00:00SPEAKER- I've always thought grandmas come in two flavors,
00:02SPEAKERpotpourri and rosewater.
00:04SPEAKER- I'm just gonna be honest,
00:05SPEAKERwe are picking, we are artificially resuming
00:08SPEAKERthis conversation from before we started recording.
00:11SPEAKER- You can't tell him that.
00:12SPEAKER- You can't just say something like you just said
00:14SPEAKERout of context and just roll with it, man.
00:17SPEAKER- My grandmas were both rosewater grandmas.
00:19SPEAKER- We were talking about Jeopardy.
00:20SPEAKERWe were talking about the fact that Jeopardy
00:22SPEAKERhad a common category called potpourri.
00:24SPEAKERAnd then you said you wouldn't know about potpourri
00:26SPEAKERwithout the Jeopardy category called potpourri.
00:28SPEAKERAnd I was like, wait, your grandma never put potpourri out
00:32SPEAKERor whatever?
00:32SPEAKERAnd then that's when you said the infamous line.
00:35SPEAKER- Grandmas come in two flavors, rosewater and potpourri.
00:38SPEAKER- What is rosewater?
00:39SPEAKER- Rosewater is water that smells like roses.
00:41SPEAKER- Okay, that's the truth in advertising.
00:45SPEAKER- I mean, I think there's probably also like a sub-genre
00:47SPEAKERof grandma that's a fork of the potpourri branch
00:50SPEAKERthat's like lavender, like dried lavender.
00:53SPEAKER'Cause my English grandmother was a dried lavender.
00:55SPEAKERTechnically, she wasn't so much on the rosewater.
00:57SPEAKER- Somebody swapped out rosewater.h
00:59SPEAKERand subbed in lavender.h.
01:02SPEAKER- Yep, yep.
01:03SPEAKER- Okay, boy.
01:05SPEAKER- My grandmother's house always was a little musty smelling.
01:08SPEAKER- Ooh, no, that smells good.
01:09SPEAKER- Not like dirty musty, but just like old stuff musty.
01:12SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, there's one mothball-y kind of.
01:14SPEAKER- Yeah, no, mothballs are kind of acrid.
01:16SPEAKERIt was more of a kind of like old books.
01:19SPEAKERLike there's a bad old book smell that makes you sneeze.
01:22SPEAKERAnd then there's good old book smell that you're like,
01:24SPEAKERman, this is a good ass book.
01:25SPEAKER- It's like comforting. - It's that one.
01:27SPEAKER- Okay.
01:27SPEAKERMy grandmother kept a very floral house, let's say.
01:31SPEAKERVery, it was a bit much, but it was not unpleasant,
01:35SPEAKERlet's say.
01:36SPEAKER- It's like the Chuck Berry,
01:37SPEAKERthe nasal equivalent of the Chuck Berry wall of sound.
01:41SPEAKER- Sure.
01:42SPEAKER- Like you just hit there and you were like, wow,
01:44SPEAKERI know where I am.
01:46SPEAKER- It's a lot of mental gymnastics
01:47SPEAKERto put that analogy together, but sure.
01:50SPEAKERYeah, what you said.
01:51SPEAKER- Look, Brad, you're tired, I get it.
01:52SPEAKERYou've had a week.
01:54SPEAKERWhen was the last time two consoles landed in the same week?
01:57SPEAKER- Um. - Ever?
01:59SPEAKER- I would have to say, I mean,
02:00SPEAKERunless I'm missing something,
02:02SPEAKERthe PlayStation 3 and Wii both released
02:04SPEAKERwithin like two days of each other,
02:06SPEAKERwhich I know because I went to New York
02:08SPEAKERto cover both of those launches back to back.
02:10SPEAKER- But the Xbox in that year
02:12SPEAKERhad launched a full year before, right?
02:14SPEAKER- Yes, the 360 came out a whole year before that stuff.
02:16SPEAKER- Yeah, so.
02:19SPEAKER- The last time around,
02:20SPEAKERI want to say they came out a week apart.
02:22SPEAKERThe PS4 and the Xbox One. - Xbone?
02:25SPEAKER- I want to say we're right around a week apart.
02:27SPEAKERAnd even then that was like, oh my God,
02:29SPEAKERthey're going head to head.
02:30SPEAKERI can't believe they're launching just a week apart.
02:32SPEAKERAnd now here we are barely 48 hours separates them.
02:36SPEAKERAnd it's been a ride.
02:38SPEAKER- How are you holding up, man?
02:39SPEAKERYou guys did a lot of video this week
02:41SPEAKERover on the other thing you do.
02:43SPEAKER- Yeah, we did a lot of streaming this week.
02:45SPEAKERA lot of recording stuff.
02:46SPEAKERA lot of behind the scenes work too
02:48SPEAKERthat doesn't, may not be obvious that it's been a lot.
02:53SPEAKER- Well, those games don't test themselves.
02:54SPEAKEREven without navigating a change in corporate ownership,
02:58SPEAKERit would have been a lot.
03:00SPEAKER- Yeah.
03:01SPEAKER- Tried going through all of your corporate new company
03:04SPEAKERonboarding in the middle of all that stuff.
03:06SPEAKER- Oh, hey, you've done your harassment training
03:08SPEAKERand selected your new healthcare options.
03:13SPEAKERWhat about your disability insurance, your life insurance,
03:16SPEAKERyour time off?
03:18SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
03:19SPEAKERYeah, I did set up my email account.
03:21SPEAKER- Oh, good.
03:22SPEAKER- I've got that far.
03:23SPEAKERBaby steps.
03:23SPEAKERNice work.
03:24SPEAKER(upbeat music)
03:53SPEAKER(upbeat music)
03:56SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
03:58SPEAKERI'm Will.
03:59SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
03:59SPEAKERHow's it going, Will?
04:00SPEAKER- It's, look, look.
04:01SPEAKERHey, check this out.
04:02SPEAKERI'm gonna do a thing with my face
04:03SPEAKERthat you can see that the audio listeners won't be able
04:05SPEAKERto see.
04:06SPEAKER- This is gonna play.
04:07SPEAKEROh man, you look a little manic.
04:08SPEAKERWhat is going on there?
04:09SPEAKER- Both sides of the face work.
04:11SPEAKER- Oh God, what is wrong with me?
04:12SPEAKERI'm just, congratulations.
04:13SPEAKERI'm sorry to die.
04:14SPEAKERGod, this is how disconnected from daily reality
04:18SPEAKERI have been that I completely forgot about your situation,
04:20SPEAKERwhich you seem to have overcome in record time.
04:23SPEAKER- Gina's pissed off at me 'cause when she had this like 10,
04:25SPEAKER15 years ago, it was six weeks before she was able
04:28SPEAKERto move the left side of her face at all.
04:30SPEAKER- Did we actually talk about it by name last week?
04:33SPEAKER- Maybe not.
04:34SPEAKER- I think you just glossed over it
04:35SPEAKERbecause you sounded normal.
04:36SPEAKERSo we just didn't touch on it, but.
04:38SPEAKER- Oh, well, maybe we should not talk about this then.
04:40SPEAKER- Well, we already talked about it
04:41SPEAKERand now you just have to put a name to it.
04:43SPEAKER- Well, okay.
04:43SPEAKERSo I have Bell's palsy,
04:46SPEAKERwhich is a temporary neurological thing.
04:48SPEAKERIt's caused by a pinching of a nerve in your upper neck
04:51SPEAKERand it basically causes one half of your face
04:53SPEAKERto stop working.
04:54SPEAKERAnd I lost my sense of taste too,
04:56SPEAKERwhich has been an exciting or smell, I guess,
04:59SPEAKERmore than taste.
05:00SPEAKERI can still taste salt and sweet and all that,
05:02SPEAKERbut it's been, I've never had that happen before.
05:05SPEAKEREven when I have a cold,
05:07SPEAKERI can still smell enough that like food tastes like food.
05:10SPEAKERAnd it was profoundly weird to eat ice cream
05:15SPEAKERand have it be sweet.
05:17SPEAKERAnd it lets you separate how much of each sensation
05:21SPEAKERis like taste and how much is like texture
05:24SPEAKERand then how much is smell.
05:26SPEAKERIt was very interesting.
05:28SPEAKER- It's a real double whammy at this particular time
05:31SPEAKERin history to both have the side of your face go numb
05:35SPEAKERand also lose your sense of smell.
05:37SPEAKERIt's like you get to worry that you're having both a stroke
05:39SPEAKERand coronavirus at the same time.
05:41SPEAKER- Look, I was gonna say,
05:42SPEAKERwhen I drove to the hospital at two o'clock in the morning
05:44SPEAKERor one o'clock in the morning on election morning,
05:46SPEAKERlike Monday night, Tuesday morning.
05:48SPEAKER- Oh my God.
05:49SPEAKER- I thought I was having a stroke.
05:51SPEAKERSo when I got there and they're like,
05:52SPEAKERoh no, it's just Bell's palsy.
05:53SPEAKEREverything after that was literally the best news
05:55SPEAKERI've ever heard.
05:56SPEAKER- This was all just gravy at this point.
05:58SPEAKER- So he was like, he couldn't,
05:59SPEAKERand of course we had masks on and I was making a face
06:02SPEAKER'cause half of my face wasn't working
06:03SPEAKERand the other eye was doing overtime.
06:06SPEAKERHe was like, are you okay?
06:07SPEAKERYou look like you're upset.
06:08SPEAKERI was like, no, I'm just really happy.
06:09SPEAKERI thought I was gonna have like
06:10SPEAKERseriously impaired cognitive function or death.
06:13SPEAKERSo like, hey, your face is gonna be jacked up
06:15SPEAKERfor three months, no big deal.
06:17SPEAKER- Stick me with some needles, strap some electrodes on,
06:20SPEAKERwhatever you wanna do, it's all just icing from here.
06:24SPEAKER- Hashtag winning.
06:25SPEAKER- Yes, hashtag not a stroke.
06:28SPEAKER- Not a stroke.
06:28SPEAKERAnytime it's not a stroke, that's good news.
06:30SPEAKER- That's probably not gonna be the episode title.
06:33SPEAKER- I hope not, please make it.
06:34SPEAKERNo, not the episode title.
06:37SPEAKERSo yeah, it's a weird episode 'cause you've been slammed.
06:40SPEAKERUsually we like figure out what we're gonna do
06:41SPEAKERearlier in the week or even the week before.
06:44SPEAKERAnd we were talking about Alex Trebek a little bit.
06:48SPEAKERWe're gonna do a potpourri episode.
06:49SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, we're just gonna grab back some stuff here.
06:52SPEAKERLet's just talk for a few minutes.
06:54SPEAKER- We have a few things.
06:55SPEAKERWe have some things that like,
06:56SPEAKERwe're gonna talk about fixing stuff
06:58SPEAKER'cause I replaced the mouse switches on my Logitech G Pro.
07:01SPEAKERI had a bad switch and I got to learn how to desolder
07:05SPEAKERthanks to Twinkle Twinkie in the chat.
07:07SPEAKER- I didn't realize that would require any soldering
07:09SPEAKERor desoldering, that's interesting to hear.
07:11SPEAKERI guess we'll talk about it some more.
07:12SPEAKER- We'll talk about that.
07:14SPEAKERTalk about like things we've fixed and origins of fixing.
07:16SPEAKERAnd then if we have time, we're gonna talk about some tech
07:18SPEAKERwe're excited about that's coming down the line.
07:20SPEAKER- Some random stuff.
07:21SPEAKER- Yeah, but also shout out to Alex Trebek,
07:25SPEAKERwho ruled for a long time and was maybe the first nerd
07:29SPEAKERI saw on TV as a kid.
07:31SPEAKERSo love that guy and yeah.
07:34SPEAKER- Real interesting bedside manner he had.
07:37SPEAKERI've seen some clips going around of actually,
07:38SPEAKERyou know what's weird is a decent number of the clips
07:41SPEAKERor photos I've seen of Jeopardy going around
07:43SPEAKERare being posted by the people
07:44SPEAKERwho were on the show at the time.
07:46SPEAKERLike a surprising number of people are just popping up
07:49SPEAKERon Twitter going like, oh yeah, here's the clip
07:50SPEAKERfrom when I was on Jeopardy and it's like, wow,
07:52SPEAKERa lot of people have been on Jeopardy apparently.
07:53SPEAKER- Well, I mean, look, you and I know at least two people
07:56SPEAKERthat have been on Jeopardy, 'cause we worked with one.
07:59SPEAKER- Who?
08:00SPEAKER- Ted was on Jeopardy.
08:01SPEAKER- Really?
08:02SPEAKER- I mean, just try it out.
08:03SPEAKERI can't remember, but I know a couple other people
08:04SPEAKERwho have been on Jeopardy.
08:05SPEAKERMy friend Glenn Fleischman was on Jeopardy a few times
08:08SPEAKERand like a lot of people,
08:11SPEAKERI mean, they've done bazillion seasons of that
08:13SPEAKERand they do like 60 episodes a year or something.
08:15SPEAKERSo, sorry, more than that.
08:17SPEAKERThey do five episodes a night for 30 weeks a year, so.
08:20SPEAKER- Five a night?
08:21SPEAKER- Five a week, sorry.
08:22SPEAKER- Okay. - Okay.
08:23SPEAKER- It's a lot of episodes.
08:25SPEAKER- Yeah, for sure.
08:25SPEAKERBut he did, he had that certain like,
08:28SPEAKERwhat's the word I'm looking for?
08:29SPEAKER- He was just nonplussed all the time.
08:31SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
08:32SPEAKERHe was a little bit, not cold exactly,
08:35SPEAKERbut he could be very hard to impress.
08:38SPEAKER- Yeah, like.
08:39SPEAKER- Well, you know, like you'd get a lot of like,
08:41SPEAKERsomebody would sit there and spend 30 seconds
08:42SPEAKERtelling him their life story and he'd be like,
08:45SPEAKERthat's it huh?
08:46SPEAKER- Well, but it wasn't mean though.
08:48SPEAKER- No, no, that's what I'm getting at.
08:50SPEAKER- Thanks for sharing.
08:51SPEAKER- Yeah, he was a little blunt.
08:52SPEAKERHe could be very blunt.
