Traveling from meeting to meeting or wandering the vast expo halls, I noticed a handful of reoccurring themes at GDC 2024 in San Francisco. On the one hand, were the developers attending the conference and their focuses (I'll write my thoughts on that soon), but on the other hand was artificial intelligence. Yes, that buzzword is something that you can't walk two steps without hearing. I'm tentative in my thinking toward AI, recognizing both its potential for greatness and its potential for extreme abuse.

At GDC, though, I did see some visions for AI in gaming that captured my attention. There are companies investing in healthy AI that aim to either aid creators or open up new possibilities for creators, and I had the privilege of seeing some of those potential futures, as well as talking to some of the people behind them. AI still poses a lot of unanswered questions and is rightfully restrained by controversy (at this point, we're still too reliant on corporations being responsible), but it was refreshing to see the other side of that equation.

AI at GDC: Major moves from NVIDIA

I see so much potential in NVIDIA's Covert Protocol demo. (Image credit: NVIDIA)

First, let's address the massive AI elephant in the room: NVIDIA. The globally popular company most known for its RTX gaming graphics cards is also one of the world's leaders in AI investments and has risen to the upper echelons of the most valuable companies thanks largely to those investments. I met with NVIDIA at GDC 2024, and the company had a lot to show me, including using AI to animate character faces when talking, translate player speech into games, upscale and improve performance in games, and even completely change a game's visual style through filters or mods.

I won't go into detail on all of that, though, because I already did. In this article I'll be focusing more on the other AI products, concepts, and tools I saw at GDC. If you want to learn more about NVIDIA's contributions, please go read my full, in-depth article on RTX, DLSS, AI, and everything else NVIDIA showed me at GDC.

AI at GDC: Inworld with Xbox, Ubisoft, and more

Xbox and Inworld partnered to prototype a text-based RPG built on AI, and I had a lot of fun with the demo.

(Image credit: Windows Central | Zachary Boddy)

NVIDIA's Covert Protocol demo, which showed how NPCs powered by AI brains can create a deep, interactive detective-style game, was done in partnership with an AI company called Inworld. It's a company with three main areas of focus at the moment: narrative, characters, and worlds. In each category, Inworld is working with different companies to build out an AI engine that can power brand-new gaming experiences, and I had a chance to check out its booth at GDC and speak to some of the team behind it.

Starting with narrative, Inworld actually partnered with Xbox to create the Narrative Graph, which can be used by writers to plot out a dynamic, flexible narrative structure for games. Inworld demoed this by letting me play a TTRPG-esque text-based game. Similar to something like Dungeons & Dragons, there was a narrator who set the scene, guided player action, and provided in-game lore and information. My job was to respond to that information in any way I saw fit and push the story forward.

With Narrative Graph, game writers decide on story beats, using lore and dialogue points, and create character profiles to provide direction, nuance, and context to the AI engine. Character arcs, branching paths born of major decisions, and crucial story progression elements can all be plotted out in advance, ensuring that the AI engine has both the information and guidance necessary to stay within the realm of the game and prevent hallucinated answers.

Honestly, the demo was a lot of fun. The AI narrator responded well to all my queries and actions; when I was unsure of what to do, I asked for more information on my objective or the world explored the area or inquired about my available tools and abilities. In true TTRPG fashion, I explored a sci-fi fortress in search of a valuable artifact, using the ventilation system and my own stealthy skills to bypass security and slip out nearly unseen. It was dynamic and felt deeply personal because I truly made everything happen. I had to be flexible, but the result was a short but excellent roleplaying experience.

I spoke with Inworld afterward about the balance between player agency (including allowing room for players to goof off and mess with the AI) and the need for story progression, as well as how players always need a way to get back on track. We also discussed how the use of AI makes games like this considerably more malleable since I could've explored the surrounding area more instead of pursuing my objective or spoke more at length about the world. Overall, it opens up a ton of possibilities for RPGs and still requires the work of writers to create the world and characters.

Next, Inworld is considering how to use AI to create more believable and dynamic characters. It's in this category that NVIDIA lays with its Covert Protocol demo, which explores how the combination of Inworld's AI brains and NVIDIA's AI micromodules can create a unique detective gaming experience you can't find anywhere else. Here, writers can build character profiles, outlining background, in-game knowledge, motivations and objectives, personality traits, emotional tendencies and habits, and personal abilities.

It's an in-depth process that requires an intimate understanding of the character beyond writing simple lines of dialogue, but the result is an AI-powered brain that's able to generate in-world responses based on that criteria. It's fascinating in motion, and NVIDIA's tech helps animate facial expressions and open up a direct dialogue between the player and NPC via speech. The result? You can have an actual conversation with video game NPCs, including casual discussions, negotiations, and even full-blown interrogations.

You can read more about the Inworld Engine on the Inworld website. The company also partnered with Ubisoft to explore different implementations of this technology. Ubisoft's NEO NPCs are similar to NVIDIA's Covert Protocol NPCs in that they use the Inworld Engine as their brain but have deeper hooks into the game. In Ubisoft's demo, you see how its NPCs are actively aware of the in-game environments, ongoing events, and even the players themselves. These AI-powered NPCs are able to respond, comment on, or even engage with these elements as needed to progress the game or deepen the player experience. Of course, as you might've guessed, that ties into the next section: the worlds.

While these AI characters still require writers behind them (and are actually more effort than simply writing lines of dialogue), AI does make it easier to choose not to employ voice or motion capture actors. That's the trade-off for these kinds of unique gaming experiences — more narrative freedom but less emotional and impactful performances. Many games won't and shouldn't use these kinds of AI characters because many stories greatly benefit from the skills of human actors, and I don't believe AI should be used to attempt to blanket replace people in this way.

Unity is one of many companies exploring how AI can make game development easier. (Image credit: Unity)

Inworld is developing technologies that allow video game writers to create dynamic narratives and characters that embrace the chaos and creativity of players without sacrificing the believability of the in-game universe, but it can go further than that. These AI brains can actually be aware of the world in which they're placed, meaning those NPCs can watch the same video as you and comment on them in real-time or talk with you to lay out a mission plan that will actually be carried out, or recognize changes in the environments, new events, or player behavior that can elicit new reactions or story progression.

You can read more on Ubisoft's website about how the company's NEO NPCs specifically focus on how AI characters can contribute to this, but it's not just limited to that. Players may interact with something in their environment that may dynamically engage AI systems, creating the sort of evolving gameplay experiences we're typically only used to when our Dungeons & Dragons DM is particularly adept at spinning narrative webs. It's certainly not perfect, especially considering how dependent it is on writers very carefully crafting the detailed outlines through which the AI works, but it's certainly more dynamic than most narrative games can ever hope to be.

If you want to experience some of these things yourself, you can actually begin experimenting with Inworld today if you sign up on the Inworld website. Of course, Inworld is hardly the only company exploring these AI concepts. While Inworld partners with companies like NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Ubisoft, another AI company known as Convai partnered with Unity to show off its own implementation of AI-powered NPCs in games. There's a lot of movement in this field, for sure.

AI at GDC: Creating helpful development tools

AI doesn't just have the potential to open up new possibilities for gaming experiences; it can also make developing existing games easier, especially for indie developers with more limited resources. Inworld, for example, has tools to make it easier for developers to prototype and conceptualize game design ideas before committing to full development, so creators can iron out plans before investing significant time or resources. Inworld also offers a variety of documentation and tools for AI game development, infrastructure (including for enterprises), and more.

Elsewhere, GDC was packed with various summits discussing the potential uses of AI in video game development. Unity demoed some of these tools within its game engine, for example, while many speakers held lectures on how developers can take advantage of AI and machine learning for generating large levels, prototyping and game design, creating more believable NPCs and AI opponents, and even enhance performance or hunt down bugs.

The goal of this kind of AI usage is not to replace any part of the creative process but to streamline it for developers, and I liked a lot of what I saw. It might be especially useful for indie developers with game optimization, NPC behavior, and even the addition of enhanced localization or accessibility features, like assisting with facial animations when porting a game to another language or building safer online spaces.

While AI-influenced narratives and NPCs can be fascinating, this is honestly where I believe AI can have the biggest positive impact on video game development. It's an extremely complicated field, and smaller teams may not have the expertise or time to master every part of the development process; AI can fill in those gaps and give talented developers more time to focus on the creative elements, like gameplay, worldbuilding, and narrative. AI should be a tool, not a replacement.

AI at GDC: Between greatness and catastrophe

One day, a CP2077 sequel may let you chat with any NPC, inquiring about Night City, recent and current events,

opinions on local politics, and even advice and directions. (Image credit: CD Projekt RED)

Ah, artificial intelligence. The ambiguous blanket term for software that evolves and learns over time. The term "AI" has reached a boiling point in recent years with the ascension of companies like OpenAI, major investments from Google with Gemini and Microsoft with Copilot, and the growing number of AI tools, large language models, and unique implementations. AI is evolving so rapidly that governments aren't able to keep up with regulations, and the potential of AI is still so untapped that the potential risks are also largely unknown.

