Yesterday’s BUILD keynote saw a focus on video games, as noted development studio Square-Enix and NVIDIA took to the stage. Eager to reiterate the PC’s power advantage over consoles, the two companies had something rather special in store to demonstrate the capabilities of a high-end gaming rig.
The graphical wizards over at Square-Enix put together a short tech demo entitled Witch Chapter 0 [cry], designed to display just what can be done with the combination of DirectX12 and Windows 10. From advanced animation, to highly detailed visualizations of skin, hair and feathers, to top-tier texture work, it’s a potent example of cutting-edge, real-time graphics.
However, the power to run such visuals comes at quite a hefty price. The system running the demo was fitted with four NVIDIA GTX Titan video cards. That’s somewhere in the region of $4,000 worth of graphics hardware.
That sort of machine might be outside of the reach of most consumers, but the advances being made in this technology will trickle down over the next few years. For the moment, access to such hardware will allow developers to create the best experiences possible.
Square Enix’s Hajima Tabata noted that the team that worked on the demo “has always pursued cutting-edge pre-rendered and real-time CG.” He went on to state that “the efforts from this project will power future game development as well as Final Fantasy XV.”
That being said, we shouldn’t necessarily expect to see any of the visuals from this demo make it into the final game. Square-Enix is known for creating concept work like this as a one-off — see the memorable Agni’s Philosophy clip that was shown at E3 2012. Still, expect to see Final Fantasy XV offer some of the same artistry that’s on show in this demo.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.