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joshslater · 4 years ago

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Twitching

Similar stories and bonus material on my Patreon.

To my surprise people keep joining the stream. Usually it was only my friends and occasionally someone random that watched me play. Space strategy games are not the most audience-friendly. They require you to know a lot about the game mechanics, and they take a long while to play through a full campaign. But all my mates know the game, and are just here to socialize and sometimes provide a tip.

This evening is different though. It had started with some "Lucy333" joining what must have been almost an hour ago. More than 30 minutes for sure. But over the past 10 minutes I've gotten 12 more viewers I think. Suddenly there is a coin sound effect and the chat stream lights up with a donation. $2 from Lucy333 and the text "Hey, spaceboy! Take your shirt off!"

I can instantly feel myself blushing. I'm flattered for a few milliseconds. I'm aware of the streams with girls showing lots of skin to get donations. I've never watched any of them. I'm not even aware of any with boys in them, but I know they exist. "Thanks for the donation, Lucy. This isn't that kind of stream though, clearly." I'm just playing for my mates when we don't feel like meeting up or doing something else. And I know I'm not a looker, though not shockingly ugly like Pete. Honestly, if there wasn't a pandemic going on we would probably do exactly the same thing anyway, playing space strategy and talk Marvel.

There is a flurry of responses from the newcomers in the chat. "Do it! Do it!" says one Donnatrix. "It could be that kind of stream," says fluffy2000. Soon my mates start cheering on as well. It basically turns into a dare. I'm not proud of my body, but I'm not ashamed of it either. It just is. Fuck it. I don't know what I'm going to be teased for more, if I take my shirt off, or if I don't. I reckon if I do what they ask for they have less ground to stand on. I set the game speed to low, say "Ok then", take off my headset, and pull off my T-shirt.

I'm met with a torrent of cheers in the chat. "Now it is that kind of stream," says fluffy. Donnatrix drops $5 and the comment "YAAAASSS". It feels weird. I can't decide if this is a group of sorority girls that randomly and sarcastically sexualize nerds, or if they are genuinely supportive.

"Thank y'all. Now back to trade route 14 to Zephyr-C". My emissary mission hasn't moved far at this speed. I'm about to increase the in-game speed when I get another $2 donation from Lucy. "Spaceboy, keep the game in slow mode and jump over to Heavenly Bodies."

I have no idea what she is talking about, if she even is a she. Her message is instantly met with a wave of support from the other newcomers. At this game speed it would take hours before I need to take any action, and I'm already up a Whopper meal without having done anything, so I reckon I can play whatever they want me to play for a while. Who knew I was that easily bought? "I don't know what that is," I say into my headset.

A few seconds later Lucy sends me a private message with a TinyURL. "This better not mess with my game rig. If it's porn I'll switch back to the game." I say. "It could be that kind of stream too." fluffy offers in the chat. "He could use some porn tbh" my friend Mike responds. I click the link.

The browser loads something that looks like a web game. It's a character creation screen with a faceless, very neutral model on the screen. Looks like those posable figures you use when learning to draw. There are no controls, except a set of buttons that offers you to upload settings, import from Facebook, and similar. I click the Facebook one, click a few approvals, and a progress bar that only lasts a few seconds appears. When it is gone there is a 3D model of me on the screen. "Wow! This looks just like me." Whatever AI they have combing through my online photos managed to get almost everything right. I'm wearing some sort of speedos, but I don't own any, so that part was a miss, but the model looks spot on. "Whatever else they have in the game, I don't think they are going to top this."

A long list of sliders and customizations appear on the screen. It looks like an incredibly detailed character creation screen. I try moving the height controller and is met with a message box saying I'm out of credits, and that I need $10,000 to change my height to whatever I moved it to. Clearly not real money. "I can't change anything". Lucy responded I need to share it. I exit fullscreen on the game and move the browser over to my other screen so everyone on the stream can see. "No, you need to click the share button in the UI and post the link in the chat", Donnatrix writes.

A big gift-wrapped box appears in the corner of the game window. I click it and it presents the text "Hair color and style" with bold letters and below that a text message from Lucy "I think this will be cute on you." I click accept and the 3D model is updated with new hair. It's dark blonde or whatever the oxymoronic name is for it, instead of my usual rat brown hair. It's short on the sides and on top is a big swooping quiff. It looks utterly silly. "Thanks, nice one," I tell the stream. I see a lot of cheers coming in the chat, but I'm a bit perplexed about the "OMYFUCKING GDO!" from Mike. It's just silly hair.

Immediately a new gift box appears on the screen, and soon after a (2) is added on top of it, possibly indicating two gifts waiting. I find it a little bit cute that these girls are essentially playing with paper dolls, but digitally and modeled after someone real. I open the next gift, "Facial Features" from Julia_Awesome. I click accept again, and the doll on the screen is updated. Weirdly it felt like a flash of heat hit me, like those flame effects on concerts. The doll still looks like me, but pretty fictionalized. The face is much sharper, not just less fat, but probably also some bone structure changes as well. It's equally interesting and disheartening, like one of those really good mobile phone filter apps that makes you into a photo model. Makes you understand how unobtainable the Men's Health cover look really is. "Thank you, Julia, but I'm not sure about this look."

