Contact lenses enable users to perceive beyond the visible light spectrum, detecting infrared flickers even in darkness or with closed eyes.
The lenses incorporate engineered nanoparticles that absorb and convert infrared radiation, particularly within the near-infrared range of 800-1600 nanometers. This technology functions similarly to night vision equipment, allowing visibility in low-light conditions, but the contact lenses are significantly lighter and do not need any external power source.
“Contact lenses grant military personnel a modest, hands-free nighttime capability, overcoming the challenges posed by cumbersome night vision [goggles or scopes]” stated Peter Rentzepis from Texas A&M University, who is involved in related research employing the same nanoparticles (sodium fluoride, ytterbium, erbium) for eyeglass lenses.
The innovative wearables developed by Yuqian Ma from the China University of Science and Technology and his team have not yet achieved detailed night vision. This limitation occurs because they can solely detect “high-intensity narrowband LED” light sources, as noted by Rentzepis, without capturing the ambient infrared light.
“While it’s an ambitious study, contact lenses alone cannot be employed for reading in infrared or navigating dark paths,” explained Mikhail Kats, who is not associated with the research, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In human-mouse studies, the contact lenses transformed an otherwise invisible flash of infrared light into what Kats describes as “a significant, colorful chunk of visible light.” These representations serve a purpose; for instance, MA and his team encoded and transmitted alphabetic characters by altering the frequency, quantity, and color of various light flashes.
This research builds upon previous studies where scientists directly injected nanoparticles into the eyes of mice to facilitate infrared vision. Wearable contact lenses present a “safer and more practical approach to human applications,” observes Rentzepis. However, he cautions that they still pose potential health and safety concerns, such as risks of thermal exposure from the photoconversion process or the leakage of nanoparticles into ocular tissues.
TThe first time I played with a ZX Spectrum was at the Stockport branch of Debenhams. Back in 1983, it had a great home computer section, which quickly turned into a kind of free daycare center for bored 13-year-old boys. You can be there for hours typing rude Basic programs into the machine’s array while hasty staff members scramble around trying to stop it from running. However, some computers were running games for customers to try. There I encountered Manic Miner, a legendary platformer with bizarre flashing visuals and surreal enemies. The Speccy game looked completely unique thanks to the machine’s unusual way of limiting its 8×8 sprite map to two colors. This meant that objects moving on the screen were typically patchwork collections of colored pixels, creating an effect called attribute collision. Somehow it was ugly and beautiful – and it still is.
Unboxing Spectrum, Retro Games Ltd’s latest offering of modern vintage hardware, is a surprisingly nostalgic experience. It looks exactly like the original machine I remember. It’s a black board with rubber keys, each of which displays basic programming commands as well as numbers and letters. “Rem,” “Rand,” and “Gosub” are mystical words from the era of home programming. There’s a USB cable to connect (but you’ll need your own USB plug) and an HDMI lead, but no joystick. This machine is compatible with most USB gamepads. You just need to configure the button yourself. It’s a little time consuming, but worth it if you can’t stand using rubber buttons to control games.
Classic… Head Over Heels by Spectrum. Photo: Retro Games Ltd
Once you load it, you’ll be presented with a modern home screen displaying a carousel of built-in games. There are 48 to choose from, from classic titles like The Lords of Midnight, Head Over Heels, Manic Miner, and The Hobbit to the latest titles created by modern programmers in the Speccy fan scene. These are fascinating projects, including the top-down sci-fi blaster Alien Girl: Skirmish Edition and the tomb raiding romp Shovel Adventure. If you run out of internal power, you can also download Spectrum Game Roms from your PC to a USB stick, plug it in, and run it here. However, if you’re not a modern open source fan and are looking for a classic Speccy title – a game made with – then you’re in questionable legal territory.
As before, there are a number of screen settings so you can add CRT effects to give you a more authentic 1980s TV experience, but honestly, you can’t watch “Horace Goes Skiing” on a 55-inch LED display. There’s nothing to reduce the intense confusion when playing. What surprised me is that these games still have a lot of visual appeal. The students and teachers wandering the halls of School Days are full of personality, from a hulking bully to an aging history teacher. Sandy White’s Ant Attack maintains its rugged beauty, with geometric walls and giant, scurrying ants giving it an old-fashioned sense of alienation and fear. Ocean’s relatively sophisticated isometric adventures The Great Escape and Where Time Stood Still pack an incredible amount of detail into their largely black-and-white worlds. It’s nice to see them again.
The legendary… Spectrum Manic Minor. Photo: Retro Games Ltd
As with most other retro game consoles, modern game features like save points (which are a bit difficult to navigate but work) and the ability to rewind to the seconds before you got hit by a car in Trashman has been added. . But I also like the fact that every time I select a game, the original illustrated loading screen appears for a few seconds. These pictorial delights were an important part of the initial experience, as the tape would be watched for up to five minutes before it was finally loaded. What matters is whether they are preserved or not.
