Latest News - Page 1158

AMD has just released its latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.4.1 drivers, which have support for Unreal Engine 5 and City Sample -- both of which were just unleashed by Epic Games.

The new AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 22.4.1 drivers will work with Unreal Engine 5, which is available for a 20GB download on the Epic Games Launcher, while City Sample is the technology infused together that created The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience... City Sample is a much larger 93GB download.

The new Radeon GPU drivers will let you check it out, as well as fix some issues with visual artifacts in Horizon: Zero Dawn on the Radeon RX 6800 XT, as well as some issues when changing resolution while using Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) technology.

Bloober Team is currently developing four new projects, and the dev expects two of them to be ready in the next 3-4 years.

While scanning Bloober Team's recent annual report I noticed an interesting section that revealed how many games the team is working on. The studio currently has four projects in development across a variety of publishers and partners. The biggest is the mysterious game for Konami, which is almost assuredly a Silent Hill project.

The Polish independent developer just posted record earnings in 2021 thanks to the success of The Medium, which has become one of its most lucrative IPs. The company expects to push these earnings even higher throughout 2022 and wants to release two big new games by 2025.

Max Payne 1 & 2 are getting reborn for the modern age.

Originally released in the PS2 and Xbox eras, Remedy's stylish and gritty Max Payne originals are getting the remastered treatment. Remedy today announced they are teaming up with Rockstar Games to remaster Max Payne 1 & 2 in the powerful Northlight engine for next-gen consoles like the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and on PC.

Grand Theft Auto juggernaut Rockstar Games will publish and finance the remasters, which will be released as a single-game bundle. Remedy could also make royalties from game sales once Rockstar has been paid back. The budget for the project will be typical of Remedy's games (Control was made for $33 million).

Sony has nuked the $59.99 PlayStation Now deal as gamers stack up subscriptions to save on the new $119 PlayStation Plus Premium tier.

With the help of deal maven Wario64, gamers discovered a great loophole that discounted the new PS Plus Premium by 50%. The deal offered 1 year of PlayStation Now for $59.99. Sony previously confirmed that PS Now subs would transfer directly over to its new $119 PlayStation Plus Premium tier that offers access to 740 games across six PlayStation generations. Gamers were buying multiple years' worth of PS Now in the hope that Sony would convert their subscriptions into PS Plus Premium at a 1:1 ratio.

Apparently this was a mistake and Sony has taken the deal offline. Navigating to the web page now delivers an Access Denied message:

Decentralized digital commodities like crypto and NFTs are quite volatile thanks to fluctuating values, shifting regulations, and security issues. Ubisoft has now effectively reminded the games industry as a whole just how unpredictable NFTs can be.

Ubisoft today announced that Ghost Recon Breakpoint is entering maintenance mode. Breakpoint will no longer get DLC or expansions and servers will remain online so the game can be played and monetized. Breakpoint was the first game to use Ubisoft's failed Quartz NFTs which are effectively in-game cosmetics that can be re-sold.

We've talked about how Ubisoft's NFTs are marginally bad for business; NFTs thrive off of scarcity and Ubisoft flooded the market, resulting in less than $3,000 in crypto resale value. That's 0.001% of Ubisoft's microtransaction earnings for Q3 2021.

Epic Games says that nearly half of all upcoming next-gen console games are using Unreal Engine technology.

The games industry typically uses two primary third-party game engines: Unity and Unreal Engine. Today's big Unreal Engine 5 showcase highlighted just how popular Epic's tools are for upcoming games on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. According to Epic's Tim Sweeney, about 48% of all upcoming announced console games are using Unreal.

"Among game developers, 48% of announced next-generation console titles are powered by Unreal," Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said.

Epic Games just released Unreal Engine 5 to developers and also shipped out a starter multiplayer game that's quite a bit like Mass Effect without powers.

Alongside UE5, Epic Games is shipping out starter game projects. One of them, a futuristic third-person shooter called Lyra, is pretty interesting. Lyra is basically a shell or framework for a game and isn't necessarily a finished product. Devs are to take Lyra and transform it into something of their own, but at its core the game looks very similar to the third-person multiplayer modes found in Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda (without the awesome abilities, of course).

