Game Dev Digest Issue #282 - Unity 6.2 Beta, Level/Character Design, and more posted in GameDevDigest Newsletter Published May 16, 2025 Advertisement This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.comEnjoy!Unity 6.2 Beta is now available - Test the latest features, including Unity AI, Mesh LOD, and World Space UI for UI Toolkit. Dive in today and help shape the future of Unity!discussions.unity.comSpace is not a wall: toward a less architectural level design - People want to do level design. They grow up playing games like Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite — all 3D games with 3D worlds. And to create 3D worlds, supposedly you need this thing called “level design.” Then when you search YouTube, you'll be told that level design is about implanting secret lines that "guide the player" into walking down hallways. Such is the power of ARCHITECTURE!blog.radiator.debacle.usSound and Music in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader | An Audio Director's Perspective - In this article, I will discuss the approach to sound design and music that we took in our latest game: Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.audiokinetic.comCastle Kellmore rendering - Since Castle Kellmore released on Playdate, I have had a lot of interest in the technical aspects of its rendering system. So I thought I would give a brief insight into how I made it look as good as possible, while (mostly) keeping to 50 frames per second.ligeiagames.comUnity-Advanced-Engineering-Guide - Unity Software Engineering Guide (Design Patterns, Software Architecture, Algorithms and Data Structure)MfaXyz VideosDesigning and Creating Video Game Zombie AI ft. PikPok - James and Sarah from PikPok (creators of Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days) are here to share their process for designing zombie behavior and bringing them to life in Unity!UnityThe GOOD, The BAD, and The BIZARRE of Unity 6.1's XR Updates - Unity 6.1 brings major XR updates, but not all features are created equal! This breakdown reveals which VR/AR features are genuinely useful. Learn about Variable Rate Shading, the new Mixed Multiplayer Tabletop Template, and why Deferred+ rendering is great tech you'll rarely use unless you're making a PC VR experience. I also dive into Unity's strange decision to support Android XR devices that don't actually exist yet!Fist Full of ShrimpHow to Generate Random Tilemap Decorations in Unity - In this continuation of the "How to Make a 2D Platformer Game in Unity" series we'll be generating random tilemap decorations using a rule tile.Wild Cockatiel GamesDiscover the HIDDEN POWER of Unity Property Bags and Visitors - The Property bag is the cornerstone of Unity.Properties—a powerful system that lets you generically access, inspect, and modify object data at runtime without reflection. In this video, we’ll show you how property bags, visitors, and adapters work together to build flexible, high-performance systems for tooling, UI binding, data validation, and more. You’ll learn how to write your own visitors, construct property paths, and use these patterns to create runtime features that adapt to any data structure.git-amendUnderstanding shaders is easy, actually - Shader code can be scary but... Well, it is scary, but it's also quite simple!tEEvy gamezBeginner mistakes when drawing assets | 2D Game Art - If you're a beginner to game art all of this art stuff might feel a bit dauntingNonsensical 2DEnemies in Unity ECS - Fundamentals & ICleanupComponentData - Build a high-performance Enemy System in Unity using ECS and DOTS!Tale ForgeI’m a Caver Making a Cave Game with Custom Tech. It’s Complicated. - This video is a longer discussion and explanation about the tech I'm developing for my caving game.Fredrik Andersson AssetsLevel Up: 5K World Building Assets Bundle - Build the game of your dreams in any setting or scenario with our Level Up: 5K World Building Assets Bundle.__Character Art Tutorial Bundle - Flash Sale - Create stylized AAA characters today Say hi to summer with a scorching hot FLASH SALE! Learn how to create original AAA-quality characters from the pros at FastTrackTutorials. Build warriors, ninjas, and more with a suite of lesson videos. Pay what you want and help support One Tree Planted with your purchase.Humble Bundle AffiliateThe-Fluid-Toy - An Opensource, GPU-Accelerated, Particle-Based, Multi-phase, Real-time Fluid Simulation Engine for Unity and a game which showcases its features. [Play with it here]Victor2266 Open SourceFree spritesheets - Download our free CC0 spritesheet pack. Explosions, lightning, smoke, confetti, and slashes ready to use —no restrictions, no attribution required!jettelly.comSpatial-Rumble - Allows you to emit pre-defined controller vibrations/rumbles in a spatialized way, with attenuation over distance.RoyTheunissen Open SourceUnity-SplineRoadUtils - A set of spline tools to build a simple road network in unityelrod Open SourcePicLet - Handy right-click tools for everyday image tasksmuammar-yacoob Open SourceTidy-Monkey - Blender Add-On for Game Developers. Productivity Tools for Blender 3D Artistsmuammar-yacoob Open Sourcemassive-ecs - Sparse set ECS with rollbacks. C# library and Unity package.nilpunch Open SourceUIMaterialPropertyInjector - This package provides a component that allows easy modification/animation of material properties for Unity UI (uGUI) without the need for shader-specific custom components.mob-sakai Open SourceInputGlyphs - Displays glyphs (icons) of keyboard & mouse or controller buttons detected by Unity's InputSystem.eviltwo Open SourceSpoke - Spoke is a tiny declarative reactivity engine for Unity.Adam4lexander Open SourceGiLight2D - Experimental 2D Raytracing for Unity UrpNullTale Open SourceSoCreator - Tool for convenient ScriptableObject's creationNullTale Open SourceBasis - Basis is an open-source social framework for VR and Desktop usage.BasisVR Open SourceUnityLocalizationEditor - Localization Editor A handy Unity Editor tool for managing localization keys and language files directly within the Editor. Easily find, edit, and save localization keys, auto-attach components, and generate language files with zero hassle.SinlessDevil Open SourceSaveSystemToolkit - A modular, extensible and editor-friendly Save System for Unity, supporting multiple serialization formats (PlayerPrefs, JSON, XML),SinlessDevil Open SourceTypedMigrate.NET - Fully statically typed data migration system for C# and Unity.dmitrybaltin Open SourceMeshia.MeshSimplification - Burst accelerated mesh simplification.RamType0 Open Sourceunity-kataru - Unity integration for Kataru, the minimal interactive dialogue language.kataru-lang Open SourceMega Bundle – Must-Have New Assets - Up To 90% Off - Discover a curated collection of must-have new assets, including versatile game templates, powerful tools, beautiful environments, dynamic animations, and innovative VFX. Get the entire bundle now for just $99!Unity AffiliateShop up to 50% off ithappy - Publisher Sale - A 3D studio specializing in low-poly model packs with a consistent, high-quality art style. Modular locations and characters let you bring any idea to life. Create stunning worlds with ease! PLUS get Furniture Cute - Low Poly 3D Models Pack for FREE with code ITHAPPY2025Unity Affiliatecom.moonlitstudios.immediatestyle - Allows you to interact with Unity UI GameObjects in an immediate Style and fashionhopeforsenegal Open SourceEasy-Text-Effects-for-Unity - An open-source Unity package for animating TextMeshPro text with customizable effects. Includes ready-to-use samples, real-time previews, and per-vertex animation capabilities.LeiQiaoZhi Open SourceStereoCancer - An open-source stereo-correct screen-space shader for Unity, mainly intended for usage in animations and games such as VRChat.xwidghet Open SourceMobileConsoleKit - Mobile Console Kit is a Unity Asset Store that help you not just viewing logs in mobile devices, but helping you monitor, do experiment and speed up development time.pixeption Open SourceDevAccelerationSystem - The DevAccelerationSystem helps to enable features to speed up development iteration from code perspective. It includes ProjectCompilation checks for all your target platforms with different scripting define symbols combinations in your project.FoxsterDev Open Sourcenvim-unity-sync - nvim-unity is a Neovim plugin that helps you keep your .csproj files up to date when working on Unity projects.apyra Open SourceSavable-ScriptableObjects-Unity - Unity plugin that enables saving and loading ScriptableObjects using JSON serialization (Newtonsoft.Json) and PlayerPrefsEduardMalkhasyan Open SourceUltimate World Building Asset Bundle - Imagine it—build it—love it Elevate your next project with elite 3D assets, textures, references, and more from the Ultimate World Building Asset Bundle by ScansMatter—featuring 300 free commercial credits on ScansMatter.com, Rooftop Asset Kit, Office Environment Kit, and much more. This limited-time partnership with ScansMatter gives Humble Bundle members a unique opportunity to access countless professional-quality assets at a fraction of the price. 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Infiltrate, sabotage, and seize districts in a world that fights back. Unlock abilities, recruit allies, and shape the resistance-one mission at a time. Will you rise or be crushed?__My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on SteamYou can subscribe to the free weekly newsletter on GameDevDigest.comThis post includes affiliate links; I may receive compensation if you purchase products or services from the different links provided in this article. Comments Nobody has left a comment. You can be the first! You must log in to join the conversation. Don't have a GameDev.net account? Sign up!

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" New features in thinkingParticles 7.4, the latest version of the 3ds Max particles plugin. The video also shows features added in thinkingParticles 7.3 and its service pack updates. Cebas Visual Technology has released thinkingParticles 7.4, the latest version of its particle effects and multiphysics plugin for 3ds Max.The update extends thinkingParticles’ ME-L scripting language with new functions for manipulating meshes, and adds a SplineForce node for guiding particles along splines. Other features added in recent updates include the Explosion Tool, a set of readymade nodes for creating explosion effects. A versatile simulation tool for 3ds Max-based VFX pipelines First released two decades ago, thinkingParticles is a procedural simulation tool that has been used by leading VFX studios including Scanline VFX, FuseFX and Bottleship VFX.Originally geared towards particle-based destruction and gaseous fluid simulations, it later added a SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) solver for liquids and soft bodies, MPM solvers for granular fluids and elastic materials, and tools for manipulating OpenVDB data. The software is also now bundled with finalRender, cebas’s GPU renderer. ThinkingParticles 7.4: new ME-L functions for controlling meshes ThinkingParticles 7.4 further extends the capabilities of ME-L (Math Expression Language), the plugin’s new scripting language.Initially a means to manipulate OpenVDB data, it was broadened out into a more general-purpose system for creating custom particle simulations in thinkingParticles 7.3. ME-L scripts have “almost unrestricted access” to the core simulation data created by the plugin, making it possible to create most of the same effects as through its standard node-based workflow, but since evaluation of particle data via the ExpressionME-L node is multi-threaded, unlike most of the standard nodes, performance can be much greater. The 7.4 update introduces over 160 new ME-L functions for modifying meshes, making it possible to perform operations like edge subdivision and dynamic remeshing. You can see examples of simulations created using the new functions in the video embedded at the top of this story. New SplineForce node, plus updates to SimpleDeform and the MPM Sand solver Other new features in thinkingParticles 7.4 include the SplineForce node, which creates a virtual force along the length of a spline curve.Particles within the radius are drawn along the curve, making it possible to create “stylized trails, flows, and guided motion effects”. The existing SimpleDeform node, for using particles to deform meshes, gets new Pose Matching controls, enabling the meshes to “maintain or revert to their original pose even after extreme deformation”. In addition, the MPM Sand solver now has a moisture-based activation threshold, for realistic damp-to-dry granular fluid simulations. Added in the previous service pack release: new Explosion Tool Other features added in recent releases include the Explosion Tool: a collection of readymade nodes for creating explosions.It includes nodes for generating the initial burst of the explosion, the shockwave it generates, and trails of debris thrown up by the blast. Price and system requirements thinkingParticles 7.4 is compatible with 3ds Max 2024+. The software is available on a rental-only basis. Subscriptions cost $660/year.Read an overview of the new features in thinkingParticles on cebas’s website Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.

