You can now link your Bungie and Blizzard accounts ahead of ‘Destiny 2’

Why it matters to you

PC gamers can now link their Bungie and Blizzard profiles, which grants access to inventory management tools from their web browser.

One of the biggest changes between Destiny 2 and its predecessor is the fact the sequel is going to be available on PC — and given Activision owns both Bungie and Blizzard, the game is set to take advantage of the latter studio’s well-established Battle.net service.

Players who want to make sure they’re ready and raring to go when Destiny 2 hits can now link their Bungie.net profile with their Blizzard account, according to a report from Engadget. The PC version of the game is scheduled to launch a few weeks after its console release, but all players will have the chance to take part in an open beta over the course of the summer.

Players were already able to link their PlayStation Network or Xbox Live accounts to their Bungie profile in order to access the forums, take advantage of special offers, and redeem in-game items. Now the PC crowd is being inducted into the community, it makes a lot of sense for the studio to offer the same benefits to Blizzard account holders.

When the game goes live, linked accounts will allow players to check out their inventory via their web browser, without having to log into Destiny 2. That’s a pretty handy feature for a gear-centric game like this, so it’s worth taking five minutes to set things up.

Blizzard accounts are required for games ranging from World of Warcraft, to Hearthstone, to Overwatch — so it’s safe to say that a huge number of PC gamers are already signed up. Integrating these profiles into the Bungie ecosystem is a great way to welcome a new sector of the Destiny 2 community into the fold.

Throughout the lifespan of Destiny, there were calls for the game to be made available on PC. Bungie finally listened to the masses with Destiny 2, and the fact that the studio is taking advantage of its relationship with Blizzard suggests it’s doing everything in its power to ensure that the PC version of the game has no deficiencies compared to its console equivalents.

That’s great news for players, and it should ensure that Destiny 2 has a long lifespan across all three platforms it’s set to release on. The game is set to drop on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 6, 2017, while the PC release‘Destiny 2’ will hit PCs almost two months after it hits console is scheduled for October 24, 2017 — the upcoming beta period gets underway on July 18, with the PC beta starting in August.

How Apple could bring augmented reality to the masses with ARKit and iOS 11

Some of the biggest tech companies — Apple, Google, and Microsoft to name a few – seem sure that augmented reality (AR) is going to take smartphones to the next level. So far, it’s all been talk, but that could change before the end of this year. Apple is preparing to unleash ARKit, a brand-new framework for creating this kind of content.

AR has been a priority for Apple for some time. The company has spent a great deal of time and effort hiring staff and acquiring startups to ensure that it has all the talent it needs once the technology is mature enough for the masses. Now, we’re on the verge of Apple’s AR coming-out party: the release of iOS 11.

To understand the implications of ARKit, we spoke to a developer who’s worked on augmented reality tech for the better part of a decade, and has already spent some time putting Apples developer kit through its paces.

The ground floor of AR

Jan-Hein Pullens and his team produce AR content for clients in the home furnishing and real estate industries – and demand for their work may skyrocket as Apple attempts to bring the technology to the masses.

Today, there’s sufficient hardware and infrastructure to allow users to run high-quality AR content.

However, when Pullens and Pieter Aarts founded RoOomy back in 2009, the technological landscape was very different. It would still be three years before the Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign even brought virtual reality into the public consciousness. Google Glass, one of the first high-profile AR projects to get underway, wouldn’t be successfully prototyped until mid-2011.

Pullens and Aarts were initially excited by the prospect of giving people a way to see how large pieces of furniture might look in their own home using AR. However, the hardware to run that kind of software simply wasn’t available to the public.

“Eight years ago, for example, there wasn’t an iPad,” said Pullens when he spoke to Digital Trends on the phone last month. “People had desktops, and phones.”

Desktop PCs aren’t ideal for AR content because you can’t move them around to see different angles. And back then, smartphones weren’t much better off. They simply didn’t have the horsepower (or the sensors) needed to present AR software.

Whether you’re trying to sell someone a luxury sofa, or a luxury apartment, it’s crucial that your virtual visualization plays to the strengths of the product. “It needs to be very realistic, otherwise it looks gimmicky and like a game,” he explained.

Today, there’s sufficient hardware and infrastructure for some phone owners to run high-quality AR content. Google Tango is the most well-established platform on the scene right now. Unfortunately, it’s only compatible with two smartphones – the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro and the Asus Zenfone AR. Do you know anyone who owns those phones? Neither do we. But with the iPhone entering the fray, suddenly a huge chunk of smartphone users will be AR capable.