The original computing power of the ZX Spectrum is also retained. Selecting classic mode switches the console to the old boot screen and allows you to actually program. This is a feature that I fully utilize.
Classic Spectrum Basic program. Photo: Retro Games Ltd
Who is this for? Obviously the target audience is people like me who were there in the beginning and remember playing a lot of these games 40 years ago. Indeed, there are free Spectrum emulators available online if you know where to look. You don’t mind risking malware infection every time you search a ROM site. But part of the nostalgic gaming experience is sitting in front of the TV and watching recreations of machines you remember. And in “The Spectrum,” you also get the legendary rubber button, which presses under your finger when you hammer the leg sweep button in “The Way of the Exploding Fist.” I feel it.
THus’ kingdom is a rural idyll, with happy villagers wandering around the market, the young shepherd Len tending his flock and his partner Tyra repairing the shed. It’s as if they all live in a cozy farming simulator made by a benevolent game developer. But is that really the case? Or is it just an illusion cast by an evil god that has trapped them in their horrible pixelated appearance?
That’s the fun “meta” setting of Quantum Witch, a pixel-art platform game by lone developer Nikki Jay. Heavily inspired by old LucasArts adventures and the legendary Dizzy series for the ZX Spectrum, it’s a comedy game with a serious autobiographical heart. Jay grew up in a right-wing religious sect with very closed-minded views, based in the northeast of England. “They were obsessed with the end of the world,” she says. “They believed it could happen at any time, and that all evil people would be destroyed. So I Had “Being good. It was very oppressive.”
“This is not a platform game. Plot Former“…Quantum Witch.” Photo: Nikki Jay
Jay came out as a lesbian as a teenager, but was quickly shunned by her group. After a period of homelessness, she taught herself to code and found work as a software engineer, but the desire to share her story haunted her. “My mind was constantly swirling with what had happened to me,” she says. “I thought, ‘I can’t just hold onto this trauma, I have to do something about it.’ I knew there were other people out there who had been through the same thing. I wanted to tell them a story they could relate to and let them know there was something better out there.”
She initially thought she would write a novel, but found the process terrifying. Instead, she turned to games. Growing up in the 1980s, her family had a ZX Spectrum, which was her escape. “I escaped into video games because they let me create the worlds I wanted,” she says. “I was obsessed with computer-generated worlds. When I first played Trashman on the Spectrum, I thought, ‘This is amazing. This is a completely self-contained, internally consistent world that I can interact with.’ I loved it. It freed me from the fears I was facing in my life.”
“Multi-layered metaphor”…Quantum Witch. Photo: Nikki Jay
In Quantum Witch, Ren discovers that something malevolent exists beyond the saccharine pixel-art world she’s lived in, and sets off on a journey to discover the truth. Along the way, she’ll complete fetch quests and pick flowers for her partner, but ultimately must attack a god and take his throne. While the open Metroidvania-style structure suggests a standard platform game, the game is actually a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style narrative quest. You’ll make many choices over the course of four hours of play, meeting characters and taking on optional side quests that will affect the outcome. “This isn’t just a platform game, it’s a game about discovering the truth,” says Ren. Plot Former“Your choices shape the story. There are multiple endings and, where possible, each side quest also has multiple endings. It’s a total logistical nightmare,” says Jay.
Throughout the adventure, the story is filled with the wonderfully silly humor that is typical of the ZX Spectrum development scene. Available on Steamyou encounter dancing skeletons who can see into time, a lampshade-worshipping religious group (“We’re not a cult!”), and a marketplace where all the merchants resemble famous video game protagonists, including a wordy archaeologist selling dodgy artifacts and a strange circular character trying to sell you stimulants to fight the ghosts in your mind. Naturally, Jay was also a big fan of Digitizer, the cult teletext gaming magazine known for its surreal humor. She later became friends with the magazine’s writer Paul Rose, who served as a script consultant for the game. “I had lots of ideas for storyline and character development for Quantum Witch, but I’d never written anything this long or complex,” Jay explains.[Rose] It’s really helped me organize and make it all work together.
After being blown away by how fun Thank Goodness You’re Here is, it’s great to see other developers taking cues from quirky British humor from the ’70s and ’80s. But Quantum Witch isn’t just a pun-filled comedy quest. It’s a multi-layered metaphor about game development, identity and escapism, and it’s based on its creators’ own experiences. It’s about what games are supposed to be about: making the biggest decisions that sometimes save your life.
“I wanted to introduce a theme of choice and responsibility that is really central to the story,” Jay says. “A lot of religions involve giving up your autonomy to some mysterious force you’ve never seen, heard or met. In the game, Ren reclaims that agency… It’s a queer liberation story.”
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