hey
let's start the show for thursday
september 3rd
2020 welcome to this is only a test the
official podcast
of tested.com
hey that wasn't bad at all oh that was
great that was pretty good
well done chloe we have to thank for
that yes thank you chloe for making
that intro piece for us um we are going
through
the submissions that you out there have
sent please send
keep on sending them we want more here
more intros
you know keep them 15-20 seconds in
length try
whatever musical style that you like
whatever you think
what goes on in your head as you listen
to this podcast
and this week it is a duo cast because i
got jeremy williams here
it's looking quite bocalicious
in in the video i thought we'd try it
out i've got the
the sony a72 running the new software
that they released a couple weeks ago
that allows you to use it as a webcam
they're kind of late to the party
but they got there and yes grateful and
this is how it looks
we'll see how it works i don't know if i
have if i will last the entire podcast
because i don't think i can actually get
power over usb
so we're running on battery and we'll
see how it goes
that's quite a limitation right we're
gonna run into zoom's time limit or your
cameras power limit that's no there's
gotta be
i guess your camera probably has a way
to do uh ac power
if you like there's a um the a7 ii
probably
i haven't used in a while but i bet
where the battery goes in there's a
little tab where
you can buy a special battery that fits
in the compartment
but then a wire comes out of that that
you plug into uh
the outlet yeah right that must exist
but i do not own it
yeah i'd say if this podcast works out
well if this podcasting
thing works out well jeremy you should
look into that you can even get a
generic one for pretty cheap on
i'll expense it yeah yeah no no you
won't
nice your room looks even better in this
under this lens it's not warped at least
yeah
i'm just saying the colors are deeper
they're a little more saturated the
natural lighting looks great
everything about this high production
quality well done
how's things going with you this past
week as well
are you breathing that fresh air out
there i don't even think it's
you know green yet but it has been
yellow which is better than orange
and uh you know it's that kind of thing
here in the bay area we smell smoke most
days if we walk outside
and we we have been instructed to wear a
new type of mask
in addition to the standard uh covet 19
mask we need masks that also protect us
from the smoke so
some people are wearing two at once um
and that's just that's just
the new normal here we are 20 20. i
refuse to accept that this is normal
and it will at least hopefully the
firefighters
um the fires will be less of an issue
going forward i
mean and the firefighters are doing an
incredible job
and you know they're putting themselves
multiple levels of risk
out there so every year it's kind of
crazy yeah yeah
yeah yeah um i left the window open in
my office and it definitely smelled like
i've been laser cutting all night
right the next day so yeah it's not
quite what you want to wake up to
um but yeah uh on my end uh
staying indoors doing some weekend
assembly um
there's a video that would be putting
out in a couple weeks time
hopefully before we are one month away
from
the release of star wars squadrons bt
dubs i meant to mention that this is
great this is fantastic how are you
preparing yourself
i am preparing uh physically with
lots of stretching uh lots of vr
playing for endurance i have now set up
my hotas setup
and you can see it just to the right of
the frame here
but next to my table here is now
a full simulator cockpit
it's just the cockpit it's not a motion
simulator it's not it doesn't like move
on any x or anything
moving ergonomically yeah you got the
butt kicker on there and you got your
shoes that you can wear so it's kind of
a motion simulator i mean a little bit
i have rumbles there are rumbles on
multiple points
uh and and also for feedback on the
steering wheel as well but
for the hotel setup it's i mean
part of the video and i'm going to not
give too much away but it's going to be
a kind of a hierarchy of
if you want to enhance your flight sim
experience or your
squadron's experience what are the the
things that are kind of extravagances
and what are the things that
are you know that immediately give you a
lot of benefit
um and obviously a a flight stick is
going to be
incredible although i bet the game will
be a lot of fun even without the flight
stick
um but like the haptic feedback i think
is
really high up there i think there's
going to be an interesting line
between uh like enjoyment and
capability like ability to play the game
well
i don't think those two are necessarily
going to ven i think that that playing
with
a vr headset will have certain
advantages
it will also have certain disadvantages
because there's a lot of maneuvers that
you're going to be able to do
in this game like swooping 180s and
just crazy you know camera control that
you might find nauseating and so i'm not
sure people will be
you know quite as free with their flight
you know abilities as they would
just on a flat screen um on the other
hand you'll be able to see around
yourself a lot better you'll be able to
look out the windows in all directions
you might have a better sense of
presence and being there and where your
enemy might be
and it's going to be more immersive
almost certainly more fun like if you
just want to be in the star wars
universe
but i i do wonder if like if the best
players will be in vr
oh i don't know i i it's a really good
question i
it goes i think that that's true with so
much of
competitive gaming in general where
immersion and
success don't go hand in hand where you
had people turning down
the graphic fidelity on their cards so
they can better see enemies at a
distance and draw distances and that
kind of stuff where
you know i'm always of the mindset where
i want to be more immersed in the fun i
have even if it's single player if
it's not directly against enemies if i
can play in my head
being the character that i've always
wanted to be in star wars
in this game i'm gonna go for that me
too
and that's exactly what abs 100 and i
think we're going to have
the most fun possible playing with
friends in that case
because if we do try to go into the
competitive matches uh
it's it's going to be like uh rocket
league or anywhere else where it's just
you know
chat spam and people are disappointed
with me and i i
end up feeling depressed at the end of
the day so um
play with me norm when the game comes
out play with me
and we can we will play for the playing
aspect
less for the high score aspect we can
get more
more toward the sim that's what
simulators are for right i think like
simulators
people enjoy simulation games because of
the the role playing i think you start
speaking in
using the lexicon of that world and all
the shorthand
and yeah that's that's fine that's play
that's that's the kind of playhouse
stuff that the the sandbox experience we
all wanted when we were
when we were little kids so absolutely
is there co-op in this not even
no i know the single player those
multiplayer is there a
co-op like campaign uh like i'm
i'm not sure i guess the way that it
would work is if you can play against ai
just play the multiplayer with bots on
the other team that's right
i imagine it would work i don't i doubt
that that preamble thing is a co-op
experience i think that's probably
single player
yeah i know the multiplayer campaign
quote-unquote campaigns are
supposed to be sprawling they're it's
not just going to be your death mass
skirmish there's going to be tier levels
of back and forth the push and pull
and so yeah we'll do that absolutely all
right well then let's move on
to our top story
top story this week now we're going to
start with the tech story which i know
is not necessarily the store in
everyone's mind but it is relevant to
what essentially is the theme of the
show which is technology news
and this is something that we knew was
coming we didn't know the details of
there have been leaked
specs and benchmarks but uh
nvidia has finally finally announced
their 3000 series gpus
and whether it's
the competition from amd or where they
are in their architecture
this looked fantastic like there was all
good news out of this to a point where
i was really worried about supply
maybe the the state of cryptocurrency is
such they won't be as in high demand and
and
people aren't going to be banking their
cards to do some mining
but let's talk about the lineup so the
3000 series got the 30 70 to 30 80 and
now a 30
90 of their ampere cores uh this is of
course all
rtx things that they've been pushing for
since the 2000 series
um and the big number they showed was at
their 30 80
it's twice the performance of the 2080
