Facial Expressions in Video Games
You may have heard of L. A. Noire. Released in 2011, it is a video game which puts you in the shoes of Cole Phelps, a detective in 1947 Los Angeles. The game draws heavily from fim noir using distinctive coloring styles as well as an option to play the entire game in black and white. As the protagonist, you complete the game by completing cases. A key aspect to these cases is the interrogation of suspects and witnesses. The player must ask questions and determine whether he or she is being lied to by closely watching body actions and facial expressions. When it comes to facial expressions most video games do a pretty dismal job. Not so for L.A.Noire. Through a technology called MotionScan, the creators have done a marvelous job. Each character seems real and multidimensional. Often they look really worried and genuinely uncomfortable. At other times they appear to be completely innocent but later turn out to be criminal masterminds. To play the game successfully one must become really adept at understanding these small individual nuances. I found a documentary about the technology used in the game and have embedded it below. I am sure you will find it as fascinating as I did.
Physics Rocks!
Physics is awesome! Last semester I took a class called Modern Physics 1. I made the following animation in one of my labs for the class, using a programming language called vpython.
The video is a simulation of the movement of a spaceship around the earth. The blue sphere in the middle is the earth. The red sphere orbiting it, with the the red trace is the moon. The spaceship that is orbiting the earth is leaving the yellow trace in its path. The beauty of this picture is in its sheer accuracy. At EACH and EVERY single point, the computer is calculating the gravitational force due to the moon and earth. This resulting force is applied on the spaceship, and it moves for a very very short time. At this new position the while process is repeated. The resulting path that is chalked out by the spaceship is thus exactly how Newton's Law of Gravitation defines it. Note that during the second revolution of the red sphere, as the spaceship comes nearer the moon, it seems to veer of its previously ordained orbit. This is due to the fact that as the distance between the moon and the spaceship decreases, the force due to the moon on the spaceship increases. During the third revolution of the red sphere they come so close to each other that they actually collide and the simulation ends. Bad day for the people on the spaceship I guess.
Another one for the physics buffs
For all you physics buffs, here is one the coolest simulative experiences I have ever experienced. Download the tool on this website: http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/electric-hockey. The goal of this game is to manipulate a charged hockey puck into a goal, with an unlimited amount of positive and negative charges at your disposal. Each charge you place interacts with the puck electronically forcing it to move as the laws of physics dictate. It is also very entertaining for the fact that you aren't simply limited to playing the game. By placing an plethora of charges at different points around the puck you can observe the crazy ways in which it moves. All this motion is due to simple calculations of Coulomb's force made by the computer at every point, every second.
Perfection, Pure Perfection!!
What I wouldn't give to be one of these guys...
Physics Rocks!
Physics is awesome! Last semester I took a class called Modern Physics 1. I made the following animation in one of my labs for the class, using a programming language called vpython.
The video is a simulation of the movement of a spaceship around the earth. The blue sphere in the middle is the earth. The red sphere orbiting it, with the the red trace is the moon. The spaceship that is orbiting the earth is leaving the yellow trace in its path. The beauty of this picture is in its sheer accuracy. At EACH and EVERY single point, the computer is calculating the gravitational force due to the moon and earth. This resulting force is applied on the spaceship, and it moves for a very very short time. At this new position the while process is repeated. The resulting path that is chalked out by the spaceship is thus exactly how Newton's Law of Gravitation defines it. Note that during the second revolution of the red sphere, as the spaceship comes nearer the moon, it seems to veer of its previously ordained orbit. This is due to the fact that as the distance between the moon and the spaceship decreases, the force due to the moon on the spaceship increases. During the third revolution of the red sphere they come so close to each other that they actually collide and the simulation ends. Bad day for the people on the spaceship I guess.
Another one for the physics buffs
For all you physics buffs, here is one the coolest simulative experiences I have ever experienced. Download the tool on this website: http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/electric-hockey. The goal of this game is to manipulate a charged hockey puck into a goal, with an unlimited amount of positive and negative charges at your disposal. Each charge you place interacts with the puck electronically forcing it to move as the laws of physics dictate. It is also very entertaining for the fact that you aren't simply limited to playing the game. By placing an plethora of charges at different points around the puck you can observe the crazy ways in which it moves. All this motion is due to simple calculations of Coulomb's force made by the computer at every point, every second.
Perfection, Pure Perfection!!
What I wouldn't give to be one of these guys...
Research Project 1101
Last semester, I was taking English 1101 under Professor Amanda Madden. In class we were discussing serendipity (the act of discovering something useful by accident). As an assignment we were required to create group blogs in which we all wrote articles our thoughts about serendipity. We even used the blog to publish our research papers. I based mine on "The Impact of Science Fiction on the World Wide Web." I worked extremely hard on this project and nothing would please me more then if some people actually read my work. If you wish to take a chance, the link is below. If you do visit the website, you will also find several well written articles by of many of my old classmates which might be of interest to you.
http://english1101electronicblog.blogspot.com
Awesome Pic
I found this last semester when I was browsing the internet. The cameras they are making these days are truly amazing
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