Nature, Published online: 18 December 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-04227-yIn a fiendish quiz our contestants battle to remember the details of the science stories that made 2024 special.

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Role playing games have always put character creation and customization at the forefront of the player experience. However, some titles feel like the classes don't really have much of an impact and don't offer all too much in terms of varied gameplay. If that's something that grinds your gears, then take a look at our list of RPGs where your class ACTUALLY matters.

The concept of the "cycle of hatred" is one of the most compelling philosophical dilemmas in Naruto. Pain (Nagato) introduced this theme as he confronted Naruto, challenging him to find a way to break the cycle that causes repeated violence, vengeance, and suffering across generations.

Early 2025 is looking pretty stacked for big new video game releases, with it bringing a few long-awaited sequels to the table, sequels like Civilization 7. It's been eight years since the last mainline Civilization entry released, and while there have been plenty of expansions and DLCs that have added new content to Civ 6 over the years, fans have been champing at the bit for an all-new Civilization experience.

By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Warner Bros. PicturesNo doubt, the entire success of Dune: Part Two was riding on the shoulders of Paul Atreides as he takes his maiden journey on top of a massive desert creature. This was something that filmmaker Denis Villeneuve was strongly aware of, so he had a separate unit working on the sequence over a period of three months. Given the sandworm does not actually exist, this iconic moment could not be accomplished without the expertise of Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Lambert, who won an Oscar for the first installment. The first discussion we had with HODs was about the worm ride. Denis gave this incredible pitch that was a completely original idea, which was: For a Freman to get onto a worm he had to climb a dune, the worm would burst through the dune, the Freman would go down with the sand and land on the worm. We never went into how you get off a worm! That could be for later. It was like, Oh, my god, what an absolutely incredible idea! How the heck do we do that?The worm doesnt exist without sand. Youre talking about incredible simulations which have to be created to get that scale. We saw it briefly in Dune: Part One, and that was in darkness. But for this one, Paul was actually going to get onto the worm in broad daylight. There wasnt going to be hiding anything whatsoever. We started down a path of some early development with DNEG as to how we have a worm crash through a dune.Paul Lambert, Visual Effects SupervisorAn example of a lighting panel utilized by Cinematographer Greig Fraser.Co-existing with the sand is the sandworm. The worm doesnt exist without sand, Lambert notes. Youre talking about incredible simulations which have to be created to get that scale. We saw it briefly in Dune: Part One, and that was in darkness. But for this one, Paul [Timothe Chalamet] was actually going to get onto the worm in broad daylight. There wasnt going to be hiding anything whatsoever. We started down a path of some early development with DNEG as to how we have a worm crash through a dune. They went through trying to get the speed of the worm to be correct. DNEG used what is called a ball pit render and would start the simulations with those size particles of sand because they could do fast iterations. We would stay in low-res until it felt right, and thats when DNEG would up-res. If you imagine DNEG working in an area that was 80,000 balls in a pit, once they up-res it there were 800 million! They got smaller and smaller and far more complicated. DNEG found that every time the tube [the worm] was rammed through a dune, the dune would explode. They went around and around in circles until somebody had the idea of, Why dont we open its mouth as its coming out? That solved it. We wanted to keep the simulation as believable as possible without cheating and cutting corners because the moment you do that youll get to these amazing renders, but something wont look right and you cant put your finger on it.Greig Fraser prepares to shoot a scene inside of a practically-built ornithopter cockpit.A badass moment occurs during the Harkonnen harvester attack when Chani defends herself by firing a rocket launcher at a Harkonnen soldier. Denis was worried that it might look too comical, Lambert reveals. We shot a stuntie being pulled on a rig, but after that we realized it required a lot of re-timing and obviously a digital double to take over. It took a lot of time to get that to feel right and to make sure it didnt feel comedic. Chani also uses the rocket launcher to shoot down an Harkonnen ornithopter defending the harvester. Every explosion that you see is digital. We did shoot some reference of explosions out in the desert. I actually got to film explosions out in the desert this time. It wasnt allowed on Dune [Part One] because where we were shooting, it wasnt the best idea to be setting off explosions. All of those explosions were mainly for reference, such as what a big explosion