DragonTamer1

I'm too lazy to look it up, is this the same PR guy that said the PS5 would do 4K at 240FPS or something like that? I'm only mildly surprised that they said it would have Ray Tracing as the upcoming Xbone is supposed to have it as well. Same with the SSD, I still want to know if that's something the user would be able to replace and upgrade or if it is mounted right to the board. The Ray tracing will probably be a different technology than what Nvidia uses. I know there is more than one type but I don't know the specifics of each one.

I like my rift a lot but the fact that it needs to be tied to Facebone is an annoyance. I got a good laugh when it asked me to link my FB account and I don't have one. At the same time though, there is no way in hell I'm spending $650 on a vive. It really isn't worth it. I didn't want MR because I wanted something that didn't use inside out tracking, and everyone I know that uses them (or at least their specific ones) has some sort of issue with it.

VLC support needed a third party plugin that no longer seems to be supported. I tried about a year ago with no luck. I don't watch Blu-ray disks much but when I do I use Leawo Blu-ray. Can be a bit clunky but it is free. I usually just rip the disk with MakeMKV.

Is it safe to assume that the survey may have been a bit skewed? It said an investment firm conducted the survey but I didn't see how it was distibuted. It's a little less impressive when you consider that earlier that year the same survey has 84% for apple which is a 2% growth of their surveyed market share.

I was specifically referring to the fact that steam does not have a direct hand in developing the the majority of the titles released on their platform and that it's unheard of for any company to charge that much money for simply distributing a product. Edit: Apple apparently charges 30% for products sold on the apple store but this is the only company I could find an example of.

I've been having this issue with MSI afterburner for a while now and can't for the life of me figure out what the problem is. So to start, Afterburner will not properly display the GPU usage instead showing them sitting at 0% usage whether I have it set to unified monitoring or not. This is annoying and makes it difficult to find game settings that are hammering the GPU for no reason. The other problem, which is the more serious of the two problems, is that after running for about an hour or so, any attempt to open or close afterburner is met with an error that just says "Out of Memory." It's not talking about system memory as I still have plenty to spare. It also is not taking about GPU memory so I think it's overrunning some internal limit. I suspect this is causing a stability issue with overclocks since an otherwise stable overclock will just spontaneously result in a crash. I have no idea what is causing this. I was running the latest version of afterburner and actually rolled it back to see if it would fix the issue and it didn't. I've updated graphics drivers and afterburner as well as every combination of rolling them back and forth. I'm at a loss and can't find any information about this specific issue.

I originally thought that 2k games/Gearbox had a falling out with steam but I couldn't find any news article about it so I must be thinking of something else. You could say that it's greed motivating these decisions though I think in every case so far it has been the publisher not the actual developer that makes the decision. On the flip side they may not like that steam is taking 30% of their revenue for doing little to no work. 30% is actually a considerably large percentage of the profits being taken and I can't think of anywhere else that is taking such a large chunk either online or real world. As a perspective, most retail stores will take somewhere between 5-15% on the products they sell.

The devs get a larger cut verses Steam. Steam takes 30% and Epic takes 12%. Steam will take less as your sales go up but there is not guarantee that your game will make those sales targets, and they are also fairly high sales targets to meet. The Epic exclusivity is either the devs thinking that if they only release on Epic they will make more profit verses steam. If the game was launched on both then I suspect that people who have both platforms would buy it from steam instead which would cut into their profit. I believe Epic also guarantees that a sales target will be met and the devs get reimbursed if that target is not met. I don't think they've had to use this yet as if they did they would hemorrhage money faster than a collapsing communist state and businesses are not in the business of loosing money.

I think the general idea here is to hurt 2k games with this tactic. Everyone seems eager to complain that EGS exclusives are hurting developers but I think this is a good example of people hurting developers because they've gotten emotional.

Your temps are really not that bad. I have my cards allowed to run up to 90 before throttling and they frequently sit around 80 while gaming (two decently overclocked 480s). If you want to find out how hot your card will get, you can take the temperature of the card under load at your existing ambient temp and add the difference between the current ambient temp and your max expected to the cards temp. Absolute temp is not indicative of most use cases. Using a temp over ambient (sometimes called Delta T over ambient) is more flexible for changes in ambient temp. If you are really concerned you can add another fan to your system, you would be better off setting your two rear most fans at the top to exhaust and putting the other fan at the bottom of the case blowing air out of the empty PCIe brackets (remove them for better airflow). This creates a low pressure area at the bottom of the case where the GPU is trying to breathe in air that allows for the cool air being brought in by the front fans to move into.

I don't know off the top of my head or not if that PSU is a good one, but I generally tend to steer away from Thermaltake PSUs. Try this one instead.

Currently digging for more salt for this story.

I'm wondering if this is related to the RGB security vulnerability from a few months ago.

