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OpinionNovember 8, 20244 min readConsciousness Might Hide in Our Brains Electric FieldsA mysterious electromagnetic mechanism may be more important than the firing of neurons in our brains to explain our awarenessBy Tamlyn Hunt Hiroshi Watanabe/Getty ImagesThe neuron, the specialized cell type that makes up much of our brains, is at the center of todays neuroscience. Neuroscientists explain perception, memory, cognition and even consciousness itself as products of billions of these tiny neurons busily firing their tiny spikes of voltage inside our brain.These energetic spikes not only convey things like pain and other sensory information to our conscious mind, but they are also in theory able to explain every detail of our complex consciousness.At least in principle. The details of this neural code have yet to be worked out.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.While neuroscientists have long focused on spikes travelling throughout brain cells, ephaptic field effects may really be the primary mechanism for consciousness and cognition. These effects, resulting from the electric fields produced by neurons rather than their synaptic firings, may play a leading role in our minds workings.In 1943 American scientists first described what is known today as the neural code, or spike code. They fleshed out a detailed map of how logical operations can be completed with the all or none nature of neural firingsimilar to how todays computers work. Since then neuroscientists around the world have engaged in a vast endeavor to crack the neural code in order to understand the specifics of cognition and consciousness.To little avail. The most obvious chasm in our understanding is in all the things we did not meet on our journey from your eye to your hand, confessed neuroscientist Mark Humphries in 2020s The Spike, a deep dive into this journey: All the things of the mind Ive not been able to tell you about, because we know so little of what spikes do to make them.Brain researchers have long acknowledged that there are a number of ways other than firing by which neurons could communicate, including the little-known mechanism known as ephaptic coupling. This coupling results from electromagnetic (EM) fields at the medium and large scales of the brain interacting, alongside much smaller scale fields accompanying synaptic spikes (which themselves result from a type of highly localized EM field activity) operating at nanometer scales.Retinal neurons, for example, operate without any neural firing. These cells employ a type of electrodiffusion, the diffusion of charged particles without synapses, the connection points between neurons. Electrodiffusion passes along a signal to the optic nerve at very fast rates and with high bandwidth. We couldnt see without this.The ephaptic in ephaptic coupling simply means touching. Though not well-known, ephaptic field effects result from the textbook electric and magnetic interactions that power our cells. Intriguing experimental results suggest these same forces play a bigger role in the brain than one suspected and perhaps even in consciousness.Ephaptic field effects first came to my attention in a significant way with a remarkable 2019 paper from the Case Western Reserve laboratory of Dominique Durand. That lab demonstrated that the mouse cortex was affected without synaptic connectionsby definition, ephaptic field interactions. This remarkable effect was found by the Durand team after they cut a slice of mouse hippocampus in half and then measured the voltage potential going up and down the slice. There wasalmost no change in that measured voltage even after the slice was fully severed, demonstrating a strong influence from ephaptic fields.The influence did, they found, wane after a certain distance, as wed expect. Once the cut slices were separated by 400 microns or more, the ephaptic field effect mostly disappeared.These results were considered so remarkable by peer reviewers that they required the Durand lab to replicate the results not once but twice before they approved publication of the paper. One scholar stated at the time of the papers publication that the findings of Chiang and colleagues should probably (and quite literally) electrify the field.Another team compared the speed of ephaptic field effects in various tissues, finding that the speed of propagation of ephaptic fields in gray matter is about 5,000 times faster than neural firing.This means that what would take normal spike pathways one second to span through the brain, could be traversed 5,000 times during that same time interval with ephaptic effects. If we cube this over the volume of the brain we get an information density up to a staggering 125 billion times more from ephaptic fields than from synaptic firing.A key caveat to this statement is to stress that this is potential information density only, and it is not necessarily the case that this potential can actually be reached. More research will need to be done to see how much of this vast ephaptic potential is realized by our brains.Abundant evidence shows that synaptic firing is essential for moving, hearing, touching and much else, but given the vastly greater information density in the ephaptic fields, and the pervasiveness of ephaptic field effects, it would be exceedingly strange if evolution hadnt grasped upon this effect for important brain functions. Indeed, it seems that she has, in sundry ways.Walter Freeman, a legendary now-deceased neuroscientist from the University of California, Berkeley, stated in a 2006 paper that traditional synaptic firing speeds could not explain the speed of cognitive functions he had observed over the years in rabbits and cats.Instead, the recent spate of ephaptic effects findings suggest a solid mechanism to explain these speeds. Our recent theoretical paper, building on these findings, suggested that ephaptic field effects may in fact be the primary mechanism for consciousness and cognition, rather than neural firing.Another recent paper including as authors the University of California, Los Angeless Costas Anastassiou and former Caltech neuroscientist Christof Koch, provides strong support for the importance of ephaptic effects. They find that, indeed, ephaptic coupling can explain the fast coordination required for consciousness even in the absence of very fast synapses.This single paper could take the field of ephaptic field science from the fringes of neuroscience to the forefront. Its findings regarding the speed and pervasiveness of ephaptic field effects may presage a fundamentally new understanding of how cognition and consciousness work.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

