Monthly Archives: March 2025

We’ve figured out the basics of a shape-shifting, T-1000-style material

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The T-1000 in Terminator 2 could change shape at will, morph its hands into blades or turn parts of its body into a fluid to move through metal bars. “I saw this movie when I was a child—it was like, ‘Wow, can you imagine,’ I thought, ‘being able to do this?’” says Otger Campàs, a professor at Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. “Now I work on embryos. And what we saw in The Terminator actually happens in an embryo. This kind of shape shifting is what an embryo does.”

Campàs and his team drew inspiration from processes called fluidization and convergent extension—mechanisms that cells in embryos use to coordinate their behavior when forming tissues and organs in a developing organism. The team built a robotic collective where each robotic unit behaved like an embryonic cell. As a collective, the robots behaved like a material that could change shape and switch between solid and liquid states, just like the T-1000.

Real-world and sci-fi alloys

The T-1000 was a marvel to behold, but the movie gave no clues as to how it worked. This is why Campàs and his colleagues looked for clues elsewhere. Similar shape-shifting properties have been observed in embryos when you watch their development sped up using time-lapse imaging. “Tissues in embryos can switch between solid and fluid states to shape the organs. We were thinking how we could engineer robots that would do the same,” Campàs says.

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XR News Round-Up: Gran Turismo 7, Ember Souls, Underworld Overseer & More

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Our latest XR News Round-Up is live, bringing you a few more stories that caught our attention this week.

The news didn’t stop coming this week across VR. With hardware, PlayStation VR2 got a major price cut as one leaker claimed Valve’s Deckard headset will launch this year at $1200. With gaming, Batman: Arkham Shadow got its last major update. Devolver Digital revealed GORN 2, while Not Like Us is now in Beat Saber. Mannequin went free-to-play, there’s a release date for Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate, and Orion Drift entered early access.

Our weekly newsletter and latest articles feature the rest, and here’s what else we’ve seen this week.

Gran Turismo 7 Adds New Commercial Truck On PS VR2 With Update 1.56

The latest regular update for Gran Turismo 7 is now live on PS5 and PlayStation VR2. Update 1.56 adds a new base color for the MAZDA 3 Gr.4, a new Peugeot-themed café menu, three new world events, a new Scape, and three new cars: the BMW Z4 3.0i ’03, the Mercedes-Benz Unimog Type 411 ’62, and the Peugeot 205 GTI ’88.

Ember Souls Goes Underground In New Update

Following its Quest launch back in November, hack-and-slash action game Ember Souls recently received a new ‘Underground‘ update that we initially missed two weeks ago. That adds a new biome for Raids, a redesigned first boss fight, 60 achievements, new enemies, bug fixes and visual tweaks, while VirtualAge also promises improvements to combat and the parkour.

VR/MR Sandbox DigiGods Goes Cat Crazy In Latest Update

Free-to-play VR/MR sandbox DigiGods has released its latest ‘Cat Crazy’ update, collaborating with Neko Atsume Purrfect for its Nekomania anniversary event. That introduces a new cat avatar called Noodle, alongside feline-themed “cosmetics simulations, decorations, toys,” and cat companions.

VR Strategy Game Underworld Overseer Is Now Available On Pico

Following recent news that both Deisim and Underworld Overseer are coming to PlayStation VR2, Myron Games also released the latter on Pico earlier this week. The Dungeon Keeper-inspired VR strategy game previously launched on Quest and Steam last year, earning 4/5-stars in our review that you can read below.

Underworld Overseer Review: It’s Good To Be The Dark Lord
Underworld Overseer wears its inspiration on its sleeve, delivering an entertaining VR strategy game on Quest and Steam. Our full review.
UploadVRRebecca Hills-Duty

Attack On Titan VR: Unbreakable Kicks Off Global Challenge Event

Following its full release in December, Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable has kicked off the new “Global Challenge – Thunder Spear Unlock” event on Quest. Ending at midnight on March 10, this tasks the community with taking down Titans to unlock the weapon. While co-op mode is normally restricted to those who own part 2, that’s temporarily available in the base game until March 16.

Other Updates

For more stories, here’s everything else we’ve seen this week.

