The hardest part of building a PC is picking the parts, especially when everyone around you seems to have an opinion. And no flame war is more prevalent than the NVIDIA snobs vs the AMD fanboys. What’s really going on with these two companies, and which card should you get? Read more…
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PC Graphics Card Showdown: NVIDIA vs. AMD
Tired of waiting to skip ads in YouTube? Wish you could save YouTube videos and music offline or keep playing when your mobile screen turns off? YouTube Red might be the subscription for you—and it includes a Google Play Music subscription for the same price as Play Music alone. Read more…
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Google Introduces YouTube Red, a Subscription for Ad-Free and Offline Videos
Archaeologists can figure out how old a substance is by radiocarbon dating, but to do that they need to know what the substance is—and that’s not always clear. Radioactive material comes to the rescue again! Read more…
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How We Figure Out the Composition of a Substance by Hurling Neutrons at It
You might not understand all of the technical details behind the computer graphics research being revealed at Siggraph 2015 this week, but come next year when the CG characters in movies and video games start to look indistinguishable from real humans , you’ll know who to thank. Read more…
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A Graphics Breakthrough Makes Perfect CGI Skin
Google Play’s a pretty simple way to get access to all your music. If you’re looking to build a little standalone machine for playing that music, GitHub user fredley created a simple little front end that’s easy to use. Read more…
Unreal Engine 4 has shown us what the next generation of video games can look like: large, realistic and mind-bogglingly gorgeous. Frankly, its tech demos are breathtaking — technical marvels that show off photo-realistic apartments and stunningly beautiful landscapes ; but what happens when you cram cartoonish mascots like Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog into these technical marvels? Mind-blowingly awesome YouTube videos, that’s what. It was bound to happen eventually. Back in March, Unreal made its incredibly popular game engine free to anybody who wants to use it, leaving amateur game developers with immediate access to professional game creation tools. Search around YouTube, and you’ll find more than a few folks using it to put our favorite game characters into hauntingly realistic worlds. Check it out: See that vast landscape? That’s the setting for Unreal Engine 4’s Kite demo, which shows off the engine’s ability to handle large worlds and procedural asset placement. YouTube user CryZenx decided it was the perfect place to drop in Sonic The Hedgehog. The resulting demo isn’t much of a game (though it does show off just how fast a blue hedgehog can run), but it binds the potential of Unreal Engine 4 to a familiar face — letting us imagine what the coming generation of games could really look like. CryZenX made a Mario demo, too — but the plumber looks a little out of place in the Unreal’s endless prairie. YouTuber Aryoksini put Mario in a more familiar environment, a series of castles and caverns more suited to his adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom. The canned environments (taken directly from the Unreal marketplace) look a little too polished for the off-beat world Nintendo’s mascot normally inhabits, but it’s still a stunning look at where console gaming could be in a few short years. Want to see more? Hit up the YouTube search bar with “Unreal Engine 4” and your favorite video-game mascot. Let us know if you find anything good. Filed under: Gaming Comments Source: YouTube (1) , (2)
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Mario and Sonic look absolutely stunning in Unreal Engine 4
When you’re bored at work, pulling out your Game Boy to pass the time isn’t exactly inconspicuous. But this simple app called Screentendo is. It snaps a screenshot of whatever you’re working on and then turns it into a simple Super Mario level with clouds and breakable blocks. Spreadsheets have never been more entertaining. Read more…
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Screentendo Turns Screenshots Into a Playable Super Mario Level
If you’re looking for a fun way to use an old PC, Lakka can turn it into an amazing retro gaming machine. This easy setup doesn’t require any advanced Linux knowledge, and you can even use the controllers you already have lying around. Here’s a step-by-step guide to making your own all-in-one retro arcade in no time. Read more…
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How to Turn Your PC (or Other Device) Into a Retro Arcade with Lakka
Just when did gaming laptops get so thin and powerful? A year ago, thin meant weak—but today there are tons of sleek notebooks that can play the latest PC games at maximum levels of detail. I decided to discover which ones are actually worth your money. Read more…
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The Best Thin Gaming Laptop For Every Need
When a franchise is around for four decades, it can get impossibly unwieldy to try and grasp its lore — and Star Wars canon is no exception. Here’s a guide to the origins of Star Wars Canon, the rise and fall of one of the most prominent Expanded Universes in fiction , and where the saga stands with Disney today. Read more…
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A Brief History Of Star Wars Canon, Old And New