I unironically think I'm pretty good at Football Manager. By this point, I really better be I've been playing this game for anywhere between 200 and 400 hours a year, every year, since I caught the bug sometime around 2008. But then in each of those years I do always play as Manchester United, the team I support, and unlike the United of the real world, it's easy enough to see things regularly going well with a bit of clever spending and tactical nous - in my last save, I just won the quadruple with United, alongside a full "invincibles" season in the Premier League.If that all sounds like a bit of typical United fan bragging, however, worry not! A severe humbling follows.After more or less 'fixing' the club - the task I set myself with each new game, and in doing so clearing all of the main challenges of my most recent save - I've been looking for a bit of a new spin to fill the void while we wait for FM25. Lo and behold, here's real-world Manchester United finally agreeing to bring in a new manager, the widely admired 39-year-old Ruben Amorim of Sporting CP. The perfect new challenge has arrived. And so, in light of the excessive interest in how his teams play - and a wonderful 4-1 spanking of Man City in the Champions League earlier this week that deserves its own celebration - I thought I'd see how Amorim's already famous 3-4-3 translates to United in the world of Football Manager.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Part 1: Figuring out how Amorim playsIf you've been broadly plugged into the football world over the last week or so you'll be fully aware that Ruben Amorim really likes to play 3-4-3. In fact, he's only played with a standard back four - the default for the English Premier League - in his very first three games as a manager several years ago, before ditching it forever.Unfortunately, that's where my real certainty about Ruben Amorim ends. And in Football Manager, we have to go a lot deeper than just mere formations to get things moving. Where things get much harder is in interpreting how exactly that 3-4-3 works in practice.First up, the research. I am shamelessly obsessed with football tactics, and so am happy to admit I've a few regular go-tos for full tactics nerd breakdowns, which are naturally where I started here.One is a Manchester United podcast called Devils In The Details, run by Aaron Moniz and Kees Hemmen - a pair of young, yet also enjoyably world-weary data analysts who support the club. Another is the handful of Twitter 'tacticos' that regularly cover United: a well-known blogger who just goes by Harrison (or @htomufc); and Varun Vasudevan, who runs another account and personal blog called The Devil's DNA. There's also Third Man Runs, another excellent, non-Manchester-United-specific tactical blog that wrote a three-part series on Amorim's 'game model' with Sporting in April earlier this year. And lastly there's The Athletic, which has frankly rinsed the news of Amorim's arrival with a tidal wave of articles from United experts such as Carl Anka, analytics gurus such as Ahmed Walid, and tactical historians including Michael Cox on how he plays and whether it'll work in the Premier League. (Short answer: maybe - but we're not here for short answers!) A sample of Carl Anka's analysis for The Athletic. | Image credit: Carl Anka / The AthleticHere's the issue: as you might have guessed, everyone has a slightly different idea of how Amorim's teams tend to play. Some describe his 'build-up phase', where teams move into a specific shape during situations like goal kicks to help them get past the opposition team's own structure, as a kind of 4-2-2-2. Sporting's wing backs drop back, the central centre-back of the three pushes up into midfield, one of the two central midfielders pushes up, one of the two players behind the striker pushes up again (fellow tactics nerds would recognise this as forming what's called a 'box midfield' to overload opponents who typically only have up to three players defending the middle - this one's actually a kind of double-box, but let's not sweat that just yet). Others describe a 3-4-2-1, where the back three and two midfielders stay closer to their original positions. Out of possession, it's the same: most describe an intense high-press, potentially leaving risky gaps in midfield.But actually watching Sporting myself only makes things more complicated: against City earlier this week, Sporting played on the break, sitting into more of a back five shielded by three densely packing the midfield, one in front of them, and a lone striker, more like a 5-3-1-1. After the match, Amorim even came out and said United "can't play as defensively" as his Sporting side has once he takes over.As for how this works for Football Manager? My main takeaway at the moment is that this is going to be a headache.Part 2: The setupIt's time to settle on a plan. What's clear and what many of these genuinely brilliant tactical analysts agree on is that Amorim is actually highly adaptable from one game to the next, despite being rigid in his overall reliance on a 3-4-3. Sometimes his teams focus on short passes through the middle of the pitch to get the ball forwards, using that box-shaped overload of central midfielders to bait the opposition into pressing, a bit like Roberto De Zerbi's Brighton last season. Other times, they use quick interplay down the flanks, relying on the wing backs heavily. Others they actually go quite direct, over or around the opposition's defensive line to their hugely prolific, channel-running Swedish forward Viktor Gykeres.Translating that adaptive style to FM is going to be a challenge. Football Manager is excellent at recreating a specific tactical approach, but it struggles, perhaps naturally, when it comes to one based on in-game contingencies, or that automatically adapts to your opponents. Navigating that turns out to be the biggest challenge of all.To start off, I set things up with the quickest possible method of diving into a close-to-realistic part of United's season. In lieu of a sparkly new FM25 database from official scouts, I download a community mod from a pair called TheNotoriousPr0 and FMTU, which gets FM24's database as close as possible to the starting point of the current season. Despite us technically starting in 2023 here, we at least have all of summer 2024's transfers and a few attribute updates for the youngsters.I opt to jump into the