I'm ignoring the chat, though I see it is going bananas. I'll have to read that later when the stream is over. I open the next box. Another two has already arrived. This gift is from Donnatrix and is "Core Body", whatever that means. It feels like a gut punch. Perhaps not that, because it doesn't hurt, but it knocks the air out of me. Almost made me fall out of the chair. I'm confused about what is actually happening though because things don't make sense. My body looks deformed. It takes a moment before my brain stops associating what I see with HR Geiger's nightmarish paintings and start to understand what I really see. My body is suddenly a lot leaner and a hell of a lot more stacked than before. Proper abs muscles like a pan of Hawaii rolls.

I look up at the main screen for the first time in what feels like an eternity. The model on the screen looks ripped as well. How stupid can one person be? I turn to the side monitor and look at the window from the webcam. It's me, all new muscles, strong jaw, and a silly quiff on top.

"Hold up! Hold up! Hold up! This is insane! This isn't possible."

"lol, of course not" I see moving by in the chat. I go back to the program. Four more gifts waiting. I look at the model on the screen. I look at the webcam view. "Arms" says the next gift with the text "Promise to flex for me." Well, fuck Zephyr-C and trade route 14.

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outerloop · 4 years ago

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Porting Falcon Age to the Oculus Quest

There have already been several blog posts and articles on how to port an existing VR game to the Quest. So we figured what better way to celebrate Falcon Age coming to the Oculus Quest than to write another one!

So what we did was reduced the draw calls, reduced the poly counts, and removed some visual effects to lower the CPU and GPU usage allowing us to keep a constant 72 hz. Just like everyone else!

Thank you for coming to our Tech talk. See you next year!

...

Okay, you probably want more than that.

Falcon Age

So let's talk a bit about the original PlayStation VR and PC versions of the game and a couple of the things we thought were important about that experience we wanted to keep beyond the basics of the game play.

Loading Screens Once you’re past the main menu and into the game, Falcon Age has no loading screens. We felt this was important to make the world feel like a real place the player could explore. But this comes at some cost in needing to be mindful of the number of objects active at one time. And in some ways even more importantly the number of objects that are enabled or disabled at one time. In Unity there can be a not insignificant cost to enabling an object. So much so that this was a consideration we had to be mindful of on the PlayStation 4 as loading a new area could cause a massive spike in frame time causing the frame rate to drop. Going to the Quest this would be only more of an issue.

Lighting & Environmental Changes While the game doesn’t have a dynamic time of day, different areas have different environmental setups. We dynamically fade between different types of lighting, skies, fog, and post processing to give areas a unique feel. There are also events and actions the player does in the game that can cause these to happen. This meant all of our lighting and shadows were real time, along with having custom systems for handling transitioning between skies and our custom gradient fog.

Our skies are all hand painted clouds and horizons cube maps on top of Procedural Sky from the asset store that handles the sky color and sun circle with some minor tweaks to allow fading between different cube maps. Having the sun in the sky box be dynamic allowed the direction to change without requiring totally new sky boxes to be painted.

Our gradient fog works by having a color gradient ramp stored in a 1 by 64 pixel texture that is sampled using spherical distance exp2 fog opacity as the UVs. We can fade between different fog types just by blending between different textures and sampling the blended result. This is functionally similar to the fog technique popularized by Campo Santo’s Firewatch, though it is not applied as a post process as it was for that game. Instead all shaders used in the game were hand modified to use this custom fog instead of Unity’s built in fog.

Post processing was mostly handled by Unity’s own Post Processing Stack V2, which includes the ability to fade between volumes which the custom systems extended. While we knew not all of this would be able to translate to the Quest, we needed to retain as much of this as possible.

The Bird At its core, Falcon Age is about your interactions with your bird. Petting, feeding, playing, hunting, exploring, and cooperating with her. One of the subtle but important aspects of how she “felt” to the player was her feathers, and the ability for the player to pet her and have her and her feathers react. She also has special animations for perching on the player’s hand or even individual fingers, and head stabilization. If at all possible we wanted to retain as much of this aspect of the game, even if it came at the cost of other parts.

You can read more about the work we did on the bird interactions and AI in a previous dev blog posts here: https://outerloop.tumblr.com/post/177984549261/anatomy-of-a-falcon

Taking on the Quest

Now, there had to be some compromises, but how bad was it really? The first thing we did was we took the PC version of the game (which natively supports the Oculus Rift) and got that running on the Quest. We left things mostly unchanged, just with the graphics settings set to very low, similar to the base PlayStation 4 PSVR version of the game.

It ran at less than 5 fps. Then it crashed.

Ooph.

But there’s some obvious things we could do to fix a lot of that. Post processing had to go, just about any post processing is just too expensive on the Quest, so it was disabled entirely. We forced all the textures in the game to be at 1/8th resolution, that mostly stopped the game from crashing as we were running out of memory. Next up were real time shadows, they got disabled entirely. Then we turned off grass, and pulled in some of the LOD distances. These weren’t necessarily changes we would keep, just ones to see what it would take to get the performance better. And after that we were doing much better.

A real, solid … 50 fps.

Yeah, nope.