Apple opens the gates

ARKit will be supported by iOS devices that use the Apple A9 or A10 processors – the 2017 iPad, the iPhone 6S, and onward. Admittedly, that does leave the millions of users with older hardware unable to access AR content built using the platform, but it absolutely dwarfs the userbase for Google Tango, Microsoft HoloLens, and every other AR platform.

Sophisticated AR functionality requires specialized sensors, like a depth-sensing camera.

There is another complication. Some of the most sophisticated AR functionality requires specialized sensors, like a depth-sensing camera. It’s true that the iPhone 7 Plus has some depth-sensing capabilities, utilizing two lenses working in sync to measure relative distance. However, in the grander scheme of AR tech, it’s a relatively primitive solution.

In February 2017, there were rumblings that the next iPhone would implement an infrared sensor similar to the one used in Microsoft’s Kinect accessory for the Xbox 360, as reported by The Verge. This kind of sensor would provide much more detailed information on an object’s relative position to the device than the current dual-lens set-up. It’s also rumored that Apple will introduce some kind of component that serves this purpose as part of its 2017 iPhone refresh (read the latest iPhone 8 rumors), but there’s nothing official yet.

These new devices will be considered the baseline for AR developers moving forward, particularly because of the advantages associated with depth-sensing cameras. However, the combination of ARKit and current hardware is already bearing fruit. Pullens and his team spent some time with an early version of the development kit, and they like what they’ve seen.

“The first findings that we have with Apple ARKit are promising, they’re actually very promising,” said Pullens. He praised the way the platform copes with occlusion, and its capacity to prevent virtual objects from interfering with one another.

AR bedroom demonstration by roOmy

For Pullens, the most impressive aspect of ARKit is its stability. Virtual objects can often ‘drift’ when they’re not properly aligned with their real-world surroundings, which can be a big problem for the type of visualizations that he and his team at RoOomy produce.

“What I mean by drifting, is for example, a chair in an AR view,” he said. “You would like to see that chair be very stable – you wouldn’t want it to drift or tremble. So, the first findings that we have with Apple are very promising, because it’s quite stable.”

A virtual leather chair isn’t much help if it insists on floating towards the ceiling, or wobbles like there’s a cat under the cushion.

While Pullen had plenty of praise, he also raised some areas where Apple might make improvements. He noted the way ARKit renders light and shadow maps is alright, but added that he expects it to be even better once the platform is ready for release. He also suggested he can see its surface detection capabilities being refined significantly with an improved depth-sensing camera – so, it’d be ideal if the rumors of an infrared camera on the iPhone 8 prove true.

ARKit makes everything easier

AR developers are excited about ARKit because it should open the technology to a much wider audience. Apple seems heavily invested in AR, so we can expect this kind of content to be a priority for the iPhone and iPad. This is an appealing proposition for the people creating AR experiences.

We can expect this kind of content to be a priority for the iPhone and iPad.

Yet a bigger audience isn’t the only benefit of Apple’s development kit. ARKit also aims to remove a lot of the busywork from creating software, allowing developers to focus on how they can use the functionality to provide new and engaging experiences.

“It helps developers like us to provide new features and make good use of AR technology,” said Pullens. “Otherwise, one has to build everything themselves.”

For example, every AR apps needs surface detection that allows a virtual object to sit on a table or the floor. Previously, developers might’ve spent months creating their own surface detection algorithms, or make do with so-so middleware provided by another company. With ARKit, they have access to a highly sophisticated solution that’s already tailored to iOS.

“You get a lot of features already for free in this kit,” added Pullens, referring to functionality like occlusion and light and shadow maps. “This will give a big push to the development community, for new AR solutions to be out there.”

Early ARKit creations are already impressive

Developers who are interested in a sneak preview of ARKit can get it by downloading the beta version of Xcode 9, which includes the iOS 11 SDK. It is already leading to new ideas. AR and VR feed MixedRealityDesign has set up a website dubbed Made with ARKit, which curates a selection of the very best projects around.

The slightly creepy ‘A robot dancing in my living room’ demonstrates the superior stability that Pullens spoke about. An android performs some fluid dance moves in front of a sofa, and despite the camera moving around, the scene looks incredibly natural. The shadow that the robot casts on the floor is particularly impressive.

‘Inter-dimensional Portal’ places a window to another world in the middle of a city street. The graphics used to render this virtual space aren’t very refined, but the overall effect is arresting, particularly once the user walks through the portal. It’s easy to see how this kind of idea might be used in a location-based game along the lines of Pokemon Go.