save with pre-season partially underway to save some time, but still give me a few weeks to give the players some tactical familiarity. I turn opening window transfers off, skip my usual backroom staff overhaul, ignore my scouts' many (justifiable) reports on where the squad can improve, and skip the opening press conference. I've never done this before, and it turns out this makes a lot of digital journalists default to thinking I'm some kind of arrogant chancer, but otherwise does nothing of consequence here thankfully I won't be around long enough for the inevitable 'sack the manager' campaign. My goal is to get the squad semi-familiar with the tactics, play a few games, and see how we get on. Image credit: Eurogamer/SegaOn to the tactics, at last!We've talked about overall shape, but now it's time to get really granular. I start with a basis of the Vertical Tiki-Taka preset, which feels like the most 'Amorim' option, emphasising fairly short but forward-thinking passing through the centre of the pitch. (The wing back interplay, I tell myself, is something players will naturally end up using because the wing backs are likely to regularly find themselves open. I'm sort of half-right, but more on that later.)There are a few bits of tinkering to sort though: we go for whipped crosses to work with Hojlund's pace and physicality against unsettled defences; I stick to underlaps rather than overlaps to try and get the two attacking midfielders of that front three running beyond the ball into the box; I choose to 'trap outside' with the press, as typically Amorim's sides like to funnel opponent attacks down the flanks and press them there with the numerical advantage; and I choose 'be more expressive' to give players freedom to problem-solve, in the hope of emulating some adaptability.Now for the personnel. Most visualisations of Amorim's tactics set the team up with three centre backs; two wing backs ahead of them - making it a back three by default rather than back five - then two central midfielders; two central attacking midfielders, or '10s'; and one centre forward.Immediately we have issues. Rasmus Hojlund is an almost perfect match for Gykeres, with an Advanced Forward role here, Onana is great for the Sweeper Keeper role, Bruno Fernandes is obviously one of the 10s and Ugarte, who played under Amorim at Sporting previously, naturally is one of the midfielders. Everywhere else is a question mark, but let's run through the decisions quickly.Astonishingly, Luke Shaw is actually fit for my first pre-season game, though Malacia is out for months longer than I have to spend here. So as the only fit left-sided defender, Shaw goes in at left wing back and Mazraoui, slightly more technically proficient than Dalot, goes on the right. I am worried about depth here. (Spoiler: I am right to worry.)In defence, the options most experts have suggested are the left-footed, progressive ball-player Lisandro Martinez at left centre back, the hulking De Ligt in the middle, and the young Leny Yoro, adept beyond his years at covering wide spaces, on the right of the three. So that's what I start with here. Image credit: Eurogamer/SegaThis is also where I decide to get a bit fancy. The idea of a centre-back forming part of the midfield 'pivot' is fun to me, and I've seen some analysis that Amorim occasionally has his left centre-back, Gonalo Incio, do that rather than the usual central one, which is rather unorthodox on top of an already very on-trend move. Incio is a very similar player to Martinez - weaker at defending channels; excellent on the ball - and Amorim does this to protect him from that channel defending while getting the most out of his on-ball ability. So, galaxy brain moment, let's have Martinez invert from the left, using the Libero role, just like Incio.In midfield, the clear best choice for a real-world partnership is energetic destroyer Ugarte alongside the more forward-thinking wonderkid Kobbie Mainoo, which makes sense to me. Eriksen is a better, more creative passer but too old and flimsy to rely on frequently; Casemiro has similar issues with creaking legs, but is a nice rotation option for Ugarte; Mason Mount I judge to be an attacking midfielder for now, as he is in the real world. And that's really all your options.Ahead of them is where it gets really interesting: Fernandes goes in one spot, and Hojlund's up top, leaving the left sided attacking midfield position. So who out of Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho, Mason Mount, Christian Eriksen, Antony, Amad, and Joshua Zirkzee takes the other place in attacking midfield?Aiming to stick with what most analysts expect the real Amorim to do, I go with Marcus Rashford. He's very loosely familiar with the position, according to FM, and so I get him retraining as a Shadow Striker pronto, and attempt to set him up here as a runner from deep who often joins Hojlund on the last line of the opposition defence as part of the 4-2-2-2 in possession. As it turns out, this is one of many, many mistakes I made with this starting line-up. Image credit: Eurogamer/SegaPart 3: The experiment begins with a wobbleFive minutes into our first friendly against SK Rapid (a team I have, with apologies, genuinely never heard of), we are 1-0 down. We go on to lose 3-2, only mustering about 0.43 expected goals (xG) to their 1.56. In other words, they had better chances and finished them well, while we did very well to even score twice. Hojlund looks dangerous and Fernandes got a goal and an assist, which is good! Everything else looks very bad.What else is very bad? Luke Shaw is injured, about 35 minutes into the first friendly of pre-season. With backup Tyrell Malacia still 3-4 months away from recovering from the same long-term issue that plagues him in real life, we're now without a recognised left wing back in the squad. Time for plan B, something a few pundits have mooted as an option since both Shaw and Malacia are injured here in the real world too: Garnacho at left wing back.The issue here is, according to FM24, Garnacho cannot play left wing back. He has such little familiarity with the role that if you put him there, because of the way FM positions work, the star rating that indicates his general effectiveness drops to an unusable 0.5 out of five. So, time for what is effectively plan C already: we change the formation a bit to have two wide midfielders rather than wing backs. They won't defend as much, but we should be dominating possession anyway! It'll be fine. Plus, this looks more like 3-4-3 on paper, so I will pretend that counts