Latest News - Page 1397

Ubisoft has hired machine learning specialist Guillemette Picard as VP of Product Technology, clearly signaling a further push into new experimental technologies.

Right now most of gaming's biggest players are trying new things like machine learning, AI, and VR as tools to create new games. Sony's AI division has teamed up with first-party studios to push ML on the PS5, and both EA and Ubisoft have been experimenting with nascent technologies for projects. EA has its SeeD division, and Ubisoft has already rolled out prototypes of blockchain-based video games.

Now the French games-maker is doubling-down on this new tech. Ubisoft recently hired seasoned AI executive Guillemette Picard to help lead its product technology group and create new kinds of gaming experiences.

Flying Wild Hog is currently working on four new games including the ultra-chaotic Shadow Warrior 3.

Flying Wild Hog has been pretty busy lately. The studio was recently acquired by Embracer Group's Deep Silver label and has expanded its team to 300 developers to help work on a new slate of games. The team is currently working on four games, and we've heard mention of three of them so far.

"Flying Wild Hog have an exciting project pipeline with four titles that will be released starting from FY 21/22," reads Embracer's most recent Q4 earnings report.

Deep Silver's parent company Koch Media is holding its own E3-timed showcase on Friday, June 11 at 12PM PST/ 3PM EST.

Get ready, Dead Island and Saints Row fans. Deep Silver should finally reveal Dead Island 2 gameplay and/or Saints Row V at the upcoming Koch Prime Time stream on June 11. Deep Silver's dev teams have been working both games for a long time now, and it's possible one of them could release in 2021-2022 based on previous executive comments.

In a recent presentation, Koch Media said it expects "notable organic growth expected in Games segments driven by significant product releases in 2021 and beyond."

The PlayStation 5 is expected to turn a profit after next month, less than a year into the console's lifecycle.

In a recent investor's meeting, Sony Interactive Entertainment says the PS5 standard edition is expected to break even in Fiscal Year 2021. Sony has focused strongly on console production costs and cut corners where it can (as per Mark Cerny, the PS5's limited SSD storage is a result of cost control) securing big multi-million wholesale part deals in the process.

"Another area that we focused on was our console economics. I am pleased to say that the PlayStation 5 standard edition will break even from next month's production. And from then on, we project that it will become increasing profitable," Ryan said.

The PlayStation 4 will be incredibly important to Sony over the next few years, and the current-gen console is expected to prop up the PlayStation brand through the transition to PS5.

Sony expects big things from the PlayStation 5. The console is expected to beat the PS4's lifetime sales and Sony is preparing the largest-ever shipment of consoles for next fiscal year. However, the PS4's mighty 116.4 million install base will continue being a tentpole for PlayStation earnings from now through 2023.

In a recent investor's meeting, Sony Interactive President Jim Ryan details just how important the PS4 is to Sony's continued success. Sony expects the PS4 to have the largest tail of any PlayStation console, and the PS4 will deliver a whopping 70% of PS Store spending in FY2022. This is the same year Sony will release a record-breaking 14.8 million+ PS5s onto the market.

There are some major changes coming to USB-C and they are very, very welcomed -- the USB Implementers Forum is an industry group that developed the technology, and they've unveiled the USB-C version 2.1 update that supports up to an insane 240W charging over USB-C.

The new 240W charging capacity is called Extended Power Range (EPR) and it will arrive in devices in the second half of 2021, and it'll require new cables that clearly state they support up to 240W charging. The regular lower-power cables are now called Standard Power Range (SPR) and will top out at 60W while delivering an electrical current of 3 amps.

The higher-end 100W cables that you can find today are running at up to 5 amps and will fall into the new Extended Power Range (EPR) family of cables. EPR will range between 100W and 240W with USB-C, meaning you could power a large high-end 32-inch 4K monitor over USB-C or even a high-end gaming laptop or AIO computer.

Far Cry 6 will bring guerrilla chaos to cross-gen consoles and PC this October, Ubisoft today announced.

Ubisoft just rolled out the first gameplay footage for Far Cry 6, and it looks awesome. Combat is chaotic with a bunch of makeshift weapons cobbled together--you use everything, including an old motorcycle motor in a chain gun, a sardine tin to hold up a laser pointer for your rifle, or even a CD-shooting gun called the Discos Locos and the El Tostador flamethrower made out of a muffler and a propane tank.

The gameplay look decidedly next-gen, and Ubisoft is going all out with the vehicle selection too. Gamers can mount machine guns on the top of sports cars, add nitrous to old Cadillacs, steal tanks from the enemy Yaran forces, fly planes, zoom around on gun-mounted boats, ride ATVs in the higher areas--you name, it Far Cry 6 has it.

Nintendo is reportedly planning a new upgraded Switch model capable of 4K output, an OLED panel, and a more powerful internal SoC. New details also suggest the system will feature an enhanced dock.

