MossyFeathers

Imo it has less to do with photorealism vs non-photorealism and more to do with pbr (physically based rendering) vs non-pbr. The former attempts to recreate photorealistic graphics by adding additional texture maps (typically metallic/smooth or specular/roughness) to allow for things ranging from glossiness and reflectivity, to refraction and sub-surface scattering. The result is that PBR materials tend to have little to no noticeable difference between PBR enabled renderers so long as they share the same maps.

Non-pbr renderers, however, tend to be more inaccurate and tend to have visual quirks or "signatures". For an example, to me everything made in UE3 tends to have a weird plastic-y look to it, while metals in Skyrim tend to look like foam cosplay weapons. These games can significantly benefit from raytracing because it'd involve replacing the non-pbr renderer with a PBR renderer, resulting in a significant upgrade in visual quality by itself. Throw in raytracing and you get beautiful shadows, speculars, reflections, and so on in a game previously incapable of it.

BofA deez nuts

That's true, but if the car is cheap plastic, then it might be fine.

(For those not familiar with gallium, it's basically mercury but safe; so it's a liquid at room temperature but a solid just below that, depending on where you live, without the risk of Mad Hatter's disease)

A balloon filled with helium tied to the handle. (How did that "fall out"?)

A gallium coin (if it's cold outside then it'll stay solid and then melt when they put it in their pocket).

An opened (but unused) bandaid. The biggest one you can find. Stick it to the handle so it flaps around and they have to choose between touching the gauze (it's clean, but they don't know that) or the sticky part to pull it off.

A household smoke detector. Use a piece of string to tie it to the handle.

Baby shoes. Again, tie them to the handle.

7 worms in a bag. They're lucky.

Whenever you go into a gas station, buy a random keychain and put that on there. Watch your friend start drowning in keychains.

Christmas lights. Just all of them. All the Christmas lights all over the car. But make sure to thread them through the driver-side handle and include your "I think you dropped this" note.

How... How did it break up in orbit? It should be effectively weightless, and depending on the altitude it shouldn't experience much, if any, atmospheric drag, right? Did they forget to fasten the bolts on it or something?

I still have mine in its original box in my closet. I wish there were modern drivers for it with custom game support; so you could mod support into your favorite games.

Not really an "older iteration" as much as a "sideways iteration", but the Novint Falcon was the coolest controller I've ever used. It had a ton of potential, but it seemed like the company had no clue how to utilize it.

Does this run on a raspberry pi 1 or 2? I can't remember which one I have, but I barely use it so it'd be cool to have something to use it for.

It's Cuba. They've been hamstringed by the US embargo for a very long time. I'm amazed they're doing as well as they are. My understanding is that, with the exception of medicine and food, basically anything that touches American soil or American hands (literally or metaphorically) is illegal to officially export to Cuba regardless of the country it's being sold in.

So for an example, any steel made in the US, manufactured for US companies, made using iron from the US, etc, may not be officially sold to Cuba. That doesn't mean a Mexican company can't buy the steel and resell it to Cuba; but it means Cuba potentially has to pay multiple tariffs and pay to have it bounced from the US to at least one other country before it can go to Cuba.

Furthermore, my understanding is that foreign companies with a US presence don't tend to do business with Cuba because the US will put pressure on them to stop doing business with Cuba.

The embargo needs to end. Cuba could have been the US' strange, goofy cousin with weird ideas about government and economy; because it seems like the Cuban government is making a legitimate attempt at a socialistic system. However, US capitalists ruined everything (iirc the embargo didn't start with the cold war, it started because Cuba overthrew the banana republic previously ruling them, which pissed off fruit companies. Said companies then cried to Uncle Sam because their slaves revolted and the US said, "you gotta pay them back for all the fruit they lost, plus interest".)

I swear I've come across an indie game that had great thunderstorms, but I can't remember what it was for the life of me.

That said, imo The Sims as a series has had good thunderstorms. Being outside can result in your Sim being hit by lightning, and iirc there are things that'll increase the chance of getting hit, like being wet, being in a pool, holding an umbrella, etc. I'm not sure which game has the best thunderstorms though.

VRchat has some worlds with really good ambience, and typically they include rain and/or thunderstorms to some extent. You don't actually need VR, you can play VRC on a normal monitor.

I've just realized that one of the things that Risk of Rain 2 is missing, is a persistent thunderstorm that gets stronger as the difficulty gets higher, lowering your visibility over time.

Fuck, I was hearing the music in my head and didn't even realize it until you said that.