While these two examples are fun, ‘ARKit will change how we order food’ is much more practical. Rather than looking at flat images on a paper menu, an app produces 3D visualizations of choices right on the table. Another practical implementation is the ‘AR Measure App Demo,’ which offers up a virtual tape measure.

These projects have rough edges, ranging from awkward user interfaces to ugly assets. It’s important to remember that these are early concepts created using tools that have been available for a matter of weeks. Still, ARKit is providing a solid foundation that allows some intriguing ideas to come to fruition.

Apple, in usual fashion, has taken time to get AR right, instead of being first. The first wave of results suggests it’s a step beyond Google Tango and other peers. The next step will be putting advanced AR-friendly hardware into the hands of a broad range of users, and that looks set to happen when the next iPhone is announced.

How Apple could bring augmented reality to the masses with ARKit and iOS 11

Some of the biggest tech companies — Apple, Google, and Microsoft to name a few – seem sure that augmented reality (AR) is going to take smartphones to the next level. So far, it’s all been talk, but that could change before the end of this year. Apple is preparing to unleash ARKit, a brand-new framework for creating this kind of content.

AR has been a priority for Apple for some time. The company has spent a great deal of time and effort hiring staff and acquiring startups to ensure that it has all the talent it needs once the technology is mature enough for the masses. Now, we’re on the verge of Apple’s AR coming-out party: the release of iOS 11.

To understand the implications of ARKit, we spoke to a developer who’s worked on augmented reality tech for the better part of a decade, and has already spent some time putting Apples developer kit through its paces.

The ground floor of AR

Jan-Hein Pullens and his team produce AR content for clients in the home furnishing and real estate industries – and demand for their work may skyrocket as Apple attempts to bring the technology to the masses.

Today, there’s sufficient hardware and infrastructure to allow users to run high-quality AR content.

However, when Pullens and Pieter Aarts founded RoOomy back in 2009, the technological landscape was very different. It would still be three years before the Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign even brought virtual reality into the public consciousness. Google Glass, one of the first high-profile AR projects to get underway, wouldn’t be successfully prototyped until mid-2011.

Pullens and Aarts were initially excited by the prospect of giving people a way to see how large pieces of furniture might look in their own home using AR. However, the hardware to run that kind of software simply wasn’t available to the public.

“Eight years ago, for example, there wasn’t an iPad,” said Pullens when he spoke to Digital Trends on the phone last month. “People had desktops, and phones.”

Desktop PCs aren’t ideal for AR content because you can’t move them around to see different angles. And back then, smartphones weren’t much better off. They simply didn’t have the horsepower (or the sensors) needed to present AR software.

Whether you’re trying to sell someone a luxury sofa, or a luxury apartment, it’s crucial that your virtual visualization plays to the strengths of the product. “It needs to be very realistic, otherwise it looks gimmicky and like a game,” he explained.

Today, there’s sufficient hardware and infrastructure for some phone owners to run high-quality AR content. Google Tango is the most well-established platform on the scene right now. Unfortunately, it’s only compatible with two smartphones – the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro and the Asus Zenfone AR. Do you know anyone who owns those phones? Neither do we. But with the iPhone entering the fray, suddenly a huge chunk of smartphone users will be AR capable.

Apple opens the gates

ARKit will be supported by iOS devices that use the Apple A9 or A10 processors – the 2017 iPad, the iPhone 6S, and onward. Admittedly, that does leave the millions of users with older hardware unable to access AR content built using the platform, but it absolutely dwarfs the userbase for Google Tango, Microsoft HoloLens, and every other AR platform.

Sophisticated AR functionality requires specialized sensors, like a depth-sensing camera.

There is another complication. Some of the most sophisticated AR functionality requires specialized sensors, like a depth-sensing camera. It’s true that the iPhone 7 Plus has some depth-sensing capabilities, utilizing two lenses working in sync to measure relative distance. However, in the grander scheme of AR tech, it’s a relatively primitive solution.

In February 2017, there were rumblings that the next iPhone would implement an infrared sensor similar to the one used in Microsoft’s Kinect accessory for the Xbox 360, as reported by The Verge. This kind of sensor would provide much more detailed information on an object’s relative position to the device than the current dual-lens set-up. It’s also rumored that Apple will introduce some kind of component that serves this purpose as part of its 2017 iPhone refresh (read the latest iPhone 8 rumors), but there’s nothing official yet.

