Latest News - Page 2532

Is will most likely not improve the sound, but at least it looks quite cool. This little 'build log' video on Facebook outlines how you might go about re-shelling your beloved earphones with two spent bullet casings.

This handy 'guide' goes through the process step-by-step, showing how you can use simple household tools in order to complete the job. With the tool list including things like a drill, hacksaw and pieces of sandpaper with various grit ratings, doing it yourself shouldn't really take more than an hour.

If you're interested in doing this yourself, watch the video posted by Best Knives above.

HTC will open up the pre-order flood gates for its Vive headset in a few hours, but how much will it cost outside of the US? The US pricing is $799, but for a country like Australia it's been bumped up to $899 - without shipping. With the dollar conversion right now, we're looking at around AU$1261 without shipping - add another $100-$150 for shipping and we're at $1400 or so.

What about the rest of the world? The HTC Vive will cost £689 in the UK, while Canadians will expect to pay CAD$1149. Here's a breakdown of the rest of the pricing for the launch countries that the Vive will be hitting when it launches in April:

MSRP

The AI revolution continues, with a team of Stanford researchers creating a new way of teaching AI systems how to predict a human's response to their actions.

The system is called Augur, which provides access to an online writing community called Wattpad, and its archive of over 600,000 stories. The information in these stories will enable support for vector machines - which are learning algorithms at their core - and will allow AI to better predict what people do in certain situations.

The researchers wrote in their study: "Over many millions of words, these mundane patterns [of people's reactions] are far more common than their dramatic counterparts. Characters in modern fiction turn on the lights after entering rooms; they react to compliments by blushing; they do not answer their phones when they are in meetings".

For those with an awesome childhood, you might remember the Powerglove. Well, Sony has just filed a new patent for a finger-tracking flex sensor, which sports a separate contact sensor that registers when the wearer touches a physical object, and a communications module that sends the data to a VR headset.

Sony's new patent says that the Powerglove-like controller is "a trackable object that is configured to be illuminated during interactivity" with "at least one inertial sensor for generating inertial sensor data".

With the controller on, "users collaborating may use their gloves to touch objects, move objects, interface with surfaces, press on objects, squeeze objects, toss objects, make gesture actions or motions, or the like".

The winner of the 87th Academy Award has been announced - and it's the crime drama 'Spotlight'.

While the film wasn't the favourite, the crime drama feature based on the catholic church child sexual abuse scandal has been quietly gathering plaudits and praise for its handling of the subject matter, and strong performances from its cast including Mark Ruffalo.

'Mad Max: Fury Road' took home the highest number of awards for the night, bagging many of the technical awards including make up, costume design, production design, editing, sound editing and sound mixing.

Discrete GPU shipments increased in Q4 2015, but were down 9% from 2014 - so how were notebook discrete GPU shipments? Well, NVIDIA saw an increase of notebook discrete GPU shipments - an increase of 34.2% - a considerable number.

Why the increase? Thanks to the industry's fastest mobility GPU - the GeForce GTX 980. NVIDIA's notebook-based GeForce GTX 980 was launched in September 2015 and has been powering the fastest gaming notebooks since. The GTX 980 is capable of 1080p 60FPS without a problem, and even 1440p and 4K gaming. The Maxwell-powered GPU is the same technology found on the desktop GTX 980, but NVIDIA did considerable work to shrink the PCB and VRMs down to fit it into a notebook - and obviously, it has been met with great success.

To celebrate this week's release of 'Mr Robot: Season 1' on Blu-ray HD and DVD, we have ten Blu-ray prize packs to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment.

Enter the "completely captivating" (Jimmy Ryan, Spoiler TV) world of Mr. Robot. Cyber-security engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night, Elliot (Rami Malek, The Pacific) finds himself at a crossroads when the mysterious leader (Christian Slater, Very Bad Things) of an underground hacker group recruits him to destroy the firm he is paid to protect. Compelled by his personal beliefs, Elliot struggles to resist the chance to take down the multinational CEOs he believes are running (and ruining) the world. Now, watch all 10 Season One episodes back-to-back and uninterrupted of the psychological thriller that critics rave is "damn near perfect" (Jessica Rawden, Cinemablend).