08:53SPEAKER- He was kind of like Mr. Rogers,
08:54SPEAKERbut just slightly, just like 8% edgier.
08:57SPEAKER- Oh yeah, just a slight crotchety-ness.
09:02SPEAKER- Yeah.
09:02SPEAKER- I guess, but.
09:03SPEAKER- I mean, look, you didn't want to disappoint Alex
09:05SPEAKERis where I would have landed.
09:07SPEAKER- Right, I hadn't even started thinking about
09:10SPEAKERwho might take over, but I saw a push for LeVar Burton,
09:13SPEAKERwhich I was like, that's probably about the best choice
09:16SPEAKERI could think of right now.
09:17SPEAKER- Look, right now, the leading candidates
09:20SPEAKERthat I've seen on the internet
09:21SPEAKERwhere no one's opinion matters are,
09:23SPEAKERI think LeVar who'd be awesome.
09:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.
09:27SPEAKER- And Wolf Blitzer who had the,
09:30SPEAKERgenerated my all time favorite,
09:32SPEAKERfavorite celebrity jeopardy screenshot,
09:35SPEAKERwhich is like him and Andy Richter.
09:37SPEAKERI can't remember who's in the middle,
09:39SPEAKERbut Andy Richter has like $35,000 on the board
09:42SPEAKERand Wolf Blitzer is like negative 18 grand.
09:46SPEAKERAnd on Celebrity Jeopardy, they get to play Final Jeopardy
09:49SPEAKEReven if they're negative because celebrities.
09:53SPEAKERYeah, anyway.
09:54SPEAKER- I've seen that clip go around of that instance
09:57SPEAKERfor a long time and I've never actually been able
09:59SPEAKERto watch it 'cause I know what happens
10:00SPEAKERjust for fear of vicarious embarrassment.
10:04SPEAKER- You just feel bad for Wolf, right?
10:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I can't bring myself to view someone else's shame
10:10SPEAKERin such a way, but.
10:12SPEAKER- Anyway, I always loved the potpourri episodes
10:15SPEAKERwhen I was with the potpourri category
10:16SPEAKER'cause I assumed that that was just the questions
10:18SPEAKERthat like the writers loved and they couldn't find a slot
10:21SPEAKERto put it in normally.
10:22SPEAKERSo they had like on the whiteboard at the end of the season,
10:26SPEAKERthere's just a bunch of cards with all these good questions
10:28SPEAKERand they're like, well, fuck it, let's just put it up here.
10:31SPEAKERLet's get these done.
10:32SPEAKER- Now that we've said the word potpourri enough times
10:35SPEAKERjust because this whole podcast is about knowing
10:38SPEAKERwhat things are and how they work,
10:40SPEAKERI'm sitting here, I'm sitting here looking up
10:42SPEAKERwhat goes into potpourri.
10:43SPEAKER- Oh, it's like dried herbals, right?
10:46SPEAKER- A mixture of dried naturally fragrant plant materials.
10:49SPEAKERBut I just, okay, let's see.
10:50SPEAKERAll spice, cedarwood shavings,
10:54SPEAKERwhich apparently is a moth repellent.
10:56SPEAKERCinnamon bark, cloves, cypress wood, fennel seeds, weird.
11:01SPEAKERDoesn't fennel like a big thing in sausage?
11:03SPEAKER- Fennel, like a fancy Italian sausage.
11:05SPEAKERYeah, sweet sausage always has a lot of fennel.
11:07SPEAKER- Apparently also in potpourri.
11:09SPEAKER- It smells nice, yeah, I got a lot of fennel.
11:11SPEAKER- A lot of stuff here, jasmine, jujube flowers,
11:14SPEAKERjuniper wood, lemon peel.
11:17SPEAKERYou could make potpourri out of just about anything.
11:20SPEAKER- You could just take an herbal tea bag
11:22SPEAKERand dump that in your drawer and call it a day,
11:23SPEAKERput some bark in there.
11:25SPEAKER- You could make potpourri out of tales of fixing gadgets
11:28SPEAKERand also some tech you're excited about.
11:30SPEAKER- Exactly.
11:32SPEAKER- Yeah, you've fixed the switch in your mouse,
11:34SPEAKERwhich is what occasioned the idea
11:36SPEAKERof talking about fixing things.
11:38SPEAKER- Yeah, the Logitech mice these days
11:41SPEAKERare shipping these Omron switches
11:43SPEAKERthat have a propensity toward double clicking
11:45SPEAKERafter some use.
11:47SPEAKER- Wait, how much is some use?
11:48SPEAKER'Cause like, I've had this one more than a year probably.
11:52SPEAKER- Not to get too deep into it.
11:53SPEAKERI mean, I think you received that mouse from Logitech
11:56SPEAKERfor full disclosure, is that right?
11:58SPEAKER- Yeah, this was a, I streamed the video games on Twitch
12:02SPEAKERand Logitech makes an effort to send free shit
12:04SPEAKERto people who stream the video games on Twitch.
12:06SPEAKERAnd as part of that transaction,
12:08SPEAKERthey sent me a Logitech G Pro wireless mouse,
12:11SPEAKERwhich is like a, it's a high-end mouse.
12:13SPEAKERIt's their lightweight model.
12:16SPEAKERAnd I like it because it's really nice and precise
12:19SPEAKERand it's so light, you kind of hardly feel that it's there.
12:21SPEAKERSo when you're doing flick shots and stuff like that,
12:23SPEAKERyou just zap right on the little noggin and dome somebody.
12:27SPEAKER- I just wanted to clear that up
12:28SPEAKERin the interest of radical transparency.
12:31SPEAKER- Yeah, we don't want the FTC coming down on us.
12:33SPEAKER- No, but by the same token,
12:34SPEAKERI also just bought a Logitech mouse a couple of weeks ago.
12:37SPEAKER- With money? - Yes.
12:38SPEAKER- Okay. - It's just an MX518.
12:41SPEAKER- That's a dope mouse.
12:41SPEAKER- It's the Legend Reborn, is how they describe it.
12:44SPEAKER'Cause I loved the MX518 back in the day.
12:48SPEAKERAnd I was like, it's weird to be nostalgic about a mouse
12:50SPEAKERand it was 20 bucks, so I went and got it
12:53SPEAKER'cause it was on sale.
12:54SPEAKERBut anyway, the reason I bring that up is like,
12:56SPEAKERLogitech to me has always been like the rock of mouses,
12:59SPEAKERof mice over the years.
13:02SPEAKERBut then, when I got this thing,
13:04SPEAKERyou had this issue with your G Pro
13:06SPEAKERand some other people on the Discord
13:08SPEAKERhad some similar stuff to say
13:10SPEAKERthat maybe they're not lasting quite as long as they used to.
13:13SPEAKERLike the G5 that I am replacing
13:14SPEAKERthat just died, I had for a decade.
13:17SPEAKERI bought that, literally bought that G5
13:19SPEAKERbecause I needed a new mouse
13:20SPEAKERfor StarCraft II's original release,
13:21SPEAKERif that taught you anything. - I remember when you
13:22SPEAKERbought that, 'cause you used one that was on my desk,
13:25SPEAKERI think, before you bought it, right?
13:26SPEAKER- I think that's right.
13:28SPEAKERBut the literal decade before that mouse started dying.
13:30SPEAKERAnd so, if they're dying faster than a decade now,
13:33SPEAKERI'm gonna be bummed.
13:34SPEAKER- Well, so, the thing I found,
13:38SPEAKERhaving reviewed mice for a really long time,
13:39SPEAKERis that Logitech has a pretty good reputation
13:42SPEAKERfor build quality.
13:43SPEAKERThe thing that they're better at is warranty support.
13:47SPEAKERLike, I've had, I have sent mice,
13:50SPEAKERI've called them about mice
13:51SPEAKERthat were multiple years out of warranty
13:53SPEAKERand they were like, "Yeah, just, what's your address?
13:55SPEAKER"We'll just send you a new one.
13:56SPEAKER"No need to send the old one back.
13:56SPEAKER"Just, you know, recycle it or whatever."
13:58SPEAKER- Wow.
13:59SPEAKER- Same thing for, like, Harmony remotes and stuff like that.
14:01SPEAKERSo, while they may not, like,
14:02SPEAKERwhile the devices may not be infallible,
14:05SPEAKER'cause, you know, nothing's infallible,
14:07SPEAKERand mice and keyboards especially
14:09SPEAKERsee a lot of abuse in my experience,
14:12SPEAKERthey're pretty good,
14:13SPEAKERassuming you haven't been just outright negligent
14:15SPEAKERabout fixing flaws in workmanship or stuff like this.
14:18SPEAKERAnd they probably would have replaced this had I, like,
14:21SPEAKERI don't do warranty stuff on products
14:24SPEAKERthat people send me for free, 'cause that's shitty.
14:26SPEAKERIf it had been something I had bought and it did this,
14:29SPEAKERand I'd called them,
14:29SPEAKERthen they would have absolutely replaced it.
14:31SPEAKERI have no doubt of that.
14:33SPEAKERBut as I was getting ready to go buy another mouse,
14:35SPEAKERI was like, "Hey, maybe I'll see about fixing this one."
14:40SPEAKER'Cause I like to not put things in the landfill.
14:42SPEAKERThat seems like a good thing to do.
14:44SPEAKERAnd sure enough, there was a guide on YouTube
14:46SPEAKERby this guy named,
14:49SPEAKERI'll have to look it up and put a link in the show notes,
14:50SPEAKERbut he's bearded something.
14:52SPEAKERAnd he had a video guide on, like, okay,
14:56SPEAKERA, this exposed me to a whole subculture
14:58SPEAKERI didn't know exists that I'm now in love with
15:00SPEAKERof like ultimate mouse weight reduction people.
15:04SPEAKERSo there was a picture of a G Pro
15:07SPEAKERthat somebody had taken all of the outside plastic
15:10SPEAKERthat Logitech provides off.
15:11SPEAKER- Oh no, oh no.
15:12SPEAKER- And they built a frame out of carbon fiber
15:15SPEAKERand it's honeycombed to the base.
15:16SPEAKER- Wow.
15:17SPEAKER- And like the whole, all that was in the mouse
15:19SPEAKERwas like a little bit of a hump on the back,
15:21SPEAKERlike two wires you could kind of hump your hand on.
15:24SPEAKERAnd then like wells where you went down and hit pads
15:27SPEAKERthat were just physically mounted on the switches.
15:30SPEAKER- I have to see what this looks like.
15:30SPEAKER- And it weighed like 24 grams.
15:32SPEAKERIt was really light.
15:34SPEAKER- Do you have any way that I could Google that right now?
15:36SPEAKER'Cause I really want to see that.
15:37SPEAKER- Just search ultralight Logitech G Pro mods.
15:39SPEAKER- Ultralight Logitech G Pro carbon fiber.
15:45SPEAKER- There you go.
15:46SPEAKERSo I was looking at that and I was like, okay,
15:48SPEAKERthat's too far, but he had a good tutorial
15:50SPEAKERfor switching the switches.
15:52SPEAKERAnd it like, the disassembly of the mouse isn't too hard.
15:54SPEAKERYou have to pull the Teflon feet off
15:57SPEAKERand then unscrew like seven screws
15:59SPEAKERand separate the bottom from the top,
16:01SPEAKERdisconnect a couple of cables, pop out the battery,
16:04SPEAKERunscrew the retaining clips that hold the buttons in place
16:08SPEAKERand then pull the buttons out.
16:11SPEAKERAnd then you can access the board,
16:12SPEAKERpull the board that the switches are on out
16:14SPEAKERand de-soldered those switches and all that.
16:16SPEAKERBut the switches are three pole switches,
16:19SPEAKERwhich means there's three wires
16:21SPEAKERthat come out of the bottom of the switch,
16:22SPEAKERgo through holes on the board.
16:24SPEAKERAnd de-soldering stuff that has one hole, really easy.
16:28SPEAKERDe-soldering things that have two holes, pretty easy.
16:31SPEAKERDe-soldering things that have three holes
16:33SPEAKERtraditionally has been beyond my skill level.
16:35SPEAKER- That's just one extra hole.
16:37SPEAKER- Yeah, but like with two, you can kind of heat one up
16:40SPEAKERand then lift it up a little bit and wiggle,
16:41SPEAKERand then you can heat the other end up and wiggle
16:42SPEAKERand just kind of shimmy shim it out.
16:45SPEAKERBut with three, that doesn't work
16:46SPEAKER'cause the two that are still in place
16:47SPEAKERwill keep it pretty locked down.
16:49SPEAKERThere's not enough wiggle.
16:50SPEAKER- Sure, sure.
16:52SPEAKERSo I post on the Discord and we have a lot
16:54SPEAKERof really good electronics people in there.
16:57SPEAKERAnd Twinkle Twinkie, who we've talked about before
17:00SPEAKERin regards to mechanical keyboards.
17:01SPEAKER- Yes, he's great.
17:03SPEAKER- Shared some, did a really good thread
17:06SPEAKERthat I'm actually gonna write up and put on a newsletter
17:08SPEAKERor a Medium post or something next week
17:12SPEAKERwith a bunch of de-soldering tips like temperature ranges,
17:16SPEAKERtools that you need, tools that are optional
17:20SPEAKERbut will help you a lot.
17:21SPEAKERAnd I felt, I ordered the stuff that was recommended.
17:24SPEAKERI got a good solder sucker.
17:27SPEAKERHold on.
17:30SPEAKERWill is reaching for his solder sucker.
17:31SPEAKERI imagine he just leaned aggressively out of frame.
17:36SPEAKERI hear some reaching.
17:38SPEAKERI hear some chair creaking.
17:39SPEAKER- Oh, there it is.
17:40SPEAKER- Getting a good look at the back of the chair.
17:41SPEAKER- His chair is very orange.
17:43SPEAKER- Okay, it's not here, nevermind.
17:46SPEAKERIt makes a real good popping noise and it sucks really good.
17:49SPEAKERAnd it has a removable silicone tip
17:51SPEAKERso that you can, it's heat safe
17:57SPEAKERat the soldering temperature you're gonna use.
17:59SPEAKERSo you can jam it right up against the soldering iron
18:00SPEAKERand get a good seal and then pop it loose
18:03SPEAKERwithout taking the soldering iron off
18:04SPEAKERso you don't have to be fast or anything.
