Latest News - Page 1540

Palmer Luckey has well and truly moved back into reality after almost single-handedly creating the VR market as we know it as the founder of Oculus, which was sold to Facebook for $2 billion. Now he heads up Anduril Industries, which just unveiled their first AI-powered Ghost 4 drone.

Anduril's new Ghost 4 drone are (very importantly) made in the USA. The new AI-powered drones are the first generation that can perform reconnaissance missions, according to Luckey, where the drones will fly out and search areas of land for objects of interest. This would include weapons, people, hardware (spy equipment), and more.

The new AI-powered drones are the first generation that can perform reconnaissance missions, according to Luckey, where the drones will fly out and search areas of land for objects of interest. This would include weapons, people, hardware (spy equipment), and more.

Have you ever wanted to build your own VR headset? Well, you can now with Relativty's open-source plans. And it will only cost you $200 and a bit of your time.

The Relativty open-source VR headset is the brainchild of Max Coutte and Gabriel Combe; two friends who wanted to develop VR games but didn't have the money a VR headset. Coutte and Combe said they started development on the headset when a few years ago when they were 15. Now the pair are releasing their plans for anyone interested in building one for themselves.

"It still feels a little surreal for us that we did exactly what we wanted since middle school: to build our own VR headset, play with it, experiment with it, and surround ourselves with other VR enthusiasts," wrote Coutte in his announcement post on Producthunt.com.

On September 9, a benchmark score was submitted to Geekbench which may point to an unannounced standalone Vive headset. The posted score, first reported by TechGenyz, suggested a new Vive Focus with better internals is on the way.

The Geekbench 5 results in question list a headset called HTC Vive Focus (XR2), which basically reveals the device's specifications. The result page pegs the process as an 8-core ARM Qualcomm running at 1.8GHz. It also indicates 5.5GB of memory, which is likely 6GB with 500MB reserved for the system.

This information seems to indicate that HTC could be preparing to launch another standalone Vive Focus headset with modern internals. The Vive Focus and Focus Plus headsets never made their way to consumers, but they had some traction in the commercial VR market in the location-based entertainment and enterprise markets. Vive could use a Quest competitor in its lineup, especially with a new Quest seemingly right around the corner. An XR2 powered Focus headset could do the trick.

Ubisoft wants to teach you the definition of insanity all over again, but this time the experience will be much more immersive. Ubisoft partnered with Zero Latency to bring the Far Cry franchise to VR arcades.

"Have I ever told you the definition of insanity?" It's not doing the same thing over and over again; it's doing it over again, but this time in VR. Ubisoft today revealed Far Cry VR: Dive into Insanity, an 8-player VR arcade experience that will take you back to Far Cry 3's Rock Island, home of Vaas Montenegro.

Ubisoft announced the game with a 1-minute trailer that doesn't tell us a much, but it does paint a picture of what you should expect from the experience. The trailer opens up with good old Vaas asking his signature question, so we presume you'll come face to face with him at some point.

If you want to try out something new in Flight Simulator, then you can fly right past Godzilla -- yes, that's right -- Godzilla, as the infamous monster is hanging around near San Francisco. Check it out:

You will need to get a mod from Nexus Mods for Flight Simulator, which will give you the gloriously (and freaking huge) Godzilla. The Godzilla in the mod for Flight Simulator is based off the 2014 Legendary Pictures version of Godzilla, and he is bigger than every building in the city and makes the Golden Gate Bridge look like a toy.

The modder behind the new Godzilla mod for Flight Simulator said that if this mod gains traction, that he would look into adding King Kong to the Empire State Building in New York City.

If you have $10,000 burning a hole in your pocket right now, and want one of the most exclusive products of 2020 -- if not in the gaming industry, then prepare your credit card.

Luxury retailer Truly Exquisite has unveiled its new totally amazing custom 24-carat gold, platinum or 18-carat rose gold PlayStation 5 console that costs over $10,000. Yeah, a gold PlayStation 5 that even Goldmember himself would be proud to yell out "I like... goooooooldddd".

Don't worry, because for that $10,000 cost you're going to get yourself two custom DualShock 5 controllers that look like they've been dunked in gold -- as well as a slick 3D Pulse headset.

