NVIDIA will be pushing into VR during its GPU Technology Conference next week, with NVIDIA Research to show off its "computational display" prototype for next-gen fidelity and form factors in VR/AR headsets.
NVIDIA's Vice President of Graphics Research, David Luebke, will be talking about the complex optical, display, and form factor challenges that are found in today's VR and AR headsets, and ways to overcome these issues. Leubke will talk about "computational display" prototypes, which co-designs the entire pipeline of rendering, display, and optics in order to hit the high resolution, wide field of view, and small form factor devices.
This session will take place on day two of GTC 2016, on April 5 at 3PM PT.
Oculus has had its fair share of issues with the Rift and its launch, with customers meant to have their VR headsets shipped on March 28 - but due to various issues, it didn't happen. Well, now HTC is experiencing their own issues with their Vive headset.
HTC is experiencing technical issues with their payment processing system and customers' banks, which are seeing some preorders for the Vive being cancelled, and real life tears shed. Road to VR has had more than one person tell them that after preordering their Vive, they have had it cancelled due to the aforementioned payment processing issues.
In the last 24 hours, customers began receiving cancellation notice emails from HTC - which are stemming from the 3 digit security code on the back of consumers' cards missing from the transaction. I've had issues with my Rift shipment (still not processed, still no payment done - so if this happens for the Vive I will be crying myself to sleep tonight).
The new Steam hardware survey has some interesting numbers to look at, with the March survey seeing Windows 10 64-bit being the most popular OS on Steam with a huge 37% of users running Microsoft's latest OS.
As for video cards, NVIDIA takes a huge chunk of the Steam gaming pie with 56% of gamers running a GeForce video card of some sort, leaving AMD/ATI with 25%. 17% of Steam gamers are still rocking the integrated GPU on their Intel processor, too.
When it comes to CPUs, Intel continues to take the lion's share of Steam gamers with their CPUs - with 76% of Steam gamers rocking an Intel processor of some sort. 47% of gamers use a dual-core CPU, while 45% run a quad-core processor. Just 4.6% of gamers have a CPU with more than four cores, and 2% are still running a single-core CPU.
Remedy Games have been in hot water over the release of Quantum Break, which was once an Xbox One exclusive - and then announced for the PC.
The Xbox One version was promised to be running at 1080p, but has been delivered at 720p - and now we're finding out some more information on game directly from Remedy's Creative Director (and the face of Max Payne), Sam Lake.
During an interview with MCVUK, Lake said: "We were pushing for the PC version. Remedy has a strong heritage on PC and have a lot of fans on the PC side. From a developer's perspective, it's always good news to make our creations available for a potentially wider audience. That to me was what it was. I'm really happy that there's a PC version and everyone at Remedy is really happy".
Just as I land in San Jose to cover NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference - where we should be introduced (in detail this time) to their next-gen Pascal architecture, and hopefully a new video card or so - I read about the reported end of GM200 production.
The GM200 might not sound like much, but it's the GPU that powers the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and the Titan X. NVIDIA will reportedly no longer be supplying AIB partners with the GM200 chip, so companies like ASUS, ZOTAC and MSI will not be making anymore GeForce GTX 980 Ti video cards.
Why? Well, there are plenty of GTX 980 Tis in the wild, and with NVIDIA ramping up towards the Pascal launch, we should expect this to be a reality, as we will soon see GP104- and GP100-powered offerings in the hopefully, very near future.
Now Oculus has finally broken its silence to explain why the pre-orders shipments are late, and promises to make up for it by fully refunding shipping costs on all orders made up until April 2. The Facebook-owned company sent out a batch of emails to all consumers who pre-ordered the system, saying that the shipments were delayed due to "unexpected component shortages". The email also mentions order statuses should be updated by April 12.
The VR pioneers plan to make up for this inconvenience by covering all of the shipping and handling costs on orders made up until today. Given how international shipping for the Rift tacks on at least $100 to the Rift's price tag, this is a pretty hefty bit of savings, to say the least. It's great to see Oculus not only explain what happened but make up for it and go out of their way to cushion the blow. Check a full transcript of the emails below, and if you pre-ordered a Rift, check your inbox.
The leaked gameplay footage is part of BioWare's presentation on Mass Effect: Andromeda's technical details, and shows off a nice range of different things including jetpacks, cinematic scenes, graphical fidelity, lighting effects, and much more.
While the presentation is short and only clocks in at less than a minute, it's still a satisfying glance at actual in-game scenes and content. That jetpack looks incredibly satisfying, and I can't wait to give it a whirl when BioWare's ships the game.
After stating his new album The Life of Pablo would be exclusive to Jay-Z's Tidal service, Kanye West has changed his mind and signed contracts with Spotify and Apple Music. The album is available on both services now.
Just earlier today it was reported Jay-Z has sued the original owners of Tidal for misrepresenting subscriber figures. Between that and the news with West, this hasn't been the smoothest of his business ventures. We've reached out for comment from him and will update this story should we hear back.
Tidal current sits at 3 million subscribers, good for 27 million behind Spotify and 8 million behind Apple Music.
The Doom closed beta is out and so PC players have weighed in how it fares port-wise. Unfortunately, not so good: user reports state the game features a 60 FPS lock, motion blur and mouse acceleration that can't be turned off, and aim assist when using the mouse if you simply plug in a controller. As well, there's no FOV slider, server browser, or pre-game lobby text chat, rebinding keys doesn't work, and multi-GPU optimization doesn't seem to be present at all.
This is just a beta build and some things will change (FOV is said to be in the final version and some say the launch command +set g_fov X works in the meantime), but regardless, it's not encouraging, particularly given how little betas tend to change for launch these days and how little time there is between now and launch (Doom releases May 13).
Despite it being April First, the time-honored day in which we trick our fellow humans into believing ridiculous tales of unimaginable and phenomenal things, Cloud Imperium Games has released a video that, while in that spirit, will likely turn into a real in-game career; Food Service Deliver.
That video is only in jest, but can you imagine the kind of attention it received and how the many people in the 'verse are now going to want that as a legitimate job or even as a secondary occupation in the game? It could be fun, a mini-game in its own right. Deliver the space pizza as fast as possible, within that 30-minute window when on a planet, and within 12 hours when delivering with that 20-parsec radius. It could even evolve into a racing event that could potentially be more entertaining than the already stimulating Murray Cup.
Or it could even evolve into an in-game series that follows the life of Fry as he tries to make sense of the 31st Century that he suddenly finds himself in, working from the ground up to create his own delivery company in the midst of a chaotic and changed world.
It was supposed to be an April Fools joke, but it's going to end up one of the most wanted career paths in the game. The power of an open universe will allow for it anyway, even if the pizza becomes something more valuable to players.
