Game Tech News

For the past six years, Microsoft has maintained a 60-person HoloLens development team in Israel. Now it’s shuttering the unit and shifting HoloLens development to the US. It’s not clear what this means for HoloLens, or whether Microsoft is moving on to related technologies it plans to bundle with the base AR headset — or if the company has something altogether different in mind for its still-developing AR platform. Reports are vague on this point, only specifying that the US team was working on a different technology compared with the Israeli version.

Avoiding Kinect’s fate

It’s hard to look at HoloLens and not see shadows of Kinect. Project Natal, as it was then known, got its own exclusive billing and extensive profiling from Redmond. The company didn’t just focus on gaming — it released videos and articles detailing how Kinect’s low-latency camera and motion-capture capabilities could be used in scientific research and analysis as well. To be fair, a number of research projects have used Kinect for various purposes, for exactly these reasons. Kinect 2 doesn’t seem to have made the same splash as Kinect did, but it wouldn’t surprise us to see research articles that focus on the abilities of the newer peripheral a few years down the line.



Demos like this look cool — but most people don’t have empty, stage-sized living rooms.

Unfortunately, for all Kinect’s potential in research and scientific analysis, it fell short as a gaming peripheral. Kinect 2 didn’t address these flaws effectively, no developers built software that targeted the camera’s capabilities, and the entire project was dropped from the Xbox One’s core requirements.

Microsoft has shown some impressive HoloLens abilities from the stage, but how well in-house gaming works in the real world depends a great deal on your living room configuration. The small viewing window on existing HoloLens devices makes it difficult to use the device the way many AR advocates would want. It’s also not clear if consumers want a project like this in the first place. Professional developers and modelers could definitely be a market, but Microsoft has to decide, at some point, who it wants to sell HoloLens too, and how it will target that market.



The modeling and visualization capabilities of HoloLens are impressive — but are they useful for gaming?


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Many gamers with access to both consoles and a gaming PC like to wait for certain games to come to the PC before they take the plunge. It can take a while, as it did in the case of GTA V, but the mods can make the wait worth it. There’s a new mod for GTA V that validates that choice called The Pinnacle of GTA V World Enhancement Project. It’s a complete reskin of the game. The mission content is unchanged, but the look and feel are completely different.

This single mod encompases changes to virtually every visual aspect of the game, as well as some of the gameplay. There’s a full feature list on the mod’s website, but some of the highlights include a revamp of the weather system and a big improvement in the quality of reflections and shadows. The mod also adds entirely new textures to the game, replacing the ones Rockstar created. These are all in 4K and cover things like vehicles, weapons, and even the pavement. Weapon behavior and physics have gotten an overhaul too with more believable and detailed damage to the world around you.

On the gameplay side, all the vehicles have been retuned to behave more realistically. In the stock game, even an old junker can reach pretty impressive speeds and make tight turns that are outside the realm of possibility. In some ways that makes sense for a video game, but Pinnacle is going for immersive reality. Thus, the vehicles have more believable top speeds, weight, handling, and crash physics.

The distribution and behavior of NPCs is altered in Pinnacle as well. The number of people you see on the streets will vary based on the time of day, and even the day of the week. Police will show up on patrol in more realistic ways, and the way they interact with gangs and civilians is more authentic. You might happen upon a shootout that you didn’t even start!



The Pinnacle mod is free to download, but you should set aside some time to work through the installation. It’s only about 1GB of data, but you’ll need to add mod frameworks to the GTA V directory and copy over new files. A program called OpenIV is also needed to painstakingly edit game files. There’s a 10 minute video detailing the installation process, but it might take you a lot longer if you run into problems. It’s recommended you make a backup of the entire GTA V folder in case you break things, so you’ll need 60GB or so of spare*hard drive space.
So why doesn’t Rockstar just make the game look like this? Pinnacle and similar mods for other games are geared towards tinkerers with powerful systems. A commercial game needs to run on most gaming PCs and it can’t randomly break like mods often can.



There aren’t any firm minimum system requirements listed for the Pinnacle mod, but suffice it to say you need to have a powerful gaming PC. According to the modders, your system should be able to run the stock game reliably higher than 30 FPS with all the effects turned on to work with Pinnacle. If frame rates start chugging when it rains, you’ll have a bad time. If you have the power to run it, though, Pinnacle will probably be a very, very good time.