That is still a big divide between where we were and the 72 fps we needed to be at. It became clear that the game would not run on the Quest without more significant changes and removal of assets. Not to mention the game did not look especially nice at this point. So we made the choice of instead of trying to take the game as it was on the PlayStation VR and PC and try to make it look like a version of that with the quality sliders set to potato, we would need to go for a slightly different look. Something that would feel a little more deliberate while retaining the overall feel.

Something like this.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize (and when that fails delete)

Vertex & Batch Count

One of the first and really obvious things we needed to do was to bring down the mesh complexity. On the PlayStation 4 we were pushing somewhere between 250,000 ~ 500,000 vertices each frame. The long time rule of thumb for mobile VR has been to be somewhere closer to 100,000 vertices, maybe 200,000 max for the Quest.

This was in some ways actually easier than it sounds for us. We turned off shadows. That cut the vertex count down significantly in many areas, as many of the total scene’s vertex count comes from rendering the shadow maps. But the worse case areas were still a problem.

We also needed to reduce the total number of objects and number of materials being used at one time to help with batching. If you’ve read any other “porting to Quest” posts by other developers this is all going to be familiar.

This means combining textures from multiple object into atlases and modifying the UVs of the meshes to match the new position in the atlas. In our case it meant completely re-texturing all of the rocks with a generic atlas rather than having every rock use a custom texture set.

Now you might think we would want also reduce the mesh complexity by a ton. And that’s true to an extent. Counter intuitively some of the environment meshes on the Quest are more complex than the original version. Why? Because as I said we were looking to change the look. To that end some meshes ended up being optimized to far low vertex counts, and others ended up needing a little more mesh detail to make up for the loss in shading detail and unique texturing. But we went from almost every mesh in the game having a unique texture to the majority of environment objects sharing a small handful of atlases. This improved batching significantly, which was a much bigger win than reducing the vertex count for most areas of the game.

That’s not to say vertex count wasn’t an issue still. A few select areas were completely pulled out and rebuilt as new custom merged meshes in cases where other optimizations weren’t enough. Most of the game’s areas are built using kit bashing, reusing sets of common parts to build out areas. Parts like those rocks above, or many bits of technical & mechanical detritus used to build out the refineries in the game. Making bespoke meshes let us remove more hidden geometry, further reduce object counts, and lower vertex counts in those problem areas.

We also saw a significant portion of the vertex count coming from the terrain. We are using Unity’s built in terrain system. And thankfully we didn’t have to start from total scratch here as simply increasing the terrain component's Pixel Error automatically reduces the complexity of the rendered terrain. That dropped the vertex count even more getting us closer to the target budget without significantly changing the appearance of the geometry.

After that many smaller details were removed entirely. I mentioned before we turned off grass entirely. We also removed several smaller meshes from the environment in various places where we didn’t think their absence would be noticed. As well as removed or more aggressively disabled out of view NPCs in some problem areas.

Shader Complexity

Another big cost was most of the game was using either a lightly modified version of Unity’s Standard shader, or the excellent Toony Colors Pro 2 PBR shader. The terrain also used the excellent and highly optimized MicroSplat. But these were just too expensive to use as they were. So I wrote custom simplified shaders for nearly everything.

The environment objects use a simplified diffuse shading only shader. It had support for an albedo, normal, and (rarely used) occlusion texture. Compared to how we were using the built in Standard shader this cut down the number of textures a single material could use by more than half in some cases. This still had support for the customized gradient fog we used throughout the game, as well as a few other unique options. Support for height fog was built into the shader to cover a few spots in the game where we’d previously used post processing style methods to achieve. I also added support for layering with the terrain’s texture to hide a few places where there were transitions from terrain to mesh.

Toony Colors Pro 2 is a great tool, and is deservedly popular. But the PBR shader we were using for characters is more expensive than even the Standard shader! This is because the way it’s implemented is it’s mostly the original Standard Shader with some code on top to modify the output. Toony Colors Pro 2 has a large number of options for modifying and optimizing what settings to use. But in the end I wrote a new shader from scratch that mimicked some of the aspects we liked about it. Like the environment shader it was limited to diffuse shading, but added a Fresnel shine.

The PSVR and PC terrain used MicroSplat with 12 different terrain layers. MicroSplat makes these very fast and much cheaper to render than the built in terrain rendering. But after some testing we found we couldn’t support more than 4 terrain layers at a time without really significant drops in performance. So we had to go through and completely repaint the entire terrain, limiting ourselves to only 4 texture layers.

Also, like the other shaders mentioned above, the terrain was limited to diffuse only shading. MicroSplat’s built in shader options made this easy, and apart from the same custom fog support added for the original version, it didn’t require any modifications.

Post Processing, Lighting, and Fog

The PSVR and PC versions of Falcon Age makes use of color grading, ambient occlusion, bloom, and depth of field. The Quest is extremely fill rate limited, meaning full screen passes of anything are extremely expensive, regardless of how simple the shader is. So instead of trying to get this working we opted to disable all post processing. However this resulted in the game being significantly less saturated. And in extreme cases completely different. To make up for this the color of the lighting and the gradient fog was tweaked to make up for this. This is probably the single biggest factor in the overall appearance of the original versions of the game and the Quest version not looking quite the same.