18:05SPEAKER- And you're literally just suctioning the warm or the hot,
18:08SPEAKERI mean the liquid solder off, right?
18:10SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.
18:12SPEAKER- Is that reusable or what would you do
18:14SPEAKERwith the solder after that?
18:15SPEAKER- It kind of falls out.
18:16SPEAKERYou kind of bang the tip and it just knocks off
18:18SPEAKERand then you throw it in the trash
18:19SPEAKER'cause it might be toxic depending on what kind
18:21SPEAKERof solder you use.
18:23SPEAKER'Cause the home solder usually has lead,
18:25SPEAKERcommercial solder is usually RoHS compliant
18:28SPEAKERso it doesn't have lead, but anyway.
18:30SPEAKER- Does it lose its conductivity though?
18:31SPEAKERIs that, would you not wanna use it again for that purpose?
18:34SPEAKER- You don't wanna, so you don't wanna reuse old solder
18:37SPEAKERbecause the flux is built into the solder usually
18:39SPEAKERand the flux is what makes it flow well.
18:41SPEAKER- I see.
18:42SPEAKER- So there's like, it's like an acidy thing
18:43SPEAKERthat just makes the solder, you know how solder goes
18:46SPEAKERfrom being shiny to like mercury to like kind of matte
18:49SPEAKERas it cools, that's as the solder, as the flux burns away,
18:52SPEAKERthat's what happens.
18:53SPEAKER- Oh it burns out, I see.
18:55SPEAKER- Yeah, you literally, like the smoke that comes off solder
18:57SPEAKERisn't molten metal, it's the flux burning away.
18:59SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.
19:00SPEAKER- Yeah.
19:01SPEAKER- Okay, I get to tell you.
19:02SPEAKER- So I bought that stuff, I bought some good flux.
19:07SPEAKERI think that's it, I think that's all I bought.
19:11SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie recommended a reflow station
19:13SPEAKERthat was like 35 bucks and I looked at it and I thought,
19:15SPEAKERoh, I don't want to have to store this in my house.
19:18SPEAKERBut about two hours into the desoldering process,
19:21SPEAKERI really, oh, and I bought some copper wire
19:26SPEAKERto kind of wick up the solder,
19:28SPEAKERwhich is the other way you can get solder
19:29SPEAKERout of existing joints.
19:31SPEAKERAbout two hours into that desoldering process,
19:34SPEAKERI wish I'd spent the $35
19:36SPEAKER'cause it would have been money well spent,
19:37SPEAKEReven if I just took it out and threw it in the trash
19:39SPEAKERthe moment I was done.
19:42SPEAKERBut I got it all done, it took a really long time.
19:45SPEAKERIt was frustrating, I need to buy a pair of magnifiers.
19:48SPEAKERThat's the thing I realized is that like,
19:50SPEAKERI've reached the point now where I can't,
19:52SPEAKERlike when I'm doing small, small work like that,
19:53SPEAKERhaving the magnifiers would be really useful.
19:56SPEAKER- Do you have the grabby arms
19:57SPEAKERthat we've talked about before?
19:58SPEAKER- I have the grabby arms, I already had them.
20:01SPEAKERWell, I can post all this stuff in the show notes
20:03SPEAKERso that people can find it if they want.
20:06SPEAKERAnd I went down the whole process.
20:08SPEAKERIt was super good, the mouse is perfect.
20:11SPEAKERYou wouldn't know that anybody had done anything to it
20:13SPEAKERexcept for I replaced the black feet
20:15SPEAKERwith the fancy hyper skids white feet.
20:17SPEAKERSo it's like-- - That looks nice.
20:18SPEAKERFirst thing you'll never see 'cause it sits on a desk.
20:21SPEAKER- Yeah, but they're a little bit higher
20:23SPEAKERthan the default ones.
20:23SPEAKERSo it's like I got lifts for my mouse, it's pretty good.
20:26SPEAKER- Little bit more glide on there.
20:27SPEAKERSo it clicks the same, it doesn't click better?
20:30SPEAKER- It clicks slightly louder, ever so slightly louder.
20:33SPEAKERBut yeah, I mean the same click.
20:34SPEAKER- I guess a mouse click is a mouse click, right?
20:37SPEAKER- It's a little bit more hair triggering.
20:38SPEAKERWell, no, 'cause it's just like keyboard switches
20:40SPEAKERwhere you can get like different forces and all that.
20:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
20:44SPEAKER- It's a pretty good, like, I mean, here I'll hear it.
20:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I hear that click, yeah.
20:48SPEAKERThat sounds like a mouse click.
20:50SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a pretty good click, I was pleased.
20:52SPEAKER- I have a question that you may or may not
20:54SPEAKERhave an answer to.
20:57SPEAKERWhen it comes to electronics manufacturing,
21:00SPEAKERdo you have a good sense of, I mean,
21:02SPEAKERI guess we could use the mouse as an example,
21:03SPEAKERalthough we could talk video game consoles
21:05SPEAKERor whatever you want, but like I would love to know,
21:07SPEAKERand this probably varies by product,
21:08SPEAKERwhere the automation ends and the human intervention begins.
21:12SPEAKERLike, obviously if it's like a, you know,
21:14SPEAKERif it's a PCB with a bunch of stuff,
21:18SPEAKERI'm trying to think of some, give you some terms here,
21:21SPEAKERresistors, capacitors, whatever.
21:22SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, transistors, whatever, yeah.
21:24SPEAKER- I assume a lot of that stuff is assembly line,
21:26SPEAKERlike robot arms, jamming a lot of that stuff on there.
21:29SPEAKERBut when you talk about something that has wires
21:30SPEAKERbeing soldered to something, like at what point
21:33SPEAKERis it not really practical to automate stuff like that?
21:36SPEAKERAnd humans are having to sit there
21:38SPEAKERand finish off that assembly.
21:40SPEAKERDo you have any sense of that?
21:42SPEAKER- So you can often tell when you look at the boards,
21:45SPEAKER'cause if there's blobs of solder
21:47SPEAKERand it's not just like perfectly,
21:49SPEAKERlike if they, if it's made by machine,
21:53SPEAKERlike by a pick and place machine,
21:54SPEAKERwhich is like a little robot that picks up the components
21:55SPEAKERand puts them on the board and then squirts a little solder
21:57SPEAKERon the pads or whatever.
21:59SPEAKERAnd then that board will like roll into an oven
22:01SPEAKERor into a special thing that heats up the solder
22:03SPEAKERwithout any, like without anything touching it.
22:06SPEAKERIt's just hot enough to melt the solder,
22:07SPEAKERbut not destroy the devices.
22:11SPEAKERThen that puts you in, like that's made by machine.
22:16SPEAKERMost of the time that there's some hand assembly.
22:19SPEAKERSo for example, like an iPhone is probably assembled
22:21SPEAKERentirely by machine at this point.
22:23SPEAKER- Interesting. - 'Cause all the little
22:24SPEAKERcables and stuff can be connected by machines.
22:26SPEAKERAnd often if there is hand soldering
22:31SPEAKERthat looks like it's happened in there,
22:32SPEAKERthat indicates that maybe it was built someplace
22:34SPEAKERthat you probably don't want to support
22:35SPEAKERbecause they were using like child labor
22:37SPEAKERand stuff like that, which is shitty.
22:39SPEAKER- That is kind of the dark side of this question.
22:42SPEAKER- Like machines are, this is a situation where machines
22:45SPEAKERare unequivocally better than not machines.
22:49SPEAKERThe actual assembly wildly varies, is my understanding.
22:55SPEAKERMy data is, let's say the last time I've had a conversation
22:59SPEAKERwith this about somebody who knows and people
23:01SPEAKERwho are listening probably know better than I do.
23:03SPEAKERBut as recently as 10 years ago,
23:06SPEAKERif you had a multi-plane board,
23:08SPEAKERso if you have boards that stack on top of each other,
23:11SPEAKERlike a Raspberry Pi or a Mr. Does,
23:14SPEAKERwhere they just kind of slot into things on the board,
23:16SPEAKERthat's something the machines can do.
23:18SPEAKERBut if you're talking about a mouse
23:20SPEAKERwhere there's boards that are on the side
23:22SPEAKERfor the side buttons and there's a board up under the front
23:24SPEAKERthat's at a different angle because of the camber
23:26SPEAKERof the buttons, those often have to be assembled by hand
23:30SPEAKERon an assembly line.
23:32SPEAKERSo somebody will be sitting there
23:32SPEAKERand will place every single one,
23:34SPEAKERor at least we'll make sure that they line up right
23:36SPEAKERand chalk them in there.
23:40SPEAKER- Cool, that's good to know.
23:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
23:43SPEAKERThe other way that they do the re-soldering,
23:47SPEAKERthe soldering on the machine is called, hold on, hold on.
23:55SPEAKERHold on, it is called, um,
24:07SPEAKERwave soldering.
24:07SPEAKER- That's like a good motorcycle revving on there.
24:10SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I'll cut all that bit out probably,
24:12SPEAKERbut it's called wave soldering.
24:14SPEAKERAnd I don't know what that means,
24:15SPEAKERbut you can ask Twinkle Twinkie in the Discord, so.
24:18SPEAKER- Yeah, he knows this stuff for sure.
24:19SPEAKER- Yeah.
24:20SPEAKER- His workstation is pretty serious from what I've seen.
24:23SPEAKER- Pretty cool.
24:24SPEAKERBut yeah, so this is, the thing about this was,
24:26SPEAKERthis was the first time I've ever done a soldering job
24:29SPEAKERthat I didn't finish and feel like a hack.
24:31SPEAKERLike every time I've tried
24:32SPEAKERto de-solder something complicated before,
24:35SPEAKERit often ended with me doing things
24:36SPEAKERthat are really ill-advised,
24:38SPEAKERlike getting a drill bit that's the right size
24:40SPEAKERand just kind of reaming out the through hole
24:42SPEAKERa little bit with that, which is, just to be clear,
24:45SPEAKERabsolutely not the right way to do that.
24:47SPEAKERThat is like, it's not going to be good
24:50SPEAKERfor what you're doing.
24:51SPEAKER- Does it work?
24:52SPEAKER- Well, yeah.
24:53SPEAKER- I mean, you can only complain so much then, right?
24:56SPEAKER- Well, but the thing is you'll reduce the life of the board.
25:00SPEAKERSo like, on this, I used a lot of flux
25:05SPEAKERto keep the solder flowing and keep it moving
25:07SPEAKERand wick up into the braid and all that.
25:08SPEAKERAnd it took a long time.
25:10SPEAKERBut at the end, it looked perfectly clean.
25:13SPEAKERAnd when I put the new parts on,
25:14SPEAKERthey looked like they were meant to be there,
25:16SPEAKEReven though they were different colors
25:17SPEAKERthan the switches that I started with.
25:18SPEAKERSo I was pretty stoked.
25:21SPEAKER- I'm just going to ask another question.
25:23SPEAKER- Yeah.
25:24SPEAKER- Tangential to this, 'cause I guess that's what I do
25:26SPEAKERwhen I hear about things.
25:28SPEAKER- That's why we're here.
25:29SPEAKER- Yes, I guess so.
25:32SPEAKERAnd again, I apologize, my brain is mush.
25:33SPEAKERI'm trying to think how to phrase this question.
25:35SPEAKERLike, is there anything, is the PCB part of,
25:38SPEAKERor is the board part of a PCB totally inert?
25:42SPEAKERLike, as long as you don't see any traces
25:45SPEAKERrunning through a given part of the board,
25:48SPEAKERis anything ill, are there going to be any ill consequences
25:51SPEAKERif you like drilled a hole through that part of the board?
25:53SPEAKERYou get what I mean?
25:54SPEAKERLike, is there no electrical traces
25:55SPEAKERor anything similar in that spot?
25:58SPEAKER- So it depends on the board.
26:00SPEAKEROn a single layer PCB, you're probably fine.
26:03SPEAKERMy understanding is I've never tried
26:05SPEAKERto actually drill through a board,
26:07SPEAKERbecause that, like, they're a little brittle.
26:11SPEAKERSo you might explode at doing that, I don't know.
26:13SPEAKER- Yeah, this is very theoretical, you know.
26:15SPEAKERIt's not something you should actually try
26:16SPEAKERif you care about the device.
26:18SPEAKER- Most modern boards, like the one on a Raspberry Pi
26:21SPEAKERor a motherboard or something, or a video card,
26:22SPEAKERare multi-level, multi-layer boards.
26:25SPEAKER- Okay, so there's stuff in there.
26:26SPEAKER- Instead of having one conductor, you know,
26:28SPEAKERit's a sandwich of a piece of fiberglass, a conductor,
26:30SPEAKERand then another piece of fiberglass,
26:32SPEAKERand then there's some stuff in between.
26:35SPEAKERAnd the traces are cuts in that conductive layer.
26:41SPEAKERSo if you have a multi-layer board where the holes go,
26:45SPEAKERwhere, like, one hole is connected to level three
26:47SPEAKERand one hole is connected to level seven,
26:48SPEAKERone hole is connected to level five,
26:50SPEAKERyou may not be able to see where the traces are
26:52SPEAKERin the middle layers.
26:53SPEAKERThey may just be visible in the top and the bottom layers.
26:55SPEAKERSo, you know, don't draw holes in bottom boards.
26:59SPEAKER- Again, I'm not recommending it.
27:00SPEAKERI just mean, just theoretically, though,
27:02SPEAKERif you hit a spot on the board that was nothing
27:04SPEAKERbut pure fiberglass, like,
27:05SPEAKERit wouldn't actually affect anything.
27:07SPEAKER- Yeah, if it doesn't explode, you're probably fine.
27:08SPEAKER- Interesting.
27:09SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah.
27:10SPEAKER- Good to know. - I think, I don't know,
27:12SPEAKERDiscord will tell me if I'm wrong.
27:14SPEAKERWe'll have a correction next week.
27:16SPEAKERYou had talked about, like, learning to fix stuff
27:20SPEAKERby, like, taking apart consoles back in the day.
27:22SPEAKER- Yeah, it's kind of floated that idea
27:23SPEAKERwhen you started talking about your mouse.
