deanb

I've downloaded a VR game that might be compatible (got an ocoulus rift one cos they're "sit down" ones). Gonna trial it out at some point, just haven't yet. .... ... I guess I'm about to do this. I'll respond in a bit I guess. edit: So I tried to launch "Colosse" which is one of the free VR games on Steam, but it carried on dropping the connection. Grabbed "The Night Cafe" from their store, many of their stuff is all free demo pieces n such, and it's quite thematic cos it's based on the paintings of Van Gogh, and it worked pretty damn great. Only major issues really is my lenses are a bit murky now, and I need to pick up a strap cos doing this one handed is a pain, and also controlling a keyboard while it's behind you is a bit funky but that'll be same issue other VR headsets have. So yeah, it's easy enough to sign up and trial it out n worked pretty fine for me. It seems from the syncing set-up (which I just ran through "automatic" and it was instant) you need a N wi-fi but that's pretty common these days. So yeah, I wouldn't say go out n start buying games for use in this, but if you've Cardboard and maybe a game that supports VR then it's worth the 5 minutes of your time it takes to set-up. edit 2: Oh I'm on a GTX 760, so regardless it's not gonna run blazing quality games. Also it seemed my screen was maybe a lot brighter for this than it needed to be cos there was definete exposure difference between what was on my phone n it been much darker on my PC.

I'm really hopeful for this, seems they're doing really well in picking up what to retain from the games and what to change. The new animus is the big one, since watching someone laying down for a chunk of the film would suck, and would help in better explaining the "bleed" effect that allowed Desmond to escape Abstergo n later fight off Templars in ACII. It's much more visual compelling too, as a gamer you don't care that your PC is laying down on the job with a video game controller in hand. The parkour is suitably unreal, and loving the bit at the end and hoping that he lands in a pile of hay and makes nothing of it. Some nods to like picking up feathers or something would be neat. Also the graphics with all those NPCs on screen is amazing!! And hey for the time period...no one expected the spanish inquisition My only issue is the music choice. Also seemingly no Danny Wallace (at least yet, but totally needs to be in the sequel)

This looks like it'll be quite neat. Quite a Korra-style of animation.

Except the Humanities, which would make it SHTEAM. Languages too, and I'm not sure if English comes under Arts or Humanities it's an extremely broad subject (heck, was split in two for the GCSEs). Also PE I guess, which more comes under "acceptable childhood torture" than any other bracket. Also being STEAM is kinda weird cos I've always seen STEM in a "totally separate from the Arts, which are beneath us" kind of way. The "hard" subjects opposed to the "soft" subjects.

Yeah. I think these days the push is more towards the Iron Man style UI in the likes of Holo Lens n VR.

Kinda neat, though be curious on the applications.

So how frequent is "STEM" in like regular human conversation, cos it seems to be semi-common. I only have ever encountered it in recent years through consuming US media. Like over here I'd think if someone mentioned "stem" in conversation then you'd be like "as in a plant stem?". I don't think they're even joined much over here. Might have changed in recent years but when I was at school maths, science n english were the tentpole trifecta.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/289070 They're up on Steam already. Kinda limited atm but I imagine we'll have gameplay trailers n such upcoming, so far seems like a sort of visual polish of V.

You must feel like a right plonker for a lot of these (But then you look at the cheque ) Had seen the bit at the end with Winter Soldier earlier today and yeah that's..yeah. I'd love to see the thinking on the planning for that "So we gonna use a crane? put a camera on a wire? what's the plan?" "Why don't we just strap a camera guy to a zip wire n have him jump out a building?" http://i.imgur.com/vESj1.gifv (or) http://i.imgur.com/3lFHq.gifv (both work)