Also as mentioned before we disabled real time shadows. We discussed doing what many other games have done which is move to baked lighting, or at least pre-baked shadows. We decided against this for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was our game is mostly outdoors so shadows weren’t as important as it might have been for many other games. We’ve also found that simple real time lighting can often be faster than baked lighting, and that certainly proved to be true for this game.

However the lack of shadows and screen space ambient occlusion meant that there was a bit of a disconnect between characters in the world and the ground. So we added simple old school blob shadows. These are simple sprites that float just above the terrain or collision geometry, using a raycast from a character’s center of mass, and sometimes from individual feet. There’s a small selection of basic blob shapes and a few unique shapes for certain feet shapes to add a little extra bit of ground connection. These are faded out quickly in the distance to reduce the number of raycasts needed.

Falcon

Apart from the aforementioned changes to the shading, which was also applied to the falcon’s custom shaders, we did almost nothing to the bird. All the original animations, reaction systems, and feather interactions remained. The only thing we did to the bird was simplify a few of the bird equipment and toy models. The bird models themselves remained intact.

I did say we thought this was important at the start. And we early on basically put a line in the sand and said we were going to keep everything enabled on the bird unless absolutely forced to disable it.

There was one single sacrifice to the optimization gods we couldn’t avoid though. That’s the trails on the bird’s wings. We were making use of Ara Trails, which produce very high quality and configurable trails with a lot more control than Unity’s built in systems. These weren’t really a problem for rendering on the GPU, but CPU usage was enough that it made sense to pull them.

Selection Highlights

This is perhaps an odd thing to call out, but the original game used a multi pass post process based effect to draw the highlight outlines on objects for both interaction feedback and damage indication. These proved to be far too expensive to use on the Quest. So I had to come up with a different approach. Something like your basic inverted shell outline, like so many toon stylized games use, would seem like the perfect approach. However we never built the meshes to work with that kind of technique, and even though we were rebuilding large numbers of the meshes in the game anyway, some objects we wanted to highlight proved difficult for this style of outline.

With some more work it would have been possible to make this an option. But instead I found an easier to implement approach that, on the face, should have been super slow. But it turns out the Quest is very efficient at handling stencil masking. This is a technique that lets you mark certain pixels of the screen so that subsequent meshes being rendered can ask to not be rendered in. So I render the highlighted object 6 times! With 4 of those times slightly offset in screen space in the 4 diagonal directions. The result is a fairly decent looking outline that works on arbitrary objects, and was cheap enough to be left enabled on everything that it had been on before, including objects that might cover the entire screen when being highlighted.

Particles and General VFX

For the PSVR version of the game, we already had two levels of VFX in the game to support the base Playstation 4 and Playstation 4 Pro with different kinds of particle systems. The Quest version started out with these lower end particle systems to begin with, but it wasn’t enough. Across the board the number and size of particles had to be reduced. With some effects removed or replaced entirely. This was both for CPU performance as the sheer number of particles was a problem and GPU performance as the screen area the particles covered became a problem for the Quest’s reduced fill rate limitations.

For example the baton had an effect that included a few very simple circular glows on top of electrical arcs and trailing embers. The glows covered enough of the screen to cause a noticeable drop in framerate even just holding it by your side. Holding it up in front of your face proved too expensive to keep framerate in even the simplest of scenes.

Similar the number of embers had to be reduced to improve the CPU impact. The above comparison image only shows the removal of the glow and already has the reduced particle count applied.

Another more substantive change was the large smoke plumes. You may have already noticed the difference in some of the previous comparisons above. In the original game these used regular sprites. But even reducing the particle count in half the rendering cost was too much. So these were replaced with mesh cylinders using a shader that makes them ripple and fade out. Before changing how they were done the areas where the smoke plumes are were unable to keep the frame rate above 72 fps any time they were in view. Sometimes dipping as low as 48 hz. Afterwards they ceased to be a performance concern.

Those smoke plumes originally made use of a stylized smoke / explosion effect. That same style of effect is reused frequently in the game for any kind of smoke puff or explosion. So while they were removed for the smoke stacks, they still appeared frequently. Every time you take out a sentry or drone your entire screen was filled with these smoke effects, and the frame rate would dip below the target. With some experimentation we found that counter to a lot of information out there, using alpha tested (or more specifically alpha to coverage) particles proved to be far more efficient to render than the original alpha blended particles with a very similar overall appearance. So that plus some other optimizations to those shaders and the particle counts of those effects mean multiple full screen explosions did not cause a loss in frame rate.

The two effects are virtually identical in appearance, ignoring the difference in lighting and post processing. The main difference here is the Quest explosion smoke is using dithered alpha to coverage transparency. You can see if you look close enough, even with the gif color dithering.

Success!

So after all that we finally got to the goal of a 72hz frame rate! Coming soon to an Oculus Quest near you!

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2327302830679091/

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someplace-that-is-else · 5 years ago

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‘Go into a Room Too Fast, the Room Eats You: How I Fell into the Expanse’

If I was being honest…I had never forgiven them.

By them, I mean the Sci-Fi Channel. For what? Cancelling Sliders. It had been my favorite sci-fi show of all time. It was the one that resonated with me. It was a show that inspired me to write. So much so that I did my first fan fiction, fiction done by a fan for a show.

