Latest News - Page 1539

Insomniac teases high-end shadows and lighting on PS5 ahead of Wednesday's big new event.

Complete with ray-traced visuals and next-gen atmospheric fog, shadow, and lighting enhancements, high-end textures, and ultra-fast loading, Spider-Man: Miles Morales should exemplify the PS5's power at launch. While we haven't seen official gameplay footage just yet, Insomniac teases a glimpse at Miles Morales' eye-popping visuals.

The footage is simply a 1-second clip looped over and over in a GIF, but it's enough to get fans riled up. There's real-time fog effects as Miles exhales in the cold city, dynamic lighting bounces off of every surface, motion is smooth and clear, and you can even see how the lighting passes through the car's exhaust as it moves. There's plumes of exhaled breath from the passersby and the characters move so realistically.

Borderlands 3 owners on PS4 and Xbox One are getting free next-gen upgrades on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, complete with 4K 60FPS in campaign mode.

At PAX, Gearbox announced the perfect way to carry a live game forward into next-gen. Borderlands 3 is getting free next-gen upgrades, and all of your saves, DLC, unlocks, and associated content will carry into next-gen.

There's no need to re-buy the game like with the Control Ultimate Edition, and there's no expensive $100 cross-gen bundle like with 2K Sports' NBA 2K21.

I'm still benchmarking and playing around with my new GeForce RTX 3080 -- sorry guys, review will be here on September 16 though, and we have the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Unboxing article right here.

But the world doesn't stop, and especially not now when both companies are ramping up into releasing their next-gen graphics cards. We know heaps about the GeForce RTX 3080 and there's even more I cannot say, but let's talk about AMD -- Big Navi is coming, and new rumors are surfacing about performance.

Moore's Law is Dead is "confident" that AMD will be releasing a new Navi 21-powered graphics card that will have performance that will be within "spitting distance of the RTX 3080 in rasterization performance. If AMD doesn't "beat" the 3080, they will assuredly crush the RTX 3070".

NVIDIA has already unveiled its new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series, with the new GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition recently unboxed on TweakTown -- we're now hearing about Quadro RTX.

Moore's Law is Dead is behind the news, posting a screenshot from the NVIDIA Control Panel that teased an unannounced, unknown Ampere-based graphics card. The graphics card in question has 48GB of GDDR6 memory (not GDDR6X like in the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090) and 10752 CUDA cores.

NVIDIA's purported Quadro RTX graphics card would have its 48GB of GDDR6 on a 384-bit memory bus, with 768GB/sec of memory bandwidth. Keep in mind the GeForce RTX 3080 has 10GB of GDDR6X on a 320-bit memory bus with 760GB/sec memory bandwidth.

Sharp has just unveiled its new 8M-B120C -- which by name alone might not sound like much but it is an absolute beast.

The new TV is a mammoth 120-inch in size, with Sharp using a UV2A II LCD panel and a glorious 8K resolution -- so the full 7680 x 4320. When it's used at 8K you'll have a 60Hz refresh rate, but if you bump it down to 4K you'll be able to enjoy a super-smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

Sharp is using the latest HDMI 2.1 connectivity on its 8M-B120C TV, which is the only one capable of delivering 8K60 and 4K120 over a single cable. There are no graphics cards on the market with HDMI 2.1 just yet so you can't plug your PC into Sharp's glorious new 8K TV -- but you will be able to on September 17, which is when NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 launches (and that has HDMI 2.1 connectivity).

Crysis Remastered is coming to the PC and consoles very soon, with developer Crytek releasing a new video teasing some of the software-based ray tracing on current-gen consoles. Check it out:

The current-gen Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles will be enjoying some software-based ray tracing thanks to Crysis Remastered, with the trailer above showing it off in real-time for the first time ever. All before the next-gen consoles have launched.

Crytek captured all of the footage of Crysis Remastered running on the faster PlayStation 4 Pro -- but the Xbox One X console will also do the same thing. PC gamer? You can expect even more graphical bells and whistles.

NVIDIA has just delayed the review embargo for its upcoming Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition -- from September 14, to September 16 -- you can read more on that here.

But inside of that news was something a little smaller, but equally as important: NVIDIA will be launching its GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card on October 15. NVIDIA announced the GeForce RTX 3070 would launch "in October" when it revealed the GeForce RTX 30 series cards, but now hve an exact date: October 16.

AMD has its Big Navi / RDNA 2 / Radeon RX 6000 series reveal event on October 28, but NVIDIA will get in first with its new GeForce RTX 3070 on October 16.

