Last time, we covered the basics of simple block-style moldmaking. While this technique is versatile and can produce very good results, it’s often not the best solution for molding complex or larger parts. The Halo Needler prop has many parts both complex and large, so we’ll need to look into other methods. But first, a little show off of the completed master sculpts all sitting pretty. Now I just need to make copies of everything!

I’m going to use the upper casing as the test mule here for showcasing a technique called “brush-on” moldmaking. The basic premise is gradually building up layers of silicone onto a part until the desired mold thickness is achieved. It’s a bit more complicated than just slathering some rubber on though, so let’s take a look at the individual steps.

First off, you need to determine if your master part will need to be molded in sections; and if so, where should the seam line be positioned. There is a significant amount of spatial organization to consider - most notably where will seam lines be the easiest to conceal and clean up later - but also things like how easily the parts will be to de-mold and how the mold will be disassembled and reassembled after use. For this upper casing, I chose to follow the lower seam line around the base of the part, then follow this hard edge line up the front. Any seam lines will be easy to sand off in these areas, and the resulting silicone mold parts will be easy to remove from the cast part. I also added a section of ¾” PVC conduit to act as a pour spout. This area will be covered up by another part after assembly, so we don’t have to worry about losing any detail here. Non-sulfur clay is used to create the parting seam, and small indentations (registration keys, as we learned last time!) are marked into the clay.

At CES 2013, Microsoft showed off a new Microsoft Research project called IllumiRoom, not as a product, but as a proof-of-concept--a possible way to do something very, very different with the Kinect. IllumiRoom combines a Kinect sensor with a projector to take in the layout of a room and then project video from a game onto the walls surrounding the TV. The system could extend the content of a game beyond the boundaries of the television screen, effectively turning an entire part of a room into a giant screen. But the augmented reality potential of the technology is much cooler.

Microsoft Research just released a video overviewing IllumiRoom's potential uses. Check it out for yourself below. Extending a full game's environment outside the TV looks jarring and distracting in some cases--due to the differences in tone and brightness, the two don't really blend. The AR effects, on the other hand, look pretty cool. In one example, the video shows only gunfire and explosions in a first-person shooter extending onto the walls, and the way they fly out of the TV frame and into the living room works really well. A similar gimmick makes it snow all around the TV.

The Research team also released a white paper describing the technology of IllumiRoom and giving multiple examples of how it could be implemented. Here's an excerpt describing how IllumiRoom could be implemented:

"Our vision for a fully developed IllumiRoom system includes an ultra-wide field of view device sitting on the user’s coffee table, projecting over a large area surrounding the television. The device would be connected wirelessly to a next generation gaming console as a secondary display...

Our current proof-of-concept prototype uses a commodity wide field of view projector (InFocus IN126ST) and a Microsoft Kinect for Windows sensor. The prototype is limited by the field of view of the Kinect and projector (~57º horizontal FOV). Therefore, the system is mounted above and behind the user’s head, as they are seated on a couch in front of the television.

The Kinect sensor captures the color and geometry of the scene, and the system renders the illusions using the acquired depth map. Careful calibration of the system is required in order for the illusions to tightly match the onscreen content and the physical environment. The calibration of the IllumiRoom system is fully automatic, determining the relative pose of the projector to the depth sensor and the position of the television in the projector image. Therefore, setup only requires that the projector and depth camera are placed such that they cover the area surrounding the TV."

The use of the Kinect allows IllumiRoom to conform to furniture or other objects in a room, which means it isn't limited to a flat, white surface as much as other projectors. But there are other limitations--you'll still need a dark room, bundling a projector with a console would be expensive, and developers will have to rethink or reprogram their games to fully take advantage of IllumiRoom. On that note, though, Microsoft's video also demonstrates some ways IllumiRoom can still interpret game motion and show that on the walls in what they call Peripheral Flow.

Even if this proof-of-concept isn't destined to show up at Microsoft's May 21st Xbox reveal, we hope Microsoft Research sticks with it. IllumiRoom could be in the running for weirdest video game accessory ever if it becomes a weird product.