UPDATE: Microsoft has officially confirmed the Xbox Series S will only support One S upgrades via backward compatible games. Here's a statement:

Consoles are varied enough now that they're like PCs, especially Xbox systems. By November, there will be 5 different Xbox consoles that all have varying performance and specs. Devs have optimized their games to take advantage of each incremental power gain; same game, different performance. Now as we push into next-gen with the Series S and X, this variance grows.

At $299, the Xbox Series S is great for consumers. But some developers are concerned the lower-powered next-gen console will just add more cross-gen optimization work.

On November 10, devs releasing cross-gen games will have to optimize across five consoles: The 2013 Xbox One, the Xbox One S, Xbox One X, and the newer Xbox Series S and Series X duo. All of these systems have varying performance and games will play differently on each one.

Some developers like Remedy Entertainment's Sasan Sepehr, who's working as senior technical producer on Remedy's new unannounced AAA game, says the Series S could cause trouble for game optimization.

Today Twitch announced Ninja is returning home to the streaming platform that started it all.

Ninja is back, and Twitch is paying big to keep him on the service. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ninja has signed a lucrative multi-year exclusivity deal with Twitch to keep him away from competing services like YouTube and Facebook Gaming.

Microsoft had originally poached Ninja from Twitch for its failed Mixer service, paying him millions to move to the Xbox-driven streaming service. Mixer was closed in July 2020, and it's only natural for Ninja to move back to the next-biggest service.

The Xbox Series X's retail box proudly touts 4K 120FPS gaming and makes it easy to differentiate among current-gen Xbox One family.

Consumer-facing messaging is extremely important in any product industry, and that goes double when you're about to have four Xbox consoles on the market at the same time. Luckily the Xbox Series X's box design makes it hard to get next- and current-gen systems mixed up.

The box art was revealed by Canadian retailer The Source, and it clearly highlights info consumers will see on store shelves.

Even with a duo of consoles including the low-cost $299 Xbox Series S, Sony's PlayStation 5 is still expected to beat Microsoft in the next-gen race.

Following today's Xbox Series X/S price announcements, analyst firm Ampere Analysis upwardly revised its next-gen console sales forecasts for 2020. The group predicts the PS5 will still outsell Series X/S combined sales by over 1 million units. The PlayStation 4's established lead is expected to carry over into next-gen thanks to backwards compatible games and peripherals.

The PS5 is expected to sell 5 million units in 2020 (+400,000 units), and the Series X/S are pegged at a combined 3.9 million (+600,000 units). These numbers exceed both the 2013 launch year sales of the PS4 (4.2 million) and the Xbox One (3 million).

EVGA has a pretty good stack of custom GeForce RTX 3080 graphcis cards coming, with no less than 5 custom RTX 3080 cards on the way.

The fastest of them all is EVGA's new GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 ULTRA graphics card, which has a GPU boost clock of 1.8GHz -- making it the fastest custom GeForce RTX 3080 so far. It is a 2.75-slot graphics card, with a chunky triple-fan cooler with EVGA's in-house ICX3 cooling technology and full-cover backplate.

You will need triple 8-pin PCIe power connectors, compared to the single 12-pin (which requires dual 8-pin) PCIe power connectors on NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics card.

Apple's next flagship iPhone will reportedly incorporate the same Lidar technology that Apple debuted in the 2020 iPad Pro. If that is true, we should see awe-inspiring AR capabilities out of the next iPhone.

According to Fast Company, Apple's upcoming flagship phone, the iPhone 12 Pro, will feature the same Lidar technology that the iPad Pro currently offers, which gives the tablet enormous advantages for developing augmented reality experiences.

A Lidar system is an advanced depth perception camera that uses a "direct-time-of-flight" calculation to determine distances at the speed of light. The Lidar system's accuracy on the current iPad Pro enables it to produce incredibly realistic augmented reality experiences that genuinely blend in with reality.

If you haven't seen the bombastic and Michael Bay-stylized multiplayer gameplay trailer reveal for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War -- you can read more about Black Ops Cold War here, or check out the trailer below:

But now we have COD: Black Ops Cold War developer Treyarch talking more about the game, about its battle pass system, and what Black Ops Cold War means for Warzone. Not only will COD: Black Ops Cold War have cross-play and cross-progression included, both games have shared post-launch content in the battle pass and store.

