Half-Life, VR Globes And Indian Snakes - BBC Click

[Music] this week keeping our devices coronavirus free the mobile phone app hoping to help more survive snake bites and this eagerly anticipated video game is here but don't expect to see it on an actual screen anytime soon [Music] in 1998 the release the first-person shooter half-life sent a seismic shock across the world of video games it featured cinematic storytelling tort action sequences and some of the creepiest bad guys ever to grace a video game well let's just say you're out has the gear I mean would half-life came out November 1998 a massive moment in PC gaming before then it'd have been doomed defined shooter games half-life reset the bar a sequel followed in 2004 fans patiently awaited new half-life content but its makers a company called valve went very quiet on the half-life front until now that is marches lack has been to vows headquarters in the US where he's got his hands on their latest addition to the franchise a game which has surprised many by embracing virtual reality Bellevue Washington is home to valve software an award-winning games development company it has plans to reinvigorate virtual reality with half-life's help a title which changed games forever a mr. Bremen I had a bunch of messages for you but we had a system crash the first half-life I played was probably the second one before going back to the that's the first one and but both of them start on a train journey going in and you'll being introduced to the world as the Train does as you as you enter the game you're seeing everything that's going on in the world and you saw you're slowly being immersed in it I played the first half-life like not long after it came out damn attorneys degrees there's something about having glimpses of set pieces that you never fully get up close to in games that somehow just accelerates the world-building by a thousand percent but the knowledge that you may not have even seen it I think is brilliant like the idea that on a second playthrough or a third you can see something you didn't see the first time around and even then it's like just by chance it was going on outside a window and if you'd look to the right you'd have seen a different set piece looks like you're running late everyone has been so excited by the idea of a new half-life game for years you know the first one gave us such a new cinematic way of experiencing a game the second one it handed us the gravity gun we had much more puzzling we have much more storytelling and it's almost become a kind of joke over the last 13 years of half-life 3 announced because valve is always kind of teased that something would come there's lots of rumors everyone wanted something new but now finally being told that we've got something in that universe it's a whole new full-length story people are really really excited [Music] certainly for the events of half-life 2 the player assumes the role of Alex Vance a resistance fighter struggling to rescue the scientists father in city 17 a center of an extra dimensional invasion of the earth there's been a lot of hype and high hopes around the rebirth of virtual reality VR headsets have arrived from a variety of different companies but in recent years interest in the technology has waned virtual reality it seems is lacking a killer app that however could be about to change it's probably fair to say that a new half-life game will be one of the most keenly anticipated titles of the last decade but is making it a virtual reality only title a way of shifting VR headsets I mean this is a way to sell VR headsets the minute you put a half-life game on VR is going to make people buy something or potentially look into buying something that they hadn't had before but it's not just available on Valve's headset is available everywhere so what this will do is potentially reinvigorate and kick-start everyone's interest in the entire VR space one of our goals here was to hopefully show a bunch of people who have looked at VR and thought it looks interesting but not yet inche hasn't convinced them yet that oh there's an experience over there they really want and hopefully they will see this and say you know what actually I will go check that out this is the moment that I have been waiting for it's been 16 years since half-life 2 was released in 13 years since we've had any new half-life content right now I'm gonna try out the latest game in the series in virtual reality [Music] I'm playing using valves own VR hardware called index the controllers feature sensors which translates my hand and finger movements this will allow me to interact with the game world in much the same way as I would in the real world here we've got an opportunity to try out some of the gameplay mechanics so we have the gravity gloves you should allow me to pull this grab it throw it towards on those barnacles a barnacle eat it you see items you can grab them with the gravity gloves catch them store them in your backpack for later title has been designed to work with a wide variety of different VR headsets but the games demanding technical specifications means that it will have to run on a pretty high-end PC the full index B are set up like this one isn't cheap either costing nearly a thousand pounds can't open these doors they're jammed here we go almost everything you interact with in the game works like it does in the real world everything apart from travel getting around turns out to be one of the more interesting things in virtual reality it's it's one of the trickier problems to solve and so many things that are local scale allow you to just use your body in a natural way like I'm going to pick up a bucket to look at what's underneath it traversing space doesn't quite yet allow you to use your body in that way so solving that for players is one of the more interesting things about virtual reality we've chosen to provide a variety of methods there are a couple different styles of teleportation and then a more traditional movement that is we call continuous motion and some people are more comfortable with one than another we've got a room full of headcrabs here full of zombies let's see if there's any extra ammo in here cuz I have a feeling I am gonna need it pretty soon this title is unusual for VR because there's about 15 to 16 hours worth of gameplay much longer than a lot of virtual reality titles let's get rid of this barricade pull it out of the way this is genuinely extremely tense okay well I need new underwear this adds an entirely new dimension to to video game combat one of absolute pant wetting fear the big question is will this game be the one that persuades more people to invest in virtual reality there's a real chance of half of alex is going to be a killer app for virtuality in 2020 in part that's because it represents the return of one