Latest News - Page 1378

Last week, Facebook announced a plan to introduce advertisements in VR content. The idea was presented as a way for small developers to increase revenues to help reach profitability. As you might expect, the announcement drew immediate ire from VR fans which prompted the only developer involved in the plan to back out.

Facebook said it would implement a small-scale pilot with a select few developers to test its in-game advertising system. Multiple studios are said to be involved in the pilot, but Facebook named only one game, Blaston, in the announcement, and that didn't go well for the developer. Within a day of the announcement, Blaston's user rating got blasted with a review bomb. As a result, Resolution Games did an about-face and backed out of the plan to advertise in Blaston.

Iranian police have just performed their largest cryptocurrency mining farm bust ever, with 7000 computer miners seized in the raid.

State media reports that crypto mining farms have been behind the recent power outages across Iran, with Tehran police chief General Hossein Rahimi explaining that they seized the 7000 computer miners in the west of the capital, inside of an abandoned factory.

General Rahimi said: "The computer miners were found at an abandoned factory in Iran's capital. It was used to carry out illegal cryptocurrency mining activities".

HP's Reverb G2 is one of the highest resolution VR headsets on the market today. The headset usually sells for $599, but Walmart is currently offering a hefty $200 discount on the headset, so it's a great time to buy one if you were thinking about it.

HP's Reverb G2 VR headset boasts dual 2160 x 2160 RGB LCD panels, translating to one of the best visual experiences in a VR headset. The Reverb G2 also includes a pair of off-ear headphones, like those that come equipped on the Valve Index headset.

When HP released the Reverb G2 late last year, the headset received mixed reviews. While the visual experience was just about as good as it gets, the tracking quality didn't get such glorious praise. The Reverb G2 is a Windows Mixed Reality device, which means it gets its tracking from cameras on the headset instead of base stations like SteamVR-based headsets do. HP's inside-out tracking leaves blind spots where it loses the controller tracking at times.

NVIDIA has had some major shifts with DLSS over the last few days, with Deep Learning Super Sampling technology now supported in DOOM Eternal with new GeForce Game Ready 471.11 WHQL drivers.

The upgraded DLSS 2.2 was recently deployed in Rainbow Six Siege, and will soon be introduced into Red Dead Redemption 2 as well.

NVIDIA works with the biggest game developers in the world, and has been working closely with Epic Games on their next-gen Unreal Engine 5 technology. Unreal Engine 5 developers can now download the NVIDIA DLSS plugin, which will let them tweak DLSS for their games in-development and have huge performance increases thanks to DLSS.

AMD has released their new Radeon Adrenalin 21.6.1 driver, which adds support for their DLSS competitor in FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and the first mobile RDNA 2 GPU.

The new Radeon Adrenalin 21.6.1 driver adds support for FSR in certain games, including Godfall (with ray tracing support), Terminator Resistance, The Riftbreaker, Evil Genius 2, Anno 1800, 22 Racing Series, and KingShunt.

There are many more FSR games coming in the future, including Far Cry 6 and Resident Evil Village -- as well as support for the Radeon RX 6800M. There are some issues fixed with the new drivers, where Radeon FreeSync would lock on the desktop when switching tasks between extended and primary displays.

DOOM Eternal receiving ray tracing and more so the DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology is some of the biggest news for NVIDIA of the year, and now there's some new GeForce Game Ready drivers that add support for ray-traced reflections and DLSS in DOOM Eternal.

Even before the ray-traced reflections, DOOM Eternal was one of the best-looking games on the market... but now it looks even better. On top of that, we have DLSS that boosts the performance in all settings and resolution combos -- pushing 4K 120FPS+ on GeForce RTX graphics cards.

NVIDIA's new GeForce Game Ready 471.11 WHQL drivers not only add support for the new ray-traced reflections and DLSS upgrades in DOOM Eternal, but they add support for NVIDIA Reflex tech inside of Escape from Tarkov, Rust and its DLSS upgrades, and the ray tracing and DLSS upgrades in LEGO Builder's Journey.

343 Industries is doing early preliminary investigations on boosting Halo MCC's big team battle player counts past 16 players.

Since MCC launched in 2014, 343i has been reinventing classic Halo games in a multitude of ways like cross-play, unlockables, and mod support, and it's not finished just yet. The developer is currently looking into boosting Halo's ultra-nostalgic big team battle game mode and increasing the max player count beyond 8v8. How big could it go? Maybe 20v20 or 30v30.

"How epic is big team battle? You know, another thing...We're doing some investigations on increasing player counts above 16," 343i producer Sean Swidersky said in a recent Xbox Plays stream.

The latest update for Marvel's Avengers displays your IP on your screen while connected to online servers. Yes, really.