The recent Unreal Engine showcase highlighted how easy it was for developers to start up Lyra and make direct changes in real-time in UE5, utilizing effects like the direct import feature from other libraries like Artstation and Quixel Megascans as well as a showcase of the new advanced lumen lighting tech.

Russia recently backed away from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant allowing Ukrainian forces to announce its recapture.

Multiple reports, along with statements from Ukrainian officials, revealed that the Ukrainian flag had been raised at the abandoned nuclear power plant. The retreat from Russia follows numerous statements from various sources that multiple Russian military troops suffered radiation poisoning after walking through the forbidden red forest and digging trenches in radioactive soil without protective equipment.

Notably, the surrounding forest area recently caught on fire, causing radioactive dust to stir up and float up into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the Chernobyl acting director Valery Seida recently told Reuters that inhaling the dust is "likely to cause internal radiation in their bodies." Now, a video captured by a drone has shown trenches dug into the soil around the abandoned power plant, providing more evidence that suggests Russian troops have been exposed to radiation.

The technology could allow solar panels to continuously generate electricity, even while the Sun is not shining.

The solar panels were created by researchers from Stanford University, who combined a regular solar panel with a thermoelectric generator. Solar panels, and any other matter warmer than absolute zero, emit infrared radiation, or heat, which radiates out into the atmosphere. On clear nights where this radiation cannot reflect off clouds, the air becomes warmer than the surface of the solar panel, and the thermoelectric generator can use this temperature difference to generate electricity.

A recent report from Allied Market Research estimates that the global nuclear bombs and missiles market will grow significantly over the decade.

The analysis notes that in 2020, the global market for these weapons was valued at $72.64 billion. By 2030, it is projected to reach $126.34 billion, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.4% from 2021 to 2030. Weapons carried by aircraft bombers are projected to see the biggest market increase, followed by submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Yet another NFT scam has caused a user to lose over half a million dollars worth of NFTs.

A user going by the name s27 owned the two stolen Bored Ape NFTs originally, the bubble gum ape and the matching mutant version, valued at a combined $567,000. s27 fell victim to a scammer who pasted a small image of a checkmark over copies of otherwise legitimate NFTs and traded them with s27 on SwapKiwi.

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. government has uncovered more documents related to UFOs.

The U.S. government has released a database containing 1,574 pages of material to The Sun on April 5th 2022 after the British tabloid filed an FOIA request four years ago. The FOIA request sought documents related to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which only became publicly known about in 2017.

One report titled "Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human and Biological Tissues," from March 2010, describes alleged effects inflicted on "human observers by anomalous advanced aerospace systems." The report contains details from 42 cases from medical files and 300 "unpublished" cases relating to brain damage, nerve damage, heart palpitations, and headaches resulting from UFO encounters.

A study on the new cell titled "Human distal airways contain a multipotent secretory cell that can regenerate alveoli" has been published in the journal Nature.

Scientists found the new cell tucked away inside human lungs called respiratory airway secretory (RAS) cells. They are found in the bronchioles of the lungs, which connect to alveoli that allow oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange between the air we breathe and the lungs.

The RAS cells have two roles within the lungs; secreting molecules to maintain the bronchioles' fluid lining to increase the lungs' efficiency and rigidity and can serve as a progenitor cell to alveolar type 2 (AT2) cells. When other alveoli cells are damaged, these RAS cells can differentiate into the AT2 cells (similar to how a stem cell can differentiate into other cell types) and will be able to secrete a chemical that is used to repair the other damaged alveoli cells.

On April 3, a 12,000 mile-long "canyon of fire" opened up on the surface of the sun, causing a coronal mass ejection (CME) to be shot towards Earth.

Officials from the UK weather forecaster Met Office said the sun experienced two "filament eruptions", with the first occurring on Sunday, April 3, and the second on Monday, April 4. Forecasters have confirmed that both eruptions have caused CMEs, which are waves of charged plasma ejected from the sun's atmosphere.

When a CME impacts Earth, it interacts with Earth's magnetic field, and that interaction between the charged particles from the sun and Earth's atmosphere can be seen in the form of auroras such as the southern/northern lights. Additionally, larger CMEs can cause many problems for Earth as they can interrupt satellite communications, power networks, GPS, and even electrical grids.