ti boom how much is the 20 80
i was gonna ask that's a thousand dollar
card yeah wow
i didn't know that this presentation was
coming and the way i found out about it
was i heard
shrieking coming from the other room as
my
my 13 year old son started screaming dad
dad the new nvidia cards are being
announced
and he ran in to tell me i was like well
son i i'm in the middle of some work i
can't check right now but he was he was
giving me the download that everything
that that happened and then of course i
read up about it but yeah
um the the 3080 is what i'm waiting for
personally because i have a 1080 right
now i skipped the 20 series
um and i'm i think this is like i made
the right move the 20
compared to the 10 it didn't seem like
that much of a leap well
they added the rtx features the ray
tracing but in terms of like you know
gigaflops it was it wasn't terribly
impressive
well not only that that performance
update because it really was a feature
update
and the pricing was also at a point
where they did not have the competition
they were doing so well
demand was so high because of
cryptocurrency mining
people were burning out their 10 series
cards that they were really in a
position of
strength there and not to say they're
not here but you know amd wasn't pushing
them as hard either
and so the 10 10 000 series right the
the
pascal series um of cards were a huge
jump in terms of power efficiency
in terms of uh just how much you know
how much performance they had
and so they were able to milk that a lot
over the
900 series 28 series you know what
didn't it was
honestly it was overpriced right you're
talking about a thousand dollars at the
ti edition
the 700 that again if you got a 1080 and
the games the hardware that displays
that point we're talking about
mid-generation um console ports
or on the pc side most people still
playing at
1920 you know p resolution and maybe 144
hertz you want to get that the 1080s
were fantastic that vr
being a kind of
a requirement for or something to
increase the need for
the extra processing power and the gpus
everything at that point the
the rift the the vive right we're
talking about pre
index pre reverb even the windows
mixture
headsets with a higher resolution that
ran all fine on
the pascal series cards you haven't had
any disappointments
no but i'm also only running i am
running vr but i'm also i don't have
super high res monitors i don't have 4k
monitors
um so i and i also i mean i'm not
i i'm at the point in my life where i'm
like i don't need to max my settings out
to make myself feel good
you know i mean that that's always the
chicken and egg with with pc gamers is
like
you know do you have the system that can
run crisis
at max settings um or do you just want
to play the game uh
i'm more of the just play the game kind
of guy but um
i i mean i'm assuming that we're
going to enter into a a new generation
of vr over the next year and i'm going
to want
as much power as i can get and sounds
like you know the
3000 series is right on time for that
i'm excited about it
so they have a chart that they put out
that kind of is price against
um relative performance because
performance is a tricky thing that's why
the reviews are so important because of
the configurations because of
uh you know the the engines that you're
you're testing this on like all this
stuff needs to be
contextualized but based on their kind
of arbitrary metric for relative
relative performance the 3080 is two
times the speed of a 2080
not the ti sorry the 2080 uh and
definitely
over two times the speed of a 1080 ti
from that pascal generation and it's
gonna be 700
which i know we've like that sounds
great
because in the context of how expensive
the last generation was
it doesn't sound overpriced but 700 is
still a lot of money
for a graphics card it might even be
more than a ps5
pro i mean i i would say it's very safe
to say that's more expensive than the
psp
yeah well me too and we don't know i'm
just suggesting that we don't know yet
we don't know that's right the 30 70
will be priced at 500
and the 70 lines has always been that
really nice sweet spot for performance
and price and 500 which used to be if
you think about 10 years ago that was
the most you want to pay for a high-end
graphics card but this you know they
kind of like
established sweet spot is 500 bucks the
high-end 700 and then for those with
unlimited budgets there's also now the
30
90 the bf gpu
and uh that will be what is that uh
so dubbed by john carmack on twitter
well no they said it in the
jensen put it in in the presentation oh
from his kitchen
yeah that's great i i just saw it it was
on a slide
um the 3090
is gonna be 1500
and their whole thing is that it's going
to be capable of
8k resolutions at 60 fps
known as ak monitor no one plays games
on ak monitor
that really tells me that this is for
you know
vr essentially but it's also it is a
massive card like
you need how many slots for that thing
i don't know how many slots yeah that is
big
it's i mean it's one big pci but um the
flagship card
right it's like you know whatever their
titan was september 24th 500
um interestingly enough so
new power adapters these are 12 pin
power connectors from your power supply
and most
psus don't have that so they're gonna
ship with an adapter for
two eight pins and i think some of the
partner cards
like coming from asus will just use the
two eight pin connectors but nvidia is
pushing this new
12-pin one which might make installation
easier because it's always been kind of
finicky to do like an eight pin and a
six pin or two eight pins that's
one of those places where my finger
always gets caught on something
uh it's going to have all your you know
standard support hdmi 2.1 for bandwidth
you know all your hdr output and
everything
and no virtual link
which yeah just just went away yeah
i i guess it was because
valve never really jumped on board it
even though there was some official
support from you know from oculus in the
early days
um the bandwidth over which wasn't going
to be
enough for how long you needed a vr
cable to be
and it really points to you know valve
maybe pushing
for wireless solution this is what's
going to be the vr
the single port that would allow you to
transfer everything you needed power and
data
to a vr headset from your graphics card
yeah essentially a usb
c type connector right one cable power
and the video signal just not enough
bandwidth for the frame rates needed
you know obviously with the index one up
to 144 hertz and also
the signal strength over the length of
cable you would want
for vr do you know if all of the cards
that they announced will use the same
power connector this new 12-pin
uh i know at least that's uh the 3080
and the 3090
way because sometimes i've been in the
in the case where like my existing power
supply doesn't have
the enough to you know power the the
higher cards so i have had to opt for
the for the 70 series or the 60 series
so i wonder if that's going to be the
case or not or if they finally just
standardized the power requirements
across all their cards
yeah they just all need all the power
we're back to the footlongs too the
30 90 is 31 almost
31.5 centimeters so
do the conversion to imperial that is
over a foot long of a car that's
compared to 28
centimeters for the 30 80 and you're
right it will be wider too it'll take
three pci slots
that's a massive card a 350 watts of
drain just on that card minimum
power supply required will be 750 watt
and that's assuming you don't have
you know power hunger cpus and drives
and all your other accessories that will
eat that up
yeah crazy crazy availability is soon
right 24th for the 30 90 i think the
16th 17th i want to say 17th
for the 30 80 and uh our partners are
taking pre-orders
don't know how supply constrained
they're going to be like this is
one that is back on the rise it's almost
at 12 000 now i feel like that's like
the threshold for when it used to make
sense to people to start mining again
i hate that right now yeah
yeah i mean
he did say it's this card is for you
jeremy this
is pascal users 1080 series 10
1000 series users it's now safe to
upgrade they're very aware
of how the upgrade cycle for users and
it's been
you know well over a couple years since
that launch so
all right yeah you're going to pick one
up you're picking one up for your kid
no what are you joking god no
how were you though when he ran into the
room when you heard screaming
that your son you know was was so
into i'm not talking like an apple
keynote
like this is this is a gpu keynote
yeah right honestly right there uh it
was more like what have i done
i mean he's got he's got a wonderful
hand-me-down like 10
70. it's a great card it has never
failed him and yet he's still
he has he's already at 13. he has this
lust