I think this would have been better if they still planned on selling the regular Rift with the Rift S or at least let the old tracking towers work as extra tracking. I have quite a few VR games that require tracking behind me or in areas where that cameras just can't see. I also don't want someone using my POV while I look at VR porn.

I have a home server that has been crashing with the Bad Pool Caller BSOD. At least I think so as this is the first time I've actually seen its bluescreen. I plan on trying to narrow down its cause but the odd thing is that it is causing my entire home network to shit itself in the process. Literally the whole network went down until the bluescreen was cleared. Has anyone ever heard of this before? Is it possible the network is causing the bluescreens?

Might have, we'll also need to hear from some other developers as well and see.

In one of the other threads going on right now an indie developer sent an email out that they were switching to Epic and about 1600 people asked for refunds out of the 47,000 or so who had backed it which is about 4% of the customers. I don't know if it's like this for every title but it seems the majority of people just don't care.

I brought up the consoles because it sounded like you were touching that subject with your original post, it's also a comparison that I see getting thrown around a lot but as I stated already is not a good comparison because one has a cost of entry while the other does not. It's still their choice, but as I said, people are more likely to act on emotion instead of logic and reasoning even if it's not the right choice. I've made snap purchases based on emotion, and I've also refused to purchase things based on emotion. Neither of these decisions were based on logic or reasoning but I made them anyway. One ended up being a mistake and the other didn't. You have chosen to not purchase from the Epic store, I've chosen to not care and purchase from them anyway if I really want the game. Keep in mind though that based on some of the numbers we've seen so far, the number of people who are not purchasing are a minority in this situation. This is a decent indication that what EGS is doing is working to some extent. Before I continue, it's important to note that the internet was very different in the early and mid 2000s when these companies came up. It was easier for a small startup to get recognition and exposure because of how much smaller the internet was at the time and the overall lack of major tech giants. This is why I didn't bother going back that far even to look at the original Steam layout, it is no longer applicable. Facebook is a mega site with over 2 billion users, nearly a quarter of the worlds population. Facebook has two main competitors that have a similar layout to what they do, Google+ (which is getting shut down despite being able to throw untold amounts of money at R&D to try and entice people in), and Telegram which despite being arguably better than Facebook in terms of features, only has on average one twentieth the user base. We can use that as a modern example though as we saw with the Facebook outage they saw a spike in registration. This demonstrates that people will switch platforms when they are more or less forced to but won't do so otherwise. Google came up because it was better than the main competitors at the time, however now we have other search engines that offer unique features that Google doesn't have but most people either haven't heard of them or just don't want to switch platforms because they already use Google for everything. History has shown, like at the height of the industrial revolution, that companies will hold a monopoly until acted upon by an outside force be-it the government or a much more aggressive competitor. It is immensely difficult for a startup company to get going on the internet because people don't want to wander outside of their comfort zone. As I said above, the early 2000s when these mega tech companies came around the internet was a different place and was still being explored. The number of people who were using the internet was also considerably smaller. Once people fall into a favorable routine they don't want to leave, this is simple human nature. That is why brand loyalty in the real world is a thing. In the real world monopolistic businesses would get broken up by the government but this is much harder to do on the internet outside of breaking up the companies themselves. The internet and the large corporations that live there are a perfect example of what happens when people are left to their own devices. As I've said already there are competitors but nobody is using them because everyone is already somewhere else. Just like DuckDuckGo and Telegram. Platforms with unique features that have yet to make a mark and are largely unknown in the tech space. Because as I've already said, that doesn't guarantee that people will use your platform. I'll admit that the Epic store doesn't have many of the features of Steam, but for a game store you need one core component that the Epic store does that. Epic has already talked about adding additional features down the road, but I would actually argue that some of steams features are actually trivial. While I'm sure some people use them, it is nothing more than an extra and would help serve as a pro-competitive selling point of Steam. I have actually followed this, I also looked at the .js file that was talking with the Epic servers. While I don't have an extensive programing knowledge, I know just enough to tell what data it was collecting. It was collecting web browsing data and EGS browsing data presumably to recommend more games to a user. This is collecting, at worst, the same amount of data that Google is collecting. I don't subscribe to the paranoia that because Tencent is a majority share holder, they are collecting user data for nefarious purposes and I won't subscribe to that until someone shows definitive evidence to support it. I use a Chinese made smartphone, use Chinese made software and play Russian made games. Just because these are not US companies, are you saying I should be paranoid and fearful that they are going to use my data for some sort of political overthrow? I've already had Facebook sell all my data to Russian hackers and I've had Google sell my data to god knows who. Both of these companies had access to considerably more substantial information than one Chinese investment firm is getting. I'll once again state that Epic should not have been skimming that file and Steam should have done more to protect it. Epic should not be tracking what you do during your web browsing, but neither should Google, Facebook or any other site that you visit since pretty much every site tracks you now days even if it's only within their site. The EGS is not perfect, it doesn't have the most admirable business practices and its CEO may not be the most likeable character, but they are doing the most they can with the shitty hand they've been given. You can complain and stamp your feet all you want but it's unlikely they are going to change their actions based on a vocal minority.