Today an asteroid approximately the size of a bus will zoom past Earth at around 34,500 mph, according to NASA's database.

The asteroid is categorized as a "potentially hazardous object" and is called 2022 GN1. According to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) database, the space rock will come within 79,000 miles of Earth, and doesn't pose any threat of impact. Astronomers discovered the asteroid on April 1 and have estimated that its diameter is anywhere between 24 and 52 feet wide, making it a smaller asteroid when compared to some others floating around in space.

Read more: NASA confirms 1,000+ foot-wide asteroid will approach Earth this April

A Californian-based company has announced it will be attempting to catch the first stage of a rocket booster with a helicopter at the end of April, 2022.

Rocket Lab has put out a press release that announces it will attempt to catch the falling Electron first-stage rocket booster mid-air after it has separated from the main stage. Here's the plan for the mission called "There and Back Again". The 59-foot-tall Electron rocket will launch from Rocket Lab's New Zealand launch site carrying 34 satellites into orbit.

Before Electron is launched, Rocket Lab will already have set up a customized Sikorsky S-92 helicopter that will be located around 150 nautical miles off the New Zealand coast, where it will wait to catch the falling rocket stage. Here's what Rocket Lab expects to happen. Around 2.5 minutes after the launch, the second and first stage will separate, with the first will fall back down to Earth, and the second will continue transporting the cargo to its designated location.

NASA and the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for 32 years now, and of those 32 years, it has been observing a baby planet forming for 13 years.

Throughout its operation, Hubble has been periodically looking back at the protoplanet AB Aurigae b that's located in a young solar system 530 light-years away from Earth. At the center of that solar system is the star AB Aurigae which is only two million years old. Hubble has been observing the baby planet form around its local star and found that its very similar to Jupiter, but is actually nine times larger than Jupiter and orbits its star at a distance that is twice the distance between Pluto and our Sun (8.6 billion miles).

Now, why is this interesting? Typically gas giants form through a process called "core accretion", which is the process of a planet being built from the accumulation of smaller pieces of rock, ice, dust, and pebbles that combine together over millions of years to form a planet. At the distance AB Aurigae b is orbiting its star, researchers believe it's unlikely that it would form through core accretion, which led them to observe the baby planet with multiple different telescopes over an extended period to find an answer.

An extremely wealthy Russian oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin is being targeted by the US government.

Under the new sanctions imposed by the US government following Russia's invasion into Ukraine, US officials began targeted Russian oligarchs which are the extremely wealthy elite that are close with Putin. Russian oligarchs have had their assets targeted by the Biden administration and recently the US Justice Department secured a warrant to seize the 77-metre superyacht called Tango valued at $120 MILLION.

The superyacht is one of the most expensive superyachts in the world and is linked to billionaire Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg, who was accused by the US Justice Department of attempting to conceal ownership of the superyacht through various shell companies. Tango was seized by Spanish police and US federal agents at the Marina Real in the port of Palma de Mallorca in the Mediterranean Sea.

It's expected that developer Battlestate Games will unleash NVIDIA DLSS technology into its new update for Escape from Tarkov, which could drop this week.

Escape from Tarkov is a super-hard game on your PC as it is, so any performance help is very, very welcomed. NVIDIA's kick-ass DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology will offer its multiple upscaling modes in Escape from Tarkov: Quality, Balanced, and Performance.

The news is coming directly from Battlestate Games CEO Nikita Buyanov, who said in a recent podcast that NVIDIA DLSS support would be dropping in Escape from Tarkov sometime this week, and that it has passed the testing phases required for it to go live into the game.

Intel has just announced the first details of its new Intel Blockscale ASIC, which is offering energy-effiiency hashing for proof-of-work consensus networks.

The new Intel Blockscale ASIC has its first customers already, with Argo Blockchain, Block Inc., Hive Blockchain Technologies and GRIID Infrastructure all frothing for the 580MH/s of hash rate mining power. Intel is using its many years of research and development (R&D) into the new application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners.

Balaji Kanigicherla, Intel vice president and general manager of Custom Compute in the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group explains: "Momentum around blockchain continues to build. It is the enabler of decentralized and distributed computing, making way for innovative business models".