for something despite knowing it absolutely does not.The next friendly, against another minnow, I tinker a bit. I decide to try a slightly more direct approach to test out one of the other interpretations of Amorim's style, and it goes a little better with a 4-2 win. But I still don't like conceding two goals against a small side, and also having such little control of the game as a result of my players regularly gambling on more ambitious longer balls. The not-so-settled first choice 11. | Image credit: Sports Interactive / EurogamerThe third, against Bayern Munich, we win 3-1. I'm trying not to get too excited because it's just pre-season, but this is looking promising this squad is absolutely not good enough to beat Bayern Munich 3-1. I'd tinkered again here, going back to a shorter style but a bit less central so we could use the wing backs a bit more, and this one feels like a winner.Friendly number four, against Bundesliga strugglers Wolfsburg, brings me right back down to Earth, as we get clearly beaten 2-0. I did say we shouldn't get too excited, I just didn't listen to myself.Finally, with a Community Shield game against Man City, a rapidly building list of injuries (accurate), and a somewhat chastening pre-season run of inconsistency under our belt, it's time to start the season.After a lot of tinkering, I decide to, a) not panic and stick to broadly the same tactics, in part because the players really need to start building some familiarity; and b) I settle on my starting 11. Mazraoui fills in for Shaw on the left. Maguire has come into the middle of defence by now and De Ligt pushed out to the right, after a terrible run of games from youngster Yoro (he's only 17 in this save, and very raw; time to take the lad out of the spotlight for a bit). I've pulled in Casemiro next to Ugarte as a deep-lying playmaker to shore up central midfield and avoid overplaying young Mainoo. And I've stopped the Libero experiment already, after getting caught out a few too many times on the left. Let's save the fancy stuff for when we've got a bit of momentum.As an aside: FM has done well to introduce some great rotational play to allow for setups like this, but this one doesn't quite work. There's no function to get your central defender to step to the left to fill the left defender's vacated space when they move forwards as a Libero. Thankfully, there's a (sort of) workaround anyway. Instead of a left-sided Libero, I use Maguire as a classic ball-playing defender in the middle.There's an extra bonus here too. A lot of analysts point out that from goal kicks, Amorim's back three do something unusual. Typically, in real football, the central defender would go to one side, the wide defender on that side pushes further wide, and the back five sort of shuffles along to look like a typical back four, with one wing back pushed up to the midfield. But often Amorim's central defender stays in the middle instead, pushing forward a bit. A quirk of Football Manager is that Maguire naturally does this when set up as a ball-playing defender in the middle, so we've sort of hacked an Amorim-ism already.The results are good?! City are kept largely quiet, with just one big chance, from a highly dubious penalty that Kevin De Bruyne naturally smashes into the net. We win 3-1 and we're good value for it, well ahead on (non-penalty) xG at the end of the match and also, miraculously, dominating possession against Pep Guardiola's side. And this game was semi-competitive as well, being the Community Shield. Technically, we've just won our first trophy. After a very wobbly pre-season, suddenly things are looking up. Image credit: Eurogamer/SegaPart 4: The experiment continues to wobbleThe first game of the Premier League season, away to Tottenham, we lose 3-1. Despite sticking with the exact same lineup and tactical settings that beat a vastly superior side, we barely scrape two shots on target, for an xG of 0.36 to Spurs' 2.6, and despite having 63 percent possession for the game we are ultimately played off the park.It's too early to panic yet, I tell myself, not entirely believing it. The thing with FM is it takes a lot of time for players to learn tactical systems properly. Teams get a boost to stats like their Vision from getting along well with each other, for instance, while tactical familiarity requires a lot of specific training and game time more than a few pre-season games can afford. Currently these boys are playing like strangers. True to real life, but Amorim's got to find a solution to that.Our next game, barely a few days later, is against Chelsea at home. I schedule some Team Bonding sessions in training and double up on the tactical focuses, but not until after this match will they really start to have an effect. We win 5-0. [Mourinho-removing-headphones-dot-jpg] | Image credit: Sports Interactive / EurogamerI will be honest: right now, I have no idea what's going on. Why are we easily beating the good sides and struggling against Spurs? This might make sense if, say, I'd gone for the 5-3-1-1 Amorim used against City in real life, as a kind of counter to these high-possession, high-talent sides, but I didn't. I'm trying to beat these guys at their own game, and I'm winning.Until I'm not. The season continues like this. Win a game, lose a game, on and on. A loss to Fulham. A win in the Europa League. A loss in the league again.Meanwhile, most of my players are struggling for any consistent form. Marcus Rashford, one of the best players in the squad on FM but still out of position here, is averaging a match rating of a dreadful 6.3. I've got no left wing-backs, and every time I play with a midfielder there instead, like that Garnacho experiment, or Antony, or anyone else who can kick a ball, we get hammered down that side. Against smaller teams, we're controlling possession. But I've realised we're just getting torn apart on the break ourselves effectively the plan Amorim used against City in the real world is being used against my virtual Amorim in FM. It's time for a rethink.Part 5: RevelationThis is where the first big revelation hits, and it's really something I should've considered earlier. Football Manager tactics are less about setting up in what looks the same as real life, as they are about getting teams to work in the same way as real life. This is the lesson learned from that Maguire trick in keeping him central from goal kicks just one that took far too long to set in. There are a few tweaks I make which suddenly and quite dramatically work.One: with high stats for Teamwork and Work Rate, but pretty