Latest News - Page 2676

Crytek has just announced the released of CryEngine 3.8.1, something that includes support for OpenGL rendering, Linux support, and it's now compatible with the Oculus Rift.

When it comes to the Oculus Rift support in CryEngine 3.8.1, Crytek said: "You asked about it, and we listened: Just in time for the announcement of Crytek'S new VR title "Robinson: The Journey" at this week's E3, we are putting support for the Oculus Rift HMD (Head-mounted display) into EaaS users' hands. We've included a small demonstration level, aptly titled the "VR_Demo" level. This showcases some information on how you can approach setting up your levels for VR, some of the implications and the immersive benefits of using VR".

The latest version of CryEngine also includes a voxel-based volumetric fog system, 8-weight GPU vertex skinning, POM self-shadowing, GameZero, support for 3ds Max 2016, Maya 2016, and MotionBuilder 2016, and "much, much more".

Update: AMD's PR agency, Edelman, reached out to us just now with the following statement: "AMD Spokesperson Sarah Youngbauer: AMD provided official confirmation that we have not hired an outside agency to explore spinning-off/splitting the company (Reuters has since updated their story as such). We remain committed to the long-term strategy we laid out for the company in May at our Financial Analyst Day, which encompasses all parts of the business".

Reuters has quite the report for the weekend, where according to "three people familiar with the matter" AMD will be splitting up its businesses into two. This move would see the chipmaker reverse its position in the market, and better combat against the quite unstoppable Intel.

The sources said that the "deliberations are preliminary and no decision has been made" but the review highlights AMD CEO Lisa Su and her "determination to consider every possible option to turn the company around". AMD has reportedly called in a consulting firm to help look at its options, bringing up scenarios on how this would all work.

Gamers unsure if they are ready for virtual reality or augmented reality had a great chance to learn more about the booming technology during E3 2015. Both the Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus received a lot of attention, while Microsoft also was on-hand to show off HoloLens.

During E3, gamers were able to test out the Oculus Touch controllers, along with the Oculus Rift system. They could try several games on the Sony PlayStation 4 using the Project Morpheus VR headset, offering an actual gaming experience.

Microsoft announced HoloLens in January, and used E3 to help users familiarize themselves with the AR platform. The company showed "Project X-Ray," which let virtual bug-like monsters emerge from the world - or look at a Minecraft world displayed right in front of them.

Companies want to 3D print human skin within the next five years, using a mix of live cells and specialized 3D machines. The bioprinting market could evolve into a $1 billion market by 2025, and offer a scalable method for personalized medicine.

Cosmetics company L'Oreal is working with the Organovo biotech company to begin 3D printing skin tissues. If done successfully, both companies hope for realistic product testing in the future. It's possible to grow real skin in a laboratory, but it's a slow and costly procedure - using bioprinting with 3D printers would greatly accelerate the process.

"Some safety questions are still difficult to mimic with today's methods and new, additional non-animal alternative methods are needed," said Elena Lurie-Luke, P&G Global Life Sciences innovation leader, in a statement published by CNN Money. "3D bioprinting is a promising option for the future."

Huawei has been forced to delay the launch its debut smartwatch, caused by an unknown problem in China. The smartwatch, powered by Google Android Wear, will be released in the United States and Europe sometime during Q3 - and suspected issues stem from Google services used in China.

"We're experiencing some problems with Google's Android Wear [the watch's operating system] in China," Yang said, in a statement published by the Wall Street Journal. "It's a new product."

It looks like Huawei will leave the hardware specifications alone for the watch: 1.4-inch AMOLED (400x400) display, 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor, 512MB RAM, and 4GB of storage capacity. The watch is just 11.3mm thick and is powered by a 300 mAh battery.

It looks like Apple is planning some big upgrades to the Apple Watch 2, with 9to5Mac reporting that the next iteration of Apple's wearable to feature some big improvements.

Apple Watch 2 should feature a FaceTime camera, which will allow you to make video calls directly from Watch 2. One thing that keeps the Watch from really excelling is its constant reliance on the iPhone, something that Watch 2 will hopefully solve. Apple is working on something it's supposedly calling internally "tether-less" that would see Watch 2 having more functionality when not connected to your iPhone.

Battery life is also reportedly set to be improved on Watch 2, where Apple should be able to make the wearable faster, better, and either have similar, if not improved battery life when compared to the current Apple Watch. The last rumor is that there will be a few different models between $1000 and $10,000 - with Apple set to possibly introduce Watch 2 variants based on titanium, tungsten, palladium, or platinum. Prepare your credit cards, people.

Our friends over at Legit Reviews were at the AMD event where the Radeon R9 Fury X was officially unveiled, taking in the beauty that is a triple 4K setup with a resolution of 11,520x2160.

The 11,520x2160 was powered by a single AMD Radeon R9 Fury X running Dirt Rally, with Legit Reviews adding that it "was pushing 60FPS" with AMD telling the site that two Radeon R9 290X cards, or a single R9 295X2 gets around 45-50FPS with the same resolution.

