NVIDIA this week revealed the GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics card lineup, and you may have noticed that none of the cards include a USB-C port for VirtualLink support. It turns out that's because the VirtualLink project is dead. Sadly, it never even got off the ground.

The VirtualLink connection was meant to be a revolutionary advancement in VR headset connectivity. It was supposed to be a single USB-C connection, which would deliver the video, audio, USB, and power signals from your computer to your VR headset in a single cable.

The specifications for the VirtualLink connection were established by the VirtualLink consortium, which comprised some of the VR industry's biggest and most important players. Both NVIDIA and AMD were onboard, was were HTC, Oculus, Valve and Microsoft. With that kind of backing, VirtualLink appeared to have a lot of promise when it was announced in 2018.

Fanatec partnered with the World Rally Championship to create a simulation racing wheel specially designed for rally racing. The release of the CSL Elite Steering Wheel WRC coincides with the launch of WRC 9 on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.

Fanatec's CSL Elite is a high-end simulation racing platform that offers modular components so you can tailor your sim rig for your style or racing. The system consists of a primary wheelbase, which houses the wheel mechanism's mechanical core, A set of interchangeable steering wheels that house the logic systems that enable new features and compatibilities. The CSL Elite wheelbase platform has been around for years, but the new WRC wheel brings a handful of new features to the mix.

The CSL Elite WRC Wheel includes a handful of iterative changes, such as a thicker grip for improved hand comfort, a new 5-way joystick, and removable paddle shifters. Fanatec also introduced a new quick-release system, which requires no tools to operate. For those who don't like change, the new quick-release is removable, so you could swap it with the older ClubSport quick-release.

Acer just announced the Spin 7 convertible laptop, and the specifications are quite impressive. It features a 14-inch IPS touchscreen on a 360-degree hinge, Qualcomm's brand new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G for excellent performance and battery life on the go, and best of all; it includes antimicrobial coatings to keep the germs away.

If it weren't for the global pandemic situation, the most notable feature about Acer's Spin 7 convertible laptop would undoubtedly be the Qualcomm chipset that it's built around. The Spin 7 is the very first laptop to employ the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G compute platform. The 8cx G2 supports the latest wireless communication standards, such as 5G and Wi-Fi 6. It's also incredibly power efficient, boasting "multi-day" battery life.

"We envision notebooks of the future to provide exceptional productivity and portability with human-centric design, ultra-long battery life, blazing-fast 5G connectivity and beyond," said Jerry Kao, Co-COO, Acer Inc. "The new Acer Spin 7 is an Always On, Always Connected notebook capable of keeping up with the modern work-from-anywhere lifestyle with its sleek form factor supporting up to multi-day use on a single charge."

Doom and Doom II have just received official 16:9 widescreen support, which is incredible considering the original Doom was released 27 years ago in 1993. The two original Doom games received 60FPS updates earlier this year.

Bethesda took to its official website to explain it all, saying: "For the first time in an official port, the original DOOM renderer has been modified to natively render 16:9 without any letterboxing".

They continued: "The FOV has been increased to reveal more image on the side instead of chopping off the top and bottom. All new 16:9 versions of the titlescreen, intermission, and ending screens have been added. Many of our Add-Ons have also had widescreen support added, so download the latest version from the Add-Ons listing to check it out!"

You might not have heard about NuScale, but I think you will over the next few years -- as the nuclear energy startup has just crossed a milestone for its modular nuclear reactor design.

NuScale has become the first American modular design to get to this point, reports Popular Mechanics. NuScale's new design uses a classic nuclear fission water reactor technology, but in a super-small footprint, versus the gigantic sizes of nuclear power plants worldwide.

Marc Nichol, senior director of new reactors at the Nuclear Energy Institute explains: "The approval of NuScale's small modular reactor design is not only a monumental milestone for NuScale but is a crucial step for the future of the industry. As the first U.S. small modular reactor design to be issued a [Final Safety Evaluation Report], NuScale is pioneering the way for additional innovative advanced nuclear technologies under development".

If you've been wondering what kind of nuclear reactor you need to run Crysis Remastered, you won't need one -- it seems it'll run on even modest gaming PCs.

Crytek is requiring at a minimum, an Intel Core i5-3450 or AMD Ryzen 3 series CPU and 8GB of system RAM. You'll need 20GB of storage space minimum, with GPU minimum requirements at an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 470.

