A drone versus the McLaren 650s supercar is one serious battle

Chris Smith | Drones | Mar 7, 2016 10:33 AM CST

Set as an advertisement for the upcoming World Drone Prix set to kick off in Dubai, the marketing team for this event has released an awesome video depicting a race between a drone and the McLaren 650s supercar.

A drone versus the McLaren 650s supercar is one serious battle

Spotted on Gizmodo, we're told that a straight line drag race between these vehicles would be a fruitless venture, but the twists and turns of a drone race actually gives this remote controlled 'rocket' a chance.

This isn't me telling you that travelling to work at over 100mph by drone is going to be the next best thing, but it's something cool to think about at least. If you're a little short on cash and can't pick up a McLaren 650s as your Sunday driver, maybe a pocket rocket drone is more up your alley.

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Lionhead Studios may be closing down

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Mar 7, 2016 10:31 AM CST

Microsoft may add a lion's head to its trophy collection: the tech giant could slay Lionhead Studios once and for all.

Lionhead Studios may be closing down

Microsoft has announced that Fable Legends has been cancelled, and the creative minds that built the iconic Fable franchise could soon be out of work. Lionhead Studios is being shut down for good and all, and it looks like this is the end to the Fable universe.

"After much consideration we have decided to cease development on Fable Legends and are in discussions with employees about the proposed closure of Lionhead Studios in the UK. Additionally, we will close Press Play Studios in Denmark, and sunset development on Project Knoxville," reads the official announcement.

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The Legend of Zelda Picross accidentally revealed, could be soon

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Mar 7, 2016 10:04 AM CST

If this new leak can be trusted, then a new Picross game could be coming very soon. And this time it's based on The Legend of Zelda, a perfect pairing.

The game was discovered by Cellenseners while looking through the Nintendo US and UK servers. Apparently he found more than just the above pictures. Being on the official servers lends more credence to their being real.

This version of Picross is going to be offered as part of Nintendo's new loyalty program that's scheduled to become fully active later this month. The idea is that you'll be able to get this game by redeeming any acquired My Nintendo points. It will be interesting to see how they integrate the new rewards program and whether or not other mobile games, and in-game purchases, will be part of that program.

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Launch deathclaws at your foes in this hilarious new Fallout 4 mod

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Mar 7, 2016 9:34 AM CST

If you're looking for yet another must-have Fallout 4 mod to add to your list, then you've come to the right place. Earlier this morning I found this little gem that allows you to launch deathclaws out of a rocket launcher--yes, really.

Launch deathclaws at your foes in this hilarious new Fallout 4 mod

Thanks to pigeonmancer, the dastardly creative mind behind the Deathclaw Launcher, Fallout 4 gamers everywhere can now spice up their post-apocalyptic world's with some chaotic humor. The mod adds in a special rocket launcher that blasts deathclaw eggs that instantly hatch on impact, spawning a towering deathclaw to annihilate everything in sight.

The mod is very easy to install and won't conflict with any other weapon mods, but you'll need to do a quick console command 'help "deathclaw egg" 4 ammo' search to find the right ammo--normal deathclaw eggs don't do the trick.

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Yahoo is serious about eSports, teams up with ESL for eSports content

Chris Smith | Gaming | Mar 7, 2016 9:32 AM CST

Yahoo and ESL announced a partnership recently, with Yahoo promising to deliver eSports content to the globe on new gaming tournaments conducted by the world's largest eSports company.

This partnership kicked off at the recent Intel Extreme Masters competition in Katowice on March 4th to 6th, seeing Yahoo "provide ESL's audience a world class viewing experience, delivering HD video quality with its video technology that live streamed the NFL to over 15 million people around the world last October."

While Yahoo is said to be currently searching for a buyer, it seems that there are no plans to stop expansion.

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Lead designer of Star Wars Battlefront snaps after being called lazy

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Mar 7, 2016 9:08 AM CST

It seems that the lead designer of Star Wars Battlefront, Dennis Brännvall, gave into his anger on Twitter after someone told him that he, and his development team, were lazy.

