Video: Doom Running on Gut Bacteria | Hacker News Reader

Video: Doom Running on Gut Bacteria

engadget.com

19 pointsyboris9 comments

This isn't actually running DOOM. It's basically just taking DOOM "screenshots" and rendering them with the cells. It also takes 70 minutes to render a single screenshot and then 8 hours to clear the display.

Call me a pedant, but this bugs (heh) me every time someone comes out with "we ran doom on X!" when they're really just using X as a display. Same thing with the pregnancy test a few years back.

The whole "it runs doom" thing is meant to be about actually running the game engine, not getting something to display the output of another computer actually running it.

I agree. And it's not even like "we displayed Doom on X" would be uninteresting, it's just a significant difference from actually running it on X.

You could say that you "ran" doom on a piece of paper if you just draw each frame yourself, the FPS would depend on how good/fast you are at drawing.

That's running on your brain, not the paper.

Indeed

The authors writeup can be found here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SFm1dS6myqq7psBKttP7CVYN...) and her explanatory video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DnoOOgYxck). However, it appears to be only a simulation, not physically running Doom on E.coli

Interesting but the title feels a little misleading because after reading the article, I realized that it wasn’t actually running doom.

The article is simply wrong:

> An MIT biotech researcher has been able to run the iconic computer game Doom using actual gut bacteria. Lauren Ramlan didn’t get the game going on a digital simulation of bacteria, but turned actual bacteria into pixels to display the 30-year-old FPS, as reported by Rock Paper Shotgun.

The cited Rock Paper Shotgun article doesn't support this though:

> It’s worth noting that Ramlan herself points out that “running” Doom using the cells would be an enormous undertaking due to their extremely limited ability. What she did manage to successfully do, however, is simulate using the wall of cells as a display for Doom by rendering gameplay using the illuminated E. coli.

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