Then there was Farscape. I had no intention of watching that either. Especially after losing Sliders to it I believed. And who would watch a show that was essentially Muppets in Space. Or so I thought. But boy, did it prove me wrong! After avoiding it for the majority of its first season, the finale episodes…and the introduction of a certain leather-clad half-Scarran…caught my eye. I slowly, but surely was hooked…until that was cancelled, too three years later. Never again, I thought.

Since my ‘never again’ pledge, the Sci-Fi Channel had changed. After years of allowing itself to devolve into a channel full of constant movies, reality tv, and wrestling (Wrestling? Really?), SyFy (the name they decided to rebrand themselves as) finally decided to get back to what their purpose was supposed to be: sci-fi…old and most importantly NEW.

One of the new shows was The Magicians. I remembered seeing the book when I was still living in Little Rock, Arkansas in the local library. I never knew it would become a show. More fantasy than sci-fi, but I liked it. Usually it was on Wednesdays.

One Wednesday I happened to be home. I saw the new episode. And then I felt lazy. I allowed my television to stay on the same channel rather than turn it.

I had been looking down. My ears still heard dialogue and sound effects. But I was not paying attention. Then a boom sounded off. I looked up. There was someone on some planet. They were in a space suit. All hell was breaking loose. It was intercut with space. Then I remembered that The Magicians was scheduled with another show called The Expanse. I texted my friend Lee about it since I remember she had mentioned it in passing.

“Turn off the television,” she texted.

“What?” I texted.

She said I couldn’t watch it. That I had to go back and watch it from the beginning. I thought she was being silly on one hand. On the other hand, I wanted to see what happened in the scene that I had just watched. In any case, I turned the channel.

But…I was already intrigued.

About A Girl…Or Is it? The Expanse Season 1

The Expanse took place in a future where Earth and Mars were vouching for power with a people in an asteroid belt (called Belters) caught in the middle. That was what I first started to get as I started on Season 1. Great world building in my opinion, complete with their own ways of speaking, dialogue, and traditions.

And Season 1 was also a slow burn.

A detective on the hunt for a missing rich girl.

A man and his crew who get framed for something they did not do and make an unusual discovery.

A female politician who swore like a sailor who stumbled onto an intergalactic conspiracy. What did they have in common? They were all part of the same story…the discovery of an alien element called the protomolecule.

Not that they realized it. Yet.

If I had to label the first season anything in terms of a genre, I would call it a mystery. Viewers were right there with Detective Miller (played in perfect noir by Thomas Jane) as he went in search of Julie Mao, the daughter of the rich man. Yeah, there was spaceships due to the frame-up on James Holden and his crew. There was the hint of aliens, but for the most part The Expanse stayed very noir with the hint of a conspiracy as provided by the swearing politician Chrisjen Avasarala. As the first season ended, the storylines converged. Three different people were part of the same storyline.

It was a storyline that I continued to follow right into Season 2. Made easy by the fact that the people who wrote the books (James R. A. Corey), it followed quite well alongside the books I heard. I also loved the world building that was going on. The politics of Earth. The culture of people who lived on the Belt. How people from Mars were which was a more military mindset than people from Earth.

I even saw the scene that I saw that one Wednesday. It was to introduce a Martian character named Bobbie. Another storyline introduced into all of this mystery.

And then it happened.

I was on Season 2, Episode 5. I was about to head into work. I had gotten dressed. I was about to turn it off…

…and the episode went left into hard core sci-fi.

The scene I had heard was faithful to the scene in the books that The Expanse was based on. The special effects were breathtaking. The visual was stimulating. Ethereal even. And the dialogue and action were on a whole other level. And storywise, the story of Detective Miller was reaching the end of an arc.

I went on to work. However, the scene stayed on my mind. It was the last scene in that episode. It would be hours before I was home again. Hours before I could watch the next episode. My mind was on all the possibilities of what could happen next. In that moment of seeing how my mind kept coming back to that episode’s end, I knew.

I was hooked.

Gone?: The Expanse Season Three and the Almost Was

I had been late.

And by late, I meant that I had not watched the latest episode.

It was Season Three of The Expanse. After hinting at war between Earth, Mars, and the Belt over the protomolecule, war finally came through in Season Three. Holden and his crew (love interest Naomi, crazy mechanic Amos, pilot Alex) had turned into a nice team as well as become a family. Chrisjen Avasarala had even been roped into, joining the team for an arc.

So of course, the SyFy Channel had to cancel it.

Wait? What?!?

That’s right. Like so many shows before it, SyFy was cancelling The Expanse. After rebranding themselves as a SCIENCE FICTION channel again thanks to this show, DARK MATTERS, KILLJOYS, and good sci-fi miniseries, they were cancelling what was debatably their current flagship (because a case could be made that THE MAGICIANS was that, too) show. After putting my trust in them again, SyFy had gutted me again.

Oh, well. I guess I could try to enjoy the last few episodes of Season Three, right?