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It’s been five long years since we last saw Rico Rodriguez get up to some explosive shenanigans in Just Cause 2. Finally, Rico has returned, and the fast-paced action we’ve come to expect from the series has never been better. Just Cause 3 delivers exactly what fans were looking for in terms of gameplay, but performance here is more than a little sketchy.

Over on our sister site IGN, the PC version received a rating of 8/10. And based on 33 reviews, the PC version is sporting a score of 76/100 on Metacritic. In a year jam-packed with heavy hitters like The Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid V, this probably won’t be a game of the year contender, but it’s still very much worth playing if madcap action is what you’re craving.

Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry has already run performance tests on numerous PC configurations, and the results are pretty good. A Core i3 Haswell CPU with a GeForce GTX 950 graphics card can handle the game with settings all the way cranked up, but older hardware didn’t fare quite as well. If you’re running Just Cause 3 on a GeForce GTX 750 Ti, the game can’t maintain a 30fps lock.

Sadly, you’ll either need to turn down the graphical settings or live with a shoddy frame rate if you’re running on aging PC hardware. Performance issues on older gear is unfortunate, but it’s definitely not surprising.

On the console side, the situation is exactly what you’d expect. The PS4 version is running at 1920×1080, and the Xbox One is limited to 1600×900. In terms of effects and level of detail, the two versions are nearly identical, and are roughly comparable to the “High” setting on the PC version.

During heavy action, both the Xbox One and PS4 begin dropping frames. And when the engine bogs down, you can start to see some tearing at the top of the screen. It’s a shame that sub-30fps gameplay is considered par for the course, but that’s an issue much larger than this particular release. If you’re unwilling to deal with dropped frames, maybe console gaming just isn’t for you.


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High-end water coolers have become popular at the top of the graphics card market in recent years, but a recent lawsuit victory for Asetek could spell trouble for companies like AMD and Gigabyte. In late September, Asetek won a patent infringement lawsuit against CoolerMaster. The judgment hinged on CM’s use of a cooling pump mounted directly to a cold plate, which was found to violate Asetek’s patents.

CoolerMaster isn’t the only company potentially caught by this issue, but it provides cooling solutions to a number of companies, including Gigabyte and AMD. The company has been slugged with a hefty fine for violating Asetek’s patent, and must pay Asetek a 23.375% royalty rate on all infringing products sold since January 1, 2015. Now, GamerNexus reports that Asetek has sent cease-and-desist letters to both Gigabyte and AMD, demanding that the manufacturers cease selling the WaterForce brand of GTX 980 products and the Fury X, respectively.

Asetek apparently has no plans to reach an agreement with CoolerMaster. The company’s statement is reprinted below:
“There is no licensing agreement in place with Cooler Master, nor do we plan to offer any in the foreseeable future. Asetek sued Cooler Master and CMI USA, Inc. (Cooler Master’s US affiliate) for infringement of Asetek’s US Patent Nos. 8,240,362 and 8,245,764, and the jury found that the Cooler Master products at issue infringe Asetek’s patents and awarded damages to Asetek. The judge also entered an injunction prohibiting Cooler Master and CMI USA from importing or selling the accused products in the US, and the judge awarded enhanced damages because of continued sales after the jury’s verdict. The injunction states ‘[a]s used herein, Infringing Products shall mean the following Cooler Master products: Seidon 120M, Seidon 120XL, Seidon 240M, Seidon 120V, Seidon 120V Plus, Nepton 140XL, [Nepton 280L], Glacer 240L, and products not more than colorably different from them.”



AMD’s Fury X uses a CoolerMaster rather than an Asetek cooler.

Cease-and-desist letters can be intimidating, but we’d be stunned if Asetek actually won an injunction against either AMD or Gigabyte. Tactics like this are designed to bring companies to the negotiating table — Asetek is likely hoping to recoup a percentage of the sales of CoolerMaster products.

We reached out to AMD, which provided us with the following statement:
“We are aware that Asetek has sued Cooler Master. While we defer to Cooler Master regarding the details of the litigation, we understand that the jury in that case did not find that the Cooler Master heat sink currently used with the Radeon Fury X infringed any of Asetek’s patents.”

