Raj Agrawal – Page 11

3D-Printing Our World – 3 Amazing Projects For Humanity

September 29, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

UPCOMING TECHNOLOGY – 3D-printers have become increasingly popular in recent times, especially with recent provisions to enable printing of 3D objects at home. 3D -printing is a revolutionary technology and a type of manufacturing technique that involves building successive layers of 3D objects using certain materials. The beauty of 3D-printing technology is that it easily seeps into any manufacturing domain that is involved in construction of objects, regardless of their physical structure and complexity.

At home, you can now print and use actual and fully functioning items like utensils, crockery, mechanical spare parts and even toys with utmost precision of design. At the industrial end, 3D-printers have been used to build fully functioning parts for air-planes, cars and even complex furniture! This is just a tiny gist of how powerful and useful 3D-printing technology is to mankind. I’ll now talk about a few projects aimed to solve some of the most complicated problems in the history of mankind; all with the help of 3D-printers!

Automating the production of habitable houses

Among the many disparities, our civilisation continues to face a state of uneven distribution of rights, like shelter for instance. The lack of adequate shelter is largely witnessed in 3rd world countries and there’s inadequacy with the conventional methods of building residential houses, which commonly arises a number of risky and unlawful problems.

Due to incessant rise in population, especially in urban areas of the world, the number of slum dwellers is rising. One billion people worldwide live in slums and the figure is projected to grow to 2 billion by 2030 – An excerpt from Wikipedia; statistics forecasted by United Nations.

But, there’s good news. A project is under cooks that is focused at eradicating all the negative outcomes of constructing houses – the project is called CRAFT – Centre for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies. It is aimed at scaling the 3D-printing method to a level of automatically building a much stronger, completely habitable house within 20 hours and at the cheapest costs of production. And guess what, apart from it being an automated process, it’s also environmental friendly and capable of building exotic structures at no additional costs of production!

Printing precise exoskeletons to overcome certain physical disabilities

For years, the concept of a wearable exoskeleton for humans has been associated with cyborg-like suits that amplify human strength, typically intended for military purposes. They’ll take time to be perfected. But now, wearable exoskeletons are gradually working with smarter prosthetics for certain disabilities in people. The exoskeletons have been usually intended for adults and conforming to their physical size. One exceptional case of a 2 year old disabled child invited the need for an alternative way to build an exoskeleton for children.

This is very indicative that we’ll see more developments in coming years in the field of smart prosthetic. The video briefly explains how a child suffering from a permanent disability called arthrogryposis, was only able to use an exoskeleton because of 3D-printing technology.

3D-printed blood vessels are now a reality

Yes, you read it right. It is now possible to generate/ build functioning blood vessels. A news report talks about a new process called Dynamic Optical Projection Stereo-lithography, or DOPsL, that promises printing of blood vessels in mere seconds. Read more about 3D-printed blood vessels using DOPsL at Neatorama. This being done, we could soon print all parts of a human body. However and whenever it happens, growing human limbs and organs would be outstanding. While 3D-printed human kidneys and potentially other organs are under development, they could take some time to materialise as an available solution.

The video explains and demonstrates the 3D-printing process of blood vessels with sugar – A technique that was much in news before DOPsL.

LG Optimus 4X HD Launches In India – First Look

July 27, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

LG isn’t a newcomer when it comes to high end smartphones. They’ve been in the mobile space for a long time, but have never quite been able to penetrate the market as effectively as some of their peers. They were one of the first companies to release handsets with dual core processors, and although the same cannot be said for the quad core sector, they’re here, and they looking to create a stir. With phones such as the One X, and the Galaxy S3, one may say that the quad core scenario has already peaked in terms of popularity. Even so, there is always room for improvement, and the LG Optimus 4X HD seeks to prove as a worthy adversary to the aforementioned heavy hitters and make a name for itself.

At first glance, the Optimus 4X HD looks like a larger version of the much acclaimed Galaxy S2. The edges aren’t rounded, well they are, but they’re still square edges only slightly rounded at the very tip, and the phone is ultra light, exactly the reasons why we loved the S2. Hardware wise, it’s no slouch. The 4.1 core Tegra 3 processor is speedy and keeps response time to a minimum. It comes packed with 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB storage, an 8 mega pixel snapper, and almost all the features you’d expect from a high end smartphone. The screen size is 4.7 inches, on par with the One X and the Galaxy S3, and for such a huge phone, it is surprisingly light. The screen looks gorgeous, but the glare is apparent while viewing the screen under direct sunlight.