There's a fine line between greatness and catastrophe. AI has been a focal point for countless conversations and debates between casual internet dwellers and experts alike, and the controversy isn't liable to die down any time soon. In an ideal world, AI would make our jobs easier, freeing us from the mundane and giving humans more opportunities to embrace creativity and leisure; the adverse is one in which companies take every opportunity to squeeze as much profit out of AI as possible, regardless of how it affects everyday people and inspiring creatives.

I want to be optimistic, but I must be cautious about it — whatever your economic or political stances, companies shouldn't be trusted unreservedly because profits will always matter more than people. However, AI does have a lot of potential to create new game experiences that otherwise would be impossible, and can also enhance games during the development process as a tool for developers to use (especially those who may not have the resources or experience to do certain things manually).

After GDC 2024, I am intrigued to see what companies accomplish with AI and what kind of gaming experiences we'll see come out of these endeavors in the coming years. Soon, some of the best Xbox games may even use the AI I saw at GDC. I just hope that AI doesn't become yet another way for companies to drain the passion and creativity out of our games in the pursuit of money because I know we're all getting really tired of that.

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Yellow Brick Games, a game studio that was first launched in 2020, has finally and officially announced its first title. It's called Eternal Strands and it's going to be an action-adventure game with Unreal Engine 5-based graphics.

Here's how Yellow Brick Games describes Eternal Strands:

In this 3rd person action-adventure game, you play as Brynn, a young and fearless Weaver, determined to recover her people’s cultural home by uncovering the mysteries of the Enclave, a once powerful nation that now lies dormant. Fight epic, 25-meters-high climbable creatures – the Arks, while blending magical abilities with an arsenal of powerful weapons to keep the world from crumbling. Use the environment and extreme weather events to your advantage in battles against a big roster of fantastical creatures.

The press release added that players will be able to use the game world itself as a weapon thanks to "physics-based systems with engaging action-combat."

A new teaser trailer for the game was released today as well, and it definitely has some elements of Shadow of the Colossus for fans of those acclaimed games.

Yellow Brick Games is based in Canada, with offices in Quebec City and Montreal. It was formed by a number of former BioWare and Ubisoft team members. Arguably, the best-known team member is Mike Laidlaw, who previously was the creative director at BioWare for its Dragon Age series. He now serves as the Chief Creative Officer at Yellow Brick Games.

Laidlaw is quoted in the press release as well, saying:

Our hope with Eternal Strands is to deliver an adventure that brings a sense of fun and excitement to fantasy, while encouraging players to experiment with its systems. It’s a very different game to ones I’ve worked on in the past, and it’s been a delight to generally answer the question ‘what if the player does X?’ with ‘Cool!’. It’s also exciting to have a chance to build an all-new world that encourages and reacts to this kind of play.

Eternal Strands is due for release in 2025 for the PC via Steam, along with Sony's PlayStation 5 console and Microsoft's Xbox Series X and S consoles. While Yellow Brick Games previously had a publishing agreement with Take-Two Interactive's Private Division, the developer has now decided to self-publish its first game.

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Two cheapo Intel mini PCs, a Raspberry Pi 5, and an Xbox controller for scale.

Andrew Cunningham

 

I recently tried to use a Raspberry Pi 5 as a regular desktop PC. The experiment wasn't a failure—I was able to use a Pi to get most of my work done for a few days. But the device's performance, and especially the relative immaturity of the Linux's Arm software ecosystem, meant that there were lots of incompatibilities and rough edges.

 

One of the problems with trying to use a Pi 5 as a regular desktop computer is that, by the time you've paid for the 8GB version of the board, a decent active cooler and case, and (ideally) some kind of M.2 storage attachment and SSD, you've spent close to a couple of hundred dollars on the system. That's not a ton of money to spend on a desktop PC, but it is enough that the Pi no longer feels miraculously cheap, and there are actually other, more flexible competitors worth considering.

 

Consider the selection of sub-$200 mini desktop PCs that litter the online storefronts of Amazon and AliExpress. Though you do need to roll the dice on low-to-no-name brands like Beelink, GMKTec, Firebat, BMax, Trigkey, or Bosgame, it's actually possible to buy a reasonably capable desktop system with 8GB to 16GB of RAM, 256GB or 512GB of storage, a Windows 11 license, and a workaday x86-based Intel CPU for as little as $107, though Amazon pricing usually runs closer to $170.

 

In a fit of curiosity, I bought two of these systems to experiment with. We're still talking about no-frills, low-performance computing. But can these little PCs succeed where the Pi 5 let me down?

Oops! All E-cores

Junky, low-performance, generic mini PCs have been a thing for a long time, but within the last year or so, they've gotten a lot better because Intel's cheapest, slowest processors have also gotten a lot better.

 

The one you'll see the most often is the Intel Processor N100 (remember, Intel now uses "Intel Processor" for Intel processors that might have been called Pentium or Celeron in years past). They're quad-core chips that use a cluster of four small, high-efficiency E-cores, the exact same cores Intel uses in most of its current-gen desktop and laptop processors. Unlike the Intel Core chips, these Intel Processors don't include any large, fast P-cores to do heavy lifting.

 

But those E-cores are surprisingly decent compared to the old Atom or Celeron chips that used to go into these kinds of systems.

 

Intel has compared its E-cores’ performance to those of its 6th-generation Core CPUs, codenamed Skylake (head-to-head performance comparisons show the N100 running a bit slower, generally). But Skylake-ish performance is plenty for browsing and office work even in 2024, and the N100 is faster than older 4000-through 6000-series Pentium and Celeron chips by double-digit percentages in both single- and multi-core benchmarks, and they're significantly faster than a Pi 5. All this while still being considerably more power-efficient than Skylake (or its many, many iterations) ever was.

 

The GPU is also an improvement; with just 24 of Intel’s GPU execution units (EUs), it’s significantly slower than the three-year-old Intel Iris Xe integrated GPU (80 or 96 EUs, depending on the processor you get), and even an eight-year-old integrated GPU like the Intel HD 520 can beat it sometimes. But it’s at least a reasonably modern graphics architecture that benefits from the same ongoing driver improvements as other Intel GPUs.

 

What I used

There are truly dozens of these mini PCs, even once you exclude the ones with older Pentium, Celeron, and Atom chips in them (and you really should exclude them; no amount of money they save is worth the performance you give up, since the N95/N97/N100 don't have a ton of speed to spare).

 

I'll tell you about the ones I bought, but in case those models go away or aren't quite what you want, here are a few of the differentiators:

 

• USB-C and power: Most of these come with a USB-C port, but pay attention to what it does. On some boxes, it's used exclusively for power and can't be used for data or display output. In others, it can be used to power the box while also handling DisplayPort and USB speeds. Some of the latter type also have a separate proprietary barrel-style power jack that you can use instead of USB-C if you want to keep the port free. I have USB-C monitors with USB hubs built in, and I prefer boxes that can do everything over USB-C so you only need to connect one cable to the box to make it work.
• RAM capacity: These usually come with 8GB, 12GB, or 16GB of RAM, typically installed in a single RAM slot or in some cases soldered to the motherboard. For people who are just doing browsing and email on a single monitor, 8GB is still fine. But the price difference is small enough that it rarely costs much to buy a little more.
• RAM type: Most of these desktops still use DDR4, but a few use DDR5. In theory, DDR5's extra bandwidth will help a bit with graphics performance. In practice, these GPUs are so slow (and already so bandwidth constrained by single-DIMM memory setups) that it's probably not worth paying much for DDR5.
• Storage type and capacity: 256GB and 512GB SSDs are the most common; buy what you need, but as with the RAM, the price difference between the two is often as little as $10. Stay away from eMMC storage—look for either SATA SSDs or (ideally) PCIe/NVMe SSDs. What you get won't be name-brand or high-quality, but you might as well get all the speed you can.
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth: You'll find systems that advertise both Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6, and they rarely get more specific about it. The Wi-Fi 5 adapters will be older and slower but potentially better-supported if you're going to load Linux or some other non-Windows OS; the Wi-Fi 6 adapters are newer and faster but can be from more obscure, non-Intel companies.
• LAN ports: Most boxes have at least one and many have two, which is potentially useful if you're looking to turn one of these into a networked appliance. You'll also find both 1Gbps and 2.5Gbps ports.
• Other ports: Three or four USB-A ports and a pair of HDMI ports are nearly universal on these boxes, most of which advertise their ability to work with up to three monitors. The third display output is more flexible—it's a USB-C port on one of the models I bought and a full-size DisplayPort on one of the others.
• Design: This is the most subjective of these categories, and it's also probably the biggest compromise you'll make. Nearly all of the boxes are ugly or ergonomically awkward in some way, and some use rough 3D-printed parts with visible layer lines. You can at least try to find one where the no-name logo on the top is confined to a small corner rather than big enough to be seen from space.