This means that if you unlock something in Black Ops Cold War and its new battle pass, it will carry over to Warzone -- and if you unlock something in Warzone, it will carry back over to Black Ops Cold War. Post-launch content for both games is completely free, which means you can easily transfer everything between Warzone to Black Ops Cold War.

The lads over at Digital Foundry have done what they do best -- and seriously, it is great -- and torn down a PC preview build of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Check it out:

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is being developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, using Treyarch's own engine -- and not the one Infinity Ward used in the mega-popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and its standalone F2P smash hit Warzone.

Digital Foundry had some hands-on time with the preview build of the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (check out the recent gameplay reveal trailer here), which in early form didn't have its just-announced RTX features enabled. The game still looks great, with DF noting that the game has a cinematic Michael Bay style... which is fitting for its early 1980s Miami vibe.

Another Reality, the developer behind the popular VR title Gorn, revealed that the game would be coming to the Oculus Quest standalone VR system. Don't get too excited, though, because the developer is not even speculating about a release date.

Gorn was an early title on PCVR. It hit Steam in early access in July 2017, shortly after the original Rift and Vive launches. It took the developers a couple of years to complete the game, but Gorn left early access in July 2019.

Another Reality was keen to let us know the game is in the works, but the company is unwilling to give us an idea of its release timeline. That may be because the company wants to avoid upsetting people if the game gets delayed. A PSVR version of Gorn was scheduled for release in 2019, but the game's development took longer than expected. Gorn eventually hit PSVR in May this year.

AMD announced that it will unveiling its next-gen Zen 3 CPU architecture and desktop Ryzen 4000 series CPUs at a new event on October 8.

We should expect a bunch of Ryzen 4000 seires desktop processors to be unveiled, and a deep dive on the new Zen 3 architecture itself. AMD has dubbed this event: "Next Generation Ryzen Desktop Processors".

Just over two weeks later on October 28, AMD will unveil its next-gen RDNA 2-based "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. We've just seen leaks that tease the Radeon RX 6000 series engineering sample with 16GB of VRAM, you can read more about that here.

EVGA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 has been spotted in the wild, with EVGA's own Jacob Freeman, tweeting out a picture of the card. Check it out:

The new EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 has a 2.2-slot design and a large triple-fan cooler, and will be one of two custom GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards from EVGA. The other will be the higher-end premium GeForce RTX 3070 ICX3 FTW3.

We have a fully custom PCB on EVGA's new GeForce RTX 3070 XC3, with a triple-fan cooler and massive heat sink that you can see underneath. Freeman said that the RTX 3070 XC3 will be around 11.2 inches tall (or long) while the RTX 3070 FTW3 card is 11.8 inches.

The RealMax Qian augmented reality headset is looking even more impressive now that we know the device's specifications. Not only does it boast a wider field of view than other AR headsets, but it can also convert into a VR device with SteamVR support.

Last week we discovered a video of the RealMax Qian AR headset that showed the headset's 119-degree wide field of view display in action. Today, RealMax revealed the device's general specifications, and now we're even more intrigued about this headset.

RealMax said the Qian would be powered by a Snapdragon 835, would include 4GB of memory and would offer 64GB of storage space, which are the same specifications as the Oculus Quest VR headset. Snapdragon 835 isn't the most recent Qualcomm hardware, but it should handle an AR headset with ease if it can power the Quest. Although the headset also doubles as a VR headset by slipping on a magnetic faceplate, we expect to see comparable VR performance from RealMax's headset.

GALAX has just announced its new super-fast Hall of Fame (HOF) Extreme PCIe 4.0 SSD, which packs Phison's incredible new SSD controller that enables 7GB/sec read speeds.

The new Phison PS5018-E18 controller is powering GALAX's new HOF Extreme PCIe 4.0 SSD, which means we're looking at an ultra-fast 7000MB/sec (7GB/sec) reads and 6850MB/sec (6.85GB/sec) writes. This is at the same level as Sabrent's new Rocket 4 Plus SSD which packs the same Phison E18 controller.

We can expect GALAX to offer its new Hall of Fame Extreme PCIe 4.0 SSDs in 1TB, 2TB, and even 4TB capacities which is great to see. GALAX has just stepped up, over and beyond Samsung with its new HOF Edition PCIe 4.0 SSDs -- the same with Sabrent which has come out of nowhere and dominated the SSD market.