[NEWS] SONY PSVR is up for pre-ordering !

The Sony PSVR holds tremendous promise for first-gen VR. The integration of the PSVR HMD and PS4 is a master stroke because it means PS4 owners already have a VR-ready system, and Sony accessorized its HMD with its own existing products (PlayStation Camera, Move controllers). But Sony is stumbling, fumbling, flailing and failing with the official announcement and preorders.

First, at the official announcement at GDC, Sony’s Andrew House announced that PSVR would cost just $399. He did not qualify that statement by noting that the price does not include the needed Camera, nor the Move controllers most people do want.

That was a truly misleading announcement. The Camera and Move controllers will run you approximately another $150, bringing the total, actual cost of a complete PSVR to about $550. Sony used the media to disseminate its gasp-worthy $399 price tag (gasp-worthy because it fit $200 below the Oculus Rift), and because of the nature of the Internet (people read something once and believe it, and far too many media outlets don’t care to go back and correct mistakes), the “$399 PSVR” myth persists. 

Many eager early adopters looked at the fine print and realized that they’d need the Camera and Move controllers, and they quickly snapped them up. Reports circulated that sales of both increased after the PSVR announcement. Of course, some people already had them from previous purchases, although we don’t know how many of the 36 million PS4 owners this applies to.

However, Sony has now announced complete preorder bundles for North America, which open March 22. It’s a great deal: You get the whole schmeer for $500 USD ($700 CAD). That includes the PSVR HMD, the cables, stereo headphones, PlayStation VR demo disc, PlayStation Camera, two Move controllers, and the PlayStation VR Worlds disc.

At $500 (sorry Canucks, you got marked up), the PSVR undercuts both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. So why would Sony fudge the price in the first place? One theory is that the company wanted to gauge feedback, and we were all live guinea pigs. Perhaps it had the $399 number in mind all along for the core bundle and wanted to suss out what people would be willing to pay for the extras. It had the net effect, then, of both scoring some killer headlines and giving Sony valuable feedback about where to mark pricing for the full bundle. And, hey, why not sell some Cameras and controllers, too?

Okay, so you can get this complete bundle, but Sony is also naming a “core” bundle (HMD, cables, headphones, PSVR demo disc) that doesn’t have the camera or controllers. But it hasn’t said much about when or even if that core bundle will be available in North America. A blog post stated:

“If you miss out on this wave of pre-orders, fear not – we’ll have another wave in the summer.”

That’s great, but right below that, the post said that the core PSVR bundle will not be available for preorder. We guess that means the core bundle will be available at some point? On the October launch day, maybe? 

So that means if you caught the initial $399 headline blast and snapped up the Camera and Move controllers, you have to preorder the full bundle now and hope that you can return the accessories you just bought, or hope that you can snag a core bundle on launch day before they sell out. (That’s assuming Sony is even going to sell the core bundle at all in North America.) 

Also, if you did buy the camera and controllers separately, you almost certainly paid more than the $100 markup for the full bundle.

Oddly, the core bundle is available elsewhere, and those preorders --  in the UK, Australia and the EU -- already opened. (They’re sold out in some regions.) 

It’s quite unfortunate that Sony is botching the PSVR launch. It casts a pall on an otherwise exciting release. Even the $500 full bundle destroys Rift and Vive on price. And one of the most amazing achievements Sony has made is in somehow integrating its existing products with this revolutionary new VR technology. Hey, you have a PS4, the PlayStation camera and a couple of Move controllers? All you need is this $399 HMD, and you’re all set for VR. That’s incredible. 


Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi
source : click here 

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[News] Is your Pc VR ready?? Find out with Steam VR Performance Test

If there's one thing you can rely on in 2016, if Valve release a sheet of code, people will pillage it for Half-Life 3 references. Valve recently rolled out the SteamVR Performance Test, which is designed to establish how fit a PC is for VR. Predictably enough, the community at Valve Time has stripped the program down and discovered a bunch of secrets inside. 
 

Among the interesting tidbits are a collection of images which appear to be an updated version of the Dog character from Half-Life 2. The same model has circulated online for a while, but the Performance Test has several new ones hidden in its files, one of which you can see below:

It's hardly evidence that Half-Life 3 is confirmed: as the source at Valve Time notes, the image could simply be a 3D sample model for a toy statue the model's creator, Tristan Reidford, also collaborated on a toy version of the gravity gun. 

