The hardest part about finding games like Hollow Knight is knowing where to start. The overwhelming success of Team Cherry's award-winning 2017 game--and anticipation of its long-awaited sequel, Silksong--prompted a flood of similar games all looking to capture the magic of combining soulslike combat with deep exploration. Some are more inventive than others, building on Hollow Knight's foundations to push that style of game forward in new or unexpected ways. Others take a specific aspect, such as grueling boss fights, and run with it. We've combed through the lot and picked out 15 of the best games like Hollow Knight to get you started in this impressively varied sub-genre.If you're not as excited about combat and want puzzles and exploration instead, head over to our list of the best metroidvania games. Nine Sols Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5Release Date: May 29, 2024Developer: Red Candle GamesIf Hollow Knight is the Dark Souls of metroidvanias, then Nine Sols is the genre's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Parrying is at the core of almost everything you do in Nine Sols, from dealing with standard enemies to wearing down some of its relentless bosses. Among games like Hollow Knight, it's also one of the most thematically and visually distinct. Developer Red Candle Games call Nine Sols a "Taopunk," a blend of sci-fi punk with traditional Taoist architecture and symbolism. Most protagonists in games like these are blank slates, but Nine Sols adds a personal touch by making the personality of its hero, Yi, an important part of the story. Yi starts out seeking revenge, and ends up on a journey to save the world and himself, becoming a reluctant hero in the process. See at Humble Animal Well Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5Release Date: May 9, 2024Developer: Billy Basso, Shared Memory LLCAnimal Well is a puzzle, or more accurately, a lot of puzzles. There's a bit of combat and some platforming, but mostly, it's about trying to unravel dozens of mysteries big and small as you delve ever further into a maze that wouldn't be out of place in Lewis Carrol's Wonderland stories. Explaining too much about what's going on would spoil what makes Animal Well special, but the most interesting and even subversive parts of it is that you have almost nothing to guide you and can make discoveries in any order. That freedom creates a sense of discovery and wonder that's often absent from the procedural methods inherent in these kinds of games.Read our Animal Well review. See at Steam Ultros Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5Release Date: February 13, 2024Developer: HadoqueOf all the games like Hollow Knight, Ultros takes the most organic approach to metroidvanias, and we mean that literally. You, an intergalactic explorer, arrive on a psychedelic space colony called The Sarcophagus and find it teeming with exotic life and mysterious spiritual energies. You use the life force and remains of enemies to nourish your mind and unlock new abilities, and there's a scoring system that ranks how efficiently you defeat your foes. That determines the quality of the loot they drop, so if you want to unlock and improve your skills, you have to plan each encounter carefully. Ultros is also absolutely beautiful, a dream-like blend of esoteric architecture and wild ecosystems with closer ties to the Sarcophagus' secrets than Ultros initially suggests. Read our Ultros review. See at Fanatical Blasphemous 2 Platforms: PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo SwitchRelease Date: August 24, 2023Developer: The Game KitchenBlasphemous 2's big addition over its predecessor--apart from even more ghoulish and gory moments--is the inclusion of more platforming. The first Blasphemous is a bit one-note, which is great if you're just here for the combat, but not so much if you want, well, anything else. Blasphemous 2 throws in some challenging and smartly-designed platforming as well, bringing it closer to the likes of Hollow Knight. Better still, developer The Game Kitchen was more ambitious with its environment design as well, with more complex layouts, better backgrounds and lighting, and even colors that aren't brown, grey, and blood.Read our Blasphemous 2 review. See at Fanatical Elden Ring Platforms: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PCRelease Date: February 25, 2022Developer: FromSoftwareOkay, so Elden Ring doesn't have the exploration style of Hollow Knight, but it does have the kind of grueling combat that inspired Team Cherry's spectacular boss fights, and lots of it. It's FromSoftware's first open-world game, one that follows a lone, nameless warrior in their bid to bring salvation to a shattered land--or make its ruin everlasting. Mostly, though, it's a giant playground for dozens of exceptionally