27:24SPEAKERIt's just like, ah, maybe we should just talk
27:26SPEAKERabout our history of taking stuff apart.
27:27SPEAKERBut I don't know how much I have to talk about there,
27:31SPEAKERbut yes, modding PlayStations was my very first exposure
27:34SPEAKERto soldering, which I think we've talked about
27:37SPEAKERat some point in some capacity, but.
27:40SPEAKER- Yeah, your long history of console game piracy
27:43SPEAKERhas been a topic of conversation.
27:45SPEAKER- Three or four of them total in my life,
27:48SPEAKERbut actually I don't know how much more there is to say
27:51SPEAKERthan that other than I had a cheap $10 Radio Shack
27:55SPEAKERsoldering iron that I did it with
27:57SPEAKERand never actually upgraded.
27:59SPEAKER- So I never actually did that.
28:01SPEAKER- Really?
28:02SPEAKER- No, I never had a, so I skipped from the N64
28:06SPEAKERto the Xbox One, PS2 generation,
28:09SPEAKERand I never got a PlayStation,
28:10SPEAKERI guess I got a Dreamcast late.
28:12SPEAKERYeah, because I was, like, it was the '90s, man.
28:15SPEAKERI was into Quake.
28:16SPEAKERI didn't want to play any of your Tomb Raiders.
28:18SPEAKERI could have played that on the PC.
28:20SPEAKERI had a video card.
28:21SPEAKER- That's fair.
28:23SPEAKER- What was involved with modding the PlayStation?
28:25SPEAKER- It was like a four-wire ship.
28:27SPEAKERI forget.
28:29SPEAKERExactly what it is.
28:30SPEAKERLike one ground wire and three, whatever, whatever.
28:32SPEAKER- Yeah.
28:33SPEAKER- But yeah, you literally just soldered like four wires
28:35SPEAKERto four different points on the board.
28:36SPEAKERIt was very easy.
28:38SPEAKERPretty hard to mess up.
28:39SPEAKER- So did, but did you have to hit like a jumper
28:41SPEAKERor did you hit a pin, like a through-hole
28:43SPEAKERthat was something else?
28:44SPEAKEROr was it like a place where the,
28:46SPEAKERlike was it one of those little leads
28:47SPEAKERthat came off old school CPUs?
28:49SPEAKER- Oh gosh, I don't know how to describe it.
28:50SPEAKERIt's like the, kind of the pointy,
28:52SPEAKERthat's like something was attached
28:53SPEAKERon one side of the board
28:54SPEAKERand like had a point sticking through to the other.
28:57SPEAKERIs that a through-hole?
28:57SPEAKER- That's a through-hole.
28:58SPEAKER- Okay, 'cause you don't see a hole there.
28:59SPEAKERYou just see the metal.
29:01SPEAKER- Yeah, that was filled with solder.
29:02SPEAKER- Okay, so I didn't realize that
29:04SPEAKERthat's how you would refer to that.
29:05SPEAKERBut yeah, that's what it was.
29:06SPEAKERIf I remember, if memory serves,
29:09SPEAKERand I've still got my last PlayStation
29:10SPEAKERthat I modded in the closet somewhere.
29:12SPEAKERSo theoretically I could open that thing up and look at it.
29:16SPEAKERLook at the job I did here 20, 20 years later.
29:19SPEAKER- Did you have to do that to play games from Japan?
29:21SPEAKER- Yes, like that was for everything.
29:24SPEAKER- Okay.
29:25SPEAKER- And then, gosh, what was it?
29:27SPEAKEREventually, like toward the end,
29:28SPEAKERthey started shipping games
29:30SPEAKERthat defeated the mod chips with software.
29:32SPEAKER- Like would kill them?
29:34SPEAKER- Yeah, or it wouldn't boot.
29:34SPEAKERIt would just like-
29:36SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
29:37SPEAKER- It would not make it to the title screen
29:38SPEAKERif it detected the chip.
29:40SPEAKER- That's a trip.
29:41SPEAKER- Yeah, so that last chip that I put in,
29:43SPEAKERI connected it to a toggle switch
29:45SPEAKERthat would kill the power to the chip.
29:48SPEAKER- Oh, really?
29:49SPEAKER- So I could still play the games that wouldn't boot
29:51SPEAKERbecause, you know, I think Dino Crisis was one of those.
29:56SPEAKER- Oh, that's a trip.
29:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so drilled out a little hole
29:59SPEAKERon the back of my last PlayStation
30:00SPEAKERand just screwed a little Radio Shack rocker toggle switch
30:04SPEAKERin there, turned the mod chip on and off at will.
30:07SPEAKERIt's pretty fun.
30:08SPEAKER- Huh.
30:10SPEAKER- Anyway, I don't know.
30:11SPEAKERI think we've, I always second guess on this podcast
30:14SPEAKERanytime we talk about a thing like this,
30:15SPEAKERlike we must've talked about this before, right?
30:17SPEAKERI have to just be repeating myself for like 30 episodes ago.
30:21SPEAKER- I mean, we touched on it a little bit early on,
30:23SPEAKERI remember, but yeah.
30:25SPEAKER- I also, yeah. - Sorry, go ahead.
30:27SPEAKER- No, I was just to say,
30:28SPEAKERI also don't remember like a pretty substantial chunk
30:30SPEAKERof the episodes from like February of this year
30:33SPEAKERto maybe April of this year, so.
30:36SPEAKER- I don't think people understand
30:38SPEAKERwhen you do this for a living,
30:39SPEAKERyour capacity to forget all of the things
30:41SPEAKERyou've said over time.
30:43SPEAKER(laughing)
30:43SPEAKERI think people like, like in my other life,
30:47SPEAKERpeople will be like,
30:47SPEAKER"Hey, I remember when you gave so-and-so PS2 game
30:50SPEAKERa six point whatever."
30:51SPEAKERAnd I'm like, I don't remember ever playing that game,
30:53SPEAKERlet alone reviewing it.
30:55SPEAKER- Well, you know, it's funny, this is a sidebar,
30:58SPEAKERbut when I was at Maximum PC, I always thought we had this,
31:02SPEAKERwhen I started, we had this list,
31:04SPEAKERlike we just kind of casually stuck up a cutoff.
31:07SPEAKERWe cut off the cover of every magazine of every issue
31:09SPEAKERand just stuck them up on the wall in rows of 12 or 13,
31:13SPEAKERhowever many issues we did that year.
31:15SPEAKERSo, and when we moved offices,
31:18SPEAKERI always fought to keep that to the point that like,
31:20SPEAKERI got a bunch of poster board
31:21SPEAKERand glued them to the poster board
31:22SPEAKERso we could pick them up and move them with us.
31:24SPEAKERBecause it was so useful to have a physical reminder
31:28SPEAKERof like what work was in which months.
31:32SPEAKERLike you just look at the cover and you know like,
31:33SPEAKERhere's the five things that were in that issue
31:35SPEAKERand then that would prompt everything else
31:36SPEAKERthat went in that issue.
31:37SPEAKER- Right.
31:38SPEAKER- And because there were discrete stops and stops,
31:41SPEAKERlike each issue was a discrete thing, right?
31:43SPEAKERLike November, 2000 was, I still remember,
31:46SPEAKERa home theater, first home theater PC build, right?
31:49SPEAKERAnd we would go through those,
31:52SPEAKERlike having those on the wall where you could glance at them,
31:54SPEAKERlet you know exactly where,
31:56SPEAKERlike I can remember where everything was there.
31:58SPEAKERAnd then we started testing and started working on the web
31:59SPEAKERwhere it just never, there's no stop ever.
32:01SPEAKERYou just always keep going and it's all gone.
32:04SPEAKER- I think that is a big part, that's a big part of it,
32:06SPEAKERis that yes, it's just one long unbroken chain of, yeah.
32:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
32:12SPEAKER- Anyway, but I started to say like,
32:14SPEAKERI took apart my receiver, my AV receiver,
32:17SPEAKERa couple of years ago.
32:19SPEAKER- The Sony one?
32:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
32:20SPEAKER- Oh wow, what for?
32:21SPEAKER- It's a long story.
32:23SPEAKERI had some work done on it,
32:24SPEAKERbut then some other stuff got broken at it.
32:25SPEAKERSo I actually ended up having to buy
32:28SPEAKERan entire new face plate for it.
32:29SPEAKERLike that's kind of what happened is the face plate
32:31SPEAKERgot broken in the process of fixing the big LED display
32:34SPEAKERon the front.
32:35SPEAKER- Yeah.
32:35SPEAKER- So I had to straight up go,
32:36SPEAKERlike find whoever Sony's like warranty parts supplier is
32:40SPEAKERand buy a new face plate from them.
32:42SPEAKER- Wow.
32:43SPEAKER- So yeah, so I had to take all that stuff apart
32:45SPEAKERand reconnect all the ribbon cables and blah, blah, blah.
32:48SPEAKER- Those ribbon cables,
32:49SPEAKERlike the ribbon cables are the hardest part
32:51SPEAKERof taking apart modern stuff in my experience.
32:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
32:55SPEAKER- It's really worth,
32:56SPEAKERespecially if you're taking apart something
32:57SPEAKERyou haven't done before and you don't know how to do it,
32:59SPEAKERit's worth taking it.
33:00SPEAKERA, it's worth having nylon spudgers around,
33:02SPEAKERwhich are, they're like little plasticy sticks
33:06SPEAKERthat are non-conductive and pretty soft.
33:10SPEAKERSo it's really hard to kind of jack something up,
33:12SPEAKERbut it's worth learning how those connectors work.
33:14SPEAKER'Cause some of them flip up,
33:15SPEAKERsome of them pull like out away from the socket.
33:18SPEAKERSome of them have weird connectors
33:19SPEAKERthat I've never seen before.
33:20SPEAKERSome flip up from the far side of the socket.
33:23SPEAKERAnd if you, once you mess those up,
33:25SPEAKERyou're basically hosed.
33:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I was, it was a pretty harrowing process.
33:28SPEAKERI'm not gonna lie.
33:29SPEAKERI was pretty proud that it all worked
33:31SPEAKERwhen I put it back together.
33:31SPEAKERAlso the power supply inside that thing looked
33:33SPEAKERlike something that I should not be anywhere near
33:35SPEAKERwith a screwdriver or anything else.
33:38SPEAKER- That's the way the old TiVo's were.
33:40SPEAKERI used to do TiVo upgrades for people,
33:42SPEAKERfor friends when, remember TiVo?
33:43SPEAKERThat was a thing.
33:44SPEAKER- Yeah, oh yeah.
33:46SPEAKER- People would buy like the 14 hour TiVo or whatever
33:48SPEAKERand be like, hey, this thing doesn't hold enough.
33:50SPEAKERCan you do anything about that?
33:50SPEAKERI was like, yeah, I got you.
33:52SPEAKERBring me a hard drive and bring your TiVo over here.
33:54SPEAKER10 o'clock behind the Best Buy, we'll take care of you.
33:57SPEAKERAnd then you have to like bless the hard drive.
34:00SPEAKER- Yeah, you bless the drive.
34:01SPEAKER- We had to take the old drive out.
34:03SPEAKERYou had to bless the drive,
34:04SPEAKERwhich basically was like putting
34:06SPEAKERsome weird file system business on there.
34:08SPEAKER'Cause it was a Linux machine.
34:09SPEAKER- Dark magic.
34:10SPEAKER- But those power supplies were just some exposed fat,
34:14SPEAKERfat capacitors that look like real heart stoppers
34:19SPEAKERif you hit the wrong point on 'em, so.
34:21SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
34:22SPEAKER- And all sorts of goopy grease stuff there to cool, anyway.
34:25SPEAKER- Indeed.
34:26SPEAKERI've got something that AV receiver related
34:28SPEAKERthat I want to talk about that would have made sense
34:31SPEAKERin the tech we're excited about part,
34:32SPEAKERbut I don't know if I should save it for that or not.
34:35SPEAKER- I mean, you want to do the tech we're excited about?
34:36SPEAKERWe can go on.
34:37SPEAKER- I guess we just move.
34:38SPEAKER- Let's just hope we're in, man.
34:39SPEAKER- That's right.
34:40SPEAKER- All bets are off.
34:40SPEAKER- We can just move into that.
34:41SPEAKER- Okay, it's actually the third item on that list,
34:44SPEAKERbut I'm just going to read it first
34:45SPEAKERbecause we have got this awkward segue.
34:48SPEAKERHere's what I wrote.
34:50SPEAKER"New TVs kind of maybe because consoles, but not really."
34:53SPEAKER- Nailed it.
34:54SPEAKERThat's a good read.
34:55SPEAKER- Like I was trying to come up with, I was trying.
34:58SPEAKER- Hold on, can you do that one?
34:59SPEAKERLike a little more enthusiasm about because consoles
35:02SPEAKERand a little more dejectedness on but really, not really.
35:06SPEAKER- "New TVs kind of maybe because consoles, but not really."
35:11SPEAKER- Perfect, nailed it.
35:11SPEAKER- Something like that.
35:12SPEAKER- Okay, we'll ship that one.
35:13SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.
35:15SPEAKERYeah, I was just trying to come up with some items
35:16SPEAKERto populate this list with,
35:17SPEAKERand I'm kind of in new TV mode, not really,
35:22SPEAKERbut I'm sort of at least thinking about it
35:23SPEAKERkind of a little bit because of these consoles.
35:26SPEAKER- We went down this path a couple months ago,
35:29SPEAKERand we talked about it a little bit,
35:30SPEAKERand then I decided after looking at what was available
35:34SPEAKERand either the amount of money I would have to spend
35:37SPEAKERto get all the shit that I want in my next TV
35:39SPEAKERor the sacrifices I would have to make
35:42SPEAKERto buy a reasonably priced TV
35:43SPEAKERthat did the things that I wanted,
35:45SPEAKERI was just like, fuck it, I'm waiting.
35:47SPEAKER- What are the things you want?
35:49SPEAKER- Well, I want the new HDMI spec.
35:51SPEAKER- HDMI 2.1 goes without saying, like that's of course,
35:54SPEAKERalthough like the shitty thing,
35:55SPEAKERI think we've maybe mentioned this before,
35:57SPEAKERthe shitty thing is you can have those ports on a TV
36:00SPEAKERand still not support all of those features.
