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'Overwatch' gets full support for NVIDIA's low-latency Reflex tech
Landing a headshot should be slightly easier.
'Fortnite' will add ray tracing and DLSS on September 17th
'Fortnite' will get NVIDIA's ray tracing and DLSS tech on September 17th.
Google wants to reduce Stadia lag with 'negative latency'
Plenty of gamers are skeptical about cloud-based gaming. Fast internet connections just aren't prevalent enough, the argument goes, and lag will kill the gameplay experience. Google is diving in head first with Stadia, though. In an interview with Edge, Stadia's VP of Engineering Madj Bakar said the platform will eventually be more responsive than consoles. And while the technology to do so sounds silly, the underlying concepts may prove to be effective.
DJI reveals ultra-low-latency goggles for drone racers
Drone racers just got a major viewing upgrade. Aerial imaging company DJI has launched its digital first person viewing (FPV) transmission system, which boasts the first low latency HD video transmission signal. This means a crystal clear display, minimal lag, anti-inference reliability and range of up to 2.5 miles.
Netflix’s Fast.com now measures upload speed and latency
In 2016, Netflix launched Fast.com, a simple, easy way for anybody to check their internet speeds. Now, the company has announced that it's adding more information to the site. Fast.com will now let users see their connection's latency and upload speed, and latency will be broken down into both loaded and unloaded connections. So, you'll be able to see if more traffic on your network affects your latency values. "We're adding these new measurements to Fast.com so that consumers will have a more comprehensive view of their internet connection speed at any given time," Netflix said in a statement.
Bill Gates, SoftBank and Airbus back plan to livestream the Earth
Exploring the planet from the comfort of your own home is nothing new -- Google Earth has largely cornered the market on that. But what if, instead of looking at static pictures of your own house, you could explore views of the entire planet, in real time? It sounds ambitious, but that's exactly what space imaging startup EarthNow aims to achieve.
SteelSeries says it’s nailed 'true 1-to-1' mouse tracking
Gaming peripheral brand SteelSeries has expanded its mouse lineup with an offering that could prove to be the Holy Grail for serious esports gamers: true "1-to-1" tracking. The company's new TrueMove3 sensor means your mouse movement will match up exactly with movement on-screen, regardless of the CPI setting (counts per inch, or the number of pixels your mouse moves in a single inch). Engineered in partnership with PixArt -- the team behind the Wii Remote -- the sensor is the product of the company's 15-year quest to make the perfect gaming mouse and is available exclusively in the newly-designed Sensei 310 and Rival 310 models.
Real-time tracking and projection mapping keeps getting better
Japanese creative studio P.I.C.S. have set a mindbending new standard for real-time tracking and projection mapping with their latest visual creation, EXISDANCE. The technology has been around for a while, although it arguably first captured the mainstream public's imagination at the Grammy's last year, when a red bright lightning bolt appeared on Lady Gaga's face during her David Bowie tribute.
NVIDIA's upcoming tool will analyze your VR setup
The setup for your HTC Vive or Oculus Rift VR headset can make the difference between soaring or puking, but how can you tell if it's good? NVIDIA is going to release a new tool called the FCAT VR that will take some of the guesswork out of system testing. It tracks four key metrics that can lead to high latency, stuttering and other issues: frame time, dropped frames, warp misses and synthesized frames.
Cuba signs deal with Google to speed up access to its services
A lot has happened since President Obama announced that Google would work with Cuba to speed up its internet. There's a new president in waiting and Fidel Castro has passed away, but the pledge to boost the country's connectivity is moving along thanks to a new agreement between the search giant and Cuba's national telecommunications company ETECSA.
