Waifu Enjoyer shows off UEVR. UEVR allows you to play just about any Unreal Engine 4 & 5 game in VR – even if it wasn’t made for VR. It does this by hooking into the DirectX API and then overriding.
Read more on the UEVR project page here.
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Via ferrata routes have been around for more than a century in Europe. They original had been developed in WWI to move troops and supplies through the mountains but continued to be a popular, beginner-friendly (provided you’re not afraid of heights) way for people to spend time in the mountains. Today, more than 1,000 via ferrata routes spider across the Alps alone.
Afar has a great article on how that experience has come more and more to the US.
Guests of Amangiri and Camp Sarika, two ultra-luxurious properties in Utah, can use any of the seven resort’s via ferrata’s. The most stomach-tightening course arguably involves the Cave Peak Stairway, a 200-foot-long steel bridge that spans from one peak to another 400 feet above jagged rock.
The via ferrata completed by Tordrillo Mountain Lodge features a network of metal rungs, 1,200 feet of cable, and two suspension bridges, which all together help guests gain 900 feet of elevation. Throughout the course, climbers can see the 28-mile-long Triumvirate Glacier and Tordrillo Mountains which includes Mount Spurr, an active volcano.
Only guests of the lodge are allowed to use the via ferrata—and it would be challenging to sneak a climb on it otherwise, as it starts on a rocky shelf only accessible by helicopter, 4,000 feet above sea level.
Cloud Ladder at Estes Park Colorado is billed as the steepest via ferrata in the United States, it’s roughly 600 feet of vertical climb. Two tightrope-style suspension bridges, one of which stretches 45 feet across a 200-foot chasm. However, from the top (roughly 9,200 feet in elevation) are views of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Mummy Range.
One of the first urban via ferratas in the U.S., the Quarry Trails via ferrata is found in Columbus and opened in May 2023. The route stretches 800 feet horizontally across a limestone cliff and includes two aerial walkways, a 54-foot steel staircase, and a 90-foot suspension bridge that hangs 105 feet above a pond.
One of only three, free, and open-to-the-public trails in the United States, the Telluride Via Ferrata has been operational since 2007. Nestled into the eastern end of the box canyon on the southern-facing wall below Ajax Peak, this route is technically 2.2 miles long, but only 1,600 feet of it has cable—the rest is a single-track trail. However, that trail is very exposed—it’s on a ledge of a more than 12,000-foot mountain.
Rutledge said what he likes most about the route is how it differs throughout the seasons. “In the spring, you’ve got Bridal Veil Falls, the tallest waterfall in Colorado, just gushing right next to you. And in the fall, you’re above this sea of gold and amber trees.”
In the sub-alpine forest of Kachina Peak, a popular ski area, is a collection of Toas Ski Valley via ferrata routes for beginners and advanced climbers alike. The climbs start at about 11,500 feet. The routes include a 100-foot sky bridge suspended 50 feet above the ground, a double cable catwalk, and views of the Rio Honod and Wheeler Peak Wilderness area.
After a few previous smaller cuts in 2023 and some pretty serious cuts in tech in general, now it appears really big cuts are coming to Unity.
Unity is now cutting 25% of it’s workforce.
Daniel Coppen recently teamed up with media artist Tomo Kihara to develop “How (not) to get hit by a self-driving car,” a street-based game designed to improve people detection in autonomous vehicles by challenging people to avoid being recognized by an object-detection algorithm.
Participants use creative maneuvers like cartwheels and disguises to test and potentially enhance the AI’s ability to identify pedestrians in varied and unpredictable scenarios. The game’s creators hope to conduct a global tour to gather diverse data, aiming to share it with researchers and self-driving car developers for better training of these systems.
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Vox does a good job describing why AI has such a rough time with hands.
I don’t think I would have guessed any of these, but the fact people could type in normal text and then the robot could sort of act it out is pretty amazing.
The Walton Adventures has a great set of videos of a dad and his daughter.
What started as a Fast Company reporter getting a free mattress from a friend’s friend led to a web of lawsuits, corruption, and a revelation of just exactly how blurred internet reviews and advertisings had become.
The long story short? A great number of mattress review sites are often simply paid advertising for mattress companies. In other cases, the mattress company simply buys out the review site. This happened in 2016 – so you can probably expect this method of taking over review sites to have become even more popular.
Some of the worst offenders? Bed-in-a-box company Casper was known to sue bloggers that gave unfavorable reviews while promoting bloggers that gave good reviews. Casper apparently tried to use cyber-warfare tactics and even tried to buy out a review site that tried to blow the whistle on them.
The things we’re able to do with 2D images with just a few clicks is absolutely mind blowing.
Switzerland is Life takes you on a cogwheel train that transports passengers to the top of Switzerland’s Mount Pilatus at 6,983′. It starts getting quite hair-raising around minute 10