So it was questioned on me not posting anything here n mainly cos last time I properly did painting n such was well over a decade ago. But turns out I have photos of stuff so here is two pieces I've managed to dig out from my "Personal Investigation", which was into Van Gogh and accompanied a few thousand word essay alongside it into like his life, inspirations, painting technique n such. (IIRC this is a duplication of one of his smaller works. Man was a fucking machine. Everyone only really knows sunflowers n starry night but he painted like a man possessed...then shot himself in a field. Sad life. He was a preacher by training, for him art was his way of capturing gods beauty n all that.) This was my own work in style of the chosen artist, this is local (not so local anymore) hill "Roseberry Topping". I've been up there at 4AM with a bunch of drunk friends once IIRC this painting is actually based off a photograph by a semi-famous local photographer. Also here's my bigger piece which I love (and so does my grandma) but it's not a drawing or painting (it's an "installation" if you're wanting the arty-farty word. I was big on "installations". I did a shaving cabinet thing too, and also a set of blinds which is a fucking total pain to paint on to). It's called "Material Handling for Rainy Days: Glue, Bleach, Salt and I". Each page is textured in various ways (one is just a chunk of carpet tile) from ...well glue, wallpaper paste (which is great at various viscosities) my own home made paper, various textures done in plaster, some latex (also great to paint with). It's fragile as out like 10 years later n I'm afraid to remove it from it's packaging in my mums loft but oh it's so good. Each page has OHP overlay with instructions like a recipe book put on it. The sort of general concept from it was most pieces in a gallery are "do not touch", and the whole point of this is "touch away". Obviously photos won't do it justice but hey I could dig out the recipes n you can make your own. Also found this which I guess this day n age is probably doable in some free app but this was many hours of work in a £3,000 computer program 10 years ago: It was a great cheat. The crystals aren't transparent n refractive, they're all opaque and reflective But you get the same effect at first glance and it renders a shit ton faster (doing this properly in the day would have used up a PC rendering long enough my tutors would be rather upset with me). Also even less impressive I've a render of a paintbrush, which at the time doing hair at the "low" end £3000 package range was brand fire new, I had to teach my tutor how to do it I also found my research photographs from another piece I did, which I don't have anymore cos it weighed like 80lbs n was a good 10ft long but my teacher loved it n took it home with her after the show which was like...I can't remember the artist in question but it was a semi-sculpture of the ex-coal pits near my parents house. So like this scrubby marshland area all gunk n grey browns n dark greens. I suspect, assuming bit rot ain't set in, I might have it on a CD somewhere (that's how old it was, DVD-R was a rich mans toy, n I had my trusty 24MB pen drive). It was like 80% made from MDF hence the weight, n had actual samples from the scrubland used in its construction. Anywho, currently working on another painting (Well one of two), which you might have an idea of if you follow my Twitter cos I posted my reference material earlier today.

Oh apparently I didn't share the fun fact I found out about Pokemon a couple months ago. Some of you probably don't, but for the 10,000 this is for you: Pokemon don't evolve in a technically sense, since it's within a single lifespan, and in a more technical sense it would be metamorphosis that they go through to transform from one stage to another, much like many insects do. The problem is "metamorphosis" in Japan, while having different kanji(or whatever), is....hentai which is a homonym for a thing you don't want in a kids game. So that's the story of why it's evolution n all those extremist Christians got pissed at launch n poor kids grew up without Pokemon or Harry Potter.

Sun Moon starter reveal video. That Popplio looks terrible. Also a bit of a bummer there's only one dual type starter. figured that cat would be Fire/Dark at least.

I'm yet to watch, it's viewing for later this day though I know one of the plot points (cos the "trending subreddits" gave a bit away, not that I mind). Anyway figured I'd share this.

He's a VFX artist*, I think maybe goes for social commentary a bit too much. Less style recently too, like D9 was sort of his "baby", he'd fleshed it out a lot in his head, obviously did the short before hand. Really beautiful art direction. With Jackson it's as a producer and I'm always wary on that title cos a lot of time it's mainly to put the name on the film in some way, but others yeah there's more involvement either in being directly on set to help or having contacts to hook you up with people, or just raw funds. It's the least useful job title ever to work out what the person does. Given D9 uses Weta for its VFX n Chappie doesn't I imagine the main thing for Peter was hooking Blomkamp up with Weta. I imagine there was some sort of protege thing going on which didn't really pan out, compared to Jackson n Serkis (who is one of my fave people in the industry n gets nowhere near the credit he deserves). *Though so was Gareth Edwards n Godzilla was pretty great and we'll see if it continues with Rogue One.