Google opens up its tool for testing your Android phone's lag
For years, Google has had tools to test the lag in Android and Chrome OS devices, letting it know when bad hardware or sloppy software is causing delays in touch input or voice commands. Wish you could check that lag yourself? As of now, you can: Google has posted the source code for WALT, its latency timer. While you'll need to build some Arduino-based hardware to perform the tests, Google promises that the whole thing will cost you less than $50. You won't need to go all-out and recreate the company's TouchBot, then. True, this will mostly be useful to developers who need to check their code, but it could come in handy if you've ever wanted to prove that a phone was unacceptably sluggish.
Here's how Google checks for lag on your Android phone
Yes, Google hates lag on smartphones as much as you do -- enough so that the search giant has a robot dedicated to spotting that delay between your finger input and what happens on screen. Meet the Chrome TouchBot, an OptoFidelity-made machine that gauges the touchscreen latency on Android and Chrome OS devices. As you can see in the clip below, the bot's artificial digit pokes, prods and swipes the display in a series of web-based tests (which you can try yourself) that help pinpoint problems in both code and hardware. This isn't the only gadget monitoring device lag at Google, but it could be the most important given how much the company's software revolves around touch. Don't be surprised if this automaton boosts the responsiveness of Mountain View's future platforms.
Telesurgery tests highlight the limits of the Internet
Telesurgery has the potential to bring surgeons in contact with patients anywhere, any time. In a remote robotic-assisted surgery, a doctor would be able to guide a mechanical device at a far away location to perform the procedure. The use of robotics in surgeries has been successful, as long as the operator and the device are in the same OR. But putting distance between the two has been problematic. The whole process relies on a strong network or Internet for connectivity, which invariably results in some amount of latency. Even the slightest lag can have serious implications. With a $4.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Florida Hospital Nicholson Center has completed a series of tests that reveal improvements in bandwidth technology are making telesurgery safer.
Roberts' latest post peeks behind the Star Citizen development curtain
Star Citizen has opened another window on the world of game development, this time courtesy of a Chris Roberts post that details the investigative process behind Arena Commander's lag and rubber-banding issues. In a nutshell, the problems surfaced with patch 12.4 as Cloud Imperium expanded the pool of AC participants past the initial 60,000-player threshold. "Like doctors trying to identify a mysterious illness, we looked for common environmental factors," Roberts writes. "Was there a significant geographic distance between players? Surprisingly, no: in many cases, players with almost no latency between them were still having issues. The team moved on to examining our own code." He goes on to explain how CIG translates potential problems into JIRA tasks and assigns them to engineers who are responsible for repairs prior to the next patch. [Thanks Cardboard!]
Latency and connection issues on all US Realms
On logging into my US World of Warcraft client, I was greeted with the following screen. The Breaking News section informs players that, due to technical issues, they may experience latency or loss of connection on all realms. Blizzard Customer Support has also confirmed that the issues are being investigated: We're looking into the #WoW server stability, folks! Our technicians are on the case! Updates to follow. - BlizzardCS (@BlizzardCS) December 19, 2013 The responses to the tweet imply that the lag is the most problematic part of these technical hitches, with players reporting very high MS on their connections. However, not everyone is affected, as my latency is only 70 MS, which while higher than usual is far from problematic. Blizzard's tech team are working hard to rectify these issues.
Age of Wushu promises latency improvements and matrix authenticator
In a new set of questions and answers from the Age of Wushu community, Snail Games promised that North American players experiencing lag will soon see relief. "We are taking serious measures to solve the latency problems after escalation," the devs promised. "Server fixes are already on their way. Players in North America will see considerable improvement starting from this week!" The devs said that a mobile matrix authenticator is coming later this month to provide better account security. "Think of it as a private Bingo card that works as a key to your account," Snail PR explained. A separate mobile authenticator is being worked on for iOS and Android, but no release date has been set. The Q&A article covered other topics such as the cash shop skill, bug fixes, cross-server interactions, and unnecessary chat spam. For those interested in Age of Wushu's upcoming Steam release, the devs said that this is still in the works but currently there is no release date set. In a separate post, the studio announced that the Phantom Twin Dagger skill set will be coming to the game next week. [We erroneously reported the matrix as a mobile authenticator and have corrected the article accordingly.]
