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Unity has just announced today at NVIDIA's own GTC 2019 that it has teamed with the GPU leader where it will integrate NVIDIA's RTX real-time ray tracing technology into its future platforms.

The company announced that NVIDIA's beautiful RTX real-time ray tracing technology is officially arriving in Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) today in preview form. It will officially be deployed out in a more optimized state to Unity customers in 2H 2019, so we should begin to see the flow-on effects of this in 2H 2019 and more so in 2020 and beyond.

Natalya Tatarchuk, Vice President of Graphics at Unity Technologies explained in a statement: "As part of our commitment to best-in-class visual fidelity graphics, we rolled out the preview of the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) last year - a highly-optimized, state-of-the-art raster-based solution capable of achieving stunning graphics in real-time on consumer hardware. We built HDRP with the future in mind and today we're excited to announce that we are working with NVIDIA to adopt its RTX real-time ray tracing capabilities so we could bring this technology to all. Real-time ray tracing moves real-time graphics significantly closer to realism, opening the gates to global rendering effects never before possible in the real-time domain".

Star Wars is awesome, and retro gaming is awesome...but what happens when you combine the two together? This custom-made Millennium Falcon Nintendo console, of course.

Star Wars and Nintendo megafan Chris Scott has quite the talent for crafting consoles out of spaceships. Scott revealed his latest creation, a combo SNES and NES wrapped in a snazzy Millennium Falcon shell, on the Nintendo Over 30's Club Facebook page, which obviously led to massive acclaim.

The two-in-one Corellian YT-1300 light freighter console can run both SNES and NES games, and even lights up in the back for hyperspace travel ambient effects. In today's lacking landscape of Star Wars games, it's great to reminiscence to the days of yore when microtransactions didn't rule gaming...and when Disney didn't make bewildering decisions with the franchise. Here we get a two-in-one retro throwback and I'd love to see more creations like these.

Bethesda today confirmed its E3 2019 plans, which include a stage show for its biggest upcoming games...and Starfield could be one of them.

Bethesda's E3 2019 gala will basically be a rehash of everything announced at last year's show, including the hellishly explosive DOOM Eternal, the two-player co-op Wolfenstein Youngblood, open-world post-apocalyptic RAGE 2, and plus maybe a few surprises. "E3 is coming, and on Sunday, June 9, Team Bethesda returns to Los Angeles for our 5th Annual Bethesda E3 Showcase. It's going to be a hell of a night. We have got an in-depth look at DOOM Eternal plus much, much more," the devs announced.

But one highly anticipated sci-fi game could make another appearance, as teased in the starry night sky on Bethesda's E3 reveal. Originally announced at E3 2018, Bethesda's latest game Starfield is its most ambitious project yet and is still probably a ways off from release.

OtherSide Entertainment have decided to separate with publisher, Starbreeze Studios while also announcing that System Shock 3 development is well on the way.

In a recent post to their website, OtherSide Entertainment has announced that the relationship between them and Starbreeze has ended due to the current finnancial situation Starbreeze is going through. For those that don't know, Starbreeze is dealing with massive company losses after the catastrophe with OVERKILL's The Walking Dead, the company is looking at losses of $135 million and is currently aiming for overall stability.

The post has also mentioned that despite the separation between OtherSide Entertainment and Starbreeze, the development progress of System Shock 3 has been unaltered. Deus Ex creator, Warren Spector has created a team for System Shock 3 and gave a statement in the post, here is what he had to say; "We parted ways with Starbreeze (amicably), which means we are in the process of lining up a new publishing partner. Happily, given the pedigree of System Shock and the progress we've made so far there's already a lot of interest. Has the situation affected development? Not really. The team is still, as we say, 'psyched and cranking' - in other words, continuing as normal. I'm confident we can bring System Shock 3 to market and have it take its place as a leading title in the immersive simulation genre".

Valve has just released a new DOTA 2 betting app onto the App Store and Google Play Store, the app allows users to bet on DOTA 2 eSports matches with in-game money.

The app has already been released and allows for Android and iOS users to win shards by predicting what DOTA 2 team wins the eSports Circuit matches. The betting uses in-game money instead of using real-world money, and also allows for its users to personalize their news feed which is in-built into the app.

