Latest Technology Content

The Master Chief Collection's impending PC release is a massive undertaking, and Microsoft plans to hold tons of internal beta tests for the six-game Halo anthology.

At the recent Halo Championships event, 343 Industries recently announced Halo Insider program, a new initiative for testing out new Halo games. The program offers fans across Xbox One and PC the chance to try out new games like Halo: Infinite and the hugely anticipated PC version of Master Chief Collection in their fledgling states, and shape them over time with valuable feedback. Users can even test out the Steam version of the Master Chief Collection.

"Halo Insiders who choose to opt in to console or PC flighting will be considered for early access play sessions with in-development Halo games," the announcement reads. "Every improvement to Halo: The Master Chief Collection over the past year was the direct result of Insiders participating in flights and sharing feedback to the development team. Each public flight has specific goals, meaning not all Insiders will be selected for every flight."

Respawn Entertainment is unleashing Season 1 of Apex Legends otherwise known as Wild Frontier, tomorrow at 10AM PST/1PM ET. EA has now revealed what we can expect inside of the Season 1 Battle Pass, which we've got detailed below:

• 1000 Apex Coins (these can be put toward the next Battle Pass if you like)
• Apex's first ever 3-stage Evolving Legendary Weapon Skin (Havoc)
• Exclusive Epic PDW weapon skin
• Legendary Apex Pack with Guaranteed 1+ Legendary
• Epic Apex Pack with Guaranteed 1+ Epic
• 5 standard Apex Packs
• 3 Legend skins
• 20 exclusive rare weapon skins
• 9 exclusive banner frames
• 9 exclusive intro quips
• 9 exclusive seasonal stat trackers
• Exclusive badges, Battle Pass boosts and more!

The new Battle Pass will cost 950 Apex coins which works out to $10, but EA is also offering the Battle Pass Bundle that will cost 2800 Apex coins and will throw you right up to level 25 instantly. The pass will also unlock Lifeline Revolutionary, Wraith Survivor, and Mirage Outlaw skins instantly so you can use them right away.

As you get through the levels in Apex Legends, Battle Pass holders will earn rewards that will include skins for your Legends and weapons, trackers, and badges. There are over 100 items that EA and Respawn have ready to be unlocked, all within the first season.

Unity has just announced today at NVIDIA's own GTC 2019 that it has teamed with the GPU leader where it will integrate NVIDIA's RTX real-time ray tracing technology into its future platforms.

The company announced that NVIDIA's beautiful RTX real-time ray tracing technology is officially arriving in Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) today in preview form. It will officially be deployed out in a more optimized state to Unity customers in 2H 2019, so we should begin to see the flow-on effects of this in 2H 2019 and more so in 2020 and beyond.

Natalya Tatarchuk, Vice President of Graphics at Unity Technologies explained in a statement: "As part of our commitment to best-in-class visual fidelity graphics, we rolled out the preview of the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) last year - a highly-optimized, state-of-the-art raster-based solution capable of achieving stunning graphics in real-time on consumer hardware. We built HDRP with the future in mind and today we're excited to announce that we are working with NVIDIA to adopt its RTX real-time ray tracing capabilities so we could bring this technology to all. Real-time ray tracing moves real-time graphics significantly closer to realism, opening the gates to global rendering effects never before possible in the real-time domain".

Star Wars is awesome, and retro gaming is awesome...but what happens when you combine the two together? This custom-made Millennium Falcon Nintendo console, of course.

Star Wars and Nintendo megafan Chris Scott has quite the talent for crafting consoles out of spaceships. Scott revealed his latest creation, a combo SNES and NES wrapped in a snazzy Millennium Falcon shell, on the Nintendo Over 30's Club Facebook page, which obviously led to massive acclaim.

The two-in-one Corellian YT-1300 light freighter console can run both SNES and NES games, and even lights up in the back for hyperspace travel ambient effects.

Bethesda today confirmed its E3 2019 plans, which include a stage show for its biggest upcoming games...and Starfield could be one of them.

Bethesda's E3 2019 gala will basically be a rehash of everything announced at last year's show, including the hellishly explosive DOOM Eternal, the two-player co-op Wolfenstein Youngblood, open-world post-apocalyptic RAGE 2, and plus maybe a few surprises. "E3 is coming, and on Sunday, June 9, Team Bethesda returns to Los Angeles for our 5th Annual Bethesda E3 Showcase. It's going to be a hell of a night. We have got an in-depth look at DOOM Eternal plus much, much more," the devs announced.

But one highly anticipated sci-fi game could make another appearance, as teased in the starry night sky on Bethesda's E3 reveal. Originally announced at E3 2018, Bethesda's latest game Starfield is its most ambitious project yet and is still probably a ways off from release. Starfield is Bethesda Game Studios' first new IP in decades, and promises to be a "singleplayer space epic" that delivers unique RPG-driven action. All of BGS' internal studios are working on Starfield, including its new Austin and Dallas branches.

An internet service provider is a very important player in your online ecosystem. They, therefore, hold a lot of power when it comes to your online privacy and anonymity. This is because ISPs are able to monitor everything we do online using our IP addresses; they are then able to sell this personal data for marketing purposes or other uses.

