SOPA protests: Minecraft, Firefall, Reddit going dark next week. Nvidia, Runic and Frozenbyte come out against the bill
Earlier this week Reddit announced that they would be switching off for twelve hours next Wednesday from 8am–8pm EST (1300–0100 UTC) in protest at the Stop Online Piracy Act. Today Red 5 Studios and Mojang have announced that they will also go dark and Nvidia, Runic and Frozenbyte have voiced their opposition to the bill.
Red 5 CEO, Mark Kern confirmed to Shacknews that “Red 5 Studios is joining Reddit in protest of SOPA by going dark on January 18. We will be taking down our website, community site and Firefall beta for 24 hours on the 18th.”
“We are extremely disappointed in this misguided legislation. We are also ashamed of the ESA for supporting a bill which is clearly not in the best interests of gamers or the game industry. This bill, and it’s sister bill, Protect IP, will shut down live streaming, shout casting, user generated content and have a chilling effect on game innovation and social media,” he added.
On Twitter, Notch has mentioned that Minecraft.net and Mojang.com will go down next Wednesday in protest.
Limited edition GeForce 560s launched: review round up
Graphics vendor NVIDIA has launched a limited edition version of its sub-£200 GeForce GTX 560Ti card, which features more shader cores and a wider memory bus than a standard version. It’s not entirely clear how limited the production run is – although the card won’t be on sale in all regions – but the GeForce GTX 560Ti 448 Edition is available from today, and reviews are appearing across the web.
Zotac, Inno3D, EVGA, Palit, Gainward, ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI will all have their own spins on the 560Ti 448 for sale, with prices starting at around £240/$289. That compares to about £180/$240 for a standard GTX 560Ti, the likes of which we recommend in the current PC Gamer Rig.
Should you grab one while you can?
Nvidia beta drivers boost Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and Batman: Arkham City
Here’s a quick heads up for anyone running an Nvidia card. New GeForce 290.36 Beta drivers have been released that add ambient occlusion support for Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3. Screen flickering and triangular artifacts in Battlefield 3 should also be fixed by the new drivers, and Nvidia recommend the update to Batman: Arkham City players. The update streamlines PhysX support, so players experiencing performance problems in Arkham City might want to give this a download.
The Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3 ambient occlusion settings can be turned on via the Nvidia control panel. You’ll find instructions on how to enable the advanced shadowing effect on the Nvidia site where the new beta are now available to download. You’ll find the full release notes below.
NVIDIA says desktop GPU sales up 23%
Graphics chip vendor NVIDIA saw its share price rise overnight after a conference call yesterday evening in which it discussed its third quarter results with analysts. The company says it took in a massive $1.07billion in the three months to October 30th, beating analysts expectations by a small margin.
New Nvidia drivers boost Battlefield 3 performance by “up to 11%”
US players will get their war-fingers on Battlefield 3 today. If you’re picking up a copy, you’ll want to make sure that your PC is up to date and ready to go. Helpfully, Nvidia have just released some new drivers promising an 11% performance boost when running Battlefield 3, especially if you’re running a GeForce 500 series card.
NVIDIA improves depth perception with 3D Vision 2
Just when you thought it was safe to put your regular sunglasses back on, NVIDIA releases a sequel to its stereoscopic rendering technology 3D Vision. It’s called 3D Vision 2, and funnily enough doesn’t have much to do with graphics cards.
The current crop of 3D Vision cards and drivers are already more than competent at adding a second camera angle to games, and work with pretty much any DirectX game. For 3D Vision 2, then, NVIDIA have focussed on the supporting hardware.
Win free admission to Nvidia’s GeForce LAN 6 – on a freakin’ aircraft carrier [US only]
Ever gone to a BYOC (bring your own computer) LAN event? Yeah? How about one held aboard a decommissioned aircraft carrier?
No? That’s what we thought—but we, and the good folk at Corsair, are here to make sure you never have to endure the shame of admitting that you’ve never been to a BYOC LAN event on an aircraft carrier ever again. Read on to find out how!
Update: Winners have been drawn!
NVIDIA experiments with 3D storytelling
What do 3D effects add in terms of storytelling? That’s a discussion which comes up a lot no matter what visual medium you’re working in at the moment, be it games, films or photography.
While not at all game related, it is has been interesting to look at techniques involved in one experiment for 3D storytelling that’s taken place in Spitalfields Market, London, this week. Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), an NGO which sponsors doctors and hospital workers in crisis regions and the developing world, teamed up with NVIDIA and one of the best photojournalism outfits around to create a short piece of 3D photojournalism about one of their midwives in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Battlefield 3 will need monster rig to run on ultra settings
DICE community manager Daniel Matros has been answering questions about Battlefield 3 on Twitter. Battlefield fan @bkohn1 asked him whether a rig matching the Battlefield 3 recommended system requirements would run the game on ultra settings. Matros replied to say that “recommended is usually medium.”
So will a top of the range Nvidia GTX580 do the trick? Apparently not. Matros revealed that we’ll need two 580s in SLI to make the most of the Frostbite 2 engine. The minimum system specifications may not be too punishing, but for those who want to see Battlefield 3 at its very best, a hefty upgrade may needed. Battlefield 3 may well be worth the expense. Would you be tempted to upgrade?
NVIDIA says PC games revenue to overtake consoles by 2014
Graphics vendor NVIDIA reckons that the total amount of money spent on PC games will be greater than that splashed out on console titles within the next three years.
That’s according to a report over at Techgage, which says that the claims were made during a conference call with analysts yesterday.
NVIDIA increase profit forecasts
Well here’s a turn up for the books. Amid plummeting stock prices and warnings of double dip recessions, NVIDIA’s shares rose by 18% during after hours trading on the NASDAQ yesterday, after the company’s quarterly financial report came out.
NVIDIA launch new notebook graphics chips
Thinking of buying a new notebook? Might want to hold on until we’ve had chance to review these two new graphics chips from NVIDIA. The company has launched a pair of processors today, the GeForce GTX 580M and GeForce GTX 570M.
Both are pretty high end processors: the 580M is slated to make its first appearance in Alienware’s giant M18x and is the company’s fastest current mobile chip. It has 384 unified shaders and a base clockspeed of 620MHz, while the 570M is slightly lower power with 336 cores ticking over at 535MHz – although actual speeds can be tuned by the laptop manufacturer.
They don’t look like a massive upgrade to the older GeForce GTX 485M and its ilk, although NVIDIA is claiming a 20% increase in framerates across the board. Worth keeping an eye on though.
Id Software’s John Carmack picks a side in the Nvidia/AMD GPU war
We sat down with legendary John Carmack and picked his brain on a few of our favorite topics. Along the way, we asked him which graphics card–AMD or Nvidia–he would buy right that second and why. His answer might surprise you.
Bulletstorm on PC to support 3D
Epic Games have confirmed to Big Download that Bulletstorm will support Nvidia’s 3D Vision system, and that the PC version will be the only one supporting 3D technology.
PC gamers with access to an Nvidia GeForce graphics card, the 3D Vision kit and a 3D capable monitor will be able to play Epic’s insane shooter in brain-bending 3D-o-vision come February 22.
Developer Cliff Bleszinski may be living in hope that this PC exclusive feature could cheer up PC gamers after he made them ‘grumpy’ by tweeting that the Bulletstorm demo would only be available on consoles.
So does this make up for the lack of a PC demo? Let us know in the comments.
Nvidia announce wireless graphics card
Nvidia have announced the launch of the KFA2 GeForce GTX460, the world’s first wireless graphics card. Read on for details.
