March 21st 2014 - The WAN Show Document

[LinusTech]

 

News Items Android Wear - Smartwatch OS

Source 1: theverge.com

Source 2: developer.android.com/wear/ (Developer page)

Source 3: youtube.com/ (Promo video)

n.b.: Topic on Moto 360 next, this topic is intended to be about smartwatch OSs

- Designed specifically for wearable devices.

- Motorola and LG have revealed their first Android Wear watches.

- Source 2 lists features.

- Source 2 has a list of partners at the bottom. (Samsung, HTC and Asus are all said to be developing Wear watches)

- Will connect to android smartphones.

- OS fairly similar to the one used in Google Glass.

- Much more information expected on June 25th.

- What can google use the OS for besides smart watches?

- Rumours flying around about an Apple watch (which will you pick/what do you want from a smartwatch?)

Connection: Smart watches

Moto 360

Source 1: cnet.com

Source 2: dailytech.com

Source 3: youtube.com (Promo video)

- Will launch in the summer.

- Motorola isn’t mentioning any specs.

- Pictures/Renders in source 2.

- No camera on-board.

- Launches first in US.

- Will probably feature wireless charging.

Connection: Mobile Devices

Amazon Smartphone

Source 1: bgr.com

n.b.: All of this is speculation.

- Predicted by Ming-Chi Kuo (His prediction about apple products have been correct in the past)

- Launching in next 3 to 6 months.

- Will feature 6 cameras, front, back and 4 for gestures.

- Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor.

- 4.7-inch display with a pixel density of between 300 and 320 ppi.

- 13-megapixel main camera supplied by Sony.

- Battery sized between 2,000 and 2,400 mAh.

Connection: Phones

iPhone 6 leaks

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP:

Source 2: www.expertreviews.co.uk

- A different design predicted for iPhone 6.

- Apple wants to replicate the multiple colours of the iPhone 5C.

- Apple wants to use aluminum, not plastic like the 5C. - What a failure this thing was eh? My uncle got one FREE on contract… First time I’ve seen that for a current Apple device.

- Rumours of two different screen sizes 4.7” and 5.7” screens. - Rumoured 389PPI ultra Retina

- Apple has put in 5 patents for “liquid metal”. May be used to encase the phone. Link to patent

**From Wikipedia: Liquid metal was used before by Apple in Sim ejectors of iPhone 3G’s. doesn’t has a clear “melting point” and behaves like plastic for casting at high temps and like a modable material at lower temps. Very little expansion and shrinking when heating or cooling, so complex shapes are possible.

- Camera could be up to 13MP.

- Sapphire glass screen. (According to reports: Apple has struck a deal with GT Advanced technologies to produce sapphire glass in a plant in Arizona.)

** Interesting notes from Corning conference call earlier this month: New Gorilla Glass coming in 2014, GG is lighter and clearer, and 1/10 the price, less expensive and environmentally harmful to produce, and while Sapphire glass may be more scratch-resistant, GG can take more pressure… They claim not to know what kind of glass Apple is using in their new iPhone 6, but are saying

Connection: Apple

Apple patent for system that puts Siri in charge of your home

Source 1: gizmodo.com

- Apple won 38 patents for a system of sensors “as big as a house”.

- They will let Siri do jobs around the home. (Reminding you to take meds and turn of lights)

- For example Siri will note that it’s 8am and you are in the kitchen and remind you to take your pills.

- You could use existing siri voice control to set alarms, etc.

Connection: Law

Ohio Auto Dealers Support AntiTesla Bill

Source 1: dailytech.com

- Ohio auto dealers are supporting a bill that would stop Tesla from opening stores outside of its only two locations in Ohio.

- Ohio auto dealers took legal action against Tesla's two stores, but it didn't fall in their favor. So now, the dealerships are pushing for a new bill that would prevent Tesla from opening more locations.

- The deep pockets of auto dealers is what Tesla believes is the cause for the recent direct sales ban in New Jersey.

- The problem is that auto dealers don't want to sell Tesla vehicles, and they're also barring Tesla from selling its own vehicles.

Source 2: http://jalopnik.com/ohio-senator-behind-new-anti-tesla-bill-gets-paid-real-1522401125

- estimates between 7000 and 42,000 in contributions since 2002 from auto dealers

Intel QuickSync added to In-Home Streaming

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Ashley

Source 2: steamcommunity.com

- (All points in Source 2)

Connection: Intel

New CPUs from Intel

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: keoghjacob

Source 2: linustechtips.com OP: wizpig

Source 3: techreport.com

Source 4: anandtech.com

- In the fourth quarter of 2013, she noted, Intel desktop CPU shipments rose 7%.

- Intel will address the problem of people having to de-lid CPUs head-on with a new unlocked Haswell part code-named "Devil's Canyon," coming in mid-2014.

- Devil's Canyon will have redesigned packaging (no CPU cooler?) and an improved TIM meant to increase overclocking potential.

