{"id":5341,"date":"2020-04-16T11:09:07","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T17:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/?p=5341"},"modified":"2020-04-16T15:48:39","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T21:48:39","slug":"seven-things-for-april-16-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/seven-things-for-april-16-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Things for April 16, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are seven things, with a focus on videogames and related things this time around:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Minecraft RTX is now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nvidia.com\/en-us\/geforce\/news\/minecraft-with-rtx-beta-begins-april-16\/\">out in beta<\/a>, along with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nvidia.com\/en-us\/geforce\/news\/minecraft-with-rtx-coming-soon-screenshots-and-guides\/\">a tech talk<\/a> about it. There&#8217;s also <a href=\"https:\/\/help.minecraft.net\/hc\/en-us\/sections\/360004960711-Current-Topics\">a FAQ and known issues list<\/a>. There are custom worlds that show off effects, but yes, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nvidia.com\/en-us\/geforce\/guides\/minecraft-rtx-world-conversion-guide\/\">convert your Java worlds<\/a> to Bedrock format. I tried it on <a href=\"http:\/\/vokselia.com\">our old world<\/a> and made <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/xGtJNG97PN0\">one on\/off video<\/a> and five separate location videos, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/kWi9x3uvNOQ\">1<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/br2iD6Bosxg\">2<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/_MB8E0X04q0\">3<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/CINNUoquE-0\">4<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/ELnJ4t1o4QI\">5<\/a>. Fun! Free! If you have an RTX card and a child, you&#8217;ll be guaranteed to not be able to use your computer for a month. Oh, and two pro tips: &#8220;;&#8221; toggles RTX on\/off, and if you have a great GPU, go to Advanced Video settings and crank the Ray Tracing Render Distance up (you&#8217;ll need to do this each time you play).<\/li>\n<li>No RTX or home schooling? Try <a href=\"https:\/\/code.org\/minecraft\">Minecraft Hour of Code<\/a> instead, for students in grades 2 and up.<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s now <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2020\/04\/you-can-help-medical-science-just-by-playing-a-new-borderlands-mini-game\">a minigame in Borderlands 3<\/a> where <a href=\"https:\/\/borderlands.com\/en-US\/news\/2020-04-07-borderlands-science\/\">you solve little DNA alignment puzzles<\/a> for in-game bonuses. The loot earned is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/paultassi\/2020\/04\/08\/how-to-farm-borderlands-3s-science-minigame-for-infinite-loot-xp-and-damage-boosts\">absurdly good<\/a> at higher levels. <a href=\"https:\/\/dnapuzzles.org\/2020\/04\/13\/am-i-really-helping-by-playing-borderlands-science\/\">Gearbox finally explained<\/a>, with particularly poorly chosen dark-gray-on-black link text colors, what (the heck) the game does for science. It seems players are generating training sets for deep learning algorithms, though I can&#8217;t say I truly grok it.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/gaming\/comments\/f88dh7\/beat_saber_with_a_staff\">Beat Saber with a staff<\/a> is hypnotic. You can also use your skills outside to maintain social distancing.<\/li>\n<li>A few Grand Theft Auto V players now <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StMtGang\/status\/1176442808946909190\">shoot bullets to make art<\/a>. Artists have to be careful <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fanbyte.com\/features\/grand-theft-auto-v-bullet-art\/\">to not scare the NPCs<\/a> while drawing with their guns, as any nearby injuries or deaths can affect the memory pool and so might erase the image being produced.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/fortnite-mandalorian-filmmaking-tech\">Unreal Engine&#8217;s StageCraft tech<\/a> was used to develop <em>The Mandalorian<\/em>. I&#8217;m amazed that a semicircular wall of LED displayscould give realistic backgrounds at high enough resolution, range, and quality in real time. It has only 28 million pixels for a 270 degree display, according to the article &#8211; sounds like a lot, but note a single 4K display is 3840 * 2160 = 8.3 million pixels.<\/li>\n<li>Stuck inside and want to make your housing situation an infernal hellscape, or at least more of one? <a href=\"http:\/\/richwhitehouse.com\/index.php?postid=72\">Doomba<\/a>&#8216;s the solution. It takes your Roomba&#8217;s movement information and <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/doomba-will-turn-your-roomba-into-a-doom-hellscape-gene-1831327342\">turns it into a level of classic Doom<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/doombaprocess.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"508\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/doombaprocess.png 508w, https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/doombaprocess-300x236.png 300w, https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/doombaprocess-381x300.png 381w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 508px) 100vw, 508px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Made it this far? Bonus link, since it&#8217;s the day after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irs.gov\/newsroom\/filing-and-payment-deadlines-questions-and-answers\">U.S. taxes were due<\/a>, but now deferred until July 15th: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/kellyphillipserb\/2020\/02\/15\/after-confusion-irs-clarifies-tax-treatment-of-fortnite--gaming-currencies\">Fortnite virtual currency is not taxable<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are seven things, with a focus on videogames and related things this time around: Minecraft RTX is now out in beta, along with a tech talk about it. There&#8217;s also a FAQ and known issues list. There are custom worlds that show off effects, but yes, you can convert your Java worlds to Bedrock [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5341"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5368,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5341\/revisions\/5368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}