 

The two systems I ended up settling on were the Bosgame B100 ($170 shipped, after coupon) and the GMKtec NucBox G2 ($180 shipped). The main difference I was looking for was DDR4 and DDR5 so I could measure the performance difference between the two, but both ended up demonstrating a lot of the other differences between these little computers.

 

The Bosgame system ended up being my favorite of the two, with a single USB-C port that could handle power/display/data and a design that, while not great (why on earth do so many of these systems put a CLR CMOS pinhole on the front of the computer), is reasonably understated and inoffensive. It used an older Wi-Fi module that ended up agreeing better with the various Linux distributions I tried, and had a full-length M.2 2280 NVMe SSD (from "GOFATOO," whoever that is) that wouldn't be hard to upgrade if you ever needed to.

 

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The GMKtec system has the benefit of a pair of LAN ports and DDR5, plus an LED ring around the bottom that was (surprisingly!) customizable in the BIOS. But its USB-C port only handles power, and it's a lot chunkier and more awkward-looking; its lid is also clearly 3D-printed, giving it a rough, homemade look. It also used an oddball M.2 2242 SATA SSD and doesn't leave room for something longer, which will make upgrades or replacements more difficult.

Comes with Windows 11 Pro!

One of the neat things about all of these mini PCs is that they tend to come with a Windows 11 or Windows 11 Pro license, despite costing around what a retail copy of Windows 11 Pro currently goes for. Both installs on my systems were activated out of the box just like any prebuilt Windows PC.

 

That said, there are good reasons to re-install a fresh copy of Windows 11 from a USB drive instead of using the installation that comes preinstalled.

 

Very occasionally, these mini PCs will ship with malware installed out of the box. But even without that, you'll sometimes encounter weirdness; neither of my boxes asked for Microsoft account sign-in. I'm not complaining, but it's a sign that these installs have been modified, even if there are totally easy and innocuous ways to make that particular tweak (contrary to what some online influencers would have you believe). The GMKTec box also seemed to believe it had a touchscreen installed, possibly a sign that the install image had been built on a touchscreen-enabled PC and then installed on the mini PCs (there's nothing nefarious about this; it's just weird and a bit careless). The GMKTec box also had Secure Boot disabled out of the box—I could enable it, but it raises the possibility that the Windows install could have been modified in a malicious way.

 

Using the Windows install that comes out of the box is probably fine on most of these, but blowing away the existing install and starting fresh is the surest way to exorcise any gremlins. Follow our guide to further clean up the default "clean install" if you want to minimize Microsoft's more annoying pop-ups, reminders, and upsell attempts.

 

Do make sure you grab the drivers you need first; Bosgame and GMKtec both, at least, offered driver bundles that cleared all the exclamation points in Device Manager, which I supplemented with newer generic graphics and wireless drivers from Intel's site. Store that driver bundle in a safe place just in case the no-name company that made your PC up and vanishes six months from now.

 

I didn't test Windows 10 on either of these boxes, but if you prefer it to Windows 11, it ought to work fine with the same drivers.

Good-enough speed, reliable compatibility

These N100 PCs don't make a great first impression, because the first thing they do out of the box in Windows is try to install updates—both from Windows Update and, because this is how Microsoft updates most built-in apps and a few system components, from the Microsoft store.

 

These tasks peg the N100's CPU usage immovably at 100 percent, indicating that the CPU is definitely holding the rest of the system back, and you can feel it. Add some other external task, like syncing a large Dropbox or OneDrive folder for offline use, and you'll find that the PC will need at least an hour or two to complete these routine tasks.

 

Once that's all settled, though, the N100 mostly fades into the background, and typical desktop use is mostly fluid and snappy. You feel the lack of P-cores (and/or the lack of high Turbo Boost clock speeds beyond 3.4 GHz) the most when launching apps, snapping windows, or loading large files or heavy web pages. This is the exact kind of work that benefits from the short bursts of extreme speed that P-cores are tuned to provide, and you do feel the absence of that performance here, even if it doesn't wreck the experience.

 

The other issue is storage speed. Generally speaking, even the systems that use PCIe SSDs are only connecting those to the rest of the system with a single lane of PCIe 3.0 bandwidth; the Pi 5 uses a single PCIe 2.0 lane by default, though most testers and reviewers have found that it can generally be run in PCIe 3.0 mode without problems.

 

In our testing, that will limit your maximum read and write speeds to something like 800MB/s—a shade better than the 560-ish MB/s you'll get from a good SATA drive, but not by much. The GOFATOO SSD that shipped with the Bosgame box ran closer to 600MB/s. Upgrade the SSD for extra capacity if you want it or if you just prefer a name-brand drive with a warranty to a no-name NVMe stick, but don't overspend in the name of getting more speed. These boxes just can't give you much.

 

Also worth noting: Windows 11 was the only operating system I could run on the Bosgame box if I wanted sleep and wake to work normally. Other OSes either straight-up crashed or failed to function normally after waking up.

 

If you're more familiar and comfortable with Windows, you'll be more comfortable with these mini PCs because they can run Windows—the Raspberry Pi is a creature of Linux, and Linux is the only thing it can really use, despite a couple of projects that can get a barely functional version of Windows running. But even if you're a Linux person, there's a strong argument to be made for going with one of these N100 boxes instead of the Pi, at least if you're thinking mostly about performance and mainstream app compatibility.

 

That comes down to a few things: more memory, better CPU and GPU performance, and the wide world of x86-compatible Linux software. Performance on the Pi 5, especially with a decent overclock, is tolerable. Linux performance on the N100 is, as in Windows, often decent enough that you can often go for several minutes without thinking about the machine's performance.

 

The benefit of Pis for Linux desktop use is that they are stable, well-known and extensively documented boards with a reasonably well-resourced company making sure that everything necessary to support essential hardware (graphics, networking, audio) is available and functioning properly. Additionally, most alternate Linux distros for the Pi will either exist downstream of the Raspberry Pi OS or will be able to target the Pi 5 specifically so that they all work out of the box with no problems. It takes time for new hardware support to roll out across the entire Pi ecosystem, but eventually, you get to a point where "what do I want to run" becomes the big question and "can I run it in the first place" is less salient.

 

The downside of installing Linux on these low-end Intel systems is that they're PCs with random, relatively new hardware inside, and Linux's compatibility problems are generally at their worst when faced with random, relatively new PC hardware.

 

I found that Ubuntu 23.10 generally worked as expected on both systems, with functioning Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and graphics acceleration out of the box. Suspend-and-resume didn't really work because weird phantom keyboard input would keep me from typing my password into the login screen after waking the system up, and the Bluetooth mouse could become unresponsive occasionally. But the system was mostly fine during active use, which made those issues reasonably easy to work around, and it's possible that the problem was specific to my hardware (namely a USB-C monitor getting power, USB, and display data from the box through its USB-C port).

 

All of that said, once Ubuntu was up and running on the N100, things ran as smoothly as they had in Windows, give or take a bit of graphical choppiness. The biggest problem, sleep issues aside, was the font and icon and app-specific tweaks I had to make to slightly increase the size of the UI on my 4K displays, since operating system-wide "fractional scaling" remains problematic in Linux (some things are broken, some things are blurry, some things are both). Most Windows PCs these days seem to ship with 125 percent or 150 percent scaling enabled, and to Microsoft and its developer community's credit, those settings mostly just work these days, a major improvement over where things were a decade or so ago.

 

Linux Mint 21.3, which ships the older 5.15 LTS kernel, needed a kernel update before graphics acceleration would work on the Bosgame box and before graphics acceleration and Wi-Fi would work on the GMKtec box. Even once the GPU was working in most of Mint, Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome remained steadfastly un-accelerated. Even ChromeOS Flex didn't support the oddball Realtek Wi-Fi on the GMKtec system, though the other hardware all seemed to be working fine; Flex also failed to wake up normally from sleep on either box.

Better buys, depending on what you’re looking for

Let's not discount the strength of Raspberry Pis: They're phenomenally well-supported boards, and everything from the first-gen Pi to the Pi 5 is still getting first-class software support from the Pi Foundation. There's a big software and accessory ecosystem around each board, so it's reasonably simple to transform your Pi from a low-powered server to an emulation box to a makeshift baby monitor to a smart home hub to an educational tinkering machine and back again. And if all you need is cheap, basic computing power, there's no Intel box that can match the price of the $60 4GB Pi 5, let alone the $35 of the 1GB Pi 4 or the $15 of the Pi Zero 2 W.

 

It's only when you start talking about the Pi as a general-purpose computer that it starts to reach beyond its grasp, even accounting for the improved performance of the Pi 5.

 

These cheap Amazon and AliExpress Intel PCs have a lot of problems, too. You're unlikely to ever get any kind of ongoing BIOS or software support, and they come with bargain-basement SSDs and wireless modules that tend to be either very old or obscure and harder to find software support for. They're not very attractive, they can be difficult to upgrade, and if one breaks outside of your return window, you'll be lucky if you can find someone who will do anything about it for you. When running Linux, the systems may or may not go to sleep and wake up properly, and some distros (particularly LTS versions) may not work properly without a kernel update.