These new devices will be considered the baseline for AR developers moving forward, particularly because of the advantages associated with depth-sensing cameras. However, the combination of ARKit and current hardware is already bearing fruit. Pullens and his team spent some time with an early version of the development kit, and they like what they’ve seen.

“The first findings that we have with Apple ARKit are promising, they’re actually very promising,” said Pullens. He praised the way the platform copes with occlusion, and its capacity to prevent virtual objects from interfering with one another.

AR bedroom demonstration by roOmy

For Pullens, the most impressive aspect of ARKit is its stability. Virtual objects can often ‘drift’ when they’re not properly aligned with their real-world surroundings, which can be a big problem for the type of visualizations that he and his team at RoOomy produce.

“What I mean by drifting, is for example, a chair in an AR view,” he said. “You would like to see that chair be very stable – you wouldn’t want it to drift or tremble. So, the first findings that we have with Apple are very promising, because it’s quite stable.”

A virtual leather chair isn’t much help if it insists on floating towards the ceiling, or wobbles like there’s a cat under the cushion.

While Pullen had plenty of praise, he also raised some areas where Apple might make improvements. He noted the way ARKit renders light and shadow maps is alright, but added that he expects it to be even better once the platform is ready for release. He also suggested he can see its surface detection capabilities being refined significantly with an improved depth-sensing camera – so, it’d be ideal if the rumors of an infrared camera on the iPhone 8 prove true.

ARKit makes everything easier

AR developers are excited about ARKit because it should open the technology to a much wider audience. Apple seems heavily invested in AR, so we can expect this kind of content to be a priority for the iPhone and iPad. This is an appealing proposition for the people creating AR experiences.

We can expect this kind of content to be a priority for the iPhone and iPad.

Yet a bigger audience isn’t the only benefit of Apple’s development kit. ARKit also aims to remove a lot of the busywork from creating software, allowing developers to focus on how they can use the functionality to provide new and engaging experiences.

“It helps developers like us to provide new features and make good use of AR technology,” said Pullens. “Otherwise, one has to build everything themselves.”

For example, every AR apps needs surface detection that allows a virtual object to sit on a table or the floor. Previously, developers might’ve spent months creating their own surface detection algorithms, or make do with so-so middleware provided by another company. With ARKit, they have access to a highly sophisticated solution that’s already tailored to iOS.

“You get a lot of features already for free in this kit,” added Pullens, referring to functionality like occlusion and light and shadow maps. “This will give a big push to the development community, for new AR solutions to be out there.”

Early ARKit creations are already impressive

Developers who are interested in a sneak preview of ARKit can get it by downloading the beta version of Xcode 9, which includes the iOS 11 SDK. It is already leading to new ideas. AR and VR feed MixedRealityDesign has set up a website dubbed Made with ARKit, which curates a selection of the very best projects around.

The slightly creepy ‘A robot dancing in my living room’ demonstrates the superior stability that Pullens spoke about. An android performs some fluid dance moves in front of a sofa, and despite the camera moving around, the scene looks incredibly natural. The shadow that the robot casts on the floor is particularly impressive.

‘Inter-dimensional Portal’ places a window to another world in the middle of a city street. The graphics used to render this virtual space aren’t very refined, but the overall effect is arresting, particularly once the user walks through the portal. It’s easy to see how this kind of idea might be used in a location-based game along the lines of Pokemon Go.

While these two examples are fun, ‘ARKit will change how we order food’ is much more practical. Rather than looking at flat images on a paper menu, an app produces 3D visualizations of choices right on the table. Another practical implementation is the ‘AR Measure App Demo,’ which offers up a virtual tape measure.

These projects have rough edges, ranging from awkward user interfaces to ugly assets. It’s important to remember that these are early concepts created using tools that have been available for a matter of weeks. Still, ARKit is providing a solid foundation that allows some intriguing ideas to come to fruition.

Apple, in usual fashion, has taken time to get AR right, instead of being first. The first wave of results suggests it’s a step beyond Google Tango and other peers. The next step will be putting advanced AR-friendly hardware into the hands of a broad range of users, and that looks set to happen when the next iPhone is announced.

Oculus to cut the cord, will release a stand-alone VR headset in 2018

Why it matters to you

If the cost and hassle of a heavy-duty PC has held you back from giving VR a try, and you’re not impressed with smartphone-based options, another option is on the way.

Today, if you want to use an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, then you need a fairly potent PC to connect to it. All of the computing power resides in the PC, which makes the $400 or so price for the Oculus Rift just part of the overall cost equation. And so far, it is that or go with an inexpensive smartphone add-on that does not provide nearly the same experience.