- Devil's Canyon will be compatible with Intel's upcoming 9-series chipsets, motherboards based on those chips are widely expected to be released this spring.

- This CPU will also include Intel's Iris Pro graphics technology.

- The 14-nm Broadwell refresh of the Core i3/i5/i7 has largely been pegged as a mobile chip.

- Intel will be producing a socketed version of Broadwell that will drop into desktop boards based on 9-series chipsets.

Connection: Technology

Direct X 12

Source 1: blogs.nvidia.com

Source 2: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/178904-directx-12-detailed-backwards-compatible-with-all-recent-nvidia-gpus-will-deliver-mantle-like-capabilitie

- WIll be delivered sometime this year with enough time to see shipping titles holiday 2015.

- Forza 5 ported from Xbox One to PC with DX12 in 4 man months and with big performance improvements

- DX11 relied on one CPU core to do the bulk of the work. Everything else largely unutilized

- DX12 will much more efficiently leverage multiple cores. Less waiting for CPU cores means higher frame rates directly

- Orders of magnitude more draw calls to be supported versus DX11 and much more “direct to metal” programming methods available for developers who want to dig into it and control the way the GPU is rendering the game.

- NV to support DX12 on all DX11 GPUs - Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell

- AMD to support DX12 on all GCN, but no details on 5000 & 6000 series. I doubt it.

- DX12 could be leveraged on Xbox One, Windows Mobile, but  Microsoft has niether confirmed nor denied DX12 will come to Windows 7...

OpenGL Improvements

Source 1: blogs.nvidia.com

Source 2: http://schedule.gdconf.com/session-id/828316

- Unlikely team of  presenters - AMD, Intel, NVIDIA

- Unified message - By reducing driver overhead to near-zero, modern OpenGL can improve performance by 1.3x, or, with optimization 7-15x…

- OpenGL, aside from being an open standard, is cross platform, so while on the desktop this will mean higher FPS,  on a notebook or mobile device higher FPS and better battyry life and less heat output to boot!

Snowdrop Engine

Source 1: hexus.net

- Node-based scripting system allows all objects and actions to be connected and allows artists to focus on creativity rather than mundane tasks.

- Will be available first in Tom Clancey’s The Division later in 2014.

- Easy experimentation and testing of whatever is being worked on. The videos shows patterns being altered with a simple slider on a helicopter, and a little robot walking in a test environment.

Connection: Gaming Technology

Unity 5 announced with support for plugin-free browser games.

Source 1: techcrunch.com

Source 2: youtube.com (new features of Unity 5)

- Unity is a game engine that works natively on Xbox, PS3, Windows, iPhone, Android, and so on.

- A whole lot better — better lighting, better audio capabilities, greater efficiency, etc.

- Video of new features in Source 2.

- New features: Real-Time Global Illumination, Light baking previews (Light maps can now be previewed in real-time), Unity Cloud,  “Early Access” to WebGL support, New audio system, 64-bit CPU support, Nvidia PhysX 3.3.

Connection: Gaming Technology

Mantle & True Audio patch for Thief released

Source 1: hexus.net

Source 2: tomshardware.co.uk

n.b.: Notes on this edited a lot.

- Mantle now released on Thief. Performance comparison charts on Source 2. Top two results on graph 2 (ON SOURCE 2), show a direct comparison of DirectX to Mantle on Thief.

- Feb. 25th Thief is released

- March. 18th Its audio may actually work now

- Positional audio was always buggered out, I will try it again now and see if this fixes it.

- A non issue since it only works on R9 290 and R9 270 lawl

- Consists of three Tensilica HiFi2 EP Audio DSP cores built into the GPUs. So “no” impact on GPU performance.

- TrueAudio is said to handle the game's new convoluted reverb audio effect. You can turn the feature on or off on any machine. But on a system without TrueAudio support, it'll supposedly increase CPU utilization.

- Offload to cpu? Nope. True audio uses programmable DSP. Pwned.. Oh interesting. Alright then. So… I guess why did we bother with the programmable DSP in the first place? Pwned again?

- Promising for owners of entry level CPUs.

- Improvement with mantle was 1fps on a 4770k + 270x

Connection: Gaming Technology

Project Morpheus

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP:

Source 2: wegotthiscovered.com

Source 3: oculusvr.com/dk2/

- 1920x1080 screen VS. 960x1920 per eye

- 90deg FOV - 100deg FoV

- will integrate with the PlayStation Camera for tracking and PlayStation Move for motion control.

- Playstation Camera can account for some amount of skeleton movement(crouching so far)

- HDMI/USB, although they want to make it wireless

- 5 inch panel

- sometime 2015

- John Carmack : “Calibrate PS4 VR expectations: a game that ran 60 fps on PS3 could be done in VR (stereo 1080 MSAA low latency 60 fps) on PS4.”     