Including, the fire-nado. An excerpt from issue #31 of befores & afters magazine. Replicating natural phenomena was ILM’s central task on Twisters. The visual effects studio would need to analyze the reference, then consider the science behind storms and tornadoes, and finally develop new tools for simulation and rendering to bring what were key ‘characters’ to life. The ILM Art Department also had an early role in crafting keyframe art to help visualize some of the more epic scenes in Twisters. Senior concept artist Brett Northcutt then continued the design process for specific tornadoes. “At first,” he says, “I wasn’t sure how much help I would be as there is a ton of amazing real storm chaser footage online. At that point, ILM visual effects supervisor Florian Witzel told me that director Lee Isaac Chung wanted each tornado to be like a monster, each with its own characteristics.  That really resonated with me as I could play with size, lighting and visibility for each tornado.” Concept art. “We also looked at a lot of real footage and I quickly learned how much variation they can have aesthetically,” adds Northcutt. “For scenes where our heroes are scientifically chasing storms we could use clarity and front lighting to show them as less threatening. However, for scenes where our heroes are in peril, we could backlight them or hide them in weather so the actual threat level wasn’t entirely clear.  The greatest movie monsters, like in Jaws or Alien, aren’t seen very clearly and are therefore much more scary.” ILM began the 3D tornado building process by breaking down the different elements that make up a storm and a tornado, while also giving distinct personalities to each of the ten tornadoes that appear in the film. This look and feel to the weather also came directly from the director, as production visual effects supervisor Ben Snow points out. “At the beginning we knew there were these six major sequences and that tornadoes went through different phases. I said to Isaac, ‘Look, I’d really like to get one or two key images from all of this amazing material that we’ve collected. Let’s just choose a couple of images for each tornado to get the character. So we went through and did that, and we ended up with a pretty good focused set of material.” Plate. Roto. Layout. Final. “In addition,” says Snow, “there were key beats in the film where Isaac would have looked at YouTube footage or footage from the storm-chasers, and he’d say, ‘This is the sort of feeling I want for this sequence, this is the quality of light I want. Not just for visual effects, but also for special effects and for the DP Dan Mindel and production designer Patrick Sullivan. Here are the key feelings I want, based on footage that we found.’” That gave Snow and the team at ILM two sets of creative inputs to start crafting the look of the storms and tornadoes, alongside the storm-chaser footage and the imagery produced by Giles Hancock. “What the VFX artists would have to do is start by trying to get it to match that reference and that look,” states Snow. “We ultimately had a development cycle for each tornado, with iterations. Even though we were using science and weather-based systems to do the simulations, there was still an artistic component to all this. We still got to sculpt, shape and add to them. And actually what that ended up giving us, too, was a library of clouds shapes and sky pieces and other parts of weather that could be combined together. I think it became key to both achieving realism and achieving the creative side to those tornadoes as well.” The outcome of this analysis of the tornadoes was a break-up of the general structure that needed to be depicted on screen. Tornadoes had a funnel, a thin layer of vapor surrounding the funnel, a debris field of dirt picked up from the ground, rigid debris objects and a shelf cloud connecting to the sky. “Our simulations are not just a tornado alone, there’s a lot more than that,” details ILM associate visual effects supervisors Charles Lai. “We have the wall cloud that connects from the top of the funnel to the sky, but that also has to be connected to the shelf cloud. So, we also built that shelf cloud, and that is moving a little bit slower, and that has to be connected to the HDRI panel that’s in the background. So, there’s a whole lot of little pieces that go into it. And then, not only are we simulating the tornado and those separate pieces, we’ve got a lot of ground effects that showcase that spiral inflow, and we pretty much had to do it for all our sequences.” “There’s so much more to it than just the tornadoes,” notes Witzel. “We’re essentially inside this dense soup of weather. There are varying levels of moisture and fine particulates in the air that diffuse the background, so you can’t just drop in an element and expect it to work. You constantly have to balance how the object or background is being affected and diffused. That was always an important thing to get right in each shot.” After the initial layout phase, the animation team was equipped with a flexible rig and toolset to define the base motion of each tornado. “The anim department blocked out the overall performance without breaking physical accuracy,” Witzel explains. “With the twin tornadoes, for instance, we could choreograph the timing and when they split apart. How they spiral around each other, how wide are they, how they relate to each other or how fast they move. All of these foundational choices help guide the simulation and effects teams. Once that framework is there, we hand it off to the fluid solver to do its simulation, and then you refine it from there.” “With the tornadoes, they were not always perfectly vertical,” adds Lai. “When you see these massive wedges on screen, you could believe, sure, it is just a massive vertical column. But, when we worked on some of the smaller tornadoes that were just trying to touch down, they often curved around and touched down. I think that’s where it was really valuable to be able to have the animation rigged that way and to show animatics in that form and just get quick buy-offs on, screen-space wise. It let us art direct them.” ILM used the latest iteration of its proprietary fluid solver, ILM Pyro, to simulate the tornadoes. “ILM Pyro started out several years ago as a wrapper around Houdini’s Pyro, just to make things easier for artists,” explains Witzel. “Over time, it evolved. Today its core is completely replaced with proprietary microsolvers and custom tools. The idea was always to create a system that gave artists both an easy entry point and deep artistic control.” With ILM Pyro, artists could manage a wide range of forces – as well as detailed emission and dissipation, pressure, buoyancy, gravity, and temperature bands – to sculpt the look and behavior of each tornado. The resulting velocity fields were then used to advect additional environmental effects like debris, smoke, and fire. “We’re essentially guiding the volumetrics,” says Witzel. “But when you do that, it’s easy to lose energy and detail. Other solvers can get soft and blurry very quickly. With ILM Pyro, we put a lot of emphasis on maintaining that energy. We use techniques like reflection solvers to preserve vorticity and confinement. It’s all about keeping the tornado’s energy and details alive.” The scale of the weather systems, especially supercells and the larger storm structures, often exceeded what a single simulation could handle efficiently. To manage this, ILM adopted a wedging workflow, splitting simulations into smaller blocks that were reassembled at render time. To retain fine detail, a secondary narrowband particle simulation was layered in, adding localized noise and complexity. “We’d run a core sim first,” Witzel explains, “then layer in another sim with added wavelet turbulence. Or we’d run a narrowband sim focused on the tornado’s edge, where the core was coarse, but the outer layers had much higher resolution.” Lighting the synthetic clouds proved compute-intensive, especially allocating for volumetric rendering time (rendering was generally handled in Mantra and Katana, with Katana XPU rendering done towards the end of production). To speed up the renders for clouds, ILM developed a workflow that pre-baked the light scatter on the clouds while being sampled directly at render time in the shader. This gave renders a six-time speed increase but preserved the desired look. One particular tornado seen in the film was unlike anything previously witnessed in Twister. This is the ‘fire-nado’ at the oil refinery. Snow worked directly with the previs team from The Third Floor, led by James Willingham III, on the refinery sequence. “We did a lot of work on what it was going to look like,” says Snow, “and we’d printed out little diagrams of what the imagined landscape might be like to take with us to Oklahoma. But we actually hadn’t come to a final agreement about what the scene should be.” The intervening Hollywood strikes in 2023 provided an opportunity to revisit the fire-nado sequence. “What we were trying to bring was a sense of mystery to the whole thing,” relates Snow. “We thought, let’s have them drive into a fog bank so they lose visibility, all of their GPS has gone out because of the storm, they don’t have knowledge that they’re next to this big refinery, which would make it more scary and creepy.” Anim. Creature dev. FX. Final. Owing to the time of the year that they could finally shoot the refinery scenes, the plates tended to be in bright daylight, necessitating a complex layering in of atmosphere and fog in visual effects. “One of our compositing supervisors, Ben O’Brien, came up with a really beautiful fire-lit fog look that we were able to bring into play in that end sequence.” Bluescreen photography for the sequence of the actors in their vehicles saw Scott Fisher fire off a series of pyro events for interactive lighting. “This really helped tie in the bluescreen plates to what we had filmed already,” notes Snow. “Scott also built these really cool rotisserie rigs and ways to flip the cars over with the actors inside that could then be dragged around, which happens in that storm.” Meanwhile, in the ILM Art Department, Brett Nortcutt worked with a 3D model of the refinery developed by model supervisor Bruce Holcomb to help art direct the scenes. “Even though the model was a work in progress, it was already an amazingly detailed model that I could start with,” notes Nortcutt. “For the low-angle image, I started with plate photography of the caravan on the road but ended up replacing everything but the road. The real challenge was showing a massive tornado interacting with an oil refinery as well as heavy fog. I imagined the wind forces of the tornado twisting and pulling apart the tanks and pipes of the oil refinery while also sucking fire and fog into its funnel. To add more chaos, I added sparks, explosions, and an indication of wind forces pulling everything into it across the terrain from the foreground.” “While I rendered Bruce’s 3D model of the refinery for these concepts,” continues Northcutt, “I knew that the only way I was going to be able to quickly create tornado variations for each concept was to digitally paint them. I developed a technique in Photoshop using three different brushes that allowed me to quickly vary the edges and thickness of each tornado. I then had great success adding a long exposure waterfall texture on top at a very low opacity that looked very similar to the texture of real tornadoes. It’s always fun to find something that you wouldn’t expect helps more than the real thing.” For the final fire-nado, the concept was that the nearby oil refinery accelerates the tornado, making it grow larger and more intense. “That meant,” says Witzel, “we had to layer in all kinds of elements. Crude oil fires, butane tanks exploding. We imagined a mix of chemicals being sucked into the atmosphere, creating this real Frankenstein’s monster of a storm. We had to build the entire refinery asset in detail, then destroy it, and on top of that, the whole scene was blanketed in fog. It was incredibly complex.” The post ‘Twisters’: what went into a storm appeared first on befores & afters.

2025 Sony has a team of magicians on staff. It’s the only rational explanation I can come up with for how it’s raised the bar for active noise-cancelling headphones year after year. I really thought Sony couldn’t improve upon last year’s model, the class-leading WH-1000XM5. But the WH-1000XM6 (yes, the naming convention still sucks) has so many new features—a revamped design that folds again, a new processor and drivers, and more mics—I can’t argue with the results. The XM6 ANC headphones don’t have many flaws to speak of. Although the estimated 30 hours of battery life is solid, I’m always looking for more time off the charger. Honestly, the only downside is the hefty $450 price tag, but then again, Apple seems to have no problem selling AirPods Max for $550. Sony WH-1000XM6 Sony's WH-1000XM6 outdoes its predecessor in just about every category, making them the headphones to beat this year, noise cancelling or otherwise. Pros Cons At first glance, you may not notice all the refinements that Sony made to the XM6. But I assure you, they all add up to a more comfortable and polished pair of headphones. The leatherette over-ear cups create a nice passive noise-cancelling seal, the headband is wider for better weight distribution on your dome, and it’s great to see Sony listened to feedback and made them foldable again. Even little touches like a larger power button that’s easier to press are worth appreciating. Sony’s playing it a bit safe with the usual black, silver, and midnight blue colorways, but hopefully it’ll roll out more interesting shades down the line. It’s not hard to get the XM6 connected to your smartphone or laptop. The minute you flip the included magnetic hard case open, you’ll get a pairing prompt on your phone, which walks you through connecting the headphones via Bluetooth, and then you’re ready to go. The initial pairing process only takes less than three minutes, but I still wish it was faster, like it is on most modern wireless earbuds. Play your cards right, and you’ll rarely have to touch your phone. Unlike AirPods Max, you can control audio from the touch-sensitive surface on the right ear cup using taps and swipes. A double tap plays and pauses audio or answers and rejects a call, while a forward or backward swipe switches to the next and previous track, respectively. Swiping up or down adjusts the volume, while holding your hand over the earcup launches Quick Attention, which pauses audio until you remove your hand. And if you don’t feel like touching the headphones, you can nod your head or shake it to answer or reject a phone call. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo The NC/AMB button (noise cancellation and ambient noise mode) also pulls double duty. Press it twice to Quick Access a chosen app (Amazon Music, Spotify, or Endel). You can program a second app to launch with three taps, but you’ll need the Sony Sound Connect app (previously called Headphone Connect) to configure that. I’m always wavering between Bose and Sony when it comes to noise-cancelling tech. Right now, Sony has taken a noticeable lead. In its quest for silence, or at least a quieter environment, Sony has brought its new QN3 processor and 12 upgraded microphones (versus eight on the XM5). It also wouldn’t be 2025 without a healthy dose of AI. To that end, the XM6 has AI noise reduction, which the company says was trained on over 500 million voice samples. The result is some seriously quiet phone and video calls. You also have a refreshed AI Noise Optimizer feature, which works to identify and eliminate pesky ambient noises. I took the XM6 and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones for a trip on the New York City subway—a place full of random smells and noises. Neither pair of cans did anything for the summer bod funk in the air, but plenty for the latter. In terms of regular train noises (opening and closing doors, moving along the tracks, train announcements, etc.), the XM6 was slightly better at muting the din without any music playing. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo Sony’s newest ANC headphones also did a better job of shielding me from a lover’s spat on the train. I typically hear more ambient sound while wearing Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra. I cued up Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” on the XM6 and committed myself to minding my own business. Okay, I may have switched over to Ambient Sound to hear some of the juicier details, but not for the whole conversation. Speaking of Ambient Sound, that’s the mode I engage when I’m walking alone at night or in unfamiliar surroundings. It lets in outside noise so you can keep tabs on your surroundings. One minute, I’m hearing nothing but the deep bass and raunchy lyrics in the Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song),” and the next, there’s birds chirping and traffic sounds filtered in. Deeper bass, brighter highs, and fuller mids—what a difference a driver makes. The 30mm drivers utilize a more rigid dome construction, which translates into more balanced audio performance. Since my regular playlist covers a wide swath of music genres, I kept the built-in equalizer off to get the flattest frequency possible. That means when I listened to Sevendust’s “Enemy,” there wasn’t any artificial bass being added. It was just me, crisp cymbals, bombastic percussion, an energetic set of electric guitars, and silky smooth vocals juxtaposed against guttural screams. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo Even without spatial audio or Cinematic mode, the XM6’s soundstage is seriously generous. I can really make out the finer vibrations of the twang of the guitars on “Raised Right” by Reyna Roberts. The violin and vocals were just as clean, where I could hear some of the plosives as Roberts enunciated words like “night” and “taught.” But what about the low end? No, the XM6 don’t go as hard on the bass as the Sony’s Ult headphones. But I discovered they still bring the boom as I listened to Pop Smoke’s “Dior.” The bass was nice and weighty but didn’t overwhelm the violin, hi-hats, or the Nextel chirps and other electronic elements throughout the drill track. Whether I’m watching a movie or listening to music, spatial audio has become one of my favorite features to indulge in. Seriously, cue up a music service that supports Dolby Atmos or Sony’s 360 Audio format—you’ll thank me. It’s a cool, almost eerie feeling to move your head from right to left or up and down and have the music respond to your location accordingly. It essentially creates your own personal concert hall. Spatial audio is at its best watching action scenes, as the gunfire and subsequent explosions gain an extra dimension of immersion. Previously called Headphone Connect, the renamed Sound Connect app retains all previous functionality while adding new features. While I love a kitchen sink approach to features, I have a feeling that many users won’t touch more than 50% of them. Speak-to-Chat, Spatial Audio, Ambient Sound Control, Adaptive Sound Control, and multipoint pairing are all present. Something new to the scene is Listening Mode, which lets you toggle between Standard, Background Music, and Cinematic modes. The first one is pretty straightforward: you listen to your music with whatever settings you’ve got enabled. Background Music lowers the volume so you can carry on a conversation. The audio is a bit diffused, but you can still bop without losing too much detail. Cinematic mode is the exact opposite and expands the soundstage. It’s not on a par with spatial audio, but it’s the mode I recommend using when you’re watching movies or TV. (If you’re concerned about protecting your hearing, the app has a Safe Listening feature that tracks your sound allowance as advised by the World Health Organization. It can also track how much ambient noise the cans have protected your ears from.) There’s also Scene-based Listening (SBL). This goes hand-in-hand with Adaptive Sound Control. Where the latter automatically adjusts noise cancellation based on your location, SBL will start playing music from your chosen player based on activity or location. You can set it to play at the start of your commute, while you’re taking a jog or working out at the gym and the app will learn your habits and adjust ANC levels accordingly. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo My only complaint is that some of the cooler features, like spatial audio and Find Your Equalizer, aren’t front and center. Instead, they’re tucked away in smaller menus that aren’t easy to navigate. You really have to hunt for the setting you’re looking for. I already mentioned the XM6 has a set of 12 microphones on each side, half of which are beamforming devices designed to focus on picking up your voice. Combine that with the AI Reduction technology, and you’ve got crystal clear calls whether you’re connected to a smartphone or laptop. I was most impressed with how well the AI reduction worked. Whether I was in a busy coffee shop or walking down a construction-laden street, my callers reported little to no background noise. That doesn’t mean that they totally blocked out the jackhammer I walked by or the overhead train. The headphones muted them and all but killed any wind resistance, but certain noises don’t totally disappear. The XM6 has the same 30 hours of battery life (with noise cancellation on) as the XM5, with a quick charge that translates to three hours of power after being plugged in for three minutes. The battery shoots up to 40 hours if you disable the noise cancellation. Keeping the volume at about 50%, I’ve only had to charge the headphones twice over the course of a week. While I would have loved for Sony to give the XM6 even more battery life, that doesn’t mean the company didn’t give us some sort of improvement. Unlike previous headphones in the WH-1000 series, you can charge the XM6 while they’re in use. Instead of having to face a long commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx sans music or ANC, I just plugged them into my Anker battery pack and maintained my peace on the train. I’m going to do my damnedest to stop doubting Sony when it comes to outdoing itself. But it’s so hard when it seems like the company’s ANC headphones can’t get any better. Because let’s be clear, the XM5 landed on many a best noise-cancellation headphones list. But the Sony WH-1000XM6 has taken just about everything I loved about its predecessor and given it a big update. Better driver? Check. New processor? Yep. Actually useful AI features? You betcha. The result is a refined and feature-packed pair of premium ANC headphones with best-in-class ANC and a comfortable, albeit safe design.

Adobe Premiere Pro earns its status as industry-standard video editing software thanks to its familiar nonlinear editing interface, excellent performance, unmatched ecosystem of tools, and powerful capabilities. The massive application benefits from straightforward import and export experiences, while AI-powered auto-captioning, text-based video editing, and many other features keep it on the cutting edge. Premiere Pro earns our Editors' Choice award for professional-level video editing software. If video editing is more of a hobby for you, check out our Editors' Choice winner for enthusiasts, the less-expensive yet feature-packed CyberLink PowerDirector.Pricing: Subscription RequiredPremiere Pro is available by subscription only. It costs $22.99 per month with an annual commitment or $263.88 per year up front. A month-to-month option with no commitment goes for $34.49 per month. A free trial lasts just seven days.You can also get Premiere Pro as part of the complete suite of Adobe Creative Cloud professional applications that includes After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, and the rest. That costs $59.99 per month with an annual commitment, $659.88 per year up front, or $89.99 on a month-to-month basis. Business customers pay more for either package, at $37.99 per person per month for the single app or $89.99 for the whole suite. The Business version adds collaboration options, enhanced support, and management features. Education users pay less, starting at $19.99 per month for the whole suite for the first year and then $34.99 per month after that.Premiere's subscription pricing means the immediate dent in your pocketbook isn't as noticeable compared with when you had to plunk down $1,000 all at once to buy a perpetual license. A subscription model also means that the app gets regular updates with improvements and new features. For comparison, Apple's Final Cut Pro carries a one-time cost of $299. DaVinci Resolve charges $295, though you should first try its very capable free version. The nonprofessional programs for consumers who enjoy creating dazzling videos without the steep learning curves hover around $99 for a one-off purchase. That's what you pay for Adobe Premiere Elements. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate lists for $129.99, while CyberLink PowerDirector Ultimate costs $139.99 one-time or $74.99 per year for a subscription. A less-expensive tier of editors runs about $70 one-time, including Corel VideoStudio Pro and Filmora.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Can Your PC Run Premiere Pro?Premiere Pro runs on macOS 10.15 or later and Windows 10 (64-bit) version 22H2 or Windows 11. On Windows, it requires an Intel 6th-generation or newer CPU or an AMD Ryzen 1000 Series or newer, 8GB of RAM (16GB recommended), and a 1,920-by-1,080-pixel display. On Apple computers, Premiere Pro requires macOS 12 or later and an Intel 6th-generation or newer CPU, but also supports Apple silicon natively.When you install Premiere, you also get Adobe Media Encoder, which converts output to common formats for online and broadcast. It also enables batch processing and lets you keep editing during rendering processes.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)What’s New in Adobe Premiere Pro?Adobe updates Premiere Pro every month or two with new tools, interface changes, and performance improvements. The biggest new announcements involve generative AI tools that can extend clips and search for media based on AI analyses. Here's a list of the important recent feature updates available for Premiere Pro (in order of importance):Generative Extend. This is the big AI-powered feature Adobe has long promoted. Available in the 25.2 release version, it lengthens your clip when you need to fill brief moments in your timeline.Media Intelligence. Premiere Pro indexes all your media with AI analysis, letting you later find any clips, sections of clips, or other media, based on images or sounds (including speech).Caption Translation. This feature lets you automatically translate either auto-generated or imported captions into a choice of 27 languages. Automatic Raw and Log Footage Conversion. Premiere Pro recognizes all major raw and log formats and automatically converts them to the color space you're using. Three new wide-gamut color spaces make everything look better on-screen.Support for MKV. The open-source codec has long been popular among file sharers. Premiere Pro users can now play and edit this content.Content Credentials Support. This important initiative allows creators to maintain ownership of their work and lets them tell AI bots not to train using it. Read my take on the initiative.Dynamic Waveforms. I was surprised that Premiere Pro didn't already have this feature since it has long been available in other video editing apps. It just means that dragging the waveform up or down in the timeline makes it larger or smaller.More Sample Media. This is great for learning how to use new features. Once you start up the app after the recent update, you see a project that shows you how to use Generative Extend.Previous recent updates of importance include:Audio Auto-Tagging and Enhanced Speech. Premiere Pro can detect and tag ambient audio, dialogue, music, and special effects. The app surfaces relevant controls for these sound types in the Essential Sound panel. The AI-powered Enhance Speech tool automatically cleans up unwanted audio noise.Automatic Transcription and Text-Based Editing. Premiere Pro can transcribe spoken audio in your clips and lets you edit—that is, split, merge, move, or delete—segments of video based on the transcription. Background Auto-Save. You can set Premiere Pro to auto-save in increments down to a minute. This works in the background without interrupting your work. A Dashboard for background processes shows your saves and other activities. A Recovery Mode lets you restore your project after a program crash or revert to a previous project state.Free Stock Sound Effects. Previously, Premiere Pro inexplicably didn't offer any stock sound effects, only background music. You now have many choices, including car doors slamming and explosions.Motion Graphic Template Views. The Essential Graphics panel is gone (you use the Properties panel for many of its functions), and there's a panel called Graphics Templates.Productions. Premiere Pro now uses a three-level nested hierarchy for editing: Productions, Projects, and Sequences. Productions comprise sets of Projects, which in turn can contain multiple timeline Sequences. You can move or copy media between Projects within Productions by dragging and dropping it.Interface and Ease of Use: Continual ImprovementsPremiere Pro has an attractive, flexible interface, and I'm a fan of Adobe's simplifying changes over the years. The startup view helps you quickly get to recent projects, start new projects, or search for Adobe Stock footage. The dark program window makes your clips the center of attention. It now has just three main modes (in addition to the Home screen): Import, Edit, and Export. A button or menu choice in Edit mode has a good selection of workspace layouts for Assembly, Editing, Color, Export, and more. You can pull off any of the panels and float them wherever you want on your display(s). It's also possible to create content bins based on search terms.By default, the editor uses a four-panel layout, with the source preview at the top left, a project preview at the top right, your project assets at the lower left, and the timeline tracks along the lower right. You can add and remove control buttons to taste; Adobe has removed a bunch of elements over the years for a cleaner interface. Since many editors rely on keyboard shortcuts like J, K, and L for navigating through a project, fewer buttons and a cleaner screen make a lot of sense. It's a very flexible interface, and you can undock and drag around windows to your heart's content. Here's another helpful feature: When you hover the mouse over a clip in the source panel, it scrubs through the video.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Premiere Pro is touch-screen-friendly, letting you move clips and timeline elements around with a finger or by tapping buttons. You can also pinch-zoom the timeline or video preview window. You can even set in and out points with a tap on thumbnails in the source bin. When you click on a media thumbnail, you get a scrubber bar and can mark in and out points right there before you insert the clip into your project. Premiere gives you several ways to insert a clip into your sequence. You can click the Insert or Overwrite buttons in the source preview monitor, or you can just drag the clip's thumbnail from the media browser onto the timeline or the preview monitor. Holding Command (or Ctrl on Windows) makes your clip overwrite the timeline contents. You can even drag files directly from the OS's file system into the project.The media browser also has tabs for Effects, Markers, and History, the last of which can help you get back to a good spot if you mess up. Markers, too, feature improvements, with the ability to attach notes and place multiple markers at the same time point. Markers can have durations in frame time codes, and the Markers tab shows you entries for every marker in a clip or sequence. Clicking on a marker entry jumps you right to its point in the movie.Any device that can create video footage is fair game for import to Premiere Pro. The software can capture from tape, with scene detection, shuttle transport, and time-code settings. It also imports raw file format from pro-level cameras like the Arri Alexa, Canon Cinema EOS C300, and Red Epic. The software supports resolutions of up to 8K. Of course, you can import video from smartphones and DSLRs. For high-frame-rate video, the program lets you use proxy media for faster editing.You can apply color labels to your clip or open the Metadata panel to view and apply tons of XMP information about a clip, but there's no simple keyword tagging capability. Productions, Projects, Sequences, Libraries, and Bins are available to organize your media.If you’re moving up from the consumer-level Adobe Premiere Elements, you can import your projects, especially since they use the same .PREL file format. But you still might lose some effects, even things like image filters and motion tracking. A project consists of one or more sequences, which in turn contain your clips. There are sequence templates for HDR, high-resolution, and social videos.Semantic Search With Media IntelligenceOne thing that has been missing from the editing interface is a permanent search box for finding commands, content, or help; other major apps, including Adobe’s Photoshop, include this. The Home screen has a search box, but its results are sometimes unhelpful. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)However, you can now search for any of your media with the Media Intelligence search tool. It's in the top-right corner of the program window, a standard magnifying glass icon with the universal "spark" elements that designate the presence of AI. As you might expect, the tool had no problem coughing up clips with your search text in their captions or metadata. And it did a fine job finding clips with eye close-ups or water bodies. But, for some reason, it couldn't find clips based on color. I searched for "yellow" and "orange" to see if it could find my clips with those colors prominently in the background, but it found nothing. Trimming Project Clips: All the Options You Could WantPremiere Pro has four edit types that sound like they belong at a water park—Ripple. Roll, Slide, and Slip—along with a Razor tool for splitting clips and a Rate Stretch tool for speeding up or slowing down a clip to fill a specific length of time. You can easily access all of them at the left side of the timeline. The cursor shape and color give visual cues about which kind of edit you're dealing with. One welcome capability is that you can make edits while playback is rolling.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)With the Ripple and Rolling edit tools, holding down the mouse button while moving a clip edit point (or double-clicking on an edit point) opens a view of both clips in the preview window—a helpful touch. If you double-click on the edit point, it switches to Trim mode. This shows the outgoing and incoming frames, with buttons for moving back and forward by one frame or five, and another to apply the default transition.As with Adobe Photoshop image layers, layer support in Premiere Pro lets you apply adjustments. These affect all tracks below them. You create a new adjustment layer by right-clicking in the project panel. Then, you drag it onto a clip on your timeline and start applying effects.Generative ExtendAs mentioned, Generative Extend is the feature Adobe is most excited about. It makes use of the emerging field of generative video AI courtesy of Firefly. As its name suggests, this feature lets you extend a clip, though just by up to 2 seconds. You can extend audio by a more practical 10 seconds, however. Perhaps that short video time limit signifies that Adobe intends this as a pro video editor tool rather than something that can generate full AI videos with deepfake potential.The feature adds a new basic editing tool to the toolbar along with Razer, Ripple, Slip, and the rest. Below is how it looks in the interface. When you hover over it, you see a tooltip explaining the new feature.