In 2018 Korean animator and illustrator Han Ji-won created a commercial for jewelry brand Stonehenge that follows a girl who dreams of going to space, just like her astronaut grandmother. The brief, beautiful animation caught the attention of Korean production company Climax Studios, who saw potential for a much bigger story about the human connections astronauts carry with them into space.  Seven years later, the Netflix animated film Lost in Starlight expands that near-future world into a story of two star-crossed lovers who fall in love on the neon-lit rooftops of a futuristic Seoul only to be separated by 140 million miles when one of them embarks on an expedition to Mars.  “While I was developing the script [for Lost in Starlight], a lot of things changed,” writer-director Han says In fleshing out the story, she was inspired by the individuality of Miyazaki, the edgy sentimentality of Cowboy Bebop, and the near-future worldbuilding of Her. “But, still, there were the same keywords: space, female lead, music, childhood, and love.”  Lost in Starlight centers a slice-of-life love story between astro botanist Nan-young (voiced by The Handmaiden’s Kim Tae-ri in Korean and Never Have I Ever’s Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in English) and musician Jay (voiced by Weak Hero’s Hong Kyung in Korean, and Umbrella Academy’s Justin H. Min in English). For Nan-young, who hopes to find life on the planet, Mars is personal. Her mother was part of a doomed, 2026 mission to the Red Planet. Twenty-five years later, Nan-young dreams of continuing in her mother’s footsteps, and helping the Adonis amurensis flower thrive on the alien planet.  “My character is kind of stubborn at times,” says Ramakrishnan, with a laugh. “She’s a girl boss, but she needs to take a breath.” That breath comes in the form of a return to Seoul from Houston, following low psychological exam scores that have Nan-young bumped from an upcoming Martian expedition. The driven scientist doesn’t give up on her goal, continuing her development of a Life Form Detector to try to earn a spot on the trip, but she also finds time to devote to fixing her late mother’s busted record player. When Nan-young literally bumps into Jay with the 2023 Crozby in her arms, he becomes determined to fix it for her.  “I would describe Jay as someone who doesn’t really believe in himself,” Min says of the character who is working in a vintage electronics repair shop after turning away from his passion for composing and performing music. “I think he is more concerned about the practicalities of life and just kind of getting by. I think he has a lot of dreams, but he doesn’t quite know how to act on them and fulfill them.” While Jay may be hesitant in his music, he is determined when it comes to pursuing the brilliant Nan-young. By the time he has fixed her record player, the two have fallen for one another… but can their budding relationship survive the distance between Earth and Mars? Like the short animation it stems from, Lost in Starlight is far more interested in the emotional dimensions of space travel than the logistical ones. The Martian, this is not—nor does it want to be, instead curious about the work of human connection in a sometimes unforgiving but never hopeless universe. The film’s space-scapes are vividly animated, and especially powerful in the abstract. In one climactic, hallucinatory moment, Nan-young’s vision explodes with the yellow blossoms of the flower that connects her work to her mother’s, across time and mortality. She imagines the galaxy as a spinning record, the vinyl representing connections to her mother and to Jay, as well as the natural forces that move us all along.  The story is strongest, however, in its most mundane, Earth-bound moments, and in the ways Han’s animation is able to connect the familiar with the fantastic so seamlessly. Like anime auteurs Hideko Miyazai and Makoto Shinkai before her, Han is incredibly detailed in her realization of interior spaces, bringing a sense of realism to the animated format that casts the same warm, human touch to the mise-en-scene of a Martian research facility as it does Jay’s sunlit, stickered Euljiro apartment. In 2051 Seoul, massive holographic jellyfish float through the twilight sky, but Nan-young’s aging father still sticks struggling plants in an old mug emblazoned with a heart-shaped photo of his family from decades previous. And when Nan-young takes a self-driving car home after a long day, Han focuses not on the technology but our weary protagonist toeing off her work heels. This balance between the futuristic and the familiar is further buoyed by the film’s soundtrack, which features work from Korean artists such as CIFIKA, Meego, and