Don't stream Marvel's Avengers on Twitch or YouTube any time soon. The new Patch 1.8.0 update adds a bunch of features to the game: a Cosmic Cube event and sector, a bunch of fixes, and potentially doxxing players by showing sensitive personal internet network data on their screen. For some astronomically bewildering reason, the game can show your IP address on the screen as you play. This is a big deal because in the right hands, IP addresses can be manipulated to seriously ruin your day with DDoS spam or even find your location.

Mention of the glitch was first spotted on Twitter and then confirmed by Forbes' Paul Tassi. Crystal Dynamics has acknowledged the issue and calls it "floating text strings." If you see them, don't stream, the devs say.

Tencent has bought the majority of shares in Yager Development, the studio behind games like Spec Ops: The Line, German website Games Economy reveals.

Tencent has grabbed the reins of another indie studio. This time it's German game dev Yager, a team responsible for games like Spec Ops: The Line and an Eve Online-esque shooter called Dreadnought. Yager is currently working on two titles: An online live game calledThe Cycle, which has been released but will expand with content and is a big reason behind Tencent's acquisition, and another unannounced project. Tencent typically invests in studios creating games-as-a-service titles that are monetized over time and kick back consistent revenues--like, say, Riot Games' League of Legends or Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile.

Backed with Tencent's billions, Yager now has a lot more freedom to chase its passions and create projects it wants to make. Yager boss Timo Ullmann says he wishes he teamed up with Tencent sooner, especially in the 2018-2019 periods when Yager's fate was more uncertain, but the partnership will open up new doors for the studio.

Quake, one of the most formative FPS games on PC, is now 25 years old, and id's John Romero takes a look back at the shooter's development.

Like Doom, Quake has had a transformative effect on the games industry. It had major breakthroughs like a fully-fledged console command environment, TCP/IP multiplayer, its own scripting language that id actually released to fans and a much more advanced control scheme with techniques like strafe jumping. The gory atmosphere was gritty and brutal, and the industrial Nine Inch Nails soundtrack really added a visceral flavor to everything.

On Twitter, id Software co-founder John Romero briefly talked about what it was like to make Quake.

Starfield's new trailer was created entirely in-engine and confirms big upgrades from Bethesda's new Creation Engine iteration.

According to Senior Lighting Artist Keith Beltramini, the recent Starfield E3 2021 reveal footage wasn't pre-rendered, but was entirely in-engine. This shows what the new Creation Engine 2 overhaul can do on PC and the Xbox Series X/S.

"I created the lighting for the 2021 teaser trailer of Starfield. Using our own Creation Engine 2, we created this entirely in game without any cinematic tools,"Beltramini said on his website.

The cryptocurrency market has taken a sharp dive almost across the board. Even people such as Mark Cuban have said he has felt the "hit".

Cuban isn't alone when it comes to feeling the effects of the market dropping, and if you are involved in cryptocurrency in any way, you certainly know how it feels. Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum (ETH), and the world's youngest crypto billionaire, felt a loss of $400 million as Ethereum's value dropped by more than 50% in just 5 weeks.

Forbes reports that Buterin holds 325,001 and 1,366 ETH in two addresses currently valued at around $632,000,000. On May 3, his stack of ETH was valued at $1.09 billion, meaning that around $457,000,000 was lost in between May 3 and now. Ethereum is still ranked the no.2 coin when it comes to market capitalization, Bitcoin being the first with a $606,843,934,844 market cap, and Ethereum with $223,752,321,616. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

Bitcoin has taken a sharp dive in value as of late, but now there might be big some news that could add to its value.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), an arm of House Republicans, announced on Thursday that they would be accepting cryptocurrency as a form of donation to the party. In addition, the announcement revealed that cryptocurrency donations will be accepted through a Bitcoin payment service provider called BitPay.

It should be noted that the NRCC won't be storing any cryptocurrency, but instead, the cryptocurrency that is donated will be converted to US dollars before it will become available to the NRCC. Tom Emmer, NRCC head, said that "We are focused on pursuing every avenue possible to further our mission of stopping Nancy Pelosi's socialist agenda and retaking the House majority, and this innovative technology will help provide Republicans the resources we need to succeed."

Alien skeptics and believers of the recently viral UFO footage are all patiently awaiting the coming report from US intelligence agencies on UFO or UAP sightings.

Ahead of the report, the broadcasting network Fox has announced that it's currently investigating UFOs in its coming one-hour special from TMZ. The network says that it will be called TMZ Investigates: UFOs: The Pentagon Proof, and as reported by Deadline, "will analyze the US government's official response to the phenomenon, which is expected later this month."