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)You might also notice a white gap in the timeline above. You can use the Generative Extend tool to drag the clip to the left or right and fill the empty space. When you do this, a timer shows you the progress—it's not an instantaneous operation and requires sending the clip to Adobe's servers. After using the tool, you first see an "Uploading" message on the clip, then "Generating," and finally "AI-generated." After it showed this last message, my clip didn't appear extended in the timeline. Instead, I saw a placeholder image from Adobe telling me that it was generating the AI clip. After a few more seconds, my test clip was extended to fill the gap and showed realistic motion. You can see the added frames below as the playhead crosses the section marked AI-generated:The result in my test is pretty convincing, but I wouldn't trust it to extend a clip of a person speaking. Other video AI generators go much further. For example, Sora can create up to 15 seconds of video and lets you describe what you want to see. That's even possible with the consumer-minded Filmora.Adobe's Firefly can extend clips, too, but it requires you to spend credits each time. Generative Extend is free for a limited time in Premiere Pro, but Adobe doesn't specify when the free lunch ends. You can see the list of credit costs and how many each account type gets on this intimidating FAQ page. Generative Extend can produce frames at up to 4K resolution, but those cost more credits than lower-resolution ones. Transitions and Effects: Abundant OptionsEnthusiast-level video editors tend to have a huge number of transitions, so it might surprise you that the professional-grade Premiere Pro includes just 47 (you can install plug-ins for more). Many professionals find a lot of transitions tacky, so when they want to add a fancy transition, they build one in After Effects or buy polished ones from third parties.Premiere Pro has all the video effects you'd expect—colorizing, keying, lighting, and transforming. You can apply an effect just by double-clicking. A search box makes it easy to find the effect or transition you need.The Warp Stabilize feature (originally from After Effects) is very effective at smoothing out bumpy video. This feature now works quicker than before. In testing, it got through a 1:33 (min:sec) clip from a moving tram in 2:38, smoothing out all but the biggest shakes. You can adjust the amount of cropping, make the borders auto-scale, and tweak the smoothness percentage. A cool option is No Motion, compared with the default Smooth Motion. Using it with Stabilize Only (as opposed to adding Crop, Autoscale, or Synthesize Edges) resulted in a weird (and unusable) zooming in and out with rotation in my test, so be careful with the settings you use. The result with default settings is noticeably smoother than with Final Cut Pro in testing.Color AdjustmentsThe Lumetri Color manager in Premiere Pro brings the program in line with Photoshop for video. These tools give you a remarkable amount of color manipulation, along with a great selection of film and HDR looks. Black point, contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows, and white balance adjustments are available—all of which you can activate with keyframes. It includes Faded Film, Saturation, Sharpen, and Vibrance adjustments, too. The curves and color wheel options are impressive and include a Color Match feature with face detection and comparison views. There's also a very cool Lumetri Scope view, which shows the current frame's proportional use of red, green, and blue.Recommended by Our Editors(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)You can opt to apply any of these effects only in masked areas, which you can create from polygons or by using a pen tool. For motion tracking, however, you need to look to After Effects, so those masks won't automatically track, say, a face.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Auto Color is something we've seen in photo editing software for many years, but Adobe claims the tool analyzes an entire clip using its patented Sensei AI technology to improve contrast, exposure, and white balance. Unfortunately, it works only on a per-clip basis; it would be nice if you could apply it to your whole sequence, that is, the group of clips and overlays that comprise your digital movie. The above screenshot shows Auto Color's adjustments, which you can then tune to your taste. In testing on several clips, this tool improved both the color and the lighting in testing with several clips but occasionally pumped up saturation too much. Unfortunately, Premiere lacks video noise reduction features like those in CyberLink PowerDirector and DaVinci Resolve.Auto ReframeA good chunk of today's video content ends up on social media, which means different aspect ratio formats. Auto Reframe uses Adobe’s Sensei AI technology to identify what's important in the frame and then crop to 16:9, square, vertical, or custom aspect ratios to match the output device or service. You can use the tool on individual clips or entire sequences.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)You can either drag the video effect onto a clip or choose Auto Reframe from the Sequence menu. Then, you can choose the output aspect ratio, motion tracking, and whether you want clip nesting.Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Vimeo, as well as broadcast outlets, all have different spec requirements, so the feature saves video producers the work of having to custom edit for each. At the very least, Auto Reframe gives producers a starting point; its Nested option means you can adjust what it creates to taste.Apple has a similar tool in Final Cut Pro called Smart Conform. It’s nearly identical to Auto Reframe. Smart Conform also bases the crop on your project aspect ratio setting rather than creating new aspect ratio versions to taste. One thing I prefer about Final Cut’s feature is that it lets you see how the effect worked by showing the full frame outside the automatically cropped area.Collaboration: Excellent FeaturesPremiere Pro lets you use Creative Cloud Libraries to store and organize assets online, and the Team Projects feature lets editors and motion graphics artists using After Effects collaborate in real time. When you create a project, you simply choose Team Project and designate team members. When you're happy with an edit, tap the Publish button so the other members see it. Any Premiere user can sync settings to Creative Cloud, enabling editing from different PCs and locations. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)These collaboration features also mean you can go to any machine running Premiere and see your workspace when you sign in. Getting this kind of collaboration and workflow capability in Final Cut Pro requires third-party extensions. Similarly, consumer-targeted products like PowerDirector don't have any collaboration features to speak of. Premiere Pro also has a Share button for Team projects, which lets you invite collaborators to your project via email.Frame.io IntegrationAdobe acquired Frame.io in 2021, and Premiere Pro subscribers now get a Frame.io account with 100GB of online storage for five projects. That's separate from the 100GB of Creative Cloud storage. After removing the Frame.io panel from Premiere Pro in favor of a plug-in, Adobe has reinstated it in the current version, with choices for Legacy, V4 Comments, and V4 Preview.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Note that you need a Version 4 frame.io subscription to use the new features. The upgrade process isn't as simple as it might be, either: you have to wait for an email from frame.io for it to finalize. In its favor, the newer version of the service adds features like connected comments, metadata, and user permissions. You can attach comments to specific time codes in the sequence, which is a big help to editors. You can't simply log in to your frame.io account with your Adobe account through Creative Cloud, however. Multi-Camera Editing: Powerful Tools Multicam support in Premiere Pro can accommodate an unlimited number of angles, limited only by your system capabilities. Final Cut Pro lets you work with only 64 angles, though most projects won't need more. In Premiere, you select your clips and choose Create Multi-Camera Source Sequence from the right-click or Clip menus, and then choose a syncing method. The program does a good job of syncing clips based on their audio, which is helpful for DSLR-shot clips that have no time codes. As in Final Cut, a Multi-Camera Monitor lets you record angle changes as the composite video plays, either by simply clicking on the angle's tile or the corresponding number. You can then adjust the cuts with the normal editing tools. Adobe adds an option for multicam editing preference: Ripple trim adds edits to keep both sides in sync.Titles and Captions: Ample SupportAs you might expect, Premiere Pro has a wealth of text options for titles and captions. It can import SRT or XML files. For titles, you get a great selection of fonts, including Adobe TypeKit fonts. You can set crawling, leading and kerning, opacity, rolling, rotation, texture, and more. As in Photoshop, you can apply strokes and shadows to any font. Stroke styles let those with very particular typographic needs choose the type of caps the strokes have, including bevel, miter, and round. Advanced text animation, however, once again falls to After Effects. For comparison, enthusiast-level programs like PowerDirector and Pinnacle Studio build in a good selection of title animations.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Automatic TranscriptionsOne of the coolest recent features in Premiere Pro is Transcribe Sequence. This feature uses speech recognition technology to produce a text panel from spoken words in the sequence. It can impressively separate multiple named speakers. You can then jump to the place in the timeline by tapping on words in the panel, and pauses are marked with [...], letting you find and remove them easily. The panel lets you edit the text and combine or separate text blocks, and its CC button automatically creates a caption track using the transcription. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)The caption editing panel lets you redistribute words among the captions, each of which becomes a separate timeline clip. You can split or merge caption clips and edit the style of all the separate caption clips at once. Then, you export to an SRT or text file or burn the captions into your video project.Automatic Caption TranslationOne welcome new feature is AI translation of captions in 27 languages. This works either with auto-generated captions or imported caption files. Click the translation icon in the Captions panel, and you get a choice of source and target languages. You can also drop down more choices to reveal time and character limits for generated timeline entries. When Premiere Pro finishes processing everything, you see a second caption track in the timeline right above the previous one. This lets you display more than one caption language at once. In my testing, the feature worked quickly and accurately. Keep in mind that Premiere Pro sends data to Adobe's servers for processing.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Text-Based Editing: A Whole New Streamlined ApproachAn extension of the auto-transcription capability is the option to edit based on the transcripts. You can select text in the transcription panel and move or delete it, and Premiere Pro adjusts the video clip accordingly. The program lets you automatically highlight filler words (um, ah) or pauses and then delete them all at once, which can be a huge convenience for interviews or expository videos. One issue I have is that the skips are abrupt. Adobe should include an improved version of the Morph Cut transition (similar to Final Cut Pro's excellent Flow transition) in the Text-based Editing interface to fix this. Unfortunately, the current version of Morph Cut caused artifacts in my video. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)DaVinci Resolve now offers text-based editing capabilities, too, though Apple has yet to announce them for Final Cut Pro.360-Degree VR Video Editing: Decent SupportPremiere Pro lets you view 360-degree VR footage and change the field of view and angle. You can view this content in anaglyphic form, which is a fancy way of saying you can see it in 3D using standard red-and-blue glasses. You can also have your video track the view of a head-mounted display.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)The program, however, couldn't open my Samsung Gear 360 stereoscopic footage unless I converted it to an equirectangular format (this is the only VR format Premiere supports). Corel VideoStudio, CyberLink PowerDirector, and Pinnacle Studio can all open the footage without this conversion. You can't see the spherical view alongside the flattened view as you can in those apps, either, but you can easily toggle back and forth between these views if you add the VR button to the preview window. Helpfully, Adobe’s tool lets you tag a video as VR so that Facebook and YouTube properly recognize it.Audio Editing: Deep OptionsPremiere Pro's Audio Mixer shows balance, pan and VU meters, clipping indicators, and mute/solo controls for all timeline tracks. You can use it to make adjustments as the project plays. Premiere Pro automatically creates new tracks when you drop an audio clip in the timeline, and you can specify types like standard (which can contain a combination of mono and stereo files), mono, stereo, 5.1, and adaptive. Double-clicking the VU meters or panning dials returns their levels to zero.The audio meters next to your timeline are resizable and let you solo any track. The program also supports hardware controllers and third-party VSP plug-ins. If you have Adobe Audition installed, you can round-trip your audio between that and Premiere for advanced techniques such as Adaptive Noise Reduction, Automatic Click Removal, compression, Parametric EQ, and Studio Reverb.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)For background music, you get a large selection of clips from Adobe Stock (some of which are free). A relatively new Free switch lets you see only those clips you don't need to pay for. The program now has a full selection of sound effects, such as car door slams, crowd cheers, and explosions. You find these within the Essential Sound panel, which also lets you designate your audio tracks as Ambience, Dialog, Music, or SFX—either manually or via the AI-powered Auto Detect tool. (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)Switch to the Browse tab to find audio stock, which you can filter by mood or search by term. None of these auto-fits your project length automatically, but you can use the Remix trimming tool to do that. Professionals will likely have a full Creative Cloud subscription, which lets them get sounds through Adobe Audition. The SFX clips include detailed options—not just "car door slam," for example, but specific options like a 1941 Cadillac or 1975 Ford F150 Pickup. The recent Enhance Speech tool does a remarkable job of removing background noise when you are editing a piece shot in a noisy environment. Essential Sound provides another very useful capability: auto-ducking for ambient sounds, which pulls back background noise during dialog or sound effects.Export: Many Output OptionsA clear Export mode button lives at the top of the editing interface, in addition to the Quick Share button at the top right. The simplified Export interface in Premiere doesn't mean you can't go into every little detail about the file you need to render. You now see a list of common output targets along the left—Media File, YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook—along with Adobe's own Behance and Creative Cloud online services. Importantly, you can export to as many as you want with one press of the Export button by toggling several choices. You can also send your rendering job to Adobe Encoder if you want to batch render and get back to editing in Premiere Pro without waiting for the export to finish.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)The categories in the middle section of the interface (in the above screenshot) all allow for fine-tuning, thanks to drop-down arrows. For example, click on Video here, and you can set not only the frame size, frame rate, and aspect ratio but also the bit rate, color space, and time interpolation. For the rest of us, the updated interface thankfully hides those brain-hurting settings.Premiere Pro gives you most formats you want, and for more output options, Adobe Encoder can target Blu-ray, DVD, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, and many other devices. Encoder lets you batch encode to target multiple devices in a single job, such as mobile phones, iPads, and HDTVs. Premiere can also output media using H.265 and the Rec. 2020 color space, as can Final Cut. However, Final Cut requires you to buy the separate Compressor 4 add-on ($49.99) for this functionality.(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)The Quick Export option lets you tap the share icon at the top right, and you can produce the project with minimal fuss using a choice of seven preset formats: Match Source—Adaptive High, Medium, or Low Bitrate; 4K, 1080p, 720p, and 480p.A new option during export is to embed Content Credentials metadata. If you use AI generation tools in any of your project's assets, you see a simple check box called Export Content Credentials, which attaches the credentials to the exported content. Anyone can then check the credentials on Adobe's Content Authenticity site's Inspect page.Performance: Fast Render SpeedsPremiere Pro takes advantage of 64-bit CPUs and multiple cores. For render speed testing, I have each program I test join seven clips of various resolutions, ranging from 720p up to 8K. I then apply cross-dissolve transitions between them and note the time it takes to render the project to 1080p30 with H.264 and 192Kbps audio at a bitrate of 16Mbps. The output movie is just over five minutes in length. I ran this test on a Windows 11 PC with a 3.60GHz Intel Core i7-12700K, 16GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.Premiere Pro sits near the top of the leaderboard, with an impressive time of just 35 seconds. Premiere periodically auto-saves your work, in case you forget to save explicitly. If you do encounter a crash, it presents you with a Reopen button in a red warning message upon restart.