mediocre attacking ones, Mason Mount's best role in Football Manager is in central midfield, not attacking midfield, and he immediately scores when playing as a box-to-box midfielder in that new position. Good.Two: I should really have looked at how Amorim's in-game Sporting CP play in Football Manager, to see how Sports Interactive's own scouts have translated his model to the game. And surprise! In FM, they play with two wingers rather than two attacking midfielders. Suddenly I've got a role for Marcus Rashford that he actually understands. Using him as an Inside Forward but still giving him specific instructions to stay narrow effectively gets him into the exact same positions as before, only with a role and 'official' position that he fully understands. Image credit: Eurogamer/SegaThis also opens up a role for Joshue Zirkzee, who I think would work very well as one of the two attacking midfielders in real life, but can't play there at all in FM. Instead, I plonk him into the central striker role, rotating Hojlund out for a break, but this time set Zirkzee as a deep-lying forward with a support duty. Zirkzee dropping deep and Rashford darting into the space he vacates is a winning combination, the two combining nicely for a goal.Three, and really the one that brings it all together: Amorim's whole thing is adaptability, but as I mentioned earlier, because of how Football Manager works, we're only playing one quite rigid way. The world's most passive-aggressive tooltip. | Image credit: Eurogamer/SegaUntil I realise that, actually FM does sort of have an answer for this. I rework our tactics to have a 'balanced' passing style rather than short, and more balanced width as well. The thing about these passing style sliders with Football Manager is that it's easy to fall into reading them as specific parameters for pass lengths that you're setting your team: setting the slider to short means they will only play short passes; direct, at the other end of the scale, only long ones; balanced only medium-length ones.But actually, it's about probability. Balanced doesn't mean mid-length passes, it means a mixture of passes. This is exactly how Amorim's side plays at least from the little I've watched, and the awful lot I've been told. Sometimes they play short, sometimes they go long, sometimes they do a bit of both. They adopt the approach that helps them beat the opposition at hand. I put all this into practice and what happens? A sampling of a few more weird formation experiments and emergency mid-game measures. | Image credit: Eurogamer/SegaFour wins on the trot. We're six points off first place in the league after nine games, comfortably beating opponents on xG, top of our Europa League group and still playing without a recognised left-back.How many lessons can we take from this about how Amorim's Manchester United might play in the real world, then? Probably not many. Football is complicated even more complicated than Football Manager and there's no telling how Amorim might adapt to the Premier League, who might get injured (beyond lots of left backs), and honestly, who he's even going to pick to play where. A fun twist here: I loaded up a save I had from half-way through my invincibles season, with a stellar squad that, would you believe it, I'd also tinkered with a very similarly 3-4-3 formation with just to mix things up a bit after we won so much. With my invincibles save, things quickly return to an inverted kind of chaos. Fulham get the 2-0 battering they deserve; now Chelsea are giving me trouble. | Image credit: Eurogamer/SegaShort of a left wing back, you say? May I present Theo Hernandez, who gets three assists in his first game. Josko Gvardiol, now at City in the real world, is the perfect left-sided channel defender. Jamal Musiala slots into one of the attacking midfielder roles (sorry Rashford) and some guy called Jude Bellingham takes the box-to-box role in midfield. Ugarte is also here in this save because, I cannot emphasise this enough, Ugarte is a monster in Football Manager I'd signed him last year for my United before he joined the real one.There are more experiments and more tinkering. I try using the two deeper midfielders as defensive midfield positions, which works quite nicely. I try going back to wider wingers instead of attacking midfielders, and setting the side up to counter attack. Like most of this whole experiment, mix results continue.So, not too many lessons beyond real life, beyond "please sign a left wing back Manchester United". But how many lessons can we take about Football Manager? Actually, for someone who once thought he knew a lot, quite a few.

This Dragon Age: The Veilguard mission has killed more of us than any otherAnd it's the High Dragon Corium The Icetalon that's our deadliest enemy.Image credit: Eurogamer/EA News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Nov. 9, 2024 As people continue to get stuck into Dragon Age: The Veilguard this weekend, developer BioWare has shared a number of interesting statistics about its playerbase, including confirmation that High Dragon Corius The Icetalon is the game's "deadliest" enemy.So far, it looks pretty evenly split across classes - 40 percent of us are playing as Mages, whereas the other 60 percent is spread evenly across Rogues and Warriors. However, the lineage delineations are interesting with 43 percent of us choosing to be human and 40 percent as elf.The final 17 percent splits across Dwarf and Qunari, at 6 percent and 11 percent, respectively.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Here's a video version of our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review.Watch on YouTubeFactions are also a little uneven: 24 percent of players opt to play as both Grey Wardens and Shadow Dragons, whilst 16 percent are Antivan Crows. 15 percent of us joined the Veil Jumpers, 11 percent the Lords of Fortune, leaving just one in 10 of us opting to become a Mournwatch.Perhaps unsurprisingly, more of us have died during the Sea of Blood mission than anywhere else. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Eurogamer's Robert Purchese had a lot of good things to say about BioWare's latest Dragon Age in his five star review. "From head to toe, wing to wing, The Veilguard is exquisitely realised and full of sophistication across systems and storytelling," he wrote. "It's warm and welcoming, funny and hopeful, gentle when it needs to be, and of course it's epic - epic in a way I think will set a high bar not only for BioWare in years to come but for role-playing games in general."