of the most acclaimed series in gaming but it's also down to the fact there aren't a lot of developers making this kind of blockbuster experience of VR right now half-life Alex might not push bad drought in the mainstream by itself but it could persuade the new wave developer to start working on similar experience of VR and that will be huge I think the only game that could potentially sway me and maybe want to get some VR and play is a valve game the only downside is that I have to wander around my living room in fear of my wife walking in on me pretending to smash smash up some combine offices with a crowbar and with you every step of the way we'll find out what kind of impact half-life alex has when it releases on March the 23rd [Music] hello and welcome to the weekend tech it was a week that the British government ruled that Chinese tech giant Huawei would still be permitted to develop the country's 5g network after a rebellion from its own MP's Finnish satellite firm ice I debuted videos made with cutting-edge radar tech that can operate through clouds and at night and the game-playing robot has been taught to admit its mistakes I feel bad letting you all yeah Yale University scientists said that by expressing vulnerability the Droid helps humans to communicate better as the corona virus pandemic continues one Chinese firm says its created facial recognition that can identify people while they're wearing protective masks hanwen technology says it's 95 percent accurate in this scenario and could even connect sensors to help China identify civilians suffering from high temperatures we've seen drones carry and medical cargo before but now autonomous reports could help load packages to a drone station like this is opening a Swiss hospital where staff will use smartphones to locus samples they can then scan and drop these off for delivery to nearby labs and finally a digital food specialist in Japan has been 3d printing sweet treats based on weather data Tokyo's open mills has used algorithms to create much of flavor designs where wind speed alters shape pressure levels dictate size and temperature determines color now that is cooking up a storm we're all being told that the best way to combat the corona virus is by washing our hands thoroughly with soap and water but when we can't get to a basin many of us are also using alcohol-based hand sanitizer so much so that supplies have been running low one company we met in Taiwan last year hopes to have found the solution this is the Ella clean a device that's claimed to create your own disinfectant the first step is we just add water into our electrode reactor and then the water structure will turn into the hydrogen process and the hydrogen peroxide is a kind of acident so they can damage you the structure of viruses and bacterias easily hopefully that'll do the trick the company does expect that this protects against the corona virus the issue is they have actually sold out of them but it's not just about keeping our hands clean how about our devices this week Apple issued new advice about how to keep our phones clean but I would suggest that you don't do anything until you've heard what Chris Fox has to say with the growing concern around coronavirus I thought I'd be better safe than sorry and smothered my phone with antiviral gel it turns out that some hand gels and sanitizers can actually damage the only a phobic oil repelling layer of your foam screen that's supposed to keep fingerprints off so check this out if I put my phone next to one that has the layer intact which you can see that this one looks like I've been eating pizza off is covered in fingerprints and oil this one does have some fingerprints on it still but not nearly as many and now if I wipe down this phone with a microfiber cloth the fingerprints come off super easy and if I try this one some of the oil comes off you can see it's still really smear II and as a final test if I pop my fingerprints on there you can see this one is absolutely gross and this one not nearly is dirty so how can you clean your phone without damaging it well this week and that with crow biologist dr. Lena suruc she told me how you don't actually need to use antibacterial antiviral products on your phone you can just use simple soap and water unplug your phone turn it off and remove the case dampen a microfiber cloth with water and simple household soap gently rub the surfaces of the phone with the damp cloth take care not to get moisture in any of the openings because even water-resistant phones lose their protection over time finally dry your phone with a clean microfiber cloth we haven't used any antibacterial or antiviral gel on these phones so how do we know they're clean well we can use these swabs and this device which tell us the level of microbial activity on the phone in relative light units or RL hues so the higher the number we get the higher number of germs the results are pretty good so we would want a surgical surface to be a reading of 50 or less and all of our phones have had readings of less than this so we're pretty good so they're significantly cleaner just with soap and water yep and how is that possible without using antiviral gel what's going on here the main ingredient in the soap which is the detergent is basically lifting off the grease and the grime and the germs from the surface of the phone which is then rinsed off with the water and that's what makes it clean now there are a few other ways you can clean your phone safely this week Apple changed its guidance and said if you have an iPhone you can safely wipe it with a 70% isopropyl alcohol wipe the kind you can get from a computer shop or online if they haven't sold out there are also devices that can sterilize your phone using ultraviolet UVC radiation this one's called foam soap it costs about 80 pounds although there are cheaper ones available and what you do is you pop your phone inside and let it cook for about 10 minutes and the manufacturer says that shouldn't harm your device but some phones or cases could be discolored over time finally what can you do if like me you've stripped the oil repellent coating off your phone screen well there are some ways to fix it first of all you can get a screen replacement although that's not going to be the cheapest option or you could stick on one of those glass screen protectors which is a quick and easy way to fix the screen or you could try this it's called liquid Nano and this puts a silica dioxide coating over the display that the company says will restore the oleophobic properties for 12 months it cost between 20 and 40 pounds we have to let it set on the phone for at least half an hour so I've tried it out on the phone I ruined and I have to say it seems to have done a pretty good job so that's one solution to what could have been an expensive mistake