The future of personal air travel is so close you can almost touch it – or sit in it. If you happen to be in Las Vegas at CES 2022 you'll find, nestled in the usually bustling Eureka Park start-up exhibit area, SkyDrive's Model SD-03 ultra-light, compact flying vehicle. You can, if you like, climb right in.
With its eight horizontal rotors, the SkyDrive vehicle looks more like a giant drone than a flyer capable of carrying a human. It's small – cramped even. The EV flyer measures just 4 meters by 4 meters by 2 meters tall. That's right, you will not be standing inside the Model SD-03. In fact, it has room for exactly one occupant. If you ever do fly inside it, you'll have to be both passenger and pilot. Company representatives told TechRadar that they're working on a 2-seater Model SD-05.
Despite the tiny cabin, it can hoist roughly 1,000 pounds into the air (that includes the air taxi's own fuselage weight). After a vertical takeoff (something that makes this and other EV air taxis attractive for more densely populated areas and rescue missions), the SkyDrive Model SD-03 can fly at a max cruise speed of between 24- and 31 mph. That's a decidedly leisurely pace for flight. The company would not comment on if the air taxi includes any sensors for obstacle avoidance.
Between the pokey speed and a maximum of 10 minutes of flight time, this air taxi is designed for short trips, at best. (Come to think of it, that might be just right for avoiding CES taxi lines.)
“What we want to see in the future is that SkyDrive’s emission-free vehicles take off from and land in your parking lot and helipads atop buildings, making door-to-door air travel a realistic choice of daily urban transportation,” said SkyDrive Chief Operating Officer Takehiro Sato in a release.
Despite the drone enthusiast looks, SkyDrive, which launched its efforts to bring flight to our personal mobility arsenal in 2018, claims this Model SD-03 is fully tested for a piloted flight.
However, aside from test flights, the SkyDrive Model SD-03 is still years away from regular air taxi use. The Japanese company hopes to employ it as an air taxi in Osaka, Japan, during World Expo 2025, a goal it's now more likely to achieve after Japan's Transportation Ministry accepted its flight certification. SkyDrive claims it's the first flying vehicle developer to achieve this distinction.
SkyDrive is far from the first EV Air Taxi company. Over the last few years, everyone from Uber and Hyundai and companies like Bell Helicopter have presented their take on personal and passengered air taxis at CES. Most, like Uber's, are larger, accomodating pilots and multiple passengers.
All we know is that there still isn't a single EV air taxi in operation and we look forward to Sky Drive and its Model SD-03 kickstarting the personal commuting revolution a few years from now at World Expo.
Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: everything we know
It's been more than 30 years since work first began to adapt Neil Gaiman's epic comic book series, The Sandman, but it is finally set to arrive this year.
Told over 11 episodes, the show will follow Morpheus, the king of dreams as he escapes from capture and tries to rebuild his kingdom.
The highly anticipated series will land on Netflix this year. The streaming giant has been tight-lipped on a release date thus far, but have confirmed we will see it in 2022.
Given the vast amount of source material for the series, you'd expect plans for further seasons are already in place, but let's not count our chickens just yet…
Release date: We don't have an exact date yet, but a 2022 release has been confirmed. We'd expect to see The Sandman release in the second half of next year.
Cast: Tom Sturridge, Charles Dance, Gwendoline Christie, Boyd Holbrook, Jenna Coleman all feature in the series as part of its vast ensemble cast. Scroll down for more detail on who they're each playing, as well as the many other confirmed cast members.
Story: The Sandman's first run, which will take in 11 episodes, will cover the series' first two collections, Preludes & Nocturnes and The Doll's House.
At the start, we find ourselves in 1916 and in the midst of an occult ritual. As you can see from the show's first trailer, which you'll find further down this page, a secret society, led by a magician named Roderick Burgess, is trying to obtain immortality by imprisoning Death himself.
Sadly, Burgess mistakenly binds Death's brother Dream instead. Fearing retribution, Burgess keeps Dream imprisoned for over 100 years. Eventually, Dream escapes, and, finding himself in the modern world, sets about avenging those who captured him and rebuilding the kingdom of dreams…
There isn't a confirmed release date for The Sandman just yet, but given we've had a trailer and Netflix is pushing the title as a key part of its 2022 slate, we'd be prepared to place a sizable bet it'll be on our screens before the autumn.