Valve's new app also encourages its users to create their own 'pro-player' roster in the Fantasy Challenge mode which will reward playerss with shards. Its quite obvious of what Valve's motives are with the DOTA Pro Circuit app, they want its users to be always looking at the eSports games of DOTA and to keep its viewers there they will be rewarded with some currency. To check out the app on iOS click here, for a link to Google Play, click here.

Just last week, China managed to hit a Space milestone with the launch of their 300th rocket. The launch carried a satellite into Earths orbit and marks quite the achievement for China's National Space Administration.

Wu Yansheng, the board chairman of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has spoken out about the achievement, saying "This is a milestone for China's space industry development." The launch was carried out at Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern Sichaun Province, and featured a Long March 3B rocket that carried the ChinaSat 6C satellite into orbit.

According to the Xinhua news service, the first Long March rocket that was launched by China dated back to April 24th, 1970. That rocket which was titled Long March 1 carried the country's first satellite, Dongfanghong-1 and could only carry a total weight of 661 lbs, or 300 kilograms into orbit. Since then China has managed to make a staggering 17 variants of the original rocket, and also managed to drastically increase the carrying capacity of each of the rockets. The rocket that can carry the heaviest load weighs is called the heavy-lift Long March 5 and can carry 27.6 tons of weight to low-Earth orbit. If the desired trip is further than low-Earth orbit, the rockets weight must be reduced to 15.4 tons.

Square Enix has confirmed that there is a brand new Octopath Traveler game in development for the Nintendo Switch.

In an interview with the Japanese magazine Famitsu, Tomoya Asano, the producer for the first Octopath Traveler has said that a sequel for the JRPG is currently in the works and will be released onto the Nintendo Switch. it is unclear when the title is planned for launch. According to Stealth, a Global Market Researcher, "the Yokoyama team of Square Enix is the one working on the Octopath mobile game."

The first Octopath Traveler was very-well received by the JRPG community, but that doesn't mean it didn't come with its faults. The expectations for the sequel will be quite high, but if the sequel is anything like the first game fans of the series shouldn't be disappointed. Unfortunately was no release date mentioned in the news tip from Nintendo First Order Reaver.

Valve has issued out a new update to the networking aspect of Steam, the update improves the SDK and bring it up to v1.44 which will improve the overall quality of connection as well as protection.

Valve has released onto their official Steam blog all the changes that are coming to Steamworks SDK. Valve say that for Steam partners the are tied to Valve through servers will now have improvements added to their network in the form of protection against denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks, and network connectivity. The new update anonymizes users game traffic which protects it from DDOS attacks, while at the same time decreasing the amount of latency between two hosts.

The way Valve has managed to improve connection to its servers for partners is through a relayed route. While in most networking instances a "direct" route is usually the fastest form of access, Valve explains that "The Internet is a packet-switched network; there is no such thing as a "direct" route. When a packet is sent "directly" to the remote host's IP address, it takes the route determined by standard IP routing protocols. This route is often not optimal! Our protocol puts the client in charge of routing decisions. The client considers each relay point-of-presence, and determines the end-to-end latency along this route. It then selects the route with the lowest latency."

Respawn Entertainment will be launching the first season and Battle Pass for Apex Legends any day now, with a new leak teasing that launch pads will be arriving in the battle royale smash hit... sometime soon.

The new launch pads have been found in the market area for players to test, with YouTuber 'Mokeysniper' providing a video showing how they work in all sorts of ways. The video above shows different speeds of running up to it and how you will be propelled, using Pathfinder to gain momentum to see if there will be any benefits from that, and more.

You can use the launch pads when when you've been knocked down, which will be a great way of getting out of a battle and surviving so your team mates can get you back up. The launch pads can also be used to throw projectiles around, including grenades and traps so I can see future battles in Apex Legends involving the launch pads to be super fun.

The smartphones of today already rock incredibly impressive cameras, but what about the phones of tomorrow? According to Qualcomm's Director of Product Management (Camera, Computer Vision, and Video), Judd Heape, set your hype meters to 11, people.

Qualcomm's current Snapdragon 660, 670, 675, 710, 845, and 855 chipsets all support resolutions up to 192MP sensors, but for those dizzying megapixel heights phone maker swill need to disable multi-frame noise reduction and zero shutter lag. This means you'll need to hold incredibly still to get a good shot, but that shot will be ridiculous good.