Disconnects and latency issues and Patch 5.3
No one likes high latency, least of all someone playing an MMO that can demand reaction time the way World of Warcraft can, especially in raids. But even out in the world, latency can be a killer. So when people started reporting issues with connections to World of Warcraft soon after patch 5.3 launched, it got a lot of players noticing. In a six page forum thread there's been a lot of lively discussion of what's going on - whether it's on Blizzard's end, or somewhere between the computers of the affected players and the Blizzard servers. If you remember the Lagpocalypse post, you know how complicated these issues can get. MVP forum poster Lissanna posted an interesting walkthrough of her own attempts to find the culprit today, and explained why despite some forum poster dissatisfaction that it is indeed helpful to run a traceroute and pathping and post the results to the tech support forums, since it gives Blizzard an idea of who to talk to about these issues. If they don't know who's being affected, where those people are, and more importantly where the issue is physically located there's not much they can do to help. So if you're having the same problem, giving Blizzard as much information as possible is definitely helpful in terms of getting this sorted out. I've seen people in my raids disconnect on every single boss so far while I haven't had the issue at all myself, suggesting the problem isn't on Blizzard's end but is out there somewhere in the path the data takes between Blizzard and the players. Hopefully it can be solved soon.
Microsoft details how Xbox One cloud servers will tackle processor-intensive gaming chores
One of the Xbox launch's big reveals was that Microsoft added 300,000 servers to Xbox Live, and now GM Matt Booty has detailed to Ars Technica how that'll improve game play. He said the improved cloud architecture will speed up GPU- or CPU-heavy chores that aren't dependent on latency -- like lighting or cloth dynamics -- by pre-calculating them before applying them to a scene. To make that happen, the Xbox One server cloud will provide three virtual devices for "every Xbox one available in your living room." It'll be up to game developers to manage transitions between console-only and cloud assisted graphics, though, since the first few seconds of lighting in a new scene will need to be handled by the console before servers can take over. Of course, that means many titles may look better when you're online, but he added that you'll still be able to play if the internet is cut and "the game is going to have to intelligently handle that."
RITE Project aims to conquer internet lag, eliminate excuses for game noobs
Lag: it's the bane of video chats, VoIP calls and Call of Duty players trying to keep a streak going. The European Commission must be as irked by delays and drops as we are, as it's giving €3.6 million ($4.8 million) over three years to help three universities, Alcatel-Lucent Bell, Institut Mines-Telecom and Simula Research Labs defeat lag through the RITE (Reduce Internet Transport Latency) Project. The initiative hopes to find new ways to cut lag on both the network itself as well as endpoints, like servers. If the networking research alliance hits the jackpot, it hopes to make standards of any proposed changes. Without a specific direction, it's not clear that RITE will lead to instant-response connections. Should there be much success, however, we'll only have ourselves to blame for flaky gameplay.
Killer Wireless-N 1202 and E2200 Ethernet controller launch, aim to squash your ping times
Killer Technology -- formerly known as Bigfoot Networks -- has certainly come a long way from its days as a scrappy startup, and now the outfit's taking one more step towards ping domination with the introduction of two new products. Qualcomm Atheros is actually doing the honors, as it formally reveals the Killer Wireless-N 1202 WiFi module with Bluetooth as well as the Killer E2200 gigabit Ethernet controller. Each one is aimed at DIYers and OEMs, enabling machines based on them to automatically classify and prioritizing gaming, video and audio network data -- a bit of behind-the-scenes black magic that's said to "provide a superior, uninterrupted online entertainment experience." As you'd expect, both will include the Killer Network Manager software on associated rigs, giving end users a borderline ridiculous amount of control over how bandwidth is used. We're told that the 1202 will ship next month, while the E2200 is available now; pricing remains a mystery on both, though.
