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Friday, April 13, 2018
Vol. 78, No. 15
Gaming company debuts innovative VR game
LITTLE LEAGUE SEASON BEGINS
BY GARY SIMEONE
Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino (back row, center) recently joined with coaches, players, and parents for the opening day ceremony of the Plainview Little League Baseball Challenger Program. Challenger Baseball is a Little League-sanctioned program established in 1989 that gives physically and mentally challenged children the opportunity to play baseball. Supervisor Saladino commended everyone in the league for their efforts in providing an important recreational outlet for boys and girls in the community.
Town plans Harbor & Beach Cleanup Day
The annual Oyster Bay Harbor & Beach Cleanup will be held on Saturday, April 21. The event is co-sponsored by the joined forces of the Town of Oyster Bay, the North Oyster Bay Baymen’s Association (NOBBA), and Friends of the Bay. This environmental event is scheduled to kick-off at 8AM “This great event features Town employees and volunteers rolling up their sleeves and working side by side to clean-up the beaches and shoreline areas along Oyster Bay
Harbor,” Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino said. “With Earth Day right around the corner, this important environmental initiative is the perfect way to pitch in and help make a difference!” Volunteers are invited to participate in the cleanup, which will run from 8AM to 12PM. The central meeting place will be Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park launching ramps and waterfront gazebo off of Larrabee Avenue, Oyster Bay. Additional locations for the clean-up
include Theodore Roosevelt Beach in Oyster Bay, Stehli Beach in Bayville, and Centre Island Beach in Bayville. Typically, in years past, harbor and beach clean-up events have resulted in about forty thousand pounds of debris collected by volunteers. Individuals and groups who are interested can get further information by calling the Town’s Department of Environmental Resources at 677-5943.
The world of virtual reality has just been upgraded thanks to the introduction of a new game from the Labrodex corporation in Jericho. The game is entitled Scraper First-Strike, and it is a virtual reality video game that lets users feel like they are inside the digital action. Labrodex opened its office doors in 2016, and is the brainchild of owner and CEO Jim Ivon. It is a virtual and augmented reality gaming company that has a lot to offer the market in 2018. Ivon is a 48 Muttontown resident who considers himself to be a “gaming addict” of sorts. For his Scraper game, which is a first person shooter that is played inside a VR headset, he collaborated with famed Star Wars series based author, Ryder Windham. “I reached out to a few top sci-fi authors and Ryder and I just kind of clicked on this project,” said Ivon. “He loved both the story and the CV idea.” The two worked out the games parameters over the phone and went over multiple drafts to ensure they had a quality product to sell to customers of the virtual gaming market. The game is a sci-fi based first shooter action with what the industry calls RPG (role-playing game) elements. These elements allow for characters inside the game to move freely inside of virtual worlds. “With the VR headset, players have a free range of motion and they can move in all directions as they turn their heads,” said Ivon. Labrodex is hoping to follow in the footsteps of the Glen Cove based Acclaim Entertainment Inc., which grew to be one of the largest videogame developers in the nation in the late 1990’s. Ivon’s ultimate goal is to get virtual and augmented reality videogames on the mainstream market. He hopes to be able to offer his services first to videogame developers and than onto the general public. According to the company, Scraper First-Strike has an estimated release date in September 2018.
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