would be like in the hot desert. The guys and girls at DNEG did a fantastic job creating the simulation. When Chani takes out the Harkonnen ornithopter, we did shoot reference, but not for when the Harkonnen soldier gets shot up into the spice crawler.DNEG found that every time the tube [the worm] was rammed through a dune, the dune would explode. They went around and around in circles until somebody had the idea of, Why dont we open its mouth as its coming out? That solved it. We wanted to keep the simulation as believable as possible without cheating and cutting corners because the moment you do that youll get to these amazing renders, but something wont look right and you cant put your finger on it.Paul Lambert, Visual Effects SupervisorMaking use of LiDAR scans from his iPhone and Unreal Engine, Greig Fraser was able to meticulously plan to ensure that every shot was backlit.Oppenheimer had ramifications beyond the box office as it influenced how the atomic missile strike is portrayed in Dune: Part Two. It was cool, Lambert remarks. We tried to keep it as much as plate-based as possible. That sequence obviously has a huge digital effect in the background and Greig Fraser [Cinematographer] did some additional lighting on the characters, which had to be extended onto the background. We started off with a conventional nuclear bomb, but this was also the year of Oppenheimers release, and we were using the same references from the 1940s. We then veered to something different. Denis wanted a manga look to it. The idea was this isnt a nuclear bomb, but more like a super high explosive. It was a big, old TNT explosion, which meant that you had dust, sand and rocks flying everywhere. We shot some practical elements of people running, but there is a substantial amount of digital crowd running, simulated and motion captured for that purpose.We started off with a conventional nuclear bomb, but this was also the year of Oppenheimers release, and we were using the same references from the 1940s. We then veered to something different. Denis wanted a manga look to it. The idea was this isnt a nuclear bomb, but more like a super high explosive. It was a big, old TNT explosion, which meant that you had dust, sand and rocks flying everywhere. We shot some practical elements of people running, but there is a substantial amount of digital crowd running, simulated and motion captured for that purpose.Paul Lambert, Visual Effects SupervisorHaving a clear vision is important to Denis Villeneuve, who has a on-set conversation with Rebecca Ferguson.Giedi Prime, which is the home world of House Harkonnen, orbits around a black sun, and has a monochromatic palette for the daylight exterior shots. Greig did some intriguing camera tests. You had two crew members both with black T-shirts, and one would stay black and the other would go white. You didnt know why. It could be because of the weave or material or temperature. You could never tell what would change to a different tone. One thing it did do was give this subsurface look to the skin and make your light look super sci-fi. Denis fell in love with that particular look, but if we go down this path you cant undo it. These are modified cameras from ARRI. Youre capturing the full spectrum, infrared and real light. Then youre desaturating it to get that particular look. But we also wanted to be able to transition from real to that world. Rather than try to rely on a full-on digital effect to try to recreate the infrared, we built a stereo camera rig. One of the cameras is vertical and the other is a horizontal that shoots through a mirror or across the mirror. One camera is infrared and the other is RGB, which means we get the exact same image with one in infrared and the other is RGB. Then I can do a collage roto where you can transition from one to the other. That worked out well for when the Bene Gesserit come in or when the Baron is coming from the inside of his stadium to the outside light. The idea being that the outside is a different atmosphere where you have this infrared light.Some crowd replication was required and rubber blades had to be digitally fixed for the fight between Paul Atreides (Timothe Chalamet) and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler).A black oil aesthetic emphasizes that House Harkonnen is resembles a virus rather than a bastion of humanity.Machine learning assisted in producing 1,000 blue-eye shots found in the sequel.Accompanying the Emperor to Arrakis is the Imperial Tent, which is attached to his ship. You could have a simple shot where you put this great big battle occurring behind you, and have a shot where youre not looking at the battle but looking at the Imperial Tent, which was then attached to the chrome ball, Lambert states. That chrome ball saw the whole world 360. The idea behind the Imperial Tent was that it started flat, and the Emperors ship, the chrome ball, would pull that up so the actual structure would appear in this almost pyramid shape. You dont actually get to see how it got made. What we were able to do was a technique we developed on the first one and used extensively again on Dune: Part Two, which was proxy shooting. Rather than building out this interior tent to its final in-camera texture, we would build this proxy version of it. You would get the overall tone