If you’d like to inform us about a VR game we should know about for this article or future updates, you can use our contact page or email tips@uploadvr.com with details.

Half-Life 3 is just the hot exclusive Valve needs to propel SteamOS past Windows

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A little over 20 years ago, Valve was getting ready to release a new Half-Life game. At the same time, the company was trying to push Steam as a new option for players to download and update games over the Internet.

Requiring Steam in order to play Half-Life 2 led to plenty of grumbling from players in 2004. But the high-profile Steam exclusive helped build an instant user base for Valve’s fresh distribution system, setting it on a path to eventually become the unquestioned leader in the space. The link between the new game and the new platform helped promote a bold alternative to the retail game sales and distribution systems that had dominated PC gaming for decades.


Remember DVD-ROMs?
Credit:
Reddit

Today, all indications suggest that Valve is getting ready to release a new Half-Life game. At the same time, the company is getting ready to push SteamOS as a new option for third-party hardware makers and individual users to “download and test themselves.”

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Intel Core 2 CPUs Have Been Affected By An Annoying Linux Kernel Bug For 5+ Years

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A fix was merged to the Linux 6.14 kernel on Friday — and also for back-porting to existing Linux stable kernels over the coming days — for fixing an annoying problem with Intel Core 2 processors. The problem, which was introduced to the Linux kernel back in 2019, could lead to system stalls and boot delays for those still using Intel Core 2 CPUs with modern distributions…

Federal firings could wreak havoc on Great Lakes fishery

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Sweeping layoffs of federal employees have struck the program responsible for controlling the invasive sea lamprey that threatens fish across the Great Lakes, the earth’s largest freshwater ecosystem.

Among hundreds of US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) employees terminated this month were 12 members of the Great Lakes sea lamprey control program, based at field stations in Marquette and Ludington, Michigan.

These staffing cuts could have grave consequences for the lakes’ native fish population and the $5 billion fishery they comprise.

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COSMIC Desktop Alpha 6 Released

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New submitter TronNerd82 writes: Linuxiac reports that the 6th alpha release of the COSMIC desktop environment has been released. The new alpha release includes zooming, desktop icon management, some new scaling options, and improved accessibility features. Also included in the release are a number of bug fixes.

These include, but are not limited to:
– Fixing a crash issue in Steam, and fixing certain issues for Radeon RX GPUs
– Fixing a bug that prevented icons from appearing in screenshots
– Adding a layer of polish to the COSMIC Files application by adding folder size metadata and preventing crashes

Also of note are a number of memory usage reductions across the board. COSMIC Alpha 6 also replaces the default font, changing from Fira Sans to Open Sans, with Noto Sans Mono as the default monospace font. Additional changes can be found in System76’s official announcement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese Scientists Developing Mars Drone That Can Roll and Fly

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Chinese scientists are developing a lightweight Mars drone capable of both rolling on the ground and flying using contra-rotating coaxial rotors. Space.com reports: The air-ground dual-purpose unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) weighs only 10.6 ounces (300 grams), equivalent to the weight of an apple. The development team is at the School of Astronautics (SoA) of the Harbin Institute of Technology. Seen as showing promising potential in future Mars science work, the UAV can take off at any time, traverse obstacles, and boasts superb endurance, reports state-owned China Central Television (CCTV).

“On the ground, it mainly rolls by shifting its center of gravity,” said Zhu Yimin, a Ph.D candidate at SoA. “In the air, it relies on a pair of contra-rotating coaxial rotors, controlled by a steering engine to adjust the forward direction, to control torque and force, ultimately achieving stable flight,” Zhu told CCTV. The UAV work entails multiple models of air-ground dual-mode robots with different configurations, CCTV reports. These robots move by rolling close to the ground, which reduces energy consumption, and can achieve a flight endurance time of more than six times that of traditional drones of the same size.

According to Zhang Lixian, a professor within the SoA, the hope is that the aerial vehicle can show off its long endurance and observational abilities on Mars. “Our second goal is for such machines to be suitable for construction in many underground spaces and for exploring unknown underground spaces. We also need robotic means for inspection and environmental detection. We have now materialized all these functions,” said Zhang. A video of the drone can be found here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.