 

But if you're actually looking for a cheap functional everyday PC and not just a hobby project, these oddball no-name computers do give you a lot for your money. Arm software is on the rise, but in the here and now (and for the foreseeable future), there's simply no substitute for the app compatibility of an x86 processor, whether you're trying to run the same Linux distros you run on the Pi or you want to run Windows 10 or 11.

 

Source

Voice synthesis has come a long way since 1978’s Speak & Spell toy, which once wowed people with its state-of-the-art ability to read words aloud using an electronic voice. Now, using deep-learning AI models, software can create not only realistic-sounding voices but can also convincingly imitate existing voices using small samples of audio.

Along those lines, OpenAI this week announced Voice Engine, a text-to-speech AI model for creating synthetic voices based on a 15-second segment of recorded audio. It has provided audio samples of the Voice Engine in action on its website.

Once a voice is cloned, a user can input text into the Voice Engine and get an AI-generated voice result. But OpenAI is not ready to widely release its technology. The company initially planned to launch a pilot program for developers to sign up for the Voice Engine API earlier this month. But after more consideration about ethical implications, the company decided to scale back its ambitions for now.

“In line with our approach to AI safety and our voluntary commitments, we are choosing to preview but not widely release this technology at this time,” the company writes. “We hope this preview of Voice Engine both underscores its potential and also motivates the need to bolster societal resilience against the challenges brought by ever more convincing generative models.”

Voice cloning tech in general is not particularly new—there have been several AI voice synthesis models since 2022, and the tech is active in the open source community with packages like OpenVoice and XTTSv2. But the idea that OpenAI is inching toward letting anyone use its particular brand of voice tech is notable. And in some ways, the company's reticence to release it fully might be the bigger story.

OpenAI says that benefits of its voice technology include providing reading assistance through natural-sounding voices, enabling global reach for creators by translating content while preserving native accents, supporting non-verbal individuals with personalized speech options, and assisting patients in recovering their own voice after speech-impairing conditions.

But it also means that anyone with 15 seconds of someone's recorded voice could effectively clone it, and that has obvious implications for potential misuse. Even if OpenAI never widely releases its Voice Engine, the ability to clone voices has already caused trouble in society through phone scams where someone imitates a loved one's voice and election campaign robocalls featuring cloned voices from politicians like Joe Biden.

Also, researchers and reporters have shown that voice-cloning technology can be used to break into bank accounts that use voice authentication (such as Chase's Voice ID), which prompted US senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the chair of the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, to send a letter to the CEOs of several major banks in May 2023 to inquire about the security measures banks are taking to counteract AI-powered risks.

OpenAI recognizes that the tech might cause trouble if broadly released, so it's initially trying to work around those issues with a set of rules. It has been testing the technology with a set of select partner companies since last year. For example, video synthesis company HeyGen has been using the model to translate a speaker's voice into other languages while keeping the same vocal sound.

To use Voice Engine, each partner must agree to terms of use that prohibit "the impersonation of another individual or organization without consent or legal right." The terms also require that partners acquire informed consent from the people whose voices are being cloned, and they must also clearly disclose that the voices they produce are AI-generated. OpenAI is also baking a watermark into every voice sample that will assist in tracing the origin of any voice generated by its Voice Engine model.

So, as it stands now, OpenAI is showing off its technology, but the company is not yet ready to put itself on the line (yet) for the potential social chaos a broad release might cause. Instead, the company has re-calibrated its marketing approach to appear as if it is warning all of us about this already-existing technology in a responsible way.

"We are taking a cautious and informed approach to a broader release due to the potential for synthetic voice misuse," the company said in a statement. "We hope to start a dialogue on the responsible deployment of synthetic voices and how society can adapt to these new capabilities. Based on these conversations and the results of these small scale tests, we will make a more informed decision about whether and how to deploy this technology at scale."

In line with its mission to cautiously roll out the tech, OpenAI has provided three recommendations for how society should change to accommodate its technology in its blog post. These steps include phasing out voice-based authentication for bank accounts, educating the public in understanding "the possibility of deceptive AI content," and accelerating the development of techniques that can track the origin of audio content, "so it's always clear when you're interacting with a real person or with an AI."

OpenAI also says that future voice-cloning tech should require verifying that the original speaker is "knowingly adding their voice to the service" and creating a list of voices that are forbidden to clone, such as those that are "too similar to prominent figures." That kind of screening tech may end up excluding anyone whose voice might naturally and accidentally sound too close to a celebrity or US president.

Tech Developed in 2022

According to the company, OpenAI developed its Voice Engine technology in late 2022, and many people have already been using a version of the technology with pre-defined (and not cloned) voices in two ways: The spoken conversation mode in the ChatGPT app released in September and OpenAI's text-to-speech API that debuted in November of last year.

With all the voice-cloning competition out there, OpenAI says that Voice Engine is notable for being a “small” AI model (how small, exactly, we do not know). But having been developed in 2022, it almost feels late to the party. And it may not be perfect in its cloning ability. Previous user-trained text-to-voice models like those from ElevenLabs and Microsoft have struggled with accents that fall outside their training dataset.

For now, Voice Engine remains a limited release to select partners.

Source

Table of contents:

1. Windows 10 and 11 news
2. Windows Insider Program
3. Updates are available
4. Gaming news
5. Great deals to check
6. A blast from Microsoft's past
7. Random fact about Microsoft

Windows 11 and 10

Here we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And of course, you may find a word or two about older but still supported versions.

Let us start with this month's optional non-security updates. This month, those are big ones. Windows 11 received KB5035942, which delivered the Moment 5 Update and its features to all users. Windows 10 got KB5035941, and it also contains new stuff, such as lock screen widgets and Windows Spotlight for desktop backgrounds. You can skip these two updates and get new features, including the updated lock screen, as part of the April 2024 Patch Tuesday updates.

In addition to the latest non-security updates, Microsoft released a detailed blog post to explain how IT Admins can get faster access to optional updates on managed devices. Previously, it was only possible to expedite security updates.

Windows and Surface have a new leader. This week, Microsoft revealed that the two divisions are now united under one roof, led by Pavan Davuluri. About six months ago, Pavan was assigned as the new head of Surface following Panos Panay's departure from Microsoft to Amazon. Now, Pavan Davuluri will also get behind the wheel of the Windows department. As for Mikhail Parakhin, who is currently the Bing boss, he will step down and look for new opportunities within Microsoft.

The infamous POPCNT instruction struck again. This time, Windows Terminal was hit. However, a Microsoft engineer quickly refuted conspiracy theories about the company intentionally locking out old systems. The problem happened due to a compiler bug in MSVC 19.38 that resulted in the output of the CPUID instruction being misinterpreted.

Did you know that you can still access the old pre-facelift Task Manager in Windows 11? We recently published a small guide detailing how to open the old Task Manager in Windows 11 versions 22H2 and 23H2, so check it out.

In a similar fashion, you can resurrect the old Notepad, which will soon become the go-to text editor on Windows 11. Microsoft confirmed that Windows 11 version 24H2 will remove WordPad from the operating system.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft Released this week for testing in the Windows Insider Program:

The new Beta Channel build brought a surprisingly big set of features. Some of them Microsoft acknowledged publicly, while others are not ready for prime time. For example, the company finally fixed the broken address bar in File Explorer, allowing you to drag files and folders. The Share dialog is getting a built-in QR code generator, and the taskbar has a new home for the widgets button.

Some of you will be happy to know that Microsoft is working on a redesigned "All apps" list. Users discovered a feature ID that lets you switch from the list to the grid view. Check out this article to learn more about how to try that. Just keep in mind that the initial implementation is unfinished, which explains why Microsoft has not announced it yet.

As for build 26090, which was released in the Dev and Canary Channels, its most exciting part is probably the lack of the watermark in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Microsoft removed it in preparation for the upcoming version 24H2 release.

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

Microsoft Edge had an interesting week. Shortly after version 123 arrived in the Stable Channel, users noticed that it also installed a mysterious Microsoft Copilot app. According to Microsoft, it is there to power the new Copilot experiences, which are not available yet. A few days later, Microsoft pulled Edge 123 from the Stable Channel to address potential compatibility issues. Finally, on March 27, the company re-released the update with extra fixes and security patches.

If you feel like Microsoft Edge is taking too much RAM, you will be delighted to know that Microsoft is working on a feature that would let you limit the maximum amount of memory the browser can consume. It is currently rolling out to Edge Insiders in the Canary Channel, so check out more details here.

Microsoft Teams for personal use is getting a redesign. Teams Insiders on Windows 11 can try the reworked UI that features larger avatars, bigger reactions, more space between elements, improved materials, and other design enhancements. The Teams Insider program is open to everyone, so you can sign in if waiting for the stable release is not an option.