and shape. I would then go in in post, because I didnt have to shoot up against bluescreen or greenscreen, and add additional texture to it. Its a far more believable process than just having bluescreen or greenscreen.To avoid the need for additional sand simulations, a rule was made to not go over previous footprints in the sand when shooting.DNEG, Wylie Co. and Territory Studio provided 2,156 visual effects shots, while Rodeo FX contributed concept art and MPC did some of the previs. [The extensive crowd work] was potentially one of the harder things to wrangle and get right, Lambert remarks. We did a lot of 2D and 3D replication. Tiling was done for a couple of shots which was then augmented with thousands of others. A returning visual effects element that was refined further for the sequel were the blue eyes of the Freman because by their consumption of spice. On the first movie, Wylie Co. had to roto 300 shots. We knew on the second movie there would be a hell of a lot more blue eyes. Nuke has a new feature called CopyCat where you can say, If this image is doing that, try to replicate doing this. I did some initial tests, and we found that if I could feed it images of our actors faces from the first one along with the mattes, it could be trained to figure out whenever it saw an eye it could make this matte. The ones that didnt work, we rotod and put them back into it. It was a five-month process. By the end of it, we had trained the models on 77,000 pairs of eyes; 400 of the 1,000 shots were done completely with machine learning.Dunes are treated as characters in their own right.Infrared cameras were deployed for the exterior daylight fight scenes on Giedi Prime, which orbits a black sun.An overriding element that had to be kept in mind when dealing with the mammoth creature that lives beneath the surface is the sandworm would not exist without sand.For when Chani turns to see the Imperial Tent explode, Greig Fraser captured the shot in the United Arab Emirates while the rest of the oner involved stitching various motion capture performances together.A significant challenge for the visual effects team was all of the crowd work.All of the explosions were digitally created.Industrial tracks held black screens that to get the proper shadows for when Paul Atreides and Chani attack the Harkonnen harvester.Unlike the first movie, Paul Lambert was able shoot practical explosions as reference for Dune: Part Two.Finding a dune for Paul Atriedes to run across that was backlit and had the right wind direction was not easy given the time of year.Every explosion that you see is digital. We did shoot some reference of explosions out in the desert. I actually got to film explosions out in the desert this time. It wasnt allowed on Dune [Part One] because where we were shooting, it wasnt the best idea to be setting off explosions. All of those explosions were mainly for reference, such as what a big explosion would be like in the hot desert.Paul Lambert, Visual Effects SupervisorChani watching the Imperial Tent explode was a huge shot to execute. In [the first] Dune, we did something called the Paul oner where hes in his dream state and is fighting all of these characters. In Dune: Part Two, we had Chani doing something similar. Chani gets up, runs, fights, and she turns her head seeing the explosion of the Imperial Tent in the distance. That is a 35-second all-digital shot apart from the end shot of Chani. We shot Chanis turn out in the desert. Greig lensed it in the correct light, and we then had to back in the entire shot so it finished on that particular moment. That shot went through some interesting stages. All of the characters fighting are motion capture. We motion captured that out in Hungary using tens of stunties fighting. We actually motion captured Zendaya. We stitched her performance and all of the fighters together. We then took that to the studio at Digital Domain and brought Greig back in to compose with Denis. Greig had a virtual camera and was able to follow Zendaya through the move. We then re-lensed it based on all of the animation in there, and what you see is actually Greigs camera move going all of the way up to the point where he shot her in the Unite Arab Emirates. That shot took months and months to do. But again, we had a plan, so it was just going through it. It was a slow burn. It was a step-by-step progressive of giving notes. Thats how Ive always worked with Denis.A separate worm unit was created that spent three months to capture Paul Atreides riding the sandworm.Wind machines were used to blow the sand to the point where the stunt performer would turn orange by the end of shooting.When the sun was not cooperating, the worm unit had another assignment to complete, which was photographing the fetus of Paul Atreides sister Alia. In the corner of the studio in a tank was a prosthetic baby, which we shot that through the glass, Lambert reveals. This was a project in itself trying to get some beautiful textures around it. The idea was from that plate photography; I would add CG blood flow to give it some life. Every time you see it blink, its only CG around the eyes, but the rest of it is a prosthetic. Dune: Part Two is a film that tries to use the best technique it can for the particular visual. In that case, having a real prosthetic was the key.