If you haven't heard about Fury X, it's powered by AMD's new Fiji architecture and uses High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). There's a 4096-bit memory bus with 4GB of HBM1 on it, with 512GB/sec of available bandwidth. We will have our Fury X sample arriving next week, so prepare for some very interesting tests to take place.

Forget news that North Korea has landed a man on the sun, the reclusive country claims it has done something to benefit mankind. North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong-Un, says his country has successfully cured AIDS, Ebola, SARS and MERS using a single "miracle drug."

The Korean Central News Agency of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea made the announcement at the same time South Korea is facing a growing number of MERS cases. However, using the Kumdang-2 drug, which North Korea says is injectable, could also be used to help treat "a number of cancers."

"The researchers insert rare Earth elements (REE) into insam (ginseng) by applying the micro-elementary fertilizers of REE to the fields of insam," said Dr. Jon Sung Hun, in a statement to the KCNR. "The injection is made of extracts from those complex compounds. As a strong immune-activator, the injection has been recognized to prevent different malignant epidemics."

Microsoft had a lot to talk about during E3, but the Kinect peripheral was noticeably absent from discussions. Don't worry, however, as the company is "absolutely continuing to support Kinect," according to Xbox executive Aaron Greenberg, in a statement made to GameSpot.

The company will support Kinect "where it makes sense," as there are a number of Xbox Kinect users - when the Xbox One launched in 2013, all bundles included a Kinect. Even though gamers can purchase the Xbox One without a Kinect, Microsoft simply cannot abandon its Kinect users.

"We really want Kinect to be a choice for customers. For me, I love it; I turn my Xbox One with Kinect; I use it for entertainment; I use it to do screenshots and all that. I like to be able to have my hands on the controller and use voice commands. But, frankly, a lot of people also want a better value and don't want to have to pay for it. So we're not going to force people to do that. We give people the choice."

It looks like the folks at Utah Valley University have a good sense of humor, after installing walking, running and texting lanese in its Student Life & Wellness Center. The stairway was the brain child of the Marketing & Communications Department, tasked with "enhancing the center's design through the use of art and graphics."

Not surprisingly, the new stairway has received a significant amount of national and international attention - especially with most of us having a story related to watching a person, fully engrossed with using a smartphone, do something potentially reckless or dangerous.

"When you have 18- to 24-year-olds walking on campus glued to their smartphones, you're almost bound to run into someone somewhere; it's the nature of the world we live in," said Matt Bambrough, creative director at UVU. "But that isn't the reason we did it - we used that fact to engage our students, to catch their attention and to let them know we are aware of who they are and where they're coming from. The design was meant for people to laugh at rather than a real attempt to direct traffic flow."

Microsoft earned praise from gamers after it announced the Xbox One would be backward compatible, so owners are able to play their Xbox 360 games on the next-generation console. Xbox One Preview Program members can currently test 21 Xbox 360 titles on the Xbox One, and can expect "hundreds" of titles to be supported by the end of the year.

The company also created a poll to ask which game titles Xbox One owners wanted to see, and Red Dead Redemption topped the list (with more than 39,000 votes). Of the top 10 games voted on, four Call of Duty video games made the list.

The full list, based on gamer votes: Red Dead Redemption, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Halo: Reach, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Gears of War 3, Call of Duty, Black Ops, Fallout 3, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Mass Effect 3.

AMD released its Radeon R9 390X, and the entire Radeon 300 series this week, with our reviews on the SAPPHIRE Tri-X R9 390X 8GB and MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G already up and running.

But what we really wanted to see was the super enthusiast side of things, so we've tested out two of our 390X cards in CrossFire at 4K to see what the scaling is like on them. Well, we were more than blown away with the performance, with 4K 60FPS and above in every single one of our tests. But it was the power consumption that blew us away the most, with up to 805W of power being consumed by our setup.

Yes, 805W. Comparing this to the single Maxwell-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti in our test system, with the entire rig using 360W, this is a big difference. We found during our normal testing (Battlefield 4 at 1440p with the Ultra preset minus AA) the AMD Radeon R9 390X cards in CrossFire were consuming 760W, but during some of our testing (Shadow of Mordor) the cards were pushing up to 805W.

With 195% of its funding goal reached in just one month, this audio product boasts impressive features such as 2.1 or 5.1 surround-sound audio, satellite speakers being able to operate singularly or as a group and a universal charging dock for all components. Even better, there is the ability to direct sound to whatever speaker you are near from a single device.

Complete with Dolby surround sound, $149 plus shipping will nab you the cheapest early bird package and this expands up to $899 plus shipping for the full 5.1 system ($500 off the eventual retail price).

As they are currently sitting at $97,279 raised, Kien has introduced stretch goals to get everyone a little more interested - the next one coming up is at $100,000 and will ensure three other colors are introduced as voted for buy the buyers. Further to this is the $200,000 stretch goal of extra inputs, followed by the $500,000 goal of a free power dock for every system.

$65 (56.90 Euros) will now grab you a new Sharkoon S28 ATX case, complete with (add $3) or without a side window, cable management, tool-free drive installation and two 120mm fans pre-installed.