Microsoft also rolled out a big feature update for OneDrive for Microsoft 365 Basic subscribers. This $1.99/mo tier now includes ransomware detection and protection, an unlimited number of files in Personal Vaults, password-protected and expiring links, and offline folder support on mobile.

Chrome has finally joined the ranks of ARM64-native browsers on Windows. Just a few months before the launch of the first Snapdragon X Elite-powered PCs, Google released the long-promised version of its browser for Windows on ARM to give users better performance and energy efficiency.

Speaking of Chrome, the browser will soon display better fonts on Windows. A page on the Chrome Platform Status revealed that Microsoft is working with Google on making the Skia text engine capable of "picking up" ClearType settings and adjusting text contrast and gamma accordingly. As of right now, Microsoft Edge is the only Chromium browser that follows ClearType settings on Windows 10 and 11 (the feature was introduced about three years ago).

Finally, Intel unveiled Microsoft's guidelines for "AI PCs," which will be on the market in a couple of months. As it turned out, a dedicated Copilot hardware key is a must for Microsoft to label a computer an "AI PC."

Other notable updates include the following:

• The Microsoft Store app on Windows received a new section for tracking changes and new features.
• The Microsoft 365 mobile app on Android and iOS received Microsoft Designer integration.
• Microsoft published an updated DC hardening timeline for SecureBoot.
• New Copilot features are coming to Microsoft Teams users.
• Microsoft will end .NET 7 support on May 14, 2024.
• Microsoft Edge 124.0.2478.6 is out in the Dev Channel.
• Microsoft Edge 124 is now available in the Beta Channel.
• Dropbox is now available in the Microsoft Store.
• Surface Pro 9 5G received the March 2024 firmware update.
• The Microsoft Photos app is getting a Copilot plugin.
• Logitech has updated its Options Plus app with Smart Actions for Copilot and new keyboard/mouse support.
• AtlasOS developers pitched improved latency and game performance in their "Windows alternative."

And here are the newest drivers released this week:

• Intel Game On WHQL 31.0.101.5382 with fixes for Horizon Forbidden West and more.

Finally, here is the latest edition of Microsoft 365 Roadmap Weekly, a series covering the newest additions to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap website. This week, Microsoft added new security features for Outlook admins, a new way to view hidden files in OneDrive on the web, and more.

On the gaming side

Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts and more.

Xbox Series X kicks off this week's gaming section with a big leak. Someone leaked images of the upcoming white edition without an optical drive. This is not the first time Microsoft is working on a separate disc-less version of its console to make it affordable to more gamers. Naturally, this leak is unconfirmed, so take it with a grain of salt.

Grounded from Obsidian Entertainment is getting its final free content update. On April 16, the game will receive a new boss creature, the New Game+ mode, and other improvements. On the same day, Grounded will arrive on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.

Forza Horizon 5, another first-party title from Microsoft, received a new free update called "Horizon Race-Off." It adds six exclusive cars, new props for Event Lab, and a fresh pack of premium vehicles. The series is now in full swing, so be sure to jump it to get the 2023 Ford F-150 Raptor R, the 2024 Ford Mustang GT, and other new-to-Forza cars.

Bethesda Game Studios, another Microsoft-owned studio, offered a small hint at Elder Scrolls VI development. The company said developing a new chapter in Tamriel's history still fills it with "the same joy, excitement, and promise of adventure."

With all the fuss surrounding Apple in the EU, Microsoft's gaming boss spoke about alternative marketplaces on Xbox. Phil Spencer told Polygon in an interview that that is not completely impossible. In the same interview, he offered some thoughts about a potential Xbox-branded handled console.

Xbox Insiders can try out keyboard and mouse support on Cloud Gaming. A small number of Xbox titles, such as Fortnite, Sea of Thieves, Halo Infinite, and others, now allow playing with a mouse and keyboard when streaming.

If you live in an officially supported Xbox region, you can try your luck winning one of four custom Xbox Series X, which were made to celebrate the release of South Park Snow Day. Each console features a unique character on its casing and controller. The contest ends on April 22, so be sure to participate.

Did you hear the news that Diablo IV is now available in Game Pass? If you plan to hop in, check out this article, which details how to get the game running on PC. Unlike Xbox, the PC experience is slightly more complicated, and it requires installing the Battle.net launcher.

Other interesting gaming news published this week includes the following:

• The Xbox Wireless Arctic Camo Special Edition Controller is now available worldwide.
• Halo developer Certain Affinity is laying off its employees for the first time in 17 years.
• Predator: Hunting Grounds is coming to Xbox Series X|S in late 2024.
• Xbox Insiders can preview Stampede: Racing Royale on their consoles.
• Nvidia GeForce NOW received new games, including South Park: Snow Day.

Deals and Freebies

This week's Weekend PC Game Deals features horror bundles, a wholesome metroidvania in the Epic Games Store, a free weekend in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and plenty of big discounts on games of all shapes and forms across different marketplaces.

Great deals to check

Every week, we cover many deals on different hardware and software. The following discounts are still available, so check them out. You might find something you want or need.

You can still save a lot of money on the following devices from all sorts of categories:

• Razer Edge, an Android tablet for gaming with a bundled controller, is $100 off.
• The 45-inch LG UltraGear 45GR75DC QHD monitor is $153 off.
• TP-Link's AX1500 Wi-Fi extender is $40 off.
• The Anker PowerConf C200 with a 2K sensor is down to just $47.99.
• Meta Quest 2 is now available for just $199.

A blast from Microsoft's past

John Callaham's weekly "Look back" series provides throwbacks into the past, detailing the company's products, partnerships, mishaps, and successes from years ago.

This week's blast from Microsoft's past comes from our fellow Aditya Tiwary, who took a look back at Microsoft launching Office for iPad exactly ten years ago. The move was quite bold for the then-new Microsoft CEO and, eventually, turned out to be a massive success for the company overall.

Random fact about Microsoft

And here is a randomly selected piece of trivia about the company, Windows, and other Microsoft-made things.

This week's trivia comes from Dave Plummer, a Microsoft veteran and a true treasure trove of interesting inside stories from the world of Microsoft. Dave recently published a story on his X, detailing how a temporary UI for the Format dialog on Windows NT had stuck around for over 30 years. Three decades later, it is still in use in the latest versions of Windows 11.

Source

What is new in the March 2024 Surface Pro 9 5G firmware update?

• Extends device security certificate authority.

• Improves system performance and stability, and addresses system bugcheck.

Here is the list of new drivers:

Here is extra information about the release:

Microsoft will soon expand its lineup of ARM-powered Surface computers. The company announced a May 20 event where it plans to unveil new consumer versions of the Surface Laptop 6 and the Surface Pro 10. Both devices are expected to feature quite a lot of changes, such as an OLED display, a new design, and more.

Source

Now that the miniature game console trend has already covered most of the biggest devices from Nintendo, Sega, and Sony, we’re starting to enter more niche territory. The Atari 400 Mini isn’t a rerelease of the company’s most recognizable console (that’d be the 2600). And it isn’t full of household names. But that’s also part of what makes it so interesting — the little gadget is a cute, playful way to explore a very specific and formative niche of video game history.

 

Like its contemporaries, the 400 Mini is a shrunken-down version of the original. That means a small box in a very 1970s shade of beige plastic, with a keyboard and cartridge slot that are purely ornamental. I appreciate just how retro this thing looks; even the included HDMI and power cords are beige. It has five USB ports (four on the front, one on the back), an HDMI port, and USB-C port for power. There’s one functional power button on the rear, coupled with a little red light to let you know it’s on. You also get one classic Atari joystick, which has been outfitted with a USB plug and the sneaky addition of a few extra buttons, including a shoulder button and a clickable circle around the actual stick.

The games line-up:

• Airball
• Asteroids
• Basketball
• BattleZone
• Berzerk
• Boulder Dash
• Bristles
• Capture the Flag
• Centipede
• Crystal Castles
• Elektraglide
• Encounter!
• Flip and Flop
• Henry’s House
• Hover Bovver
• Lee
• M.U.L.E.
• Millipede
• Miner 2049er
• Missile Command
• O’Riley’s Mine
• The Seven Cities of Gold
• Star Raiders II
• Wavy Navy
• Yoomp!

 

This is a plug-and-play device, so setup is exceedingly straightforward. It doesn’t connect to the internet, and the visual settings are pretty standard. There are two options: the 4:3 mode displays games in their original aspect ratio, while “pixel perfect” mode renders the pixels as squares. You also have the option to add virtual scanlines to imitate the experience of playing on a CRT display. Other than that, there’s not much to it. You scroll through games in alphabetical order, and it has console-level save slots, so you can pause and save your progress at any point while playing. It all works well enough, though it took me some time to get a handle on navigating the menu with a big joystick.

