Logistics, Mark II

The first StableDiffusion repaint/upscale experiments were largely a failure. The main thing I learned is that when the AI is turned up high enough to fix bad join lines and painted-in hair, it also messes up seams and does that awful pareidolia stuff it does, deciding that a button is a rose or that a belt buckle is a circuit board. And messing the hell out of seams because it doesn't get the whole "straight lines" thing.

Another discovery is that, for better or worse, the particular repaint recipe I did on the stock image set I've been basing Penny on has become "her" face for me. I can easily improve the face via AI, as in it looks smoother and more professional. But it also stops being her. And since faces are so subtle, this happens at even lower settings than the ones that start messing up seams and buttons.

So I'm going to have to do this in a much more controlled way. Masking, ControlNet mapping, alpha channel comping back into PhotoShop. Not basically going to be "press the button to make the art look smoother, and while you are at it, add a little more back light."

***

Meanwhile my "Roads must roll" playthrough in Satisfactory really isn't. Trains are a more efficient solution. Basically, the map is just too damned big! Even putting aside the time spend building the roads in the first place, driving feels like it is starting to approach real-world commuting times. 

And my fancy combination road with underslung conveyor belts is a pain to hook up. Although that's another thing rumored in Update 8; that blueprints will snap connections. Right now, it involves crawling under the road building conveyor belts and running power, and that's just annoying.

Again, the map is too big. Out in the Dune Desert, resource nodes are close enough together it makes sense to haul a dozen remote mining camps worth of raw ore into a trunk conveyor belt to a centralized factory. But I've just started into Aluminium production and -- quite intentionally from the game designers -- the necessary resources are never found in easy conveyor belt distance from each other. Which is why my previous play, I had a weird loop train line to move silica here and coal there and aluminium ingots there. 

Which I had to follow up with smart splitters feeding into item dumps, because otherwise I'd get a silica backup that would end up with a cargo train that was supposed to be carrying ingots dumping that into the manufacturing site, instead...

***

Picked up a Logitech MX (half the reason being, I needed an excuse to take the Smart out on the highway). Okay keyboard but...grey on black so when the keyboard light is off you can't see the keys, and that light is sensor-controlled and the sensor was programmed by an absolute idiot.

Seriously, Logitech could have released a software/firmware patch. But no; they refuse to fix it. So it is time to crack the case and see what I can hack.