That is apparently changing in 2018, with Oculus working hard to create a $200 stand-alone wireless headset that does not require a dedicated PC to run, Bloomberg reports. The development should come as no surprise, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — Facebook purchased Oculus in 2014 — indicated at last year’s Oculus developer conference that such a device was possible.

At the conference, Zuckerberg said, “This is the kind of thing that we believe will exist.” he said. He was describing a device that would hit a “sweet spot” that is more expensive than a smartphone-based VR system like Samsung’s Gear VR and less expensive than Facebook’s own Oculus Rift system. That sentiment was reaffirmed in an email by Oculus spokesman Alan Cooper, who said, “We don’t have a product to unveil at this time, however, we can confirm we’re making several significant technology investments in the stand-alone VR category.”

There are not many details on the upcoming headset. It will have wireless controllers and an interface that will sport an interface that’s a bit like the Gear VR. The device will be manufactured by Chinese company Xiaomi and it will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile system-on-chip (SoC) to provide a similar gaming experience to the Gear VR. Facebook is apparently also working on a stand-alone VR headset that matches the Oculus Rift in power, but that one is not likely to come in at anywhere close to a $200 price point.

The lower-end product will not be a replacement for the Rift because it won’t have the high-end product’s positional tracking capabilities. That feature won’t make its way to a stand-alone product until a future version. In the meantime, Oculus will be working with game designers to ensure that a solid lineup of titles will be available and downloadable from within the VR environment.

If you are excited about the prospect of a stand-alone VR headset that does not tie you down to an expensive PC, then you will have to wait awhile to get your hands on one. Oculus won’t be shipping it until 2018.

Smartphone maker Vertu will close U.K. manufacturing operations, cut 200 jobs

Why it matters to you

Vertu stands as the biggest name in luxury phones and its disappearance leaves a gap for the market’s most discerning customers.

Vertu, a company known for building extravagant, handmade mobile phones, will cease its manufacturing operations in the United Kingdom, according to the Financial Times. An estimated 200 jobs are expected to be lost in the closure.

Vertu is facing a debt of 138 million pounds (about $178 million) and the company will now be forced to liquidate the facility after owner Murat Hakan Uzan could only offer 1.9 million pounds to cover the deficit. Uzan will retain the Vertu brand and its assets and reportedly hopes to resurrect the product line in the future.

Uzan only purchased Vertu in March and in June, sealed a partnership with TCL, the manufacturer of Alcatel and BlackBerry devices. TCL was to supply the luxury handset maker with advanced technology as part of the deal, which totaled an estimated $40 million and would have covered 30,000 units.

However, things began to fall apart quickly after the announcement. A report from the Telegraph emerged, citing overdue wages and payments to suppliers. At the same time, Uzan came under fire from Vertu’s previous owner, Gary Chen, regarding unpaid funds relating to the sale. Uzan claimed the company’s financial issues were concealed from him until after he assumed ownership, and the two sides have been threatening legal action.

As for Vertu, Thursday’s news marks what is likely to be the end of a chapter for the company. Nokia established the brand in 1998, with an attitude of building phones with the same level of attention and craftsmanship typically found in designer watches. As of 2013, Vertu operated 500 retail stores worldwide.

At the moment, other aspects of the company have not been affected by the manufacturing shutdown, though that is likely to change in the coming weeks. We will keep you updated as the situation unfolds.

Vertu’s latest device is the Constellation. Released in February, the phone features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, runs Android 7.0 Nougat (with an update), and features a sapphire-coated display. At a starting price of $6,000, it slots in beneath the company’s New Signature Touch, which begins at $9,000 and lacks the more expensive model’s more dramatic design touches — like a spring-loaded gull-wing door for the SIM card.

Star Citizen was rebuilt in Amazon’s Lumberyard, and it only took a few days

As a relatively fresh-faced-fish in an ocean of established names, Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine has its work cut out for it. When faced with the option of the Unreal Engine, Unity, or the latest rendition of the CryEngine, why would a developer opt for something built by a company like Amazon, which has little experience in games?

For Star Citizen creator, Cloud Imperium, it was down to a combination of Amazon’s Web Services (AWS), the engine’s royalty free model, and the fact that it was built on the same CryEngine code base as the game.