To go into the running to win a prize, simply answer the following question in 50 words or less:

We haven't seen a new GPU release in over 6 months, but GPU shipments are quite healthy. According to the latest data from Jon Peddie Research, overall GPU shipments increased 2.4% in Q4 2015 compared to the previous quarter. Why the increase? Well, new games were released in the last three months of 2015, but with next-gen GPUs only months away, consumers are holding back their wallets.

AMD noticed a 5.16% increase quarter-to-quarter while competitor NVIDIA had an 8.41% increase, leaving Intel with a smaller 0.73% increase. The attach rate of GPUs for Q4 2015 was 139%, which was up 0.59% from the previous quarter while discrete GPUs were in 31.28% of all PCs - a number that's up 1.34%. The entire PC market increased 2.01% quarter-to-quarter, but decreased 10.27% year-to-year.

Nintendo is going to get some huge attention this year at gaming-related events like Game Developers Conference next month, and E3 later on in the year in June. Their next-gen NX console is reportedly quite powerful, and according to the latest rumors, requires "near-zero modification" of Xbox One and PS4 games to get them working on NX.

The new rumors are coming from Dual Pixels, with some huge detailed spilled on Nintendo's next-gen console. Dual Pixels reports: "I don't have many details on the device itself but I do have some background for it and some PR techniques they will use for it. A thing to note about this device is that much of it's production was started in 2014 and many of the stuff I list here was outlined by the late Satoru Iwata before his passing. Hence in the company, the NX is considered the last project of their late president. Employees since his passing utter a phrase at the end of meetings and during idea brainstorms which is "岩田のために!" which roughly translates 'For Iwata!'".

Now, if you want the full skinny on Nintendo's next-gen console, Dual Pixels has quite the purported scoop. Here's what they had to say in detail: "The importance of this is that this "new" Nintendo is highly motivated in delivering a fantastic system and games, something that I quote from an employee 'have not seen this much forward momentum on a project since they launched the original Famicom'".

Now in its 36th year, the anti-Oscar celebration the Razzies, have dished out awards to 2016's worst of the worst, with two hugely hyped films have walked away with the lion's share of the dubious honors.

According to ComingSoon, 'Fantastic Four' and 'Fifty Shades of Grey' jointly share the worst picture award, with the widely panned Marvel reboot also taking out the worst remake/rip-off/sequel and worst director, while the E.L. James novel adaptation also took out the worst actor, worst actress, worst screen combo and worst screenplay awards. Despite the critical drubbing, it's ultimately Universal who have the last laugh - 'Fifty Shades of Grey' made great bank for the studio earlier last year, grossing $570 million dollars on a $40 million budget.

Amongst the Razzie's relatively non-constructive feedback, the redeemer award went to Sylvester Stallone for his come-back of shorts in the critically successful 'Rocky' sequel 'Creed'.

Doom is set to be one of the biggest releases of the year, but how will it perform on the ultimate gaming platform? Well, the idTech 6-based game runs entirely on OpenGL, which really changes things up. Why? Because AMD and NVIDIA optimize their drivers and goodies inside for DirectX, and with nearly all games being based on DirectX, id Software is changing things up with Doom.

Early benchmarks using the Doom alpha have been performed by GameGPU, where we see AMD dominating NVIDIA. These benchmarks are from an early build of Doom, without any platform-specific optimizations done, so things will only get better from here on out. As for the specs on the PC running the Doom alpha, this is what was used:

From these specifications, the benchmarks were run at 1080p (1920x1080), 1440p (2560x1440) and 4K (3840x2160). In both benchmarks, AMD dominates completely. AMD hits the 60FPS barrier in both minimum and average frames per second, with nearly all of its high-end and enthusiast GPUs. This includes the R9 290, R9 290X, R9 295X2 (dual-GPU), R9 Fury X, and R9 Nano. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 Ti fall behind the R9 290 - which is a strange thing to see indeed.