It's taken AMD a few months to plan its counterattack to Nvidia's fastest graphics cards, the dual-GPU GTX 690 and monstrous single GPU GTX Titan. But now that response is here in the form of the Radeon 7990, a dual-GPU card that essentially slaps together two of the (already speedy) 7970GEs, which sell for at least $400 by themselves. AMD's press release proudly proclaimed this was the card EA used to premiere Battlefield 4, and that it's the only one around that can run Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider at 4K resolution.

AMD's hailing the new 7990 as the world's fastest graphics card thanks to its count of 2048 stream processors per GPU, 950MHz core clock, and 6GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6GHz. Total, the 7990 is packing about 8.6 billion transistors. None of this comes cheap, of course--the 7990 will launch online in a couple week at $999.

Anandtech has some great analysis of the new card that digs into the advances AMD has made with dual-GPU tech. It's important to note that this technically isn't the first 7990 model to hit the market--ASUS and PowerColor released their own versions before AMD, but it looks like this will be the one to get. Writes Anandtech:

"AMD’s 7990 has an official TDP of just 375W, which although common for official dual-GPU cards, is quite a bit lower than the TDPs of the unofficial 7990s. As the GPU manufacturer AMD has the ability to do finely grained binning that their partners cannot, so while Asus and PowerColor have essentially been putting together cards that really are two 7970s on a single card – right down to the TDP – official 7990s get the advantage of AMD’s binning process, significantly reducing power consumption. The end result is that while an unofficial 7990 would be a 450W+ part, AMD can deliver the same or better performance while consuming much less power, putting the 7990 within the all-important 375W envelope that OEMs and boutique builders look for."

Two other important things to note. One: AMD's new power technology, which they've dubbed ZeroCore, can turn off a slave GPU when not in use. So for your normal day-to-day, the 7990 can shut off one of its GPUs and bring its idle power consumption down to about 20 watts. And that other important thing: AMD is giving away a ton of games with this card.

Your $999 will also buy you copies of BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and Deus Ex Human Revolution. If spending a grand on a graphics card leaves you too poor to buy anything else for a month, at least you'll have plenty of games to play.

Our Halo Needler prop is somewhere around 15 pounds at the moment, an amalgamation of wood, foam, bondo and various types of plastic. While the shape of the whole thing is spot-on, the prop leaves a little bit to be desired with how heavy and fragile the mishmash of materials ends up being. The parts we’ve got so far have to be molded, then cast in urethane plastic. This will yield a piece that is both far lighter as well as more durable, since it’ll all be one cohesive material through and through.

There are many types of techniques to make molds, and just as many types of materials to make molds with. The techniques covered in this and the next build installment will give an overview on the processes for making hard copies--that is, a piece that ends up being cast in rigid plastic. First, to those who aren’t familiar with moldmaking, I’ll cover a bit of terminology. Important moldmaking terms will be bolded.

The part to be molded is referred to as a “master” or sometimes as the “sculpt." For the purposes of this article I’ll be covering molding the grip section of the Needler. The grip here is made from MDF, Acrylic, PVC, Bondo and some epoxy clay. This is the grip master.

(Of note in the shot above is a little trick I learned from some of the modelmaking guys at the Replica Prop Forum. The little black arrows on the grip were cut at a local sign shop and adhered to the grip before molding. After making the mold and pouring a casting in resin, this will create small raised details in the final part.)

The technology has never been right for VR headsets, but as long as techheads have been designing head-mounted displays, they've faced a simpler challenge: Weight. In 1995, Nintendo's Virtual Boy weighed so much, at 1.65 pounds, that the company wisely released it with a stand for resting it on a table (releasing the Virtual Boy turned out to be less wise). The Oculus Rift is a featherweight compared to the Virtual Boys and other 80s and 90s HMDs, but a recent teardown reveals an interesting fact: There's not a ton going on inside the headset itself.

iFixit took a screwdriver and spudgers to the Oculus Rift dev kit to open it up. Good news for tinkerers: the kit is really easy to dive into. iFixit easily popped open the housing for the 7-inch LCD display with a plastic tool. Opening the Rift revealed that the 7-inch panel it contains is from Taiwanese manufacturer Chimei Innolux; iFixit writes that the manufacturer "is Taiwan's largest LCD manufacturer and is rumored to be a replacement source for Apple's iPad Mini screens."