The year will kick off with the maiden voyage of New Glenn, a heavy-lift rocket built by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Credit: Blue Origin Though 2025 won't mark the return of astronauts into deep space as NASA had hoped, launchpads still will be scorching-hot from a procession of robotic spacecraft attempting to land on the moon. How many of these moon landings will succeed? Will the number top the two-ish (one of which made a heckuva comeback) last year? Giant commercial rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn, will likely also have several uncrewed orbital test launches as they iron out the kinks in their hardware. And while people await scientific missions to distant solar system destinations, a few probes will send home close-up pictures of planets as they snag gravitational boosts from flybys.  You May Also Like Here's a round-up of space missions and cosmic events just around the bend. Bookmark this calendar and look for updates from Mashable throughout the year.  BepiColombo makes final Mercury flyby: Jan. 8Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, but it's perhaps the most overlooked of the rocky worlds in the solar system. Hot and harder to reach than Saturn, it hasn't enjoyed the level of study that other worlds have.But BepiColombo, a joint mission of the European and Japanese space agencies, seeks to change that. The spacecraft makes its sixth and final flyby on Jan. 8 before returning to enter orbit around the planet in late 2026. Closest approach will take the spacecraft just 160 miles above the surface of Mercury. Mission controllers will release images of the event on Jan. 9.Two moon landers on one rocket: Jan. 15Two small uncrewed spacecraft, one of which is carrying several NASA instruments, will try to land on the moon with a boost from the same rocket. Both Firefly Aerospace and Japan's ispace will ride a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket slated to leave Earth as early as 1:11 a.m. ET Jan. 15. Firefly's Blue Ghost lander was originally scheduled to lift off in late 2024, and the launch will mark its maiden voyage. The spacecraft is slated to travel for 45 days before trying to touch down in early March. Firefly's flight will be the first Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission of the year. The NASA program has recruited vendors from the private sector to help deliver instruments to the moon and send back crucial data.Ispace's new Hakuto-R mission will be its second try, after it ran out of fuel and crashed on the lunar surface in April 2023. The Resilience lander, a partnership with Japan's space agency JAXA, is taking a long way to the moon to save on fuel, arriving about four to five months after launch.Blue Origin's first flight for New Glenn: Jan. 16Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will soon get a chance to see his giant rocket New Glenn launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. His aerospace company Blue Origin started a countdown on Jan. 13, but launch controllers waved off the opportunity when a technical issue arose. The company will try again no earlier than Jan. 16, targeting a three-hour launch window that opens at 1 a.m. ET.Blue Origin's goal is to reach orbit, and the company will also try to land its booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean so that it can be reused on future flights, though executives admit doing so would be "ambitious" on the first try. SpaceX tests upgraded Starship: Jan. 16SpaceX is preparing to launch another uncrewed Starship test, this time with an upgraded spacecraft and 10 mock satellites to practice a payload deployment in space. This SpaceX launch would mark the seventh Starship test and feature a reused engine from the booster returned from the fifth test. Weather-related postponements have made it possible that Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn will lift off for these tests on the same day. Starship's one-hour launch window opens at 4:00 p.m. CT. NASA moon rover and orbiter delivery: Feb. 26Intuitive Machines made history last year as the first company to reach the moon intact — though its lander, Odysseus, broke a landing leg and touched down tilted. The Houston-based company is now gearing up for a second moon landing — this time with the Athena lander. The mission, referred to as IM-2 or PRIME-1, will carry a NASA rover. The spacecraft will test a drill and mass spectrometer, a device that identifies the kinds of particles in a substance. Liftoff is targeted for a four-day launch window that opens no earlier than 7:02 p.m. ET Feb. 26.Another spacecraft, NASA's Lunar Trailblazer, will also hitch a ride on this flight. The small satellite will orbit the moon to map out the locations of lunar water. Europa Clipper flies by Mars: March 1After a successful October 2024 launch, the Europa Clipper spacecraft has been hurtling through space. It's on schedule to make its first flyby of Mars on March 1, where it will get a gravity assist to continue its journey. Its closest approach to the Red Planet is expected at 12:57 p.m. ET, when it will zip 550 miles above the Martian surface. The probe won't arrive at Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, for its mission until 2030. Scientists are intrigued by Europa because they believe it could hold double the water held by Earth's oceans. Could this small world in the outer solar system have conditions capable of supporting life? If NASA finds that Europa is a habitable place, a second Europa mission could return to determine if there are indeed any inhabitants. Firefly attempts moon landing: March 2Following a successful launch in January, Firefly Aerospace will target a robotic landing in the Mare Crisium region of the moon, an ancient hardened lava flow, no earlier than 2:34 a.m. CT on March 2. Prior to descent onto the surface, NASA and Firefly intend to broadcast commentary, starting at 1:20 a.m. CT that morning. However, the broadcast will not include a live video stream of the spacecraft."Our available bandwidth will be dedicated to critical descent operations during landing," Firefly officials said on X, formerly called Twitter. Landing on the moon remains onerous. The moon's exosphere provides virtually no drag to slow a spacecraft down as it approaches the ground. Furthermore, there are no GPS systems on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot. Blue Ghost shared a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Japanese company ispace, which will try to land on the moon after a failed attempt in 2023. Its Resilience lander is taking a longer route than Blue Ghost to save on fuel, arriving in May or June.  Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! Intuitive Machines attempts moon landing: March 6On the heels of Firefly Aerospace's moon landing attempt, competitor space company Intuitive Machines will try to touch down just four days later. The landing is slated for 11:32 a.m. CT on March 6. Intuitive Machines will provide live event coverage, starting at 10:30 a.m. CT / 11:30 a.m. ET. The company's lander, Athena, will attempt to descend on Mons Mouton, a plateau at the moon's south pole. Before landing, the spacecraft is expected to orbit the moon for about one week. SpaceX tests Starship following explosion: March 6Coming off the heels of a Starship test that ended in an explosion and a scrubbed launch on March 3, SpaceX will try to fly the rocket and empty spacecraft again as early as 5:30 p.m. CT March 6. The upcoming launch will be the eighth for Starship and feature several hardware changes following January's mishap. During the previous test, two flashes occurred near one of the ship's engines shortly after booster separation. A post-flight investigation determined that strong vibrations led to fuel leaks that were too much for the ship's vents to handle, leading to fires that eventually triggered the flight termination system. Launch of new astrophysics observatory: March 11NASA intends to launch an astrophysics observatory to create a map of the entire sky in 3D. The mission, SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer), will orbit Earth while studying hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies, showing them in 102 invisible "colors." One of the main goals of the mission is to learn more about cosmic inflation, a brief but crucial phase of the Big Bang that contributed to the universe's expansion. It will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California as early as 11:10 p.m. ET on March 11. Live launch coverage will begin at 10:15 p.m. ET. NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) probe is hitching a ride on the same rocket and will be the first to image the sun’s corona and solar wind together to better understand them as a connected system.  European spacecraft Hera flies by Mars: March 12Back in 2022, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a harmless asteroid to practice thwarting a space rock, should a hazardous one ever be on a collision course with Earth. The European Space Agency is providing a follow-up to that test, known as Hera. The mission's spacecraft launched in October 2024 and will rendezvous with Dimorphos, the slammed asteroid, in 2026. But this March, it will also have a quick pop-in with Mars, closest approach at 7:51 a.m. ET, and one of the Red Planet's two moons, Deimos. Mission controllers will use the opportunity to collect data on the Martian moon. The agency plans to host a webcast image release from the flyby at 6:50 a.m. ET the next day, March 13.Boeing astronaut crew returns home: March 18Two astronauts whose eight-day visit to the International Space Station turned into a more than eight-month layover are expected to return to Earth in March. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been waiting for their ride since the space agency decided not to send them home on the spaceship they rode in on. That test vehicle, Boeing's Starliner, landed empty without any problems, but NASA hadn't wanted to risk it after the capsule experienced propulsion issues in space. The pair was supposed to return in a SpaceX Dragon capsule in February, but NASA announced at the end of 2024 that the flight would likely be pushed back to March. Wilmore and Williams, who were integrated into Crew-9, will fly back to Earth after the next crew arrives at the space station, allowing for a brief hand-off period. Crew-10 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 14. Due to weather concerns later in the week, NASA has decided to move up the Crew-9 return. Their spaceship is expected to undock at 1:05 a.m. ET on March 18. A splashdown landing would follow at about 5:57 p.m. ET that evening. Katy Perry and others head to space: April 14Blue Origin will send an all-female crew to the edge of space in its next civilian astronaut mission. The flight will be the eleventh carrying passengers on the New Shepard rocket to the Kármán line, where Earth's atmosphere and outer space meet.Katy Perry, CBS Mornings' Gayle King, and Jeff Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez will join former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics scientist and social activist Amanda Nguyen, and fashion designer-turned-film producer Kerianne Flynn on the trip. The NS-31 mission will target liftoff from the company's private West Texas launch pad at 8:30 a.m. CT / 9:30 a.m. ET on April 14. Check back here for details about the webcast as the launch approaches. Lucy spacecraft flies by asteroid: April 20NASA launched the Lucy spacecraft on a grand 12-year asteroid tour last fall with plans to fly by several space rocks that share Jupiter’s orbit. On April 20, Lucy will encounter a small main-belt asteroid, Donaldjohanson, as a sort of test sequence before it visits seven Trojan asteroids. The asteroid, called DJ for short, is only 2.5 miles wide, with an extremely slow rotation that takes more than 10 days to complete. Peak of Lyrids meteor shower: April 21-22Meteor showers happen every year or at regular intervals as Earth passes through the dusty wake of previous comets. Each time a comet zips through the inner solar system, the sun boils off some of its surface, leaving behind a trail of debris. When the planet intersects with the old comet detritus, the result can be a spectacular show, with sometimes up to hundreds of meteors visible per hour. The debris that creates the Lyrid meteor shower originates from comet Thatcher. The Lyrids, best viewed from the Northern Hemisphere, will be active from April 17 to 26. Related Stories Peak of Eta Aquariids meteor shower: May 3-4The Eta Aquariids meteor shower, best viewed from the southern tropics, produces strong "persistent trains" of shooting stars. The shower is the first of two each year created by Halley's Comet debris. The celestial event will be active from April 20 to May 21.Twin spacecraft go to Mars: no earlier than springA NASA-funded science mission seeks to get to the bottom of how solar radiation strips away the tattered Martian atmosphere. Called Escapade, the mission will involve two Mars orbiters built by Rocket Lab.The flight was previously scheduled for October aboard Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, which would have been its first launch. But, as rockets are wont to do, the inaugural flight was delayed. NASA and Blue Origin are now in talks for a new launch date for that mission, no earlier than spring 2025.Japanese company tries moon landing: June 5After a failed attempt in April 2023, Japan's ispace will try to land an uncrewed robotic spacecraft on the moon and deliver a rover to its