Technology - Google News

Amazon updates the Fire HD 8 with a faster processor, more RAM, and USB-C - Circuit Breaker
Unreal Engine 5 Announced With Gorgeous PS5 Demo - IGN - IGN
This business laptop doesn't quite rival the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but is less than half the price - TechRadar India

Amazon updates the Fire HD 8 with a faster processor, more RAM, and USB-C - Circuit Breaker

Posted: 13 May 2020 06:01 AM PDT

Amazon has announced a new update for its Fire HD 8 tablet, adding a faster processor, more RAM, and USB-C charging. These are all welcome updates for the 8-inch tablet, which hasn't seen a meaningful update in years. There's also a new Fire HD 8 Plus model, which offers even more RAM and Qi wireless charging, in a first for any of Amazon's hardware.

The regular Fire HD 8 is getting spec boost nearly across the board. The processor is getting bumped up from a 1.3GHz quad-core chip to a 2.0 GHz one that Amazon says is 30 percent faster. RAM is going from 1.5GB on the 2018 model to 2GB. Storage is being doubled, going from a choice between 16GB and 32GB to 32GB and 64GB models, with up to 1TB of expandable storage through a microSD card (up from 400GB on the old model).

The display is, unfortunately, still the same, with an 8-inch 1280 x 800 panel, and battery life is still estimated at around 12 hours, although you'll be able to charge it faster, thanks to the addition of USB-C. All told, it's a similar set of upgrades to the improvements on last year's Fire HD 10, which also was overhauled with better specs and USB-C charging.

Those upgrades come at a price, though: the base model will now start at $89.99 instead of $79.99, although Amazon will be offering a limited time two-pack bundle for $159.99.

Along with the standard Fire HD 8, though, are two new models: the Fire HD 8 Plus, which, at $109.99, costs $20 more than the regular version but ups the RAM to 3GB, adds Qi wireless charging, and includes a faster 9W charger in the box and six months of Kindle Unlimited service.

Amazon will also be offering the Fire HD 8 Plus in a bundle that includes a new "Made for Amazon Wireless Charging Dock" from Angreat (an accessory company that currently supplies Amazon's USB-C chargers for the Fire HD 10) for $139.99. While the Angreat charger is specifically designed to fit the Fire HD 8 Plus, any Qi charger will work with the tablet.

There's also the usual "Kids Edition" of the standard Fire HD 8, which costs $139.99. That gets you identical hardware to the Fire HD 8, but it's bundled with Amazon's colorful "kid-proof" case (with the same updated stand as the Fire HD 10 Kids Edition). The Fire HD 8 Kids Edition also comes with a two-year extended replacement program and a free year of Amazon's FreeTime service for managing content and parental controls.

Preorders for all three Fire HD 8 tablets begin today over at Amazon.com, and all three models expected to ship on June 3rd.

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Unreal Engine 5 Announced With Gorgeous PS5 Demo - IGN - IGN

Posted: 13 May 2020 08:01 AM PDT

Today, Epic Games revealed the first look at Unreal Engine 5, its next-generation game engine designed with features meant to make game worlds more detailed and dynamic. To show off the power of its new game engine, Epic released a real-time tech demo called, "Lumen in the Land of Nanite" which runs live on the PlayStation 5.Lumen in the Land of Nanite is a fully playable title made up of Unreal Engine 5's two new tools: Lumens, a dynamic global illumination tool, and Nanite, a virtualized geometry that lets artists import film-quality art and assets into Unreal Engine.The demo shows a woman venturing into a rocky cavern and discovering a hidden temple. The demo makes a particular point to highlight how light and objects react dynamically, and the demo ends with a thrilling flight through a crumbling canyon. All of the assets and visuals in the demo are reacting in real-time, meaning the PlayStation 5 is processing the demo as it happens.

"I think a lot of people [will ask], 'Oh is [the demo] real?' But you know that demo was grabbed from the back of a PlayStation 5 development kit," says Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri in an interview with IGN. "An HDMI cable went into a disc recorder and played out real-time — no editing, no tricks, that's what comes off the box." Incidentally, Sweeney made clear that the SSD in that devkit is "far ahead" of current high-end PCs.

Unreal Engine 5: PlayStation 5 Tech Demo

Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney explained Unreal Engine 5 is meant "to do things that are absolutely not possible today." This means offering new levels of photorealism and visuality but also offer these tools in a way that increases the productivity and efficiency of game developers. "Lumen [and Nanite]... are not just order-of-magnitude leaps in visual quality but they're also greatly simplifying technologies for the artists who build content," says Sweeney.

The goal, according to Kim Libreri, is to make game worlds as immersive and realistic as modern movies, but where that goal differs from previous game generations is how interactive that realism is.

