the only major social media network still up and running, which is ironic since it became the only way for Facebook to reach out to the world…
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
This massive outage couldn’t come at a worse time for Facebook, whose stock slumped about 5.5% after former employee and whistleblower, Frances Haugen, leaked internal documents to the Wall Street Journal.
She also accused her former firm of repeatedly and knowingly allowing the proliferation of hate speech and misinformation for profit. Really tough times for Team Zuckerberg indeed…
Even Edward Snowden chimed in, saying that the world has become a healthier place for one shining day…
Facebook and Instagram go mysteriously offline and, for one shining day, the world becomes a healthier place. #facebookdown
Why Did Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. Go DOWN?
This massive, unprecedented GLOBAL outage appears to be caused by a DNS (Domain Name Server) failure.
The DNS service “translates” the plaintext link we use (www.facebook.com for example) into its actual numerical IP address (123.123.123.123 for example), allowing your app or browser to connect to the right server.
Without a working DNS service, no one is able to connect to any Facebook-owned service because the Internet no longer knows how to locate the right server.
CloudFlare senior vice-president Dane Knecht shared that the Facebook BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) routes have been “withdrawn from the Internet”, causing failure to connect through CloudFlare’s DNS service.
. @Facebook DNS and other services are down. It appears their BGP routes have been withdrawn from the internet. @Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 started seeing high failure in last 20mins.
This was likely due to a configuration error on Facebook’s side, but coming one day after the story broke on Frances Haugen? It would be folly to rule out internal sabotage or a rush to remove some controversial features before she testified to the US Congress.
The conspiracy theory that it was a DDOS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack by Anonymous or some vigilante group is really farfetched. It would require an incredible amount of resources and coordination to not only bring down Facebook, but all the other services as well… at the same time!
Facebook’s Vice-President of Infrastructure, Santosh Janardhan, later confirmed that “configuration changes” on their “backbone routers” caused the 6-hour long failure.
Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.
He also asserted that it was a faulty configuration change, and no user data was compromised.
Our services are now back online and we’re actively working to fully return them to regular operations. We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime.
While he blamed “the underlying cause” for impacting their ability. to “quickly diagnose and resolve the problem”, it is notable that it took Facebook engineering teams more than 6 hours to resolve a DNS failure.
It is now believed that the changes were made to Facebook’s Border Gateway Protocol, a mechanism that exchanges routing information to help figure out the fastest route for any request.
Apparently, the changes “withdrew” Facebook services from the DNS system, making it impossible for anyone to connect to them.
Even worse, Facebook ran their own systems through the same servers, so everything from engineering tool, messaging services and even security systems that controlled the key fob locks were no longer accessible.
So their engineering team had to rush to their data centres to manually reset the servers there.
Needless to say, this will be a big wake-up call for their engineering teams, and in the words of Russell Peters – “Somebody’s gonna get a hurt real bad!”
It is also a big wake-up call for everyone using Facebook services. This massive outage is a reminder that we should NOT put all our eggs in one basket.
I believe it will at least temporarily spur the adoption of alternative messaging services like Telegram and Signal. Even Twitter should see a nice boost in Tweets and maybe new users.
Now, I’m not into conspiracy theories… but what are the odds of this failure happening just one day after Frances Haugen came out publicly against Facebook, and a day before she was set to testify before the US Congress?
Could these “configuration changes” be designed to remove some controversial features before Haugen’s testimony to the US Congress?
Could Facebook’s own engineering team have accidentally triggered the failure in their rush to remove those controversial features before she testified?
Please Support My Work!
Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
Credit Card / Paypal : https://paypal.me/techarp
Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
DreamFly is a game that simulates flights in your dreams. Immerse into the atmosphere of traveling through the world of dreams. But before you start your adventure, you will need to, well, learn how to fly.
At first, it will seem to be impossible to take off. But don’t worry! After some practice you will fly with almost no effort, enjoy the process, and, maybe, even master some aerobatics!
Playing this game requires physical activity. So you can treat it as fitness!