for you know the pc master race perfect
pc
uh i don't know does he run benchmarks
like is he is he downloading 3dmark and
is he like
trying to get on top of those
leaderboards what's
there was a day of that when he but when
he assembled his new pc
yeah there was yeah that so i'm sure he
would love to
be even faster did you see the the
videos they put out like the the marvel
the lighting
demos where they showed what rts x
brings with this new generation of cards
no i was curious about that no i'd love
to see that there's
uh i think um who has some good
screenshots and rs technical problems
some green shots we can find them on
youtube but they have this
this render of what it looks like of
course without the shaders of just
geometry with the shaders on now they're
getting really ambitious with
so many bouncing lights soft glows and
but the biggest comparison i mean maybe
i can find the link
to share with you on slack
um yeah if you just go to like rs
technica's page
halfway down ah they might not be the
one maybe it was end gadgets but there
are these screenshots of like what it
would look like
before rtx and the thing that struck me
was that
it's an aesthetic oh it's there's some
of it that's almost an aesthetic choice
like we've been so trained to see what
lighting rendered lighting looks like
from render demos from real-time
gameplay
yeah that in my mind someone just looks
you know it may look hyper real or might
look
like the they do some cheats for
overblowing some of the
objects you know really high exposure so
they don't have to do
some of the the more subtler effects and
the nuance that ray tracing brings
is something i think users will have to
get accustomed to it's almost like a
switch from
uh non-hdr to hdr it's not just that
it's brighter but there's more nuance in
the the spectrum of brightness here and
here it's more nuanced in the amount of
light that's bounced between the objects
and it's i don't think i i think people
are
my point is that people are gonna have
to kind of retrain their brain
to to recognize the benefits what
realism looks like because it's all
believable like you look like
something from two generations ago and
you and even stuff that has you know
hard baked in lights like
it can look believable it's photorealism
isn't just like a
isn't just one like this this checkbox
of like
okay now it's photoreal right there's a
range of what photoreal
can mean as long as it makes your brain
think that it's
a real thing right it seems like each
generation of graphics cards
allows developers to stop using tricks
and start
using the real deal and uh in ray
tracing it's certainly a huge step in
that
direction and you know what i'm i'm
actually just as
anxious or you know excited about ray
tracing from the standpoint of what can
it bring
to other aspects of game design than i
am to visuals because you can apply the
same
technologies to sound reflections
uh you can apply it to collisions so if
you
send objects off and and you you want to
pre-calculate where it's going to be
you can do insanely complicated
calculations
um before you have to display anything
to the user so i mean it has
far-reaching ramifications and i'm so
i'm just excited to have that technology
on board now
besides the fact that you know this
eventually could lead to a pixar quality
rendering that we uh have enjoyed for
decades now from the movie studios
light and gravity do move at the same
pace you can do gravitational
calculations
thank you raytracing yep isn't that true
yeah i don't know let's ask for sure
yeah he's not here
sorry our silent third party not here
uh all right uh
i really want to get one of these cards
great do it
it's 700 bucks i'm i and
i'll wait for the benchmarks we'll see
if we can do some benchmarks ourselves
but for vr specifically
you know that reverb g2 i want to run
that native resolution i want to bump it
up
and exactly um yeah very exciting all
right
let's move on to pop culture
all right so we got to talk about of
course the
sudden and unfortunate um and really
devastating passing of
chadwick boseman um this came with a
shock to
everyone i i you know i think it's safe
to say
and uh the effects of which i think
we're all still kind of
dealing with certainly in the
fan community um but just the
appreciation of him
as an actor um and as a role model
and as honestly a symbol you know in
terms of representation
in film um and pop culture uh
his loss is staggering and i've
just been it's been real tough even to
read a lot of these remembrance pieces
because it just it it brings to bear
but what was lost you know and what will
never have which is more performances
and uh sounds like a wonderful human
being
ryan coogler wrote an a wonderful uh
remembrance of him
where he revealed the director obviously
a black panther
he revealed he didn't know he didn't
know up until
the day it happened this week um that
uh that he had cancer at all so that and
he was busy writing he was busy
scripting the sequel
to black panther you know for the past
year writing words that he would
eventually say
i mean so that i mean just speaks to the
level of privacy that chadwick boseman
had about this issue
and which is such a generous thing to
have done in a way
you know just to have kept that to
himself while he was giving so much i
mean
this this death more than i don't know
we've we've lost several celebrities
this year and it's been heartbreaking
but
this one really especially hit home for
me just because i feel like his
his work really mattered you know i feel
like he was doing work that that made a
difference
and and we need more of it we need more
of it this year especially
yeah the the fact that you know he knew
even back when he was cast as black
panther and
gave so much of himself that generosity
the the roles he did you know playing
not just of course t'challa and black
panther but also
uh jackie robinson and um james brown
and like like it
i think it all it makes us all kind of
try to reconcile with mortality and that
the time we have and i think
hopefully it gives us a better
appreciation for you know the people in
our lives and what we want to do in the
world
and i we certainly you know i can't
speak for
what he meant for so many people that he
represented right on film
um uh and it's just like it's it's
heartbreaking
and um we'll never watch black panther
the same way again but at least
absolutely will appreciate
that role for sure yeah
um moving on
to
netflix this is a a surprise
and something worthy of discussion i i'm
almost going to wait till
we're done absolutely talk about this
more
as this announcement become develops
more but are you talking about the three
body problem
the three body problem yes which for
fans of tested
and our podcasts it's something you know
that we it's a book that we
we're big fans of uh it's a trilogy of
books
um and i know will's gonna have a lot to
say about it so we might get an
opportunity to maybe bring him on the
podcast to get his thoughts on it but
the news is that netflix is adapting
this as a show
and who's adapting it were the previous
showrunners of game of thrones
um that's david benioff and d.b weiss
uh this is their big project after you
know they had previously announced that
they were going to do a show with hbo
that then got cancelled because it
clearly wasn't the right project
to put out in this moment and i i think
we're going to be agreed on that
but they signed this huge deal with
netflix
and they're going to make this show and
among the list of producers
uh are uh ryan johnson
also really yeah god everybody's behind
this one
i mean so you tell me are you optimistic
about this
i mean it's sort of like it sounds like
a dream team to me
i have not read the book all right so i
don't know
if you know you feel like this if they
need someone a little more avant-garde
or who might be coming at it from
a different you know less mainstream
kind of approach
but this is sort of like spielberg
directing ready player one was like okay
that's perfect
uh it sounds to me like this is the
shoe-in i mean
i would say the only appropriateness is
that
these shell runners have a lot of
experience adapting
from complicated text to screen which
game of thrones absolutely was
uh unlike game of thrones thankfully
this is a completed story
and so they're not going to be inventing
things on their own hopefully obviously
up to every adaptation is a
transformation
in in medium and even the books
themselves you know the localization
of translating from the original chinese
um
to english was done by science fiction
writer ken liu
who is going to be a consulting producer
on this so that gives me
hope that you know that the themes won't
be
hopefully as lost in translation because
we're talking about from chinese to
english
then culturally to the screen
and so much of the book is high concept
