Analyst: 21 million driverless cars on the road by 2035

Anthony Garreffa | Electric Vehicles & Cars | Jun 10, 2016 4:36 AM CDT

Autonomous cars are really becoming a thing, but they're not mainstream, yet. According to analyst organization IHS Automotive, there will be more driverless cars on the market than they had estimated. IHS Automotive increase its expectation of driverless and self-driving cars across the world, from 11.8 million on its last estimate in January 2014, to a huge 21 million by 2035 - an increase of nearly 100%.

IHS says that because of the increased R&D into autonomous technology, it has doubled its previous estimates, now stating that around 21 million driverless cars will be sold worldwide by 2035. The analyst firm says that the US will lead the world with autonomous car deployment, with thousands of cars on the roads by 2020. IHS expects the number to expand to 4.5 million self-driving cars in the US by 2035.

Most would think Japan would lead with autonomous cars, and don't worry - they're not far behind. IHS expects that Japan will "ramp up industry coordination and investment ahead of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020". China is actually expected to be the volume leader for autonomous technology, with IHS estimating that over 5.7 million cars in China will have some form of autonomous technology built into their cars by 2035.

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PlayStation VR exclusive 'How We Soar' teased, looks like Eagle Flight

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Jun 10, 2016 2:55 AM CDT

Just a few days ahead of E3 2016, former Free Radical Design and Crytek developers have announced a PlayStation VR exclusive flying game; How We Soar. The new studio is called Penny Black Studios, and with former Free Radical Design and Crytek developers, we should expect something quite beautiful in How We Soar.

Based on the trailer above, it looks like a truly different genre of game - with similar flight mechanics to Eagle Flight from Ubisoft, which is on the Oculus Rift. The developers tease: "The world that you explore has been created in the mind and memories of 'The Author.' You will travel back and forth between the realms of reality and fantasy with the goal of uncovering the memories hidden within and piecing together the tale of The Author's life".

How We Soar will drop onto the PlayStation VR later this year, just after the PSVR itself launches.

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QNAP's new NAS is 4K-capable, with 40Gbps of bandwidth for editors

Anthony Garreffa | Storage | Jun 10, 2016 1:15 AM CDT

Computex 2016 - QNAP always impress when it comes to NAS systems, with their product line being on show at Computex 2016 once again. The company was showing off their new NAS systems powered by Intel's new 6th generation Core i3/i5/i7 processors, as well as the next-gen TVS-x82T Thunderbolt 2-powered NAS.

The new TVS-x82T line of NAS systems include SATA M.2 SSD and 2.5-inch SSD cache abilities, something that will super-charge your video editing speeds with up to 20Gbps of bandwidth available - enough to handle multiple 4K video transfers, and displays. Nerd alert! The new TVS-x82T lineup comes in 4-, 6-, and even 8-bay solutions depending on your needs.

Then we have the new quad-core TS-831X which offers a "powerful yet affordable NAS solution with two built-in 10GbE SFP+ ports to accelerate applications that require a fast, high-bandwidth and reliable NAS, including intensive data transmission, video storage, streaming and editing". QNAP adds that studios can use the 10GbE storage solution "at a budget price, create a centralized file center for storage, backup and sharing with the rich native apps, and rely on the NAS scalability to accommodate increasing amounts of media files".

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'Fruit Ninja' is coming to HTC Vive this month and I'm way too excited

Some people cry over things like Final Fantasy VII Remake*. Others shed tears of unbridled joy when they discover the existence of Shenmue III. But I'm one of those weirdos who just sat here and shrieked at the realization that I'll be playing Fruit Ninja -- the original one, from Australian developers Halfbrick -- on my HTC Vive by month's end.

"After the latest VR technology was released, we felt that there was no better game suited to VR than Fruit Ninja," Halfbrick's Adam Wood, product manager for Fruit Ninja VR, told IGN earlier today. "The simplicity of Fruit Ninja with the total immersion of VR creates an experience like no other."

Simplicity and VR get along very, very well. That's because with something like the Vive's hyper-accurate motion tracking, your hands and arms quickly transform into whatever weapon or other implement is in the game world. Nailing targets with a bow & arrow? Perfect. Swinging a sword? Super satisfying. It's also more challenging than you might expect, thanks to the 1:1 tracking.

Continue reading: 'Fruit Ninja' is coming to HTC Vive this month and I'm way too excited (full post)

Two generations of 'Ghostbusters' meet on Jimmy Kimmel

Ben Gourlay | Celebrities & Entertainment | Jun 10, 2016 12:04 AM CDT

With the much-derided 'Ghostbusters' reboot releasing in just a few weeks, Sony Pictures sorely needs some good buzz to cut through, but this merging of the old and new crew is just the kind of association that fans need to make.

In a slightly awkward, but nonetheless good-natured dance off to the chart topping Ray Parker Jr. theme song on the Jimmy Kimmell show, which features original stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, rnie Hudson and Annie Potts, in addition to the new crew. To the dismay of fans, 'Ghostbusters' 2016 is a complete reboot and features no continuity to the two classic films, despite many of the stars make cameo appearances.