 

The more important part is the games themselves. The 400 Mini has 25 built-in games spanning Atari’s 8-bit era. That includes expected titles like Asteroids and Centipede, as well as slightly more obscure releases like the nautical-themed shooter Wavy Navy and Hover Bovver, Jeff Minter’s game about cutting lawns with a stolen lawnmower. The emulation is solid, and I was surprised by how well some of these games stood up. I had never played Crystal Castles before — a platformer where a bear tries to escape a series of magical mazes — but I ended up spending hours playing with my eight-year-old daughter, passing the joystick back and forth. Similarly, space sim Star Raiders II remains incredibly thrilling all these years later, and I was very happy to discover Airball, a fantasy maze where you play as a bouncing bubble.

 

It’s a well-curated list, and I found basically everything — with the exception of the dead-simple Basketball — still playable by modern standards. The collection does a great job of encompassing just what this hardware was capable of. And unlike most similar mini consoles, the 400 Mini has room for expansion. The various USB ports let you connect a variety of joysticks and keyboards, and you can also stick in a flash drive to sideload games. That opens up a lot of possibilities, especially considering how robust the Atari homebrew scene is.

 

Star Raiders II.

Image: Atari

 

That ability to expand the device is also important because the 400 Mini has a surprising amount of competition. It’s really not that hard to find ways to play Atari games right now. The company released a recreation of the 2600 last year that can play old cartridges, and the excellent Atari 50 collection not only has an expansive list of games but also adds historical context with its interactive documentary format. With that in mind, a $119 mini console could be a tough sell. But the bookshelf-worthy design combined with its flexibility might just push it over the edge — so long as you have a craving for some Star Raiders.

 

The Atari 400 Mini is on sale now.

 

Source

In partnership with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan and Nokia Bell Labs in the United States, Aston researchers were able to transfer data at a rate of 301,000,000 megabits per second using standard optical fiber. That’s compared to the average UK broadband performance at 69.4 megabits per second. In the United States, average download speeds are faster, averaging 242.4 Mbps, but the breakthrough is still over a million times faster.

The feat was achieved by using new wavelength bands that aren’t used in traditional fiber optic systems. The new wavelength bands are equivalent to “different colors of light being transmitted down the optical fiber.”

“Broadly speaking, data was sent via an optical fiber like a home or office internet connection,” said Aston researcher Ian Phillips in a press release. “However, alongside the commercially available C and L-bands, we used two additional spectral bands called E-band and S-band. Such bands traditionally haven’t been required because the C- and L-bands could deliver the required capacity to meet consumer needs.”

Aston University developed an optical amplifier that allows data wavelengths to operate in the E-band, which researchers say is about three times wider than traditional wavelengths used for data transmission. Before this breakthrough, no one was able to emulate E-band channels in a controlled way.

The solution is remarkable because it does not require new infrastructure to drastically improve internet speeds, and could allow significantly faster internet speeds through existing fiber cables.

The breakthrough could be a revolution in internet speeds across the spectrum of users. If implemented widely, this new and faster internet could help give access to the tens of millions of Americans who don’t have reliable internet. For average internet users, it could make downloading movies and large files near instantaneous. For large business and tech researchers, it could accelerate development speeds multiple times over.

Source : https://gizmodo.com/scientists-make-broadband-speeds-million-times-faster-1851374040

Today, a new report from The Information, citing unnamed sources, claims Microsoft and OpenAI are working on a joint data center project that will include developing a new AI-based supercomputer. the report claims this project could cost as much as $100 billion.

The Information says that the project is being developed under the code name "Stargate". That also happens to be the name for the popular sci-fi film and TV show franchise from MGM. In that fictional universe, the Stargate program is a super-secret part of the US Air Force, where people from Earth travel to other planets via an alien-made portal that was discovered buried in Egypt.

Today's report claims that Microsoft and OpenAI are currently in the third phase of a plan that will take five phases to build and develop this supercomputer as part of this data center network. Microsoft is said to be responsible for the financing of this project, which will reportedly be completed sometime in 2028.

However, this report also claims that the Stargate project may be dependent on whether or not OpenAI will be able to deliver its next-generation AI LLM model, GPT-5 in a certain time frame. The Information claims OpenAI currently plans to launch GPT-5 sometime in early 2025.

This new report comes on the same day that OpenAI officially announced Voice Engine. This project has been designed to create an artificial voice based on a real person, using a 15-second sample of that person's voice. However, the company has yet to release this new model, partly due to its possible use of creating "deepfake" voice of real people.

Source

When Gmail launched with a goofy press release 20 years ago next week, many assumed it was a hoax. The service promised a gargantuan 1 gigabyte of storage, an excessive quantity in an era of 15-megabyte inboxes. It claimed to be completely free at a time when many inboxes were paid. And then there was the date: the service was announced on April Fools’ Day, portending some kind of prank.

 

But soon, invites to Gmail’s very real beta started going out — and they became a must-have for a certain kind of in-the-know tech fan. At my nerdy high school, having one was your fastest ticket to the cool kids’ table. I remember trying to track one down for myself. I didn’t know whether I actually needed Gmail, just that all my classmates said Gmail would change my life forever.

 

Teenagers are notoriously dramatic, but Gmail did revolutionize email. It reimagined what our inboxes were capable of and became a central part of our online identities. The service now has an estimated 1.2 billion users — about 1/7 of the global population — and these days, it’s a practical necessity to do anything online. It often feels like Gmail has always been here and always will be. 

 

But 20 years later, I don’t know anyone who’s champing at the bit to open up Gmail. Managing your inbox is often a chore, and other messaging apps like Slack and WhatsApp have come to dominate how we communicate online. What was once a game-changing tool sometimes feels like it’s been sidelined. In another 20 years, will Gmail still be this central to our lives? Or will it — and email — be a thing of the past?  

 

---

 

The thing most people remember most about Gmail’s launch is the free storage. What Google remembers is the search. 

 

“If you think about the kind of value proposition that Gmail brought to the table when we first started, it was about lightning-fast search,” says Ilya Brown, Google’s VP of Gmail. People were tired of email management, Brown says. Spam was everywhere, and inbox storage was tiny. You constantly had to delete emails to make room for new ones. Gmail’s giant storage limit solved that.

 

But Gmail’s solution also introduced a new problem: now you had way too many emails. That’s where Google’s search prowess came in. If you’re never deleting emails, speedy and reliable search is a must.

 

If you’re never deleting emails, speedy and reliable search is a must

 

Google has tweaked the Gmail formula over time. In 2008, Google introduced themes, making Gmail’s inbox much more whimsical than the competition. (The little tea-drinking fox and I have been buddies ever since.) You now get 15GB of free storage. Gmail went mobile in the mid-2000s. And Google has made smaller changes like adding email priorities, smart replies, summary cards, and the one-click button to unsubscribe from that newsletter you definitely don’t remember signing up for.

 

Even with all the changes, Gmail feels largely the same. (Though, I guarantee if you look at an old picture of Gmail, you’ll be taken aback by how much has changed.) That may have to do with how few big or disruptive changes have been made in the intervening years. At launch, Google was free to shake up the email formula to its liking. Decades in, the company has to be careful not to disrupt the most widely used email service in the world. 

 

“What we take very seriously is building for things that [Gmail users] need,” says Maria Fernandez Guajardo, senior director and product manager for Gmail. With a product like Gmail comes big expectations for reliability. While Google is keen to experiment, the company has to take extra care in rolling any new features out and explaining how they’ll impact the product.

 

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Google brought Gmail to mobile in the mid-2000s.

Photo by Fabian Sommer / picture alliance via Getty Images

 

This could be why Google has made so few major changes over the years. Even as online communication has accelerated with DMs, group chats, and corporate messaging tools, most of that has happened around or outside of Gmail. Email still has its place, but it’s not quite the central way we communicate anymore. I used to keep Gmail open in my browser to talk to my friends and colleagues through Gchat. Now, I live in Slack with my Gmail off to the side.

 

---

 

When you have enough storage that you never have to delete anything, you can keep an infinite record of your life. Packages, receipts, itineraries of past trips, messages from loved ones, photos, appointments, documents — you can just label them, archive them, and search for them later.

 

A lot of this is detritus, but there are special moments mixed within. Email was how I kept in touch with my parents when I moved abroad in my 20s. Now that they’re gone, I’m grateful to have a record of that love sitting in my Gmail. When I go searching for those emails, it feels like stepping through time. I saw old college internship applications and grimaced through my old résumé. There were goofy e-cards from my high school pals. The cringiest breakup email from my first real heartbreak. A whole battle plan with friends to defeat Ticketmaster for Hamilton tickets. Little things that teleported me to a different place in my life.

 

Then...

Image: Google

 

...and now.

Image: Google

 

Most of those communications now happen over text or social media DMs, a decentralized network of communications meant to be far more disposable. It’s not quite as easy to search through your DMs as it is your inbox. Slack requires you to pay if you want to access older messages. Scrolling through my TikTok DMs to find a video a friend sent is tedious if it didn’t happen within the past day or two. I often feel the urge to screenshot chats I want to remember — only for them to get lost in my camera roll. Gmail’s ability to archive is still unmatched.