There's a bunch of other stuff in the files, most of which are half-finished VR demos using assets from Half-Life 2, Portal and Dota 2, among others. There is some evidence pointing to Left 4 Dead 3, though. In a directory marked "L4D3", textures for a character called 'Retired Engineer' were found. The textures don't reveal much more, unfortunately, and nor do other character textures that don't appear to belong to any specific Valve series. 

It shouldn't come as a surprise that elements from Valve's past games have appeared in their VR software: programmer Jeep Barnett told Kotaku last year that the company often repurposed old assets to use in their demos. Still, some will find it reassuring that brand new assets related to Half-Life 3 and Left 4 Dead 3 are out there. 


Author : Saatvik Awasthi

[LEAK] LeEco Le 2 Pro specs, images leaked before launch

Only two days ago we got a glimpse at the upcoming LeEco Le 2 Pro smartphone, through some leaked pics showing it. Back then we found out a couple of its most important specs, and today thanks to a new leak we get a more complete list.

LeEco is the Chinese company formerly known as LeTV, which grabbed the international spotlight when it was the first to release a device powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820. And it looks like it really likes that chipset, since it's going to use it again in the Le 2 Pro.

The Le 2 Pro should thus come with a 5.7-inch QHD touchscreen, a 21 MP rear camera with LED flash, an 8 MP selfie snapper, the aforementioned Snapdragon 820 SoC on board, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of built-in storage, LTE support, a USB Type-C port, Dolby Audio, and a 3,100 mAh battery.

It will obviously run Android, but which exact version isn't clear yet. Nor is how much it will cost, or when it's getting official.

You may have heard of LeEco when it became the first company to sell a smartphone powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chipset.

Speaker grill holes can be seen on both sides of that port, which may mean the phone will have two speakers. Then again, many smartphones use similar designs but only actually ship with one speaker, with the holes on the other side being purely cosmetic. Anyway, the frame of the handset seems to be metal. Its back cover could be metal too, or maybe not - it's not easy to tell just from these shots.

  

Author:   Saatvik Awasthi

 

[LAUNCH] Sony Playstation Vue TV service Launched Nationwide in U.S.

Ditching your cable TV subscription just got easier, no matter where you live in the United States.

PlayStation Vue, a service that streams live and on-demand TV over the Internet, is now available everywhere in the country, and for a lower price than ever. Starting today in 203 U.S. TV markets, you can subscribe to the service for as little as $30 per month. 

Vue is designed as an alternative to a traditional pay TV package from a satellite or cable TV provider. It delivers numerous live TV channels and on-demand programming, just like cable TV, and also lets you record shows to a "cloud DVR" and watch multiple TVs around the house from one account.

To use Vue you'll need an active subscription, a stable broadband Internet connection and a compatible device. Currently they include PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 game consoles, as well as Amazon Fire TV boxes and Fire TV Stick devices (if you have a Fire TV device, you don't need a PlayStation to use Vue). There's also a Vue iOS app for iPad and iPhone, which can Cast to TV devices like Chromecast--but you can't use Vue if don't own at least one PlayStation console or Fire TV.

New "Slim" packages lose local channels

Until today Vue was only available in seven major metropolitan areas: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco and Miami. Packages in those cities start at $40 per month and include local broadcast TV channels, namely ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC (but not PBS).

If you live in one of the 203 other TV markets newly served by Vue--places like Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, Phoenix, Portland, and St. Louis, as well as smaller cities and towns in all 50 states--you only be able to subscribe to what Vue is calling "Slim" versions of its channel packages, starting at $30 per month.

 The difference is that Slim packages don't have access to live local channels via Vue. According to Sony's press release,

 "Content from ABC, FOX and NBC will be available only as on-demand content in the Slim multi-channel plans. Most on-demand content will be available within 24 hours after airing. CBS live and on-demand programming will be added to select TV markets at a later date." 

I spoke with Dan Myers, head of product for PlayStation Vue, and was given some additional details. If you live in one of the original seven markets you will not be able to subscribe to a Slim package that lacks local channels--in other words, pricing in those seven markets will not change as a result of Vue's nationwide expansion, and starts at $40.

Sony will continue to add local channel access to additional markets in the future. I asked Myers whether that meant, for example, that a Vue subscriber in Atlanta might suddenly have to start paying $40 per month instead of $30 once those channels were available, but he said he didn't have any additional pricing tiers to announce.