well-designed and challenging bosses to stomp (you) around in, with enemies ranging from fire-spewing land dragons to the spirits of an ancient civilization and a gigantic, greatsword-wielding prince on his favorite little horsey. Read our Elden Ring review. See at Fanatical Cuphead Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PCRelease Date: September 29, 2017Developer: Studio MDHRIf you really like boss fights and are less bothered about exploration and all the other Hollow Knight-y bits, Cuphead is definitely worth checking out. Don't let Studio MDHR's retro cartoon style give you the wrong impression, either. Cuphead's cutesy bosses demand careful planning, precise execution, and a lot of patience. The battles aren't the only thing Cuphead has going for it, though. Studio MDHR's exquisite animation, the soundtrack, even period-specific cartoon-style sound effects--the entire game is a spectacle in the best way. Read our Cuphead review. See at Fanatical Castlevania Advance Collection Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PCRelease Date: September 23, 2021Developer: KonamiAny of the Castlevania bundles are strong picks, but the Castlevania Advance Collection should be your go-to choice for the kind of classic action that Hollow Knight builds on. The collection includes Circle of the Moon--low on our list of the best Castlevania games only on account of it not really doing anything that Symphony of the Night didn't--the excellent Harmony of Dissonance, and the even better Aria of Sorrow. Sorrow is the standout inclusion, one that radically shook up the Castlevania formula by removing the Belmonts from the equation, telling an entirely new story set in the distant (at the time) future, and giving the protagonist, Soma, an ability that absorbed enemy souls for use in combat. It helps that Sorrow, as well as Harmony, have an excellent selection of bosses and some fantastically moody settings, too. See at Humble Ori and the Blind Forest Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PCRelease Date: March 11, 2015Developer: Moon StudiosOri and the Blind Forest starts like the end of a Disney movie. A cute little creature finds a family in the middle of a dream-like forest, and that family gets taken away from them. Your job is to figure out why and find a way to save the woods. Ori takes Hollow Knight's demanding platforming even further with some segments that wouldn't feel out of place in something like Celeste, but the real stand-out feature is the map. In addition to being a well-designed metroidvania world, it's absolutely gorgeous and a delight to explore. Blind Forest is a modern classic, and its sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps manages to improve it even further.Read our Ori and the Blind Forest review and Ori and the Will of the Wisps review. See at Fanatical Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo SwitchRelease Date: March 25, 2024Developer: AdiglobeIn the onslaught of games like Hollow Knight that released following Team Cherry's success, developer Adiglobe decided to shake up the formula first with Ender Lilies and then with the more refined Ender Magnolia. You've got your standard elements, such as gigantic bosses that force you to learn their patterns and a puzzle-like map that unfolds as you gain more powers. Those powers, however, are the spirits of fallen friends who also aid you in combat. You find several, but can only recruit a handful at a time, which adds a layer of strategy to exploration and combat. There's also a strong sense of emotional attachment, since you and your ghostly allies have history and connection of a kind that's often missing in these games when you just play as an outside observer. See at Steam Metroid Dread Platforms: Nintendo SwitchRelease Date: October 8, 2021Developer: Nintendo EADAny Metroid game is going to have something of that Hollow Knight feel, since the sci-fi series is a big part of where the genre and Hollow Knight in particular came from. However, the easiest to get your hands on without having to pay for a subscription is Metroid Dread. It's the culmination of the 2D Metroid saga that started in 1986, but you can get by just fine if this is your first. Dread follows bounty hunter Samus Aran as she searches for evidence of a deadly parasite, only to find herself hunted by rogue robots--sometimes. The stealth segments that have you hiding from your metal hunters only take place in specific areas. The rest of Metroid Dread takes you across sprawling subterranean research labs, sunken testing stations, and extravagant dwellings, featuring the series' biggest map ever, stuffed with secrets and formidable bosses. If you really enjoy those bosses, Dread has a boss rush mode you can test yourself against as well.Read our Metroid Dread review. See at Amazon Lone Fungus Platforms: PCRelease Date: September 21, 2021Developer: Basti GamesThese types of games tend to lean more toward the edgy, dark, and broody side of things, which makes Lone Fungus a gem in the genre. You're the last mushroom on Earth, exploring a vast network of tunnels and temples in search of treasure and using magic skills that change form depending on how you swing your sword. A ball of energy is damaging to one enemy, for example, but you can smack it and shatter it into several projectiles to clear out lots of foes at once. Best of all, though, Lone Fungus has a robust Assist Mode that lets people of all skill levels enjoy the game and just makes it more relaxed in general, with features such as extra platforms, no costs for spells, slower platforms, and invincibility so your little fungus won't die. See at Humble Dead Cells Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PCRelease Date: May 10, 2027Developer: Motion TwinDead Cells throws roguelite randomness into the metroidvania mix and ratchets up the challenge as well. You're a spirit determined to figure out why you died, and in the absence of a tangible vessel for your ethereal self, you pilot shambling corpses in a bid to make it through streets, swamps, dungeons, and horrors untold. These corpses aren't the sturdiest, so when you fail, they fall apart and you start again. Eventually, you can unlock permanent upgrades, but with no checkpoints at any stage of the journey, you'll have to rely on your skill with weapons and knowledge of enemy behavior to make it through. If you enjoy Dead Cells, you can pick up DLC packs that add new locations, weapons, and enemies, and there's even a Castlevania-themed expansion as well. Read our Dead Cells review. See at Fanatical Monster Sanctuary Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series One, PCRelease Date: August 28, 2019Developer: DeveloperIf you like a bit of Pokemon with your Hollow Knight, Monster Sanctuary might be for you. You play as a fledgling monster tamer out to explore the vast world with just a single critter by your side. You'll find and tame more, training them into the best versions of themselves and using their abilities not just to deal with threats in the sanctuary, but to explore its secrets and hidden areas as well. Monster Sanctuary is lighter and breezier than some games on this list, but if something more intense is to your liking, there's a robust PvP element where you can challenge other players and their monster teams too. See at Fanatical Salt and Sanctuary Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo SwitchRelease Date: March 15, 2016Developer: Ska StudiosUpgrades and customization are usually rather limited in games like Hollow Knight, which makes Salt and Sanctuary, with its more in-depth RPG components, something special. You play as a sailor, washed up on some evil-looking, godforsaken island and foolish enough to go exploring the mysterious labyrinth underneath. What you find is a parade of nightmares and some spectacular, bone-crunchingly hard 2D boss fights that are among the best Soulslike challenges out there. Read our Salt and Sanctuary review. See at Humble Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo SwitchRelease Date: July 17, 2024Developer: Squid Shock StudiosMovement is often a means to an end in video games--a double jump that propels you higher, for example, or a dash that lets you avoid dangerous terrain. In Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, it's no exaggeration to say movement is everything. Bouncing, flying, gliding, moving with magical speed, and navigating the hand-drawn world is just as important as battling the myths and monsters inspired by Japanese folklore. Path of the Teal Lotus is one of the most elegant platformers around, and it even has a reset system where you can pause or rewind a failed jump to try again, perfect for learning some of the more difficult segments. Read our Path of the Teal Lotus review. See at Fanatical

There are plenty of creative ways to take care of enemies in a game as boundless as Minecraft, but one incredibly lucky interaction shared by one fan online proves that it's possible to kill bosses like the Wither using a wild dolphin. This might take the cake when it comes to one of the most unorthodox ways to finish off one of Minecraft's bosses, despite fans using plenty of strange methods in the past, ranging from explosive beds to traps that suffocate them with bedrock blocks.

In any anime series, it's inevitable that fans will always have a first impression of a character when they make their debut. However, now and again, there will be a few characters who, for one reason or another, will go completely against fan perceptions of who they are and what they can achieve, and this has happened many times throughout the course of My Hero Academia's story.