PlayStation 5 Pro arrives complete with a somewhat enigmatic feature - the ability to enhance the image quality of older PS4 software. A toggleable menu option suggests that the new console has the ability to 'improve the resolution of select PS4 games' but there's no explanation of what it actually does. With that in mind, we set out to find out. What exactly does the 'enhance image quality' feature actually do? Is this a game changer for PS5 Pro, or more of an incremental improvement? Let's get down to business by kicking off with a look at a prominent pre-PS4 Pro PS4 title, the original Destiny - and we can confirm that it is indeed making a difference. A close look at fine details reveals a sharper image with the enhanced mode enabled. The most obvious differences understandably come in high contrast areas of the image, such as structures cast against a skybox. The enhanced mode is doing a pretty good job at refining some of the edge detail, but without emphasising edge artifacts, as a naive sharpening filter would typically do. There does appear to be some attempt at reforming edges, eliminating some of the aliasing artifacts we saw before. Edges that used to have obvious sawtooth aliasing artifacts appear less jagged, but simultaneously have sharper edges. However, aliasing patterns can remain, just masked slightly.Our educated guess is that this new technique is a post-process filter that runs after the processing of the PS4 game content - it's a kind of smart upscaler. Everything seen here indicates that it's the same basic game content, running at the same resolution. However, the way the image resolves appears different on PS5 Pro and game content does look noticeably more detailed and slightly more refined. We've got some nice zoomers on this page showing the difference, but seeing the effect in motion is recommended - hence the video.Watch on YouTubeBecause the enhanced mode appears to apply to games as a post-process, all UI elements - like the HUD in Bloodborne, for example - get the same treatment. In some instances, it can bring the old 2D art up to a level of detail and refinement that looks pretty solid at 4K. There is indeed more detail, if slightly smoothed. Batman: Arkham Knight also gets a surprisingly crisp and clean 4K-like HUD, with almost artifact-free upscaling - but in all tests, there are indications that we're looking at an upscaling algorithm for 4K displays, not actual 4K art. It's not going to be a perfect replacement for 4K art, generally speaking. Looking at Metaphor Refantazio's PS4 version on PS5 Pro, the 1080p art benefits with image enhancement, but the actual 4K artwork in the PS5 code gets cleaner linework and more detailed texture. Text, again, is typically well defined with the Pro's upscaling, but not as crisp and artifact-free as actual native 4K text. It's also important to recognize the technique's limitations. The biggest problem with enhanced mode is that it really doesn't do much for temporal aliasing. Shots with movement across a variety of games reveal a similar amount of aliasing between the regular mode and the enhanced equivalent. The character of that aliasing is different, with the enhanced mode taking on a slightly rounded appearance, but the actual level of frame-to-frame breakup is similar. In other words, the enhanced mode essentially inherits the image quality characteristics of the existing game, including its anti-aliasing and it's not necessarily more stable across multiple frames. This means that games like Destiny or Killzone Shadow Fall are still going to appear fairly aliased on the Pro with the enhanced mode. However, games with better AA treatment such as Granblue Fantasy: Relink, look somewhat more detailed without suffering from excessive aliasing. This applies equally to 2D art, as some of the artwork in a game like the first Ace Attorney collection doesn't hold up that well and in some instances, I think the image resolve can actually look a bit messier than before. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. The PS5 Pro claims the enhanced mode is selective - so what games does it apply to? In my testing, it seems like it doesn't apply to PS4 software that outputs above 1080p resolution. Native 4K PS4 Pro titles like Persona 5 Royal and Mantis Burn Racing look identical across both modes, as does 1440p software like Uncharted 4. Overwatch 2, which renders at 1080p internally but has a 4K UI. Likewise for Marvel's Spider-Man, which uses a temporal upscaling technique to hit a 4K resolution. However, some PS4 Pro-enabled software like Rage 2 is visibly changed by the PS5 Pro enhancement process. This game has a 1080p UI and 1080p 3D rendering on PS4 Pro, and it does appear to be enhanced on PS5 Pro. Again, games that are higher res do not seem to get a bump. I don't know if this is a universal rule, however, or if games might be whitelisted or blacklisted based on other criteria, but that has been my experience so far. In general, you should expect to see improvements in PS4 games without a PS4 Pro version, and lower-res PS4 Pro enhanced games, and the improvements should be most obvious in games that present clear, sharp edges without effects like film grain or chromatic aberration. Games with TAA tended to have a more muted visual change relative to games that used post-process AA. And just for the record, the upscaling enhancement appears to be present with the PS5 Pro set to 1440p output or 4K output in the system settings.Outside of image quality, I was interested in the cost of the technique. Very few PS4 games actually run below their frame-rate caps on PS5, but Until Dawn's original release is a notable exception, and a good test-case for the enhanced mode's cost. Curiously, PS5 Pro, running without the enhancement, isn't enough to overcome the game's frame-rate drops on PS5 - but it does run substantially faster than the base console. My guess is that the GPU clocks and GPU resources used to run PS4 software are similar across the two consoles, but that the increased memory speed on Pro is causing a moderate performance improvement here. However, when we introduce the enhance image quality feature, all of a sudden performance drops noticeably on Pro. It's not a gigantic difference, but enhanced image quality drops about 10 percent in performance or slightly more in demanding scenes. It's enough to bring the base PS5 and enhanced PS5 Pro to a virtual performance tie. The vast majority of PS4 software runs at its frame-rate limit with headroom to spare on PS5 consoles, so I don't expect this would be an issue in many titles. This assumes that the performance regression holds true broadly across all games of course, which would require further testing. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced. Regular EnhancedComparison of PS4 content running on PS5 Pro in both regular upscaled and enhanced.I did spot one other performance issue with the enhanced mode, which was pointed out to me by CodeMalfunction on the Digital Foundry Supporter Discord. In Just Cause 3, enabling the enhancement causes a major graphics issue, which goes away with the enhanced toggle turned off. I didn't notice any similar issues across testing in dozens of other titles, but there does seem to be some limited potential for graphical bugs. Sony's enhance image quality feature isn't the only game in town when it comes to smart spatial upscaling, however, which is evident if we do some comparisons across PS5 Pro and PC. The most interesting point of comparison is LS1, which is the machine learning-based spatial upscaler available in the Lossless Scaling PC app. In a title like Granblue Fantasy: Relink, which uses TAA, it achieves a sharper, perceptibly more detailed image without the artifacts we'd usually see with sharpening. Comparing LS1 and Sony's enhanced upscaling technique, I'd say Sony's technique slightly edges out LS1 in clarity here, but it's close. Texture detail also looks clearer and sharper without edge ringing - just look at the floorboards here as one example. That inner surface detail appears more pleasing, not just geometric detail. This is an area where LS1 appears substantially better than the Pro. The Pro's enhancement process is comparable to LS1 on text and 2D elements. Both do a substantially better job than 1080p with a naive upscale to 4K, though both exhibit noticeable artifacts and can struggle with different kinds of problems. For instance, Sony's solution has greater difficulty differentiating this line from the background than LS1. There's also Microsoft's AutoSR, which is only available on laptops with the Snapdragon X Elite chip as of this recording. That technology takes a single frame between 700 and 900 vertical lines and upscales it to a higher resolution, delivering higher image detail - and even sometimes better image stability. I haven't gone hands-on with this myself, but I'd say it offers a more comprehensive overhaul than either LS1 or Sony's solution, albeit still inferior to temporal upscaling solutions that use more inputs from the game engine, like DLSS - or indeed Sony's own PSSR upscaler. However, it does incur a one-frame latency penalty.Do you want to know more? Watch Digital Foundry's 100-minute video review.Watch on YouTubeThere are other techniques - like Nvidia's RTX Super Resolution video enhancement - that focus less on game graphics and more on encoded video. RTX Video Super Resolution doesn't really give us as much edge detail as the other solutions, so the actual geometric edges only see a mild increase in definition. That said, the image looks perceptibly cleaner and texture detail is enhanced. FSR 1 is a bit less interesting than the other solutions in my experience, as it has a more uniform impact on the final image. It doesn't upscale text and 2D art quite as effectively and it doesn't do much for texture detail. It works fine enough, but I think the results from the machine learning based upscalers are better - and the potential ceiling is much higher. Based on the visual similarities in results between the 'enhance image quality' toggle and the other machine learning-based techniques, I suspect that the Pro's filter is using machine learning. Its reconstruction of text detail in particular doesn't seem realistically feasible using hand-authored algorithms. That would make sense given the high apparent cost of the technique in Until Dawn on PS5 Pro, as typical spatial upscaling is virtually free on modern GPUs. On a more general level, I think the enhance image quality mode for PS4 software on PS5 Pro is perhaps a preview of the future. Console backwards compatibility efforts have struggled against the constraints of older hardware, unlike the PC where games can usually scale in fidelity. It's not possible to expose the full capabilities of the PS5 Pro's GPU to a PS4 title, and increasing resolution for older games requires case-by-case effort that can't be applied broadly across all titles. A post-process filter that could substantially improve image quality in these older games is a scalable concept and doesn't actually require that older game code to take advantage of new hardware capabilities. A more sophisticated filter in the future could greatly improve image quality while still allowing for a high level of software compatibility. However, Sony's image quality enhancement on PS5 Pro offers a more moderate bump to image quality in PS4 software. It improves image detail and clarity somewhat, but temporal consistency is about the same as before. An enhancement is needed most with early PS4 games that lack PS4 Pro support, as these titles often had big issues with shimmer and flickering, so the lack of an improvement there is unfortunate. It's also not quite at the bleeding edge of smart spatial upscalers. In particular, Microsoft's Auto SR boasts a greater image transformation, albeit with a more limited range of compatible source content. Perhaps in time Sony can come up with something similar. Still, the PS5 Pro's image quality enhancement feature is a nice little boost to make PS4 software more palatable on high-res displays. The PS5 Pro offers far greater boosts to actual PS5 games, but it's nice to see some attention put towards older software.

