The rendering in interestingengineering article is a stock image. An older SCMP article gives a much weirder rendering which matches the whitepaper the lead researcher published on I-shaped hypersonic configurations.

So I have no idea what the blurry ass rocket pic is supposed to be, maybe it was a test vehicle for just the engine, maybe SCMP misattributed it, maybe the team dumped the whole “I-shaped configuration” thing.

Presumably any ram or scram-jet engine will require a rocket engine or other assist, assuming it’s not a hybrid like the SR-71.

It probably is, the whole reason supersonic passenger flight looked feasible for a bit was that turbine technology hadn’t caught up so slower jets weren’t that much less efficient than supersonic jets.

But fuel concerns aside, it’s kinda silly to compare a billion dollar fighter jet built with 60s technology to a 747-sized aircraft built for passenger flight with modern technology. Just wildly different environments, purposes, and resources.

It came out less than a month ago. They closed the servers after less than 2 weeks.

The character designs looked like Unity made them to say “this is what a videogame can look like”. It played like TF2 but without any soul.

A few days after release, Valve opened Deadlock’s stream/review embargo and gave everyone infinite invites to the beta.

They could have built 2 Concords for the cost of that game.

I gave it a pirate and quickly got bored, it’s so anemic. I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters or factions.

And then there’s more Radiant Quests shoved in there than ever before.

I am reminded of the Victoria 3 playerbase noticing how OP communism was.

The guy who sent this was apparently using a gmail domain, not Game Science domain, this might be fake.

The article itself says that they never received any such requirements.

I mean they have better conditions and wages than the average ag worker in the US, let alone prison workers. There’s plenty of slavery by another name in this world, but this is a poor example.

The fact that they both sides’d a slave uprising got buried in that 2deep4me multiple timelines bullshit

Cyberpunk 2077’s Cyberpunk was entirely aesthetic. I have zero faith in the devs being able to actually address those issues in a meaningful way.

Which is a shame because the genera’s whole purpose was to criticize how capitalism would subvert potentially utopian technologies to make everything worse.

Of course, but you try justifying an increased budget for writing or a bunch of smaller titles to a publisher whose only qualification is that they have a lot of money.

Or you can go the Todd Howard route and promise endless proc-generated gameplay, so that they barely even have to pay writers, the game will write itself!

Or you can just show them a pretty picture, describe an action sequence that a 13 year old boy would love.

Or even better, you can point to another successful release and just go “Yeah, we’re gonna do that again. It’s 99% done already so we can do it really cheaply”

When was this? Even in the 90s, realism chasing was a thing. It’s easier to market graphical fidelity than good writing.

I’d avoid non-DS1/3/ER souls-likes to start with, because they tend not to have multiplayer.

There’s nothing wrong with summoning a friend or stranger to help you get through a difficult bit.

The fact that they’re putting forum results ahead of web seems like they’re just throwing in the towel on having useful web results that aren’t just searching thing+reddit/stackoverflow.

womp womp

I can’t find any English-language papers covering the protests that did any actual journalism.

There’s quite a few that covered the protests, but only in service of the typical “ccp bad, the people yearn for freedom” story, so they didn’t bother with such details.

Maglevs tend to have wheels that get deployed on approach, so I don’t think that’s a big issue.

I don’t understand what this is addressing

China’s HSR has an issue in that it doesn’t go to the city centers, you still have to take a metro or bus to get there.

I can’t imagine how difficult it’s gonna be getting land for maglev. Shanghai’s maglev was supposed to connect the Hongqiao and Pudong airports, but they got NIMBY’d by property owners who wanted a bigger setback and used FUDD to organize protests.

Before watching the video, I was thinking all maglevs were just gagetbahns since there’s little difference in how maglevs are used vs conventional HSR, but 380 mph and 100+ mile long tracks make a qualitative difference as it competes with aircraft after you consider boarding, taxiing, time to get to cruising altitude, etc. This is especially important given how much CO2 per passenger mile small aircraft generate.

Also if the US can spend trillions on wars, and has a similarly sized economy, I’m sure the Chinese can afford socially beneficial projects like this even if ticket prices never cover operating costs.

wtf? It’s such a popular IP, why would they do that?