I listened. That day I was working out from home. Meanwhile, the latest episode was playing on my laptop. Holden was in a weird environment with what was Detective Miller who SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!...was dead and now part of the protomolecule. In hot pursuit was a team of Martians. And when they all made it to the same spot and despite Bobbie (she was part of the Martian team sent to arrest Holden…long story) playing moderator…all hell broke loose.

And…a Martian was taken completely apart. By an ancient alien defense system. It pulled off the armor, the skin, and then turned him to matter…ash…for the planet. The acting. The effect. The music. It all came together beautifully.

‘Fuck me!’

And I had stopped doing pull-ups. Jaw on floor. And I wondered again…

…what was SyFy thinking cancelling this great show?

---

Sometimes I forget.

Times have changed since the day SLIDERS. Back in the day, fans had to accept that a show was cancelled. Or they would have to write in by letters. Or even send a signatured item.

Not so much anymore. Since 2000, fan bases had gotten more organized. Thank you, internet, for fan bases’ ability to get organized and campaign for a show to come back. To get a network to change its mind about cancelling a show. Dollhouse. Timeless. And the fans of The Expanse…used emails and in the case of Amazon Studios, an airplane.

As luck would have it…the president of Amazon Studios, Jeff Bezos, was a fan of the series. A fan…who wanted to see how the story ended. So…at a panel…he shocked the creators and stars of the shows (and the fans) by revealing that The Expanse would have its next season on Amazon Prime. Even better…later on…it was revealed that Season 5 was confirmed before the December release of Season Four.

Good. A show that could pulled in the casual reader on a random Wednesday was a show that I felt had room to grow. While SyFy continued to have a bad track record when it came to actual sci-fi on their channel, I had to admit it. I was glad that I had left my channel unchanged that night. I was glad to have some hardcore science fiction that I was into. And better yet, there would be more years of it to come with nice twists, relatable characters, and situations that resonated in today’s world.

So I was glad Lee had told me to start at the beginning. No need to rush. Let the show take its time, and you would be rewarded. And so I was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEENk6_XFoA

#theexpanse #syfychannel #syfy #scifichannel #themagicians #sliders #Wednesday #roomeatsyou #room #eats #sciencefiction #amazon #jeffbozos #detective #mystery #noir #farscape #wrestling #timeless #dollhouse #killjoys #darkmatter #tvshows #jamessacorey #books #amazonprime #fans #belters

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moldsplastic-blog · 5 years ago

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The plastic parts have uniform wall thickness

The design of molded parts is mainly the design of core and cavity. Fig. When the mold is opened, the mold-opening force acts on the slider 21 through the inclined guide post 6 to move the slider to the left along the slide groove on the push plate 16 to reach the left limit stop 20. The plastic parts have uniform wall thickness, high surface quality and precision requirements, and large product batches. Complete the core pulling on the right side. As shown in Fig. According to the structural characteristics of the plastic part, two point gates are used in the design. 4 shows the left core-pulling mechanism. 3, the mold is in the open state. The middle cavity plate 8, the gate positioning sleeve 11, the gate sleeve 12 and the cavity plate 13 form a pouring system. The front cover of the instrument box can reach the size of the drawing, the quality of the plastic parts is effectively guaranteed, the production efficiency is high, and good economic benefits are achieved.

Since the plastic parts have round or square holes on the front, back, left, and right sides, a four-sided core-pulling mechanism must be designed. When the mold is opened, the condensate is first pulled out from the main runner, and then the intermediate cavity plate 8 pulls the condensate out of the runner, and then it is manually taken out. 2. The core is combined, as shown in Figure 5. Except that the slider is different due to molding needs, the other parts are the same, as shown in FIG. Circulating water channels are added in the core pad 4, core 17, and cavity plate 13 to enhance the cooling effect. The four holes are formed by the dynamic model core insert 10, and the other parts are completed by the core 17, the core 17 is embedded into the core fixing plate 5, the center of the core is a mirror surface, and the surrounding sandblasted The window is transparent and misty around.1 injection moulding manufacturers Design of pouring system

There is no obvious gate trace on the surface of the plastic part. Since the plastic rod cannot be set in the middle of the plastic part, the middle is in the middle A circular cold feed well is opened on the cavity plate 8. The diameter of the water channel is 9mm, and copper 3/4-inch cooling water nozzles are installed at the water inlet and outlet. The stop, the slider and the push plate are composed.

#injection moulding manufacturers

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sehockers · 2 years ago

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Cheap Injection Mould Intended for Safety Seat

A safety seat can be a common item this requires a plastic injection mold. The theory of this mildew is complex. It must make it possible for molten plastic to be able to flow smoothly on the mold's cavities along with solidify the part with no difficulty. Some molds could possibly have additional parts pertaining to complicated features within the part. In inclusion, most devices slide in the part's cavity through a side-action or go. It's imperative how the mould design become precise and suitable for the part's pattern and manufacturing process.

Safety seat plastic moulds are widely-used to manufacture little one seats. These protection seats are recognised by several names including child restraint system, infant security seat, restraining motor vehicle seat, and little one restraint system. These seats are designed to protect children during an accident and are generally installed in magnetic generator vehicles. A seat belt putting your unit together helps adjust the kid restraint system to fit correctly. This safety seat is normally made of naff and metal areas.