surface. The Hakuto-R mission is gearing up for a landing near the center of Mare Frigoris at 3:24 p.m. ET on June 5 (It will be June 6 for Japan). Livestream coverage will begin about one hour earlier, at 2:15 p.m. ET, with English translation. If conditions change, the company has identified three other potential sites for its lander, dubbed Resilience. The alternative locations have different landing dates and times. Private astronauts fly to ISS: June 8Private astronauts will launch to the International Space Station for Axiom Space's fourth mission. Four crew members will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as early as 9:11 a.m. ET on June 8. The commercial space company has said this mission will consist of about 60 scientific studies on the effects of spaceflight on the body and how to improve health and medical treatments on Earth.When Axiom flew its first private mission in 2022, it redefined the word "astronaut." For decades, that title was reserved for government space pilots and crew. More recently, uber-rich space tourists earned the distinction by breaching Earth's atmosphere. But with Axiom's private mission came a third possible description: Someone privately trained and sent into space to perform commercial scientific research. Axiom crews receive 750 to over 1,000 hours of training. Peak of Delta Aquariids meteor shower: July 29-30The Delta Aquariids are another shower best observed from the southern tropics. Conditions will be favorable for viewing meteors in the morning. Astronomers suspect the interacting debris causing the event came from the strange Comet Machholz. The event will be active from July 18 to Aug. 12. Peak of Perseids meteor shower: Aug. 12-13 Perseids meteors streak across the sky over Bishop, California, in 2024. Credit: NASA / Preston Dyches The popular Perseids, made up of remnants of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, is usually a spectacular show for the Northern Hemisphere. The meteor shower is active from July 17 to Aug. 23. But don't get your hopes up this year: Experts say the waning gibbous moon, more than 80 percent full, will allow only the brightest meteors to be seen. Europe's Juice spacecraft flies by Venus: Aug. 31The European Space Agency's so-called Juice mission is scheduled to fly by Venus on Aug. 31, though exact times and distances will be determined closer to the event. "Juice" is a wonky acronym for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer.The mission will study Jupiter's moons, including Europa, Callisto, and particularly Ganymede. These moons have intrigued scientists for years because they're thought to have liquid oceans trapped beneath icy shells. Before reaching Jupiter, the spacecraft will make flybys of Earth and Venus to get enough energy to slingshot to the outer solar system, reaching Jupiter in 2031.Astrobotic attempts moon landing, again: fall Astrobotic Technologies tried to become the first commercial company to land on the moon last year, but it lost its chance just a few hours into the flight because of a fuel leak. The company will try again this fall with its Griffin lander. Originally, this mission was supposed to carry a NASA rover to drill for ice at the lunar south pole. But VIPER — short for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover — was canceled due to cost overruns. Griffin will still launch without the rover as a flight demonstration of the lander and engines.Peak of Orionid meteor shower: Oct. 22-23The Orionids meteor shower marks the return of activity caused by Halley's Comet debris. In recent years, the displays have been pretty lackluster, but a waning crescent moon rising near dawn means moonlight won't obscure the shower in 2025. The celestial event will run from Oct. 2 to Nov. 12.Peak of Southern Taurids meteor shower: Nov. 3-4The Southern Taurids make up a complex meteor shower. Usually, the displays are weak, but Taurid meteors are more numerous sometimes. Known as a "swarm year," 2025's event could offer more fireballs as Earth plows through a group of pebble-sized fragments from the Comet Encke. But given the moon's phase, there's a good chance moonlight will interfere with viewing most Taurids. Activity will go from Oct. 13 to Nov. 27.  A Dream Chaser spaceplane, Tenacity, is expected to launch to the International Space Station in 2025. Credit: Sierra Space Peak of the Leonids meteor shower: Nov. 16-17The Leonids are some of the fastest-moving meteors, traveling up to 44 miles per second. The debris that causes the show comes from Comet Tempel-Tuttle, but the displays are usually pretty weak. The exceptions are years when the showers become so-called "meteor storms," but that won't likely happen again until perhaps 2035. The shower will be active from Nov. 3 to Dec. 2. Peak of Geminids meteor shower: Dec. 12-13Widely regarded as the best meteor shower of the year, the Geminids can be seen from most any part of the world, especially the Northern Hemisphere. The Geminids are denser meteors, allowing stargazers to see them as low as 29 miles above ground before the cosmic dust burns up. The shower will be active between Dec. 1 and 21.This year the moon will have a waning crescent phase, which rises around 2 a.m. local time. Prior to that, views should be moon-free. You could glimpse bright meteors by facing a direction with the moon at your back, according to the American Meteor Society.Peak of Ursids meteor shower: Dec. 21-22The Ursid meteors are caused by debris from Tuttle's Comet, which orbits every 13 years. This shower, often overlooked because of its close timing to Christmas, can only be observed in the Northern Hemisphere. Because of a new moon at the shower's peak, moonlight won't interfere with the show. The event will be active from Dec. 16 to 26. Other possible missions in 2025Sierra Space has been working on a spacecraft with the nostalgia of NASA's space shuttle program. Dream Chaser, a cargo space plane capable of runway landings, is set to launch for the first time to the ISS for a resupply mission sometime this year. Following Intuitive Machines' second mission in early 2025, the company will shoot for another later in 2025 or early in 2026. If successful, the lunar landing mission, IM-3 or PRISM, will deploy rovers and study a so-called "lunar swirl."NASA is teaming up with India's space agency on a mission to study Earth's land and ice, involving the NISAR satellite, which will scan all of the planet's surfaces twice every 12 days to measure changes. The satellite will launch from the Indian Space Research Organisation's space port, the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, on India's southeastern coast. It was supposed to liftoff this spring, but neither agency has provided an update on the mission's status. Topics NASA Elisha Sauers Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA's moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds. Through 17 years of reporting, she's covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association's top honor, Best in Show, and national recognition for narrative storytelling. For each year she has covered space, Sauers has won National Headliner Awards, including first place for her Sex in Space series. Send space tips and story ideas to [email protected] or text 443-684-2489. Follow her on X at @elishasauers.

The second, and final, part of an extensive look behind the scenes of the visual effects production for Lucasfilm’s pirate-themed Star Wars adventure series. By Clayton Sandell (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) The Observatory Moon Still searching for At Attin’s coordinates, Jod (Jude Law) and the kids land the Onyx Cinder on the Observatory Moon, seeking help from an alien, owl-like astronomer named Kh’ymm (voiced by Alia Shawkat). The group treks from the ship to the observatory, a striking sequence that includes visuals of the characters silhouetted against a night sky dominated by a nearby planet. The scenes were all captured in camera on the StageCraft volume, with the actors walking across a practically built dirt mound and the background displayed on the LED screens. “That was another one of our more successful volume shoots,” ILM visual effects supervisor Eddie Pasquarello says. “Perfect use of that, in my opinion.” The volume also helped create the illusion of the observatory center rotating within the outer walls. “That one was the most technically challenging,” says ILM virtual production supervisor Chris Balog. “We had to figure out multiple ways of tracking the camera to make sure that the wall was moving in conjunction with it. For some shots they had a circular dolly moving around the set. So we had to make sure that the wall was moving correctly too.” The volume was used in 1,565 shots in all, Balog says, and 900 of those shots were in-camera finals. Like Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), Kh’ymm was also realized using a combination of digital and practical techniques, depending on the scene. In some shots, a practical puppet created by Legacy Effects captured her performance entirely in camera. In other scenes, ILM collaborator Important Looking Pirates created a full computer graphics head composited on top of the puppeteered body or utilized a fully digital replica carefully animated to closely match the movements of the puppet. The episode concludes with the arrival of a pair of familiar New Republic ships summoned by Kh’ymm. “Of course, we see our first X-wings,” Pasquarello smiles. “That was right in our wheelhouse and fun for everyone to do.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin The Onyx Cinder arrives at a world that initially looks a lot like At Attin but is actually the conflict-battered sister planet At Achrann, a place where children are trained as soldiers in a war between the Troik and Hattan clans. The kids hike through the decayed remains of a neighborhood and city that once looked like their own. Live-action scenes were shot with minimal sets against blue screen backgrounds and completed with extensive environments created by ILM partner DNEG, including dilapidated buildings and streets, a fully-digital armored assault tank, and a small herd of horned eopie creatures. The heroes are challenged by a Troik warlord named General Strix (Mathieu Kassovitz) to prove their strength in battle. In exchange, Strix’s daughter Hayna (Hala Finley) takes them to an abandoned tower that may have the coordinates they need to get home. Inside the tower – another set that utilized the StageCraft volume – SM-33 (voiced by Nick Frost) reveals that his previous captain ordered him to destroy the coordinates to At Attin. Fern attempts to override his memory, triggering a hostile response and transformation sequence that required significant digital work by ILM’s Sydney studio. “Whenever SM-33 goes into attack mode, he’s more CG versus the puppeteered, less-docile version of him,” Pasquarello explains. “When he has those armored plates on, or whenever he grows, that’s all CG.” The abandoned tower set utilized a mix of 3D elements and backgrounds in the volume along with practical columns, floor, and set dressing. “I thought it had a really amazing photographic feel to it,” says Balog. “Some of the biggest challenges are blending the volume with the real set. And that’s why the virtual art department is such a key factor, because they have to work hand-in-hand with the set department and the 3D content to make sure the textures on everything look the same.” “ILM had a really great content team led by [visual effects associate supervisor] Dan Lobl, creating content that is believable and looks real,” Balog says. “We’re not successful unless they’re successful.” The setting also provides subtle foreshadowing to events that unfold inside the At Attin Supervisor’s Tower in episode eight,” says Pasquarello. “The environment was unique and custom,” he explains. “There’s a deliberate tilt up to the ceiling, and you can see some cables hanging. Those are the remnants of their Supervisor, who’s been totally gutted and ripped out. I think it’ll be fun for people to watch the series again, and they’ll understand.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Lanupa’s Luxury and Peril Next stop is a mountain on the planet Lanupa, the site of an old pirate lair that SM-33 believes contains At Attin’s coordinates. It’s also the site of a lavish hotel and spa occupied by high-end patrons, including a Hutt who swallows a Troglof mud bath attendant and a massive, tentacled creature called Cthallops, both achieved digitally with the help of Important Looking Pirates. Jod is captured by the pirate horde and sentenced to death. He’s allowed a few remaining minutes for a final appeal, measured by an hourglass filled with churning blue plasma. “It wasn’t a fully fleshed-out idea on set. We knew we needed an hourglass, and we would be doing it, but it was just kind of a fun adventure to figure out,” Pasquarello says. “We were trying to do some fun ideas with how the plasma would show the passage of time.” Successfully navigating a series of booby traps, the children, Jod, and SM-33 enter the subterranean treasure lair of pirate captain Tak Rennod, another set that relied heavily on the StageCraft volume. “They built the big skull throne that the pirate king sat on,” says Balog. “They had all the treasure in the room, four big columns, and the stairs and the rock when they walked in. Everything else in the cave was created with the volume.” After finally discovering At Attin’s secret, as well as its location, Jod betrays the children, who escape the lair by sliding down a series of tunnels to the base of the mountain. As Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Neel, Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and KB (Kyriana Kratter) figure out how to get back to the Onyx Cinder, they encounter a cast of curious trash crabs. “They’re not droids,” explains Pasquarello. “They’re literally crabs with garbage on their backs. And that was a lot of work to make that understandable. They’re not synthetic. It’s one of those sequences that is very rich in detail, and there’s a lot going on.” While the baby crabs are digital, a massive mama crab was created as a detailed stop-motion puppet by Tippett Studio, the production company founded by original Star Wars animator and creature designer Phil Tippett. The beast’s jagged, rusty, junk-laden look prompted the Tippett crew to nickname it “Tet’niss.