Beyond pricing, regional availability and the absence of local channels, Vue's Slim packages are identical to their non-slim counterparts. The cheapest $30 Access Slim package has 55 or so channels; the $35 Core Slim package has 70-odd with the addition of live national and select regional sports networks; and the $45 Elite Slim package has more than 100 channels.

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi
Source : click here 

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[RUMOUR] NVIDIA to unviel its new PASCAL 16nm GTX 1080 in MAY

NVIDIA is on the verge of launching their first 16nm FinFET based products featuring the highest performance and power efficiency to date. Pascal which is the name of their upcoming GPU architecture is built from ground up to deliver not only the best gaming performance but also the best compute performance. NVIDIA is going to present their Pascal GPUs at GTC 2016 but it seems like we already have a hint at when the consumer variant will be launching as Benchlife reports that NVIDIA is prepping the GeForce GTX 1080 for launch in May.

We have long been awaiting to learn some information on the Pascal GPUs regarding which NVIDIA has kept really silent but it seems like the company is getting ready for a big showcase at GTC 2016. NVIDIA’s CEO, Jen Hsun Huang himself will deliver the opening keynote of GTC and present not only their latest 16nm FinFET architecture but the corresponding cards that utilize the Pascal GPUs.

Word is that NVIDIA’s Pascal will aim at both consumer and server markets as the chip to be in headlines would be the GP100 which is the flagship GPU in the Pascal lineup and the full fledged beast that will be shipping with Tesla and Quadro brands first. The consumer side will not be left alone as NVIDIA will launch their new graphics card based on the GP104 which will be solely aimed at gamers in Q2 2016. These cards will include new graphic side enhancements along with software side enhancements for APIs such as Vulkan and DirectX 12.

NVIDIA’s Gaming (GP104) Pascal GPUs To Feature Up To 8 GB GDDR5 Memory and Single 8-Pin Connector

The report mentions that NVIDIA’s GP104 will be utilized by a graphics card called the GeForce GTX 1080. Know we don’t know whether NVIDIA will be aiming for a 1000 series naming scheme or skipping it for something far more simpler but the name could change at any point since the launch is still a few months away. The GeForce GTX 1080 will be the fastest consumer offering for a while and while NVIDIA will also have the GTX 1070 in the same time frame, the latter will fall below the 1080 performance since it will be using a cut down configuration.

There are some significant details in the mentioned report which state that NVIDIA’s GP104 based Pascal cards will feature up to 8 GB GDDR5 memory. This brings the memory capacity to the same amount as AMD’s current Radeon R9 390 series graphics cards which are hit among the public for their great price to performance value. The report says that GDDR5 is the memory standard to be used on the GP104 series cards and there remains a possibility where AIBs can start shipping higher performance GDDR5X chips based cards later on since Micron is expected to start mass production in Summer of 2016.

Performance side of things, NVIDIA will have their GP104 GPUs pitted directly against AMD’s Radeon Fury and high-end Polaris (Mid-2016) graphics cards while the GP100 consumer variant (New Titan) will be competing against the flagship Polaris based graphics cards. The GP100 consumer variant will feature up to 16 GB HBM2 memory while the HPC variants will ship with up to 32 GB HBM2 memory.


It is stated that Samsung is in direct cooperation with NVIDIA on deployment of HBM2 memory for their cards and have already begun production as of early 2016. SK Hynix on the other hand is directly cooperating with AMD for the development of the new HBM2 memory dies for their Polaris GPUs however SK Hynix has stated to commence mass production in Q3 2016
.
Other details that are mentioned suggest that the GeForce GTX 1080 will be shipping on 27th May which is just a few days before Computex so its probable that NVIDIA may host a Pre-Computex event to display their Pascal consumer variants. The reference variants will feature 2 Display Port, 1 HDMI and a single DVI display output. The custom models are said to start shipping in June so AIBs will have a great chance to showcase their new products at Computex 2016.

Finally, we are expected to see a single 8-Pin power connector on the GP104 cards which will be a good approach from the dual 6-Pin configuration required on current graphics boards. A single 8-Pin connector can suck 150W of power while a single 6-Pin connector sucks 75W of power which is the same as the PCI-Express slot. Pascal is known to deliver more than 2x the performance per watt of Maxwell. Maxwell itself was NVIDIA’s bet on power efficiency and it turned out really well for the company, Pascal is further going to take NVIDIA’s lead in the efficiency department which has been their strongest suit since Kepler GPU in 2012. NVIDIA is also expected to launch their mobility Pascal GPUs in mid of June.

