Over on the friendly Star Citizen forums, a player of the space sim asked, "Do you, as I, believe that RTX tech will save you devs so much work farther along and look absolutely spanking?"Ray tracing is the tech everyone's talking about, whether it's Nvidia planning to literally write the book on it or Battlefield 5 players trying to figure out if they can even see it. Meanwhile, if you want to see how it looks in Metro Exodus, here you go.Cloud Imperium developer Ben Parry initially responded to the question in the negative. "Not in the slightest", he wrote. "I expect, if we use it, it'll be a massive headache and time-sink but might give us some subtle improvements in looks or performance if we get it right."He followed up by clarifying exactly what he means by headache: "The added headache is that whatever we offered would have to be an "as well" feature rather than an "instead", developing a feature for a single manufacturer's top-end cards means also maintaining feature parity for … [Read more...] about Star Citizen developer calls ray tracing “a massive headache”
Get to know Anthem’s Ranger javelin
More AnthemAnthem review in progress10 tips for getting started in AnthemAnthem combo guideAnthem's wild cutscene bugsAnthem gives you the pick of the litter at the start, allowing you to choose one of four javelin types to dive-bomb Scars and bop Dominion in. If you're like me and don't like to committing to a playstyle from the get-go, the Ranger will probably suit you well. And if you came here expecting a full-on Ranger guide, I can help, for sure, but my first bit of advice might sting: don't pick the Ranger. It has no defining characteristics that set it apart from the rest. The Interceptor is fast, the Colossus has a chunky shield and big guns, and the Storm can hover and rain down elemental storms. The Ranger isn't too fast or too slow, it can hover for around 10 seconds, it can toss grenades and shoot little missiles, but it doesn't do any one thing in a unique, flashy way. It's the run-and-gunner of Anthem, an all-around javelin, sure, but an all-around boring pick. … [Read more...] about Get to know Anthem’s Ranger javelin
Fortnite Live UK event sounds like a disaster
Over the weekend a Fortnite Live event was held at Norfolk Showground—organized by an independent company called Exciting Events it should be noted, not Fortnite's creator Epic Games. It was, as this report in the Guardian calls it, "a shambles".Tickets cost between 12 and 20 pounds, which is roughly 15 to 25 US dollars. For that price the estimated 2,800 attendees got to share four go-karts, one climbing wall, an archery space with room for four kids to practice, and a cave that, according to a commenter on the event's Facebook page, was "in the back of a trailer with a pathetic slide". There was also a VR station for a single player and computers for playing Fortnite—a game that, it's worth remembering, you could be playing at home for free. All this after queueing for several hours.Here are some more of the comments from the event's Facebook page."I've attended gaming events and this is by far the worst. It was like a school fete.""This event was an absolute disgrace and … [Read more...] about Fortnite Live UK event sounds like a disaster
Whats the least expensive way to play video in unity?
Alright, Ive asked this various ways but my situation is I have several (over 100) objects that have screens that need to play animated videos on them. There does not need to be sound, but this is for VR so performance is an issue. So far, after trying render textures and video materials and seeing that fps dropped, Ive been using this script to flip through sets of pngs and put them in the diffuse slot of a material: public class VideoPlayerRawImage : MonoBehaviour { public Texture[] frames; public int framesPerSecond = 60; public bool isEmissive = false; void Update() { int index = (int)(Time.time * framesPerSecond) % frames.Length; this.GetComponent<Renderer>().material.mainTexture = frames[index]; if(isEmissive) { this.GetComponent<Renderer>().material.SetTexture("_EmissionMap", frames[index]); } if(index >= frames.Length-1) { index = 0; } } Is this the most efficient way to play videos? What would be a drawback to this method/is there a better way? … [Read more...] about Whats the least expensive way to play video in unity?
Five new Steam games you probably missed (February 18, 2019)
On an average day, about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that's a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. JumpgridSteam pageJumpgrid is a reflex-oriented action game with a mesmerising art style, tasking the player with hopping between nine grid nodes in order to avoid colliding with obstacles. That may sound dull on paper, but you need only watch the video above to know that it's anything but – especially if you like stuff like Super Hexagon. "This is a game about honing your muscle memory until you learn to dance with your fingers," reads the Steam description. Definitely a must for masochists and people who love beautiful graphics.Hyper JamSteam pageHyper Jam is a top-down multiplayer brawler with a 1980s … [Read more...] about Five new Steam games you probably missed (February 18, 2019)