To celebrate this week's release of 'Fear The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season' on Blu-ray HD and DVD, we have five Blu-ray prize packs to give away thanks to our friends at eOne Home Entertainment.

Fear begins here. Living in the same universe as 'The Walking Dead', 'Fear the Walking Dead' is a gritty drama that explores the onset of the undead apocalypse through the lens of a fractured family.

Set in a city where people come to escape, shield secrets, and bury their pasts, a mysterious outbreak threatens to disrupt what little stability high school guidance counselor Madison Clark (Kim Dickens, House of Cards) and English teacher Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis, Whale Rider) have managed to assemble. The everyday pressure of blending two families while dealing with resentful, escapist, and strung out children takes a back seat when society begins to break down. A forced evolution, a necessary survival of the fittest takes hold, and our dysfunctional family must either reinvent themselves or embrace their darker histories.|

A new development regarding the trademark dispute between Ubisoft and EA regarding the word "Ghost" in relation to video games has just come up. It seems that EA has completely withdrawn their dispute, "without prejudice," meaning they won't be allowed to pursue legal action in the future regarding this issue.

At the beginning of the month, we found out that Ubisoft had filed a trademark for the word Ghost in conjunction with gaming, to help to identify their Ghost Recon series of games from the mind of Tom Clancy, specifically Ghost Recon: Wildlands. EA filed an opposition to Ubisoft's application on the grounds that their internal studio, Ghost Games was the first to use the word in association with video games.

Now it seems they've resolved to withdraw that opposition entirely, letting the trademark, if it passes through further scrutiny, become Ubisoft's. Because of the association with the trademark, it might have an impact on Ghost Games, forcing them to change their name, or it could have little to no impact depending on how strict Ubisoft is regarding their win. We had thought the battle could be long and drawn out, but it seems to have been completed amicably, which is a surprise.

Airbnb has become a central source of professionals and everyday people getting accommodation, jumping out of the usual hotel bookings. With Mobile World Congress taking place last week, Airbnb was a popular choice for attendees with around 1/3 of MWC attendees using Airbnb accommodation.

Mike Curtis, VP of Engineering with Airbnb, said that around 30,000 people at Mobile World Congress used Airbnb to stay in and around Barcelona, Spain. With 100,000 people attending MWC, the 30,000 that used Airbnb represents 1/3 of the total MWC attendance - a number that simply can't be ignored.

Curtis said: "Airbnb is becoming a much more mainstream thing now. A couple of years ago, I would attend a conference like this, and everybody would ask what 'Air Boom' was". Curtis added that most MWC attendees that used Airbnb booked their accommodation at the last minute, and over their mobile devices. Curtis added: "It's just an expectation now that you're going to be able to reach in your pocket and book something on Airbnb more often than not, instantly".

With the Windows Store-based games not supporting multi-GPUs in games, with Rise of the Tomb Raider being the most recent example, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has come out trying to douse the flames.

Andre Miller (@BigMouthGamer on Twitter) asked Xbox boss Phil Spencer on Twitter: "Are you guys taking steps to resolve these issues? A lot of these limitations are on fundamental features...". Miller makes a very good point, with Spencer replying: "We know lists like this include features PC gamers want to see from us, we appreciate the feedback and have plans to improve".

Spencer didn't provide any details, but the Windows Store-based games having issues that PC gamers shouldn't be putting up with is complete crap - IMO. With the release of Quantum Break from Remedy Entertainment right around the corner, after being an Xbox One exclusive and then announced for the PC recently - I expect there to be multi-GPU support on day one. But Quantum Break is launching on the Windows Store only - so if nothing is fixed between now and then, one of the biggest releases of the year will launch without support for multi-GPUs... and that sucks.