Credit: iFixit.

In addition to the LCD panel, the housing only contained a timing controller and a very small custom circuit board housing the sensor package and CPU responsible for making the Rift's head-tracking mojo work. iFixit has close-up photos of each in its post.

And that was basically it. The rest of the Rift's virtual reality immersion comes from the control box, which facilitates the connection with a PC, and with software on the PC side.

First takeaway: the Oculus Rift dev kit is very, very easy to take apart. Second takeaway: This thing can probably be even lighter, since the key components add little to the overall bulk. We might see an even thinner and lighter housing with the consumer Oculus Rift next year, which will be key for extended gaming sessions--speaking of, check out Will playing Team Fortress 2 for nearly an hour. Our necks will thank Oculus for every ounce they can shave off the HMD's bulk.

[Harrison is away on an overseas trip this week, so he hasn't had the opportunity to continue working on the Halo 4 Needler prop. In its stead, he sends over this writeup of his recently constructed mask from the first BioShock game. --Norm]

I suppose it's no secret that I'm a pretty big BioShock fan. BioShock: Infinite has recently been released and I'm really excited by all the props that game will open up to me. But before I can get to those there was one object from the world of Rapture I wanted to take a crack at building: the Splicer mask. Here’s my journey building on leading up to the launch of the next BioShock chapter. And if you want to take a pass at making your own Splicer mask, I sell raw styrene copies of the finished mask in my store, ready for trimming and paint!

The Splicer characters in BioShock wear once-festive party masks that have been smattered with blood and cracked with abuse during their time in Rapture. My favorite design has always been the bird Splicer masks, so when I got a commission for one earlier this year, I jumped on it.

Gathering reference was a bit tricky here. I don't have the PC version of the game and though someone unfolded a pepakura model of the mask some time ago, it has since disappeared after the demise of Megaupload. Nothing left to do then but fire up the game! One of my save files happened to be very convenient as my character was wearing the Big Daddy suit and the Splicers would ignore him. Perfect for gathering reference images. I found a bird splicer, dispatched the poor fellow, then used the "Telekinesis" plasmid ability to get about a hundred different views of the mask.

I used these references to put together a set of blueprints, then commenced building.

"The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." - Sci-fi author William Gibson

This quote from Gibson--which he said in a 1999 NPR interview, though not for the first time--endures in popularity because it implies two exciting ideas. One, that with our Internet and our smartphones and scientific advances, we're living in a "future" sci-fi authors imagined in the 1980s. Two, that the future is a nebulous concept, rather than a sudden moment in time, that pops up in different parts of the world based on wealth and other socioeconomic factors. Even as the future as crept forward in fits and bursts, one of its most enduring icons--virtual reality--has stubbornly remained in the realm of fiction.

Until now. The Oculus Rift has arrived.

Oculus VR's head-mounted display fits into the first part Gibson's paradigm. It's a technology driven by sci-fi fantasies like Tron and The Matrix and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but in reality, head-mounted displays have been impossibly expensive and, in consumer models, pretty crappy, until the Oculus Rift. It's the right time for high-resolution displays and low-latency technology to deliver virtual reality into our present "future." But the Oculus Rift--and VR in general--also fit into the second part of that paradigm: Virtual reality is complicated, and it will be a long, long time until it's evenly distributed.

If there's anyone who knows exactly what it will take to overcome VR's complex challenges and hurry along its development, it's Michael Abrash. Abrash programmed Quake alongside John Carmack and has worked on games and graphics programming at Microsoft and other tech companies for more than 20 years. He's spent the past two years at Valve researching wearable computing. This is his thing. And at this year's Game Developer's Conference, Abrash talked to a packed room about why virtual reality is hard and where it's headed in the next few years.