just remember that if you do clean your phone as soon as you touch it you're putting germs back on it again and the most important advice remains to wash your hands thoroughly and frequently that was Chris now later this month a number of globes here at the British Library some of them over 400 years old are going to be made available online in full 360 interactive form now this isn't just a way of immortalizing these fragile objects but also making them available to the masses the digital Globes project will eventually see 30 of them brought to virtual life without the risk of any grubby mitts damaging the originals Anthony here we have the capturing process quite a few DSLRs can you talk me through the setup so it's not actually capturing the whole globe itself it's actually capturing elements and the process is called photogrammetry and so once all the images go through to the computer the software will have been using this will render all the images together to make one complete blow and so once they're all listed together you've also got to make sure that the colors right is that what that kind of shouts for that is correct so who's on we can do a freely print from the items so you do a freely print you need to have it exactly like colour so people can recreate their own not that these globes are entirely accurate California seems to be an island and it wasn't due to ignorance in the 1700s as some earlier maps had it right inaccuracies were purposefully placed in maps for all sorts of reasons such as putting continental rivals or example down a wrong route or sending them the wrong direction [Music] as well as being available on the British library's website there's also an augmented reality version which is within an app called sketchfab now this is accessible on any AR compatible device so here's the map and to turn it into AR I tap on this and it's going to appear in front of me and then I can travel around the world it's an interesting contrast whilst this looks so ancient to us it was technology in its time and now we're mixing that in with a bit of augmented reality technology of our time so whilst there may have been a little polishing in the virtual versions these Globes still provide the history lesson of how the world was seen not just geographically but politically in each of their errors [Music] so earlier we were talking about the coronavirus but now on to a very different sort of health risk the snake bite around five million people every year of bitten by snakes and of course we know how dangerous their venom is it can cause crippling injuries and be fatal India is one of the parts of the world that has the highest death toll falling into the tens of thousands every year so could something as simple as a mobile phone app actually bring those numbers down well David Reid has been tagged under art in the west of India to find out [Music] these guys are off to catch one of the world's most dangerous animals the cobra highly venomous they're using a new life saving app it's told them the snakes been spotted in a local Gujarati workshop to bag it and get it back in the wild they first have to find it in a pile of stuff where every second thing looks like a scary snake this is gonna take time so let's check back with them later first we're heading to a local hospital to see why this app is so important conservationist Joe celui is going to guide us there with his Indian snakes app it gives vital details to those bitten by snakes of nearby hospitals stocking the anti-venom that could keep them alive you actually want to meet this doctor was a specialist in snake bite in Dharampur so this is a hospital now the hospital is there the name is there the phone number is there we get there in snake bite rush hour we've been here only a very very short timing in the matter of the last five minutes three new patients have coming complaining of snake bites to help identify the snake patients often kill the animal that bit them this is a highly venomous Russell's Viper but administering anti-venom carries its own health risks doctors hold off using it and instead to a battery of tests until they know it's not a dry bite and the patient is showing the effects of venom for 48 hours if any winema symptom we see then we will start and even on innocent often there's no time for wait and see a number of by victims waste precious time visiting faith healers / hospitals it's one of the reasons so many died from bites each year in India estimates say as many as 50 to 60,000 the Indian snake's app aims to get people to hospital fast the first moments first minutes first hour of a snake Menace is very very important the major problem we face is that people don't go to the hospital first they go to the local traditional healer whom they trust and then when it is not possible for him he will send the patient to the hospital the first warning on the do's and don'ts list is don't go to a faith healer the second don't suck out the venom whatever you've seen in the movies there's also a field guide to ID venomous snakes you want to see the snake in detail so you can click on the picture you can zoom in you can see them you can also report a snake in your house and call a rescue I click on this this is your current location you will find who is nearest rescuer and all you need to do is just call the rescuer remember these guys let's see how they're getting on actually pretty well they distinguished the snake from yards of cabling it then instinctively made a dash straight into their black bag and with a little coaxing pops safely inside the Indian snake's app is not just about saving lives and helping snake rescuers but also conserving and learning about snakes especially in their conflicts with people we get a lot of that out of the country about their demography and epidemiologic bites so it's it's kind of getting knowledge as well as giving knowledge app so you think snakes are kind of misunderstood completely there's not one of the most misunderstood group of animals so this app main purpose is to sensitize people of India to start working on snake bites and snake conservation and leave the coexistence which makes life better education about how to avoid and treat snake bites could well transform our attitudes to one of the most feared and demonized animals on the planet stay free there in India well that's it for this week's show you can keep track of the team throughout the week on Instagram Facebook YouTube and Twitter at BBC click thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: BBC Click

Views: 22,768

Keywords: bbc, bbc click, tech, science, technology, snake, app, half-life, vr, virtual reality, gaming, video game, gamer, alyx, phones, smart phones, mobile phone, british library, news

Id: ZCTosX0dK-A

Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020