The plastic injection mould to get a safety seat may be extensively tested throughout production. Its structure is reasonable but it produces plastic elements that meet design requirements. It also lessens post-production work as the parts have the best finish upon ejection. It can furthermore plastic injection mould for safety seat Manufacturer contain fillers this reduce plastic density whilst in the moulding process. Those fillers also can add strength towards finished part. These safety seats may also be very easy to repair if required.

Another important section of a safety seat is the headrest cover cheap part. This plastic component has undercuts in addition to lug structures as well as an inner recess produced by a square pit that passes via it. The mold includes a small structural area, but a very stable operation. It also improves design creativeness. With this software, manufacturers can without difficulty design and manufacture child car seats.

The mold has two halves that must be fixed to your large platen interior an injection molding machine. One half is fixed to a stationary platen, along with the other half is fixed to your movable platen. The ejector bar is attached to the rear half belonging to the mold base. One time the mold cavity provides cooled, the ejection process pulls out the solidified part in the rear half.

Another component to the mold will be gating system. The gating product is closely related into the layout of that cavities. This mold can be either one or two cavities. The internal dimensions of the mold are important factors, as is this injection molding machine's treatment capacity. A core-pulling shape makes the form convenient to create. The mould also can have a single-point latent entrance gating system regarding mass production.

The basic structure on this mold is three-plates. The theory of the pattern is illustrated inside Figure 5. The fixed mold foundation plate 1 translates into the opening push. The wedge TWENTY TWO is pushed away from the fixed mould slider 25 with a spring 43. A mechanical movement rod first reset mechanism is built to ensure a clean clamping process. While the main structure on the mold is essentially like that of your safety seat, the structural accessory holder needs to be flexible to bend about the anchoring pole.

The Plastics Sector Association's Machinery Safe practices Standards Committee has revised the conventional for injection molding. It isn't really surprising that the 2 organizations are lifetime improve their standards for plastic injection moulds. Those involved inside the safety seat industry should notice this new progression. Once approved, these new standards can be the standard for everyone safety seat moulds.

The idea became widespread and affordable, making it a indispensable tool intended for manufacturers to produce lots of consumer products. The leading advantage of injection molding is the fact it allows complicated shapes to get mass-produced. There is not any other manufacturing process which is so efficient plus versatile.

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luckyvewor · 2 years ago

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plasticmouldinjectionmold · 3 years ago

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Design experience points for injection mold slider and lifter

Due to special requirements of product, stripping direction of a certain part is inconsistent with mold opening direction of injection machine, side splitting and core pulling are required to smoothly eject product. There are two types of side splitting and core pulling mechanism: slider and lifter. First, slider 1. Slider calculation (example below):In order to ensure smooth demould of…

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gudmould · 21 days ago

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Serial buckle mold classic case sharing

Chain buckle mold description: Structural feature of infinitely long chain-like plastic parts is that adjacent chain links are connected to each other, injection mold must adopt inclined slider type lateral parting and core pulling mechanism. Characteristic of oblique slider type lateral parting and core pulling mechanism is that oblique slider is driven to move obliquely by thrust of…

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dgfeman · 3 years ago

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Uscrew Injection Molding

https://www.dgfeman.com/uscrew-injection-molding.html

Unscrew injection molding, as its name implied, there is thread in the plastic part for easy assemble and connection with other screw parts. Unscrew mold design is common in our daily life as we can see the caps form our bottle. This is kind of a very basic and normal unscrew molding products.

The Introduction of Unscrewing Mould

Unscrew molding is a very important form of injection molding. Unscrew mold manufacturing technology is becoming more and more mature. However, many mold factories cannot really master the technical essentials. The injection mold unscrewing mechanism have very strict requirements for the entire mold manufacturing and processing because of their assembly performance. Unscrew mold is divided into internal thread mold and external thread mold. Externally threaded molds can generally be realized by slider in the mold, but the precision is very high. Internally threaded molds generally require the cooperation of the core pulling structure.

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gudmould · 28 days ago

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Injection molding upper and lower mold operation guide

In injection molding production, upper and lower mold work is very important. Mold operator or technician must master following key actions to do a good job of upper and lower mold work. 1. Preparation before production 1.1 Before production, first check whether injection equipment is consistent with mold design: check whether mold perimeter, thickness, positioning ring, gate sleeve, ejector…

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almajonesnjna · 6 years ago

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What Exercise Equipment is Good for Abs?

How to Choose the Right Equipment for Toned Abs

Flat, chiselled and hard abs have often been perceived as the sign of whether someone is in shape. Wanting to gain a six-pack often the New Year’s Resolution of thousands of Metairie residents hoping to shed the pounds of fat covering that pristine stomach.

While overall fitness is measured by more than just abdominal definition, we cannot deny the importance of a toned core. Our cores are used for a plethora of other exercises and offer a myriad of health benefits when properly trained and maintained, including better posture and support.

So, when it comes to our cores and primarily our abdominals, what is the proper exercise equipment for abs to use for training? The myriad of options available can seem overwhelming, and resolutions often fade quickly for no other reason than not knowing where to even begin.

Luckily for you, dear reader, Fitness Expo is here to help!