there are you know ideas of virtual
reality
of metaverses of um
hard science fiction like real hard
science fiction that
i i'm gonna struggle to see
uh i struggle in my mind to see how they
can be adapted but also
there are some core themes of the book
that are tied to
uh the cultural revolution in china it's
an all-star history book essentially
yeah when i learned that i i looked up
to see if the book was ever banned by
the chinese government
apparently it wasn't even like no bans
no censorship of any kind even though
the the book does
take a uh you know negative um
perspective on the on the chinese
government um and
that that's a complex topic right like
of its it's kind of it's uh criticism of
the government of certainly
certainly of the the um
the suffering that happened during the
cultural revolution and i hope these are
themes that will not be
backed away against because they might
not gel with
um what netflix thinks is their audience
and so i really hope that people pushing
this on netflix
will let this stand and maybe even see
this as a way to
not just tell a story for a kind of a
us-based audience so more of an
international audience because it's a
big story
yeah yeah i mean it sounds great to me
are you
looking forward to it absolutely i mean
like this is one of those things i would
love to see adapted in some form and
then
it's been adapted like there is i think
a film in china about the three-body
problem
um that you can you can find and you can
watch uh and there's also
uh i think there's like a a stage play
i saw recently of this so it's
definitely it's a popular story
and this will be just an adaptation i
think what's hard to do is
separate adaptations from the original
source material because people fans
want adaptations want the visual
representation to be as
canonical and as defined and i
understand that because i understand
there are only so many resources
you're only going to get so many chances
to put this much money
behind a topic you love a piece of
writing that you love
and so that's why fans feel invested in
this and i'd say
separate yourself from that like i'm
gonna keep my expectations low
be happy for them to surprise me the
book will always be the book
the translation can lose translation
will always be that version
and i'm glad we're gonna get this for
what it is and you know what if it's a
failure
right there's gonna be another
opportunity 30 years down the line dune
came out we're getting another dune at
the end of this year
right science fiction indoors there'll
be new stories to fall in love with um
so yeah that's good for his mind
you are a wise science fiction fan how
do you feel about
mulan which comes to disney plus this
weekend
for how much twenty five dollars thirty
bucks
thirty bucks thirty bucks to unlock
we've talked about this
extensively i'm still soured by the
disney decision i understand like even
parts of the world where theaters are
open
they're not putting this in theaters
which i i think is
such a disservice to the filmmakers and
the production team
who made this to be seen on a big screen
and i get the business decision behind
it because they want to find this is
their case study right this
is in this scenario in this unique time
with the data they know of people who
are subscribed to disney plus already
paying
you know seven bucks a month however
many per year
uh will they pay an additional amount
to add this to the service they kind of
have the data point of
onward already which was like how much
like how many people will watch it who
are already subscribers if we release a
like a film that was supposed to be in
theaters to disney plus for free they
have that metric
well they have three they had three
things they had and they had hamilton
well you oh you're right they have so
much data they have frozen remember
frozen two
they're happy did over a billion like
1.4 billion
in theaters internationally and then
they dropped on disney plus early
release right so they
got rid of their own rental sales
because they wanted to
bolster disney place so they have that
as their as a big valid data point
you're right but onward was a premiere
no it wasn't it wasn't theaters it was
the worst timing it was in theaters for
like
a week and a half right when theaters
were shutting down
they spent the money on the marketing oh
that's horrible didn't do great
and so then they tried to salvage it by
then
making a dizzy plus you know a soft
launch
there right the premiere titles and then
they had artemis fowl which again was a
movie that was supposed to be in
theaters
uh not well critically well reviewed and
dropping dizzy plus they have the
numbers of there
on how many people wanted to see that
hamilton of course which they dropped
you know 70 million dollars on
uh and then this film which they did at
premiere
right they had at an la a la
premiere they did all the marketing and
again the timing
i would say probably more
i don't even know if this is like
comparing to onward
makes sense like would i even happier if
mulan came on theaters
and did so poorly you know it would have
made so much money that first weekend
but yeah it's such a unique scenario and
we'll probably never have this case
again
where they put hundreds of millions of
dollars into making a movie and they
made a decision
to charge this much for it under a
service just for a data point
right so i'm wondering like if they if
well first of all of course i wonder if
this will happen again
because if it is a success i could see
this happening quite a lot
um but um i wonder if if they are
regretting not having charged for
onward or even hamilton you know or
something else
that they did bring for free i mean
obviously like those were
i know you say onward was in the theater
but most people didn't have a chance to
see it there
i think those were pretty much premieres
uh you know that people might have paid
a premium for
it's an interesting idea that that a
premium service can up charge for yet
another level of service
um so i don't know we'll see if if this
is a success or not i'm i'm
kind of betting against it despite the
fact that i'm going to drop 30 bucks on
it because my family's been looking
forward to it and
i as a family of four it actually makes
financial sense
um it does not make sense to me at all
that it's only on disney plus
i think we talked about this with
couture it should be everywhere there's
no reason to sell it only in disney plus
i mean
even if you you know i think you should
even be cheaper on disney plus like
if you're going to sell it there sell it
at a discount uh
and sell it everywhere else for a little
bit more of a premium but i
there are there's a rumor that this will
drop on disney plus for free
in december have you heard that i've
heard that make sense
i've heard that from multiple people
absolutely makes sense
they're considering the 30 that they
make from this as the box office sales
and when the movie would have then gone
on for rentals or
it will it'll be on itunes it'll be at
other places where you'll be able to buy
it and rent it like that's a
there's no reason that way that revenue
stream goes away you'll buy the the
blu-ray the hard copy right
at the same time they'll use it again to
bolster the disney plus
numbers um by making it part of the
streaming service
but dude you if you buy it on disney
plus
it's only on disney plus right it's true
yeah
so once it goes free that money is gone
because if you cancel your disney plus
subscription you lose it either way
uh whereas if you were able to buy it
somewhere else it would go into movies
anywhere
and then you can watch it on any app
what that you want
yeah so i mean yeah
it's a tricky scenario right the analogy
you're talking about is like
you know they would they would come to
you and mickey mr mickey the mouse would
say
hey
he asked for his bag of cash so you go
watch my movie in a theater and you
don't get to watch it anywhere else
right right but maybe that's a model
that needs a shift
maybe maybe that's a something going
forward where you go you pay
your price for the ticket at the theater
and then your voucher your ticket stub
gets you a discount to rent or buy the
film later
yeah right it's kind of the ebook
physical book model and that whole
debate
on that we'll see what happens i mean
it's a shame that these filmmakers
who are artists have to get their work
tied up in this experiment
you know i feel like that's that's a
shame like you were saying about the the
onward guys
who got the got the shaft on the
theatrical release of their film
uh you know but it's 2020
yeah strange times um here's a feature i
know you won't be using
but the rumor is and this is in the
javascript code
that disney will be launching a watch
party feature much like netflix
has on third-party sites for disney plus
