Latest News - Page 2583

Facebook is finally moving into the world of immersive video content, announcing that 360-degree videos will begin rolling out to your News Feed in the very near future.

The social network announced that the Facebook website is the only place they'll appear for now, with the Android and iOS versions of the Facebook app to support 360-degree video "in the coming months". When you're on the web and on your News Feed with a 360-degree video, you can click your mouse on the video and move around the video, all from your desktop.

But what about content? This is next to useless without some good content, right? Well, various companies are already diving on the 360-degree content bandwagon, with Star Wars, Discovery, VICE, GoPro, Saturday Night Live and LeBron James & Interrupted. The Disney side of things has a 360-degree promotional video for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is super-awesome.

Reports indicate that LG has laid preparations for mass-production of its own foldable display tech that will lead to flexible smartphone screens, curved screen strips in autos, foldable tablet screens and rollable HDTV screens by 2017.s.

Right now curved displays are seen with wearables like Samsung's Gear S smartwatch and Gear Fit smartbands, but LG is about to take the tech to a whole new level with displays that can be "folded and unfolded more than 100,000 times".

ET News reveals that LG has secured a contract from an unnamed global software company in an effort to "challenge Samsung Electronics' and Apple's strongholds in high-end smartphone market with foldable smartphones". LG has already begun investing huge capital into OLED development facilities in Gumi, Kyeongbuk, and initial shipments are expected to arrive in January 2016. Right now the tech is still in its early stages as functional prototypes.

Brandishing 4GB of RAM, a full HD 1920 x 1080 IPS display, USB 3.0 and audio provided by Skullcandy, Toshiba's new Chromebook 2 comes in to stores during October 2015 at a nice price of $429.99 with the Intel Core i3 or $329.99 with the Intel Celeron.

If you're looking for some more goodies thrown in, Toshiba also offers up 100GB of Google Drive storage, 90 days of unlimited Google Play streaming and 12 in-air passes for Gogo internet. Other features include a 13.3-inch display, a weight of only 2.9 pounds and a lengthy 8.5 hour battery life across both models.

Also included is a SD Card slot, one USB 2.0 port and dual microphones, just in case you're sporting two voice boxes (or enjoy better microphone quality).

Valve was at SIGGRAPH this year, with Dan Ginsburg having some interesting things to say about the various APIs at their fingertips including DirectX 12 and Vulkan.

In the video above (1:40:01 into the video), Ginsberg says that Valve has been working with Vulkan since its inception, and that there's no big reasons for developers to use a DX12 backend in their games. Ginsberg adds that Vulkan is far superior than DX12 in various areas. He said: "Unless you are aggressive enough to be shipping a DX12 game this year, I would argue that there is really not much reason to ever create a DX12 back end for your game".

He added: "And the reason for that is that Vulkan will cover you on Windows 10 on the same class of hardware and so much more from all these other platforms and IHVs that we've heard from. Metal is single platform, single vendor, and Vulkan... we are gonna have support for not only Windows 10 but Windows 7, Windows 8 and Linux".

In a move that doesn't seem so surprising, the Hitman reboot has been delayed from its original December 2015 release window to March 2016.

IO Interactive, the developer behind Hitman, has said that the delay applies to all versions of Hitman: the Xbox One, PS4 and PC versions. The launch plans have changed, with IO Interactive and publisher Square Enix to launch Hitman in stages, starting with the larger initial launch. After that, we'll see the rest of the locations in Hitman released over time.

The developer has teased that the tagline to Hitman is: "Enter a world of assassination", with that world being a constantly changing, evolving landscape. IO Interactive wrote on the official Hitman blog: "These few extra months will mean we can add more to the launch content of the game, more than we had originally planned, and then follow with a tighter frequency of updates, which ultimately will create a better game for everyone. And in the end, that's what we're all looking for".

Predator drones are already scary enough, but what if you couldn't see them at all? This is the next step for the US government, with UC San Deigo developing a new camouflage technology that they will submit to the Department of Defense later this month.

