Hyper-realistic bodycam style shooter in Unreal Engine 5

Hyper-realistic bodycam style shooter in Unreal Engine 5

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(This random frame shot from YouTube is horrible and doesn’t do the game justice – check the video itself to see how real it is.)

In Oct 2022, Alexandre Spidler of Studios Drama posted a Twitter clip from an experimental hyper-realistic bodycam style game that he was fooling with.

In Apr 19th, 2023, he released a brand new high resolution clip, a press release, and a steam page for a game called ‘Unrecord’. The description says:

Unrecord is a single-player FPS that tells the story of a tactical police officer from the perspective of his body camera. As you work to solve a complex case, you’ll need to use your tactical and detective skills to succeed.

It doesn’t look at all like the typical Call of Duty style – it looks…real. Just like actual bodycam footage with gritty environments that remind you of exactly what real-life interiors might look like. They use body-cam style cameras with a spherical FOV, shaky hand movement, chromatic aberration, and pixelated faces that make it seem like watching replayed camera footage.

The second video looks even better and captures just what anyone that’s gone paintballing has experienced. None of the polish of CoD – all the grittiness of real locations. I have no doubts this is good enough to be something that police and military will want to use for training soon.

The developer appears to be seeking funding and a studio partner to continue development. I’m surprised they haven’t been snatched up already.

Side note: the developer has already posted scammers putting up false ads and trying to get people to download links and apps that are supposedly the game. A reminder that we’re in the brave new world of the internet – full of scams and misinformation. Be careful out there.

Unknown: Killer Robots

Unknown: Killer Robots

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AI is here. Netflix put out a short show called Unknown: Killer Robots that is largely on-point. If anything, it’s not as up to date as reality – which is a little scary.

Despite our efforts, there’s really no putting the AI genie back in the bottle despite the attempts of artists, politicians, and academic pundits. AI has demonstrated it can teach robots how to walk and fly better than any static system, it can create art faster and with nearly the same quality as real artists. The question is, can we control and limit it in a reasonable way – or will it destroy us?

To that point, the show demonstrates how countries are increasingly seeing AI in military use. We’re already seeing off-the-shelf drones being used extensively in the Ukrainian war – from tiny drones scouting and delivering hand grenades to ad-hoc drones using small plane engines to delivering bombs. They also cover the counter-intuitive reality that trying to save lives by developing military technology has almost always lead to even greater casualties – such as the Gatling gun which was design to put fewer people on the military field but resulted in massive causalities of mis-matched soldiers in WW1

Many of the topics and data they cover in this show are actually old news – the reality is that AI enabled systems are around 5-7 years more advanced. Which is almost half the length of time the modern field has existed.

Still, they cover most major bases:

  1. AI flying drones that go into hostile buildings to map and scope them without risking troops in extremely deadly house-clearing fights.
  2. AI can be used to generate helpful drugs – but the same AI can be used equally to create chemical and biological weapons.
  3. Playing and cheating at games – from chess and Go to StarCraft
  4. Jet fighter piloting systems that are better than actual pilots. I wrote about this 6 years ago.
  5. Swarm drones that can overwhelm forces (something Elon Musk talked about years ago).
  6. Wildfires and the fog of war – multi-system battle managers

The stakes couldn’t be higher. While politicians can argue the ethics, the reality is that when forces are pushed to their breaking point and a force is about to lose – just about nothing is off the table. Especially ad-hoc and terrorist forces which have perpetrated chemical, biological, and conventional weapons attacks (from bombings to shootings).

Some of the better quotes:

  • It will be like people on horseback charging tanks. Forces with AI will absolutely dominate forces without AI
  • There is no prize for second place in war.
  • I think people have largely underestimated the peace we enjoy today due to overwhelming military dominance we’ve had over the last 70 years.
Shakespeare in the Park

Shakespeare in the Park

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The Original Practice Shakespeare Festival puts on free Shakespeare plays in local Oregon parks. It’s quite a prolific group – they do multiple shows per week at a variety of local parks each summer. It appears the cast is volunteer and they do carry small scrolls in case they get lost but what they lack in technical skill they make up for in theatrics and good fun. So, it can be a somewhat rag-tag operation at times but it’s definitely a fun and cheap way to catch some Shakespeare.

Tour Edo-period Japan

Tour Edo-period Japan

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The Edo-Tokyo Open-Air Museum is an outdoor museum where historically valuable buildings are relocated, restored, and exhibited along with most of their interiors. It’s a collection of over two dozen reconstructed houses, shops, and restaurants that feels like you’re going back into time.

It recently got even more amazing museum’s Downton Summer Evening event, in which its Shitamachi Nakadori section will remain open after sundown and offering night events where the whole street is lit up.

Pond cooling

Pond cooling

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AIO water cooling and heatsinks are so last year. DIY Perks takes a brand new i9-13900K processor, mounts all the major components with water cooling bricks, encases the entire PC in a waterproof acrylic tube, and runs all the cooling through external copper tubing. How does it cool it? Using a pond.

And it turns out to be extremely effective – reaching only 20C (only 5C more than standard) at full load after an hour. Dang.

Remove Subaru Crosstrek window switches

Remove Subaru Crosstrek window switches

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If you have a 2015, 2016, 2017 Subaru Crosstrek and need to pull/replace your window switches – this is a good video on how to do it. You have to unscrew the door panel screw in the inside handle recess and pull the door panel off to access the 2 screws and the wire harness you’ll need to access to remove the trim piece and associated windows controls.