However, they sell your data indirectly once a marketing company approaches them for a marketing campaign towards a certain demographic; they are able to channel specific advertisements to specific people depending on the data they have. Your internet service provider is also obliged to provide all the information they have on you to a government agency if the need arises. This begs the question: how secure is your online data?

The type of information they store

Different ISPs have different policies on what data they store on internet users. Despite this fact, they are still able to see your personal data particularly if you do not encrypt your internet traffic. A recent study indicated that 86 percent of shopping and health websites do not use HTTPS, a more secure protocol for sending data over the internet.

The type of information they store also depends on how much of your personal information you willingly put online especially on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Furthermore, from your IP address they will be able to store the URLs you visit, your previous browsing history, how much time you spend on certain pages and the pages you visit frequently. In extreme cases, ISPs are able to store information about your location, phone number, email, medical data as well as your private social media information.

One of the measures that internet users can apply to reduce the amount of data that their ISPs have on them is using a Virtual Private Network. Top rated VPN services are your sure bet to a more private browsing life and secure online data. This method works by ensuring that you have a safe and secure gateway to the internet through the VPN servers located all over the world. Besides, offshore Virtual Private Networks such as NordVPN do not store any requests you make to web servers across the internet.

OtherSide Entertainment have decided to separate with publisher, Starbreeze Studios while also announcing that System Shock 3 development is well on the way.

In a recent post to their website, OtherSide Entertainment has announced that the relationship between them and Starbreeze has ended due to the current finnancial situation Starbreeze is going through. For those that don't know, Starbreeze is dealing with massive company losses after the catastrophe with OVERKILL's The Walking Dead, the company is looking at losses of $135 million and is currently aiming for overall stability.

The post has also mentioned that despite the separation between OtherSide Entertainment and Starbreeze, the development progress of System Shock 3 has been unaltered. Deus Ex creator, Warren Spector has created a team for System Shock 3 and gave a statement in the post, here is what he had to say; "We parted ways with Starbreeze (amicably), which means we are in the process of lining up a new publishing partner. Happily, given the pedigree of System Shock and the progress we've made so far there's already a lot of interest. Has the situation affected development? Not really. The team is still, as we say, 'psyched and cranking' - in other words, continuing as normal. I'm confident we can bring System Shock 3 to market and have it take its place as a leading title in the immersive simulation genre".

It seems that the development progress of System Shock 3 is around the 65% margin, who will be the titles next publisher? It is unknown at this stage but I think it was a good idea by OtherSide Entertainment to move away from Starbreeze considering the company has filed for bankruptcy. I will be sure to update you when the next publisher is announced for System Shock 3.

Valve has just released a new DOTA 2 betting app onto the App Store and Google Play Store, the app allows users to bet on DOTA 2 eSports matches with in-game money.

The app has already been released and allows for Android and iOS users to win shards by predicting what DOTA 2 team wins the eSports Circuit matches. The betting uses in-game money instead of using real-world money, and also allows for its users to personalize their news feed which is in-built into the app.

Valve's new app also encourages its users to create their own 'pro-player' roster in the Fantasy Challenge mode which will reward playerss with shards. Its quite obvious of what Valve's motives are with the DOTA Pro Circuit app, they want its users to be always looking at the eSports games of DOTA and to keep its viewers there they will be rewarded with some currency. To check out the app on iOS click here, for a link to Google Play, click here.

Just last week, China managed to hit a Space milestone with the launch of their 300th rocket. The launch carried a satellite into Earths orbit and marks quite the achievement for China's National Space Administration.

Wu Yansheng, the board chairman of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has spoken out about the achievement, saying "This is a milestone for China's space industry development." The launch was carried out at Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern Sichaun Province, and featured a Long March 3B rocket that carried the ChinaSat 6C satellite into orbit.

According to the Xinhua news service, the first Long March rocket that was launched by China dated back to April 24th, 1970. That rocket which was titled Long March 1 carried the country's first satellite, Dongfanghong-1 and could only carry a total weight of 661 lbs, or 300 kilograms into orbit. Since then China has managed to make a staggering 17 variants of the original rocket, and also managed to drastically increase the carrying capacity of each of the rockets. The rocket that can carry the heaviest load weighs is called the heavy-lift Long March 5 and can carry 27.6 tons of weight to low-Earth orbit. If the desired trip is further than low-Earth orbit, the rockets weight must be reduced to 15.4 tons.

Square Enix has confirmed that there is a brand new Octopath Traveler game in development for the Nintendo Switch.

In an interview with the Japanese magazine Famitsu, Tomoya Asano, the producer for the first Octopath Traveler has said that a sequel for the JRPG is currently in the works and will be released onto the Nintendo Switch. it is unclear when the title is planned for launch. According to Stealth, a Global Market Researcher, "the Yokoyama team of Square Enix is the one working on the Octopath mobile game."

The first Octopath Traveler was very-well received by the JRPG community, but that doesn't mean it didn't come with its faults. The expectations for the sequel will be quite high, but if the sequel is anything like the first game fans of the series shouldn't be disappointed. Unfortunately was no release date mentioned in the news tip from Nintendo First Order Reaver.