so that you can sync up with your
friends and
watch a movie at the same time and maybe
even have some you know
however it's implemented chat
functionality or some type of group
viewing experience
not of interest for you no i i
man like i get upset if people yawn too
loudly like
i i don't have any interest in that um
my however my my family might uh my
daughter
had now does this weekly thing with her
friends in fifth grade
where they all sit in front of the tv
load up a movie and i'll hit play
at the same time and have a facetime
chat going and they just
watch a movie together and they love it
so i mean if they could have control
over
pausing simultaneously or some other
feature maybe they could make a
graphic show up on the screen and
everybody sees it great i bet that
disney will do this right
i think they'll probably have some fun
implementation of it that uh you know
the netflix hacks that we've seen do the
same thing or even amazon's
implementation which is pretty bare
bones with a little chat bar
you know everybody can sync up their
viewing experience i don't know i think
disney will do it right i'm curious to
see what they do
given how disappointed i am with disney
plus
as a user experience on the server on
the the app side so far
i doubt it there's so many bugs they
need to fix
that they just don't understand their
users they know that people watch
disney movies with their kids and kids
when they watch a movie it's not because
they just want to watch it the once
and then have it go back into the
library like when i add something to my
list
it's because i wanna i know i'm gonna
watch with my kid hundreds of times
don't take it off my list once it's
finished watching
like that's just the top of the like
they need to do
more focus groups and get better
feedback because it is not
the experience i want right now yeah i
guess
it's strange to see companies that are
have so much money
and are so successful in some realms try
to do software
just and just fail miserably just it's
uh
it's higher higher game developers
people and uh they'll do it right
or put more money in that department
yeah it sounds like this is an
accounting thing uh okay uh last bit is
that we're sticking with disney that
there's an announcement for
the season two release date for the
mandalorian
and it's gonna be october 30th
two months from now came up much sooner
than i thought it
feels like there's something that's ways
away but i guess
come that time we'll be like a year
since the premiere of the mandalorian
well it's just impressive given that the
production
halts that have had to occur this year
um i'm amazed that they were
able to do this i'd be i'm you know very
curious to find out how they pulled it
off
did they go to another country i know
that the matrix continued their filming
in new zealand for instance
like i'd be curious you know maybe they
just did it all you know and
closed sets in la who knows but it's uh
it's great i
i can't wait this is fantastic news yeah
yeah uh obviously
uh without going deep into the kind of
spoilers there are
new characters familiar characters i say
it's a return
i should see what the new slew of
directors are going to bring
to season two uh and how they're gonna
also
make great use of their their volume
technology
um you're talking about the the set with
the big screen in the back the lcd wall
yeah now that
you know make it i mean it's a little
too late for them to make use of unreal
engine 5
but that's going to be a a possibility
right going forward for their production
and of all the growing pains they went
through for season one and now through
season two whenever they inevitably do a
season three
it's hopefully only gonna get uh more
impressive
yeah it's just great that they made it
like
any season two benefits from the
perspective of the first season and not
just the filmmakers but the fans and
they get the feedback and they uh
i think they'll it'll just come into
their own i think i expect great things
i can't wait
they're gonna they're gonna disney it up
olaf it up everyone loves baby yoda
more baby yoda the child you mean the
child more
of the child i just got emailed from the
sideshow they they uh
they are the ones doing the the
full-size replica of the child and they
just got their final
production samples so they have photos
of what that actually is going to look
like
what do you expect that to cost oh i
mean it's it they they announced that
already
people pre-ordered 350 bucks wow yeah
i i did my pre-order late last year
earlier this year whatever half a 30 80
cars i know
stop putting everything in terms
which is only two thirds of an iphone
jeremy let's put that in that context i
know which one all those phones are
expensive
yeah and i'm three generations out so
this is an expensive year
yeah yeah save on parking eat lunches at
home
yeah and gasps and end gas and your
disney plus
subscriptions all right before we move
on to our next segment i want to let you
know
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only a test and now we move on
to our next segment
i don't know why i put this under
technology news probably fit in pop
culture but
you know lego yeah sorry i probably
should have been in pop culture do you
see lego how to
had a uh crossover with ikea
lately i have no idea what that even
means
so they did this they they teased it on
social media
something interesting is coming from
lego and ikea and
people are like losing their minds what
type of collaboration could this be
are we gonna be able to er are the
designers ikea
making lego sets or you know are we
gonna get lego
expedit in calaxes and
and but no i mean i
don't know what i could have expected
but certainly
not a storage box an ikea storage box
with lego studs on
the top ah so it's like a big surface
for
putting your legos on is that the idea
that that's idea and we're not talking
about big tubs
either uh it's i can't even pronounce
this it's a collection
known as bigleck
b-y-g-l-e-k
and it basically it's small
rectangular boxes with little lego
windows
in them some of them um actually not not
that expensive 15
for a large box 13 for a smaller one
smaller ones even 10 dollars
but they have the stud plates on the top
of the boxes
on the lids and so you can build on top
of them and then store your lego bricks
on the inside it's a great idea i mean i
suppose they couldn't have made this
without the
approval rate because that that stud
orientation in size is probably
panted no i think the patents are i know
for them
the stud i think is is in public domain
system oh really
i want to say is in public domain
minifig
maybe not but the branding is strong
and that's true now when you when people
go to ikea stores whenever we're able to
really bring our kids there now they'll
be able to buy something with a lego
brand on them and
you know ikea and lego both do great
instruction manuals so
i'm really curious to see what their
instructions look like for this if they
even come
with instructions i gotta ask have you
started the nintendo yet
no no and i'm telling you i i'm still
doing almost a bag of days sometimes i
take a day off because i'm really
trying to prolong it and i'm i'm telling
you i'm i'm imagining
the boardroom when they have this thing
ready to go and they're like guys
should we release this on because if we
release this
all of our other lego sets by comparison
are going to be weak
it is so good it is like such an
ingenious
build from an engineering standpoint
that
like other other builds are just lego
builds like this thing
does stuff both the console and the tv
and it's so smart and then there's just
like nintendo charm in it
they knocked it out of the park i love
it oh
i'm very looking forward to it uh and
we'll have to get the
the full review once we're both able to
finish building it still in the box
there's so much i need to do in this
house before i can i take a reward
for finishing all my chores and the
chores are unfortunately
never ending over on the cpu side intel
unveiled their tiger lake mobile cpus
now this would
be a lot more exciting uh for the
broader
tech crowd if apple didn't already
announce that they were going to kind of
depart from x86 and go with their own
arm-based laptops
later this year still waiting for those
but this
is and also intel's kind of prolonged
extension of their current uh
architecture
and not going to uh not even make it to
the seven nanometer
yet so like that amd has already
achieved so
these are their 11th generation cpus for
uh what essentially what used to be
called ultrabooks and
you know low tdp 12 to 28 watt
uh profiles some even going as low as
seven seven watts
and so thin and lights with four cores
um eight threads there's one an i3 with
two core eight threads
and you know it seems like a another
minor step up
20 cpu improvement over the last