Star Citizen is one of the most attractive and most expansive games currently under development so the fact it has adopted Lumberyard is quite an endorsement. Both the game and the engine are ambitious projects, but moving over to a new engine half-way through development is often no mean feat, and Lumberyard itself has yet to prove its worth in a manner equivalent to its contemporaries.

To find out what Lumberyard’s features can add to the Star Citizen formula, and how the transition has gone, we organized a digital sit-down with Cloud Imperium COO, Carl Jones.

DigitalTrends: How much of a transition process was involved in moving from the original engine to Lumberyard?

Carl Jones: We found it very easy to transition as our engine and Lumberyard share a similar base in CryEngine. We made extensive changes in our engine from the ‘vanilla’ CryEngine, as had Amazon with Lumberyard, so for us the approach was to strip each engine down to their matching parts – then add our changes back again to the common core. Essentially this was the work of only a few days, so it was a very easy transition indeed.

You originally stated that Star Citizen’s development would not be delayed by adopting Lumberyard. Is that still the case now that you’ve been working with it for several months?

Yes – the change to Lumberyard hasn’t delayed us on the project. In fact, in some cases, such as utilizing the new graphics features implemented in Lumberyard, it saved time and sped things up compared to the very drawn out process of creating that work from scratch.

How much of an overlap was there between Lumberyard and the changes you had already made to the version of CryEngine you were working with?

Not so much. We’re lucky to have the engineering resources and talent to completely customize and rebuild huge amounts of our engine, as any ambitious project would, and we’ve done that to specifically service our games’ needs. Amazon has quite rightly built Lumberyard to service many different games and game developers.

“We will be able to do a lot more for Star Citizen and Squadron 42 without being concerned about the cost”

Both engines have advanced well beyond the original CryEngine base, but they have moved in different directions and will continue to do so. While this means we can’t benefit automatically from all the changes Amazon makes to Lumberyard by simply merging code, that’s really not a problem for us. Amazon has sensibly architected Lumberyard to be as modular as possible, which means we don’t have to make any wholesale changes to our technology, yet we can look at improvements Amazon makes on a case by case basis, and take advantage of them if we feel it works with our games.

We were already in a position where we were only ‘cherry picking’ changes to CryEngine, so not much changed for us there, and Amazon is making Lumberyard in such a way that this can continue indefinitely.

Since you adopted CryEngine 3 before the free-license change, did the move to Lumberyard and its royalty free model, mean it was a cost saving for Cloud Imperium?

Well you can’t get better value than free, of course! In the future, it means we will be able to do a lot more for Star Citizen and Squadron 42 without being concerned about the cost of licensing technology, which is no bad thing, but it doesn’t make a huge difference for us economically, in the short term.

Was the decision to move to Lumberyard at all based on the financial difficulties faced by Crytek?

We certainly wanted a technology partner that could support us and be with us for the long term, investing in tools and technology year after year, which Amazon of course can uniquely deliver. But mostly we liked Amazon’s strategy for gaming, specifically with Lumberyard, Twitch and AWS. We knew that over time Amazon would create the best game engine and support technologies to enable and power online games using AWS – it’s inevitable and will be a big help to us and our community, now and in the future. We’re always looking long term at CIG, and with Amazon as a partner, we’re able to feel confident about the future.

In what way will Star Citizen leverage the Amazon Web Services integration with Lumberyard?

We have built our game since day one to take advantage of cloud computing and have always run our platform and game environments on cloud platforms. We’re live on AWS now and taking advantage of AWS features in many ways. I can’t go into technical details at this point, but there are technologies we are working on now on AWS that will enable us to have the most detailed, massively populated universe for our players to explore and interact with. Some of these things simply have never been done before and we’re finding more ways to benefit from the architecture of AWS all the time.

Will Star Citizen make use of any or all the streamer-focused features like Twitch ChatPlay?

We have some really cool ideas for supporting Twitch and live streaming in Star Citizen, which we expect to be able to start showing around Gamescom time. We also have our own social platform, Spectrum, which we are looking to tie into Twitch and streamers in interesting ways in the future.

As one of the earliest big names to publicly adopt Lumberyard, has Cloud Imperium helped guide any other studios in their uptake of the engine?

“We knew that over time Amazon would create the best game engine”

I’ve personally recommended the engine, based on our positive experience with it and the support provided by Amazon, but game developers will always choose the right engine for their project, as no single engine can excel in every situation.

Are you working with Amazon and the Lumberyard team to provide feedback and ideas for its ongoing development?