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) “We generally did the rough blocking of the shots at ILM first,” production visual effects supervisor John Knoll explains. “We figured out what the shots wanted to be, the pace, and how big the creature was going to be. Once we got all those layouts approved, it went to Tippett’s, including all the camera info so they could figure out where the camera was positioned relative to the set and the puppet.” A low-resolution, untextured 3D model of the mama crab also helped animators work out the creature’s speed and movement in advance of shooting on the stop-motion stage. “Since stop-motion is very labor intensive, you don’t want to have to go back and reshoot things,” Knoll says. “So we got approval on their preliminary animation, and then they would go in and do the detailed stop-motion. And that was a particularly complicated character because there are so many moving parts on it. Obviously, there are the eight legs, but then there are all kinds of little pieces on it that bounce and move when it starts to walk. I’m impressed that they were able to keep that all straight in their heads.” The mama crab puppet weighed in at about 15 pounds, requiring support from a mechanical harness that was digitally erased in post-production. (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Onyx Cinder Metamorphosis The kids reach the Onyx Cinder just as an enormous scrapper barge closes in, threatening to pulverize the ship and ingest the remains into its fiery maw. “There’s sort of a tug-of-war between the ship and this garbage muncher,” Knoll explains. When the ship is snagged by one of the muncher’s claw-like arms, Fern decides their only hope for an escape is by triggering the emergency hull demolition sequencer. A series of rapid explosions ripple down the hull, causing the Onyx Cinder to shed its worn outer shell. A smaller, silver-colored version of the ship is freed and rises out of the debris. “Our code was the ‘ironclad’ and the ‘sleek ship,’” Pasquarello says of the two Onyx Cinder variants. “We went around a lot with the shedding of the hull. We didn’t want it to all blow off and just be conveniently revealed. It had to come off like a snake’s skin. “And the effects are just dialed up to 11,” continues Pasquarello, who hopes that fans notice a key storytelling detail of the ship’s metamorphosis. “One cool thing that I don’t think everybody knows is that when you transition between the ships, we don’t share all the same engines, but the engines that we do share between the ships change from a warm color to blue. “One of our challenges was that the sleek Onyx Cinder is a cleaner-burning ship,” Pasquarello says. “The whole conceit was that the engines were that orange color because they were dirty and running bad oil. We kept debating: ‘When would it turn blue?’ The sequence is a very elegant transition shot where you see it sputtering away all of that oil and dirt to the cleaner burning blue that we got.” Knoll says the transformation was one of the more “complicated” scenes to pull off. “There are a lot of simulation layers that are in there, and the sleek ship doesn’t actually fit inside the armored hull, so there was some sleight of hand that had to happen to make that appear to work,” he explains. The end result is one of Pasquarello’s favorite sequences. “Every time I watch it, I still get chills,” he says. “It just speaks to the detail that the creators had about this show. They thought of everything. [Jon] Watts was very clear with us that this is why this is happening. And we just had to figure out how to execute that.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) The Return to At At Attin’s coordinates in hand, Wim, Fern, KB, and Neel arrive at their home planet aboard the transformed Onyx Cinder. A horde of pirates led by Captain Brutus (portrayed by Fred Tatasciore and performance artist Stephen Oyoung) are not far behind. But the pirates are stopped by the planet’s protective, nebula-like barrier. “Going through the barrier for us was a really big endeavor,” says Pasquarello. “It’s something that started early because it’s so effects-driven and heavy and large scale, and there’s a lot of story to be told in there.” An array of satellites protect At Attin, blasting deadly arcs of lightning toward unauthorized ships. SM-33 reveals the Onyx Cinder is an At Attin vessel, which allows it to pass safely. The design and function of the satellites – crafted by ILM’s digital modeling department – evolved over time, says Pasquarello. “At one point, the satellites were actually emitting atmosphere. There were versions where you could literally see atmosphere coming out of them to create that cloudy environment,” he explains. Pirate ships pursue the Onyx Cinder through a toxic swirl of greenish-blue gasses but are destroyed by the satellites. “There’s a lot of heavy, heavy sims [simulations] and work that went into that sequence, and then the landing on At Attin,” Pasquarello says, giving credit to ILM’s compositing and effects teams. One element featured in the return to At Attin came along late in the production process. With shot delivery deadlines approaching faster than a ship in hyperspace, John Knoll got an email from Jon Watts. “He said, ‘We’ve done animatronic creatures, we’ve done rubber monsters, we’ve done stop-motion creatures. We did miniature and motion control. The only thing we haven’t really done from the old days is a traditionally-painted matte painting. Is it too late to do one?’” Knoll recalls. With only two months to make it happen, Knoll reached out to former ILM artist Jett Green at her home in Hawaii and asked if she’d like to put her brushes to work creating a traditional oil matte painting of At Attin. Using paint instead of pixels to compose a matte image is something ILM hadn’t done in about 30 years, according to Knoll. Green – with a long list of credits as a traditional matte painter on films including Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Labyrinth (1986), and Willow (1988) – says she was honored to be asked. “I love being part of this history,” Green tells ILM.com. “John and I had this conversation about it being a planet. He had the references already, and he told me what he needed. I even built the Masonite panel for it, and it just felt really good.” Knoll now has the roughly six-by-two-foot painting displayed in his ILM office. At Attin matte painting created by Jett Green (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Posing as an emissary from the New Republic, Jod gains access to At Attin’s bountiful treasure: 1,139 subterranean, credit-filled vaults. The vault is an entirely digital environment that DNEG populated with security droids, industrial robotic arms, and a seemingly endless supply of golden computer graphics credits that line the walls and spill into Jod’s rapacious hands. Jod, Fern, and her mother, Fara (Kerry Condon), ascend the Supervisor’s Tower. The Supervisor is revealed to be a large, domed droid with a red eye. Only a small part of the Supervisor droid was constructed physically, with the StageCraft volume completing the illusion. “Virtual production is the future of visual effects,” says Chris Balog, a 20-year ILM veteran with a background as a digital compositing artist. “It’s where the next evolution is going. And if you can do it successfully, it’s an amazing tool.” Jod destroys the Supervisor with a lightsaber, triggering a citywide power outage and disabling the barrier satellites, clearing the way for the massive pirate frigate to reach the planet’s surface.  The enormous frigate survives the barrier and floats ominously over the city. “The great effects work done with the frigate coming through the clouds was Travis Harkleroad, our effects supervisor,” Pasquarello says. “Those explosions all come from him and his people.” The all-computer graphics frigate’s arrival is meant to evoke the alien-arrival feeling of films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Independence Day (1996). “There was no practical frigate,” Pasquarello says. “It’s a gorgeous ship. It’s a very complex-looking ship, and there’s a lower and upper deck that was built inside, and ships and skiffs that come out of that.” Wim, Neel, and KB devise a two-part plan to rescue Fern and call Kh’ymm for help. Jumping on speeder bikes and pursued by skiffs loaded with angry pirates, the kids – along with Wim’s dad, Wendel (Tunde Adebimpe), make their way across the city. For close-up shots, the actors were shot on a blue screen stage, with the more dangerous action – like a perilous jump across a canyon – requiring the use of digital doubles. “The speeder bikes on this show were a real challenge in the sense that we can’t put kids into a lot of heavy stunt work,” says Pasquarello. “So there was a lot of work done to help the dynamics and the physics of that chase.” The action continues through an all-computer graphics forest, through the city, to the school. Pasquarello praises ILM’s animation, layout, simulation, and environments teams for the extensive 3D build. “They’re going through an entirely CG environment, created by the environments team that you just don’t question,” he says. “Not one thing that they fly over or go through is real.” Summoned by Kh’ymm, New Republic forces arrive at At Attin, attacking the pirate frigate and saving the day. The squadron of X-wings is backed up by B-wings, another fan-favorite fighter that first appeared in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) and later in Star Wars: Rebels (2014-2018). “The B-wings were a favorite of mine as a kid, so I did my best to try to get them featured in some big, heroic moments,” says ILM animation supervisor Shawn Kelly. “Initially, we had them dropping bombs on the pirate ship, but [Lucasfilm chief creative officer] Dave Filoni had the great suggestion to try the ‘composite laser’ weapon. Honestly, I had no idea what that was at first. As soon as the meeting was over, I looked it up and realized it’s the ridiculously cool quadruple-beam attack seen in Rebels. I got so excited by the idea that I stayed up late and designed a new shot that could really show off that attack. I felt like I was 10 years old again, playing with my B-wing toy in the backyard!” Balog would composite the B-wing shot himself, working in collaboration with the FX team to evoke the feeling of the laser as seen in Rebels, but with a more realistic style appropriate for live-action. The battle-wounded pirate frigate makes a spectacular crash landing, a completely computer graphics sequence that Pasquarello says was carefully designed to depict minimal casualties. “The conceit is that everyone’s been rounded up to a specific space, so we know that everybody evacuated,” he explains. “You notice it doesn’t really tear into buildings as the frigate crashes; it’s just pulling up the street and abandoned cars. It crashes gently into the waterway.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Galactic Global Effort Bringing Skeleton Crew to life with its creative mix of old and new took a tremendous amount of effort from artists around the globe. “I worked with a team of 50 animators that were in San Francisco, Vancouver, Singapore, Sydney, and Mumbai,” says Pasquarello. “A big team. We’re one big happy family; we’re all working together to bring these characters to life.” Knoll and veteran ILM modelmaker John Goodson say they feel lucky to still be bringing old-school ILM effects expertise to new productions. “You know, there’s only a few of us that still know how to do this stuff,” says Knoll. “And part of this for me was, I want to bring some younger people who are exposed to what we’re doing, who are trained up to use the gear so that when I’m not available to do this stuff there are people who know how to do it.” “We both came here because we wanted to shoot spaceship models,” Goodson adds. “And we’re still getting this opportunity. It’s a phenomenal experience to be able to do this, to take advantage of some of the newer technologies, and revisit this stuff from our past, which is the reason we got in the business to begin with.” For Shawn Kelly, a 28-year ILM veteran, working on Skeleton Crew was a career highlight. “Our review sessions on this project were by far the most enjoyable, fun, collaborative,” he says. “Watts and Ford are awesome. They have tons of great ideas. They’re really collaborative and open to ideas. It felt like a family just trying to make the best thing we can make all together.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) – Clayton Sandell is a Star Wars author and enthusiast, TV storyteller, and a longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design. Follow him on Instagram (@claytonsandell) Bluesky (@claytonsandell.com) or X (@Clayton_Sandell).

