Game consoles still have great success with the public because they allow us to play in the living room or bedroom quickly and quickly: just switch them on, choose the game to start (or insert the optical media into the player), wait a few seconds and start immediately to play. The same cannot be said of the gaming computer: often we will have to wait for the system to start, wait for Windows updates and start the desired game with the keyboard and mouse anyway.
But if we wanted to build a game console with PC pieces, which pieces should we choose in order not to regret a PlayStation or an Xbox? How to optimize the operating system to be as fast and practical as a console?
In this guide, we will have fun showing you how to make a home game console using the components normally intended for desktop PCs and, in a dedicated chapter, how to optimize Windows for this purpose.
PC parts to buy for a game console
The computer to be used as a game console must have a compact shape and as close as possible to the appearance of a console, although it will inevitably be larger since the internal components for a computer tend to take up more space. The advantage of this configuration is that we can update it at regular intervals, so as to always have maximum graphics power.
Components for the PC to be connected to the TV
In order to recreate a game console with the components of a computer we will have to focus, we stick to the list of products available below:
There is no slacker component to the new generation of talented young pilots who like to fool around with quadcopters.
In a canyon in the Rocky Mountain Front above Fort Collins, Colorado, a young man named Jordan Temkin is flying his drone. He wears goggles that show him a video feed from a camera built into the drone, and he holds a console with twin joysticks that control the direction, angle, pitch, yaw, and speed of the flight. He sets the drone on the gravel at his feet. Just downhill is the Cache la Poudre River. The canyon rises to maybe three hundred feet above. He gives a command and the drone leaps to the top of the canyon in an instant. Then it is soaring over the highest places, looking down on Temkin, a small figure sitting on the tailgate of his car. At eighty miles an hour, the shadow of the drone flashes across the face of the rocks. Then Temkin swoops it down to the surface of the river, where it zips a few feet above the water. Because of where the sun is, the river is a blast of silver light. Temkin takes the drone upward again and veers into an intersecting canyon.
The limit on the battery that powers the drone is about three minutes. Before time’s up, Temkin lands the drone near him, where its arrival on the gravel makes the kind of plastic clatter associated with dropped toys. In fact, the drone looks like a toy. Temkin calls it a quadcopter. It has four plastic propellers, one at each corner of a cruciform plastic frame. “Quad” is the commonly used name for drones like this. The entire device could fit in a single-serving pizza box. An immeasurable amount of scientific and technological progress, like a huge invisible inverted pyramid, converges on this small, toylike point.
Grand Theft Auto V: The Rise And Fall Of The DIY Self-Driving Car Lab
A few years ago, artificial intelligence researchers discovered that Grand Theft Auto V, the blockbuster 2013 video game, was good for more than stealing cars and causing mayhem on the fictional mean streets of Los Santos. Its realistic graphics and physics engine provide an excellent virtual environment for training self-driving cars. The game’s sprawling urban and rural environments are populated with pedestrians, drivers and animals that dynamically interact with the AI. Training an autonomous car system is all the more efficient when running over a pedestrian doesn’t result in real-life injuries and legal troubles.
The fun didn’t last long, though.
Over the past year, GTA V’s publisher, Take-Two Interactive, has quietly shut down a number of high-profile projects with cease-and-desist letters, according to multiple AI researchers involved in the projects. Take-Two is slamming the breaks on more than just commercial endeavors. Academic researchers have also been dealt with aggressively.