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Last week, AMD hosted its first RTG (Radeon Technology Group) tech conference in Sonoma, California since restructuring the company to give discrete graphics more independence. The company laid out its plans for graphics technology in 2016, including new FreeSync options and support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) monitors.

Current monitors and displays are only capable of reproducing a fraction of the luminance the human eye can perceive. The chart below shows the luminance values of common light sources, from sunlight at 1.6 billion nits down to ultra-black, at 0.01 nits. According to AMD, the average PC LCD only supports 0-250 nits, while a high-end LCD TV might stretch to 350-400 nits, at most.


That’s going to start changing in the next 12 months, thanks to new HDR support from high-end 4K televisions and cutting-edge OLED technology. HDR LCD’s can theoretically hit 1K today with 2K on the market by the end of next year, while OLEDs can push 500 nits today and up to 1K in 12 months.

Improving display quality isn’t just about increasing luminance; HDR support requires a new color standard as well. The diagram below shows a number of color space standards used in various applications and fields. The outer horseshoe is known as the chromaticity diagram — those are all the colors that a human with normal color vision can perceive. The innermost triangle with the purple dot at the top is the SRGB color space that both Blu-ray and Windows use by default. (Whether or not your LCD actually displays this space correctly is an entirely different topic).



If you work in professional editing or design and have a high-end monitor and 10-bit-capable display, you probably work in AdobeRGB (shown in green), while the Digital Cinema P3 standard is shown in yellow. The latest standard to arrive on the scene with UHD Blu-ray is known as Rec2020. Rec2020 covers 75.8% of the human chromaticity diagram, compared to the 35.9% that SRGB covers. The P3 standard is smaller, at just 53.6%, but still represents a substantial upgrade over SRGB.



SDR on the left, HDR on the right

Not every Rec2020 display is going to qualify as an HDR display, but there should be some overlap between the two capabilities on both consumer monitors and upcoming 4K HDTVs. Longtime PC gamers may remember HDR as a DX9 feature that debuted in Half Life 2’s Lost Cost demo, but there’s a critical difference between that implementation and the upcoming capability. Back then, internally rendered HDR was mapped back to SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) for output to a conventional display. The effect, while still striking, wasn’t identical to what an HDR display would offer.

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We’re only two years into this console generation, and there are already tens of millions of PS4 owners across the globe. This is one of the fastest-selling consoles ever made, and it’s quickly become the lead platform of this generation. There’s clearly a lot to love here, but there’s still room for improvement. If you or a loved one are among those 30+ million PS4 owners, consider grabbing one or more of these accessories for the holidays to make the gaming experience even better.


PlayStation TV

If you plan on buying a PSTV in hopes of playing a wide selection of Vita games, you’re bound to be disappointed. Not only is the Vita catalog limited to begin with, but the subset of PSTV-compatible games is hilariously small. However, the PSTV does have one redeeming feature: PS4 Remote Play.

Just like the Vita, you can stream games from your PS4 over the network, and play them just about anywhere you want. Unlike the Vita, however, the overall experience is actually pretty fantastic. Not only can you use a real controller, but it also streams at 720p60 instead of the 540p60 limit on the Vita. And since the PSTV has an ethernet port, latency and reliability become a non-issue when you stop using Wi-Fi.

PlayStation Gold headset

Plan on playing any online games during the Christmas break? You’re going to want to invest in a headset. Being able to talk to your teammates completely changes the multiplayer experience, and can easily turn the tide during competitive matches. Of course, you can use just about any wired or Bluetooth headset you want, but the PlayStation Gold headset is definitely worth the premium price.

Not only does this comfortable headset sport a built-in noise-cancelling mic, but it also offers up impressive virtual 7.1 surround sound. Download the headset companion app on your PS4, and you’ll be able to use presets to optimize the audio on a game-by-game basis.

PlayStation camera

The gaming industry has quickly backed away from camera games during this generation, but the PlayStation Camera is cheap enough that it’s worth picking up for the novelty alone. The free Playroom stuff offers a few hours of entertainment, and the combination of Just Dance and Commander Cherry make for some goofy fun at parties.
However, the camera really comes into its own when you start streaming your gameplay. Part of the fun of Twitch and YouTube streaming is being able to see your face when a monster pops out. It adds a layer of personality that simple gameplay streaming just doesn’t have on its own. If you’re going to stream from your PS4, this is absolutely worth 40 bucks.

