Okay, maybe a month later. And I wrote "are now DX11-compatible" instead of "DX11 GPUs" for a reason, DX12-GPUs are also DX11-compatible. ;)

I'm curious, when they will track DX12-GPUs separately... with the arrival of the first DX12-games (Fable Legends later this year?) or earlier.

Ok, you win this time...

Steam leaked the next big paradox game....
http://www.gamezone.com/news/steam-leaks-paradox-development-studios-new-space-exploration-game-3422761

This is not only PC related, but since PC gamers will be the first ones to have a chance at doing this, I'll post it here for the laughs.

AMD DETERMINES THAT ABSOLUTE IMMERSION IN VR REQUIRES 128 MEGAPIXEL DISPLAY

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-virtual-reality-resolution-presence,29814.html

The core theme of VR is presence. Nobody seems to have precisely defined what presence really is, but it's essentially the connectedness to the experience, the way that you're part of the game or video; or put another way, it's how you forget that you're in a virtual environment. Some of the things that detract from presence are low framerates, high latency, low-display resolutions, incomplete input (such as missing hand-tracking) -- all the obvious things.

To explain, we must start with explaining why we shouldn't be measuring the resolutions of VR displays as we do the resolutions of computer monitors, but in a slightly different way. Here's why. Common sense would seem to say that a VR headset with a 1440p resolution will be sharper than one with a 1080p resolution, but that's not all there is to it. Two 1440p headsets may be very different, with one being sharper, and the other having a higher field of view.

That's where the issue lies -- simply expressing the resolution in a height and width doesn't tell you anything about the headset's field of view, and therefore not precisely how sharp the image will be. Instead, AMD brought up an older term -- PPD -- which is short for "Pixels Per Degree." You need PPD and two angles to give you the complete picture of a VR headset's display.

With those numbers, and the resolution of the fovea (the most sensitive part of the eye), AMD calculated the required resolution. The fovea sees at about 60 PPD, which combined with 120 degrees of horizontal vision and 135 degrees of vertical vision, and multiplying that by two (because of two eyes) tallies up to a total of 116 megapixels.

Yes, you read that right: 116 megapixels. The closest resolution by today's numbers is 16K, or around 128 megapixels.

Additionally, consider that VR needs to run at framerates above 90 FPS, and ideally with latencies below 20ms to avoid drawing you out of the presence.

If you consider that we're still a ways off from pulling off photo-realistic graphics on ordinary monitors at framerates and latencies that absolutely wouldn't be suitable for VR, and that these monitors have resolutions as high as about 8 megapixels for a 4K monitor, you can start to see that we're still quite a ways away from the hardware that allows us to create absolute presence.

So, how many years do you think it will take: ten,  fifteen or maybe twenty?

Will "Skin Stretch" help to avoid the Uncanny Valley?

View on YouTube

View on YouTube

^Yes, but that's still gross.

Specially the second video with the face with no eyes. Eww...

I'm confident that game developers don't forget the eyes... well, perhaps the eyes will come as paid DLCs ;)

The Valve/SteamOS forums have revealed that the Steam Machines won't be able to enter in suspension:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/259#issuecomment-131256299

On January, an user by the name of Two-Tone complained about problems after returning from suspension, with his controllers not working.

4 days ago, johnv-valve answered first with this:

"suspend is no longer supported"

and then with

"Given the state of hardware and software support throughout the graphics stack on Linux we didn't think we could make this reliable."

It looks like Samsung is not only on board with HBM, but that they're pushing hard to make it a success.

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-08/idf-2015-samsung-fertigt-high-bandwidth-memory-ab-2016/ <= it's in german

Not only will they mass produce HBM chips in 2016, but they even give us a hint at how the market could use it : Mainstream_ 2-4GB, Performance_4-8GB and enthusiasts_8-16GB.

Although they also think that GDDR5 will still be here for a few more years...

This piece of news has 4 days, but despite that I decided to post it anyway, since no one else did it.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/amd-readies-three-new-gpus-for-2016-greenland-baffin-and-ellesmere/

AMD’s code-named “Arctic Islands” family of products will include three brand-new chips – “Greenland”, “Baffin” and “Ellesmere” – a source with knowledge of AMD plans said. The “Greenland” will be the new flagship offering for performance enthusiasts, whereas the “Baffin” and “Ellesmere” will target other market segments, such as high-end and mainstream.

...

While the architecture is currently known as another iteration of GCN, the new ISA [instruction set architecture] will be so considerably different compared to the existing GCN that it has every right to be called “post-GCN”, the source said. It is likely that the “Greenland” will retain layout of the contemporary AMD Radeon graphics processing units, but there will be significant changes in on the deeper level.

...

It is believed that AMD has already taped-out its “Greenland” graphics processing unit and is about to get the first silicon in the coming weeks.

Not a lot of information is known about the “Baffin” and the “Ellesmere”. The source stressed that both GPUs are brand-new and will be designed from scratch. Since the “Baffin” and the “Ellesmere” are named after bigger and smaller islands in Canada, it is likely that the former is a mainstream graphics chip with moderate die size, whereas the former is a small entry-level GPU. AMD began to work on “Ellesmere” about a year ago.