I've got that on my watch list, cos like...yeah Blomkamp, but on the otherhand something about it has seemed kinda "meh". Not hearing much about it post-release isn't helping sway that meh feeling much.

I know there's Fifth Element ones around but yet to see any in my local geek stores. I'm not a huge fan of them myself, overall seem quite tacky but I guess they're cheaper than higher quality models/figures (like the £100 Gypsy Danger one store has/had)

Yeah hoping for FFXII but I reckon that's maybe some ways out. I don't know if to condemn or commend their Steam release strategy, since we had FFIX go up end of 2015 listed as "Early 2016" then suddenly change to launching in April followed by this popping up in the database, then suddenly being "yeah this'll be out in two days". I won't be buying though, I got the HD remaster on PS4 only just last year, but strongly recommend it to anyone yet to play it. Pretty solid line-up n after FFXII one of the better Final Fantasies for a HD upscale (FFXII actually has HD-quality textures cos it wasn't sure if it'd be a PS3 game or not, and it looks sweet just running in PCSX2). It's my go to "my first final fantasy" recommendation, the battle system is rather forgiving and best of all obvious, like it's "red barrels explode" kind of enemies and I really like that. Playing FFIX and while I love it none of the elemental weaknesses really make much sense (the "this is undead, throw a phoenix down on it" or "this is stone, throw a Soft on it" enemies are really the only obvious ones). The way Aeons play was a great step-up from essentially just being super-powerful black magic of the old games. Solid voice cast too. Some meta-humour to be derived from Bender advocating against machines (though it's not beyond Bender to do that either).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playstation.U4 If you're wanting to take not-Uncharted 4 on the go

Soldier 76 is clearly made as the "jack of all trades". He's the tutorial character after all (the tutorial should be tweaked to make point of the fact different characters have different skills, not everyone is going to use shift to run fast). Bastion is the "living turret". He's fun, though being slow is annoying but makes sense I guess. I reckon there should maybe be a pre-defence speed burst or something so you're not spending most the set up walking all the way from the spawn to the defence area. Like most turrets he's mainly a case of finding a nice spot. Oh yeah another thought on the damage feedback (which there is the whole "vision goes red" stuff but for when you're dead), be nice to have a timer for when you use his ultimate so you're not now in the middle of the fray n moving slow. Should note the lag for me was purely on our end, the net died like an hour later.

I had some terrible lag the other day, and while it doesn't rubberband it does sort of...tug at you. It feels like there's someone plugged with another mouse in your computer moving you around n a bit annoying.

I dunno, I'll give a spin.

https://riftcat.com/vridge So this is kind of neat, lets you run VR games using current Cardboard set-up. Obviously it's only a bit of a stop-gap but it's neat to play with. I'm probably gonna give a spin later, need to get some elastic for my headset (I swear I've some kicking around somewhere. I guess push to shove string will do fine)

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/ansel-revolutionizing-game-screenshots This is pretty neat, be nice functionality to have cos sometimes the screenshots you can take are a bit funky. Shadow of Mordor had this kind of stuff and I quite liked the ability to mess around in-situ with the framing n effects n such.

Yeah Route 66 is a major PITA for attackers. Only got a few wins in that, defence you can hold really well in that first garage area since attackers all come from pretty much the same area there and you've got 3 different approaches. My fave maps are the king of the hill ones. London is probably the most balanced in my opinion for the objective ones. Mei is a bit of a bugger too, more annoying that the tips given after being killed by her are totally useless. There's no way to move out her way when she starts freezing you too, I experimented n found that Pharah flying up can't get out the way so you just fall like a stone. (then get popped in the head). There's certainly a bit of funky mix with people usually not really playing the right parts, like playing Defence and you'll have a bunch of offence characters. (Though I did once convince a team to play fully Pharah with one Mercy healer....we lost terribly).