Wave to Earth’s Kim Daniel. “I am a little bit greedy about having really good soundtracks,” says Han. “I wanted it to be futuristic but not apocalyptic, a little bit edgy but soft at the same time.” Han chose synth-pop as the main sound, pairing the electronic sounds of the genre with subdued, dreamy beats. Korean voice actors Kim and Hong contributed some of the lyrics for the tender, lulling songs Jay writes and performs in the film. Korean media has become known internationally for its love stories, most famously depicted in the K-drama format. While Lost in Starlight borrows some of the same narrative DNA that makes those romances tick, it represents something startlingly original within a Korean animation industry that has more often been known internationally for its outsourcing work and preschool TV programs than feature films for adults. “While we still have those companies in Korea doing a lot of outsourcing work, we also have new aspiring companies that come into the picture,” says Han of the state of the Korean animation industry.  Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Han, who became the youngest Korean animator to direct a theatrically released feature film in 2015 with anthology Clearer Than You Think, comes from an indie background, but worked with a commercial production company to make Lost in Starlight. “We have these great artists who have a lot of potential in terms of their creativity and storytelling, and then we have these companies who are now willing to do both the pre and main production works,” says Han. “I think we need a lot of love and interest and support from a lot of different players, and I hope that it could be consistent, so that we can keep on working on our projects. If that happens, then I think we’re going to bloom like flowers.” Lost in Starlight is available to stream on Netflix starting May 30.

MM33 Apartment / bunoSave this picture!Apartments, Apartment Interiors•Khet Khlong Toei, Thailand Architects: buno Area Area of this architecture project Area:  54 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2023 Photographs Photographs:Napat PattrayanondMore SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. MM33 Apartment rethinks a typical domestic milieu, a commercialized urban housing unit where room sizes are predominantly determined more by the logic of sales and marketing data rather than the dynamics of life. To create more space for flexible usages and for a sense of spaciousness, the rigid sense of room making is challenged, and the assumed standard dimensions are discarded for more meticulously compact scales.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The new design turns a one-bedroom apartment into an open-plan space, in which "rooms" are pushed against the boundaries to make space for an airy, unobstructed "court." These rooms—the sleeping, lounging, dressing, and bathroom areas—are reduced to their optimum sizes; although small, they fit just right, for these dimensions are carefully specified accordingly to the user's scale and requirements.  The court space is functionally for cooking and dining. But it also acts as a borrowed visual space for the rooms besides. So, the space perceived is bigger.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The extension of space is possible due to the use of operable walls that gently divide the court from the others while allowing for a sense of connection, instead of fixed and opaque partitioning. The curtains permit flexibility of use and make a spacious feeling possible while not rejecting privacy where needed. In the absence of walls as room makers/dividers, the functional fixtures play a crucial role in space planning and the aesthetics of the whole. They become architectural elements. These pieces of furniture are conceptualized as individual prefab units, equipped with essential functions for small-scale urban living, potentially applicable to various other sites, while adjustable to specific conditions.Save this picture!Save this picture!The essence of materiality is fully exposed. The floor is light beige linoleum. The fixture units are constructed of structural clear-coated plywood, exposing their layered edges. The distinct coloring aims to break the box-like volume into planes, and allow more flexibility and freedom by making object selection not too restricted, as opposed to having a monotonous ambience.