 

Gmail is like a passport for the internet

 

As Gmail became too slow for day-to-day communication, email became the “official” communication channel — a place for things you need searchable, tangible records of. It’s taken the fun out. I had to create a buttoned-up email address because my high school one was too embarrassing. New parents often make emails for their newborn children, both to secure an address and as a sort of digital baby book.

 

“We definitely recognize that Gmail is almost like an identity. It’s almost like it’s a representative of you in the outside world,” says Brown. “How do we help identity to evolve with [Gmail] users over time? We don’t have a solution yet, but we’ve been thinking about it.” 

 

Gmail is like a passport for the internet. Whenever I create a new account for a site or service, it’s tied to my Gmail. Often, it also doubles as my username. My Gmail is my ticket to all my apps, health care, taxes, bank accounts — my entire digital life. If I get locked out of anything, I go to my Gmail to get back in. I may not be excited to open up Gmail anymore, but my Gmail password is still the most important one in my life. 

 

---

 

Sometimes, I wake up to 100 newsletters and marketing emails and get the urge to burn it all down — to start fresh with a calm, anonymous inbox. But the reality is, there’s too much to lose. I’ve moved four times in 10 years, but my email has stayed the same. Every day, I have a friend who nukes their account on social media, but no one ever stands up to announce they’re quitting email. (Will Slack and TikTok even be here in 20 years?) I imagine the headache it’d be to set up a new email, to let everyone know, and the people who would fall through the cracks. It’s no question Gmail will endure; what I’m less certain of is what my relationship with it will be.

 

Google seems aware of this dichotomy, saying it wants to make email less laborious — to sprinkle a bit of that initial joy back into the inbox. 

 

No one ever stands up to announce they’re quitting email

 

“We want to think about, you know, the different delightful moments that aren’t always associated with email itself,” says Brown. “Sometimes that’s things you didn’t have to do or things that help you do something faster.” 

 

For example, if you email a colleague about getting coffee, perhaps Gmail’s AI pops up a recommendation for a local cafe and puts it on your Google Calendar. To me, it sounds like turning Gmail into a personal assistant or a digital librarian for my life. It’s still some form of managing an endless archive of my life, but maybe that’s just what email is now. Perhaps we can’t reinvent the inbox — just make it less horrible to manage.

 

Source

After Windows and Surface chief Panos Panay departed Microsoft last year, the software giant quickly split his two divisions into two different teams. It was a move designed to push Windows engineers to focus on more web and AI features under Mikhail Parakhin, who was previously responsible for Bing and ads. It didn’t work out.

 

Six months after that shake-up, Windows and Surface are back together under a new leader, following frustrations from the very top of Microsoft. The shuffling comes just as Microsoft gets ready for a big “AI PC” push.

 

Pavan Davuluri, who’s currently in charge of Surface hardware, will now lead both Windows and Surface. Mustafa Suleyman, the DeepMind co-founder who Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just hired, will now take over the company’s consumer AI push as the CEO of Microsoft AI. The hiring of Suleyman is a key admission that something wasn’t working out with the Windows and AI shake-up from six months ago.

 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been frustrated with the Windows web split.

Image: Microsoft

 

Nadella placed Suleyman above Parakhin in Microsoft’s organization chart. Parakhin had taken on parts of Windows engineering after Panay’s departure last year, and he had been working closely on Bing Chat and several Microsoft Edge features. Parakhin’s official title was CEO of advertising and web services at Microsoft, so if he remained in his position then he would have been a CEO, reporting to the Microsoft AI CEO, who reports to the actual Microsoft CEO. That’s a lot of CEOs, and Microsoft typically reserves CEO titles for big acquisitions like LinkedIn or GitHub, or for big divisions like Microsoft Gaming.

 

Instead, Parakhin is leaving his current position and “has decided to explore new roles” according to a Microsoft internal memo obtained by The Verge. He will report to Kevin Scott, the previous face of Microsoft’s AI efforts, during a transition phase. But it sounds like Parakhin will be leaving Microsoft soon.

 

It’s a surprise turn of events for a leader who one source described to me as one of the “fastest rising leaders in the company” just six months ago. Parakhin was responsible for Microsoft’s reborn advertising business and all of the company’s ad-based consumer businesses. It’s a big organization of more than 10,000 people, but some were frustrated with the way it was being managed. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Nadella was growing impatient with Parakhin’s team, too.

 

One employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells me that the web experiences team that Parakhin led had a different culture from the rest of Microsoft that often resulted in micromanaging and “insane deadlines” for projects. It’s been described as a culture of being forced to do more with less.

 

Hopefully we see less of these Bing pop-ups in Windows.

Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge

 

The Windows and Web Experiences (WWE) team that Parakhin briefly oversaw also developed the malware-like Bing pop-ups we’ve seen appear in Windows recently. Microsoft has also been aggressively pushing Edge in Windows, with lots of tricks to get users to move away from Chrome or use Edge’s shopping and AI features. 

 

I’m personally hoping that Microsoft ends these tactics and focuses on making Microsoft Edge a better browser for consumers instead of tricking them into using it. That will now be down to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, as his team will continue to handle the company’s consumer-facing AI products like Copilot, Bing, and Edge.

 

Windows and Surface returning under one leader should hopefully bring some much-needed clarity to Microsoft’s AI efforts for Windows, too. Microsoft has been gradually unveiling more AI-powered features in Windows, and pushing the need for “AI PCs” with neural processing units, but it hasn’t coherently explained why any of this matters.

 

The new Windows and Surface chief, Davuluri, is experienced when it comes to the combination of hardware and software that Microsoft needs to get right in this new era of AI. Davuluri has worked at Microsoft for more than 23 years and has been at the heart of Surface engineering. He was deeply involved in the company’s work with Qualcomm and AMD to create custom Surface processors.

 

While it looked like Surface hardware could get sidelined after Microsoft changed up its hardware portfolio amid layoffs last year, it’s encouraging to see Microsoft return to a focus on hardware and software for Windows under Davuluri.

 

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 10 for Business is one of the company’s first AI PCs.

Image: Microsoft

 

Microsoft’s Windows future looked like it was tied to hardware just before the pandemic began in 2020, and the rollercoaster of laptop sales over the past few years has clearly had an impact on how Nadella positions Windows in a new era of AI. There was a brief period of trying something new after Panay departed, but now it feels like Surface and Windows are back together where they belong.

 

Now it’s up to Microsoft to explain why consumers should care about AI PCs, and define exactly what they are beyond a flashy marketing term that involves a Copilot key on a keyboard. Pavan Davuluri has spent the past six months focused on leading Microsoft’s silicon efforts, with the company expected to launch Arm-powered versions of its Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 at an event on May 20th.

 

This could be a huge turning point for Windows and Microsoft’s relationship with Intel. While Microsoft has experimented with custom Qualcomm-powered chips for its Surface devices in the past, there has always been an Intel option for consumers to fall back on. Microsoft appears to have much more confidence in Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon Elite X processors, because I understand it’s about to only offer these chips to consumers on an OLED version of the Surface Pro 10.

 

That’s a big change for Microsoft’s hero Surface device, and Davuluri will have been at the center of it. If the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite is greatly improved and Microsoft’s app emulation efforts are solid, we could be about to witness an Arm transition for Windows laptops that has been years in the making. Microsoft won’t have the luxury of dropping Intel in quite the same fashion as Apple did with its transition to its own silicon, but by only shipping Surface consumer devices on Arm, it’s putting down a new line in the silicon sand.

 

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Sega has said most of the jobs being cut are from the Creative Assembly and Sega Europe divisions. Creative Assembly is responsible for the hit strategy franchise Total War on the PC platform, and only last year released the Ancient Egypt-set Total War: Pharaoh. The studio was also developing a AAA hero-based multiplayer project named Hyenas, which Sega canceled last year during open beta phases. It's unclear how many of the 240 lost positions are from Creative Assembly.

"Creative Assembly continues to have multiple projects in development with Total War and a new unannounced project," adds Sega regarding the future of the studio.

At the same time, Sega confirmed that Relic Entertainment is being sold. The move will make the Company of Heroes and Dawn of War developer an independent studio, which Relic says has been accomplished with help from an "external investor." It's unclear who this third-party investor is currently. Sega says it is "working closely with Relic on this shift, and we wish them the best for the future."

Relic has also been responsible for developing Microsoft's latest Age of Empires entry for PC and Xbox, and support for the strategy game is still ongoing.

"To our fans, we want to assure you we will continue to support our titles, including Company of Heroes 3," says Relic in a social media post regarding the move. "We want to thank SEGA, whose support over the years and guidance during this transition have been instrumental to our success. We may be out of the SEGA business, but we remain friends and colleagues."

This is not the only major shift in ownership that happened today. Earlier, Take-Two Interactive announced it had acquired Gearbox Entertainment for $460 million.

