This is how good PS3 games were meant to look

Be sure to view full-screen and at full resolution on a high-res monitor to really see the difference. Fans of classic gaming emulation know that modern emulators can do a lot to sharpen up the standard-definition sprites and polygons made for consoles designed to be played on low-resolution tube TVs. This weekend, though, an update to the RPCS3 emulator showed how much resolution scaling can improve the look of even early HD games. While the new update technically supports rendering at up to 10K resolutions, the video above shows that upscaling to 4K resolution and adding 16x anisotropic filtering can lead to a huge improvement for games originally made to run at 720p. Upscaling the 11-year-old hardware with three times the resolution doesn’t even put too much strain on modern GPUs—the creators say in an explanatory blog post that “anyone with a dedicated graphics card that has Vulkan support can expect identical performance at 4K.” Unlike N64 emulators, which often require handmade high-resolution texture packs to make upscaled games look decent, RPCS3 can often get amazing improvements in sharpness and clarity just by using content that’s already in the PS3 software. That’s because many PS3 titles stored extremely high-resolution assets on the PS3’s Blu-Ray discs, then crushed those textures down for faster processing by the console. The result is that surfaces that looked muddy and jagged on the original hardware can take full advantage of the art as it was originally conceived when upscaled for the emulator. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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This is how good PS3 games were meant to look

Windows 10 Creators Update now available to all, November Update end-of-life’d

Enlarge / The announcement of the Creators Update in October 2016. (credit: Ars Technica) Some four months after its initial release, Microsoft says it has opened the floodgates and is now pushing out Windows 10 version 1703, the Creators Update, to every compatible PC (a category that excludes systems using Intel’s Clover Trail Atoms ). Earlier this month, AdDuplex, which tracks the penetration of the different Windows 10 versions, reported that as of July 18, the Creators Update had just passed 50 percent of Windows 10 systems. Forty-six percent are on the previous version, 1607 (aka the Anniversary Update). Until now, the deployment of the Creators Update has been throttled to stage its rollout. That throttle is now removed, so most of that 46 percent should now start upgrading. Microsoft is also saying that with this full rollout, enterprise customers should have confidence deploying the update. With Microsoft getting rid of the “Current Branch” and “Current Branch for Business” nomenclature , this is the closest thing to a signal that the version is enterprise-ready. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 Creators Update now available to all, November Update end-of-life’d

The Windows 10 Creators Update is now available for manual upgrading

Enlarge / This option is the best way of transitioning out of the Insider Program. (credit: Microsoft) The “official” release of the Windows 10 Creators Update , version 1703, won’t come until Patch Tuesday on April 11, but if you want to upgrade now—and don’t want to enroll your system in the potentially unstable Windows Insider Program—you can now do so. The Windows 10 Update Assistant will upgrade any Windows 10 Home or Pro system to the Creators Update; you’ll need to grab the latest version of the Assistant and then run it, but it should be straightforward enough. If you’re upgrading more than one machine or want to perform a clean install, the Media Creation Tool, available from the same link, is the better bet; the Media Creation Tool can fetch an ISO to burn a DVD or create a bootable USB drive, and that can be used for bare metal installs. The Creators Update itself is build 15063.0, but there will be a small Cumulative Update delivered on April 11. Previews of this patch have been rolled out to insiders, with the fast ring Insiders on 15063.14 and slow ring Insiders on 15063.13. Using the Update Assistant or Media Creation Tool appears to also update to 15063.13. This situation may well change by the actual release day next week. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The Windows 10 Creators Update is now available for manual upgrading

Windows 10 Creators Update starts rolling out on April 11th

Windows 10 users won’t have to wait much longer to get their hands on Paint 3D . Microsoft announced today that the upcoming Creators Update for the OS will be available starting on April 11th. As usual, though, Microsoft is staggering the rollout so it doesn’t inundate every Windows user (and its servers) at once. Windows 10 desktop users will have their go at it first, and afterwards it’ll head to laptops and mobile devices. The Creators Update is a big deal for a few reasons: It’ll introduce Paint 3D, Microsoft’s new 3D creation app that’s simple enough for children to use. And it packs in some useful new features like Game Mode , which devotes more system resources to games, ensuring better overall performance. There are also some helpful Edge upgrades , like the ability to preview tabs and file away collections of tabs for later use. The Creators Update won’t make Windows 10 look much different, but it should hopefully make it a much more useful OS.

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Windows 10 Creators Update starts rolling out on April 11th

Delta Windows Updates shrinks downloads 65% for Insiders, 35% for everyone else

Enlarge / The announcement of the Creators Update in October 2016. The Windows 10 Creators Update, due some time in the next couple of months, enables differential updates as part of what Microsoft calls the Unified Update Platform. These updates only contain the changes between one major Windows update and the next, which should make for smaller, faster downloads. Windows Insiders have been receiving these new differential updates since early December, and Microsoft has reported on the effectiveness of the new scheme. Compared to a “canonical” update (which includes full files rather than just the changed portions), the savings are substantial: the median differential download size of build 15025 was 910MB. The media canonical size of build 15031 was 2.56GB. 910MB is quite a bit smaller than 2.56GB. (credit: Microsoft ) This is particularly attractive to members of the Insider program because each new build is delivered as a major update that performs a full in-place Windows 10 install. To take advantage of the differential updates, you’ll have to make sure to never skip any releases; if you’re updating an older build to the very latest, a full download is required. This represents a trade-off on Microsoft’s part: The company doesn’t want to have to maintain a differential update between any and every pair of builds. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Delta Windows Updates shrinks downloads 65% for Insiders, 35% for everyone else