In fact, Abrash and Carmack have both spoken and written extensively about VR in the past year; Carmack demonstrated an early Oculus Rift prototype running Doom 3 at E3 2012, and a few months back Abrash wrote a fascinating dive into the challenge of latency in virtual reality. In his 25 minute GDC talk, Abrash delved even further into the challenges and complexities of both VR and AR. By the end of Abrash's talk, it would be easy to look at the long list of deeply technical challenges he referenced as insurmountable obstacles. But he's a technical guy. These are problems to solve, and he's giddy to solve them. So let's get technical for a bit.

Anti-aliasing isn't always there for us when we need it. Jaggies are the enemy, and PC gaming typically arms us with a few ways to beat them back, smoothing out those harsh lines and minimizing that unsightly simmer. But sometimes even minimal anti-aliasing hits performance hard. Sometimes AA options can cause graphical glitches; temporal anti-aliasing offers clean lines in exchange for unsightly ghosting. And, worst of all, some games don't offer anti-aliasing options at all. There are often ways to force anti-aliasing in games, but there's another solution: Downsampling.

It's a simple concept. Downsampling involves running a game at a custom resolution higher than the native output resolution of your monitor. For example, if your monitor outputs a 1920x1080 image, downsampling would require telling a game to run at, say, 2560x1440. That's a total increase of 1.6 million pixels! When that 2560x1440 image is rescaled, or downsampled, to 1080p, the extra pixels help smooth out those jagged edges and produces a sharper, cleaner picture.

Image Credit: Kasra Korki

Downsampling is performance intensive, of course. A guide on Guru 3D elaborates that "the performance impact will be proportional to the increase in resolution or total number of pixels; however, graphics card memory may also need to be considered." The upside, though, is that downsampling "should provide image quality comparable to full screen antialiasing but with far less compatibility issues and in many cases higher performance." And if your graphics card is especially powerful, you can combine anti-aliasing with downsampling for even better image quality.

Downsampling PC games starts with setting up a custom resolution through an Nvidia or AMD control panel. Finding the right resolution--high enough to improve image quality, but not too high for the GPU to handle--takes some tweaking. The type of monitor you have, the bandwidth of the cable used to connect to it (DVI, DisplayPort, etc.), and your graphics card drivers can all affect how well downsampling will work on your machine. That all sounds like bad news, but the good news is better: finding out if you can downsample will only take about 10 minutes, and the resulting custom resolution should work in just about any PC game you play.

Image Credit: Kasra Korki

We've worked up separate guides to downsampling for AMD and Nvidia graphics cards and thrown in some additional links to longer walkthroughs and more information on different types of anti-aliasing. If you're inspired by some of the amazing screenshots downsampling enables, give it a shot.

VIdeo game "photographers" create art about art. They create art using art. The art of the "photograph," or screenshot, may come from composition or editing of stylization. For graphic design student James Pollock, that means taking images of games and filtering them with Instagram for his blog Virtual Geographic. For Duncan Harris, who runs Dead End Thrills, art comes from pushing technology to the limits--rendering virtual worlds at 4K resolution, tweaking the field of view, and using mods to touch up lighting and textures just so.

Like real photography, virtual photography requires balancing composition with technical mastery. Photographers adjust depth of field and shutter speed and ISO as they wait for light to hit from just the right angle; virtual tourists tweak anti-aliasing and field of view as they wait for the right animation to play in just the right spot. Photographers bring the world into focus through a lens; for PC gamers dedicated to taking screenshots, that lens is a technique called downsampling.

Image credit: Michael Larsen

"The beauty of this 'hobby' is to show off areas in games you might not notice at all," Michael Larsen wrote to me in an email. "Or [to] really illustrate the beauty of a simple landscape scene, perhaps even an uninteresting scene that suddenly starts to shine with clean image quality and the graphical effects pop. So that means walking, driving, flying around and constantly being on the lookout for places, areas or a certain composition that works."

Larsen was a frequent poster in a High-Res PC Screenshot thread at the gaming message board NeoGAF. These threads are common on gaming forums--members upload screenshots of whatever games they're currently playing, often in three megabyte, 1080p PNGs that would choke the life out of a dial-up connection. The threads that have been open for years still have 56K warnings in their titles.