The game basically has no explicit controls. You have a pair of wings attached to your hands (motion controllers). The rest depend on you movements and physics (especially aerodynamics).
If you want to take off try flapping your wings (have you noticed how the birds do it 🤔?). If you want to change direction, think how to position your wings, so the airflow turns you into desired direction.
Hint: after reaching a certain speed, you can simply glide with no effort!
Hint: a quick way to gain speed is to fly up, and then dive, until you reach the desired speed.
Note: DreamFly requires VR head mounted display and motion controllers. It supports Oculus Rift + Touch and HTC Vive. Other VR platforms have not been tested.
This game is in early access. It includes one level with sandbox gameplay.
WARNING!
For the new players, It is advisable to have someone to insure against falling during the game. Otherwise, if there is a risk of falling, it is better to play sitting.
If you begin to feel motion sickness, it is recommended to interrupt the gaming session. It is advisable to begin the game with the short sessions.
Controls: X – exit. Y – screenshot.
DreamFly : How To Get It For Free!
Follow these steps to get DreamFly for FREE :
Log into your existing Steam account, or create a new account.
If you like our work, you can help support us by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Interkosmos – an arcady astronaut VR adventure game – is FREE for a limited time!
Add it to your Steam account now, and SHARE this news with your friends!
If you missed this, well, next time join theTech ARP Facebook page to get these updates quickly!
Interkosmos
Enter Zvezda, a fully interactive re-entry capsule heavily inspired by 1970’s space technology where every switch, gauge, and mechanical bit could be relevant to your survival.
Guide your capsule to a safe landing with assistance from NASA and Roscosmos, and pray nothing unexpected happens to your highly experimental Soviet spacecraft – now the centerpiece of a Cold War conflict rapidly escalating towards catastrophy.
Ultimately it’s you who must adapt on the fly, execute the right sequences and procedures, manage your power and life support systems, stay on course, and land in one piece; or discover all the interesting ways to die during re-entry.
Good luck pilot!
Accessible, fun & challenging gameplay. Interkosmos is unlike any other VR game to date.
A fully interactive and sort-of-realistic-looking space capsule that reacts to your every interaction. It’s time to become the astronaut you always wanted to be!
A heavy emphasis on story and humor.
A unique aesthetic inspired by 1970s space technology and the Cold War theme.
Replayability; Each successful playthrough offers about 30 minutes of gameplay, but how many ways can you find to die during re-entry?
A branching storyline; the fate of the world is in your hands!
Great sound effects, super satisfyingly clicky buttons, professional voice acting, & binaural sound design.
Interkosmos is made with Unreal Engine 4.
Interkosmos : How To Get It FREE!
Follow these steps to get Interkosmos for FREE, but make sure you do this before 25 May at 3:00 PM :
Log into your existing Steam account, or create a new account.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
MOYOSA MEDIA is giving away The Kremer Collection VR Museum – a VR experience of eponymous private museum!
Find out how to get The Kremer Collection VR Museum for FREE, and make sure you tell your friends!
The Kremer Collection VR Museum
Art like never before. The Kremer Museum is an innovative new museum concept that combines the newest VR technology with world-class Old Master paintings.
The museum includes pieces by Rembrandt, Aelbert Cuyp, Frans Hals and many more Old Masters from the Dutch Golden Age.
Walk around a fantastic new space, where the balance between traditional museums and VR is represented through a new sort of architecture.
Be sure to check out Rembrandt’s “old man with a turban”, walk through it, and see the original back of the panel, to explore the work’s unique stamps of provenance.
Designed by architect Johan van Lierop, Founder of Architales and developed by MOYOSA MEDIA from the Netherlands, the museum features 74 Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, and is accessible exclusively through VR.
Note : This game requires an Oculus Rift / Rift S VR headset.
The Kremer Collection VR Museum : How To Get It Free!
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
StormBorn Studio is giving away Runes : The Forgotten Path – a story-driven VR puzzle solving game!
Find out how to get Runes : The Forgotten Path for FREE, and make sure you tell your friends!