Most of what happens within the video games we play is invisible to us. Even the elements we're looking straight at work because of what's happening behind the scenes. If you've ever watched a behind-the-scenes video about game development, you might've seen these versions of flat, gray game worlds filled with lines and icons pointing every which way, with multiple grids and layers. These are the visual representations of all the systems that make the game work.Assassin's Creed ShadowsThis is an especially weird dichotomy to consider when it comes to lighting in any game with a 3D perspective, but especially so in high-fidelity games. We don't see light so much as we see everything it touches; it's invisible, but it gives us most of our information about game worlds. And it's a lot more complex than "turn on lamp, room light up." Reflection, absorption, diffusion, subsurface scattering--the movement of light is a complex thing that has been explored by physicists in the real world for literally centuries, and will likely be studied for centuries more. In the middle of all of that are game designers, applying the science of light to video games in practical ways, balanced with the limitations of even today's powerful GPUs, just to show all us nerds a good time.If you've wondered why many games seem to be like static amusement parks waiting for you to interact with a few specific things, lighting is often the reason. But it's also the reason more and more game worlds look vibrant and lifelike. Game developers have gotten good at simulating static lighting, but making it move is harder. Dynamic lighting has long been computationally expensive, potentially tanking game performance, and we're finally starting to see that change.Continue Reading at GameSpot

NVIDIA was today named an Autonomous Grand Challenge winner at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) conference, held this week in Nashville, Tennessee. The announcement was made at the Embodied Intelligence for Autonomous Systems on the Horizon Workshop. This marks the second consecutive year that NVIDIA’s topped the leaderboard in the End-to-End Driving at Scale category and the third year in a row winning an Autonomous Grand Challenge award at CVPR. The theme of this year’s challenge was “Towards Generalizable Embodied Systems” — based on NAVSIM v2, a data-driven, nonreactive autonomous vehicle (AV) simulation framework. The challenge offered researchers the opportunity to explore ways to handle unexpected situations, beyond using only real-world human driving data, to accelerate the development of smarter, safer AVs. Generating Safe and Adaptive Driving Trajectories Participants of the challenge were tasked with generating driving trajectories from multi-sensor data in a semi-reactive simulation, where the ego vehicle’s plan is fixed at the start, but background traffic changes dynamically. Submissions were evaluated using the Extended Predictive Driver Model Score, which measures safety, comfort, compliance and generalization across real-world and synthetic scenarios — pushing the boundaries of robust and generalizable autonomous driving research. The NVIDIA AV Applied Research Team’s key innovation was the Generalized Trajectory Scoring (GTRS) method, which generates a variety of trajectories and progressively filters out the best one. GTRS model architecture showing a unified system for generating and scoring diverse driving trajectories using diffusion- and vocabulary-based trajectories. GTRS introduces a combination of coarse sets of trajectories covering a wide range of situations and fine-grained trajectories for safety-critical situations, created using a diffusion policy conditioned on the environment. GTRS then uses a transformer decoder distilled from perception-dependent metrics, focusing on safety, comfort and traffic rule compliance. This decoder progressively filters out the most promising trajectory candidates by capturing subtle but critical differences between similar trajectories. This system has proved to generalize well to a wide range of scenarios, achieving state-of-the-art results on challenging benchmarks and enabling robust, adaptive trajectory selection in diverse and challenging driving conditions. NVIDIA Automotive Research at CVPR  More than 60 NVIDIA papers were accepted for CVPR 2025, spanning automotive, healthcare, robotics and more. In automotive, NVIDIA researchers are advancing physical AI with innovation in perception, planning and data generation. This year, three NVIDIA papers were nominated for the Best Paper Award: FoundationStereo, Zero-Shot Monocular Scene Flow and Difix3D+. The NVIDIA papers listed below showcase breakthroughs in stereo depth estimation, monocular motion understanding, 3D reconstruction, closed-loop planning, vision-language modeling and generative simulation — all critical to building safer, more generalizable AVs: Diffusion Renderer: Neural Inverse and Forward Rendering With Video Diffusion Models (Read more in this blog.) FoundationStereo: Zero-Shot Stereo Matching (Best Paper nominee) Zero-Shot Monocular Scene Flow Estimation in the Wild (Best Paper nominee) Difix3D+: Improving 3D Reconstructions With Single-Step Diffusion Models (Best Paper nominee) 3DGUT: Enabling Distorted Cameras and Secondary Rays in Gaussian Splatting Closed-Loop Supervised Fine-Tuning of Tokenized Traffic Models Zero-Shot 4D Lidar Panoptic Segmentation NVILA: Efficient Frontier Visual Language Models RADIO Amplified: Improved Baselines for Agglomerative Vision Foundation Models OmniDrive: A Holistic Vision-Language Dataset for Autonomous Driving With Counterfactual Reasoning Explore automotive workshops and tutorials at CVPR, including: Workshop on Data-Driven Autonomous Driving Simulation, featuring Marco Pavone, senior director of AV research at NVIDIA, and Sanja Fidler, vice president of AI research at NVIDIA Workshop on Autonomous Driving, featuring Laura Leal-Taixe, senior research manager at NVIDIA Workshop on Open-World 3D Scene Understanding with Foundation Models, featuring Leal-Taixe Safe Artificial Intelligence for All Domains, featuring Jose Alvarez, director of AV applied research at NVIDIA Workshop on Foundation Models for V2X-Based Cooperative Autonomous Driving, featuring Pavone and Leal-Taixe Workshop on Multi-Agent Embodied Intelligent Systems Meet Generative AI Era, featuring Pavone LatinX in CV Workshop, featuring Leal-Taixe Workshop on Exploring the Next Generation of Data, featuring Alvarez Full-Stack, GPU-Based Acceleration of Deep Learning and Foundation Models, led by NVIDIA Continuous Data Cycle via Foundation Models, led by NVIDIA Distillation of Foundation Models for Autonomous Driving, led by NVIDIA Explore the NVIDIA research papers to be presented at CVPR and watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. Learn more about NVIDIA Research, a global team of hundreds of scientists and engineers focused on topics including AI, computer graphics, computer vision, self-driving cars and robotics. The featured image above shows how an autonomous vehicle adapts its trajectory to navigate an urban environment with dynamic traffic using the GTRS model.

The partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft in many ways hinges on the definition of artificial general intelligence, creating a tension that has spilled over into OpenAI research that has not been made public.

Urban populations are expected to double by 2050, which means around 2.5 billion people could be added to urban areas by the middle of the century, driving the need for more sustainable urban planning and public services. Cities across the globe are turning to digital twins and AI agents for urban planning scenario analysis and data-driven operational decisions. Building a digital twin of a city and testing smart city AI agents within it, however, is a complex and resource-intensive endeavor, fraught with technical and operational challenges. To address those challenges, NVIDIA today announced the NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for smart city AI, a reference framework that combines the NVIDIA Omniverse, Cosmos, NeMo and Metropolis platforms to bring the benefits of physical AI to entire cities and their critical infrastructure. Using the blueprint, developers can build simulation-ready, or SimReady, photorealistic digital twins of cities to build and test AI agents that can help monitor and optimize city operations. Leading companies including XXII, AVES Reality, Akila, Blyncsy, Bentley, Cesium, K2K, Linker Vision, Milestone Systems, Nebius, SNCF Gares&Connexions, Trimble and Younite AI are among the first to use the new blueprint. NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for Smart City AI  The NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for smart city AI provides the complete software stack needed to accelerate the development and testing of AI agents in physically accurate digital twins of cities. It includes: NVIDIA Omniverse to build physically accurate digital twins and run simulations at city scale. NVIDIA Cosmos to generate synthetic data at scale for post-training AI models. NVIDIA NeMo to curate high-quality data and use that data to train and fine-tune vision language models (VLMs) and large language models. NVIDIA Metropolis to build and deploy video analytics AI agents based on the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for video search and summarization (VSS), helping process vast amounts of video data and provide critical insights to optimize business processes. The blueprint workflow comprises three key steps. First, developers create a SimReady digital twin of locations and facilities using aerial, satellite or map data with Omniverse and Cosmos. Second, they can train and fine-tune AI models, like computer vision models and VLMs, using NVIDIA TAO and NeMo Curator to improve accuracy for vision AI use cases​. Finally, real-time AI agents powered by these customized models are deployed to alert, summarize and query camera and sensor data using the Metropolis VSS blueprint. NVIDIA Partner Ecosystem Powers Smart Cities Worldwide The blueprint for smart city AI enables a large ecosystem of partners to use a single workflow to build and activate digital twins for smart city use cases, tapping into a combination of NVIDIA’s technologies and their own. SNCF Gares&Connexions, which operates a network of 3,000 train stations across France and Monaco, has deployed a digital twin and AI agents to enable real-time operational monitoring, emergency response simulations and infrastructure upgrade planning. This helps each station analyze operational data such as energy and water use, and enables predictive maintenance capabilities, automated reporting and GDPR-compliant video analytics for incident detection and crowd management. Powered by Omniverse, Metropolis and solutions from ecosystem partners Akila and XXII, SNCF Gares&Connexions’ physical AI deployment at the Monaco-Monte-Carlo and Marseille stations has helped SNCF Gares&Connexions achieve a 100% on-time preventive maintenance completion rate, a 50% reduction in downtime and issue response time, and a 20% reduction in energy consumption. https://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/01-Monaco-Akila.mp4 The city of Palermo in Sicily is using AI agents and digital twins from its partner K2K to improve public health and safety by helping city operators process and analyze footage from over 1,000 public video streams at a rate of nearly 50 billion pixels