Grip-iT analog stick covers

I like the feel of the DualShock 4, but the thumbsticks have been a bit of a problem. Even with relatively light usage, the rubber can start to peel away from the top. Thankfully, the fix is easy and affordable. Invest in some cheap covers, and you can go to town on those sticks without worrying about ruining them.


HGST Travelstar 2.5-inch 1TB 7200RPM hard drive

The 500GB 5400RPM drive included in most PS4s gets the job done, but it’s far from optimal. You can certainly drop hundreds of dollars while upgrading to an SSD, but the price-performance ratio isn’t great. Thankfully, there’s a cheaper way to get a bigger drive with better performance on the cheap. Pick up this affordable 1TB 7200RPM drive from HGST, grab a phillips screwdriver, and follow this guide. In just a few minutes, you’ll effectively double your storage.


Elgato Game Capture HD60

The built-in video options on the PS4 are convenient, but they’re limited in scope. You can only stream to a handful of sites, you’re limited to 720p video, and you can only record locally in 15 minute chunks. But with this HDMI capture gear from Elgato, you can take your gameplay footage to the next level. Stream to sites like Hitbox, record entire 1080p let’s plays locally, and add a some real panache to your videos. If you take your video production seriously, this is where you need to start.

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Fallout 4 has been widely lauded in the gaming press as a stunning achievement, but performance issues and stuttering have negatively affected the title on all three platforms. The situation was particularly bad on the Xbox One, but the PS4 still struggled to maintain smooth frame rates as well.

On the PC, the situation was even more erratic. The Nvidia GTX 980 Ti I’ve used to test the title was more than capable of maintaining 100 FPS, the maximum refresh rate you can use to play the game without running into problems related to physics and engine issues. But there were many areas of the game where performance cratered to 25-30 FPS.
Now, Bethesda has released the 1.2 patch for Fallout 4 on all three platforms. Eurogamer reports that the PS4’s frame rate is much improved over the previous version of the game — but Bethesda appears to have hit its frame rate targets by lowering visual quality.

You can see the change in the screenshot below. On the left is the Corvega Factory (a particularly problematic area) before Patch 1.2, on the right is the same factory after Patch 1.2.



Original on the left, current 1.2 on the right

The shadows on the left-hand image are being thrown by a staircase that stretches out of frame. On the right, those shadows are removed. I don’t have a “Before” image on the PC, but here’s what that same area looks like on Ultra detail using a GTX 980 Ti.




Again, it’s comparable with the PS4 version. There may be minor differences in quality and ambient occlusion, but the shadows are gone. There’s another way to see the change between the old and new version of the game. First, here’s a shot of the shadows trash can fires used to cast. Apologies for the blur, I had to screencap a YouTube video. Some have speculated this issue is confined to the Corvega factory, since Bethesda called it out specifically, but I don’t think it is.

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In spite of underpowered hardware and a pile of poor early decisions, the current executive team at Microsoft has done a commendable job turning the Xbox One into a respectable platform. With exclusives like Forza Motorsport 6, Halo 5: Guardians, and Rise of the Tomb Raider, this has been an inarguably strong year for Redmond. And since we’re regularly seeing new bundles dip below the $300 mark, there are bound to be millions of new users jumping on the Xbox One bandwagon this holiday season.

If you’ve snagged an Xbox One on the cheap, consider investing in some accessories to improve your experience. From game streaming to online multiplayer to game storage, there’s something here to enhance nearly every aspect of this console.


HGST Touro S 1TB 7200RPM USB 3.0 external hard drive

Once you’ve installed about a dozen or so games on your Xbox One, you’ll likely begin to run out of hard drive space. Unfortunately, cracking open your Xbox One to replace the hard drive will void your warranty. And considering how easy it is to swap out a hard drive on the PS4, this seems like a sizable misstep on Microsoft’s part.