Flagship FiNFET GPUs:

GPU Family	AMD Polaris	NVIDIA Pascal
Flagship GPU	Greenland/Vega10	GP100
GPU Process	14nm FinFET	16nm FinFET
GPU Transistors	Up To 18 Billion	~17 Billion
Memory	Up to 32 GB HBM2	Up to 32 GB HBM2
Bandwidth	1 TB/s	1 TB/s
Graphics Architecture	Polaris ( GCN 4.0 )	Pascal
Predecessor	Fiji (Fury Series)	GM200 (900 Series)

More Pascal Boards Spotted on Zauba – Listed on March 9th, Ready For Production

The list of Pascal boards showing up on Zauba are increasing every passing month and in March 2016, 7 new listings of Pascal boards were spotted bearing the codename of 699-12914-0000-100, 699-1G610-0000-000, 699-12914-0076-100. This suggests that NVIDIA is actively testing new boards which will reach production in Q2 2016.

What we know so far about Nvidia’s flagship Pascal GP100 GPU :

• Pascal graphics architecture.
• 2x performance per watt estimated improvement over Maxwell.
• To launch in 2016, purportedly the second half of the year.
• DirectX 12 feature level 12_1 or higher.
• Successor to the GM200 GPU found in the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti.
• Built on the 16nm FinFET manufacturing process from TSMC.
• Allegedly has a total of 17 billion transistors, more than twice that of GM200.
• Will feature four 4-Hi HBM2 stacks, for a total of 16GB of VRAM and 8-Hi stacks for up to 32GB for the professional compute SKUs.
• Features a 4096-bit memory bus interface, same as AMD’s Fiji GPU power the Fury series.
• Features NVLink (only compatible with next generation IBM PowerPC server processors)
• Supports half precision FP16 compute at twice the rate of full precision FP32.

TSMC To Double 16nm FinFET Chip Production in March 2016

In other news, Digitimes had reported that reports from Taiwan based Economic Daily news reveals that TSMC will double their 16nm chip production in the current month. The report mentions that the output capacity of TSMC’s 16nm plants (Currently at 40,000 chips for February 2016) will reach 80,000 wafers, double the amount currently being produced. It should be noted that customers like NVIDIA and Apple will be building their chips upon the new 16nm FinFET nodes from TSMC.

Rumors alleged that the recent Taiwan earthquake had badly affected the manufacturing capacity of TSMC’s 16nm process node however doubling of the capacity by TSMC shows that their plants remain unaffected and production is going smoothly and at a very fast pace to fill in orders from NVIDIA and Apple for their next gen products.

Good times are ahead as more powerful and energy efficient graphics cards enter the market. Pascal is said to be a game changer for NVIDIA as it will further strengthen their roots in the HPC and Server markets while offering great new gaming products in the GeForce lineup which is the most popular platform among PC gamers. While the GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1070 are said to launch in late Q2 2016, the GP100 consumer variants will be arriving when a steady supply is available for both consumer and professional markets. Gamers will have the next best support with NVIDIA for VR/AR and 4K gaming experiences which are going to stir up the gaming market this year.

NVIDIA GeForce Consumer Graphics Cards:

Graphics Card Name	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X	NVIDIA GP100 (Titan/Ti)
Graphics Core	GM204	GP104	GM200	GM200	GP100
Process Node	28nm	16nm FinFET	28nm	28nm	16nm FinFET
Transistors	5.2 Billion	TBC	8 Billion	8 Billion	Up To 17 Billion
CUDA Cores	2048 CUDA Cores	TBC	2816 CUDA Cores	3072 CUDA Cores	TBC
VRAM	4 GB GDDR5	8 GB GDDR5/X	6 GB GDDR5	12 GB GDDR5	16 GB HBM2
Bus Interface	256-bit bus	256-bit bus?	384-bit bus	384-bit bus	4096-bit bus
Power Connector	6+6 Pin Power	Single 8-Pin Power	8+6 Pin Power	8+6 Pin Power	8+6 Pin Power
TDP	165W	TBC	250W	250W	250W (Pascal-Solo rated at 235W)
Display Outputs	3x Display Port 1x HDMI 2.0 1x DVI	2x Display Port 1x HDMI 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1x HDMI 2.0 1x DVI	3x Display Port 1x HDMI 2.0 1x DVI	TBC
Launch Date	September 2014	May 2016	May 2015	March 2015	2H 2016

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi
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