Latest News - Page 1829

Unreal Engine 4.23 has been released, with Epic Games adding in the Chaos physics and destruction system into the new version of UE. A recap on what the Chaos High-Performance Physics and Destruction System is capable of:

Epic Games explains that Chaos lets "users can achieve cinematic-quality visuals in real-time in scenes with massive-scale levels of destruction and unprecedented artist control over content creation".

I hope this means the next wave of games feature an incredible amount of realistic destruction and use of physics, now that it is injected directly into Unreal Engine. Another big improvement is the introduction of ray tracing which took place in Unreal Engine 4.22, and is now improved in UE 4.23.

ASUS already had one of the best gaming smartphones on the market with its just-announced ROG Phone II, but it is already succeeded by an event faster model -- the new ROG Phone II Ultimate Edition.

The faster ROG Phone II Ultimate Edition rocks a huge 1TB of UFS 3.0 internal storage, and LTE speeds that will reach 2Gbps thanks to Cat 20 4G LTE support.

Qualcomm's super-fast Snapdragon 855+ powers the new ROG Phone II Ultimate Edition (and the normal ROG Phone II) that is cherry-picked, as well as a "special" Adreno 640 that is more powerful than the original.

The Nintendo Switch is apparently getting its own Wii Fit-style peripheral that makes working out into a game.

Remember Wii Fit? The Switch is getting its own hardware that essentially makes a game out of fitness...but it looks a lot more wacky and ridiculous than the Wii Fit. Today Nintendo teased what could be the Switch Fit, a new very barebones kit that includes a leg strap holster and a tension wheel.

The idea is simple: JoyCons are slotted in both the wheel and the holster for gyroscopic tracking and simulating various exercises. We see everything from Yoga to static stretches, ab workouts, tricep kickbacks, flutter kicks, hip adductor squeezes, chest squeezing, glute bridges, and a bunch of really silly variations of warm-up static runs. Ultimately it won't replace traditional exercise, but it makes it into a fun family-friendly experience with mini-games.

Nintendo launches 20 SNES games on Switch Online today, all 100% free for subscribers.

It's finally happening. SNES games are coming to the Switch's cheap $5 a month Switch Online subscription, and they won't cost anything extra. We originally thought SNES would be sold as part of an upgraded Switch Online tier, but Nintendo confirmed they're 100% free for all subscribers. We're happy to be wrong about this one.

The games, which include great SNES classics like Super Mario Kart, Super Mario World, Zelda A Link to the Past, Star Fox, F-Zero, and Super EDF, will be wrapped up in a separate 100MB download on the eShop. The games support awesome additions like save states, online play with other Switch Online members, cloud saves, and multiple screen display settings.

Dying Light 2 aims to one-up the original in every way, including overall world size, dynamic scope, and game-shifting consequences.

Today Techland outlined a bit more of Dying Light 2's expansive features and content, confirming the sequel's massive new open world dwarf the first game by four-fold. "Dying Light 2's game world will be four times bigger than the whole game world before," Techland Chief Technology Officer Pawel Rohleder told NVIDIA.

Rohleder goes on to expound on Dying Light 2's choice-driven system that has a direct impact on the world itself. You're no longer a part of the world, but an agent of change that molds the environments, maps, factions and overall societies with your actions.

It has been announced that the Fry's Electronics store in Palo Alto will be closing its doors in January. We reported only a couple of weeks ago that the chain they may be closer than ever to facing the fate of other brick and mortar retail chains.

According to an official spokesman for the electronics chain, the lease that Fry's Electronics has for the property is expiring on January 31, 2020. The store has been located at 340 Portage Avenue since 1990. The final day of business for the store has not been announced yet but will have to vacate completely by the end of January. Currently the chain has no plans to relocate in Palo Alto. Any plans to offer transfers to other locations for current employees have yet to have been disclosed.

The city of Palo Alto is already working on plans for the site on which the building that Fry's Electronics occupies. The history of the building dates to 1918 when it originally operated as a canning company. The city hopes to complete their plan for the area by the end of 2020, but as of now the site's future remains uncertain.

The first teaser trailer for Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) has leaked online, with our first look in a tweet below:

The trailer shows us Harley Quinn just before she destroys a bunch of red balloons on the screen, with the red balloons and Quinn's quip of "I'm so f***ing over clowns" in reference to It Chapter Two, which just came out.

Warner Bros. produces both It Chapter Two and Harley Quinn, so it's a nice breaking of the fourth wall for Quinn to reference a franchise in the real-world. The trailer itself shows off some quick shots of the action, with quick glimpses of Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez).