36:02SPEAKER- Right.
36:02SPEAKER- Like it's possible to like, to 4K 120,
36:06SPEAKERbut not support the variable refresh
36:08SPEAKERor the auto low latency, you know,
36:10SPEAKERlike you could still leave features out of that spec
36:12SPEAKERand still say that you're compliant.
36:14SPEAKER- Well, so I wanted that, I wanted variable refresh.
36:16SPEAKERIdeally I wanted like a G-Sync or, you know,
36:18SPEAKERFreeSync type situation that's gonna do the frame buffer,
36:21SPEAKERthe smart frame buffer writing.
36:23SPEAKERAnd I wanted all the HDR business.
36:26SPEAKERI want something that has actual real black levels,
36:29SPEAKERnot a bad LCD.
36:31SPEAKERAlthough I think at this point,
36:32SPEAKERlike the LCDs that do bad black levels
36:35SPEAKERdon't exist in the, even in the low end.
36:38SPEAKERThey're in big set sizes.
36:39SPEAKER- I've been keeping up with the reviews of the,
36:42SPEAKERGod, I want to make sure I keep this straight.
36:44SPEAKERThe mini LED, not the micro LED
36:46SPEAKERis the magic future technology.
36:47SPEAKER- Micro LED is the future.
36:48SPEAKERMini LED is the backlight.
36:50SPEAKER- Micro LED is the like successor to OLED.
36:53SPEAKERCrazy awesome tech.
36:54SPEAKERYeah, you're right.
36:55SPEAKERMini LED is just the standard LCD,
36:57SPEAKERbut with a very high resolution backlight.
36:59SPEAKER- Right, micro LED is when the LEDs
37:01SPEAKERare actually the pixels, not.
37:03SPEAKER- Yes, which is what OLED is as well.
37:05SPEAKERIt's just that OLED is made with organic compounds,
37:07SPEAKERwhich is what the O stands for, which my understanding is,
37:09SPEAKERthat's why they tend to degrade faster.
37:12SPEAKERThose compounds break down.
37:13SPEAKER- Chemistry.
37:14SPEAKER- Yes.
37:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
37:15SPEAKER- Anyway, the mini LEDs, apparently like they're not OLED,
37:19SPEAKERbut they're like shockingly good for LCD
37:21SPEAKERis what the reviews have been saying
37:22SPEAKERthat I've been looking at, so.
37:24SPEAKER- That's what, yeah, that's what like TCL
37:26SPEAKERand all those guys are shipping, right?
37:27SPEAKER- TCL has gone pretty hard into mini LED
37:29SPEAKERas a kind of lower costs competitor to OLED.
37:33SPEAKER- It's no quantum dot, Brad.
37:34SPEAKER- Well, what if you had both?
37:37SPEAKER- One cool word and one kind of okay word.
37:40SPEAKER- Sure.
37:42SPEAKERBut anyway, I don't know.
37:45SPEAKERIt's not really necessary yet.
37:48SPEAKERI mean, it's kind of a nice to have, but eh.
37:52SPEAKER- The quantum dots are the--
37:54SPEAKER- No, just the new TV, I mean, sorry.
37:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's funny.
37:58SPEAKERThe end result of that whole conversation for me
38:01SPEAKERwas that like the thing I was excited about was having HDR
38:05SPEAKERand the TV part of it, I could kind of,
38:07SPEAKERlike the higher resolution, frankly,
38:10SPEAKERthe higher resolution seems like a real pain in the ass
38:12SPEAKER'cause it seems like everything is kind of poorly supported
38:16SPEAKERand like are you gonna get 4K worth of pixels
38:22SPEAKERacross your Apple TV or your Roku or whatever?
38:25SPEAKERNo, 'cause no streaming service is gonna stream 4K
38:28SPEAKERat a decent bit rate.
38:29SPEAKERIt's probably still, you know, anyway.
38:32SPEAKERYeah, I just couldn't be asked.
38:34SPEAKER- I am increasingly of the mind
38:35SPEAKERthat trying to run these console games
38:37SPEAKERat native 4K is a fool's errand
38:38SPEAKER'cause like, is it really worth the performance hit?
38:41SPEAKERI really don't think so.
38:43SPEAKERLike, I think saying that you are running at 4K on the box
38:46SPEAKERas a marketing point is way more important
38:49SPEAKERthan actually doing it in terms of the practical benefit
38:51SPEAKERas opposed to like running it at, let's say an 1800 P
38:54SPEAKERwith nice upscaling or, you know, something like that.
38:57SPEAKERLike, I don't think you need to actually tax the machine
39:01SPEAKERto get native 4K versus the benefits that you're getting.
39:04SPEAKER- I mean, the lesson of the 3080 for me is that,
39:08SPEAKERlike I have a 3080 on a Intel i9-9900K, right?
39:14SPEAKER32 gigs of RAM.
39:15SPEAKERIt is not an insubstantial computer.
39:18SPEAKERAnd in order for me to play something
39:20SPEAKERlike "Watch Dogs Legion" at 4K with ray tracing on,
39:23SPEAKERI have to do a whole bunch of other stuff
39:24SPEAKERand then the frame rate is like hinky around 30,
39:28SPEAKERmaybe 45 frames a second.
39:29SPEAKER- That's, and again, to be clear,
39:31SPEAKERthe machine you just described
39:32SPEAKERis like pretty significantly better than these consoles.
39:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so-
39:37SPEAKER- So what does that tell you about how taxing it is
39:40SPEAKERto run games at a native 4K?
39:41SPEAKER- Well, and at the same time, I'd much rather play,
39:44SPEAKERI would much rather have a solid 60 frames per second
39:47SPEAKERwith ray tracing cranked all the way up at 1080P
39:50SPEAKERon a 1080P monitor than do the 4K stuff.
39:54SPEAKERSo yeah, that's where I ended up on that.
39:56SPEAKER- And then of course, the PC gives you the freedom
39:58SPEAKERto actually make those choices.
39:59SPEAKERLike on the console, you're generally stuck
40:01SPEAKERwith the one or two modes
40:02SPEAKERthat you are provided by the developer.
40:03SPEAKERBut the thing I was gonna say is half the people I know
40:06SPEAKERwith 4K TVs are preferring these performance modes
40:10SPEAKERthat all these console games are shipping with right now.
40:12SPEAKERLike everybody I know is using the performance mode,
40:14SPEAKERwhich in a lot of times is like 1080P,
40:16SPEAKERjust because the frame rate is so much more noticeable
40:19SPEAKERthan somewhat higher resolution.
40:21SPEAKER- Well, and the upscalers are really good, is the thing.
40:23SPEAKEREven without doing all the machine learning stuff
40:25SPEAKERthat like DLSS and the DirectX multi-sample
40:28SPEAKERmachine learning super sampling do.
40:30SPEAKER- I like even last year you had like the checkerboard
40:32SPEAKERrendering techniques and stuff like that
40:33SPEAKERthat help you approximate a lot of that detail.
40:37SPEAKER- Well, and having the colors and having the reflections
40:40SPEAKERand all of that stuff is really good
40:41SPEAKERand having the resolution just makes the frame rate then.
40:43SPEAKERSo I mean, look, I also, I probably would feel differently
40:49SPEAKERif I kind of made a half-assed effort to buy a PS5
40:52SPEAKERand then when the pre-orders were a disaster,
40:53SPEAKERI just was like, I'll deal,
40:55SPEAKERlike when I could go to the Target and buy one, I'll do it.
40:59SPEAKERI can wait, I can wait until next year.
41:00SPEAKERLike I would love to be playing Miles Morales right now,
41:02SPEAKERbut I'll happily wait until I have the new console
41:04SPEAKERto do that.
41:06SPEAKERSo, so yeah, like if I had a new console sitting in my,
41:09SPEAKERin my, you know, taken up 18 cubic feet
41:13SPEAKERon my entertainment center right now,
41:14SPEAKERI'd probably be pretty excited about it.
41:15SPEAKERThey might have a different feeling.
41:16SPEAKER- So big.
41:19SPEAKER- And then the last thing, not to ramble about my TV
41:22SPEAKERsituation all day long, but like I've got a 55 inch
41:24SPEAKERand that's probably what I would get in this apartment.
41:27SPEAKERI don't think I would want to go to 65
41:29SPEAKERin the size of living room I have.
41:30SPEAKER- You gotta think about the future, Brad.
41:31SPEAKER- Well, that's the thing, like that's,
41:33SPEAKERthat's really what it comes down to for me is like,
41:34SPEAKERI'm just not going to buy a TV when I don't,
41:36SPEAKERI kind of don't want to live in this apartment forever.
41:39SPEAKERAnd I'm just not going to like, nobody wants to move it.
41:41SPEAKERNobody wants to move a new TV, you know?
41:43SPEAKER- Yeah.
41:44SPEAKER- Like just tough it out on the one you got
41:46SPEAKERand like give it away or sell it or...
41:50SPEAKER- Put it out on the curb with a free sign on it.
41:51SPEAKER- Sidewalk with a free sign.
41:52SPEAKERIt will last about 15 minutes.
41:54SPEAKER- Yeah, some kid will be so stoked
41:57SPEAKERthat they'll have in their bedroom
41:58SPEAKERa 55 inch 1080p plasma set.
42:01SPEAKER- And wait until you get where you're going
42:03SPEAKERand then buy the new TV instead of shipping it once
42:06SPEAKERand then shipping it again.
42:07SPEAKER- That's it.
42:07SPEAKERI mean, cause you gotta store that box.
42:09SPEAKER- You don't wanna keep that box someplace.
42:10SPEAKER- Totally, totally.
42:11SPEAKERScrew all of that.
42:12SPEAKERBut in the meantime, 55 inch, like 1080p at,
42:16SPEAKERI would guess eight, nine feet that I sit away from that.
42:19SPEAKER- Yeah.
42:21SPEAKER- I would guess that's probably pushing
42:23SPEAKERmost people's capability of noticing the difference
42:26SPEAKERat a size and distance of that type.
42:30SPEAKERWhat do you think?
42:30SPEAKER- I think you'd probably, I mean,
42:31SPEAKERyou'd probably notice a higher resolution.
42:33SPEAKER- You probably see a little bit of difference,
42:35SPEAKERbut I bet it's right on the edge.
42:36SPEAKER- Like, so Gary has one of those LG, has a big LG OLED.
42:41SPEAKERAnd when we went over to check that out
42:44SPEAKERand have a kiddo play date, the thing that struck me
42:47SPEAKERmore than the resolution was the HDR.
42:50SPEAKERThe HDR, on HDR content, the HDR is astounding.
42:54SPEAKERLike watching "Thor Ragnarok" or "Wonder Woman"
42:56SPEAKERor "Planet Earth" or something like that,
42:57SPEAKERit was mind blowing.
42:58SPEAKER- HDR and 120 Hertz are both way more noticeable
43:01SPEAKEReye popping features than higher resolution.
43:03SPEAKER- Agreed, yes, 100% agree.
43:05SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, whatever.
43:06SPEAKERI'm just kind of, we're just rambling about new TVs
43:08SPEAKERcause it's kind of, kind of on the brain,
43:10SPEAKERbut I can tell you that I've played both of these consoles
43:12SPEAKERon that 1080p set and they look quite good.
43:16SPEAKER- And you're getting a real solid frame rate, I bet.
43:18SPEAKER- Yes.
43:19SPEAKER- Even at the quality settings at that resolution?
43:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, well, you know, it's game dependent.
43:23SPEAKERIt's all entirely up to each developer.
43:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:27SPEAKER- Most of the quality are kind of, you know,
43:30SPEAKERthey're using different terminology.
43:31SPEAKERSome of them it's like resolution mode.
43:32SPEAKERSome of them it's like fidelity mode or quality mode
43:35SPEAKERor what do you have?
43:36SPEAKERBut typically that's 30 frames a second from what I'm seeing.
43:39SPEAKER- Interesting.
43:40SPEAKER- The thing I'm noticing is most of these games,
43:44SPEAKERfor whatever reason, they use some, you know,
43:46SPEAKERthey use a rendering technique
43:47SPEAKERthat'll just let you flip back and forth
43:48SPEAKERwithout having to like restart a checkpoint or, you know.
43:51SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:52SPEAKER- Do a vid_restart in the Quake 3 parlance.
43:56SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
43:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I remember.
43:58SPEAKER- The point is that is letting a lot of people
44:00SPEAKERwho I wouldn't normally think of as frame rate snobs
44:03SPEAKERsee the difference in basically real time.
44:06SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:07SPEAKER- And all of a sudden, a lot of people who previously
44:09SPEAKERsuper didn't give a shit about frame rate
44:11SPEAKERare suddenly going like,
44:12SPEAKERI can't do it with these resolution modes.
44:14SPEAKERLike I have to use performance.
44:15SPEAKERIt looks, I think there's psychologically something going on
44:17SPEAKERthat makes the lower frame rate look that much worse
44:20SPEAKERwhen you see it side by side,
44:21SPEAKERliterally flipping it back and forth like that.
44:23SPEAKER- Well, it's definitely a thing that I notice more
44:25SPEAKERif I can like, if you can go from slow to fast
44:29SPEAKERand then back to slow again.
44:30SPEAKERSlow looks bad.
44:31SPEAKER- Yes, for sure.
44:34SPEAKER- I got a new phone this week, Brad.
44:35SPEAKER- Oh.
44:36SPEAKER- My iPhone 12 Pro, the upgrade to my,
44:40SPEAKERthe sequel to my iPhone Pro 10 or iPhone 10.
44:44SPEAKER- Okay.
44:45SPEAKER- Which was a four year old phone, three,
44:47SPEAKERwell, this is the third year I'd had the phone.
44:49SPEAKERSo it came out in 2018.
44:51SPEAKER- Is that the same guts as the iPhone 8?
44:56SPEAKER- I think it had one newer processor,
44:58SPEAKERbut maybe it came out the same year as the iPhone 8.
45:00SPEAKER- I'm gonna have to look that up.
45:01SPEAKERI'm just sitting here thinking if you got rid of that phone,
45:04SPEAKERmaybe I should also get rid of it.
45:05SPEAKER- Well, so I wasn't, I was thinking I wasn't gonna upgrade.