But, as you can read below, that's a matter of minutes in comparison to the journey that Gaiman and the king of Dreams have been on…
Believe it or not, the first attempt to get The Sandman from page to screen came all the way back in 1991, before Gaiman had even completed the series.
Gaiman was resistant to the offer, which came from Warner Brothers, but eventually in 1996 he accepted and director Roger Avary, fresh from collaborating with Quentin Tarantino on Jackie Brown, was attached to take charge.
Avary, who would later go on to The Rules of Attraction, worked from a script from writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the pair who'd later earn Disney billions with Pirates of the Caribbean.
Weirdly, Gaiman was happy enough with this version of the script, but producer Jon Peters, a man so notorious in Hollywood that an entire book has been written about his misadventure (also, if you've seen Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza , Bradley Cooper's madcap portrayal of Peters is gaining serious Oscar talk), had other ideas. He fired Avary, and Elliot and Rossio's script went in a drawer.
Peters then turned to write William Farmer, who would later help adapt the ill-fated Jonah Hex. His 1998 script reimagined Morpheus as a slasher movie villain and put him in a race against the turn of the Millennium. Gaiman hated it.
He hated it so much in fact he would later tell fans at the San Diego Comic Con that it was "not only the worst Sandman script I've ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I've ever read."
Peters clearly didn't care for it much either and the project went away, where it languished in development hell for over 15 years. Gaiman would occasionally be asked about it in interviews and took to telling journalists that he'd "rather see no Sandman movie made than a bad Sandman movie."
Reports of development work flickered, there was an attempt by Logan's James Mangold to pitch the idea of a series to HBO , but it didn't get anywhere. It wasn't until 2014 that the next substantial move in The Sandman saga came.
Then super-producer David S. Goyer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and His Dark Materials writer Jack Thorne announced they were taking charge of a new attempt to take the character to movie screens.
Thorne delivered a draft, which was rewritten by Arrival writer Eric Heisserer. Things seemed like they were progressing, right up until March of 2016, when Gordon-Levitt announced he was leaving the project due to creative differences.
Heisserer left later that year, telling reporters he believed the show should really be an HBO series. Something that had already been tried and failed. With Gordon-Levitt gone, Goyer busying himself with the DC Universe , it looked like the king of Dreams would return to slumber.
That was until 2019. In June of that year, Netflix announced it was developing The Sandman as a television series. Wonder Woman screenwriter Allan Heinberg had been booked to serve as showrunner and Gaiman was on board as producer.
Like Morpheus himself, after more than 25 years of imprisonment in development hell, The Sandman was finally free.
The key cast for The Sandman looks like this:
Tom Sturridge leads the way as Morpheus. As you'll see below, in the comics, Morpheus is rake-thin and hollow-cheeked with jet black hair and a wardrobe in the same color. Sturridge, with his dark features, and commanding performances in the Hollow Crown trilogy and Far From The Madding Crowd, looks like perfect casting to play the ethereal king of dreams.
Gwendoline Christie, best known as Brienne of Tarth in Game Of Thrones , plays Lucifer. Weirdly, though Tom Ellis' Lucifer actually finds his origins in Gaiman's comics, the spin-off and subsequent TV adaptation are a world away from The Sandman. In this take, Christie's Lucifer is the ruler of Hell who quickly finds themselves butting heads with Morpheus.
Jenna Coleman will take on two roles, playing Johanna Constantine, the ancestor of John Constantine, an occult detective, Coleman will portray the character both in the 18th century and in the present day.
Charles Dance will play Roderick Burgess, the magician and charlatan who summons and imprisons Dream in the first place, while Logan star Boyd Holbrook is The Corinthian. Much-loved in the comics, The Corinthian is a nightmare created by Dream, who quickly gets a mind of his own, with very bloody consequences.
While Neil Gaiman is very active in the making of the series, it is not his show. Unlike Good Omens, where he acts as both creator and showrunner, here Gaiman is a producer.
He has worked to develop the project alongside David S. Goyer, writer of the Blade trilogy, Batman Begins and so much of the DC Universe. Goyer is a producer on this alongside his work as showrunner on Foundation. The Sandman's showrunner is Allan Heinberg, writer of Wonder Woman and hit comedy The Catch.