Right now, even smartphones with 48-megapixel sensors combine 4 pixels into one single 12-megapixel photo. We should expect 64-megapixel sensors to bust out 16-megapixel photos, and higher-end 100-megapixel sensors to blast out 25-megapixel photos which will truly take us to the next level with smartphone cameras.

NVIDIA still owns the crown for the fastest gaming graphics card in the world with its GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and it has plenty of room to move with overclocking, but the company puts some major restrictions on it or else we would see the card being magnitudes faster than it already is.

Well, now we have legendary overclocker 'KINGPIN' overclocking his custom-made EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti KINGPIN Hybrid graphics card, pushing the Turing GPU up to the dizzying heights of 2.7GHz. The 11GB of GDDR6 memory was also cranked up from its stock 14Gbps to 17Gbps, offering up 750GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

KINGPIN had the EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti KINGPIN Hybrid graphics card at its max power target (+7%) and used LN2 cooling to keep the OC at its limits. He used an Intel Core i9-9980XE processor also cooled with LN2 overclocked to 5.6GHz on all 18 cores on top of an EVGA X299 DARK motherboard, and 32GB of G.SKILL TridentZ DDR4 RAM at 4000MHz. The results? World record score in 3DMark's new Port Royal benchmark.

RAGE 2 is less than two months away, with id Software finally confirming what to expect performance wise from their latest game on both consoles, as well as the PC.

In an interview with Hardcore Gamer, id Software director Tim Willits said: "To make it simple, on the enhanced consoles, it runs at 1080p 60 FPS. On base hardware, it runs at 30 FPS. On PC, it's uncapped. We went for speed over 4K for the enhanced consoles". It's interesting to see that id Software is choosing 1080p 60FPS over 4K 30FPS, but I respect that. I would choose 60FPS over 30FPS any day of the week.

RAGE 2 will drop on May 14 for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Crytek has come out with a bang right before GDC 2019 showing off Noir, a new demo that highlights the impressive CRYENGINE with real-time ray tracing with a secret weapon: it works on any GPU, including AMD Radeon graphics cards. Check it out:

The demo is super-impressive, and even more so hwen you discover it is running on an AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics card which isn't anywhere near as powerful as NVIDIA's arsenal of GeForce RTX graphcis cards. Noir uses experimental ray tracing features that will be built into CRYENGINE 5, with Crytek using CRYENGINE's Total Illumination effects in the Noir demo.

The effects used in Noir are both API and hardware agnostic, meaning they'll run on most new graphics cards - including AMD's higher-end Radeon cards. We should expect that once more CRYENGINE 5-powered games are made, they will look even better, and run even smoother than what we're seeing here today on the Radeon RX Vega 56.

Despite making billions every year from lucrative services like Xbox LIVE Gold, Microsoft isn't locking the Master Chief Collection's PC port behind a premium sub.

Microsoft is finally bringing the six-game Halo Master Chief Collection to PC, and like most PC games on the market, it won't require a paid subscription for multiplayer. Microsoft confirmed the news to Windows Central, who says Xbox LIVE Gold isn't needed to play online multiplayer in any of the Master Chief Collection's six games on PC (even on Steam).

An Xbox LIVE account is needed to play MCC on both Steam and the Windows Store, however, but that's totally free. This move makes a lot of sense from both a PR and business perspective: PC gamers would be incredibly disappointed by having to buy into the sub, and Halo coming to Steam is because of full game sales, not services.

Red Dead Redemption 2's latest patch apparently makes some key changes to the game's singleplayer visuals, namely with lighting effects.

It appears Rockstar Games may have accidentally turned off ambient occlusion with Red Dead Redemption 2's new v1.06 update, giving the game a decidedly brighter and less defined look. Some say the game has been downgraded graphically...and there admittedly are noticeable differences. Twitter user Darealbandicoot scoped out the game's pre- and post-lighting shift.

No one knows for sure exactly what happened but gamers expect Rockstar temporarily shut off ambient occlusion, a unique bit of visual wizardry that makes objects more defined via shadow effects. This actually isn't the first time this has happened in a recent Rockstar game: GTA V had a similar visual shift after an online update.

Built on accessibility and universality, Google's upcoming Project Stream gaming platform may support all sorts of controllers...even the Switch's JoyCons.