45:08SPEAKERAnd then they had the LiDAR scanner
45:09SPEAKERon the back of the 10, of the 12 Pro.
45:13SPEAKER- Is that what pushed you over the edge?
45:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I can use it for work, it turns out.
45:17SPEAKER- Oh, go on.
45:20SPEAKERWell, back up.
45:21SPEAKERI think we may have, we've talked about LiDAR before,
45:23SPEAKERbut refresh my memory.
45:24SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
45:25SPEAKERSo LiDAR uses, basically uses infrared lasers
45:30SPEAKERto scan a room.
45:32SPEAKERSo imagine a connect one, but good.
45:35SPEAKER- Okay.
45:35SPEAKER- And Apple's putting one on the phones
45:37SPEAKER'cause they want to use these for AR positioning,
45:39SPEAKERso they can get precise positioning using like...
45:43SPEAKERThere's a couple of different ways to do precise precision,
45:45SPEAKERinside out tracking in 3D space.
45:47SPEAKEROne of them is using a LiDAR sensor.
45:49SPEAKEROne of them is using SLAM, which is uses two cameras
45:52SPEAKERthat are just normal cameras that are spaced
45:55SPEAKERat different places, far enough apart
45:57SPEAKERthat they can do binocular vision to do the math
45:58SPEAKERbased on image recognition and stuff like that.
46:01SPEAKER- SLAM, it's got to be the most aggressive
46:03SPEAKERand in-your-face acronym for tech I've ever heard.
46:06SPEAKER- Look, you got some SLAM devices in your house.
46:08SPEAKERYou do know it.
46:09SPEAKERYou gotta connect two, that's a SLAMmer.
46:11SPEAKER- Ooh, boy, it sure was.
46:13SPEAKER- You've got a Lenovo windows mixed reality headset.
46:17SPEAKERThat's a SLAM device.
46:18SPEAKER- Okay, all right.
46:19SPEAKER- Yeah, so both are good for different things.
46:23SPEAKERThe LiDAR stuff lets you do some interesting things
46:25SPEAKERthat don't work as well with the SLAM, like the scanning.
46:29SPEAKERSo I downloaded Scandi Pro,
46:31SPEAKERwhich is the gold standard for iPhone scanning shenanigans,
46:37SPEAKERand just waved around my room and got a 3D mesh
46:41SPEAKERof my room in about 15 minutes.
46:43SPEAKER- Wow.
46:44SPEAKER- So phase two is to make a SteamVR load screen
46:48SPEAKERthat's the room that I'm standing in
46:50SPEAKERwhile I'm using SteamVR.
46:52SPEAKER- That's incredible.
46:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
46:54SPEAKER- How would you square the positioning, though?
46:56SPEAKER- I'll have to line it up manually
46:57SPEAKERand then there'll be a little fiddling,
46:59SPEAKERbut that's a minor problem.
47:01SPEAKERYou can use the SteamVR advanced tools,
47:04SPEAKERwhatever that thing's called, to rearrange the room.
47:07SPEAKER- So as you're doing the phone waving around
47:11SPEAKERand filling in the room,
47:12SPEAKERcan you see on the screen how much it's in real time?
47:14SPEAKERYou kind of see where you need to continue waving
47:16SPEAKER'cause it doesn't have enough data.
47:18SPEAKERThat's incredible.
47:18SPEAKER- Yeah, so it shows you the camera feed and then it also...
47:21SPEAKERSo I have a 3D scanner that I used for this early on
47:24SPEAKERin the food days that was made by a place called Structure,
47:27SPEAKERthe Structure sensor that clipped onto an iPad.
47:30SPEAKERAnd you did that and it was great,
47:31SPEAKERbut the problem was it lost tracking
47:33SPEAKERin 3D space fairly regularly.
47:35SPEAKERSo you had to go back and then line it back up again
47:37SPEAKERand then it would resume and pick back up.
47:39SPEAKERWith this, because the accelerometers and gyroscopes
47:41SPEAKERare really good and the LiDAR sensor is fast
47:43SPEAKERand presumably hardware,
47:45SPEAKERthere's some hardware acceleration going on in there too
47:47SPEAKERfor the spatial calculation
47:49SPEAKERso that the AR stuff is rock solid.
47:51SPEAKERThis, you just kind of move it around and it paints over.
47:54SPEAKERSo you start with seeing the camera,
47:57SPEAKERlike just the real light camera of the walls,
47:59SPEAKERand then as it builds the mesh,
48:01SPEAKERit kind of paints 3D white over that mesh.
48:05SPEAKERAnd when you save it, you see the mesh of your room.
48:09SPEAKERYou can scan people's heads,
48:10SPEAKERyou can do all sorts of cool stuff.
48:11SPEAKER- And any old object basically?
48:12SPEAKER- Anything.
48:13SPEAKERSo Scandi, I've only done a couple
48:15SPEAKER'cause I'm not paying for Scandi right now
48:17SPEAKER'cause it's kind of expensive.
48:18SPEAKERIt's like 50 bucks a year, which isn't like...
48:20SPEAKERJust to be clear, I paid $500
48:22SPEAKERprobably for the Structure sensor when it was new.
48:25SPEAKERBut it's an incredible tool.
48:30SPEAKER- That is kind of insane, actually, that you can do that.
48:33SPEAKERI assume the end result is just a physical model, right?
48:36SPEAKERIt's not taking any photography
48:38SPEAKERand overlaying it on the model?
48:39SPEAKER- Oh, it'll do?
48:40SPEAKERNo, it'll scan the model
48:41SPEAKERwith whatever the pictures of the world are yet.
48:43SPEAKEROverlays that pretty well.
48:45SPEAKERSo I haven't gone through
48:46SPEAKERand loaded it up into something on my desktop yet.
48:48SPEAKERThat's the next step.
48:49SPEAKERI literally just got it yesterday afternoon
48:51SPEAKERat like eight o'clock, so.
48:53SPEAKER- Finally, you can fulfill the 25-year-long dream
48:57SPEAKERof making a Doom level out of your office.
48:59SPEAKER- I can make a Doom level out of my whole house.
49:01SPEAKERI can just walk around.
49:02SPEAKERI mean, it'd be probably not super performing
49:03SPEAKER'cause I'll have way too many polys.
49:05SPEAKERBut yeah, it's like...
49:08SPEAKERThis is one of the things that I'm not excited about
49:10SPEAKERfor me to use necessarily
49:12SPEAKER'cause I don't have the right skills
49:13SPEAKERto make that a useful thing
49:16SPEAKERaside from some easy hacks
49:18SPEAKERlike making it my SteamVR loading screen or whatever.
49:21SPEAKERBut I'm super interested like the...
49:23SPEAKEREvery time some piece of novel technology
49:26SPEAKERhas gone from like an expensive thing that's hard to use
49:29SPEAKERto an expensive thing that's easier to use
49:31SPEAKERto a cheap thing that anybody can use,
49:33SPEAKERlike magic stuff has happened.
49:35SPEAKERAnd we've seen that with like accelerometers
49:38SPEAKERand gyroscopes and phones,
49:40SPEAKERbigatte drones and stepper motors
49:44SPEAKERand microcontrollers like Arduino bigatte 3D printers.
49:47SPEAKERAnd like the fact that now anybody
49:51SPEAKERwho buys this $1,000 phone can scan,
49:54SPEAKERyou know, can scan 3D scan stuff
49:59SPEAKERfor practically nothing, 50 bucks a year from Scandi
50:02SPEAKERis gonna be...
50:04SPEAKERI think it's a transformative technology
50:06SPEAKERthat like we don't...
50:08SPEAKERI have no idea what people are gonna use it for
50:12SPEAKERand I'm absolutely fascinated to see.
50:14SPEAKERI think the first thing we'll see is a lot more
50:18SPEAKERstuff like the stock photo libraries,
50:20SPEAKERbut for stock 3D scans of weird objects in the world.
50:23SPEAKER- That's awesome.
50:24SPEAKER- But like, I wanna go to museums
50:25SPEAKERand scan sculptures and stuff like that, right?
50:28SPEAKERLike I wanna get out there and do some weird scans.
50:31SPEAKERIt doesn't work great on glass or reflective stuff.
50:34SPEAKERThat's the always the problem with LiDAR
50:36SPEAKERthat SLAM doesn't necessarily have.
50:38SPEAKER- Stands to reason.
50:39SPEAKERI assume that end product could be imported
50:41SPEAKERinto like a Maya or something similar pretty easily.
50:44SPEAKER- There are pipelines.
50:46SPEAKEROften you'll run it through a thing called Mesh Mixer first,
50:48SPEAKERwhich kind of lets you munch down the...
50:53SPEAKERSo usually on 3D scans, I don't know.
50:54SPEAKERI haven't used Scandi in a long time,
50:56SPEAKERso I don't know how it works now,
50:56SPEAKERbut it used to be that you had imported into a tool
50:58SPEAKERthat would convert the point cloud into a normal human,
51:04SPEAKERlike a normal human, like a mesh basically.
51:07SPEAKER- Right.
51:08SPEAKER- And then from there, you can munch the mesh down
51:11SPEAKERinto like a reasonable number of polygons
51:13SPEAKERand apply the skin to it and turn it down.
51:15SPEAKER- Turn dots into faces.
51:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, once I got to clean my office up
51:19SPEAKER'cause the area behind the green screen
51:20SPEAKERis a horrific mess right now.
51:22SPEAKERBut once I get through that, I'll-
51:24SPEAKER- That's just more complexity to challenge the app with.
51:26SPEAKER- I don't wanna show anybody what it looks like back there.
51:28SPEAKERIt's shameful.
51:29SPEAKER- Is it the bad kind of complexity?
51:31SPEAKER- It is.
51:34SPEAKERLook, it's borderline hoarding at this point, so-
51:39SPEAKER- Okay, fair enough.
51:40SPEAKERTwo points real quick about this
51:42SPEAKER'cause everything you just described sounds amazing
51:45SPEAKERand like not at all what I expected
51:47SPEAKERto hear about the iPhone 12, like not even close.
51:50SPEAKERPoint number one, this feels like another major step
51:53SPEAKERtoward an iPhone just becoming a tricorder.
51:56SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, I think so.
51:59SPEAKER- We're getting there.
52:01SPEAKERJust slap some radiation sensors
52:02SPEAKERand I think we've talked about that before.
52:03SPEAKERIt's not like that stuff doesn't exist.
52:04SPEAKER- You can get those, yeah.
52:06SPEAKER- Like turn it into a Geiger counter
52:07SPEAKERand like two or three other things
52:08SPEAKERand it's like basically a tricorder.
52:10SPEAKER- I think there's a micro particulate sensor
52:11SPEAKERin there now too, I can't remember.
52:13SPEAKERThat might be in the watch.
52:14SPEAKER- That's ridiculous.
52:16SPEAKERThe bigger thing I was gonna say,
52:17SPEAKERand this maybe is a decent segue
52:19SPEAKERinto our last little topic here,
52:22SPEAKERis the implications for asset generation that has.
52:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
52:27SPEAKER- For cranking out 3D models from real world objects
52:29SPEAKERthat you might be able to use pretty quickly.
52:32SPEAKER- So, I mean, I think it's more,
52:36SPEAKERI think it's one step further removed from that.
52:38SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, I don't mean you're like gonna drop
52:40SPEAKERthe tea kettle on your stove
52:42SPEAKERstraight into your Unity level or whatever, but.
52:46SPEAKER- Yeah, we did an episode of the Foo Show
52:48SPEAKERwhere we went in and scanned a bunch of stuff
52:49SPEAKERin Adam Savage's shop and like space,
52:53SPEAKEReverything from spacesuits to one of his Maltese Falcons
52:56SPEAKERto I don't know, a bunch of stuff.
53:00SPEAKERAnd like those scans came back with as many polys
53:04SPEAKERas are in like one of those unreal levels.
53:07SPEAKERLike each scan was like three or 4 million polys,
53:09SPEAKERwhich is a lot.
53:10SPEAKERIt was an incredible amount of data.
53:14SPEAKERYou're able to clean those up and kind of munch them down
53:16SPEAKERand turn a lot of the poly detail into like normal maps
53:19SPEAKERand displacement maps and stuff like that.
53:21SPEAKERAnd that gets it to the point that it'll run in real time.
53:24SPEAKERBut I think what'll happen is,
53:28SPEAKERmy guess is that somebody is going to take,
53:30SPEAKERbuild a clearing house for these scans
53:32SPEAKERand then build some sort of game
53:34SPEAKERor something that will get people to do that work for you
53:38SPEAKERand then use those two inputs and the output
53:41SPEAKERto train a machine learning algorithm
53:44SPEAKERto do that stuff at the same time.
53:45SPEAKERLike if the problem right now with doing that
53:48SPEAKERis it's hard to get the data,
53:49SPEAKER'cause there's a big difference
53:52SPEAKERbetween there being 500,000 3D scanners in the world
53:55SPEAKERand every iPhone five years from now
53:58SPEAKERhaving a 3D scanner built into it, right?
54:00SPEAKERYes.
54:01SPEAKERSo I think my guess is that that's where
54:05SPEAKERthis is all gonna end up.
54:06SPEAKERYeah, yeah, that's what I was getting at.
54:07SPEAKERNot that it's gonna happen tomorrow,
54:08SPEAKERbut it's that same process you were just talking about
54:10SPEAKERof it goes from expensive and hard to do
54:12SPEAKERto expensive and easy to do to cheap
54:15SPEAKERand democratized for everybody.
54:16SPEAKERAnd that's when crazy stuff starts happening.
54:19SPEAKERPretty soon everybody has a podcast, Brad.
54:20SPEAKERThat's all I'm saying.
54:22SPEAKERThat's, nobody should do that.
54:24SPEAKERWe're already there.
54:24SPEAKERThat's, oh my God, I guess you're right.
54:26SPEAKERBrad and Will can have a podcast.
54:27SPEAKERAnybody can have a podcast.
54:28SPEAKERMan, the truer words have never been spoken.
54:31SPEAKERAll right, last thing here.
54:32SPEAKERYeah, you showed me this earlier today
54:35SPEAKERand it blew my mind.
54:35SPEAKERThis, did it?