Samsung is launching its updated Galaxy Fold in South Korea starting September 6, and into the US "in the coming weeks" says the company. Samsung will be offering a 5G-ready Galaxy Fold in select countries, too.

With the launch of the Galaxy Fold the company is offering something it's calling the "Galaxy Fold Premier Service" which will give you "direct access to Samsung experts who can provide you tailored guidance and support over the phone any time, any day. This includes an optional one-on-one onboarding session".

Samsung is providing the Galaxy Fold Premier Service inside of the cost of the Galaxy Fold, which will set you back a hefty $1980. So you'd kinda want that one-on-one service and direct access to Samsung with your Galaxy Fold, right?

Intel teased its all-core 5GHz beast a couple of months ago, but now we know that the new Core i9-9900KS will launch next month. The news was announced by ex-media and PCPer founder Ryan Shrout, who is now the new chief performance strategist of Intel.

Firstly, the new Core i9-9900KS was first unveiled at Computex 2019 and will offer up 8 cores and 16 threads at 4GHz, but will boost with all cores at 5GHz. Shrout used the new 9900KS to push the boot into AMD's neck with its current Ryzen 3000 series processors, saying: "The point is, we're not taking this sitting down, we see the competition, we see the landscape as it is".

He continued: "We're adjusting because we take these customers very seriously. And we want to give them the best product possible".

Apple is expected to unveil a trio of new iPhones on September 10, inviting the media to the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California for its big fall event taking place at 1PM ET / 10AM PT.

We should see Apple revealing new iPhones that will replace current handsets in the iPhone XS, XS Mac, and XR. We should expect the higher-end models to roll out with triple-camera rigs, as well as a rumored 120FPS-capable front-facing camera. I don't know why, but we might see it in the new iPhone.

Apple could move over to USB-C but it's expected right now that it will continue using the Lightning connector, unlike the new iPad Pro which moved over to USB-C.

Samsung has just unveiled its next-gen Exynos 980 chip, its first with an integrated 5G modem and SoC in a single chip with it made on the 8nm node.

The new Exynos 980 is a powerful 4G LTE modem but an even more powerful 5G with up to 2.55Gbps down, which would see you downloading at over 250MB/sec. Inside, the Exynos 980 also has the new Wi-Fi 6 standard, and comes in as an 8-core processor.

Samsung's new Exynos 980 has 2 x Cortex-A77 CPU cores and 6 x Cortex-A55 chips, joined by the Mali-G76 GPU for graphics and mixed reality experiences. Samsung is building in its neural processing unit (NPU) for on-board AI tasks, versus sending AI tasks to the cloud and back, it can all be done on-device.

One of my favorite games of all time is coming to the Nintendo Switch, with the Japanese giant announcing the news during its recent Nintendo Direct and Blizzard announcing it on the official Overwatch Twitter account:

We knew it was coming from the near non-stop leaks and rumors about Overwatch arriving to mobile on the Nintendo Switch, but now it is confirmed. Overwatch isn't the most graphically demanding game either, so it should match the lower-end specs of the Switch compared to something like The Witcher 3 which doesn't run so great on Nintendo's mobile console.

The Nintendo Switch version of Overwatch is a little special, as it has motion controls -- compared to the controller/keyboard and mouse setups of the console and PC versions of the game. Not only that, but you'll get a super bonus Widowmaker skin if you pre-order the game as well as 3 months of Nintendo Switch Online.

Square Enix has something big to show off for the continuously expanding world of real-time ray tracing games and technology, with its subsidiary studio Luminous Productions showing off a new ray tracing tech demo titled Back Stage. Check it out:

Back Stage was powered by a single NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card, and is powered by the Luminous Engine that powered Final Fantasy XV. Square Enix added in most NVIDIA GameWorks bits and pieces including VXAO, HairWorks, ShadowLibs, and Turf Effects.

Takeshi Aramaki, Studio Head of Luminous Productions, explained: "Back Stage is a showcase demo of our work to answer the question, 'How can you use ray tracing in a next generation game?'"

Acer has just unveiled its revamped range of ConceptD premium notebooks, receiving the stamp of being an NVIDIA RTX Studio laptop.

The new ConceptD 9 Pro rolls out with a huge 17.3-inch 4K display, up to NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 graphics, and up to 32GB of RAM. The previous Acer ConceptD flagship laptop had up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, but now it is packing Quadro RTX goodness.

