April 15, 2025
Gray / Grey (+ Project Unreality 1.1)
Sectoid
The two images above are from the game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a reboot from UFO: Enemy Unknown.
Both franchises are excellent (a must) and there are on my top favorite gaming franchises (original and reboot).
The aliens on these images are called "Sectoid" and look like the stereotypical alien abductor. They are grey / gray, skinny and with big black eyes.
The old version from UFO: Enemy Unknown is also there as archival image (top left).
It's not related to the main topic except for the gray color !
Color / Colour
Above are some logos from restaurant and food brands. You may remark that red color and yellow color are heavily use for those logos.
It's not a random choice but dedicated choice that affect our brain!
- Red: Stimulates energy, increases heart rate, alertness, attention, excitement, passion, and urgency
- Yellow: Stimulates the brain's activity, happiness, energy, optimism and creativity
- Gray: Neutrality, unexciting, feelings of dullness, boredom, indecisiveness, sadness, and practicality
- Green: Peace, relaxation, reducing stress, improving focus, balance, growth, and harmony
- Blue: Calming effect, lowering heart rates, reducing stress, trust, relaxation, mental clarity, and serenity
- Purple: Creativity, intellectual engagement, luxury, elegance, and mystery
- Orange: Social interaction, enthusiasm, excitement, energy, inviting, warmth, and friendliness
- Brown: Grounding, earthy, safety, comfort, calming effect, stability, reliability, and warmth
- Black: Sophistication, seriousness, power, formality, negative emotions, elegance, mystery, and authority
- White: Clarity, peace, purity, simplicity, more open, larger, and cleanliness
Colors play a significant role in how your brain processes emotions and if you are addict to your phone or you spend too much time on it,
there is a simple trick to reduce your time on your phone: Enable grayscale mode on it (Use color correction) !!!
Gray color brings the unexciting and boredom mode on your phone but it still keep the same features.
I tried it multiple times usually 1 month when I find my consommation on my phone higher than normal.
It work very well for me and I tried another experiment the last time which was to enabled it also on my both computers (personal and job computers).
It was a very different game. Spent at least 8 hours on grayscale monitor on your computer is very very boring (almost depressing).
I stopped the experience on my computers after 5 days and went back to normal color mode.
I found some interesting stuff like if you take a screenshot on your PC, it will takes a grayscale image (windows 10).
The syntax color inside your IDE (e.g. Visual Studio) is very useful. When you look for an icon (in a grayscale mode),
it seems to take a longer take to find it (e.g. desktop icons).
So if you find that you spend too much time on your phone, enable the gray scale mode could help you to reduce it.
I will not recommand to enable it on your PC.
Below are two videos about when TV switched from back and white to color:
Project Unreality 1.1
TL:DR; Project Unreality: A tech demo showcasing the use of both Unreal Engine and Unity in a single game.
I received good feedback for the Project Unreality so I did a new update:
- Fixed AZERTY keyboard
- Binded Tab keyboard button to switch between Unity and Unreal
- Added in-game overlay for Picture-in-picture (PiP) with tab visual button (image above as sample)
You can download the new and old versions here.
Thanks for reading,
JS.