Sources say Nintendo is poised to reveal its new Switch Pro sometime before E3 2021 and release the device in the September-October period. Previous info says the new handheld-console hybrid would feature new NVIDIA chips to allow 4K output, and a 7-inch OLED panel with improved bezels. We also know the new Switch will need an upgraded dock as the current model's converter chip only supports 1080p.

New reports say the Switch Pro's dock will be redesigned to support an ethernet port and feature three USB 3.0 ports this time. This reminds me of the old Supplemental Computing Device patents made in 2016, and aligns with our predictions of an upgraded dock being a key component in a more powerful Switch.

It's been quite some time since Tesla revealed the now highly anticipated Cybertruck, and now a new patent has shown off crazy technologies.

The leaked patent has come from Twitter user "AMuchVaccinatedFace" who posted a link to the USPTO website. From looking at the patent, we can see that the Cybertruck's tri-motor could give users as much as 610 miles in range, instead of the originally promised 500+ miles.

Other technologies that were mentioned on the patent were eye-tracking technology and an air conditioning system that adjusts its temperature based on the passengers' body temperature. More potential features of the Cybertruck include; 20,000-pound tow limit, as well as a pull-out stovetop and tent. Patents and renders don't always dictate what the final product will look like, so these images should certainly be taken with a healthy amount of suspicion. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

Apple is rumoured to be considering accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. How would that Apple accepting cryptocurrency influence the market value?

The rumor originates from Apple posting a job listing for "Business Development Manager - Alternative Payments", which is a job position that Apple says candidates need to be adept in handling cryptocurrency. Additionally, Apple says the candidate that is successful would be joining the Apple Pay and the iPhone Wallet app development team.

Qualifications for the role included; "5+ years experience working in or with alternative payment providers, such as digital wallets, BNPL, Fast Payments, cryptocurrency and etc." And, "We are looking for a candidate who is comfortable with ambiguity, enjoys thinking about edge cases and asking 'what is an alternative way of doing this'."

Facebook has rolled back some of its restrictions around posting misinformation about COVID-19 on its platform.

Back in February, Facebook cracked down on any misinformation regarding the origins of COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. The social platform announced that any posts claiming that COVID-19 was "man-made or manufactured" could be removed or restricted, and if a person repeatedly shared content that violated the new policy, they could be banned from the site entirely. Now, Facebook has rolled back those restrictions "in light of ongoing investigations into the origin".

An announcement on Wednesday revealed, "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that Covid-19 is man-made from our apps. We're continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge."

The US Director of National Intelligence is expected to deliver a new report to Congress in June on whether the US military considers UFO's a threat.

Many people are excited to see if the Pentagon will reveal if aliens are, in fact, true and if we have previously spotted them. However, the Pentagon has made it clear that its true interest isn't aliens but if these UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) have been created by rival countries here on Earth. Due to the Pentagon stating that aliens aren't what the report is about, many people have been led to believe that the US spy chiefs report will land short of revealing the big news.

However, reports have been surfacing onlineof US Navy officers saying that they have seen an aircraft conduct maneuvers that are currently impossible with current human technology. Some of these maneuvers were just simply remaining stationary in the same spot for extended periods of time before dropping to just above the ocean to a dead stop at a ridiculous speed.

Eventually, taxi services plan on introducing UFO-like aircraft that would carry people from one city to another.

Two electric vertical takeoff and landing (eTVOL) startup companies are planning on revolutionalizing the taxi service industry with a 2-7 seater aircraft, but now a new startup called Kelekona is planning on building a larger 40-passenger aircraft for city-to-city travel. The proposed aircraft from Kelekona would be able to carry 40 passengers or 10,000 lb of cargo over a 330-mile trip between LA and San Francisco in an hour.

Kelekona explains that "a combination of stereo cameras and radar give Kelekona 100 miles of added environmental awareness for detection and avoidance from unknown aircraft, birdstrike, weather anomalies, and uncharted physical infrastructure." As you can probably imagine, if Kelekona's aircraft manages to reach the skies, there will be a slew of freshly false UFO sightings reported by residents. If you are interested in reading more about Kelekona's upcoming aircraft, check out this link here.

NASA has really seen what its Martian helicopter as it encountered a strange anomaly on its sixth flight test.

On May 22, the Ingenuity helicopter took off for its sixth planned flight test on Mars, and while the mission was going according to plan at first, Ingenuity began to experience a glitch that caused the flow of images from its navigation camera to its onboard computer to be interrupted. Ingenuity chief pilot Havard Grip of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California wrote, "This glitch caused a single image to be lost, but more importantly, it resulted in all later navigation images being delivered with inaccurate timestamps."

Due to the navigation image timestamps being incorrect, whenever the navigation algorithm attempted to perform a correction, it was operating off the incorrect information of when the image was taken. As a result, "The resulting inconsistencies significantly degraded the information used to fly the helicopter, leading to estimates being constantly 'corrected' to account for phantom errors. Large oscillations ensued." said Grip.