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereFans of Riot Games and League of Legends have a lot to look forward to with the imminent release of Arcane Season 2. The first season was fantastic, and theres expectations that the second will be just as good, if not hopefully better. To celebrate the launch of Arcane Season 2, Riot Games is giving Valorant players the opportunity to unlock special Jinx and Vi Twitch Drops. There is plenty for Valorant players to look forward to within the world of Riots multiplayer shooter. The update 9.09 patch notes have just recently been shared, meanwhile, a leak shows a mega feature already present in League of Legends is currently in development for Val. Away from leaks, we also know Riot is transiting the game from UE4 to Unreal Engine 5. While the above is stuff to anticipate for the future, tomorrow players can unlock unique Twitch Drops featuring the League of Legends and Arcane stars Jinx and Vi. How to get Jinx and Vi Twitch Drops for Valorant Valorant players will be able to get Jinx and Vi Twitch Drops by watching the Arcane Season 2 Episode 1 Premiere on the Riot Games Twitch channel. The Episode 1 Premiere begins at 12AM PT/3AM ET/8AM GMT on November 9th, and the rewards are as follows: Special Vi player card Watch 30-minutes Special Jinx player card Watch 60-minutes Image credit: Riot GamesBefore watching the premiere tomorrow, make sure your Riot account is linked to your Twitch: Sign into Twitch Select your profile picture in the top right corner Click Drops Select Manage your Connections Find Riot Games and select Connect Sign into your Riot Games account and click Authorize Once you have watched the Episode 1 Premiere for the allotted time for each reward, you should receive a notification saying the drop is available to claim. All you need to do then is go to the Drops Inventory page and claim them. They should then appear in your Valorant inventory. For more Valorant, check out our18 tips on how to get betterat the game along with our guide forhow to appear offlineif you dont want certain friends knowing youre playing. We also have guides forhow to chat with the team, all, and private, along withhow to add friends.ValorantPlatform(s):PCGenre(s):Action, Shooter, StrategySubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

Welcome to AD PROs biweekly real estate roundup, covering the biggest deals, most important announcements, and notable listings.This week, Rosie ODonnells former Star Island home lists, a home in the celebrity-beloved LA neighborhood of Hancock Park lists, and FrenchCalifornia and LObjet reveal a model residence collaboration. In this roundup, AD PRO has everything you need to know.Notable ListingsThe former home of Sea Ranch architect George Homsey lists for $2.45 millionGeorge Homsey was a founding partner of the firm EHDD Architects.Photo: Adam RouseBuilt in the 1960s, the Sea Ranch development of Sonoma County, California, is still considered one of the states great planned communities thanks to its modern wood-clad residences and captivating sea views. Just before architect George Homsey began work on homes in Sea Ranch, he crafted this newly listed San Francisco home for his family in 1961. On the market for the first time ever, the three-bedroom, three-bathroom home is asking $2.45 million.Skylights and oversized windows draw light into the home, which is clad in Douglas Fir throughout the interior. The open living space, which is half regular height and half double-height, is the highlight of the homes vistas, with one room-length window presenting San Francisco views like a framed art piece. On the shorter end of the living area, a daybed nook offers a space for repose. An office that was once Homseys studio is situated in a gallery space above this room, at once connected and detached to the social activity of the home. Upstairs, a footbridge gives the primary bedroom access to the backyard. The original built-in shelving and furniture appear in many of the rooms. Many new builds and renovation projects emulate this era of California modernism, but this property is the real deal.Suprstructur holds the listing.

Immerse yourself in a creepy dungeon with an incredible soundscape, by Stefano Cardia.Stefano writes:Been playing around with the new EEVEE lately so I wanted to push it a little and test it on a complex scene. I have to say Im pretty satisfied with the results, although there are some main issues, developers are doing an incredible job. I think in one year or so (hope before!) it will be ready to challenge Lumen, if its not alreadyModeled and textured everything except for the humans remains and some of the wooden beams and boards which are Megascans. Inspired by RPG creepy games and movies, this is my (late) Halloween render!WEAR YOUR HEADPHONES FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCEStefano shares some thoughts on this production and possible improvements on Blender Artists.

Leo from MediaWay shares a complete car animation project. If you're into car animation, you should check out my new tutorial on Youtube, where I cover every step to making a Bugatti car animation! Hope you like it!Source

Be like the monkeys Research monkeys still having a ball days after busting out of lab, police say They pose no risk to human health, and they're living their best lives. Beth Mole Nov 8, 2024 5:51 pm | 136 Credit: Getty | DEA / C.DANI / I.JESKE Credit: Getty | DEA / C.DANI / I.JESKE Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIf you need any inspiration for cutting loose and relaxing this weekend, look no further than a free-wheeling troop of monkeys that broke out of their South Carolina research facility Wednesday and, as of noon Friday, were still "playfully exploring" with their newfound freedom.In an update Friday, the police department of Yemassee, SC said that the 43 young, female rhesus macaque monkeys are still staying around the perimeter of the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Facility. "The primates are exhibiting calm and playful behavior, which is a positive indication," the department noted.The fun-loving furballs got free after a caretaker "failed to secure doors" at the facility.Alpha Genesis staff have been keeping an eye on the escapees, trying to entice them back in with food. But, instead of taking the bait, the primates have been playing on the perimeter fence while still keeping in touch with the monkeys inside by cooing to them."They're just being goofy monkeys jumping back and forth playing with each other," Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard told CBS News Thursday. "It's kind of like a playground situation here."Yemassee police note that the monkeys are very young and smallonly about 6 or 7 pounds each. They have not been used for any testing yet, don't carry any disease, and pose no health risk to the public. Still, area residents have been advised to keep their doors and windows locked in case the wee primates try to pay a visit.This isn't the first timeor even the second timeAlpha Genesis has had trouble keeping its monkeys under control. In 2018, the US Department of Agriculture fined the company $12,600 for violations between 2014 and 2016 that included four monkey breakouts. In those incidents, a total of 30 monkeys escaped. One was never found.Beth MoleSenior Health ReporterBeth MoleSenior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 136 Comments