Runes : The Forgotten Path is FREE for a limited time!
You are Leth, a wizard who awakens after a long slumber, recalling only glimpses of his past. Your spells are forgotten.
During the game you will recollect his memories bit by bit, recalling your past and figuring out the mystery behind a magical world populated by bizarre and unsettling entities.
How did you become trapped in Oblivion? Who put you there? And why?
Astray from the path of righteousness and trapped inside yourself by the tyrannical order of the Panopticon, you will have to face a blank beginning.
With the use of your powerful spells and wits you will solve puzzles, fight enemies and pursue the recollection of all your lost memories.
100% designed for room scale VR.
Cast spells by drawing in the air with motion controllers.
Smooth locomotion, teleport and front facing gameplay are all options.
Full story driven VR title with different environments and puzzle solving.
Photogrammetry for full deep and immersive worlds.
New seamless locomotion system: 4th wall (in addition to teleport and smooth locomotion).
Nodding system: answer to yes or no questions just by moving your head.
Note : This game requires a VR headset, and is compatible with :
HTC Vive
Oculus Rift
Valve Index
Windows Mixed Reality
Runes : The Forgotten Path – How To Get It Free On Oculus Store
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Quill – a VR illustration and animation tool for Oculus Rift and Rift S – is FREE for a limited time!
Find out how to get Quill for FREE, and make sure you tell your friends!
If you missed this, well, next time join theTech ARP Facebook page to get these updates quickly!
Quill is FREE for a Limited Time!
Quill is the VR illustration and animation tool built to empower artists and creators, whether to create final art or as a production tool for concept creation aid.
It is designed to be intuitive to artists, being expressive, efficient and comfortable to use over a long period of time.
Quill allows users to paint and animate in virtual reality on an infinitely scalable canvas, with rich colours and intuitive tools.
Quill is designed to be expressive and precise and to let the artist’s “hand” come through clearly – whether that’s in a watercolour style, pencil style, oil painting style or something else.
Non-creators can download Quill to experience amazing illustrations in their pre-loaded showcase and have an experience completely unlike viewing a painting on a wall in a traditional gallery.
Quill : How To Get It Free!
For a limited time, Quill will be free to download and keep from the Oculus Store.
All you have to do is sign up for an Oculus account, and add it to your account! It’s that simple!
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Half + Half – a multiplayer game for Oculus Quest or Rift – is FREE for a VERY limited time!
Find out how to get Half + Half for FREE, and make sure you tell your friends!
If you missed this, well, next time join theTech ARP Facebook page to get these updates quickly!
Half + Half is FREE for a Limited Time!
This is a multiplayer game about fun & connection. It includes five unique multiplayer spaces that are designed to help you connect with people you know, and also to connect with people you don’t, even if only for a short while.
Swim in the ocean. Glide through clouds. Play human tetris with friends, or Hide & Seek where hiders are two inches tall, and seekers are as tall as buildings.
Every space in Half + Half is designed to be fun, but also to make you look as ridiculous as possible in real life. It is made to be fun for you, but also fun for everyone in the same room.
Half + Half : How To Get It Free!
For a limited time, Half + Half will be free to download and keep from the Oculus Store.
All you have to do is sign up for an Oculus account, and add it to your account! It’s that simple!
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
After Dell launched the world’s largest 2-in-1 laptop, the Dell Inspiron 17 7000, we had the opportunity to check out some of their latest Alienware products. Some of them, we have seen earlier. Some of them are brand new. We didn’t have much time, but we recorded three videos for you to check out.
Alienware 13 OLED
The Alienware 13 OLED is the world’s first gaming notebook to feature an OLED display panel. This not only gives you a much higher contrast ratio of 100,000:1, it also gives you a wider colour gamut – 104% of sRGB. But gamers will probably be more interested in its much faster response time of just 1-2 ms.
Despite its petite size, the Alienware 13 OLED is powered by the 6th Generation Intel Core i7 processor with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics processor. The OLED display has a resolution of 2560 x 1440, lower than the non-OLED resolution of 3200 x 1800 in the previous Alienware 13.