But that’s not all the phone has to offer. Quick memo offers the users the ability to quickly edit their photos and videos. Also possible is video zooming with the ability to pan across different sections of the zoomed video without much loss in quality. Using the newly implemented Icon Customizer, you can now have custom icons for all of your apps. Also added is the ability to share files via other devices with the use of NFC. You can also quickly change the settings of the phone with the use of the awesome NFC tag, plus the system. The phone will come packed with three such tags and each can be rewritten to accommodate several settings that the user wishes to achieve. The settings will then change everytime the user simply taps the tag. Also added is the ability to remotely control your phone via your computer using a DLNA specific service called Smartshare.

The 4X HD also sports some India specific features, at the center of which stands LG mobile TV, a television media service which will stream a select group of channels straight to the phone. The service is free for the first 3 months, and will be chargeable after that. There is no online media library on the phone at the moment, but it is in the works and might hit the phone late next year.

The LG Optimus 4X HD is priced at Rs. 34,990

Overall the phone feels like a good edition to the high end paradigm, and although it won’t be giving Samsung of HTC nightmares, it is still looking like a very nice alternative to the other phones in a saturated market. Our little hands on with the phone left us cautiously impressed, but i’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of the phone, to better understand whether it can actually stand the test of time, or fall like countless others. The fact that it even made me contemplate asking that question, is an achievement in todays world, where no two products are very dissimilar or genuine.

Why Boss Battles Are Losing Their Charm

July 25, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

Playing a game is like going through a familiar pattern – kill some enemies here, do some puzzles there, fight the area boss, and then repeat the whole process all over again. Every area in most games will build up the tension from start to end until the eventual boss battle. And boss battles are what make games so entertaining. A sudden spike in difficulty is always welcome. They disconnect you from the rest of the game world for a moment, and test you with whatever you have learnt up until then. But lately, boss fights are becoming more about button mashing than anything else. Traditionally, boss fights are supposed to be all about using your brains.

There is a difference between there being a hundred enemies on screen, and a single boss. Boss fights have to be thought over. Every boss either has a weakness, or some pattern using which we can get the upper hand. It has to be about observation and development of a strategy.

Deus Ex HR Boss Fight — *A still from Deus Ex: Human Revolution*

Deus Ex: Human revolution, while a brilliant game, loses its pace and sense of freedom when it comes to boss battles. Sadly, the past few games i’ve played have been anything but strategic in handling their boss fights. A prime example which comes to mind is Deus Ex : Human Revolution. The game as a whole is brilliant. There are so many choices in each and everything you can do; it’s a shame that the boss battles throw this concept of choice out of the window. Try defeating a boss using just gas grenades and a few punches and the end cut scene will still show them with bullet wounds and cuts all over. Also the boss battles are such that they promote the use of guns, rather than giving the player the choice to skip them entirely. Sure, this can be blamed on the fact that they hired another studio to orchestrate the boss fights, but poor foresight on part of the main development team is also to blame. Another reason for this is the over-monetization of gaming.

Franchises like Call of Duty have taken the focus away from making games unique; it’s all about the action and how the game is presented. Quick time events are intended to make the game as “cool” and “awesome” as possible, but they take away from any sort of strategy, or the boss having any sort of character. It’s all about guns and explosions, and all about black and white without even a hint of gray.

The End from Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater is one of the most tension filled boss fights i’ve encountered. Good boss battles have always been rare, now more than ever. The best example of a boss battle that i would like to point out over here is ‘the end’ from Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater (or Subsistence, depending on which version you have played). Never have I experienced such tension in a boss fight. Apart from the sniper mission in Call of Duty 4 (a time when call of duty was actually good), no other moment in gaming has had me at the edge of my seat as this one. This particular boss can take anywhere between 20 minutes to two hours to beat, and needs you to use almost every tool at your disposal. Snake eater was a stealth game, and most of the boss battles involved the use of stealth, which is rare these days.

I feel developers need to get back to their drawing boards and ask themselves – What is a boss fight all about? Is it simply a tool to show off the game’s engine? Or is it a way of giving the player the fulfillment that the other foes cannot? Either ways, it shouldn’t be about simply beating the boss and going to the next one. There should be some accomplishment of a goal pertaining to the story of the game, and should make the player contemplate about what has been done and achieved. Most of all, it should feel like a major hurdle in the progress of the game. That’s where games like Dark Souls shine, while others don’t.