British director Jamie Childs, who has been a long time pick for His Dark Materials, has taken charge of four episodes. Andrés Baiz, a veteran of Narcos: Mexico, has three, and Louise Hooper, last seen stewarding The Witcher , has two.
Originally, the show was set to shoot across the world, but Gaiman confirmed to a fan that Covid-19 put paid to that and the series was filmed entirely in the UK.
We got a first look at the series towards the end of 2021 as part of Netflix's Ta Dum celebration. That showed the capture of Morpheus and the beginning of the saga.
We can expect a full trailer in the coming weeks ahead of the show's formal launch later in the year.
What Else Does Neil Gaiman Have Heading To Screens?
He's a busy man, that's for sure.
In 2022, Gaiman is overseeing the second season of Good Omens , which is filming as we speak with Michael Sheen and David Tennant returning to reprise their roles. It’ll air on Amazon Prime once again.
Also for Amazon Prime, Gaiman's 2005 novel Anansi Boys is being adapted. The cast for that series, which follows the two sons of the African spider-god Anansi, will see Small Axe breakout star Malachi Kirby and The Good Fight's Delroy Lindo lead the way, while Lenny Henry has worked on the adaptation alongside Gaiman.
As well as this, work continues on the film adaptations of Gaiman's novels The Ocean At The End Of The Lane and The Graveyard Book. Sadly though, after three seasons, it looks like it's the end of the road for American Gods, with no word on a new network for the show after Starz pulled the plug in 2021.
One of the best PS5 features is now on Xbox Series X – and you really need to turn it on
It may have taken eight years, but one of the best PS5 features – which it inherited from the PS4 – is now finally available on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles: your TV speakers will now automatically mute whenever you connect a wired or wireless pair of headphones.
However, this fancy new Xbox feature is actually turned off by default, which means that many of you might be blissfully unaware of its existence unless you’re the sort who diligently follows each and every Xbox system update.
If you’ve ever used a wired or wireless pair of headphones on Xbox Series X, you’re probably used to picking up the remote controller and turning down your TV speakers. It’s something that I’ve grown accustomed to over the years because unlike the PS4 and PS5, which automatically mutes your TV whenever a headset is connected, the Xbox One and its subsequent models never did.
But thankfully, that’s no longer the case.
The sound of silence
In November of last year, an update dropped which added an option to mute TV audio whenever you connect a wired or wireless headset – and it’s an absolute godsend. You’ll need to head to ‘Settings’, ‘Volume and audio output’, ‘Additional Options’, and look for ‘Mute speaker audio when headset attached’. Tick this box and you’re good to go.
Now, as if by magic, whenever you attach a wired headset to your controller using the headphone jack or use something like the Xbox Wireless Headset which the console recognizes, your speaker audio will mute automatically.
That means no more echoing background audio because you forgot to mute the TV, and the days of telling someone to “turn down their speakers” because you can hear their game audio blasting out through party chat will hopefully become a thing of the past.
It’s been a long time coming
This seemingly simple feature was something I actually requested way back in January 2021 , so it’s great to see that Microsoft has been able to add it, even if it has taken an inexplicably long time to arrive.
It made sense when the Xbox One was released in 2013 as the original controller didn’t even have a 3.5mm headphone jack. But when the revised version of Microsoft’s popular pad arrived, it suddenly became a particularly irksome omission – something which made less and less sense as the years rolled on.
Credit to Microsoft, though. The Xbox team has continued to push out meaningful system updates that can either make minor or more substantial improvements to the user experience. Xbox One consoles in particular have also benefited from updates like Xbox Cloud Gaming , even though Microsoft ended Xbox One S production in 2021 .
But please, turn it on
It’s admittedly frustrating that the feature is off by default, though, as I’ve encountered a number of people who understandably don’t even realize it’s there. There’s really no downside to muting TV audio if you’re using a headset, either, as I’ve never understood why you’d want the TV speaker on in the first place.
So the next time you’re despairing at your teammate that you can hear their TV, tell them about this setting. One day, we’ll finally be able to eradicate this annoying scenario for good.
Consider this article a call to action, then, because I implore anyone who has an Xbox console to turn on ‘Mute speaker audio when headset is attached’ right now for the good of the community’s ears and blood pressure levels.