Alienware X51 R3
This is the third revision of the Alienware X51. Reengineered with the 6th Generation Intel Core processors and a new selection of AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards, the Alienware X51 R3 comes with a liquid cooling option, and Oculus Rift-ready configurations.
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Alienware Area 51 R2 With HTC Vive
There is nothing new with the Alienware Area 51 at Computex 2016. In fact, this is the second revision from 2015, running on the 5th Generation Intel Core K processors. However, it was being used to power a HTC Vive headset, and since they opened it up for viewing, we thought – what the heck, let’s just record a video!
Support Tech ARP!
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participate in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donate to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Kuala Lumpur, December 31, 2015 – Samsung Malaysia Electronics proudly announces the arrival of its latest and more advanced consumer version of the Gear VR in Malaysia, an improved and more ergonomic version of the Innovator Edition for S6 that was launched earlier this year.
Boasting a ground-breaking virtual reality (VR) technology packed in a lightweight wireless headset, Samsung has now extended the Gear VR’s compatibility to include the Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6, S6 edge and S6 edge+ with an affordable retail price of RM459 (including 6% GST) / ~US$109.
“Samsung has been at the forefront of delivering mobile experiences and the new Gear VR is no exception. We see virtual reality as the next computing platform, and this time we are making immersive VR entertainment more accessible and affordable for customers with the introduction of our improved Gear VR,” said Mr Lee Jui Siang, Vice President, IT & Mobile Business Unit, Samsung Malaysia Electronics.
Leveraging on the super AMOLED display of its complementing devices, the new Gear VR gives a whole new meaning to immersive video experience and virtual gaming reality – providing sharp colours, supreme clarity and unrivalled performance for an amazing virtual reality experience.
The Samsung Gear VR is 19 percent lighter than the previous Gear VR Innovator Edition for S6, and includes new foam cushioning for added comfort. In addition, the new Gear VR’s improved touchpad provides greater control while enjoying the robust selection of film, gaming, 360 degree video and experiential content available for Gear VR.
The Samsung Gear VR is offered in Frost White and is available in 28 selected Samsung Electronics Stores (SES) nationwide.
As a bonus, we were also given the opportunity to try out not only the Oculus CV1, but also the HTC Vive, virtual reality headsets. As the software being demonstrated was still under embargo, we could not take any pictures of the display. But we still managed to take videos and pictures of the experience. Check them out!
The Oculus CV1
This is likely the same Oculus CV1 + Xbox 360 controller setup they used at E3. We had a few minutes to try out some of the titles they prepared – Edge of Nowhere, EVE Valkyrie, AirMech VR, etc.
1 / 7
The experience was amazing although we can see that virtual reality is still not ready for prime time. The Oculus CV1 still did not have sufficiently high resolution to be really immersive. The headset itself, while reasonably light, was still cumbersome and it can get a little steamy inside. Although the cable was not noticeable once you start playing, we like the freedom that a wireless solution like the Samsung Gear VR offers.
The biggest problem was the controller. The Xbox 360 controller was, perhaps, not the best controller for these games. Or maybe I’m just too used to PC gaming. During the test drive, we needed “outside” help to realign our orientation. Perhaps a dedicated button on the headset to realign orientation would be useful.
The HTC Vive
NVIDIA set up two rather large HTC Vive booths, each with a HTC Vive headset and a lighthouse system inside. We got to experience a slew of virtual reality experiences and apps over 20 minutes. We also got to try out the Chaperone safety system, which warned us whenever we come close to the wall.
The HTC Vive was amazing. Although it looks heavy, the headset was quite comfortable. It was immersive and fun to use. The controllers were quite intuitive to use although they obviously do not allow for precise control. The Chaperone system also worked very well, warning us when we approached a wall.
However, we were a little frustrated by the cumbersome cabling. Even if you don’t actually trip over the cables, you “feel” them get in the way when you walk all over the room. That kind of disrupted the experience.