However, there is a simple solution: external storage. Plug in this USB 3.0 drive to your Xbox One, and you’ll instantly add an extra terabyte of storage to your console. Since the standard internal drive in the Xbox One is so sluggish, you’ll likely see better performance when loading your games from an external drive anyway.


Xbox One play and charge kit

The battery life of the Xbox One controller is superior to the DualShock 4‘s, but repeatedly swapping out AAs as you play is a hassle. Thankfully, Microsoft has the play and charge kit to solve that problem. This lithium-ion battery pack slides into the back of your controller, and allows you to charge over the built-in micro USB port. It’s just a shame that Microsoft refuses to build a rechargeable battery into the controller in the first place.


Xbox One Kinect

After being red-hot on the Kinect concept for a few years, Microsoft went a little too far in the other direction. As a tactic to drop the price as fast as possible, it made a lot of sense to un-bundle the Kinect last year, but Redmond sacrificed one of the only unique selling points that the Xbox One had. However, the Kinect is still being sold as a standalone product, and there are still some compelling reasons to buy-in despite its quiet exile from the tribe.

Unlike the DualShock 4, the Xbox One’s controller doesn’t have a dedicated share button. If you want to take a screenshot or record a video clip, you need to fumble with the home button. It’s not a great solution, but Kinect users can bypass that isssue simply by saying “Take a screenshot” or “Record that.” Combine that with a handful of neat games like Fantasia: Music Evolved and Dance Central Spotlight, and the Kinect is still worth having around.


Xbox One stereo headset

If you’re playing online with friends, you’re going to want to grab a comfy headset. Even if you have a Kinect, you just can’t beat having a unidirectional mic pointed at your mouth. Keep in mind, other headsets will absolutely work with the Xbox One, but this is an excellent option if you don’t already have a set lying around. And if you’re not using the latest controller revision with a 3.5mm jack, you’d probably need to invest in an adaptor for third-party headsets anyway.


Elgato Game Capture HD60

The streaming and local game capture available on the Xbox One is something of a disappointment. The concept is great, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Thankfully, you can augment your recording and streaming experience by investing in this HDMI capture gear from Elgato.

If production value matters to you, this tiny box is worth your time. Not only can you capture and stream 1080p video at 60 frames per second, but the Game Capture software also allows you to add a webcam feed for a closer connection with your audience.


Grip-iT analog stick covers

If the texture and shape of the Xbox One’s thumbsticks bother you, you’re in luck. Drop a fiver on these analog stick covers, and you’ll never have to scrape your thumb on that abrasive ridge ever again.

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Oculus and CCP Games, the developers of Eve: Valkyrie, announced that all Rift preorders would ship with a free copy of the game. This is going to go over extremely well with virtually anyone who has played the game’s demo in VR, because Valkyrie is frickin’ amazing.

As I discussed last summer, playing Eve: Valkyrie is immersive in a way I’ve never experienced in any space combat or flight simulator. Positional head tracking lets the player actually look around the cockpit, following a bogie as it rockets out of your field of view.

PCWorld has an extensive write-up on how CCP’s implementation of VR has evolved over the past two years and the lessons the team has had to learn on everything from menu design to button placement. Every aspect of the player experience has to be thought out again when working in VR, often with surprising snares and pitfalls. Even as a player, you sometimes find out that things are jarring in places where you didn’t expect it.



As an example: I had an opportunity to demo an HTC Vive headset last week as part of AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group meeting in Sonoma. In the VR demo for Arizona Sunrise, I had to physically kneel and reach out with a disembodied hand to pick up my chosen weapons. In previous VR demos, I’ve never been bothered by not having hands — after all, most FPS games put weapons in your field of view, not body parts. Once I had on-screen, disembodied hands, I suddenly found not having arms visually disconcerting. Issues like this are going to crop up a lot as VR development continues, so it’s good to hear that CCP has been steadily iterating on building better environments for players.

The VR question

As great as Eve: Valkyrie looks, I’m not certain I’d go leaping out the door to order an Oculus Rift. Early VR content is going to arrive in a slow trickle, rather than a flood, and I expect most of what we’ll see will be smaller-scale demos, games, and a bare handful of larger titles. The demo versions of Arizona Sunshine, for example, doesn’t allow the player to explore the environment — you shoot an area of the screen to move from Point A to Point B, with waves of zombies attacking at each new point. Solving the basic question of movement within the game world is an issue that has plagued unusual controllers before (Exhibit A: Kinect).