No camera hacks or debug modes...they just play games at resolutions most gamers only dream of.

Some of NeoGAF's members simply post quick shots from whatever game they're currently playing. Others are more deliberate, turning off user interface elements and detailing their posts with settings information like 1680x1050 8xEQ SSAA + FXAA--Ultra. After making a combined 1311 posts in 2012's screenshot thread, Larsen and another frequent poster, Kasra Korki, decided to cater to that diehard group with the 2013 PC Bullshot thread. Korki wrote this in the introduction:

"This thread is going to be a dedicated 'High Quality' thread where there's a no holds barred attitude for achieving the highest image quality possible in-game. We're talking about downsampling, lots of anti-aliasing, Nvidia Inspector bits, the whole nine yards. We have no interest in frame-rate or what's deemed playable, this is just about a feast for the eyes, nothing else...This is the thread for people who start up games at extreme settings for the sole purpose of taking screenshots of games, to find those amazing areas that aren't just the mandatory 5 set-pieces from the games, it's about taking pictures of a toilet stall and be in awe at the quality, how the reflection falls and how clean the image is."

Image credit: Kasra Korki

Like Dead End Thrills's Duncan Harris, Larsen and Korki are fascinated with the art of these virtual worlds; unlike Harris, however, they don't use techniques like camera hacks or debug modes to break free of a game's programmed confines and take shots from normally impossible angles. For the most part, they just play games...at resolutions most gamers only dream of.

Downsampling is their secret tool. And here's how it works.

Most of the basic shapes of the Halo Needler have been rounded out (and for those keeping track, I still haven’t started sculpting the actual needles!) so it’s time to begin adding the details that will transform these from amorphous gray blobs into recognizable Needler components. In the last update I spent a fair bit of time discussing the panel lines and recesses on the top casing, so let’s start there.

All those little hexagons would be a pain to sculpt out symmetrically, not to mention smooth sided and with nice right angle edges. In the past I’ve tackled things like this by making a small styrene box and recessing it into the part, then blending the edges flush. Hexagons are more complex than rectangles though, so I came up with a different solution.

All those little chiclets are pieces of acrylic superglued together. These are the reverse of the hexagons that need to be recessed into the needler body. By vacuum-forming over them then popping them out of the resulting plastic, I got the exact shape I needed for all the hexagonal divots. Even better, they’re all identical since the parts were trimmed out with my laser cutter! That wasn't a necessity, but it does lend a lot to the aesthetic and helps the resulting forms look more “machined”.

This process was also repeated for a few other recessed parts on the upper casing. But recessing these into the sculpt of the casing was a bit more of a pain than I’d anticipated.

Computer gaming mice are a lot like shoes. You can fall in love with using one for a variety of reasons--performance, comfort, or aesthetics--and replace them more often than you actually need to. You may buy a new one when your current model is worn down from use, but it could be a result of shifting priorities and evolving taste. For example, I play fewer first-person shooters and more RTS's these days, and value ergonomics over accuracy. Just like shoes, the mouse you use serves the dual-purpose of being a practical piece of equipment and a statement about your lifestyle. And there's also the one in your heart of hearts that has always been your favorite. The model that you wish you had bought two of just to have a spare in case it ever goes out of production. For me, that was Logitech's G5. You know, the one with the awesome blue (or red) lava design and texture.

Since the G5's release five years ago (revision 2, the model with two thumb buttons), I've only switched mice twice. First with the Cyborg R.A.T. 7--with which some people had experienced tracking problems--and then to the Razer Mamba, a wireless mouse that I predominantly kept tethered in wired mode. Both are great mice with different strengths and weaknesses: the R.A.T. is extremely customizable to suit any type of grip and hand size, but its open design attracts a lot of dust over time. The Mamba is very precise and has a great soft-plastic surface but the wireless battery life is only so-so. So today, I'm ready to make another switch.

Logitech is relaunching its line of PC gaming accessories--its G series--and one of its new products is the latest successor to the G5 line of mice: the G500s. I've been testing it as my primary mouse and it fits like an old favorite shoe, reborn with a better laser sensor and some minor physical changes may make it a keeper.