NVIDIA has delayed the review NDA of its upcoming GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition by 48 hours, from September 14 to September 16.

The news gives reviewers (like myself) another two days of testing, with NVIDIA explaining that they've had issues with shipping samples of the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics cards around the world because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not only that, but NVIDIA also announced that they will be making their GeForce RTX 3070 (which will deliver GeForce RTX 2080 Ti levels of performance) starting on October 15 -- which will spoil AMD's big party with the Big Navi / RDNA 2 / Radeon RX 6000 series reveal event.

As retaliation for its anti-trust case, Apple is prepared to keep Epic titles off of iOS for an entire year.

Apple could penalize Epic Games and keep Fortnite off of iOS and Mac devices for a full year, court documents reveal. On August 28, 2020, Apple revoked Epic's developer license and doesn't plan to reinstate it for a full year. That means Fortnite will not be allows on iOS devices until 2021, which cuts off Apple from lucrative millions and denies Epic access to 116 million registered users on the iOS platform.

The info was gleaned from Epic's preliminary injunction filed on September 4, which aimed to convince courts to overturn Apple's decision and forcibly reinstate Epic's developer account. It's noted in Exhibit H in the court documents, which reads:

Nintendo is telling third-party developers to target 4K resolution, sources tell Bloomberg, hinting the new Switch model revision could output to 4K resolution. How will this be handled? We have a few ideas.

Reports indicate Nintendo is making a new upgraded Switch console that targets higher resolution. We originally interpreted that the new Switch would have an upgraded handheld display, but it looks as if the upgraded model will target 4K resolution output for UHDTVs.

There's several ways Nintendo could do this, but let's take a look at the cheapest and most cost-effective solution: Upgrading the Switch dock's built-in video output converter and using NVIDIA's AI upscaling tech.

Unity Software will soon open public trading on NASDAQ under the ticker U, and has revealed share prices for its new IPO.

Unity's new initial public offering will set share prices at roughly $34 to $42 per share. The company filed an S-1 form with the SEC in late August outlining its IPO plans, but pricing was only just revealed from a new September 9 filing.

Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse are underwriting the IPO, and the S-1 form indicates Unity will have a capitalization of $1.2 billion and 238,366,733 shares of common stock outstanding after the shares are offered.

It appears Nintendo is once again manipulating supply of its games. This time it's a target business decision to sell more digital copies on its eShop network, where it keeps 100% of revenues.

Nintendo, like every other games-maker, wants to sell most of their games digitally. There's no manufacturing costs or shipping costs with digital, and Nintendo keeps 100% of all game sales earnings from first-party titles sold on the storefront. It's a win-win.

This digital-first plan is a big reason why Super Mario 3D All-Stars is only being sold for six months. After six months, the game will be discontinued digitally and physically. Now in an effort to push more digital sales, Nintendo is apparently restricting stock of retail copies of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Some retailers in the UK are even cancelling all pre-orders and confirm Nintendo is shipping "woefully short" supply of the game.

505 Games accidentally upgrades Control Deluxe Edition owners to the new Ultimate Edition, prompting outrage by fans.

505 Games has locked Control's next-gen PS5, Xbox Series X upgrades behind a separate Ultimate Edition SKU. Instead of simply updating existing PS4, Xbox One owners with free next-gen upgrades like CDPR, Ubisoft, and EA are doing, 505 games is forcing anyone who bought Control or the Deluxe Edition to re-buy the $39.99 Ultimate Edition to play the game with next-gen enhancements.

Why is this happening? For business reasons, mostly, but 505 Games' official comment says they nixed the free upgrade because "leaving any one group out feels unfair." This caused uproar in the community. No one wants to re-buy the game for $40 (don't buy the Deluxe Edition or base game, buy the Ultimate Edition).

Sony announces a new PlayStation 5 stream for Wednesday, September 16 at 1PM PST/3PM EST, where it is expected to announce PS5 pricing and launch date availability.

Microsoft pulled a bold move by announcing Xbox Series S/X pricing on the PlayStation brand's 25th anniversary. Now Sony plans to fire back with the PS5's price. This move will shape the entire 9th console generation.

The higher-end enthusiast console is expected to retail for $499, but Sony could pull a fast one and launch it cheaper, possibly at $449. Sources say the RAM and flash memory alone costs $250, and even a $499 MSRP might be sold at a loss. Even if the PS5 is sold for $499, the same price as the Xbox Series X, analysts predict the PS5 will outsell the Xbox Series S/X duo in 2020 and beyond.

New cross-console size comparisons show just how small the Xbox Series S actually is.