Acer is aiming its new ConceptD range of laptops at VR developers, big data analytics, and AI applications. It has enough power to handle it all, with a smaller 15.6-inch model (also 4K) in the new ConceptD 7 Pro with up to a 9th-gen Core i7 processor from Intel and Quadro RTX 5000 graphics.

Acer is making its ridiculous Thronos gaming chair a little cheaper, with the company unveiling at IFA 2019 its new Predator Thronos Air -- a less motorized version that only costs $13,999.

The cheaper gaming chair drops the automatic motorized monitor arm with a manually adjustable one, but Acer will still support up to three gaming displays inside of the gaming haven. There's still an adjustable keyboard and mouse tray, as well as a foot rest to keep your tootsies up.

Dropping $14,000 on the Acer Predator Thronos Air doesn't even include a gaming PC, headset, webcam, and all the rest of the gear you'll need. So if you were spending $14K on this, then you're going to want to deck it out with a high-end gaming PC too, right? Try $20K total.

ASUS has just unveiled the world's first gaming laptop with an incredible 300Hz display, with the new flagship ROG Zephyrus S GX701.

ASUS's new ROG Zephyrus S GX701 will be the first with a 300Hz display and will roll into gamers' hands next month, with the 300Hz refresh rate joined by a 3ms GtG response time.

The company hasn't confirmed which panel manufacturer is making the 300Hz panel for ASUS, but we should expect it to be a normal 240Hz display that overclocks up to 300Hz. Impressive nonetheless.

ASUS has just unveiled the world's most graphically-powered laptop with its new ProArt StudioBook One laptop, packing NVIDIA's super-fast Quadro RTX 6000 graphics and a high-end 4K 120Hz display. The NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 has 24GB of GDDR6 memory... in a laptop.

The new ASUS ProArt StudioBook One can handle 8K video editing on the go, and has been designed in collaboration with NVIDIA. Bob Pette, Vice President of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA, explains: "Powered by Quadro RTX 6000 graphics, ProArt StudioBook One is the flagship of our RTX Studio line of laptops, designed for the most demanding creative and technical users".

Pette continued: "It delivers extreme power and portability for those working with live virtual production, realtime 8K editing, data analytics, CAD design and simulation, and other dataheavy workloads to create stunning, immersive content fast and efficiently from any location".

AMD had the entire world in its hands leading into the Zen 2 architecture, resulting in the great Ryzen 3000 series CPUs -- but now there's some serious drama with bold claims of false advertising being thrown around. Check out Der8auer's video below for a great recap:

Once the new Ryzen 3000 series CPUs began getting into consumer' hands, it was quickly noticed that the boost clocks AMD had advertised weren't being met -- and that boost speeds were locked to a single CPU core. AMD didn't confirm this before the launch, but later confirmed it -- going as far as updating the Ryzen product pages to clarify the slip up.

But then Der8auer used a survey in which 2700 people responded to, building data to show that just 5.6% of the reported Ryzen 9 3900X processors in his survey hit the advertised maximum boost clocks. The mid-range Ryzen 5 3600 was much better with 49.8% of users saying they hit max boost clocks... but this is a big issue -- a big, big issue.

Google is pushing out Android Q onto all Pixel smartphones, something that includes the newer Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL and should come out-of-the-box on the upcoming Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones.

Android 10 is now available for Pixel smartphone owners and as a Pixel 3 XL owner, I've upgraded to Android 10 -- up from the latest Android Q beta. Google has said that it is getting Android 10 into more smartphones and other brands, with the company saying it is "working with a number of partners to launch or upgrade devices to Android 10 this year".

Android 10 provides system-wide Dark Mode which is one my favorite things, improved battery life, and a slew of new features that include a new Focus Mode that will keep you, yes, more focused. Android 10 also features full support for foldable smartphones like the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X.

The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) announced today that the final technical specifications for USB4 are here, with the first USB4 products to arrive in late-2020.

USB4 ushers in dual-lane 40Gbps speeds which equal the dizzying heights of Thunderbolt 3, and double what USB 3.2 offered. USB4 will continue making our lives easier taking in the USB Type-C standard, and will be fully backwards compatible with USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and even Thunderbolt 3.

The new USB4 standard will tackle both data and display connectivity, which means we should (hopefully) see a future of more USB4-powered displays. USB3 was alright, but the transfer speeds didn't match Thunderbolt 3 which became important for content creators and enthusiasts who craved, and actually needed, all that speed.