The zombie shooting was fun, even if the game looked a bit like an old Source title.

The bottom line is that VR titles will tend to either offer limited movement and exploration compared with current open-world environments, or will limit their scope and size while studios and researchers figure everything out.
At an expected price point of roughly $400, and coming in on top of already-steep PC requirements, the Rift is going to require a substantial investment, and I’m not sure a bundled game is enough to really convince people on the fence about it — but if Eve: Valkyrie is a tenth as good as it looks, already-committed buyers are going to get a great game to show off.


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Welcome to Part II of our coverage of AMD’s Sonoma event earlier this month. Previously, we took you through the company’s plans for future HDR displays as well as how new technologies would be supported on current and future GPUs. Today, we’re diving into the software side of the equation, including a new open source software initiative meant to answer Nvidia’s GameWorks.

We first wrote about GameWorks nearly two years ago, and have written a number of follow-up pieces since. Nvidia’s GameWorks program allows participating developers to use Nvidia’s own middleware libraries for various in-game effects rather than relying on other third-parties or writing such code themselves. The advantage to GameWorks, in theory, is that Nvidia knows its driver code and hardware best, and (again, in theory) creates the best implementation of a given effect that you can achieve in the industry — provided you own an Nvidia graphics card. The flip side to this is that if you don’t own an Nvidia graphics card, you’re a bit screwed. There’s very little AMD can do to optimize performance for the specific libraries used within a GameWorks title, short of providing their own full-fledged library and hoping the developer is willing to integrate two separate libraries that do the same thing. (Spoiler: Most aren’t).

Nvidia’s response to AMD’s complaints have typically boiled down to “If they want access to custom libraries, they can build their own.” And now, AMD has.



One of the areas where companies sometimes try to fudge their facts is whether a product or project is actually open source. We’ve seen it with Mantle (which never went open source), with GameWorks (the fact that developers can pay for a code license under certain circumstances doesn’t make a project open), and in plenty of other scenarios outside the GPU market.



AMD is licensing GPU Open and its libraries under the MIT open source license, which means yes, this is open source. It’s not “open source if you squint,” or “open code,” or “code samples,” or any other set of buzzwords. This is one of the most fundamental differences between AMD’s new strategy with GPU Open and Nvidia’s strategy with GameWorks — AMD is explicitly inviting developers to contribute not just to code samples, but to the libraries themselves.
We expect to see GPU Open start rolling out in January with an initial set of libraries and capabilities. In addition to TressFX 3.0, AMD will launch new libraries centered on geometry, ambient occlusion, and shadows (we may have seen some of this work in Grand Theft Auto V). The program will also include multiple SDKs and tools, all of which will be collectively governed by the MIT license going forward.



According to AMD, GPU Open is a long-term initiative for the company, not a short-term effort to make a PR splash. AMD has championed a collaborative model of game and driver development for the last few years; with GPU Open, the company is putting its money where its mouth is. The fundamentally open nature of GPU Open will make it impossible for AMD to skew game performance towards its own hardware in the same way that Nvidia is accused of doing — anyone can contribute code optimizations to GPU Open, which means there’s nothing AMD could do to prevent Nvidia or a developer from writing its own optimizations into the code. The license explicitly allows for this type of modification.

One major question in future GPU Open versus GameWorks battle is whether or not AMD’s initiative will make much headway against Nvidia’s. To understand why this is the case, it’s important to understand that GameWorks is often part of an agreement between Nvidia and the game’s publisher. In such deals, it’s common for membership in a particular program (Gaming Evolved, TWIMTBP) to also include co-branded marketing funds and certain sales guarantees. Nvidia might guarantee to a publisher that if it adopts GameWorks, Nvidia will purchase a certain number of game copies to be distributed along with qualifying GeForce cards. AMD’s “Never Settled” program may also have used such considerations; companies don’t typically get into the nitty-gritty of these arrangements for obvious reasons.

GPU Open aims to provide a better experience for developers and a more open development environment — but will that sway publishers, who view GameWorks as a way to cut development time and reduce marketing costs? That’s not something we can answer yet.

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