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Ari, Bangkok, ThailandLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this officebunoOffice••• Published on May 25, 2025Cite: "MM33 Apartment / buno" 25 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030326/mm33-apartment-buno&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here The era of ray-tracing is here. After years of tiptoeing around the modern lighting feature, some games are now requiring ray-tracing hardware to run such as Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, Star Wars Outlaws and the new DOOM: The Dark Ages. In an interview with Digital Foundry, Id Software’s director of engine technology Billy Khan explained that ray-tracing isn’t just a fancy lighting solution, but it’s a tool that helps to speed up the process of making games. Without the need to pre-bake lighting solutions, game’s can not only take up less space on a PC or console, but developers can iterate faster than every before. DOOM would’ve taken longer without ray-tracing Speaking to the tech analyst team, Khan explained that making DOOM: The Dark Ages “without ray-tracing” while keeping the same larger environments and complex cinematics “would have had to elongate the time [of development] by a magnitude of years”. For decades now, developers have been forced to pre-bake lighting with lightmaps and shadowmaps that take ages to calculate. As soon as something is changed in an environment such as a light fixture moving place or a piece of the environment changing location, those pre-baked calculations need to be ran all over again. Unlike ray-tracing, these pre-baked maps also take up storage space. “Without ray tracing and with the same design goals, we would have had to elongate the time by a magnitude of years.”DOOM: THE DARK AGES DIRECTOR OF ENGINE TECHNOLOGY BILLY KHAN “The more you can quickly iterate on it, the more polished and diverse the gameplay encounters can become,” Khan told the outlet. “Ray tracing allows us to do WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), replacing the approximate representation used by artists and designers with exactly what it’s going to look like on PC or console, without bakes that take hours upon hours. You can imagine what kind of speed improvement that is. It’s a 10x if not 100x improvement in iteration time. A lighter can now move a light in the middle of a meeting if we want a spot to be darker, for example.” Khan explained that making DOOM: The Dark Ages with ray-tracing requirements wasn’t just a technique to make the game look “really great”, but to overall make “a better game”. With the power of real-time ray-tracing instead of generated pre-bakes, there’s a lot more time allotted to experimentation that the team otherwise couldn’t afford. “Without ray tracing and with the same design goals, we would have had to elongate the time by a magnitude of years, because we wouldn’t have the ability to create the same type of content,” he explained. “If you have a baked lighting solution, some of those things can feel out of place, especially when you’re in a mech smashing into buildings and tearing chunks off. You can’t bake for these dynamic objects, so the ambient lighting would look off without RT; with RT, all of that stuff looks homogeneous and more real.” Khan also explained that it’s lucky that “all the platforms have ray-tracing”. While a Nintendo Switch 2 port hasn’t been announced, even that system supports ray-tracing in some form, although we’ve only seen one instance of it running on the hardware and that doesn’t look great. With this in mind, there wasn’t a need to spend an extreme amount of time working to support older hardware, even if gamers with older GPUs now need to upgrade to play. (Remember, we all upgraded for DOOM 3.) So-called “forced ray-tracing” is only going to become more common as the industry continues to evolve. With games now taking much longer to make, ray-traced lighting and reflections are a key component in shortening that development time. While we could have waited another three years fro DOOM: The Dark Ages, Id Software might not have been able to. DOOM: The Dark Ages Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X Genre(s): Action, First-Person Shooter Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

If you watch anime, particularly of the shonen variety, you likely know Toei Animation. The studio is best known for adapting popular manga like Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon, and it’s got plenty of work coming out. When those series and films release, some may have been made with artificial intelligence. In Toei’s recently published financial briefing for 2024-2025’s fiscal year, one slide reveals the studio’s invested an undisclosed sum of money into Preferred Networks, a Japanese company with “cutting-edge AI technologies.” The two hope to “co-develop new business opportunities and improve the efficiency and quality of our production, capitalizing on synergies between AI and animation production