- Oculus Rift inventor Palmer Luckey stated, “Consoles are too limited for what we want to do.”

- Every single Demo I’ve tried so far would work on a PS4… That being said most are junk

- Hopefully the cost is more in line with Oculus and less inline with Sony HMD (999.99)

- software partners including Epic Games, Crytek, Autodesk, Unity, and more

- Sony will be showing demos of Thief, EVE Valkryie, and more running on Project Morpheus at GDC. So much for Oculus’ killer app…

- Was running on a windows 7 PC at GDC… lawl… http://i.imgur.com/g3famPC.jpg

Connection: VR

Oculus Rift DK2 announced

Source 1: theverge.com

Source 2: oculusvr.com/dk2/

Source 3: pcgamer.com

- We are working on integrating audio solutions so you don’t have to wear bulky headphones.

- Resolution : 960x1920 per eye

- FoV : 100deg

- Refresh rates : 75/72/60 Hz

- Persistence : Low(2ms/3ms/Full)

- Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Magnetometer

- Built in Latency tester(ALL THE TESTING!)

- 12.5 thousand units in 36 hours

- DK2 really is for developers. It is not for consumers. We don’t need consumers to buy it, we don’t want consumers to buy it. Because the consumer version is really going to be so much better.

- Crushing expectations that DK2 will be similar to the release version

- we think we’ve figured it out. DK2 is a really good step on that path. The consumer version is going to be better in a lot of ways.

- we want any developer to be able to make VR games. Not just big developers or established indie developers. We want someone who’s in his garage and just learning how to make games to buy a Rift and make games for it.

Connection: Video Games

Walmart starts video game trade-in program - better late than never eh?

Source 1: crunchyroll.com

- Games, but not consoles can be traded in

- You get a store credit rather than being stuck just being able to buy gaming gear

- Need the retail box for the game

- The resale of used games is coming later this year, but open to employees already

- Average credit payout per game of $35

Connection: Video Games

Wildstar MMO pre-order gets 20% discount

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Dealzon

- 20% off on GMG.

- Coupon code:  PLOCVS-G2T5YX-DATY6M

Connection: Video Games

Valve’s Free-To-Play Movie

Source 1: washingtonpost.com

Source 2: youtube.com (trailer)

- “Extended commercial. An effective extended commercial, but definitely an extended commercial.” - Andrea Peterson

- The structure of the release and the content were all really aimed at promoting the DotA brand.

- About a Dota 2 tournament called “The International” with the main prize being $1,000,000.

- Follows 3 people though the tournament, one of which wins.

- Forced negative view from WP?

Connection: Valve

Valve CEO holds iPad and iPhone

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: minimalist

Source 2: n/a

- Picture in Source 1.

Connection: Valve

Steam Controller

Source 1: linustechtips.com OP: Misanthrope

Source 2: themittani.com

- Pictures of new and old in source 2.

- Changes will allow developers to support the Steam Controller more easily, as the redesign resembles and works like other controllers on the market.

- Removes touch screen. Adds D-Pad. Adds XYAB in traditional diamond arrangement.

Better than Bieber Gmail closes door on NSA; all email now encrypted

Source 1: majorgeeks.com

- Today's change means that no one can listen in on your messages as they go back and forth between you and Gmail’s servers - no matter if you're using public WiFi or logging in from your computer, phone or tablet.

- In addition, every single email message you send or receive -100% of them - is encrypted while moving internally.

News Links

• http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/20zj2m/a_second_massive_leak_sony_is_interested_in/

• http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-03-20-far-cry-4-set-in-the-himalayas-has-ridable-elephants

[MegaDave91]

Hi Linus

[TheNinjaNextDor]

Linus's post count is no longer 1337.

That must be the cause of the forum going slow.

[beebskadoo]

Linus! Fix the forum....It's broked

[Tea1337]

Nothing on the galaxy S5?

[Antistatic12]

It wouldn't feel like a WAN show without Rift news.

[Peter Yacono]

*cannot* wait until haswell-e 

 

8-cores get in me. 

[MasterJV]

I thought broad well was going to get iris pro? I'll have to watch the video later to clarify

And 8-Cores intel cpus are awesome

[NICKT]

Anyone else have a sudden urge to play badminton?

[7850OC]

awesome show 

 

i miss the garage sale  :blush:

[WolfStrong]

Real men shave with a straight razor or safety razor. DIRT cheap, and a better shave than even dollar shave club can get you. That is all =)

[marty14]

Just wondering why the You Tube Video of the WAN Show has been 720p max over the last few weeks ?

Something broken ?

 

[angrylemon]

apple + home = suicide

[Stav Kats]

You didn't talk about the release of Oppo Find 7, which I find very disappointing. I think it was the highlight of the past week.

[Admire]

To quote slick...."Im not part of this"

[LOST TALE]

I'm sure you already know about it as you've mentioned, but I will still post.

 

Balance your time spent on each topic