generation graphics that are fast
although
it's all integrated graphics uh and
uh they also paired this with
announcement of the rebranding of their
athena initiative which was kind of
their
ultrabook successor these are kind of
list of qualifiers that you want
manufacturers or
third-party partners oem partners to
meet in terms of battery life
in terms of usability uh
and the feature set and what parts you
have to buy from intel
and now it's called evo so
if you're in the market for an ultrabook
uh pc based laptop
uh this holiday you'll probably see a
lot of that evo branding
and they're seeing a lot of competition
from amd
so good luck to them good luck to intel
and all the competition's good forcing
yes
beef up their their performance and
lower their prices yes
uh we're also now that we're in
september and getting close to
probably the new apple event even though
they didn't announce is going to be
pushed back
uh because of covid uh we're seeing
increase in number of uh the rumors of
what will be announced
and from mark kerman over bloomberg it
sounds like they think
he thinks that they will be doing 5g
iphones for later this year that they're
going to build
75 million of them so that tells me
there will probably be a distinguishing
factor between
the 5g phones and not 5g phones
i really hope they don't shove 5g
down consumers throats as a way to get
some of the best other hardware features
on the high end because i have no need
for 5g and i know it's very expensive
for that but it's one of those things
i'm that's the feature i'm least excited
about about
this year's phones and i'm more excited
about the additional camera systems and
the ar functionality
me too me too but i wouldn't turn down
5g and knowing you you're going to get
the pro
anyway so what are you talking about i'm
an update i mean that's
if the whatever plan i'm on with the 11
i don't have a max right if they force
the best features and they kind of group
5g with
some extra feature that i do want on a
mac and forced me to upgrade to that
i'm going to resist that because i have
no need for 5g we're working out of our
homes like
people are talking about like why do we
even have
cell phone plans now when we're mostly
using wi-fi
right like that's that's true big
expense
that's uh that i'm using very
infrequently
right now but we're kind of locked into
that like and these networks are not
being taxed
um but demand wise in in the world as
fewer people are out
uh the other report is that there's
gonna be a new ipad and i think we
actually saw some leaked photos of this
so
i believe it to be credible a new ipad
air that's gonna look more like the ipad
pro
an edge to edge screen the big rumor
there is that touch id the button will
go away from the bottom
but they're going to incorporate touch
id in
the power button which would
probably be less secure less surface
area maybe you have to swipe it
for us no i mean there you we've seen
kind of we've seen other phones
with fingerprint sensors that have a
more oblong shape
that aren't just circles that don't
cover the entire surface area of your
fingerprint and certainly
from a biometric standpoint there's
enough data in that point
to give you a good reading and touch id
has never been about
security as much as it has been about a
light deterrence
right and convenience factor um it's you
know it's so
they're finding that balance between it
being
as strong as you know two-factor
authentication or just being
like an unlock code right uh and
i'm just i'm glad it's not going i'll be
glad it's not going away because i know
some people
prefer touch id over face id and it
speaks to
how face id adoption has not been
accepted in the wider apple community
yet
as much i mean touch is still on their
laptops right
yeah um the other uh product refreshes
they're expecting
a new watch of course um the
uh uh first over-the-ear headphones
maybe they'll call those airpods because
they'll still be wireless uh
and maybe even a smaller homepod speaker
which i vote for no more covering
apple rumors i vote that we only cover
apple news
i think it's worth speculating on i mean
it's not going to change their path but
i think it's
the rumors give us a sense of what the
expectations are
i suppose i suppose but it's you know i
think that these are
pretty boilerplate expectations like we
you know yeah we all kind of expect that
so
it's fine yeah i just you know anybody
can make predictions
yeah chairman i'll let you know that
your video has frozen so
your battery is dead so i've not been
able to see for the past couple minutes
your your visual response is you you
kind of
zoom tricked me look at that there you
go
okay get this out of there ah it's so
funny
well it's a seamless technical change
what a magic trick you did
changed inputs yeah uh if you thought a
thousand dollar phone was expensive
samsung announced the galaxy z fold 2
earlier this week
it ships on the 18th of this month and
it'll be 2
000 what is wrong with people
no thank you prestige products
i i really don't know who's gonna buy
this
yeah yeah i mean you know celebrities i
guess people with just like
money doesn't matter and they wanted
something interesting and they don't
care if it's an apple product no all
celebrities want apple products i don't
know who's buying ice cream
right exactly right right i don't
i i don't know okay a couple more tech
stories um
uh our friend navindra hardware over
engadget wrote this interesting
story on engadget about leica of the
stop-motion company
using intel ai technology to essentially
help with the rotoscoping
of the their film so if you saw
leica's most recent film missing link
they've been of course integrating more
uh composited elements into their
stop-motion animations so
the characters primarily are still those
classic 3d printed for them
3d printed figures with swappable heads
and armatures and they
move you know one frame at a time maybe
animated on twos even
but surrounding those characters are of
course cg environments
and maybe other cg characters as well
things shot on blue screen
but something that people might not know
is there a lot of the actual
stop-motion characters themselves that
also get rotoscoped out we're talking
about seam lines between the parts
things around the eyes kind of almost
like the
you know the what hollywood does with
some other actors and making them
look a little younger that's been a
largely manual process
in the past so much of the fx team over
at leica is that rotoscoping uh and
they've developed technology
uh with intel to automate some of that
and while the technology is impressive
and it sure saves a lot of um
artist time and hours i'd say leave it
in
like why why not wear the animation
and the characters on its sleeve and i
think it's giving into
i would love to see a version i guess of
the film without any of
the composite elements leave all the
armatures in my favorite parts of
watching those films
the ending seeing exactly the pullback
behind the scenes and if there's a
version
that you can that they can leave the
rods that could plug into the back and
i know there's going to be some amount
of cg this is not a cg is bad
argument that's i think pretty ignorant
like some amount of cg is always going
to be required
for compositing and first rotoscoping
but as an
artistic and editorial decision to
go to scope out seam lines from
the faces of these characters
i say let the puppets wear that on their
sleeve and on their faces i well hey i'd
love to see that too
but i think that rotoscoping them out is
a part of the lineage
a part of the tradition of
big studio animation like they have
always done that
going back to when you know you know the
when they were able to composite frames
of drop of drawn art together and you
could see
like the nastiness of that then they
were able to improve that and give
things better solid outlines and can
improve the compositing
they've always attempted to eliminate
those byproducts
of the making process you know they
don't want to show those
the lines that existed you know as
rough sketches they want it they want
everything to look pristine and finished
and that's a
it's no surprise to me that they want to
do this but
i i do think that their process is way
more fascinating than most people give
it credit for people who just casually
watch the movie i think that
i would love for people to see and think
more about how these movies are made
yeah and it's something obviously we
want them to continue right like as they
like there's there's an innate
look to the animation the tangibility
it's not just like the the benefits you
get from having
photographing a physical object with the
lighting and you do get all those
benefits
as well but animators you know
physically moving objects versus
uh moving them on a rigged character
