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Forget latex suits and white ping-pong balls. Motion-capture sessions for video games and films have only gotten more intense over the years, thanks to advances like improved, LED-loaded motion-capture outfits and the ability to see robust TV-screen renders of an actor's performance as soon as a take is complete.

Of course, not every studio has a Peter Jackson-caliber budget for motion capture facilities, but the small development team behind upcoming VR game The Gallery: Call of the Starseed found an affordable path to capturing a human actor's performance—and then remembered they already had one cutting-edge gadget handy: the dev kit for the upcoming HTC Vive virtual reality system. The result, shown off in the studio's latest development diary on Tuesday, may very well be the world's first documented use of VR in a motion capture session.

"We wanted the actor to feel as if they were acting on a stage," Cloudhead Games staffer Mike Wilson wrote at the company's blog. As such, after making actor and motion-capture veteran Adrian Hough (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) put on a suit made by mo-cap company Noitom, the designers also asked him to wear a Vive headset. HTC's system enables room-scale tracking, so that users can walk around up to roughly 15 square feet of real space, which means Cloudhead was able to virtually transport Hough into the shoes of his in-game character, the Watcher.

Leslie Benzies, boss of the Edinburgh-based Rockstar North studio behind the development of the Grand Theft Auto series, has left Rockstar Games. Benzies had been on sabbatical for the past 17 months and decided not to return to work for the company.

Alongside Rockstar co-founders Sam and Dan Houser, Benzies was instrumental in the development of the Grand Theft Auto series—which continues to be developed out of Edinburgh—as well as the likes of Red Dead Redemption, Manhunt 2, LA Noire and Max Payne 3.

Benzies' contributions to the industry were recognised back in 2014 as he was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame alongside Dan and Sam Houser.

(credit: Flickr)

A combination of holiday sales and the launch of Windows 10 weren't enough to slow the decline of PC sales, which have fallen to their lowest levels since 2007. Shipments declined by as much as 10.6 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to analyst firm IDC. Fellow analyst Gartner had similarly dire numbers to share: 75.7 million PCs shipped for the quarter, down 8.3 percent on 2014.

Overall sales for the year were just as bad, with IDC estimating shipments fell 10.4 percent to 276.2 million units, and Gartner pushing the slightly less terrifying number of 299.6 million units for an 8 percent fall.

The only manufacturer to show any growth for the year was—you guessed it—Apple, which managed to grow 2.8 percent according to IDC and 5.8 percent according to Gartner. Everyone else's sales shrunk, although Lenovo—the number one PC vendor worldwide—at least managed a mere 3.6 percent fall compared to the 6 percent-or-larger drops seen by HP, Dell, Asus, and Acer.

Ron Bastien holds an aerogel tile that flew into the tail of a comet, captured dust particles, and survived to tell the tale. (credit: Lee Hutchinson)

HOUSTON, Tex.—Building 31 on the campus of Johnson Space Center lacks the Tower of London’s majesty and history. No Queen’s Guard stand outside. But this drab, 1960s-era building is nonetheless where NASA keeps the crown jewels of its exploration program. Inside various clean rooms, curators watch over meteorites from Mars and the asteroid belt, cosmic dust, samples of the solar wind, comet particles, and, of course, hundreds of kilograms of Moon rocks.

In late December, Ars spent a day visiting these collections, including the rarely accessed Genesis Lab. While our request for a Moon rock keepsake was sadly rebuffed, we nonetheless got a VIP tour of every astromaterial NASA has collected from other bodies in the Solar System and beyond. With Senior Space Editor Eric Berger providing the words and Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson capturing the photos, we can now offer an unprecedented look at how NASA protects its rarest and most valuable off-world samples.

Antarctic meteorites

To start, we wanted to see the famous Mars rock.

We take a BMW 7 Series for a short drive to play with its gesture control. Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

BMW's UI designers evidently believe gestures are the future. The i Vision Future Interaction concept we showed you Monday is built around gesture control, as is a remote parking system that BMW is developing for the i3. (Take that, Tesla Model S!) But neither of those are production-ready, unlike the system in the 7 Series.