Students Build Chainsaw Powered Trike to Travel Around Campus [Video]
A pair of student from Georgia Tech were looking for an innovative way to travel around campus, so they used a chainsaw and a trike, and combined them to create what is possibly the first ever Chainsawtrike.
Every time you move the camera in Horizon Zero Dawn, the game is doing all sorts of under-the-hood calculations, loading and unloading chunks of world to ensure that it all runs properly. And that’s not even counting the robot dinosaurs.
In a new 45-minute documentary produced by the Dutch organization VPRO, the developers at Guerrilla Games give us a fascinating glimpse at how they created their post-post-apocalyptic versions of Colorado and Utah. One of my favorite parts is the GIF above, at around 18:16 in the documentary, which shows how the game is secretly rendering giant chunks of terrain on the fly as you move your camera around.
You can watch it all here. Make sure to put on English captions—some of it is in Dutch.
Although some of the documentary is fluff, it’s worth watching if you’re into Horizon Zero Dawn and want to know more about how it was made. Games like this don’t just look incredible because of ‘hyper-realism’ but because their engineers use all sorts of tricks to save memory. Trees, for example. You won’t notice this when you’re playing the game, but when you’re far away from a tree in Horizon Zero Dawn, it’s actually an ugly, static, 2D image:
But when you get up and personal with the trees, you’ll see these nice 3D models:
This process, which at this point has become common in open-world games, helps conserve memory, which allows games like Horizon to show you a whole lot of pretty graphical models at once without sacrificing performance. Game development: It’s complicated!
Because the uprising has to begin sometime, this is a video of Russian humanoid robot F.E.D.O.R. (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) blasting away with two handguns. But don’t worry, guys, this totally isn’t a Terminator. *rolls eyes so hard my contacts are in my skull now*
"The robot of the F.E.D.O.R. platform showed skills of firing using both arms. Currently the work on fine motor skills and decision algorithms is underway," [Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry] Rogozin wrote on his Twitter.
​According to Rogozin, training to shoot is a way of teaching the robot to instantaneously prioritize targets and make decisions.
"We are not creating a terminator but artificial intelligence which will have a great practical importance in various fields," he added.
F.E.D.O.R. is also supposed to take a trip to the International Space Station by 2021, where it will murder everyone on board before claiming all of outerspace for the robots. It will then weaponize the station and use it to destroy any ships trying to leave earth. I think I just wrote a screenplay. I’m going to name it….Star Wars.
Keep going for the video.
Thanks to Magnus, FearlessFarris and Jenness, who agrees we need to get James Bond on stopping this, pronto.
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California governor Jerry Brown recently declared an end to the state of emergency brought on by his state’s historically terrible drought. It’s a mid-level miracle, assisted by record rainfall earlier this year. If you don’t believe me, just look at these before and after images.
If you’ve ever tried to watch YouTube when it’s dark out, you know that the typical bright white of the video service’s page can be a bit blinding. Enter "Dark Mode," a hidden feature that turns the light surfaces black or dark gray so you can get on with those cat videos without all that glare.
1. Open console
2. Paste: document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=fPQ4jCL6EiE"
3. Reload
4. Click your avatar
5. Dark mode!
Enabling the mode is fairly simple, provided you’re using an up-to-date Chrome browser. You’ll need to access the browser’s developer tools and paste in some text from the Tweet above, refresh your browser, and then toggle the mode on in the menu you get when you click on your avatar. You can easily turn the mode off, too, though you only have to use the console command once.
It’s an easy, semi-official way to save you some eye strain. Even though Dark Mode hasn’t been announced by YouTube yet, it could be a great regular feature that may not require all the extra steps in the near future. Why not give it a try now?
On Friday, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) updated its website to reflect that Apple now has a permit to test self-driving cars on public roads.
Apple has been hiring automotive experts—particularly those with experience in autonomous driving—for years. (In 2015, Tesla CEO Elon Musk even taunted the company saying, “If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple.â€) But the company has long kept quiet about its aspirations. That began to change in December, when Apple wrote a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) saying that it was “investing heavily†in machine learning to support autonomous systems, especially in transportation.
The update on the California DMV website confirms that, after years of speculation, Apple is serious about building self-driving car software.
Getting an autonomous-car testing permit with the California DMV requires that a company fill out an application to test its technology and take out an insurance policy for any vehicles equipped with it. Companies testing self-driving cars must keep logs of disengagements, or times when the car had to be taken out of self-driving mode for safety or other reasons.
California’s relatively strict testing rules haven’t deterred companies from seeking testing permits. Uber was a notable hold-out—it refused to apply for a self-driving permit in December after it launched its self-driving car pilot program. California then revoked the registrations of the company’s cars, so Uber took its test cars to Arizona, where no such registration is required. But a few months later, Uber filed all the appropriate paperwork anyway and is currently permitted to test its technology on California roads.
According to Bloomberg, Apple’s California permit “covers three 2015 Lexus RX540h SUVs and six drivers.†Ars contacted Apple for more information, but we have not yet received a response.
Was the Segway ahead of its time, or just an overhyped product that could have never lived up to the anticipation? Being pricier than a used car didn’t help the original Segway’s chances, but at least now, electrical engineer Olaf Winkler has solved that problem with a ball-based self-balancing scooter that features a thousand dollar price tag.
While the Segway balances riders on a pair of large wheels, Winkler’s Üo uses what looks like a soccer or basketball, but it’s actually a solid sphere of rubber that can support a rider’s weight without deforming. To maintain balance, and to propel the Üo in any direction, three motors spin that giant rubber ball using a trio of specially-designed wheels that can rotate in multiple directions.
It means the Üo is more complicated than the Segway in terms of its hardware, with more areas where it can fail, but the unique design also potentially makes it safer. Because the ball can move in any direction, the Üo can ensure it always remains directly below the rider’s center of gravity, making it hard to fall over—assuming the software powering the self-balancing mechanics is working as it should.
Using a small joystick at the end of a long handle, the Ãœo rider can also be spun 360-degrees without the ball moving, making it more maneuverable than the Segway, and easier to navigate crowded areas without bumping into pedestrians.
Winkler has been working on the Üo since 2010 and has finally made his creation available to anyone who loved the idea of the Segway, but couldn’t afford the steep price tag. However, you’ll still need to cough up a little north of $1,300 to contribute to Winkler’s Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in order to secure one. That’s considerably more expensive than a self-balancing hoverboard, but there seems to be less risk here of you ending up on YouTube after a nasty fall.
As with any Kickstarter campaign, there’s always the risk of a product not coming to fruition, or unseen problems delaying its delivery. That’s especially important to remember in this case, given the creators of the original Segway had millions of dollars to develop and perfect it, and the product is still considered a failure. Winkler left his job to pursue his dream of building the Üo, which is risky, but maybe by his efforts Will Arnett’s automotive of choice will finally get its moment in the spotlight.