We are in contact with the guys over there and we do talk a lot about our respective plans and roadmaps – but we don’t look to guide the future of Lumberyard for our benefit, per se. We agree that Lumberyard, like any engine, should be built to benefit all developers, but probably with more attention given to smaller, independent developers who need a simple, easy to use engine to create their content. Lumberyard can reduce the barrier to entry for upcoming game developers to create high quality content quickly. While we benefit indirectly from that, we’re happy to see the industry benefit from another game engine in the mix.

If Cloud Imperium were to finish Star Citizen tomorrow and begin work on a new project, would you pick Lumberyard as the basis for it again?

You have to pick the right engine for the game, but I think in most cases, I would say yes we would choose Lumberyard. It is really great for high-end PC game development, which is what we want to do. Of course, we have built a lot of our own technologies and tools with Lumberyard now, so our investment there would benefit us in making more games for our community using this engine.

Conclusion

While Star Citizen as a project has been mired by delays, and even five years on from its original unveiling is still considered exceedingly ambitious, Cloud Imperium does appear confident that Lumberyard can help bring it to completion. More importantly, Lumberyard’s flagship feature, its Amazon Web Services integration, has become a key component of Star Citizen‘s back-end structure.

It may well be that the AWS and streamer features will help drive much of the adoption of Lumberyard moving forward, though its royalty free model will certainly be attractive to developers big and small. That said, while Lumberyard’s success does not hinge on Star Citizen‘s, it would certainly benefit from it. With only a handful of games officially under development with Lumberyard, the first big one to see release will set the tone for the engine’s reception.

Time will tell whether this marriage of ambition between Cloud Imperium and Amazon pays off, but Carl Jones certainly seems confident that it’ll work.

Asus Ultra HD gaming monitor goes deep with huge color depth, AMD FreeSync

Why it matters to you

PC gamers looking for a new monitor with AMD FreeSync support and an Ultra HD resolution have another option provided by Asus.

Asus recently added a new gaming monitor to its arsenal without the popular Republic of Gamers brand. Listed as the VP28UQG, it stuffs a huge 3,840 x 2,160 resolution into a 28-inch screen that’s backed by a one-millisecond response time, which reduces motion blurring stemming from on-screen movement. The new gaming monitor also has a decent maximum brightness level at 300 nits for a great viewing experience during gaming marathons no matter the lighting conditions.

The new VP28UQG gaming monitor supports AMD’s FreeSync technology, which only works with Radeon-branded graphics cards and discrete GPUs. It synchronizes the frames per second output of an AMD Radeon card with the refresh rate of the monitor, eliminating visual screen tearing and stutter. Without this synchronization, gamers could see these visual artifacts as the GPU’s framerate fluctuates while the panel’s refresh rate remains consistent.

Asus doesn’t say what type of display technology it’s using with this gaming monitor, but the specifications indicate that it could possibly be In-Plane Switching (IPS) technology, which is known for its rich colors and wide viewing angles. According to the specifications, this panel supports more than one billion colors, but its vertical viewing angle isn’t a full 170 degrees.

Here are the hardware details:

Screen size:
28 inches
Aspect ratio:
16:9
Resolution:
3,840 x 2,160
Pixel pitch:
0.16mm
Maximum brightness:
300 nits
Maximum contrast ratio:
1,000:1
Smart contrast ratio:
100,000,000:1
Response time:
1ms gray to gray
Color depth:
10-bit
Supported colors:
1.073B
Ports:
2x HDMI 2.0
1x DisplayPort v1.2
1x 3.5mm audio jack
Tilt:
-5 to 20 degrees

As for other bells and whistles, the new gaming monitor includes the company’s GamePlus feature set such as a choice of four built-in crosshairs, a timer, a frames per second counter, and more. These are accessed by using the monitor’s 5-way OSD navigation joystick, which is also used to manage general, non-gaming settings like color temperature (four modes), skin tone (three modes), five low blue light levels, and more.

“The VP28UQG gaming monitor has undergone stringent performance tests and is certified by TUV Rheinland laboratories, a global provider of technical, safety, and certification services, to be flicker-free and to emit low blue light levels,” the product page states.

Finally, on top of AMD FreeSync support, this gaming monitor includes Flicker-Free technology to reduce all that horizontal flickering as the monitor flashes each frame on the screen. This is especially important during late nights and long gaming marathons, reducing eye strain and what Asus calls “other potentially damaging eye ailments.”

Right now, there’s no sign of a third-party product listing or a specified retail price, so keep checking back with your favorites until the product officially hits physical/digital store shelves.