The new camouflage material is called "dielectric metasurface cloak", which continues the work from Duke University in 2006. The new material is a thin layer of Teflon studded with ceramic particles and capable of modulating wavelengths of energy along the electromagnetic scale (including both visible light and radar). The study's lead author, Li-Yi Hsu, said in a statement: "Previous cloaking studies needed many layers of materials to hide an object, the cloak ended up being much thicker than the size of the object being covered. In this study, we show that we can use a thin single-layer sheet for cloaking".

This new material isn't there yet, as its thickness is a determining factor into which wavelength it's capable of blocking as the material can only block a single wavelength at one time. Even with the right wavelength, "the system only works if the incoming signal hits it at a 45 degree angle (within 6 degrees or so)," reports Engadget.

Turing Pharmaceuticals is in the headlines today for all the wrong reasons, increasing the price of their HIV/AIDS medication from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill, overnight - an increase of an insane 4100%.

Daraprim, the medication in question, has been on the market for 62 years now, and is the "standard of care for food-borne illness called toxoplasmosis caused by a parasite that can severely affect those with compromised immune systems. Turing purchased the rights to the drug last month and almost immediately raised prices", reports The Washington Post.

The story gets worse, with consumers taking to Reddit to boycott the company's products, saying that they want new laws that would prevent this price gouging from happening in the future. The editor daily newsletter on the industry, John Carroll of Fierce Biotech, asked Turing's CEO, Martin Shkreli about the huge price increase. Things took to Twitter, where Carroll asked: "Let's see if we can get a statement from @MartinShkreli. Martin, your co. just hiked the price of an old drug - new to you - by 5000%. Why?". The response from Shkreli was explosive, where he straight up said: "You are such a moron".

With this summer's 'Jurassic World' now the third highest grossing film of all time, it's no surprise that a sequel is on the way - in fact it's already been announced for 2018. What might be a surprise is that 'Jurassic World' was always planned to be the opening act for a trilogy of films, with the roadmap already laid out.

Speaking to Flickering Myth, Director Colin Trevorrow elaborated slightly on the next installment, which he won't direct, but will write.

"We looked at it as a trilogy from the very beginning. We designed the whole thing that way. And, honestly, the whole trilogy is articulated in Jurassic Park. Jurassic World is all based on Ian Malcolm's quote: 'you stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you knew what you had, you'd packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox and now you want to sell it.' That, to me, is Jurassic World. That's why I had all the product placement, that's what it was. So with Jurassic World 2 it's: "dinosaurs and man separated by 65 million years of evolution have been thrown back into the mix together - how can we know what to expect?'. That's not the exact quote, but you get the idea."

Samsung has just announced the latest SSD in its range, the new 950 PRO SSD. What makes the Samsung 950 PRO special? It's the first NVMe M.2 form factor consumer SSD with V-NAND technology, with some insane performance to boot.

The new drive arrives on a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, in various sizes. The Samsung 950 PRO will come in 256GB and 512GB capacities, with the 512GB version featuring insane sequential read speeds of 2.5GB/sec, while it can write at 1.5GB/sec. Random read performance is just as impressive, hovering at 300,000 IOPS while we have write speeds of up to 110,000 IOPS.

Samsung is using its second generation MLV V-NAND 32-layer 128Gb die with UBX controller and magician software to make the 950 PRO, while we also have AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption that will protect your data. Dynamic Thermal Guard will protect your drive and data in environments of between 0-70C, and it can take a physical shock of up to 1500G/0.5ms and vibrations of up to 20G. So if you want to take it up in your fighter jet, you can.

BenQ has been all over the competitive gaming scene in the last five years, sponsoring most of the biggest gaming organisations, gaming events and tournaments alike. This strong commitment to the eSports scene has been further extended, seeing this Taiwanese company announce that it has "strengthened holdings in the research and manufacture of gaming equipment by investing in the player trusted brand ZOWIE."

Further stating that BenQ and ZOWIE's passion and mission for business both strongly align with its own, this fact makes this renewed collaboration being only logical. Back in 2010 these two companies co-branded a professional gaming monitor, with this partnership to extend now into 2015, seeing BenQ help out ZOWIE in peripheral research and development.