This black chassis boasts a minimalistic experience, increased functionality and is packed with connection options including two front USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports and front audio jacks.

As for storage options, you can throw inside two 5.25" drives, three 3.5" hard drives and four 2.5" hard drives or solid state drives in the main body, with the optional extra mounting platform of a single 2.5" HDD/SSD in the bottom.

In a very surprise move, Chinese smartphone maker Oukitel has unveiled its latest smartphone prototype which packs an insane 10,000mAh internal battery. This is a battery that could truly last throughout an entire day of super-heavy use, without needing to recharge.

In the images we have above and below, you can see that the Oukitel handset features a black chassis, and quite a tough-looking exterior. Oukitel hasn't named the smartphone just yet, but it does pack Android 5.1 Lollipop, a 10,000mAh battery, which should cause most of the surrounding devices some issues, as the battery will be generating a decent amount of heat.

We don't know when the Oukitel smartphone is coming out, but it's great to see a company doing something different with a smartphone packing a 10,000mAh battery.

With the launch of the new Radeon 300 series from AMD, SAPPHIRE has just unveiled its new Nitro series of products. The new Nitro series from AMD is an "evolution of our market-leading, award-winning, high-end video card technology developed with features designed to be attractive to the majority of PC gamers" says SAPPHIRE. At the same time, the video card maker is also launching SAPPHIRE NATION, which is a new community website for gaming enthusiasts.

The new SAPPHIRE Nitro series is a new high-end range of products, where SAPPHIRE has used long-life capacitors and award-winning SAPPHIRE Black Diamond Chokes, on top of SAPPHIRE's usual top-class cooling solutions. The company has unveiled the Nitro series with a Radeon R9 390, R9 380, and R7 370.

SAPPHIRE's new Nitro series video cards are available right now.

E3 2015 - Square Enix unveiled the latest Hitman game at E3 2015, with the game simply titled 'Hitman'. We should expect it to be released on December 8.

Square Enix started off the new Hitman with a trailer teasing a global banking conspiracy, with Agent 47 right in the middle of it, of course. Better yet, the developer has said that all DLC will be free, with no season pass on offer. Io's Hannes Seifert told VideoGamer: "Everything we ship on December 8 will be completely finished, it will be a very polished experience. It's also going to be a very big game. There are other products that sell a game for $60 and then try to sell you a Season Pass for another $40 on top, so you spend $100 or $120 for all the stuff that happens later on. We said no, we don't want to do that".

He added: "We think it's wrong to approach players like that because players want to be part of that experience but they don't necessarily want to be ripped off. What we're going to sell is all of that but it's for a one-price package".

Sony hopes its Project Morpheus virtual reality headset will help usher gamers into the VR world, by providing a fast, responsive gaming environment. Richard Marks, director of the Sony PlayStation Magic Labs research division, recently discussed some of the breakthroughs that Project Morpheus offers to gamers interested in VR.

VR is able to create unique gameplay experiences in so many ways, but after testing Project Morpheus, GamesBeat noted that loading a new magazine into a machine gun is a "kind of fun" experience:

"One thing that's surprising to a lot of people is how much fun it is to do things with two hands separately," Marks recently told GamesBeat. "Picking something up and doing something with the other hand to it - humans are really good with that. If you have to paint with just one hand and then move your body around it, it's really hard, but if you can hold the object in the other hand and paint, it's much more effective. You can move the paintbrush or move the object quickly."

When it comes to the current state of virtual reality, the leading handful of companies know and understand what is being developed. All participating companies would like to see VR mature and spread, but can make for awkward situations if each company isn't doing the best that they can.

"We know each other very well," Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's worldwide studios for SCE, in a statement published by Polygon. "Brendan [Iribe, the CEO of Oculus] used to work at Gaikai. Palmer [Luckey, the founder of Oculus], before he started the Kickstarter, we knew him. So we share the same understanding that when a company like ours makes efforts, commercial efforts, as a well-funded company with commercial backing, and they are now as well with Facebook backing."

Previously, Oculus showed concern that a big company would release a mid-quality system - and seemingly was speaking about Sony. Those fears have been publicly alleviated, but there is still so much work left to be done among VR hardware manufacturers.

Fallout 4 was one of the best games unveiled at E3 2015, but during an interview with GameSpot, Bethesda boss Pete Hines had some sad words to say about the graphics in Fallout 4.

Hines said that the complex crafting system and extensive interactive environments required some graphical compromises, where he added: "Everything that we do is a balance. We could make the best looking game possible, but we dial some of that back in order to allow for all of these other things". Hines also added: "If you want to pick flowers and make potions all day, then that's what you're role-playing. If you want to go shoot everybody in the head with a laser-musket, then that's what you're role-playing".

Personally, I think Bethesda is having to compromise in the graphics department in Fallout 4 because of the lackluster hardware found in the Xbox One and PS4. If it were a PC only game, there would be absolutely no need to water down the graphics, or compromise any part of the game, period.