AI is keeping it real
‘Make it Real’ is the latest piece of AI genius that’s left us in awe and if we’re honest, a little frightened. A company going by the name of “tldraw” – a whiteboard app maker – caused a stir throughout X.com on Wednesday after showing off a prototype of ‘Make it Real’, a service that lets people draw out an image of a software UI and having AI bring the whole thing to life.
It’s got GPT-4V’s API behind it to do all of the looking, and Tailwind CSS and JavaScript web code that’ll be handling all the actual building, replicating a human’s interfaces and ideas that were once just a bunch of scribbles on a screen.
As we said, it’s a little frightening. Less than two years ago, the then-pinnacle of AI couldn’t even beat Martin in a round of chess. Now, we’ve got working software that requires less of a background in actual coding and more of a focus on design. It’s fascinating, and that’s best showcased by designer Kevin Cannon, who managed to build a rudimentary set of sliders that can rotate, enlarge and change the colours of an object on the screen.
Some have gone as far as building simple games inside the programme, such as Breakout, Tic Tac Toe, Snake and Pong. For reference, Make it Real’s live demo has been out for less than a week. A week. Who knows what the average Joe could be constructing in a week or two? That’s if the average Joe has access to an API Key from OpenAI, which is required to give the live demo a whirl. That does bring some security risk with it in case it’s intercepted by bad actors.
But if you know what you’re doing (and have that API Key), then go nuts.
James Webb’s bringing us more wallpapers
The James Webb Telescope is back, baby. Not that it ever really left its spot 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth, but it’s back in the metaphorical sense. The Webb Telescope just delivered us a fresh crop of gorgeous images to drool over and set as your desktop background. This time, it turned its lens to the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, showing off our digs in “unprecedented detail”.
Specifically, the Webb Telescope focused on Sagittarius C, or Sgr C, a star-forming region that’s around 300 light years away from our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, and more than 25,000 light years away from home. Its sights were set on the region’s 500,000 or so stars and protostars, eventually sending back images of a rather dense clump of stars – dissimilar to our own backyard.
According to Jonathan Tan, who is part of the observation team, the galactic centre is “the most extreme environment” found in the Milky Way – something that couldn’t be determined until the Webb Telescope showed up with this “level of resolution and sensitivity.” And at the centre is a protostar that weighs around 30 times more than our Sun.
Pretty pictures aren’t all Webb is good for. It’s allowing the minds behind it to put their current theories of star formation to “their most rigorous test” yet. Samuel Crowe, principal investigator in the observation team reckons that the coming research could help scientists understand the nature of these massive stars, akin to “learning the origin story of much of the universe.”
Metal Gear Solid 4, anyone?
Since before the announcement of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, we’ve been looking forward to something, anything that would put Metal Gear Solid IV back in our hands, freeing it from the prison that is the PlayStation 3. We sort of guessed that a Vol. 1 would mean a Vol. 2 is in the works, hopefully encompassing IV into the collection.
If the original voice actor for Solid Snake is any indication, that’s the plan. In a post on X.com, David Hayter teased the Metal Gear community with a ‘cryptic’ message: “Had a pretty cool meeting the other day…” while standing beside a statue of his iconic character from IV.
Even if Hayter wasn’t spending his days riling up MGS fans, we’ve already got a pretty good idea of what to expect when Vol. 2 eventually lands thanks to IGN’s sources close to the matter. According to the outlet, Vol. 2 will include Metal Gear Solid IV, Metal Gear Solid V and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Hey, we’re just glad Konami is leaving Metal Gear Survive off that list.
Pixel Souls: Demastered is everything we didn’t know we needed
Have you ever heard of a ‘demaster’? Probably not. Why would anyone in their right mind want games to look worse than they originally did? Us, apparently, after seeing the work of thegreatgramcracker on Nexus Mods in the form of Pixel Souls: Demastered.
It’s a self-explanatory mod that doesn’t add any new content, but “changes all textures, icons, fonts, and visual effects into pixel art based on the original game textures,” according to the description. “Additionally, the music and sound effects have been reduced in quality. Even the enemy and player equipment models have reduced fidelity. This should give the game a fun, somewhat cursed, retro feel.”
Surprisingly, AI wasn’t involved in the making, with thegreatgramcracker putting in good ol’ fashioned elbow grease to demaster the entirety of the cult classic. Specifically, they used a custom image processing algorithm with a couple of manual inputs to get Dark Souls looking just enough like a PS1 game.
Sure, it’s got nothing on Bloodborne Kart, but a demaster of the original Dark Souls is just the right amount of weird to get us playing the original game again. We wouldn’t recommend the mod to newcomers, with the game’s unforgiving nature doing plenty to drive new folk away from the word go.