It sounds like you are tripping OCP on your power supply but your system could be overheating. What case do you have? How did you install your PSU (if you have a basement is it facing the top or getting fresh air)? Is the fan on your power supply spinning? Next time it happens let the computer sit for about 20-30 minutes and see if it will restart without resetting the power supply.

Epic is competing with steam, it may not be how you would like, but they are competing. Using your store comparison, most stores have exclusive products to their store, sometimes store brand sometimes not. This is not an uncommon practice, in fact it's less common for a company to not use this practice in the real world. Even if they are the same, it is marketed differently to make it sound like it is better on their platform. The console comparison is also not an accurate one either because to buy a console exclusive you would have to go out and buy a new console for $300+ and possibly pay for an online subscription, on PC you download a free piece of software and make an account for free. There is a cost of entry to one and not to the other, I wish people would stop making this comparison. In a vacuum, this would work. The internet is not a vacuum, and people in large groups operate under a hive mind aspect. They all move to where their friends are and rarely explore outside their circle. This is what lead Google to be the leader in... well everything, YouTube is the top video platform, Twitch is the top streaming platform, Facebook is the top social media platform. People gravitate towards the group because it's safer to be with the group than to stand out. If it was as easy as make a competing platform and make the games cheaper to compete, doesn't it seem like someone would have done that by now? The reality is most people don't want to leave steam. I have seen countless times a game that is cheaper on another online store and people will just wait and get it on steam, usually because they don't want to be bothered with another launcher. People cannot be trusted to make rational decisions as people are too quick to act on emotion, that's why most TV commercials are trying to play on emotion rather than facts or reasoning. That being said take the example I've given. You are trying to compete with steam, you have two options and both are shit. You can do what I described above, make a new platform that has many of the same features as steam and your games are marginally cheaper on average. You run the very real risk that nobody will join your platform because people don't want to switch and would rather pay the extra $10 to $15 dollars on steam just to have the game with the rest of their library. Your company can no longer afford to operate as you have not been able to gain a significant enough user base to offset cost of operation. You go bankrupt and sell your store to someone like EA or Ubisoft who simply shuts it down. In the second scenario, you make a game store knowing that people are not likely to switch just because your prices are cheaper. Your only real option is to try and get big games exclusively on your platform to entice your user base to join your platform if they want to buy the game on day one. You and your company are going to be the ass end of the internet for a while but you do manage to build a sustainable user base to keep your company from going under and possibly manage to establish it as a viable alternative. These are the two shitty options you are given, compete "fairly" and get stomped by a monopoly or get more aggressive in moving people to your platform. As a businessman you have to pick one. If they ISP servicing 4 houses is faster then yes, this is competition. You also can't use this analogy for the same reason I stated above, cost of entry verses a free barrier of entry. Both Steam and Epic are at fault for this. Epic should not have been scanning this file when there is an API to do the same thing. Trying to distance yourself from the competition is a flimsy excuse. Steam is at fault because if this file is that important, it should have been better protected from scanning in the first place. The fact that it wasn't is either negligence or the file itself is not actually all that useful for anything nefarious. I suspect that it's a bit of both. This is nothing against you, you simply mentioned a lot of the talking points in a single post. I feel that everyone that is being critical of the Epic store should look at the big picture and try to approach the issue from the other side instead of being so quick to criticize. I know that not everyone can do this (this isn't an insult, literally some people are not capable of doing this) but it's better for a productive discussion. I'm not going to be a popular man for making this post, but it's something that I felt needed to be made. I'm largely indifferent on the issue so I don't really care one way or the other. I just wanted to try and bring perspective to the discussion. I am a bit keen to see where EGS goes in the future and if they do become a full fledged competitor to Steam.

Remembering that it's not an exact science, or that I'm particularly good at it, I tried doing a perspective shift on the original pics.

I'm confused as well, didn't that come out years ago?

Mine updated last night and annoyingly broke youtube. I was force signed out on all my tabs and kept getting an error when trying to sign back in. Ended up clearing all my cookies and history to fix the issue.

Digital Foundry found it to be pretty high. If it is that high, I doubt that gamers are going to be lining up to play it.

Google is making it sound like this is going to replace everything and is going to be the future, but they are forgetting that in the US where this is launching there are a large number of people without the internet speeds required to even watch a Youtube video in 480p, let alone stream a game in 1080p60 or higher. People like having the physical hardware in their home, like PC gamers... especially PC gamers. Have you seen how obsessive we can get over our hardware? This is useless for something like VR because the latency would be too high. They never mentioned the price, I'm wondering if they are going to offer it "for free" and just sell all of your data instead.