The recommended PC requirements for Crysis Remastered are a little higher -- system RAM goes to 12GB from 8GB, and the CPU requirements go up to the Core i5-7600K or higher, or the Ryzen 5 series family of CPUs or higher.

SpaceX has some big claims about its revolutionary satellite internet deployment, with Starlink satellites packing "super low latency and download speeds greater than 100 mbps".

Starlink consists of around 12,000 satellites orbiting in low orbit around the Earth, blasting super-fast internet down to the ground. A bunch of personal antennas on the ground are what you'd be connecting to, which is being touted a "UFO on a stick".

Kate Tice, the senior program reliability engineer at SpaceX, explains: "The Starlink team has been collecting latency statistics and performing standard speed tests of the system. This means that we're checking how fast data travels from the satellites to our customers, and then back to the rest of the internet. Initial results have been good".

Qualcomm has just unveiled its new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 which has a slew of new upgrades that will super-boost its position in the market.

The company has detailed its new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 chip at IFA 2020, which packs their in-house Snapdragon X55 5G modem, Wi-Fi 6 support, and some upgraded Kryo 495 processor cores and support for LPDDR4 up to 2133MHz.

More importantly, the new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 now supports NVMe SSDs and UFS 3.0 storage, which is a great thing for super-fast storage on next-gen laptops. Especially so if you want that huge up to 25-hour battery life on a new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2-powered Windows 10 laptop.

CD Projekt Group's six-month earnings for the 2020 calendar year sees high triple-digit spikes in operating and net profits, driven by strong sales of GOG titles, Witcher 3 on consoles, PC, and Nintendo Switch, and merchandise.

CD Projekt just announced its 1H'20 results to strong fanfare. As with most games companies, CD Projekt saw a sharp uptick in net sales and overall revenues during COVID-19.. The company made $38.15 million in net profits (+183%) on the back of $94.6 million in net sales (+70%). Six-month net sales are at their highest point since Witcher 3's release in 2015. Operating profit was up 160% from last 1H'19 to $40.58 million.

The Witcher 3, which has been re-released three times now (once in 2015, again in 2016 as the complete edition, and once more on Switch), was the biggest contributor to earnings.

Hello Games is gearing up for a big new ambitious game that could rival No Man's Sky's massive cosmic scope...but it won't be No Man's Sky 2.

Hello Games has re-confirmed its next project will be a colossal endeavor. Across the last 4 years the game has expanded with 7 free DLC packs and transformed into one of the most popular space sims on the market. The new game could be even bigger.

Speaking with Polygon, Sean Murray says the next project is "a huge, ambitious game like No Man's Sky."

The Witcher 3 is coming to next-gen consoles in 2021, complete with high-end optimizations like boosted resolution, ray tracing, tighter frame rates, and ultra-fast loading via PCIe 4.0 SSD storage--all of which is a free upgrade on PC.

The Witcher 3 and all of its DLC and expansions are getting re-released on PS5 and Xbox Series X as a next-gen version that will "take advantage of the most powerful gaming hardware,"CD Projekt RED announces. The optimizations are coming to all platforms--PC, Xbox Series X, and PS5--as a free upgrade for existing owners. Both GOTY Complete Edition and base editions are getting the upgrades.

CDPR is enhancing Witcher 3 for both enthusiast PC and console hardware, complete with massive visual overhauls and upgrades not possible on today's consoles. Expect frame rate boosts from 30FPS to 60FPS minimum, incredible new lighting and global illumination effects including dynamic weather visuals, next-gen shadows, and of course ray traced visuals to make everything pop even more. The biggest development comes from the SSD tech, which will allow the game to load high-res textures faster than ever and basically eliminate loading times.

It seems AMD is coming out a little early to now begin its Big Navi marketing campaign, hot on the heels of the massive success NVIDIA had launching its new Ampere-based GeForrce RTX 30 series graphics cards a few days ago.

AMD has worked with MAKAMAKES, a Fortnite Creatie Island modder in order to create the massive custom AMD Battle Arena in Fortnite's Creative mode. Inside, there are different game mods and maps with one of the maps having an Easter Egg for Big Navi's numbering scheme -- 6000.

We've heard about the Radeon RX 6000 series before, with a tease of Big Navi inside of the Radeon RX 6900 XT costing $999 back in June 2020. New reports suggest that the price of Big Navi will be pulled down and more into the $499 and $549 slots, but you can read more on that here -- that news just happened, too.

We're all waiting to see what the price of Microsoft's next generation Xbox Series X console, with a new leak from Pringles -- yeah, once you pop you can't stop -- the leaks on the Xbox Series X pricing, that is.