54:36SPEAKEROkay, I went on one of our discords
54:40SPEAKERand was just like, this looks really good.
54:42SPEAKERAnd I was worried I was being hyperbolic
54:44SPEAKER'cause nobody else really seemed to bite,
54:45SPEAKERbut then you saw it and-
54:47SPEAKERI think they're busy.
54:48SPEAKERYou acted similarly and I was like,
54:49SPEAKERokay, maybe I'm not like totally crazy here,
54:52SPEAKERbut I pulled this because the new consoles came out
54:56SPEAKERand I feel like we have still been kind of fighting
54:58SPEAKERthrough a wave of people going like,
55:00SPEAKERwhen are these gonna look like new consoles?
55:02SPEAKERIt's like, when am I gonna see something
55:03SPEAKERthat looks truly next generation?
55:05SPEAKERWhich like my first response to that is just,
55:08SPEAKERdo you remember every other console launch in history?
55:11SPEAKERThis always happens.
55:12SPEAKERI mean, it always takes some number of months,
55:14SPEAKERtwo years before they really start showing their worth.
55:17SPEAKERI like, I started playing Ghost of Tsushima the other night,
55:20SPEAKERwhich I hadn't played when it came out.
55:21SPEAKERAnd like that game is the opposite end of that spectrum.
55:28SPEAKERLike that's the difference between that
55:29SPEAKERand what a PS4 launch title looks like is astounding.
55:32SPEAKERIt's basically different.
55:34SPEAKERIt might as well be different hardware.
55:35SPEAKERLike to think of The Last of Us 2
55:37SPEAKERand Ghost of Tsushima came out this year
55:40SPEAKERup against a NAC or nothing against NAC or whatever,
55:44SPEAKERbut you know, like-
55:45SPEAKERNo, fuck that, dude.
55:45SPEAKERNAC sucks.
55:46SPEAKERThat happens every generation though, you know?
55:48SPEAKERIt's like put Perfect Dark Zero
55:50SPEAKERup against whatever the last Gears was
55:52SPEAKERthat shipped on the 360.
55:53SPEAKERYou know, it's like, it's always like that.
55:55SPEAKERAnyway-
55:56SPEAKERCameo, I wouldn't, I would not,
55:57SPEAKERbut I'm just saying, I would not have,
55:59SPEAKERif you showed me Gears,
56:01SPEAKERshowed me Ghost of Tsushima in like what, 2010,
56:05SPEAKERwhenever the PS4 came out and said,
56:06SPEAKERthis is gonna run on more or less the same hardware,
56:08SPEAKERI would not have believed it.
56:09SPEAKERTotally, yeah, that's what I'm getting at.
56:11SPEAKERSo like, as much as a lot of people
56:13SPEAKERare sort of tech skeptics about new consoles,
56:16SPEAKERI am always a tech optimist about new consoles.
56:18SPEAKERLike, I at least like to think
56:21SPEAKERI have enough of an understanding
56:22SPEAKERof what the underlying capabilities are
56:23SPEAKERto like, not like see in my mind
56:26SPEAKERwhat they're gonna result in,
56:27SPEAKERbut at least like know that they're not full of shit,
56:29SPEAKERI guess is what I'm trying to say, you know?
56:30SPEAKERWell, yeah.
56:31SPEAKERIt's like, we know how fast these SSDs are, you know?
56:33SPEAKERWe know what these GPUs can do.
56:35SPEAKERLike we know X, Y, and Z technical specs about these things.
56:39SPEAKERAnd like, we might not be seeing it yet,
56:40SPEAKERbut like it's gonna manifest sooner or later.
56:43SPEAKERAnyway, that's kind of a long-winded preamble
56:45SPEAKERfor this thing I stumbled on last night,
56:47SPEAKERwhich is like probably the most next gen looking thing
56:50SPEAKERfrom an actual production game that I have seen so far.
56:53SPEAKERThe clip that you shared of the guys running
56:56SPEAKERthrough like the sand field and stuff like that,
56:59SPEAKERI wouldn't have realized was from a video game
57:01SPEAKERon first glance, except for the animations
57:03SPEAKERa little bit like stilted.
57:05SPEAKERYou can see just enough of the stilted transitions
57:09SPEAKERbetween one run animation and another.
57:11SPEAKERBut yeah, I first came across this on Twitter on my phone.
57:15SPEAKERSo it was like a small animated GIF on my phone.
57:18SPEAKERAnd I thought I quite literally thought it was a video
57:21SPEAKERof the real world.
57:22SPEAKERYeah.
57:23SPEAKERI thought it was like real people running around
57:26SPEAKERshot on camera and not a video game.
57:28SPEAKERAre they, is this Unreal or is this their own engine?
57:30SPEAKERI believe it is.
57:31SPEAKERYes, it's yes.
57:31SPEAKERThis does say it's Unreal.
57:33SPEAKERI wonder it might be Unreal 5.
57:34SPEAKERIt looks like the new like infinite polygon Unreal stuff
57:37SPEAKERthat Tim Sweeney and they were showing off earlier this year.
57:40SPEAKERYeah, I should actually say what we're talking about.
57:42SPEAKEROh yeah, that's quite a good idea.
57:43SPEAKERIt's Embark Studio, which is the studio
57:46SPEAKERthat Patrick Soderlund of DICE and EA founded
57:50SPEAKERafter he left EA.
57:51SPEAKEROh, creator of the Frostbite engine.
57:53SPEAKERSure, yeah.
57:54SPEAKEROh, I don't know if he was the creator of the Frost,
57:56SPEAKERbut he was at DICE when they were creating Frostbite.
57:58SPEAKERDICE, yes, DICE, like a long time well-known
58:02SPEAKERlike rendering house, right?
58:03SPEAKERLike they make some of the best looking games
58:05SPEAKERin the industry.
58:07SPEAKERAnyway, I'm trying to think how to point people to this.
58:10SPEAKERI mean, we'll just put it in the show notes,
58:11SPEAKERbut they put up a blog post or Patrick did on Medium.
58:16SPEAKEROkay, yeah.
58:17SPEAKERYou can just go to medium.com/embarkstudios
58:19SPEAKERand the post is called Our Continued Journey.
58:22SPEAKERWe'll put it in the show notes too though.
58:23SPEAKERYes, but it's just a short, like how long is this loop?
58:27SPEAKERFive, six, seven seconds.
58:30SPEAKERJust a little short animated GIF here.
58:32SPEAKERSomething like that.
58:33SPEAKERBut it's like, yeah, rendering quality,
58:36SPEAKERlike lens effects, you know, camera shake,
58:40SPEAKERall that stuff, animation, like terrain,
58:43SPEAKERkind of surface quality, like all that stuff.
58:45SPEAKERIt's just the, probably one of the best looking things
58:48SPEAKERI have seen to date on a video game console.
58:50SPEAKERWell, and Amy, was the context for this
58:53SPEAKERthat like, this is what it's going to look like.
58:55SPEAKERThis is what like the future,
58:57SPEAKERit looks like for these console.
58:59SPEAKERLike this, this to me--
59:00SPEAKER- That's the game.
59:01SPEAKERI mean, like this, this isn't like a tech test.
59:03SPEAKERI mean, that's--
59:04SPEAKER- Oh, this is a game that they're actually making.
59:06SPEAKER- That is their first game.
59:07SPEAKER- Wow.
59:08SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:09SPEAKER- I mean, the thing is,
59:11SPEAKERI was just gonna say the thing that's interesting to me
59:13SPEAKERabout this generation of consoles
59:14SPEAKERis the addition of all the ray tracing stuff
59:16SPEAKERand the machine learning hardware on the chips.
59:19SPEAKERLike in some ways, the 360 and the PS4 generations,
59:27SPEAKERyou know, the last two generations were,
59:30SPEAKERlike there weren't a lot of leaps
59:32SPEAKERbecause the things that you could do
59:34SPEAKERrequired a lot more work in order to get something out.
59:37SPEAKERLike in order to get some,
59:38SPEAKERit's not like the old days where the 3D pipelines
59:40SPEAKERwere fixed function and like going from the PS1 to the PS2,
59:43SPEAKERthey added a bunch more stuff
59:44SPEAKERto that fixed function pipeline that could do, you know,
59:46SPEAKERsmoke effects and volumetric fog
59:48SPEAKERand all sorts of weird stuff that you hadn't seen before,
59:50SPEAKERbump mapping.
59:51SPEAKERWith the ray tracing and the machine learning stuff,
59:55SPEAKERthere's, it's a real open field in terms of what's available
1:00:00SPEAKERand how people use it on that hardware.
1:00:03SPEAKERAnd like, it could be everything from like sound design,
1:00:07SPEAKERyou know, it's not like, hey, we can turn on god rays
1:00:09SPEAKERif we're on the right hardware now.
1:00:11SPEAKERIt's like, oh, we could use this ray tracing stuff
1:00:13SPEAKERto make an incredible sound field
1:00:15SPEAKERif you're wearing headphones
1:00:17SPEAKERand make a game that takes place mostly in between your ears
1:00:21SPEAKERand not on the screen if we want,
1:00:23SPEAKERor we could go completely the other way
1:00:25SPEAKERand like use this new tool to do stuff.
1:00:29SPEAKERAnd the thing is, it's still so,
1:00:30SPEAKERlike there's been ray tracing hardware in the market
1:00:33SPEAKERfor like two years, right?
1:00:36SPEAKERIt's still, that's not even a full development cycle
1:00:38SPEAKERfor a AAA game at this point probably.
1:00:41SPEAKERIt's still so early, we have no idea
1:00:43SPEAKERwhat people are gonna use this for
1:00:44SPEAKERand how they're gonna use it.
1:00:46SPEAKER- And like the market reality is that the consoles dictate
1:00:49SPEAKERwhat gets developed 99% of the time, right?
1:00:52SPEAKERLike occasionally you'll get some,
1:00:53SPEAKERlike, you know, the days of crisis one,
1:00:55SPEAKERwhere it's like the tour de force PC only
1:00:58SPEAKERlike technical showcase, don't really,
1:01:00SPEAKERthose days are kind of long gone.
1:01:02SPEAKER- Well, crisis one kind of was a flop
1:01:04SPEAKERbecause they were the tour de force PC only.
1:01:06SPEAKER- That's what I'm saying, nobody does that anymore.
1:01:08SPEAKERWhat I mean is like consoles that can do ray tracing,
1:01:10SPEAKERwhich dictate largely what types of games get developed
1:01:13SPEAKERhave been on the market for 48 hours, right?
1:01:16SPEAKERSo like a large scale application of these techniques
1:01:19SPEAKERis just starting.
1:01:21SPEAKER- Well, but at the same time,
1:01:22SPEAKERbecause the tools are a little bit easier to use,
1:01:25SPEAKERyou see stuff like ghost runner,
1:01:27SPEAKERwhere they're doing ray tracing in like a kind of small
1:01:30SPEAKERscale, it's not an indie game, I don't know,
1:01:32SPEAKERI don't know where 3D realms falls these days,
1:01:34SPEAKERbut it like, it's just, that seems like a small studio game
1:01:38SPEAKERand they punched way above their weight
1:01:40SPEAKERbecause they were able to use this stuff really effectively.
1:01:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I actually, I'm really excited to see indies
1:01:45SPEAKERand smaller studios and see what they're going to do
1:01:47SPEAKERwith some of this tech and some of these APIs.
1:01:49SPEAKER- Yeah, and the nice thing about the ray tracing stuff
1:01:52SPEAKERis for the most part, it degrades gracefully
1:01:54SPEAKERif you're playing on hardware that doesn't have it.
1:01:55SPEAKERSo you just, it just turns off and you replace it
1:01:57SPEAKERwith the normal specular maps and, you know,
1:01:59SPEAKERreflection maps and stuff like that.
1:02:01SPEAKERAnd it doesn't look quite as cool,
1:02:03SPEAKERbut it still plays the same.
1:02:04SPEAKERAnd I'm just, I haven't been this excited
1:02:07SPEAKERabout new consoles in a long time,
1:02:09SPEAKEReven though I didn't pony up for either.
1:02:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm totally with you, even though,
1:02:12SPEAKEReven though there's not that much at launch
1:02:14SPEAKERto actually show that stuff off right now, but.
1:02:16SPEAKER- Dude, you got a new, that Spider-Man, like I,
1:02:21SPEAKERit's hard for me to be bummed about the launch situation
1:02:24SPEAKERwhen like you have Bugsnax and Spider-Man on the PS5.
1:02:27SPEAKER- I mean, I mean purely from a technical standpoint.
1:02:29SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
1:02:30SPEAKER- Most of these, with the exception of Demon's Souls
1:02:32SPEAKERand like, I'm trying to, Godfall, I think,
1:02:34SPEAKERlike every single other one of those games at launch
1:02:36SPEAKERalso runs on the previous gen console.
1:02:38SPEAKERThat's what I'm getting at.
1:02:39SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:02:39SPEAKER- Everything that, practically everything that's out
1:02:41SPEAKERstill has a foot in the previous generation right now.
1:02:44SPEAKER- Well, it turns out-
1:02:44SPEAKER- Just again, like again, trying to satisfy that demand
1:02:47SPEAKERfrom a lot of people of like,
1:02:48SPEAKERI want to see something that really looks new.
1:02:50SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:02:51SPEAKER- This game, which apparently still doesn't have
1:02:53SPEAKERan announced title that Embark put up in this post,
1:02:56SPEAKERlike just this like seven second animated GIF
1:02:59SPEAKERis by far the newest ass looking thing
1:03:01SPEAKERI have seen graphically.
1:03:03SPEAKER- It looks like a star wheel, yeah.
1:03:06SPEAKER- But that's actually not the thing
1:03:07SPEAKERI really got interested in reading this post.
1:03:10SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:03:11SPEAKER- And I would oversell it.
1:03:12SPEAKERI mean, like this footage they put out is very iterative,
1:03:14SPEAKERyou know, like it very much looks like a much better version
1:03:17SPEAKERof the types of, you know, Battlefield and Battlefront games
1:03:20SPEAKERthat DICE was doing for years already.
1:03:22SPEAKER- And they do the clip thing where they're like,
1:03:24SPEAKERit's just a bunch of short takes.