The Twitter comments come after a fan asked why Greedo and Nien Nunb were the two new hero characters in the upcoming Outer Rim expansion pack when those particular species that they represent are already playable. The designer replied that it would be a waste to not include those characters in the game, despite others thinking it might be an "easy" addition to the game, considering the models are already in the game.

Brännvall promptly apologized for his behavior, but his comments and the negative reaction from the community do highlight the disconnect between how we perceive game development to go, and how difficult it actually is. Making any asset in-game, regardless of whether the base model and textures already exist, isn't easy. Even though us gamers might be a bit salty regarding the staying power of Battlefront, the art and graphics are nothing short of stunning. It takes a lot of work to make it look that good. A lot.

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The Raspberry Pi 3 gets seriously hot, clocking up to 100 degrees C

Chris Smith | Computer Systems | Mar 7, 2016 8:32 AM CST

One of the quickest ways to hardware failure is running your system incredibly hot, sitting up there with rubbing your motherboard on the carpet or putting your video card through the washing machine.

Investing in a good heat sink or cooling fan is something that Reddit user 'ghalfacree' has suggested, sporting a thermal image of his Raspberry Pi 3 running at a scorching 100 degrees celsius, thanks to the help of thermal imagery.

While sitting at triple digit temperature isn't exactly common, this test was conducted on an open board under full load, causing concern for those who are straining theirRaspberry Pi 3 while contained in a small case or custom chassis. Ghalfacree's solution is a cute little fan, ensuring that his miniature pride and joy computer doesn't melt away.

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Rising Storm 2: Vietnam gets a gritty gameplay trailer

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Mar 7, 2016 8:03 AM CST

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam's gameplay trailer is full of all of the cliche's you'd expect, but it's also a game that covers an often overlooked and ignored segment of our history.

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam gets a gritty gameplay trailer

Despite being in an alpha state, the look and feel, at the very least, looks accurate enough despite the overly played-out cliche's with music and actions. But it does look pretty good as far as a shooter goes. If it's more of an open-world type single-player experience, letting you use the jungle to your own advantage, then that might be compelling to take a look.

The game is coming out sometime this year without a concrete release date. If the trailer is anything to go by, then we're in for a treat. War games tend to center around the modern, future or WWII, and that's it. It's nice to see someone branch out and add to the small collection of Vietnam-era games.

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Who are the Raspberry Pi competitors - are they any good?

Chris Smith | Computer Systems | Mar 7, 2016 7:31 AM CST

If you've been casually following the various Raspberry Pi releases like myself, it's likely you have little to no idea what other mini ARM boards there are on the market.

Thankfully Phoronix has published a quick wrap-up and some benchmarks of competing boards compared to the well-known Raspberry Pi 3. Coming in hot and topping the list was the ODROID-C2, labeled as costing "just a few dollars more ($40 USD) while having a faster SoC and other advantages."

The claimed advantages of this product include a 64-bit quad-core SBC, backed by the Amlogic S905 which comes in at 2GHz with four Cortex-154 cores, paired with 2GB of DDR3 SDRAM and a Mali 450 GPU. Connection options include Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0 and full support for Android and Ubuntu, all wrapped up in a $40 asking price.

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Gears of War: Ultimate Edition developer working on Multi-GPU support

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Mar 7, 2016 7:01 AM CST

The Coalition is hard at work, with the help of AMD, in fixing Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on the PC. One of the first items up for business that they want to add in is multi-GPU support, so you can strive for even more performance once the rest of the fixes come along.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition developer working on Multi-GPU support

Just recently they introduced a fix to the issues that caused graphics corruption to be prevalent with AMD GPU's as well as being one of the major causes of the performance issues that AMD users were seeing.

That last part of his tweet refers to how the game doesn't really have a true unlocked framerate as of yet. If you turn off v-sync, it'll run only up to your monitors refresh rate, which is likely 60Hz for the majority of gamers. They are being quite open about the issues they're working on despite the fact that those issues shouldn't even be there to begin with.

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