they can exaggerate and it's less about
again the difference of realism
and more about what believability means
and that spectrum of like hyper
hyper realism right and um this the
signature of
an animator uh being hand moved on
on a puppet and so much of like the
fabrication details of course on the
puppets that you can
you just get that that the the real real
light in real physics uh of it all did
you see that popeye animation that
went around social media earlier this
week no
you when you're mentioning of like um
animation the history of animation
let me think of that so of course you
know disney famously had the multi-plane
camera right if you go to the walt
disney family museum you see one of
those actually
uh mounted between two floors and the
multiplayer camera was a way that you
get parallax
but in your animation you have literally
planes of glass
stacked at various distances from
another and the distances between the
frames of animation
could be reduced or set further backs to
create foreground background parallax
uh while you would also be swapping out
the animation of
a character and that kind of foreground
background is like this hallmark of
animation even today you look at
a movie like frozen and the animators
work on
you know the characters in the
foreground the way these are framed
you know there's obviously there's
camera movement that's allowed in in
computer animation
but then the background is done by a
different type of artist and then
physics effects and
visual effects get put in into that and
that's a part of a long tradition of
that and uh an interesting antidote in
that in
popeye which was done by the uh the
fleischer studios we did also the
superman films they had their own
camera system that was called the
setback camera that was a stereo optical
process and you got to google this so
google fleischer set back camera and
it was a camera with the animation plane
and on the the furthest back so this
wasn't top down this is kind of
still just on a flat surface on the back
the background wasn't planes of glass
the background was an actual rotating
turntable a physical model
that they would rotate along with the
foreground character animation
and so you actually saw was a
real animation animation um
frame-by-frame animation
on top of a real moving backdrop
it looks like a black and white 3d
animation that's yes
yeah yeah and there's some great uh
popeye animation
that was uh that was filmed this way
that you can find on youtube
yeah um last two bits of tech uh
sony playstation five we don't know what
the price is going to be we know it's
being limited
and last week sony announced that uh
in terms of pre-orders a limited amount
of ps5 consoles
will be available for pre-order from
existing
sony playstation customers okay
so your invitation you're gonna invite
to pre-order the ps5
based on your playstation activities
no previous interests and playstation
activities
it's not equal opportunity wow yeah is
that legal
i don't know if that's legal yeah of
course it is i don't know dude they can
record they can reward their their fans
there's no reason they're not requiring
you to do this i
love that the reward is i can give them
money
i mean for fans like this is i think
it's a brilliant move
but it also again speaks to we think
will be a shortage
in uh supply or maybe this is all
kind of their plan to hype up the demand
for
to get their biggest fans into ps5 we
just don't know
this kind of back and forth of the game
of chicken between microsoft and sony
for
pricing and for availability is
something that's frankly getting a
little boring because i just want to
know how much these things will cost
and how we'll be able to buy them let
the consumers be happy
let us buy things i wonder how long
there will be a shortage of them because
inevitably there will be even though
they were supposed to have upped their
numbers by like 2x
uh i think there's going to be a problem
well into next year
yeah yeah um i think
that does it for the podcast not for the
podcast for our section here
uh but we do have some pinball right i
don't even have a pinball music queue
i'm a pinball nerd ding ding ding ding
there's a new pinball machine norm
and what is this who is this from it's
from stern
you know they do four for about four
games a year
and i'm sorry that kashor hari isn't
here because this one features
a big purple man we all know likes
likes to wear a glove like stones
it is called avengers infinity quest
thanos thanos is on the backlash big
bright and bold
and this stern as i'm sure you know
made an avengers game eight years ago
yes of course
this is not a remake of that game this
is another adventures game i'm not sure
that
i'd be i wonder if another pinball
company has done this i mean obviously
there's like the star trek
pinball machines it's interesting though
like stern very rarely revisits licenses
i wonder if they've done that the past
20 years since besides this
but the first game made by george gomez
great designer
designer of monster bash classic
williams of course
this one however even better designed by
keith alwyn
the same genius top-ranked pinball
player turned designer
who made iron maiden and jurassic park
both
incredible games that were absolute home
runs by all accounts
so this one everyone is very excited for
it because it's the same designer it has
some
interesting ramps it has some
interesting shots and
um it was announced today we will see
live streams of it
being played in about a week on dead
flip on twitch
and uh they should start shipping a
month from now
so that's it wow it looks like they have
what's just typical stern these days a
big
lcd screen in the back with animations
i'm sure they've populated uh this is of
course based on the comic license not
the movie license so it's not infinity
war it's comic book art
throughout and very cosmic theme comic
book characters
but you have a lot of your traditional
uh avengers characters from the hulk to
doctor strange it looks like
they have one of the doctor strange's
mystical powers but it
is a magnet and it captures the ball and
spins it around
no it doesn't there are games that do
that but that spinning disc
on the on the pro it spins and i'm sure
it does something
point wise but on the premium and the le
it will actually rise up
rise up and then the balls will enter it
and they
you'll see they go into a little subway
and you can see through the play field
to the balls rolling beneath it and
they'll be lit up underneath different
colors
um it's cool there's the premium also
has a infinity gauntlet with that lights
up the different stones and
i'm the thing i'm most interested in
they have a ramp that can be shot from
any of three flippers which is that's
new to me like i don't know if that's
been done before i don't think so
they also have a cool lock mechanism
which is kind of like
those roller coasters where the train
gets pulled back
up a hill and then released so this
lock mechanism you shoot the ball up a
ramp and it goes vertical and then it
gets held by a magnet
up on top of this ramp and then it will
be released and it rolls back down super
fast
really clever design i so keith is a
genius i can't wait to play it
it's expensive too if price has just
gone up for
other models of course this is pro
premium limited but the pro one
starts at 6 200 yep that's that's
pretty i mean it went up a hundred
dollars since teenage mutant ninja
turtles
and they've been going up maybe a
hundred dollars every game
um yeah it's it doesn't thankfully
pinball machines
can earn their money back in a couple
years on location well
less than that in some cases um and if
you keep them as a hobby you know they
they would depreciate but not as much as
you might think
it saw a big big capital investment yes
absolutely
but yes so is life
wise words from this podcast
wise men set them
you know what they should do i have a
recommendation if anyone works at stern
wants to make a amazing pinball machine
what
they should make one based on action
park
i just watched this documentary on hbo
max have you seen this no
it's a documentary about this theme park
that was the most dangerous
theme park oh yeah great idea class
action park was the name of documentary
but action park
and the documentary goes through all the
ill-conceived and
dangerous life-threatening rides that
were set up in this theme park
uh and i think those riots would make
for great ramps
in a pinball machine yeah they'd have to
like hit the glass though and like
oh yeah it would shatter yes exactly yes
yes uh injure you or the balls
themselves chance of electric shock
through the flipper buttons oh i love it
love it design right here player term
designer
jen williams all right let's move on
the vr minute virtual reality
this week
two weeks out now from facebook connect