While games this generation and older are detailed and realistic, they're also static. The Lumens and Nanite demo showcase multiple instances where changes in the environment happen in real-time, and Unreal Engine 5 is capable of rendering these changes immediately. When rocks crumble, it's not a pre-rendered cutscene but a high-resolution rock asset moving in real-time based on the player's actions. When a light source changes, it's not multiple tricks to simulate a flashing light, but real-time processing power at work.

"If you notice, most video games today are pretty static environments. You know, things don't change, there's not a lot of cause and effect. You're lucky if you can change the state of a game and come back and it's actually changed. [Unreal Engine 5] allows everything to be dynamic."

"An HDMI cable went into a disc recorder and played out real-time — no editing, no tricks, that's what comes off the box."

Epic is quick to point out the quality of the assets used for the demo, which they say are film-quality assets as opposed to the ones typically used for video games. While movie-level visuals are often higher-quality, video game assets are lower-resolution and are buoyed by development tricks to make them seem more realistic.

"The interesting thing is a lot of times artists are having to make those super high-poly models anyways, they just have to take an extra step and build the low-poly model, put a lot of time and care into that and then bake all the high-quality details into a normal map," says Epic Games VP of engineering Nick Penwarden. " Now they don't have to do the extra work of building that optimized low-poly asset and they get higher quality visuals."

What's more, Epic says that the level of quality seen in the demo is going to be easier to replicate, especially from smaller developers who previously didn't have the scale or time to render games at this level. Assets at this kind of level and quality will be available on the Unreal store for other developers to easily use.

"It's really easy. You go to the Quixel asset store, download the rocks and the mountains, and the assets you want, and you just place them in there," says Libreri. "It's actually massively lowering the barrier of entry of how complex it is to make a game level."

Epic Games also announced that it's waiving royalties on the first $1 million in game revenue starting today, meaning developers using Unreal Engine will keep more of their profits. Epic Online Services is also available to make cross-platform play easier.

Fortnite will be released on next-gen consoles at launch and will be migrated to Unreal Engine 5 in mid-2021. Sweeney says Fortnite will likely be the first game running on Unreal Engine 5, but there are plenty of next-gen games currently in development using Unreal Engine 4 and even some first-party games will use Unreal Engine, though Sweeney did not specify whether it's Unreal Engine 4 or 5.

Unreal Engine 5 will be available in preview early 2021, with a full release scheduled for later that year, and will support current- and next-gen consoles, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

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This business laptop doesn't quite rival the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but is less than half the price - TechRadar India

Posted: 12 May 2020 08:00 PM PDT

Only a few days ago, Apple launched the brand new MacBook Pro 13. It's undoubtedly an impressive machine, but there exist a number of rival devices that can compete on both performance and price.

MSI Modern 14 laptop - $1461.79 at XoticPC (preorder)
(roughly £1200/AU$2250)
The Modern 14 isn't worlds away from the new MacBook Pro 13 - and it's certainly a lot kinder on the purse strings. It's only available to preorder at the moment, but with a dedicated graphics card, 2TB SSD and Windows 10 Pro, this MSI machine could well be worth considering.View Deal

Well, at least to a certain extent, as Apple's hardware is often customized and bespoke in nature. For example, it seems the MacBook Pro's Intel 1068NG7 processor is an Apple exclusive. It's built on a newer 10nm manufacturing process, has the highest base frequency of any Intel laptop CPU and an Iris Plus graphics processor that can push 4K content at 120Hz.

If you're not willing to fork out for the Apple device, however, you might be pleased to meet the MSI Modern 14. MSI is not a household name, but has been around for more than 20 years and is well known for its motherboards and gaming laptops. The Modern 14, though, is a business laptop and is currently available to preorder.

Unavailable in your region?

Note, international customers may have to use a specialist parcel forwarding service if they want to take advantage of the deal.

At $1,461.79 (roughly £1200/AU$2250), it is less than half the price of the Apple device (which has a suggested retail price of $2,999) and boasts a comparable configuration.

The CPU is a slower Intel Core i7-10510U, but you do get a dedicated graphics card: the Nvidia Geforce MX330 with 2GB GDDR5. The machine also features a 2TB XPC M.2 NVMe SSD and Windows 10 Pro, to highlight its business credentials.

Found a better deal?

Have you managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new? Let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.

Now, how do the two compare? The MacBook Pro is heavier, has a higher resolution and a smaller screen (which means a better pixel density). Its memory is also almost 50% faster and it boasts a much larger battery (58Whr vs 50Whr).

The MSI Modern 14 doesn't quite compete with Apple's new device, but it's not worlds away and could be a great choice for anyone after a high-performance business laptop.

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