One of the fastest APUs from the Bristol Ridge family will be just as fast as the Xbox One, according to a new rumor from Bitsnchips.

AMD's new Bristol Ridge family will feature a powerful APU that will be quite powerful, easily taking on the consoles in providing a 1080p gaming experience, in a small package and price. AMD is expected to launch its new Bristol Ridge family at Computex, so we should expect more details in June.

As for the rumor, the flagship Bristol Ridge-based APU would feature 16 compute units that are based on the GCN 1.3 architecture. The 16 compute units would include 1024 stream processors, which is the same SP count as AMD's Radeon HD 7850. The HD 7850 launched in 2012, and was a great budget/mid-range GPU - if we see this performance in an APU, things could get very exciting for AMD.

Games launching with crappy multi-GPU scaling have become a new thing, with Street Fighter V launching with SLI and Crossfire support being KO'd.

Well, thanks to some users tinkering around with the NVIDIA Inspector Tool, you can find the game profile for "Street Fighter V" and do some changes to the SLI compatability bits (0x000000F5). DSOGaming ran Street Fighter V with the SLI fix on their NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 card (a dual-GPU) resulting in around 98% scaling.

Before they applied the SLI fix, the GTX 690 wasn't powerful enough to run Street Fighter V at 4K, anywhere near 60FPS. After that, the performance scales much higher and you can get closer to 4K 60FPS - especially on faster cards in SLI.

The ESA has just published the full list of E3 2016 exhibitors, giving us a nice prelude to what the show has to offer in June.

All of the biggest publishers, developers, and console-makers will be at this year's E3. The Big Three--Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo--will take the stage in full force, debuting their respective hardware and content. We'll probably see Nintendo tease some new details on its mysterious cross-platform NX console, and Sony will definitely discuss its PlayStation VR hardware. Microsoft, on the other hand, will most likely push its new Windows-centric Xbox-and-PC approach--but hopefully we'll see them address the awful Windows Store.

One of the more interesting about the list is that CD Projekt RED is showing up. The Witcher 3's latest Blood and Wine expansion is set to release before the show, so we'll probably see some new Cyberpunk 2077 action. Oculus will show up to tout its Oculus Rift headset, but HTC is absent. However you slice it, this year's E3 looks super exciting.

After Phoenix Credits were spotted in a recent Division video from Arekkz, gamers were alarmed that the shooter would be laden with microtransactions. Ubisoft affirms that this isn't the case, and The Division won't have any paid currency options to buy in-game items.

Although online games like The Division are prime territory for paid content schemes, Ubisoft Community Manager Natchai Stapper has officially confirmed that the online pre-apocalyptic shooter is microtransaction-free.

"There will be no microtransactions, and definitely no P2W," Stapper said in a recent Tweet regarding the game's mysterious Phoenix Credits. Although Stapper says paid currency is out, he didn't reveal what Phoenix Credits actually are, saying that "we'll communicate on this later, but don't worry." This directly clashes with the game's PSN page which clearly states "optional in-game purchases" are included.

Ubisoft's anticipated MMOFPS The Division is almost here, and gamers are avidly looking for any scraps of info ahead of the game's release. As it turns out, the beta tests were small morsels compared to the hearty meal of the full game, and the final release will hold some pretty key differences.

Redditor aGreatGambino has compiled a massive list that clarifies major differences between The Division's beta tests and the finished game we'll play in March. Gambino sifted through over 12 hours of past dev streams and footage to compile the info, which has been seen by thousands of gamers.

The list is a nice compendium that answers a lot of our questions and gives a better idea of how The Division will be at launch. For example, the game won't start out in Manhattan. There will be a prologue phase that bridges the story gap from the beta. The RPG mechanics will be much more dynamic, too. Players can equip up to two skills with a signature skill, and beef up stats and abilities with talents and perks. Be sure to check below for the full list, and we'll probably see Ubisoft spill more details before The Division's launch on March 8.