The cheaper $299 Xbox Series S is the smallest console Microsoft has ever made, and it shows. The Series S is 60% smaller than the Series X, and is actually smaller than the One S and One X systems too. Unlike the Series X with its footlocker-shaped chassis, the Series S has a more traditional rectangular shape that's much more shelf-friendly.

The Series S' size reduction and shape design is made possible by a reduction in hardware specifications. The digital-only Series S has 1/3rd the GPU power as the Series X, and a 61% reduction in RDNA-based GPU computed units. RAM has also been dramatically scaled back from 16GB GDDR6 to 10GB GDDR6 and a reduction in bandwidth speeds.

Tactical Haptics recently revealed its Multi-Pose magnet sockets for Oculus Touch controllers, which allow you to change the form factor of your controllers on-the-fly. The magnetic attachments can form several controller configurations.

Tactical Haptics first showed off its modular Multi-Pose magnet socket system at Augmented World Expo in 2019. The technology was bundled in with the company's Reactive Grip Motion Controller, which simulate haptic feedback with shear forces. The company has since separated the two ideas into two separate products. They created a new controller called the SaberGrip, which we already wrote about. They made a consumer-friendly version of the Multi-Pose magnet system that works with Oculus Touch controllers.

The Multi-Pose magnet socket is a sleeve that fits over the Touch controllers to add magnetic attachment points that couple your controllers together in various poses. Each sleeve includes five magnet points positioned at different angles. The design allows for machine gun, shotgun, and rifle configurations and handlebar and gamepad setup.

Tactical Haptics recently revealed the SaberGrip controller, which amplifies VR simulations' immersion with realistic force feedback. The controllers utilize sheer forces to simulate any handle sensation.

Tactical Haptics' SaberGrip is a cylindrical controller that looks somewhat like the hilt of a sword. The device comes in two models: a single-handed option and a two-handed option. Each controller includes a trigger and a single button for interacting with menus or triggering a weapon or tool. Additionally, each controller features two plates on the handgrip that trigger the shear force sensation.

The SaberGrip controllers utilize shear forces to simulate the sensation of interacting with a handle-based tool or weapon. The controllers feature moveable plates on each side on the handle, which move in opposing directions to simulate the flex and vibration you would feel in your hand while manipulating objects. The shear force plates can replicate a sword's weight in your hand while you swing it through the air, or the kickback you would get when you fire a nail into a board from a nail gun.

Viper Gaming by Patriot is taking its memory kits to new speeds. The Viper 4 Blackout Performance Memory lineup offers overclocked modules that run at 4133MHz to 4400MHz

Viper Gaming by Patriot launched a new lineup of high-speed memory kits this week. The Viper 4 Blackout Performance Memory kits are high-performance modules designed to complement the latest high-end computer systems. They offer full compatibility with 10th gen Intel and AMD Ryzen 3000 series chipsets.

Viper Gaming by Patriot built these new memory kits with stability and reliability in mind. The company said it "rigorously tests" its memory chips to ensure they are fit to operate at 4133MHz to 4400MHz. The Viper 4 Blackout memory modules also feature a 10-layer PCB to ensure good signal quality. These memory kits also include a military-grade aluminum heat spreader to keep things from overheating.

As apart of the Artemis program that will be sending the first woman and the next man to Moon's surface, NASA has announced it's looking for private companies to acquire some lunar dirt.

The announcement was made on the NASA website, and says that the space agency will pay private companies to "collect a small amount of Moon 'dirt' or rocks from the lunar surface". According to the NASA website, private companies will be required to put in a proposal with the space agency, as well as provide imagery of the collection and collected materials, and location data.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, "We are putting our policies into practice to fuel a new era of exploration and discovery that will benefit all of humanity". The goal of collecting lunar surface samples is to expand our knowledge of the Moon's surface, which will then benefit all of humanity as the knowledge will be relevant in the future years to come with the Artemis program. If you are interested in reading the blog post for yourself, check out this link here.

If you are like me, you really like high detail images of the beauties of space, and what object to capture in glorious high-detail than our Sun?

Above, we have an image of a sunspot, which is created by pockets of magnetic activity on the Sun's surface. These magnetic fields then trap stellar plasma and create a cool region located in the center. These spots can result in a coronal mass ejection (CME), or solar flares.

Researchers used the GREGOR telescope located at the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands to capture this stunning image of a sunspot. While the spot itself may seem small, it should be noted that they can be thousands of kilometers wide, essentially meaning that the spot we are looking at could potentially swallow the entire Earth. If you want more information on this topic, check out this link here.