per second. Tapped by Sicily, K2K’s AI agents — built with the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for VSS and cloud solutions from Nebius — can interpret and act on video data to provide real-time alerts on public events. To accurately predict and resolve traffic incidents, K2K is generating synthetic data with Cosmos world foundation models to simulate different driving conditions. Then, K2K uses the data to fine-tune the VLMs powering the AI agents with NeMo Curator. These simulations enable K2K’s AI agents to create over 100,000 predictions per second. https://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/02-K2K-Polermo-1600x900-1.mp4 Milestone Systems — in collaboration with NVIDIA and European cities — has launched Project Hafnia, an initiative to build an anonymized, ethically sourced video data platform for cities to develop and train AI models and applications while maintaining regulatory compliance. Using a combination of Cosmos and NeMo Curator on NVIDIA DGX Cloud and Nebius’ sovereign European cloud infrastructure, Project Hafnia scales up and enables European-compliant training and fine-tuning of video-centric AI models, including VLMs, for a variety of smart city use cases. The project’s initial rollout, taking place in Genoa, Italy, features one of the world’s first VLM models for intelligent transportation systems. https://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/03-Milestone.mp4 Linker Vision was among the first to partner with NVIDIA to deploy smart city digital twins and AI agents for Kaohsiung City, Taiwan — powered by Omniverse, Cosmos and Metropolis. Linker Vision worked with AVES Reality, a digital twin company, to bring aerial imagery of cities and infrastructure into 3D geometry and ultimately into SimReady Omniverse digital twins. Linker Vision’s AI-powered application then built, trained and tested visual AI agents in a digital twin before deployment in the physical city. Now, it’s scaling to analyze 50,000 video streams in real time with generative AI to understand and narrate complex urban events like floods and traffic accidents. Linker Vision delivers timely insights to a dozen city departments through a single integrated AI-powered platform, breaking silos and reducing incident response times by up to 80%. https://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/02-Linker-Vision-1280x680-1.mp4 Bentley Systems is joining the effort to bring physical AI to cities with the NVIDIA blueprint. Cesium, the open 3D geospatial platform, provides the foundation for visualizing, analyzing and managing infrastructure projects and ports digital twins to Omniverse. The company’s AI platform Blyncsy uses synthetic data generation and Metropolis to analyze road conditions and improve maintenance. Trimble, a global technology company that enables essential industries including construction, geospatial and transportation, is exploring ways to integrate components of the Omniverse blueprint into its reality capture workflows and Trimble Connect digital twin platform for surveying and mapping applications for smart cities. Younite AI, a developer of AI and 3D digital twin solutions, is adopting the blueprint to accelerate its development pipeline, enabling the company to quickly move from operational digital twins to large-scale urban simulations, improve synthetic data generation, integrate real-time IoT sensor data and deploy AI agents. Learn more about the NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for smart city AI by attending this GTC Paris session or watching the on-demand video after the event. Sign up to be notified when the blueprint is available. Watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at VivaTech, and explore GTC Paris sessions.

Some Minecraft players are amazed by how realistic deep water looks in the popular sandbox game after the recent Vibrant Visuals update. Minecraft always had a charming aesthetic, but this recent update really improved the game’s visuals, surprising long-time fans.

Powerscaling has always been a huge deal in the One Piece fandom, especially when it comes to the characters of Zoro and Sanji. Powerscaling can be controversial, but one thing is for sure at this point in the story — Zoro and Sanji will surpass the Yonko by the end of the story. Oda has already revealed how this is possible for them.