Said to be further making products for casuals and professionals alike, there is no saying just yet exactly what products these two companies will make together, however the press release does mention First Person Shooter games being a particular focus.

Why haven't aliens contacted us? Encryption. That's at least the reason NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has given, which is his explanation to the Fermi paradox.

Snowden had a chat with Neil deGrasse Tyson on his StarTalk podcast (where we're hoping Snowden used encryption, pun intended), where he said that our need for highly encrypted information could be the reason aliens haven't contacted Earth. He said that their communications could be so encrypted that they would be nearly impossible to distinguish from the surrounding noise.

Snowden said: "When you look at encrypted communications, if they are properly encrypted, there is no real way to tell that they are encrypted. You can't distinguish a properly encrypted communication, at least in the theoretical sense, from random noise. So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society where all of their communications will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means"

Despite a previous report which suggested that Michael Bay and Mark Wahlberg were planning on exiting the fifth entry from the multi-billion dollar 'Transformers' franchise, a number of outlets such as ComingSoon are claiming that the director and star combo are looking at making a comeback.

With Bay's next film '13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi' in the can, the director is looking forward to future projects and whilst he has taken to Twitter to deny he's officially the 'Transformers 5' director, he has said he's met with Producer Steven Spielberg to thrash out a story.

'Transformers 5' has previously been announced for a 2017 release date.

Frontier Developments, the studio behind Elite: Dangerous, have just announced that their game will have support for Steam VR thanks to the HTC Vive headset.

Elite: Dangerous already has VR support thanks to the Oculus Rift, but this is a very good announcement for the Vive. HTC is set to unleash the Vive sometime in November in a very limited run, with more headsets being made available early next year. Creative Director of Frontier Developments, Jonny Watts, explains: "Back in December 2013 we were among the first to support virtual reality with a triple-A game, and for me, exploring, trading and fighting throughout Elite Dangerous' 1:1 scale Milky Way remains an unequaled virtual reality experience. We have been working closely with Valve to bring Elite Dangerous to HTC Vive, and we are delighted with the quality we have been able to achieve".

The big difference between the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive is that the Rift is more of a sitting experience, and while the Vive can be used in the same way, if you've got the room for it, it's going to offer a much better VR experience. You'll be able to achieve this if you have a 15x15-foot room, with the Vive sporting its 'Lighthouse' base station. This blasts sensors into the room picking up an entire VR space that you can play in.

Virtual Reality represents a whole new dimension for gaming, and Sony is extremely confident that the PlayStation VR will help usher in the new age. In a recent interview, Sony corporate exec Shuhei Yoshida went so far as to call the PlayStation VR an "ultimate weapon" for developers.

"Using [PlayStation] VR tech, it's so easy, it's almost unfair. It's like an ultimate weapon," Yoshida told at TGS 2015. "I think it's going to be a hugely powerful weapon for game developers to create new and exciting experiences for consumers."

Sony has said that it wants small bite-sized experiences for PS VR that appeal to a wide-spread audience. Developer's are encouraged to market their games as "simple, passive experiences" rather than huge AAA narratives. "Because VR is such a new media, you can create totally amazing experiences with very very limited resources if you have the right idea," Yoshida said, highlighting a popular soccer indie called Headmaster.

Sony has quietly added the PlayStation 4's first paid early access game to the platform, a move that could pave the way for cross-platform game testing and development.

Although Dungeon Defenders II is still in development, it will be available on the PlayStation 4 on September 29. Trendy Entertainment's arena sequel has been on Steam's early access since late 2014 and is now coming to Sony's PS4 in a "pre-alpha" build state.

Curiously enough Sony hasn't exactly billed the game as "early access". To be a part of the pre-alpha testing players will have to buy an in-game microtransaction bundle to get in, which start at $14.99. "Please note that Dungeon Defenders II is still under development," Trendy Entertainment's Philip Asher said in the update. "During this time some features, like local co-op and controller support, will be ahead of the PC version, but other features and content will be rolling in after they are released on PC."