You don’t have to subscribe to an expensive gym membership to improve your fitness regimen. You can easily find exercise equipment for abs to that you can incorporate at home or on the go. Below, we’ll discuss options you can use to help improve your abdominal fitness, from basic support items to full-sized residential gym equipment.

Good Exercise Equipment for Abs

Basic Supports: Foam Rollers and Stability Balls

An all-out home gym might not be in your budget— that’s OK! a variety of support tools are available to help transform almost any exercise into a full workout, including exercise equipment for your abs. Of these, the most popular, versatile, and affordable tend to be medium- to high-density foam rollers and stability balls. Each of these supports is available in several styles and colors tailored to fit your style and fitness routine.

For additional stability, flexibility and core support, consider adding the Teeter EP 560 Manual Inversion Table to your lineup. This machine reduces spine and core pressure and tension, relieving pain, improving mobility and enhancing core mechanics.

Strengthening Supports: Resistance Bands, Kettlebells, and Dumbbells

You can enhance movements through the use of resistance and weights. A twist, lunge, or other movement starts to require more muscles and move beyond conditioning. Resistance bands, kettlebells, and dumbbells are all tools that can enhance your home fitness routines to better strengthen your core and lower abdominals.

Good exercise equipment for abs offers versatility to your workouts while steadily training the muscles. These enhancement items can be used from any position with proper care, though heavier dumbbells and kettlebells should only be used with proper spotting. As with any home workout routine, safety is key.

Stepping Up by Sliding Down: Ab Wheels, Rollers, and Sliders

While they use similar motions, ab wheels, rollers, and sliders are technically separate items. The number of wheels, the height, and the resistance offered will all affect your workout. these three items are useful for training your upper abdominals, core, and overall fitness. They are also inexpensive, making them a great choice for the at-home exercise experience.

Rollers offer more support for your neck and help avoid strains, while wheels can better affect your lower back. All of these options are easy to travel with due to their small sizes, so they’re great for anyone who has to travel.

Ready to improve your balance and engage your core? Consider adding the Spri Bosu Balance Trainer to your at home fitness equipment.

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neilmillerne · 6 years ago

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What Exercise Equipment is Good for Abs?

How to Choose the Right Equipment for Toned Abs

Luckily for you, dear reader, Fitness Expo is here to help!

Good Exercise Equipment for Abs

Basic Supports: Foam Rollers and Stability Balls

Strengthening Supports: Resistance Bands, Kettlebells, and Dumbbells

Stepping Up by Sliding Down: Ab Wheels, Rollers, and Sliders

Ready to improve your balance and engage your core? Consider adding the Spri Bosu Balance Trainer to your at home fitness equipment.

At Home Fitness Equipment for your Abs: Sit-Up Benches, Ab Coasters, and Rowing Machines

Ready to take back control of your midsection? Consider high quality at home fitness equipment like those from Life Fitness or the impressive AB Coaster CTL.

Ready to Train Your Core?

Have questions? We have answers.

If you need assistance setting up your home fitness experience, please don’t hesitate to contact us or swing by our store.

http://bit.ly/2QKjUNX

#What Exercise Equipment is Good for Abs?

0 notes

johnclapperne · 6 years ago

Text

What Exercise Equipment is Good for Abs?

How to Choose the Right Equipment for Toned Abs

Luckily for you, dear reader, Fitness Expo is here to help!

Good Exercise Equipment for Abs

Basic Supports: Foam Rollers and Stability Balls

Strengthening Supports: Resistance Bands, Kettlebells, and Dumbbells

Stepping Up by Sliding Down: Ab Wheels, Rollers, and Sliders

Ready to improve your balance and engage your core? Consider adding the Spri Bosu Balance Trainer to your at home fitness equipment.

At Home Fitness Equipment for your Abs: Sit-Up Benches, Ab Coasters, and Rowing Machines

Ready to take back control of your midsection? Consider high quality at home fitness equipment like those from Life Fitness or the impressive AB Coaster CTL.

Ready to Train Your Core?

Have questions? We have answers.

If you need assistance setting up your home fitness experience, please don’t hesitate to contact us or swing by our store.

http://bit.ly/2QKjUNX

#What Exercise Equipment is Good for Abs?

0 notes

albertcaldwellne · 6 years ago

Text

What Exercise Equipment is Good for Abs?

How to Choose the Right Equipment for Toned Abs

Luckily for you, dear reader, Fitness Expo is here to help!

Good Exercise Equipment for Abs

Basic Supports: Foam Rollers and Stability Balls

Strengthening Supports: Resistance Bands, Kettlebells, and Dumbbells

Stepping Up by Sliding Down: Ab Wheels, Rollers, and Sliders

Ready to improve your balance and engage your core? Consider adding the Spri Bosu Balance Trainer to your at home fitness equipment.

At Home Fitness Equipment for your Abs: Sit-Up Benches, Ab Coasters, and Rowing Machines

Ready to take back control of your midsection? Consider high quality at home fitness equipment like those from Life Fitness or the impressive AB Coaster CTL.

Ready to Train Your Core?

Have questions? We have answers.

If you need assistance setting up your home fitness experience, please don’t hesitate to contact us or swing by our store.

http://bit.ly/2QKjUNX

#What Exercise Equipment is Good for Abs?

0 notes