'Ghostbusters' hits screens worldwide next month.

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QNAP goes on the offensive at Computex 2016, pushing QIoT Containers

Anthony Garreffa | Storage | Jun 9, 2016 11:37 PM CDT

Computex 2016 - QNAP were not only pushing their usual NAS systems at Computex this year, but their new QIoT Containers - but what in the world are QIoT Containers? They're QNAP's new private IoT cloud platform, which is an "extension to QNAP's robust Container Station that supports LXC and DockerĀ® containerized apps suited for microservices-based architectural patterns as applied to IoT systems".

With QNAP launching its QIoT Containers, the company is also "launching multiple containers (including Ponte, Node-RED, Kafka, Dashing, Freeboard, Redis, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, and MariaDB) that can be used to define private IoT stacks on QNAP NAS. QIoT Containers reduces the expenses of relying on public IoT cloud platforms and provides the easiest, most convenient, and highly-configurable IoT stack for developers to accelerate development with low time to market".

QNAP boss Teddy Kuo explains: "QIoT Containers keeps sensitive data under your control and complements public IoT cloud platforms. We envision that QIoT Containers will help organizations boost microservices and modernize legacy applications to drive more business opportunities".

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Thecus show off the latest in NAS storage at Computex 2016

Anthony Garreffa | Storage | Jun 9, 2016 10:08 PM CDT

Computex 2016 - Thecus were on top of their game at Computex this year, showing off the latest advances in their network attached storage (NAS) products. Thecus had their entire line of NAS products on show at the Foxconn IPC group booth, too.

The company had their upgraded window NAS series, as well as teasing their next-gen enterprise, 16-bay NAS that is powered by a Skylake-based Intel processor and DDR4 RAM. The company also took the time to make a big deal of their upcoming N4810, a new 4-bay multimedia NAS that is capable of 4K playback. The Thecus N4810 is powered by a quad-core Intel Celeron N3160 processor that clocks at up to 2.24GHz under burst, with 4GB of RAM and dual Ethernet ports.

For more information on Thecus' NAS products, check out their website, here.

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 roundup at Computex 2016, nerd overload

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Jun 9, 2016 8:46 PM CDT

Computex 2016 - Ugh, there were so many GeForce GTX 1080 cards at Computex 2016, that I literally had a nerd overload. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 Founder's Edition is a beautiful card on its own, but the custom design cards are... well... just so freakin' beautiful. We have a small roundup video below that you can check out.

We caught a glimpse of what MSI were showing off, some of the cards from GIGABYTE, as well as the monster GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme Edition from ZOTAC. One of the new members on the block is Colorful, which most of you have probably never heard of. Colorful is a gigantic Chinese video card maker that should be sampling us in the very near future as the first media in the world outside of China to receive a Colorful video card. I even introduced Luke from Linus Tech Tips to Colorful, as I love his work on video (and he's a super-cool guy as well), so expect some major exposure from Colorful in the future.

MSI's cards impressed me, as I have their GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G in the house right now and have been benchmarking it for days. I also have the G1 GAMING edition of GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 1080 which will be benchmarked next week. So expect a flood of GTX 1080 reviews before AMD flings their Polaris-based offerings led by the Radeon RX 480 into the wild later this month.

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Harmonix turns 'Music VR' into a dance party on PlayStation VR

Harmonix Music VR -- a virtual reality app launching alongside PlayStation VR that teleports you inside a world that reacts to your tunes -- already looked pretty awesome. Now Harmonix has revealed that they're turning Music VR into a dance party.

"The Dance is a brand new world for Harmonix Music VR that lets you to choreograph moves for whacky characters," says Harmonix' Nick Mudry. "Once you've got the party going on the dance floor, you can go to town with a variety of toys at the DJ booth, and even wreak havoc in Giant Mode."

I have no doubt this will be amusing both as player and as spectator. The Dance level will tap into what makes PlayStation VR unique right now among its competitors: an emphasis on social and multiplayer experiences that utilize both the PSVR headset and your television. Next party game confirmed!

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HTC Vive Business Edition costs $1200, comes with commercial support

By now everyone is beginning to understand that virtual reality is about much more than video games. From medicine to automotive to architecture, a roomscale VR system like the HTC Vive has near-limitless possibilities in the commercial and business space. HTC is poised to capitalize on that with a brand new version of the HTC Vive: A Business Edition that costs $1200, comes with a dedicated customer support line, commercial licensing, and a unique warranty.

"Virtual reality has already proven its appeal among consumers and is now revealing its potential for enterprise," said Olivier Ribet, Vice President High-Tech Industry, Dassault Systmes. "Vive helps us provide our customers from all industries with premium virtual reality experiences that offer unlimited perspectives to inspire product ideation and creation."

Dassault Systemes (owners of 3DS.com -- Nintendo must hate that!) is a company providing other business with virtual universes to test the experiences they're building at any point in the product lifecycle, so it's no surprise they're championing the Vive Business Edition.

Continue reading: HTC Vive Business Edition costs $1200, comes with commercial support (full post)