As Sony's direct competitor in the console war, Microsoft has kept up with the old mantra of "know thy enemy" quite well. As a result, Xbox division head Phil Spencer has made some predictions on Sony's next move, and "fully expects" that Sony will expand the PS4's recent price cut overseas to the west.

"When I think about the playbook they've used in the past, I fully expect [Sony] will drop [the PS4's] price," Phil Spencer told IGN in a follow-up interview. "If history tells, then we'll see a price drop from them coming."

DICE has confirmed that Star Wars: Battlefront will indeed have dedicated servers to power the game's new skill-based matchmaking system, putting the fears of a peer-to-peer system to rest.

"We'll still have dedicated servers [in Battlefront], absolutely," DICE's Jamie Keen told PlayStation Lifestyle at TGS 2015. "It's one of the hallmarks of making sure we deliver an unparalled online service for the game." Given Battlefront has the 40-player Walker Assault mode, most gamers assumed DICE would go with dedicated servers. Then again the Frostbite engine has P2P support "baked in" and has been used for Battlefront 3's co-op missions.

We still don't have any concrete details on how Battlefront's new matchmaking system works, but DICE has made the extremely unpopular decision to cut out server browsers entirely on PC. This led to considerable backlash from the PC gaming community that sees server browsers as a must-have for games like Battlefront, giving users the freedom to pick and choose the type of maps and sessions they want to play.

Intel isn't far away from releasing its Skylake Purley-powered Xeon processors, with the new platform set to feature a huge 28 Skylake cores, and thanks to Hyper-Threading, a total of 56 threads of CPU power.

These new Xeon processors are not destined for the consumer desktop, as they will include multi-processor setups. The new Xeon E5 and Xeon E7 processor ranges will see the Xeon E5 range packing between two and four CPUs on a motherboard, while the Xeon E7 steps it up, considerably. The upcoming Xeon E7 range will pack an 8-socket design, allowing for an insane amount of CPU horsepower, especially when each CPU has 56 threads.

Intel will be unleashing its new Omnipath Architecture inside of the new Skylake-powered Xeon processors, something it calls Storm Lake (Generation 1). This new PCH will be codenamed Lewisburg, where it will include updated Ethernet controllers. The Skylake Purley update will also pave the way for Socket P, with a TDP that's configurable between 45W and 165W. The PCIe slots will have 48 lanes of bandwidth to play with, but this could change at any time.

Bungie and Activision are sending a clear message with Destiny's new The Taken King expansion: if you don't want to buy it, then there's no reason to play. Rather than moving away from the controversial paid DLC models, Destiny has embraced them in a whole new way for Year 2, which offers a decidedly shocking look at the future of the franchise.

Destiny's The Taken King isn't just an expansion: it's a whole new game. Bungie has finally made Destiny into the game we always wanted. But even with all of these new additions and changes, Activison and Bungie are still up to the same old marketing tricks.

Just as I was starting to have faith in Bungie again, I'm reminded how exactly Destiny works. The game is built upon a ridiculous paygate scheme that literally forces gamers to purchase new expansions if they want to continue onward. With every passing DLC, little bits and chips of the core game are locked off: Xur selling expansion-only gear, daily heroic missions and weekly Nightfall strikes featuring DLC-only missions.

The rumours of a release of the original, non-special edition release of the 'Star Wars Trilogy' have been swirling ever since the purchase of Lucasfilm and all its properties by the Disney corporation back in 2012, even thought the new owners failed to release the product before 'The Force Awakens' launch in December. But according to Director John Landis, Disney will do what fans have been demanding for years.

Filmmaker John Landis, director of dozens of films and music videos such as 'Animal House', 'The Blues Brothers', 'An American Werewolf in London' and Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' has been a friend and colleague of 'Star Wars' creator George Lucas for decades and his words hold far more weight than an anonymous sources.

While this is far from official confirmation from Disney, I'm very hopeful that fans will recieve a surprise ahead of the 40th anniversary of the saga in 2017.