The Hubble Space Telescope can truly capture some astonishing images of the universe we live in, and the image below is certainly no exception.

NASA has released the new image on its website, and according to its description, Hubble has snapped a gorgeous image of the spiral galaxy NGC 2276. If you didn't notice already, the spiral galaxy above appears slightly distorted as the bright hub of yellow stars usually appears directly in the center of a galaxy. NASA explains that this distortion is caused by a galactic game of "tug-of-war" between a neighboring galaxy.

The galaxy NGC 2300, which doesn't appear in this image, is actually pulling all the disk of blue stars surrounding NGC 2276. This cosmic display of tug-of-war shows that if galaxies pass too close to each other, they are impacted by their respective gravitational pull. As you could probably imagine, galaxies being caught in each other's gravitational pull is common in the universe, but no two mergers are exactly the same - much like a snowflake falling from the sky.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has said that it is looking forward to cooperating with lawmakers to add regulation and protection to cryptocurrency investors.

According to Gary Gensler, the US top financial regulator chairman at the SEC, regulators are attempting to provide protection for cryptocurrency investors because the exchanges where these tokens (cryptocurrencies) are sold can cause significant harm to investors through fraud and manipulation. " Many of these tokens are investment contracts under the securities law. Over the years, the SEC has brought 75 cases in this area," Gensler stated.

Additionally, the Hester Peirce, a Commissioner at the SEC made the urgent call back in February to introduce a form of regulation to the cryptocurrency market amid its growing popularity. Gensler also said that the SEC plans on gathering comments from crypto custody arrangements by broker-dealers. "There are many challenges and gaps for investor protection in these markets. Tokens currently on the market that are securities may be offered, sold, and traded in non-compliance with the federal securities laws." said Gensler.

The Vive Pro 2is HTC's latest VR headset. It offers a significant resolution upgrade and a refresh rate increase over the original Vive Pro. To accommodate older PC's HTC provides a variety of resolution options.

The Vive Pro 2 is just around the corner, and several reviews have popped up online. Now that reviews are out, we have more details about the hardware and how it works. One of the first things to note is that Vive Pro 2 requires driver software in addition to SteamVR and that software controls the headset's display parameters.

The below screenshot was taken from VoodooDE's Vive Pro 2 review on YouTube shows five different resolution options. The Performance setting cuts the vertical and horizontal resolution in half, from 4896 x 2448 down to 2448 x 1224. At this resolution, the display must run at 120Hz. That would be the best option for hitting high frame rates on underpowered computers. And if you want to use the wireless adaptor, you won't even get 120Hz out of this resolution.

DPVR, a VR headset company from Shanghai, recently launched the DPVR Starlink solution, allowing teachers to run guided training with VR headsets in school classrooms. Starlink synchronizes spectator headsets with the instructor's view to keep students focused on the lesson.

DPVR said it developed the Starlink solution to help schools cut down on the cost of implementing VR training systems. Starlink allows teachers to run a classroom lecture in VR, with the teacher operating a PC VR system while the students watch from a standalone headset. The standalone headsets reduce the cost for schools by eliminating the need for a computer for each student.

The piece that brings this puzzle together is DPVR's P1 all-in-on VR headset, a Snapdragon XR2-based standalone device with a 4K display. The Starlink system casts the view of the PC headset wirelessly to up to 40 P1 headsets. That means every student in a class as big as 40 people would see the same picture the teacher sees at the exact moment the teacher sees it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc in places most wouldn't expect, where economically millions of Americans are enjoying more money in their pockets each month from the US government than they are in minimum wage jobs.

The situation is so bad that in Illinois that a McDonald's restaurant has thrown up a sign at the front of their store that reads: "Now hiring. Free iPhone". Under that, McDonald's explains that the free iPhone is only "after 6 months employment" and you must meet their "employment criteria".

Corporations offering an incentive for something like this -- a free iPhone to just stay at your job for 6 months -- will most likely become the norm over the coming years. The big corporations are bleeding money as Americans aren't eating out, driving around, and consuming as much as they used to when out and about... well... because not many Americans can be out and about right now.

Acer has just unleashed its new line of refreshed gaming laptops, with the new Predator Helios 500 gaming laptop packing a delicious 17.3-inch 4K 120Hz Mini LED display.

Apart from what should be one of the best displays on a gaming laptop should also be one of the fastest gaming laptops on the market, with the new Acer Predator Helios 500 packing Intel's latest 11th Gen Core i9 processor, NVIDIA's super-fast GeForce RTX 3080 graphics, up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, and two PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs in RAID0 that can be used next to a regular SSD.

The use of a 17.3-inch 4K Mini LED 120Hz panel powered by AUO AmLED technology has support for full-array local dimming, which is meant to be the equivalent of VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification. If the 4K 120Hz is too hardcore for you, AORUS offers a 1080p 360Hz display option.