A big piece of Project Stream has been uncovered days ahead of Google's big GDC unveil: unique controller integration. According to info found in Chromium's source code, Google's Chrome browser will soon be compatible with Nintendo Switch's JoyCon controllers. This strongly hints that Google's new gaming platform will be cross-dimensional and bleed over into existing peripherals and maybe even hardware, and might lend credence to Google not actually making its own games console.

As 9 to 5 Google notes, Chrome already supports Switch Pro controllers on Linux in a limited fashion, but this new addition sees widespread compatibility with all of Switch's controller variants including separate JoyCons. Chrome will even eventually recognize the JoyCon Charging Grip when it's hooked up via USB.

Fans and developers are recreating Star Wars: Dark Forces in Unreal Engine 4, and it looks absolutely incredible.

As a kid, Star Wars games were magical experiences. The original old-school Dark Forces shooter was one of my favorite games growing up (second only to my love for Jedi Knight) and I remember blasting stormtroopers, sewer monsters, and droids on PS1 until my eyes practically fell out of my head. But what would my childhood memories look like in today's powerful games engines, like, say, Unreal Engine 4?

A team of talented games-makers and ardent fans answer that question with this magnificent recreation of Dark Forces in UE4. YouTuber BlueDrake42 found a demo for a Mos Eisley level that looks absolutely incredible, complete with a Millennium Falcon docked in the hangar. The demo didn't have any actual combat--it's not a game, per say--but it's still interactive enough and serves as a dazzling spectacle of skill and dedication.

As big players like Google, Amazon, Verizon, and even Microsoft ready their game streaming services, Valve makes a preemptive strike by offering remote streaming of Steam's juggernaut PC games library.

Valve recently announced Steam Link Anywhere, a new addition to its remote gaming platform that allows game streaming to mobiles, tablets, and other devices while on-the-go. Unlike the previous iteration of that limited game streaming to a home network, Steam Link Anywhere basically transforms your PC into a cloud server that beams Steam games to devices running the Steam Link app. Think of it as a version of PS4's Remote Play but for PC games.

Receiver devices include all hardware that can run the Steam Link app, including Android tablets and smartphones, as well as the Raspberry Pi and the discontinued Steam Link hardware.

The Epic Store is quite fledgling right now. Compared to Steam, it's pretty barebones and lacks the rich and robust feature set the PC games king currently offers. But that'll soon change: Epic plans to bring many of the same things found on Steam to its wholly-owned digital storefront.

Right now the Epic Store is setting itself apart from Steam for all the wrong reasons. Epic bought up big exclusives like Metro Exodus and The Division 2, causing a huge hurrah in the PC gaming community for "anti-consumer" practices. But the games-maker plans to copy many of Steam's best features to make its store more competent and alluring (which is something it should've done instead of securing exclusivity deals in the first place).

Epic recently outlined its store feature roadmap on Trello, confirming staples like mod support, wishlisting, achievements, and the ultra-important cloud saves are all coming to the platform. I hope these features come soon alongside a new Epic Store redesign, especially since the store doesn't give me nearly enough information about its games. Steam, on the other hand, tells me if the game is co-op, if it's online, if it has DLC and how much it costs, and a systemic deep-dive of info with player reviews, trailers, PC spec requirements, and a lot more.

Epic Games is getting lots of heat for buying up exclusivity deals for PC games for its new Epic Games Store, and company boss Tim Sweeney uses some rather interesting logic to defend the platform's choices.

With its favorable 88%-12% revenue split for games-makers, the Epic Games Store was originally touted as a way to force competition with the reigning champ Steam and push Valve to improve its policies to benefit both consumers and developers. But once Epic started buying out exclusives like The Division 2, Metro Exodus, and even a handful of indies, gamers were very, very wary. Why would a platform that lets devs and publishers keep 88% of revenues need to make exclusivity deals? Shouldn't the devs just bring their games to the store organically and treat it as an extension of other platforms? It's simple: to get more people to buy from the store.

But the move has seemingly backfired. The Epic Store is now embroiled in a PR nightmare that seems to only get worse. Rather than wooing PC gamers, the store has repelled them en masse with accusations of "anti-consumer" practices. Buying up exclusives has further fragmented the already-split PC sector into a wider galaxy of launchers, deals, and storefronts.