A new marketing partnership between South African influencers, Pringles, and Xbox -- has gamers taking home a next-gen Xbox Series X console and Game Pass subscription. Not a bad price, first of all -- but with 46 consoles to be given out to lucky gamers, the price of the Xbox Series X can be mathed out.

The contest post on FB says that the total cost of the Pringles x Xbox Series X promotion costs R621,000 -- which divided by the 46 consoles up on offer, breaks down to R13,500. Now, R13,500 converted to USD at the time of writing is pretty much $900 on the line.

Ooooh, a huge juicy rumor -- and it makes perfect sense.

According to @coreteks on Twitter, "They (AMD) want to release the 16GB at $599 and the 8GB at $499 but after the Ampere announcement I'm expecting $549 for the 16GB and $499 for the 8GB. We're receiving the ASIC (GPU+MEM) this month (September)".

So, NVIDIA's surprise jebaited price of $499 for the new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3070 and $699 for the even-better GeForce RTX 3080 -- has really affected AMD. I'm sure they didn't expect the pricing to be so damn unlike the RTX 20 series, that AMD could be shaking at their knees a little bit.

GIGABYTE has just unveiled its latest ultra-thin professional gaming laptop, the new AORUS 15P. Check it out:

The new AORUS 15P rocks Intel's latest 10th-gen Intel Core i7-10750H processor, which offers up 6 cores and 12 threads of CPU performance up to 5GHz. We have the AORUS 15P starting with 8GB of DDR4-2666 RAM, but you can configure it with up to 64GB of RAM.

We have a couple of options when it comes to discrete graphics, with the AORUS 15P WB rocking a higher-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 MaxQ with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, while the AORUS 15P KB has an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6GB of GDDR6.

EK Water Blocks has just unveiled their new water blocks that are ready for NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 reference designs -- which is a big point in itself.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 30 series Founders Edition graphics cards are not "reference cards" in the term that they usd to be, as with the GeForce RTX 10 series launch... Founders Edition cards were a very big change. Gone are the days of reviewers like myself getting reference cards, as the new Founders Edition are not "reference" cards at all -- they're custom cards.

EK's new water blocks are for the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 reference design which both feature a different PCB layout, and dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

NVIDIA has finally taken the covers off of its insane new GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, as well as the kick ass new GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 cards -- but how big are they up against the new consoles?

Shen Lee shared some images on Twitter that compare NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics cards up against the Xbox One X, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and even the older-gen PlayStation 2.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3090 is 313mm (12.3 inches) long, while being 128mm (5.4 inches) wide -- up against that chunky Xbox Series X that measures in at 301mm (11.8 inches) long and 151mm (5.9 inches) wide. The PlayStation 5 is massively tall in comparison, 398mm (15.7 inches) long while being 223mm (8.8 inches) wide.

Vuzix Corporation isn't well known in the consumer market, but it has been a leading name in the enterprise wearable space for years. That's all about to change, though. Vuzix plans to launch a pair of designer smart glasses next year.

Vuzix revealed that it's currently working on its next smart glasses platform, including products that range from a "reasonably priced" consumer-friendly model to higher-end enterprise-focused products.

Vuzix said that its upcoming smart glasses would employ binocular micro-LED displays with waveguide optics to project the virtual image into the user's view. Vuzix didn't give specifics, but it said the new headsets would offer a wider field of view than previous Vuzix smart glasses models.

NVIDIA addressed some concerns over whether the new 8K 60FPS capable GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card would have any issues in a PCIe 3.0 slot, given the card is PCIe 4.0 compatible.

The answer is no -- you will be fine, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA, Tony Tamasi, explains on Reddit: "System performance is impacted by many factors and the impact varies between applications".

He continued: "The impact is typically less than a few percent going from a x16 PCIE 4.0 to x16 PCIE 3.0. CPU selection often has a larger impact on performance.We look forward to new platforms that can fully take advantage of Gen4 capabilities for potential performance increases".

It looks like even The Batman himself has been stopped by COVID-19, with production on the Matt Reeves directed film paused yet again.

Robert Pattinson, who plays Bruce Wayne / The Batman in the movie has tested positive for COVID-19. Vanity Fair has the exclusive, reporting that Warner Bros. said an effected crew member "is isolating in accordance with established protocols".

Vanity Fair explains: "A member of The Batman production has tested positive for Covid-19, and is isolating in accordance with established protocols. Filming is temporarily paused".