I realized recently that its rare I watch something on YouTube unless theres a unique hook or challenge attached. When it comes to games, its usually speedrunning attempts, Nuzlocke runs, catching a shiny of every Pokmon before moving on that sort of thing and this probably explains why Ive found GeoWizard, a channel that introduces self-imposed restrictions to exploring the real world, so entertaining.His headline series has a simple premise: attempting to cross an entire country in as straight a line as possible. As you can imagine, the obstacles when walking coast to coast across European countries are many and varied; there are fast-moving rivers, felled forests, acres of farmland patrolled by diligent farmers, and fencing of both the thorny and manmade, barbed varieties. Even with some wiggle room of a few meters either side of the imaginary path to help skirt around the worst dangers or most serious trespassing, GeoWizard real name Tom Davies does his utmost to stick to the route, and tackles whatever is thrown his way with gusto and a camera in hand.While each attempt naturally lends itself to drama at regular intervals, theyre also a serious test of stamina, with early starts and long days walking over fields, valleys, and rolling hills. It helps that Davies is an effective storyteller and snappy editor to make these lengthy expeditions pacy and exciting, compressing hourslong treks through the countryside into tidy sped-up montages, before deftly teeing up the next spot of trouble to keep you watching.In early missions, insurmountable problems eventually arise and things are called off. But with more attempts under his belt and lessons learned, preparation improves, largely in the form of a small support crew who bring with them vital equipment such as kayaks to help cross lakes, or offer a brief respite from the elements with a snack-loaded van. Eventually, the adventures expand from just Davies to a wider cast that, like any good series, youre delighted to see continue popping up.Thankfully, even as attempts begin to succeed and countries are ticked off the list, the channel keeps its low-budget charm. Everything continues to be recorded on a rain-splattered GoPro, and recaps are annotated with Microsoft Paint-style scribbles over Google Earth footage, giving it a homemade feel a million subscribers in.If youre interested, Id recommend starting with Wales attempt two or Norway, then progressing to more Wales adventures, Scotland, and eventually England and once youve had your fill, branching out to GeoWizards other challenge videos, from exploring cities without using roads to seeing how far he can go with just pocket change. And, if you prefer your adventures more sedentary, as the channel name suggests hes also a proficient Geoguessr player though a recent video hints that the two worlds may soon combine, and if so, it could make for his most interesting set of challenges yet.

Downsizing means different things to different people. For some folks its about retirement and moving to a smaller, more manageable home. For others its about taking control over their lives. And for some its just a cleansing ritual that strips away the accumulated cruft of a busy life.Whatever your reasons for downsizing, one thing is universal: Its not easy. People have adopted many different strategies to streamline their lives and clear out their crowded homes, but for everyone who emerges from a downsizing movement with a crisp, newly minimalist life, theres someone else who gets overwhelmed and gives up. If thats you, theres one more move you should consider: Hire a downsizing consultant.A downsizing consultant is a professional organizer who helps you organize and implement a plan to declutter and reclaim your space or transition to a smaller home (consultants who specialize in helping seniors move into smaller homes or even assisted-living facilities are called "move managers"). The process is pretty straightforward, and typically involves:An initial consultation and walkthrough, separating stuff into what can be trashed, what can be donated, and what needs to be keptCoordinating with vendors to haul away stuff for donation or disposalCleaning and organizing, either at your current home or your new, smaller placeAside from the logistical support that a downsizing consultant brings to your efforts to shrink your life, they also offer emotional support by taking away the burden of decision-making. By letting an objective professional make decisions about a tightly packed garage or bursting closets, you can spare yourself a lot of stress. Here's how to know if you need a professional to help you with downsizing. A professional can help if you're overwhelmed Moving into a smaller home is often pitched in financial termsyou pull equity from your larger house, and youll have lower taxes and maintenance costs. But this doesnt take into account the fact that youve lived a certain lifestyle for years or even decades, and a smaller space means mastering a whole new way of organizing your life. Every aspect of your lifestyle, from the location of appliances to the way you navigate your kitchen, will be different in some way.If youre immediately overwhelmed by the long list of tasksif the sheer number of decisions makes you panic, or you dont even know what your first move ought to bea downsizing consultant can help you make a plan.You might need a professional if tensions are highIf youre fighting with family and friends over what to get rid of and who gets what, a downsizing consultant can be an impartial judge who isnt burdened with the same emotional baggage. They can act as a buffer between all the involved parties, keeping lines of communication open and offering some much-needed perspective that can lower the emotional temperature around distributing stuff.Consider professional help if time is a factorSometimes downsizing has to happen immediately. A new job that starts right away in a different city, a house sale that closed much faster than expected, a sudden change in health that necessitates a shift into a more manageable homesometimes you need to declutter and reorganize right away. In situations like this, handing a downsizing consultant the keys to the house and letting them manage the experience on your behalf can mean getting it all done as quickly and efficiently as possible.Contact a professional if you've tried to downsize beforeIf youve tried to downsize and declutter your life before and never got very far, a professional might be the extra resource you need to make it happen. Thats because they will treat the project like their jobbecause it is their jobinstead of a vague goal. Plus, they wont be sidetracked by busy days or tempted to postpone closet excavations, so the project will proceed according to schedule even if you get busy and distracted.How to find professional helpYou can find move managers to help with older folks trying to downsize by contacting the National Association of Senior & Specialty Move Managers (NASMM). If you just need help decluttering and downsizing, your best bet is to look for a professional organizer in your area who offers downsizing services.