Additionally, Deadline reports that Fox has said that the one-hour special will contain entirely new footage of UFOs and that this footage was shot from the deck of a US Navy ship. The footage will be aired when the special is released. On top of that, the special will also contain interviews with senators, military pilots, scientists, former Pentagon officials, and much more. TMZ Investigates: UFOs: The Pentagon Proof will air on Tuesday, June 29.

Space tourism is beginning to become a reality, and soon anyone will be able to take a trip to see Earth like they have never seen it before.

Blue Origin and Boeing are just some of the companies that are working towards making space tourism a reality. Blue Origin will have its first passenger flight in the coming weeks, and one of its first passengers will be Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos. If rockets aren't your thing, or if you can't afford the price tag, and want to opt for something cheap, maybe a space balloon will be up your alley.

Space Perspective has successfully completed the first test flight of its prototype stratospheric passenger balloon called Neptune One. The launch was conducted on Friday, June 18, and Neptune One reached 108,409 feet before it splashed back down to Earth in the Gulf of Mexico. True "space" begins at 330,000, often referred to as the Karman Line. However, Space Perspective says passengers will be able to have an incredible view of Earth that creates the Overview Effect.

NASA's Juno spacecraft used Earth for a speed boost to get to its mission destination of Jupiter back in 2016.

Juno has been orbiting Jupiter for five years now, and since then, it has been relaying vital information back to NASA about the mysterious large planet. However, before Juno reached Jupiter, it flew by Earth using its gravity for an assist and gained more than 3.9 kilometers per second (8,800 mph) boost in speed. While Juno was flying past, NASA engineers used the opportunity to test out the spacecraft's camera by taking photos of Earth.

Juno used its JunoCam to snap some incredible images of our blue planet and posted them to the Mission Juno website for public viewing. Paul Steffes from Georgie Tech, one of the Juno science investigators, said, "The idea that you can couple our scientific imaging and understanding of the planet, with artistic representations of not only what the planet means but what exploration means, has been very valuable to the mission- and to the public". For more information about this story, visit this link here.

The Hubble Space Telescope, despite being 30-year-old technology, is still managing to shock onlookers at the quality of images it can produce.

The above image is of a spiral galaxy named NGC 3254, and in order to capture this image, Hubble used its Wide Field Camera 3, which can observe ultraviolet light, visible light, and infrared light. How is an image like this created? According to NASA, the image is a "composite of observations taken in the visible and infrared". NASA also explains that NGC 3254 has a "hidden secret" hiding in plain sight, saying that NGC 3254 is actually a Seyfert galaxy.

For those who don't know, Seyfert galaxies have an extremely active galactic nucleus and belong to a class of galaxies called "active galaxies". Seyfert galaxies are galaxies that have "supermassive black holes at their centers accreting material, which releases vast amounts of radiation". These active cores can release as much energy as the entire galaxy put together. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

Earth has officially added a new ocean to its current list of four, which is; the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans.

According to the National Geographic Society, the Southern Ocean, which resides around Antarctica, is now Earth's fifth ocean after 100 years of debate. On June 8, the National Geographic Society announced that it would be labeling the ocean region as the Southern Ocean and that it will be added to the ocean and its respective title to global maps of Earth.

Here's what Alex Tait, the society's official geographer, said to National Geographic, "The Southern Ocean has long been recognized by scientists, but because there was never agreement internationally, we never officially recognized it. It's sort of geographic nerdiness in some ways." Tait also said, "Students learn information about the ocean world through what oceans you're studying. If you don't include the Southern Ocean, then you don't learn the specifics of it and how important it is."

Researchers are currently on the hunt to better understand the relationship between black holes and galaxies.

It's widely considered that most, if not all, galaxies contain a black hole at their center, but the reasoning behind it is still not fully understood by astronomers. However, a new study published in the online in Astrophysical Journal may reveal some new information, which could pave the way for astronomers to have a deeper understanding.

Researchers suspect that black holes and galaxies evolve together through what is described as galactic "winds". The winds are produced by a black hole's ability to swallow anything that is close to it. As objects are pulled closer, the black hole's gravitation pull accelerates the objects, which results in an energy release that ejects the drawn-in objects outwards.

The entire cryptocurrency market has tumbled, with Bitcoin down 20% in the last 24 hours -- losing $60 billion+ in market cap in the process.

Bitcoin took its huge tumble for a few different reasons: 90% of the crypto mining farms in China are winding down, China is clamping down on cryptocurrencies from all angles, and in the middle of it Bitcoin and every other crypto is being ripped a new one.

It's good to see the media not solely blaming Elon Musk for the streets being turned red with crypto blood, but things are beginning to turn green as I'm typing this news. Bitcoin dropped to $31,000 or so down from $36,000 or so 24 hours ago -- but bounced up from $31,000 up to $32,500 or so at the time of writing.