technologies.” © Toei Toei is specifically eyeing AI usage for storyboards in productions, along with coloring (and color specification), backgrounds, and in-betweens. Use cases cited include having the technology automatically correcting in-between or specifying and picking the correct colors, and generating backgrounds from referenced photos. At the time, the slide only talks about future prospects, and makes no mention of the technology being incorporated in the studio’s current works like One Piece or the upcoming Digimon BeatBreak and Gosu. AI has been controversial to use and discuss across the larger entertainment industry. While it’s often been argued to be a means of efficiency and helpful to reducing menial work, workers across different creative fields like (voice acting and art) feel their livelihoods have been threatened by studios’ adoption of the technology and its integration into projects without artists’ consent. Others consider it a form of theft or digital necromancy that could add extra steps to the production process or lead to unintended errors upon release. Toei’s a big company, and how it uses the technology will impact everyone, from other studios to the fans who watch their works. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

It's been over two years since Sony had a new pair of headphones in its 1000X lineup, but the newly announced WH-1000XM6 seem worth the wait. From the outside, the new ANC headphones look similar to the streamlined WH-1000XM5 from 2022, with the only major change being the return of ear cups that rotate and fold flat. Inside, though, Sony's packed in improvements that put the WH-1000XM6 ahead of the competition in terms of both sound quality and active noise cancellation. That's mostly thanks to the new QN3 processor on the inside, the addition of four new built-in microphones (from eight on the 1000XM5 to 12 on the 1000XM6) and an updated system for adapting ANC performance around fit and pressure. All three combine for noticeably better ANC. Those changes haven't led to shorter battery life either — you'll get the same 30 hours with ANC activated on the WH-1000XM6 that you were able to get on the WH-1000XM5. The WH-1000XM6 is not only able to play spatial audio tracks like the WH-100XM5 and AirPods Max can, the headphones can also convert any stereo track you throw at it into 360-degree audio. For most people, though, the more immediately useful new feature will be the ability to keep using the headphones while you charge them, something oddly missing from previous models. At $450, the WH-100XM6 are a good $50 more expensive than WH-1000XM5 and tiptoeing closer to the exorbitantly priced AirPods Max. The best way to know if Sony's new headphones are right for you is to read Engadget's review and ideally, try them for yourself. Until then, we've put together an overview of how the WH-1000XM6 compare to the WH-1000XM5 and the AirPods Max. WH-1000MX6 WH-1000MX5 AirPods Max Pricing (MSRP) $450 $400 $549 Active noise cancellation Yes Yes Yes Transparency mode Yes Yes Yes Adaptive audio Yes Yes Yes Multipoint connectivity Yes Can switch between 2 Bluetooth connections Fast Pair with Android devices  Swift Pair with Windows 11 and Windows 10 devices Yes Can switch between 2 Bluetooth connections Fast Pair with Android devices Swift Pair with Windows 11 and Windows 10 devices No Automatic device switching between Apple devices only Battery life (rated) Up to 30 hours with ANC on Up to 40 hours with ANC off Up to 30 hours with ANC on Up to 40 hours with ANC off Up to 20 hours with ANC on Up to 20 hours with ANC and Spatial Audio on Up to 20 hours of talk time Wired charging USB-C USB-C USB-C Water & dust resistance No No No Size & weight 8.96 oz 8.82 oz 13.6 oz Chip(s) Sony QN3 Sony QN1 + V1 Apple H1 Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.3 Bluetooth 5.2 Bluetooth 5.0 Bluetooth codecs SBC, AAC, LDAC, LC3 SBC, AAC, LDAC AAC, SBC Spatial audio Yes 360 Audio 360 Spatial Sound Upmix for converting stereo audio Yes 360 Audio Yes Control type Touch controls for playback and volume NC/AMB button for ANC Touch controls for playback and volume NC/AMB button Digital Crown dial for playback and volume Noise control button for ANC Mics & sensors 12 microphones total: six microphones for calls Touch sensors Accelerometer Gyroscope Eight microphones total: four microphones for calls Touch sensors Accelerometer Gyroscope Nine microphones total: eight ANC mics, three mics for voice pickup (two shared for ANC) Optical sensor Position sensor Case-detect sensor Accelerometer Gyroscope This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/heres-how-the-sony-wh-1000xm6-compare-to-the-wh-1000xm5-and-airpods-max-193706730.html?src=rss