Hasta La Gadget!

It had been a while since I wore an Oculus Rift, and it was time to peek at the latest version of the hardware SDK, called Crystal Cove. I had missed out on the previous evolution, but it looks like this latest revision is much more interesting anyway. Oculus VR has worked hard to fix every pain points that it could, such as latency, response time and other critical aspects of its virtual reality (VR) headset. I’ve been following VR since it was using non-textured 3D graphics, so how far have we come? Read on. (more…)

Hands-On: Oculus Rift Review (Crystal Cove, DK2) original content from Ubergizmo.

I’ve seen the announcement from Imagination technologies earlier in the week, but I wanted to take a look at their Ray-Tracing demos and presentations to get a better idea. I finally got an opportunity to do so, and I really liked what I saw. The latest PowerVR GPU architecture has a new Ray Tracing Unit (or RTU) that can trace the path of light rays from one surface to another in order to accelerate a number of graphics techniques going from shadowing, reflections to visibility algorithm – and more. (more…)

PowerVR GPUs Get Hardware Ray-Tracing, Leap Everyone Else original content from Ubergizmo.

At GDC 2014 we’re getting our very first up-close look and feel of The Chooseatron, a built-it-yourself mini-arcade kit. This is no ordinary video game, mind you, it’s a multiple-choice … Continue reading

The Sony PlayStation 4 brought with it a significantly revamped DualShock 4 controller. There’s a light bar on the controller itself, and while it does provide a really cool effect, it does feed on the controller’s battery. Some gamers would prefer to cut down on the novelty as much as they can if it helps extend the DualShock 4′s battery life even if in the slightest. If you’re one of those gamers, fret not, Sony has a fix in mind. Head of PlayStation Worldwide Studios at Sony, Shuhei Yoshida, has confirmed at the Game Developers Conference 2014 today that a software fix will bring the option to dim the PS4 DualShock 4 light bar.

(more…)

PS4 DualShock 4 Light Bar Dim Option Coming In Next Update original content from Ubergizmo.

Microsoft has just finished presenting its preview of DirectX 12 (Direct3D 12 in particular), their newest graphics API (Application Programming Interface) which lets game developers control graphics processing units (GPUs) in games and other graphics applications. Although DirectX has been an excellent graphics API since DirectX 8, Microsoft’s DirectX 12 is going to address long-standing issues that were carried out until DirectX 11. As a result, developers will get the level of control that they are asking for and DirectX 12 is going to make much better use of both the main processor (CPU) and GPUs available in the system. From a developer’s point of view, this brings “console-like” control and efficiency, but wrapped in a standard API. (more…)

DirectX 12: A Rather Awesome Software-Only Evolution original content from Ubergizmo.