Moto E4 vs. Moto G5: Battle of the budget phones

Motorola has stuffed the budget market full of great phones, but does the low-end Moto E4 hold its own against the G5?

This year has been one of overhaul for Motorola’s budget lineup, as evinced by the debut of six handsets in the C, E and G lines. They all share aesthetic similarities, but are are staged linearly, each appealing to a different segment of that entry-level market.

The Moto G refresh came first, at Mobile World Congress, and bifurcated the G5 and G5 Plus largely on performance lines — the former sported the Snapdragon 430 platform and a removable battery while the latter went mid-range with the proven Snapdragon 625 and a larger, enclosed battery, a superior camera and up to 4GB of RAM.

When the Moto E4 was announced, it wasn’t clear why Motorola decided to sell it in North America instead of the G5, but after using both for a time, it makes sense: they’re fairly similar — closer than one would initially think — and overlap in a few important ways. The Snapdragon 425 or 427 in the Moto E4 is definitely a little bit less powerful, and the 8MP rear camera considerably less reliable, not to mention the less pixel-dense 720p display, but overall the phones provide similar experiences.

You also can’t officially buy the Moto G5 in the U.S. That’s perhaps the most confusing part of this whole thing: Motorola sells the Moto E4 and the G5 Plus on its website, while the E4 Plus was just released in India and the G5 is available in markets like Canada, Europe, Latin America and other areas where the budget segment is less controlled by carriers.

So the main takeaway here isn’t so much a direct comparison between these two products, at least not for Americans, since the only way you can officially purchase the Moto G5 is for way too much money on Amazon, but rather to show that the sacrifices made in going down to the E4 aren’t tantamount to a downgrade, and as Jacklyn points out in her excellent video above, may in some ways provide a better experience.

What do you think? Would you import a Moto G5 over buying a Moto E4, or would you rather spend a bit more to jump up to the Moto G5 Plus, which is currently on sale? Let us know in the comments below!

Google Pixel 2 leaks: What we know so far

We’re a few months out from the launch of Google’s next Pixel phones, but the first details are already starting to leak, painting a very interesting picture of at least two new Pixel models for 2017.

Same as last year, it looks like we’re getting two phones from Google in 2017, but this time there are two different manufacturers: a smaller Pixel made by HTC, and a larger one manufactured by LG.

And while much of what we think we know about Google’s next-gen phones is limited to rumor and conjecture, we’ve recently gotten our first look at the new Pixels thanks to a new mock-up by a usually reliable source.

Check out our video roundup for an overview of everything we know about Google’s upcoming handsets!

• Android Central on YouTube
• More Google Pixel 2 background
• Our Google Pixel (2016) review

Vertu closes shop, leaving billionaires to buy phones elsewhere

It’s finally the end of the road for this UK luxury phone company.

After running with what seemed like an unsustainable business model for years, luxury phone maker Vertu has shut down. The BBC reports Vertu is currently in the process of liquidating its assets, and 200 people have subsequently lost their jobs.

Vertu had previously changed hands a couple of times since being founded in 1998, most recently being sold by its Chinese owner in March to a Turkish businessman who planned to put in the necessary money to keep it going. It is reported that Vertu was running on a deficit of £128 million, however.

On the face of it, this isn’t all that surprising. Vertu has made some absolutely gorgeous smartphones with brilliant materials and truly unique craftsmanship that were fun to think about owning. But the prices were completely out of consideration for just about everyone — its most recent phone, the “mid-range” Constellation, started at $6,000. Some models were over $15,000.

People want a great smartphone experience more than they want a diamond-encrusted phone.

The prices were that high because they were hand-made in the UK out of exceptional materials — and naturally, produced in very small numbers. At the same time, Vertu wasn’t able to keep up with the latest innovations that all smartphones were offering — its specs weren’t great, its skin of Android was dated and it never produced a great camera. This model of creating bespoke ultra-luxury phone made far more sense 10 years ago before high-powered smartphones were the norm, but in the past few years this model was becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Even multi-millionaires, with all of their conspicuous consumption, typically just use the same iPhone 7 or Galaxy S8 that you and I do because they’re simply the best phones. These flagship smartphones are really good, and having a phone made out of calf leather, titanium, sapphire and diamonds actually isn’t worth using subpar software and a mediocre camera.

Vertu’s Turkish owner will retain the rights to the Vertu brand as well as its in-house technology and licenses, but it isn’t yet known if he plans to do anything with it. For now, the select few who own a Vertu have an (even more) extremely limited edition piece of smartphone history.