1:03:25SPEAKERYou can't really look at anything long enough
1:03:27SPEAKERto get a good look at it.
1:03:28SPEAKER- Which is a little bit of clever trickery, I don't know.
1:03:31SPEAKERBut the thing that I'm really interested in though,
1:03:33SPEAKERis if you scroll down the page a little bit
1:03:35SPEAKERto the shot of a bunch of character models that they've got.
1:03:38SPEAKER- Yeah, this thing, this is a trip.
1:03:40SPEAKERLike this is the stuff that actually got me excited
1:03:42SPEAKERbecause they're basically, they have a shot here
1:03:43SPEAKERthat of a bunch of quite nice,
1:03:46SPEAKERI mean, I think they look like quite nicely
1:03:48SPEAKERrealistic human character models.
1:03:50SPEAKERI don't know what you think,
1:03:51SPEAKERbut the caption says our procedurally aided
1:03:54SPEAKERand non-destructive character pipeline tool
1:03:55SPEAKERhas significantly reduced the time it takes for us
1:03:57SPEAKERto create and iterate on in-game characters.
1:03:59SPEAKERAnd there's a whole section of this article here
1:04:02SPEAKERthat talks about, I'll just kind of read from it real fast.
1:04:05SPEAKERTraditionally, the biggest chunk of time in game development
1:04:07SPEAKERis centered around simply producing and polishing game assets
1:04:11SPEAKERfor large AAA games.
1:04:12SPEAKERThis is painstakingly tedious involving a lot of manual
1:04:15SPEAKERand boring work and a big reason why burnout and crunch
1:04:18SPEAKERis such a prevalent problem for the industry.
1:04:22SPEAKERTo solve this in the longterm,
1:04:23SPEAKERwe need to become smarter about the way we build games.
1:04:26SPEAKERThis is the exciting part.
1:04:27SPEAKERRight now, there's a combination of technical breakthroughs
1:04:30SPEAKERhappening in tandem in fields like proceduralism
1:04:32SPEAKERand reinforcement learning that will lead to a big shift
1:04:35SPEAKERin how we're able to create and scale game content.
1:04:39SPEAKEROur ambition as a studio is to make use of these
1:04:41SPEAKERbreakthroughs and remove as many of the tedious manual tasks
1:04:44SPEAKERfrom our own workflows as possible.
1:04:46SPEAKERIn certain areas like hard surface modeling
1:04:48SPEAKERor character creation,
1:04:50SPEAKERour artists are now able to create content in days
1:04:52SPEAKERwhere it used to take weeks by applying procedural tools.
1:04:55SPEAKER- It looks like, have you ever seen that Twitter account,
1:04:57SPEAKERthis person does not exist?
1:04:59SPEAKER- Yes, they look like faces from that.
1:05:01SPEAKER- It looks like they've built that.
1:05:04SPEAKER- Totally. - Maybe some sliders
1:05:06SPEAKERthat they can control.
1:05:07SPEAKER- Yes, for like to spit out.
1:05:09SPEAKERAnd those are like probably 2D images
1:05:11SPEAKERthat stuff like that Twitter account is spitting out
1:05:14SPEAKERand these are 3D character models.
1:05:15SPEAKER- Well, but I think that in order for that Twitter account
1:05:18SPEAKERto work, it has to, like the machine learning thing
1:05:20SPEAKERhas an idea of what the 3D shape of a face should look like.
1:05:23SPEAKER- Oh sure, sure, yeah.
1:05:24SPEAKER- And occasionally it makes a nightmare, of course.
1:05:27SPEAKER- Yeah, of course, oh yeah, we've talked about some.
1:05:29SPEAKER- I mean, I'm sure this will too.
1:05:31SPEAKER- Yeah, but I've just been curious conceptually
1:05:36SPEAKERabout this for a long time and I wish I got a chance
1:05:38SPEAKERto talk to more game developers than I do,
1:05:39SPEAKERbut just the idea of procedural generation
1:05:42SPEAKERin your asset pipeline.
1:05:45SPEAKERI assume reinforcement learning is another,
1:05:48SPEAKERis a synonym for machine learning.
1:05:49SPEAKER- Machine learning stuff is my understanding.
1:05:51SPEAKER- Neural net type stuff.
1:05:53SPEAKER- I mean, a lot of times when you do game stuff,
1:05:55SPEAKERlike if you're painting terrain for Unreal Engine
1:05:58SPEAKERor something like that, right?
1:05:59SPEAKERLike you're just applying layers of a map
1:06:04SPEAKERand like one of those layers is often a noise layer
1:06:07SPEAKERto add just random, the kind of randomness
1:06:11SPEAKERthat exists in the real world, right?
1:06:13SPEAKERLike imperfections in the earth
1:06:15SPEAKERand trails and stuff like that.
1:06:17SPEAKERThis is a trip, this is really cool.
1:06:19SPEAKER- They actually, there's another,
1:06:20SPEAKERnot to go on and on about this,
1:06:22SPEAKERbut there's a blog from like a year ago
1:06:24SPEAKERthat I had not seen that they linked to
1:06:25SPEAKERoff of this blog post.
1:06:29SPEAKERIt has a little like 45 second video of a terrain
1:06:31SPEAKERthat they created with some of these tools.
1:06:34SPEAKERAnd if you go look at it,
1:06:37SPEAKERI'm sorry, I'm pulling it up right now.
1:06:38SPEAKERIt's one of the nicest,
1:06:40SPEAKERit might be the nicest looking 3D environment
1:06:42SPEAKERthat would be appropriate for a game that I've ever seen.
1:06:45SPEAKERAnd they say that it took three artists
1:06:47SPEAKERlike two or three weeks to make.
1:06:50SPEAKERSo it seems like, yeah, I don't know, whatever.
1:06:54SPEAKERI'm quickly getting out of my league here,
1:06:56SPEAKERbut it seems like the potential for these tools
1:06:58SPEAKERto empower artists to really just completely go crazy
1:07:01SPEAKERwith their creativity and not be hamstrung by,
1:07:04SPEAKERlike, you know, again, the tedium of the workload,
1:07:07SPEAKERlike you said, could be huge.
1:07:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think the goal
1:07:10SPEAKERisn't to take the artist's hand out of any of this work.
1:07:12SPEAKER- No, no, not at all.
1:07:13SPEAKER- The goal is to give them more time
1:07:15SPEAKERto work on the things that matter
1:07:18SPEAKERversus the kind of scut work of, you know, yeah.
1:07:22SPEAKER- It's just a way of more like fully expressing
1:07:26SPEAKERwhatever vision they have, right?
1:07:27SPEAKERI'm very into this and yeah, this is all in real engine.
1:07:30SPEAKERSo yeah, what a cool thing.
1:07:33SPEAKER- Yeah, there's some cool looking shit.
1:07:34SPEAKERAnd again, like both from a human perspective
1:07:37SPEAKERand from a technical and artistic perspective,
1:07:39SPEAKERthe idea of being able to make more
1:07:41SPEAKERand better looking stuff without burning people out
1:07:43SPEAKERand get more of it into every game,
1:07:46SPEAKERlike that's just like extremely cool in every aspect.
1:07:50SPEAKER- It's just another reason that Spelunky
1:07:51SPEAKERis gonna be the game that changed the games industry most.
1:07:54SPEAKER- I guess you're right.
1:07:56SPEAKEROne last tidbit I just thought of,
1:07:58SPEAKERI was talking to some people on the discord
1:07:59SPEAKERabout this this morning and someone pointed out on there
1:08:02SPEAKERwith the insanely high SSD speeds in these machines,
1:08:07SPEAKERwhen you've got this much more detail being produced
1:08:09SPEAKERfor your games, you can stream so much of it into memory
1:08:12SPEAKERso much faster, like you can pack more detail,
1:08:14SPEAKERmore variety into very small areas
1:08:16SPEAKERand just stream in and out as you move around
1:08:19SPEAKERmuch faster than you could before.
1:08:21SPEAKER- Games here.
1:08:21SPEAKER- Like the games are just so big.
1:08:23SPEAKERIt seems like the richness and variety of detail
1:08:25SPEAKERyou're gonna be seeing in games in like two to three years
1:08:27SPEAKERis gonna be pretty, pretty eye-opening.
1:08:31SPEAKER- It's exciting because the impact of machine learning
1:08:35SPEAKERin this instance and associated technologies
1:08:39SPEAKERis hopefully, I mean, it's not gonna happen
1:08:43SPEAKER'cause the games industry sucks in a lot of ways
1:08:45SPEAKERand there's always horrible crunch for the art teams
1:08:47SPEAKERand the programmers and everybody, but.
1:08:49SPEAKER- Yeah, like I don't mean to imply
1:08:50SPEAKERthis is gonna like solve crunch or anything like that, but.
1:08:53SPEAKER- But well, but I mean, yeah, at least,
1:08:57SPEAKERI mean, if it shifts things
1:08:59SPEAKERfrom things that are less fulfilling to work on
1:09:00SPEAKERto things that are more fulfilling to work on, that's good.
1:09:03SPEAKERThat's a good thing. - Yeah, totally.
1:09:04SPEAKERYeah, stuff looks exciting.
1:09:06SPEAKER- Well, cool.
1:09:07SPEAKERWell, Brad, this has been fun.
1:09:08SPEAKERWe should do this again next week.
1:09:09SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe we should just, okay, sure.
1:09:12SPEAKERMaybe we should show up and talk sometimes
1:09:14SPEAKERand see what happens.
1:09:16SPEAKER- As always, thanks to all of our patrons.
1:09:20SPEAKERThere are something like, hold on.
1:09:24SPEAKEROh, I clicked the wrong button.
1:09:26SPEAKERThere are something like 1,275 of y'all right now.
1:09:30SPEAKER- That's a good one.
1:09:31SPEAKER- So thank you all so much
1:09:32SPEAKERand we love chatting with you in the Discord.
1:09:34SPEAKERI said it about, we talked about it last week.
1:09:37SPEAKERWe opened, by the way, I made that parenting channel
1:09:39SPEAKERlast week after we recorded the show
1:09:41SPEAKERand then meant to unlock it once we posted
1:09:43SPEAKERand forgot until somebody reminded me later this week.
1:09:45SPEAKERSo it's up now.
1:09:45SPEAKER- It's been sitting there.
1:09:47SPEAKER- It's been popping off.
1:09:47SPEAKERPeople are sharing everything from what their strategy is
1:09:51SPEAKERfor screens and for young kids to dealing with teenagers,
1:09:55SPEAKERwhich seems like a nightmare.
1:09:59SPEAKERYou can check that out.
1:10:00SPEAKERIt's all the way at the bottom of the real life section.
1:10:03SPEAKERThank you, as always, to our executive producer,
1:10:05SPEAKERlevel patrons, Jacob Chappell, Andrew Cotton,
1:10:08SPEAKERand David Allen.
1:10:08SPEAKERWe really appreciate you guys,
1:10:10SPEAKERbut we also appreciate everybody,
1:10:12SPEAKERwhether you're posting in the Discord
1:10:14SPEAKERor supporting us on the Patreon
1:10:16SPEAKERor just sharing the podcast with your friends
1:10:18SPEAKERif you can't support the Patreon right now.
1:10:20SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you so much.
1:10:23SPEAKER- The parenting channel, I've spent a lot of time in
1:10:27SPEAKERsince I remembered to flip the switch on it.
1:10:29SPEAKERAnd man, huge shout out to everybody
1:10:32SPEAKERwho posted de-soldering tips
1:10:33SPEAKERbecause I would have really fucked up that mouse
1:10:36SPEAKERif I had not and that's nice
1:10:38SPEAKER'cause now the one that's coming is a spare
1:10:39SPEAKERinstead of a replacement, so.
1:10:42SPEAKER- It's all we have on us to have.
1:10:43SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:44SPEAKERI guess we'll be back next week.
1:10:45SPEAKERIt's, we're coming up on Thanksgiving.
1:10:47SPEAKEROh, the other thing is people last week
1:10:49SPEAKERafter we did the Patreon episode last month
1:10:51SPEAKERand we talked a little bit about Thanksgiving
1:10:53SPEAKERconvinced me to post Thanksgiving recipes.
1:10:55SPEAKERSo I'll post them in the food channel
1:10:58SPEAKERand I'm probably gonna do a blog post
1:10:59SPEAKERor an email newsletter or something like that.
1:11:01SPEAKER- I have to, I have to avoid the food channel.
1:11:04SPEAKER- Why? - My secret confession.
1:11:06SPEAKERI have not been in there in months
1:11:07SPEAKERbecause it makes me very hungry and very jealous.
1:11:10SPEAKER- No, dude, look, man.
1:11:11SPEAKERLook, if we can't eat, if we can't,
1:11:14SPEAKERone of the things that's funny, Gina and I,
1:11:17SPEAKERwe're talking about this the other day,
1:11:18SPEAKERbut we're both really sick of eating our own food.
1:11:21SPEAKER- Ah, sure. - Like the food that we make.
1:11:22SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:11:24SPEAKER- So we've, we're leading the lead up to Thanksgiving.
1:11:29SPEAKERWe're gonna do an eat out week
1:11:30SPEAKER'cause we also, we have to buy a bunch of groceries
1:11:32SPEAKERway in advance and we wouldn't want to have space
1:11:33SPEAKERin the fridge for regular meals.
1:11:35SPEAKERAnd then we're hoping to work that out on our system
1:11:38SPEAKERand get back on the cooking at home train for Thanksgiving.
1:11:42SPEAKER- A reverse palate cleanser, you might say.
1:11:44SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.
1:11:45SPEAKER- Now I'm scrolling through the food channel.
1:11:49SPEAKER- It's really good, it's a good channel.
1:11:50SPEAKER- And it's dinner time, we gotta get out here.
1:11:52SPEAKER- Yep.
1:11:53SPEAKERThanks everybody, we will see you all next week
1:11:56SPEAKERwith another episode of Brad and Will at a TechPod.
1:11:59SPEAKER- Oh, that salmon, that salmon looks so good.
1:12:01SPEAKERSalmon's good, man, salmon's real good.
1:12:04SPEAKER- See you, Brad.
1:12:05SPEAKER(upbeat music)
1:12:12SPEAKER(upbeat music)