ShredBird

Hey LTT Team, Your claim that HDR in Doom Eternal and high refresh don't rate work simultaneously because the game doesn't support AMD FreeSync Premium Pro is factually incorrect. FreeSync Premium Pro monitors are agnostic to game and GPU vendor for VRR + HDR support. FreeSync Premium Pro support in games allows the game to read display capability and apply tone mapping automatically. This basically allows the gamer to skip the HDR calibration screen. It also allows the developer to control the FALD on a per scene basis to avoid excessive blooming. Games that support this are listed on AMD's website. If you are testing HDR with an AMD GPU, you should know that Doom Eternal is kind of odd because you sometimes have to have HDR off in Windows to enable it in game. This is opposite of the behavior when using an Nvidia GPU which detects Windows HDR setting just fine. Most other games don't have this issue, this is the only one I know that behaves like this. -Shred

Yeah, the 1UP mechanic has really saved me. Some levels I got through no problem because I had hoarded enough of them, but when you run out, you feel it.

Who's playing and what do you think? I'm loving it so far, looks great in 4K and HDR. The mechanics are brilliant and it's a punishing challenge! I do think this game is harder than DOOM 2016. I beat DOOM 2016 on Nightmare and that was pretty rough for me and this one feels like you hit that level of challenge much sooner.

This is a good question. During the Digital Foundry deep dive on Xbox Series X they talked about using the SSD as another level of cache for the game, this enables some truly amazing things: Consider this, in a lot of current games, when a level is loaded, as many assets as are needed are loaded into VRAM for that level. Let's say you have an 8 GB graphics card. The level assets might fill up all 8 GB of that. But when you're in a single room or portion of the level, to render what's in front of you might be using less than 20% of what's stored in memory. By having a fast SSD act as another cache, a developer could potentially use the entire 8 GB of VRAM on a single room of the level knowing they can stream in new assets fast enough to not interrupt the flow of the game. Asset streaming is not new, in fact it was pioneered with Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation 1 to overcome the memory limitations there. Huge open world games like GTA V make major use of it, but take into account that people will be using HDDs and that speeds may be slow. Because of this assets are slowly streamed out of a major pool of assets representative of a large portion of the game. With SSDs a full 8GB of VRAM could be swapped in and out in a matter of seconds loading new assets for the corner you just turned in the game. The amount of detail you can achieve on a per scene basis without increasing the VRAM requirement is staggering. With the Senua's Sword trailer, Digital Foundry questioned how the game footage seemed to be rendering such high fidelity textures and models per scene. SSD caching may be what's enabling this and it may be a requirement for certain next gen experiences. I think DX12 Ultimate that Microsoft announced is going to make it so that the advanced graphics features and perhaps storage features can be realized on PC. The question is how much effort will developer put in to adapt their game engines to PCs that are not on the bleeding edge. Another thing to consider, is, given the highly backwards compatible nature of the new consoles, developers will probably still want to reach those markets too and will have to adapt their engines to run on less powerful hardware anyway. A lot to digest, but I am excited. Usually console technology holds back what developers are willing to invest money on and this generation really stands out from the last as actually being cutting edge.

while (PSU != "Seasonic") do PSU = getNewPsu() end

If you really just want to try the basics, I would look into something called "PICO-8", it's a very simple virtual 8-bit game console that you can make your own games for. The language it uses is called LUA and it's a very simple C-like language. I like PICO-8 and Lua because there is nothing extra, there is a simple graphics API in the form of baked in LUA functions you can call and you get the instant visual confirmation of what you're programming. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the complexity of getting started in a more formal language without actually getting your feet wet in how to think as a programmer and games programming helps you see the fruit of your labor instantly. As many others have stated here, though, Python is probably the most approachable if you want to go that route.

I have the original Oculus and just tried the Rift S for the first time. The tracking on the S is fine, the lenses are definitely better, the "screen door effect" is reduced due to a different subpixel layout. The S also accommodates eyeglasses much batter and due to the headband design feels a bit more balanced. That being said, the original Oculus has MUCH better speakers built in.

If it's derive from Pegasus then I can see how it can get pronounced a bunch of different ways by English speakers that is most certainly different from a Greek pronunciation. This reminds me of people debating how to say the aircraft manufacturer Embraer, which is just shorthand for "Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica". Most people say "em-brayer" but if you read it phonetically from what it would be more like "em-bra-er" where the r's have a single rolled sound and sound more like a softened d.

There are plenty of brands going for a simple looking and well built laptop. Dell XPS and Microsoft really helped PC makers embrace the idea that Windows hardware can and should be available in a premium unbloated package. I bought one of the first XPS 13s and loved that thing and I only recently replaced it with the new Razer Blade Stealth GTX model. The new Razer is exactly what I needed, something with fast enough specs to run engineering applications and program on plus enough graphics horsepower to game when I'm on the go in a very portable package. There is nothing as small as the Stealth GTX with the same specs and that really matters for me, it's hardly bigger than my old XPS was with a lot of added utility. Razer costs more than some of its competitors, but generally their pricing doesn't look that crazy to me, they are generally offering a bit more in some areas in terms of material selection and things like that and they seem to be in line with other premium offerings like Surface. Some people compare the Razer tax to the Apple tax, but honestly no one gets close to the Apple tax.

Hey forumgoers! I'm looking for a good and short (1.5 foot or shorter) USB A to USB B type cable to use with my DAC. I'm not looking for some snake-oil USB cable, just something well built that will get folded up and thrown in and out of a laptop bag. There are a few brands I like for braided cables and whatnot, but a lot them don't offer short cables. Anwyay, I was just curious of what other people may use with their DACs and if they had any recommendations. Thanks in advance!

It likely will switch itself to analog headset mode when you plug in a 4 conductor TRS connector. A lot of laptops do this and they only appear as a single device in the sound control panel until you do so. @emosun, it's not common anymore, but I've owned plenty of soundcards over the years where every single input/output showed up as its own device in the sound device manager in windows, including analog microphone inputs.

You are either hearing noise in the recording itself or you are hearing noise from the amplifier driving your headphones. What are you plugging into and what sources of audio are you listening to?

Are your monitors all different makes and models? Some monitors don't actually turn off, they just remain in standby and Windows will still detect them as plugged in. It can be very annoying, I've run into the same issue with some displays.

I've seen these before, they were common on digital cameras and some phones (pre-smartphone) because they were more portable than mini and more sturdy than micro.

I just launched this for the first time myself on a Razer Blade Stealth 13 (Ice Lake / GTX 1650). How long does it hang? Mine took quite a while to get going, but it got there.