i had to catch myself
for saying that and there's some news
that's ramped up
so uh not hardware news but software
news
uh first of all i think at the gamescom
livestream event
there are two vr games announced uh or
two vr games shown
one salmon max vr kind of unexpected
it looks okay i don't know it's exactly
what i want from a salmon max game
did you play mmx yeah the adventure game
absolutely he did i never played it that
was uh
i just kind of missed it it was back it
was back when i wasn't playing too many
new games i guess it was in high school
or something
but uh yeah i i love what i've seen and
it looks funny i mean i love the sense
of humor i love the old school
nature of it i just don't know if it's
what i want from a vr game either
that's it exactly i i think the their
adventure games at heart
in adventure games you know require a
lot of character a lot of animations and
if they just kind of use this
to tap into novel vr gimmicks then
that's less exciting
to me i'd rather just see a machinima in
vr i can hold animation with
the writing and the voice acting we also
got to see some new footage
so it turns out it's not a what we
anticipated what i i
speculated was going to be a quest
announcement but no medal of honor above
and beyond it was more
that they dropped a full trailer for it
and
that the launch will be out this holiday
did you watch this trailer
looks great it does
it doesn't no it does it does yeah but
you sound like it doesn't
there's a butt coming right okay it does
but we're in a post-half-life alex world
and
the single-player because we played a
little bit of it last year
at oculus connect was that last year oh
my god it was last year
um when we previewed it and parts of
those levels look
you know pretty complete already i'm
just wondering what what have they been
doing this past
year and what have they not shown us yet
because they haven't shown us
multiplayer like that's what i'm excited
for like
i want to see i know the campaign i'm
going to play through that
my expectations are temper because
you know we are in a post-half-life alex
world so i don't imagine that level of
storytelling
or interactivity now hold on now i i
kind of disagree with your premise a
little bit here like
and i i know this is dangerous territory
because half-life alex is kind of sacred
and i get that and it should be it's a
10 out of 10. i love the game i did one
at one point saying negative things
about it because i
it was it didn't live up to my
expectations after the first couple
levels but i finished the game
and i think it's a masterpiece however
like i
i also think you know like like
half-life was a masterpiece
but no one lives forever was also a
masterpiece i loved it and it did a lot
more with the genre
and i feel like this kind of looks like
it's doing the same kind of thing as no
one lives forever
where it takes you into so many
different environments
um that whereas half of alex is pretty
much you know
citadel city was it called city 17. say
17 and a linear story like you're just
playing
one continuous exactly six hour
adventure here you're jumping between
and there it is they're vignettes in
half-life alex like there's
a few npcs that you interact with but
not too terribly many
uh and those were great highlights and
there's like at least as many in this
trailer alone
of interesting npcs that are engaging
you
that have a lot of personality that have
you know bright
costumes and it's looks like i'm very
intrigued by this
i think this looks very exciting i am as
excited for this maybe as i was for
half-life alex
uh certainly there's production value
here there's no doubt just diversity of
environments and it'll be
revisiting you know world war ii in
nvr and there's no better team to do
that
uh it's just gonna be a different type
of game experience right it's gonna be
more of an adventure
uh sorry more more of like an action
game uh than
this the kind of heavy story driven
personal adventure that we got with
halflife alex uh it's all going to be
also be about the the combat encounters
right
what we played last year it was very
typical run and gun vr shooting
um with enemies and great animations
running out of doors and then firefights
and stuff
but uh that's the kind of like i want to
get lost in a fire fight and i don't
know
if i'll be able to do the fuel like that
just yet against ai
which is why i'm also really just
waiting for their multiplayer
announcements yeah me too that'll be
great
there's no date yet announced right we
expect that maybe at connect this yeah
just holiday
it's still this year okay and um it will
be
you know obviously an oculus exclusive
uh also oculus exclusive
and not quite a game but we finally saw
some more of
horizons i think this is the first in
game we've seen
from horizon right there's a youtube
video of in-game
there are some people who've been part
of the closed beta okay
and lots of interesting things that
we're learning about the uh the
experience in the beta for one
you know they're gonna be very aware of
moderation
and uh people safety and feeling safe
and so they will actually be
real people content moderating or you
know as guides or helping people
navigate the experience
i don't know what that ratio of player
to moderator
will be but that's fascinating to think
of that there will be paid people
wearing
presumably quest headsets uh if not rift
s
in a dev capacity uh helping people out
and then also just one technology
standpoint you know there's no eye
tracking
in the quest or the rift s so how do you
get
social interaction to work and some of
the things they've been doing sounds
like what john carmack had experimented
with years ago
was a way to lock eyes onto players
uh when based on the gestures and this
could be through some deep learning
but when they think you're talking to
someone an avatar soccer another avatar
your eyes will will lock contact
uh it's interesting echo arena went
final recently and there's been an open
beta for a while they went final on
quest i think last week and they
with that announcement they also
released the um a new version of their
room system i forgot what they're
calling it but it's the same kind of
thing where there'll be moderators
in the uh lobbies um
you know and the the different lobbies
will have different themes like they'd
be like older mature gamers
like in the competitive sect and then
there's maybe
like the 12 and under crowd who knows
but you in order to form a club you have
to sort of
get enough of a following first and have
moderators available and that kind of
thing so
i'm i'm so glad because i've always said
vr needs moderation or desperately even
more so than chat rooms or in typical
flat screen games
the invasion of personal space and the
feeling when people when you're
confronted is so much more personal
that you have to have strong moderation
tools i'm glad to see
facebook uh making that a priority yeah
absolutely it's not cheap and it's not
easy and i think you know they're
building tools for people to create
their own experience in this in a very
minecraft kind of way and
that kind of emergent gameplay emergent
social behavior
immersion experiences is the potential
of a social space like this
a metaverse space like this and so it's
they're putting a lot of effort behind
it and i'm sure we'll see a lot more uh
as we get closer to connect
i'm gonna call connect now because that
just makes more sense
right that right yeah you know what if
you say oc
i don't know what you're talking about
oc yeah oh geez
yeah all right oc yeah seven keep
everything
x7 we'll workshop it keep on
workshopping all right that does it for
the podcast this week we'll be back next
week
at least i know i'll be jeremy i know
you might be taking the week off but we
might be getting some
substitute in talk next week neural link
big topic that we want to wait for
shore to talk about check in jack
in indeed uh and an outro
this week created by black powder engine
thank you for creating that outro uh and
thank you all
there for listening thanks for uh
creating the intros too keep them coming
send them over
twitter dm to my email it's norman
tested
and just upload a soundcloud i'll be
able to download that we'll give you
credit and
we'll play it in the future guaranteed
okay the once again outro courtesy of
black powder
engine and here it goes
never listen this one yet hi there i
didn't see here
um more trailers you have the second
full trailer for wonder woman 1984
still hopefully coming out this october
yeah i'm not sure how i felt about the
lightning vine swinging you know that
was available oh i love it oh
that's really that's the best part
that's that was for us
okay i love that that's pretty sweet
stand by my comments still very excited
for lightning swinging
i too stand by my comments alright see
you next week
bye
you