Project G-Assist — available through the NVIDIA App — is an experimental AI assistant that helps tune, control and optimize NVIDIA GeForce RTX systems. NVIDIA’s Plug and Play: Project G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon — running virtually through Wednesday, July 16 — invites the community to explore AI and build custom G-Assist plug-ins for a chance to win prizes and be featured on NVIDIA social media channels. G-Assist allows users to control their RTX GPU and other system settings using natural language, thanks to a small language model that runs on device. It can be used from the NVIDIA Overlay in the NVIDIA App without needing to tab out or switch programs. Users can expand its capabilities via plug-ins and even connect it to agentic frameworks such as Langflow. Below, find popular G-Assist plug-ins, hackathon details and tips to get started. Plug-In and Win Join the hackathon by registering and checking out the curated technical resources. G-Assist plug-ins can be built in several ways, including with Python for rapid development, with C++ for performance-critical apps and with custom system interactions for hardware and operating system automation. For those that prefer vibe coding, the G-Assist Plug-In Builder — a ChatGPT-based app that allows no-code or low-code development with natural language commands — makes it easy for enthusiasts to start creating plug-ins. To submit an entry, participants must provide a GitHub repository, including source code file (plugin.py), requirements.txt, manifest.json, config.json (if applicable), a plug-in executable file and READme code. Then, submit a video — between 30 seconds and two minutes — showcasing the plug-in in action. Finally, hackathoners must promote their plug-in using #AIonRTXHackathon on a social media channel: Instagram, TikTok or X. Submit projects via this form by Wednesday, July 16. Judges will assess plug-ins based on three main criteria: 1) innovation and creativity, 2) technical execution and integration, reviewing technical depth, G-Assist integration and scalability, and 3) usability and community impact, aka how easy it is to use the plug-in. Winners will be selected on Wednesday, Aug. 20. First place will receive a GeForce RTX 5090 laptop, second place a GeForce RTX 5080 GPU and third a GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. These top three will also be featured on NVIDIA’s social media channels, get the opportunity to meet the NVIDIA G-Assist team and earn an NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute self-paced course credit. Project G-Assist requires a GeForce RTX 50, 40 or 30 Series Desktop GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM, Windows 11 or 10 operating system, a compatible CPU (Intel Pentium G Series, Core i3, i5, i7 or higher; AMD FX, Ryzen 3, 5, 7, 9, Threadripper or higher), specific disk space requirements and a recent GeForce Game Ready Driver or NVIDIA Studio Driver. Plug-In(spiration) Explore open-source plug-in samples available on GitHub, which showcase the diverse ways on-device AI can enhance PC and gaming workflows. Popular plug-ins include: Google Gemini: Enables search-based queries using Google Search integration and large language model-based queries using Gemini capabilities in real time without needing to switch programs from the convenience of the NVIDIA App Overlay. Discord: Enables users to easily share game highlights or messages directly to Discord servers without disrupting gameplay. IFTTT: Lets users create automations across hundreds of compatible endpoints to trigger IoT routines — such as adjusting room lights and smart shades, or pushing the latest gaming news to a mobile device. Spotify: Lets users control Spotify using simple voice commands or the G-Assist interface to play favorite tracks and manage playlists. Twitch: Checks if any Twitch streamer is currently live and can access detailed stream information such as titles, games, view counts and more. Get G-Assist(ance)  Join the NVIDIA Developer Discord channel to collaborate, share creations and gain support from fellow AI enthusiasts and NVIDIA staff. Save the date for NVIDIA’s How to Build a G-Assist Plug-In webinar on Wednesday, July 9, from 10-11 a.m. PT, to learn more about Project G-Assist capabilities, discover the fundamentals of building, testing and deploying Project G-Assist plug-ins, and participate in a live Q&A session. Explore NVIDIA’s GitHub repository, which provides everything needed to get started developing with G-Assist, including sample plug-ins, step-by-step instructions and documentation for building custom functionalities. Learn more about the ChatGPT Plug-In Builder to transform ideas into functional G-Assist plug-ins with minimal coding. The tool uses OpenAI’s custom GPT builder to generate plug-in code and streamline the development process. NVIDIA’s technical blog walks through the architecture of a G-Assist plug-in, using a Twitch integration as an example. Discover how plug-ins work, how they communicate with G-Assist and how to build them from scratch. Each week, the RTX AI Garage blog series features community-driven AI innovations and content for those looking to learn more about NVIDIA NIM microservices and AI Blueprints, as well as building AI agents, creative workflows, digital humans, productivity apps and more on AI PCs and workstations.  Plug in to NVIDIA AI PC on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X — and stay informed by subscribing to the RTX AI PC newsletter. Follow NVIDIA Workstation on LinkedIn and X.  See notice regarding software product information.