This Duster review contains no spoilers. Would you look at that? Actor Josh Holloway and creator J.J. Abrams have reunited for the first time since Lost crash-landed onto ABC 20 years ago. I have slight memories of the series — I was more of a Heroes watcher — but never felt inclined to revisit. Nonetheless, I can understand the joy in seeing them collaborate on a new project after all these years. But this time, they’re trading vehicles and genres. Abrams and LaToya Morgan’s Max period crime thriller series, Duster, in which Holloway portrays a getaway driver tapped to be a mole by the FBI, bears a pulpy and cartoonish exterior, though its constant tonal whiplash prevents its engine from roaring as loud as it should. Jim Ellis (Holloway) is the quintessential getaway driver men don’t want to mess with and women want to be with. He’s a cool, alluring, charming dude whose business varies between wheelman, courier, and blackmailer. Most of his jobs are for his crime lord boss, Ezra Saxton (Keith David), who has the Southwest crime strip on lock and whom he’s loyal to thanks to the friendship his dad Wade (Corbin Bernsen) shared with him. Whenever he’s not under Saxton’s thumb, he’s a supportive uncle to his fellow courier driver ex-girlfriend Izzy’s (Camille Guaty) daughter Luna (Adriana Aluna Martinez). Although Jim leads a low-key lifestyle, it’s evident that he is going through a transition brought on by the unresolved death of his beloved brother, Joey who was also a wheelman in the past and died in an explosion.  Enter the driven and hard-working Nina Hayes (Rachel Hilson), who makes it into the FBI as the first Black woman agent. Because it’s the ‘70s, all the white males within her unit, whether it be her peers or superiors, do their best to belittle her. The sole person she establishes a friendship with is Awan (Asivak Koostachin), a comic book-loving Navajo nation-based agent who is assigned as her partner.  Hayes and Ellis’ worlds collide, and she propositions him to be her mole for the FBI to take down Saxton and his entire crime syndicate. Unknown to her FBI allies, Hayes has additional motivations for wanting to bring Saxton down. Jim’s loyalty to his boss is frequently put to the test during the season’s perilous assignments, causing him to question his loyalty to Saxton. Hayes faces the same moral compass challenge as she is compelled to work outside the law and actively pursue information.  Despite the serialization of the plot, Duster bears a high-spirited eccentricity that works in its favor for most of the series. At least on Jim Ellis’ part, where it adopts the “mission of the week” episodic format. Every episode follows Jim going job to job for Saxton, which results in him either facing off against assassins or crime lords straight out of an ‘80s animation. Jim’s quests get unabashedly cartoonish to the extent that one episode features a stunningly animated dream sequence where Jim envisions himself in a Looney Tunes cartoon. When he’s not fighting in his orange Plymouth Duster, Jim’s wheelman missions involve him interacting with icons of 1970s pop culture, such as Colonel Tom Parker and Adrienne Barbeau. Abrams and Morgan’s use of campy worldbuilding is largely attributable to the charismatic supporting actors who confidently embellish their roles, as opposed to the straight-laced nature of the two leads. Jim’s smooth persona, in particular, bounces off quirky characters, resulting in strong comedic moments. Some of my favorite scenes are when Jim fights with his stepmother Charlotte (Gail O’ Grady), who despises him to no end even though they both have a close bond with Wade the patriarch. Duster‘s heart simply lies in how Jim and Nina navigate this kooky, crime world and their reliance on each other to thrive in their paths. Holloway’s smooth wit and personable bravado contribute to the show’s welcoming gravitas. Hilson on her part excels with a tough, self-assured backbone that adds so much charm to the conventional cop-criminal dynamic she and Holloway share.  It’s clear that Duster is a different engine from Lost, but Holloway hasn’t lost his star touch. The series thrives on being brainless, fast-food TV that is often wildly entertaining, accompanied by stylish and cool action sequences. Whether it be combat or car chase sequences with adrenaline-inducing practical crashes, it feels like a remnant of pulpy action thrillers with an adult edge not often around in modern television. Much of that credit is attributed to director Steph Green, who keeps the energy buoyed throughout each episode despite elements of the overarching investigation Nina and Awan feeling like a chore to get through.  Some episodes have trouble keeping a consistent tone. Mostly when it tries to make timely social commentary about workplace diversity, racial identity, and equality, especially within Nina and Izzy’s subplot. It’s a good attempt, if not absolutely necessary, especially since many studios are cutting back on diverse content in a Trump 2.0 administration. But it all contradicts the ridiculous scenes that follow, like Jim facing an assassin whose shtick is throwing projectile blades or a ceiling fan landing on a racist patron’s crotch. Duster is an all-around enjoyable and engaging historical thriller, supported by a warm, campy energy and wit, incredible action scenes, and strong performances from Josh Holloway and Rachel Hilson. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The first episode of Duster premieres Thursday, May 15 at 9 p.m. ET on Max. New episodes debut Thursdays at the same time, culminating with the finale on July 3.

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The first US hub for experimental medical treatments is coming The news: A bill that allows clinics to sell unproven treatments has been passed in Montana. Under the legislation, doctors can apply for a license to open an experimental treatment clinic and recommend and sell therapies not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to their patients. Why it matters: Once it’s signed by the governor, the law will be the most expansive in the country in allowing access to drugs that have not been fully tested. The bill allows for any drug produced in the state to be sold in it, providing it has been through phase I clinical trials—but these trials do not determine if the drug is effective.The big picture: The bill was drafted and lobbied for by people interested in extending human lifespans. And these longevity enthusiasts are hoping Montana will serve as a test bed for opening up access to experimental drugs. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou Google DeepMind’s new AI agent cracks real-world problems better than humans can Google DeepMind has once again used large language models to discover new solutions to long-standing problems in math and computer science. This time the firm has shown that its approach can not only tackle unsolved theoretical puzzles, but improve a range of important real-world processes as well. The new tool, called AlphaEvolve, uses large language models (LLMs) to produce code for a wide range of different tasks. LLMs are known to be hit and miss at coding. The twist here is that AlphaEvolve scores each of Gemini’s suggestions, throwing out the bad and tweaking the good, in an iterative process, until it has produced the best algorithm it can. In many cases, the results are more efficient or more accurate than the best existing (human-written) solutions.Read the full story. —Will Douglas Heaven Research cuts are threatening crucial climate data —Casey Crownhart Over the last few weeks, there’s been an explosion of news about proposed budget cuts to science in the US. Researchers and civil servants are sounding the alarm that those cuts mean we might lose key data that helps us understand our world and how climate change is affecting it. Long-running US government programs that monitor the snowpack across the West are among those being threatened by cuts across the US federal government, as my colleague James Temple’s new story explores. Also potentially in trouble: carbon dioxide measurements in Hawaii, hurricane forecasting tools, and a database that tracks the economic impact of natural disasters.  It’s all got me thinking: What do we lose when data is in danger? Read the full story. This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Donald Trump doesn’t want Apple building iPhones in India The US President claims Apple will be upping their US production as a result. (Bloomberg $)+ He also said that India was willing to “literally charge us no tariffs.” (WSJ $)2 Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot ranted about white genocide  In response to completely unrelated queries. (FT $)+ It’s not the first time Grok has shared questionable responses. (Bloomberg $)+ Grok told users it was instructed to accept white genocide as real. (The Guardian) 3 RFK Jr doesn’t think we should take his medical advice Which begs the question: why is he US Health and Human Services secretary? (NY Mag $)+ Kennedy said his opinions on vaccines are irrelevant. (NYT $)+ He defended his decision to downsize the health department amid protests. (The Guardian)4 GM’s new EV battery can power a truck for more than 400 miles  Its lithium manganese-rich cells use cheaper minerals than lithium-ion ones. (Fast Company $)+ Tariffs are bad news for batteries. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Anthropic has been accused of using AI-generated evidence in a legal case A lawyer for Universal Music Group claimed an expert cited a source that didn’t exist. (Reuters)+ A judge in another case reportedly caught fake AI citations, too. (Ars Technica)+ AI companies are finally being forced to cough up for training data. (MIT Technology Review)6 AI won’t put human radiologists out of a job any time soonThe technology is helpful, but is unable to do everything trained human experts can. (NYT $) + Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer. (MIT Technology Review) 7 The US Defense Department wants faster aircraft and missiles And startups are more than willing to answer the call. (WP $)+ Phase two of military AI has arrived. (MIT Technology Review)8 SpaceX has successfully tested its Starship rocket 🚀Clearing a major hurdle ahead of its planned launch later this month. (Wired $)9 YouTube will start inserting ads into videos’ crucial moments Wow, that doesn’t sound annoying at all. (TechCrunch)10 Apple’s Vision Pro headset is a pain in the neckAnd early adopters are regretting shelling out $3,500 apiece. (WSJ $) + Maybe the ability to scroll using their eyes will change their minds. (Bloomberg $) Quote of the day “To say a professor is ‘some kind of monster’ for using AI to generate slides “is, to me, ridiculous.” —Paul Shovlin, a professor at Ohio University, reacts to student backlash against professors using AI to create teaching materials, the New York Times reports. One more thing Who gets to decide who receives experimental medical treatments?There has been a trend toward lowering the bar for new medicines, and it is becoming easier for people to access treatments that might not help them—and could even harm them. Anecdotes appear to be overpowering evidence in decisions on drug approval. As a result, we’re ending up with some drugs that don’t work. We urgently need to question how these decisions are made. Who should have access to experimental therapies? And who should get to decide? Such questions are especially pressing considering how quickly biotechnology is advancing. We’re not just improving on existing classes of treatments—we’re creating entirely new ones. Read the full story.—Jessica Hamzelou We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + Food nostalgia is the best nostalgia, and this Bluesky account of discontinued foods doesn't disappoint.+ Don’t even think of calling your newborn baby King if you live in New Zealand.+ Actor Jeremy Strong just loves a bucket hat.+ Watch out Swiss drivers—a duck has been caught speeding 🦆

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The first US hub for experimental medical treatments is coming The news: A bill that allows clinics to sell unproven treatments has been passed in Montana. Under the legislation, doctors can apply for a license to open an experimental treatment clinic and recommend and sell therapies not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to their patients. Why it matters: Once it’s signed by the governor, the law will be the most expansive in the country in allowing access to drugs that have not been fully tested. The bill allows for any drug produced in the state to be sold in it, providing it has been through phase I clinical trials—but these trials do not determine if the drug is effective.The big picture: The bill was drafted and lobbied for by people interested in extending human lifespans. And these longevity enthusiasts are hoping Montana will serve as a test bed for opening up access to experimental drugs. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou Google DeepMind’s new AI agent cracks real-world problems better than humans can Google DeepMind has once again used large language models to discover new solutions to long-standing problems in math and computer science. This time the firm has shown that its approach can not only tackle unsolved theoretical puzzles, but improve a range of important real-world processes as well. The new tool, called AlphaEvolve, uses large language models (LLMs) to produce code for a wide range of different tasks. LLMs are known to be hit and miss at coding. The twist here is that AlphaEvolve scores each of Gemini’s suggestions, throwing out the bad and tweaking the good, in an iterative process, until it has produced the best algorithm it can. In many cases, the results are more efficient or more accurate than the best existing (human-written) solutions.Read the full story. —Will Douglas Heaven Research cuts are threatening crucial climate data —Casey Crownhart Over the last few weeks, there’s been an explosion of news about proposed budget cuts to science in the US. Researchers and civil servants are sounding the alarm that those cuts mean we might lose key data that helps us understand our world and how climate change is affecting it. Long-running US government programs that monitor the snowpack across the West are among those being threatened by cuts across the US federal government, as my colleague James Temple’s new story explores. Also potentially in trouble: carbon dioxide measurements in Hawaii, hurricane forecasting tools, and a database that tracks the economic impact of natural disasters.  It’s all got me thinking: What do we lose when data is in danger? Read the full story. This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Donald Trump doesn’t want Apple building iPhones in India The US President claims Apple will be upping their US production as a result. (Bloomberg $)+ He also said that India was willing to “literally charge us no tariffs.” (WSJ $)2 Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot ranted about white genocide  In response to completely unrelated queries. (FT $)+ It’s not the first time Grok has shared questionable responses. (Bloomberg $)+ Grok told users it was instructed to accept white genocide as real. (The Guardian) 3 RFK Jr doesn’t think we should take his medical advice Which begs the question: why is he US Health and Human Services secretary? (NY Mag $)+ Kennedy said his opinions on vaccines are irrelevant. (NYT $)+ He defended his decision to downsize the health department amid protests. (The Guardian)4 GM’s new EV battery can power a truck for more than 400 miles  Its lithium manganese-rich cells use cheaper minerals than lithium-ion ones. (Fast Company $)+ Tariffs are bad news for batteries. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Anthropic has been accused of using AI-generated evidence in a legal case A lawyer for Universal Music Group claimed an expert cited a source that didn’t exist. (Reuters)+ A judge in another case reportedly caught fake AI citations, too. (Ars Technica)+ AI companies are finally being forced to cough up for training data. (MIT Technology Review)6 AI won’t put human radiologists out of a job any time soonThe technology is helpful, but is unable to do everything trained human experts can. (NYT $) + Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer. (MIT Technology Review) 7 The US Defense Department wants faster aircraft and missiles And startups are more than willing to answer the call. (WP $)+ Phase two of military AI has arrived. (MIT Technology Review)8 SpaceX has successfully tested its Starship rocket 🚀Clearing a major hurdle ahead of its planned launch later this month. (Wired $)9 YouTube will start inserting ads into videos’ crucial moments Wow, that doesn’t sound annoying at all. (TechCrunch)10 Apple’s Vision Pro headset is a pain in the neckAnd early adopters are regretting shelling out $3,500 apiece. (WSJ $) + Maybe the ability to scroll using their eyes will change their minds. (Bloomberg $) Quote of the day “To say a professor is ‘some kind of monster’ for using AI to generate slides “is, to me, ridiculous.” —Paul Shovlin, a professor at Ohio University, reacts to student backlash against professors using AI to create teaching materials, the New York Times reports. One more thing Who gets to decide who receives experimental medical treatments?There has been a trend toward lowering the bar for new medicines, and it is becoming easier for people to access treatments that might not help them—and could even harm them. Anecdotes appear to be overpowering evidence in decisions on drug approval. As a result, we’re ending up with some drugs that don’t work. We urgently need to question how these decisions are made. Who should have access to experimental therapies? And who should get to decide? Such questions are especially pressing considering how quickly biotechnology is advancing. We’re not just improving on existing classes of treatments—we’re creating entirely new ones. Read the full story.—Jessica Hamzelou We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + Food nostalgia is the best nostalgia, and this Bluesky account of discontinued foods doesn't disappoint.+ Don’t even think of calling your newborn baby King if you live in New Zealand.+ Actor Jeremy Strong just loves a bucket hat.+ Watch out Swiss drivers—a duck has been caught speeding 🦆