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The basic requirements for an AI PC, at least when it's running Windows.

Intel

 

Microsoft said in January that 2024 would be the year of the "AI PC," and we know that AI PCs will include a few hardware components that most Windows systems currently do not include—namely, a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) and Microsoft's new Copilot key for keyboards. But so far we haven't heard a whole lot about what a so-called AI PC will actually do for users.

 

Microsoft and Intel are starting to talk about a few details as part of an announcement from Intel about a new AI PC developer program that will encourage software developers to leverage local hardware to build AI features into their apps.

 

The main news comes from Tom's Hardware, confirming that AI PCs would be able to run "more elements of Copilot," Microsoft's AI chatbot assistant, "locally on the client." Currently, Copilot relies on server-side processing even for small requests, introducing lag that is tolerable if you're making a broad request for information but less so if all you want to do is change a setting or get basic answers. Running generative AI models locally could also improve user privacy, making it possible to take advantage of AI-infused software without automatically sending information to a company that will use it for further model training.

 

Right now, Windows doesn't use local NPUs for much, since most current PCs don't have them. The Surface Studio webcam features can use NPUs for power-efficient video effects and background replacement, but as of this writing that's pretty much it. Apple's and Google's operating systems both use NPUs for a wider swatch of image and audio processing features, including facial recognition and object recognition, OCR, live transcription and translation, and more.

 

Intel also said that Microsoft would require NPUs in "next-gen AI PCs" to hit speeds of 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to meet its requirements. Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and others sometimes use TOPS as a high-level performance metric when comparing their NPUs; Intel's Meteor Lake laptop chips can run 10 TOPS, while AMD's Ryzen 7040 and 8040 laptop chips hit 10 TOPS and 16 TOPS, respectively.

 

Unfortunately for Intel, the first company to put out an NPU suitable for powering Copilot locally may come from Qualcomm. The company's upcoming Snapdragon X processors, long seen as the Windows ecosystem's answer to Apple's M-series Mac chips, promise up to 45 TOPS. Rumors suggest that Microsoft will shift the consumer version of its Surface tablet to Qualcomm's chips after a few years of offering both Intel and Qualcomm options; Microsoft announced a Surface Pro update with Intel's Meteor Lake chips last week but is only selling it to businesses.

 

All of that said, TOPS are just one simplified performance metric. As when using FLOPS to compare graphics performance, it's imprecise and won't capture variations in how each NPU handles different tasks. And the Arm version of Windows still has software and hardware compatibility issues that could continue to hold it back.

 

As part of its developer program, Intel is also offering an "AI PC development kit" centered on an Asus NUC Pro 14, a mini PC built around Intel's Meteor Lake silicon. Intel formally stopped making its NUC mini PCs last year, passing the brand and all of its designs off to Asus. Asus is also handling all remaining warranty service and software support for older NUCs designed and sold by Intel. The NUC Pro 14 is one of the first new NUCs announced since the transition, along with the ROG NUC mini gaming PC.

 

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In the tech world, you can't walk far without hearing about NVIDIA. This tech company, which has spread across hardware and software, is a true behemoth that seems to be at the forefront of technological innovation lately. NVIDIA's investments in emerging markets and continued dominance in established ones have results in NVIDIA becoming one of the most valuable companies on the planet, so it's no surprise that NVIDIA was a common presence at GDC 2024 in San Francisco.

I didn't just regularly see NVIDIA as I explored GDC; I met with team members in a one-on-one briefing to demo the various technologies NVIDIA is showcasing at this year's Game Developer's Conference. Most of it you can actually go see for yourself right now, but I'll go ahead and give you all the details alongside what I learned at GDC. It shouldn't surprise anyone, but NVIDIA's theme of the year at GDC was AI, AI, AI.

NVIDIA at GDC — Using AI to enhance your games

Everything NVIDIA is building is centered around the power of RTX GPUs. (Image credit: NVIDIA)

A long-standing part of NVIDIA's business has been utilizing a combination of its impressive RTX graphics processing units (GPUs) and AI-driven software to improve not only the performance of playing PC games but even actively improve visuals and detail. NVIDIA is continuing to invest in this area, and I was able to see a variety of tools in action, including NVIDIA RTX Remix, NVIDIA Freestyle, and NVIDIA DLSS 3.5.

DLSS 3.5

NVIDIA DLSS isn't a new technology — It has been around basically since the advent of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX GPUs, which replaced the aging GTX brand with more powerful, ray-tracing capable graphics cards.

DLSS aims to massively improve performance in supported games without sacrificing visual fidelity and does so through a combination of different techniques and tools such as DLSS Super Resolution (an AI-powered resolution upscaler), DLSS Frame Generation (uses AI to interpose generated frames into your gameplay and artificially increase your frames-per-second), and NVIDIA Reflect Low Latency, which optimizes the throughput between your gaming hardware and your monitor to reduce latency to its lowest possible point.

NVIDIA DLSS support in video games is actually extremely common now, and the next generation of NVIDIA's performance-enhancing technology was announced back in Aug. 2023. It's DLSS 3.5, which adds AI-powered ray reconstruction on top of DLSS 3 for massively improved performance when using ray tracing. Namely, it replaces hand-drawn denoisers with a new AI model that's far more responsive, detailed, and natural. We've already seen the effects in games like Cyberpunk 2077.

During GDC, NVIDIA announced that more games like Black Myth: Wukong and Naraka: Bladepoint are gaining DLSS 3.5 support, while a free update for Portal with RTX with DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction and RTX IO support (this technology uses your RTX GPU to improve storage performance). You can go play Portal with RTX for free at Steam right now; NVIDIA demoed the improvements to me side-by-side, and I have to admit it's extremely impressive. DLSS 3.5 doesn't just improve performance; it provides dramatic improvements to visual fidelity and shadow detail with less latency when ray-traced lighting is enabled.

It was awesome to talk to the people at NVIDIA who helped make DLSS 3.5 a reality; the combination of various AI-powered technologies combined with the powerful Tensor cores of RTX 40-series GPUs does lead to dramatic performance gains in the best PC games, even if you opt not to use DLSS Frame Generation (which does increase latency). Ray tracing, especially, sees noticeable gains in both performance and quality with NVIDIA's technology, which was extremely obvious in games like Alan Wake 2.

Freestyle filters & auto-HDR

NVIDIA uses Ark as an example for just a few of the different filter styles you can apply to your games.

(Image credit: NVIDIA)

NVIDIA Freestyle isn't a new feature, but it is new to me. Introduced in 2018, Freestyle is a sub-feature included as a part of NVIDIA GeForce Experience, NVIDIA's flagship app for optimizing games, installing new drivers, and more. With Freestyle, you can apply a variety of post-processing, AI-powered filters onto supported games (of which there are many on NVIDIA's site) to dramatically change the look and feel of the game you're playing.

From color-grade filters to even video effects like making your game look like found footage, NVIDIA Freestyle filters utilize the power of your RTX GPU to seamlessly change your games. I've seen it in action, and it does work well. Each filter has settings to customize the intensity and effect, and you can even layer filters to achieve entirely unique looks! However, Freestyle did just recently get a new filter, and it's the most impressive of the bunch.

High dynamic range, or HDR, can improve the contrast, lighting, and vibrancy of supported games, but you have to own a premium monitor (or laptop) that supports it. Many games don't feature HDR support on Windows PC because of this, so Microsoft brought its Auto HDR feature from Xbox over to PC users. Now, you can achieve the same with NVIDIA Freestyle. Just like Microsoft's affair, NVIDIA Freestyle can apply a convincing HDR effect on supported games that looks awesome.

NVIDIA's implementation actually bests Microsoft's built-in option in a few ways, though. For one, you can customize the HDR filter to achieve the desired effect, similar to other NVIDIA Freestyle filters — with Auto HDR, it's either on or off. You can also stack other layers on top of it, too! NVIDIA demoed the new filter for me with Remnant 2, and I came away extremely impressed. If you love HDR gaming, you should check this one out.

RTX Remix

One of the most impressive parts of my time with NVIDIA at GDC was seeing the power of NVIDIA RTX Remix. This is a comprehensive modding platform built using all the technologies NVIDIA has at its disposal, and what you can accomplish with it is astounding. Remix allows you to mod classic games in real-time with a huge arsenal of tools, all supported by RTX hardware and NVIDIA's AI prowess.

RTX Remix can dynamically and instantaneously replace game assets with modded alternatives, massively upscale and enhance textures, and even inject NVIDIA features like DLSS 3, real-time ray tracing, and Reflex Low Latency. You can edit games and tune your mods in real-time using the Remix overlay, transforming classic titles with enhanced visuals, lighting, and performance. It's open source, too, meaning GitHub developers can contribute to the project and help it improve over time.

NVIDIA showed me how easy it was to significantly alter classic games like Half-Life 2, remaining faithful to the original while introducing new 3D assets, increasing detail and visual fidelity, and introducing realistic lighting. However, NVIDIA also showed me how Remix can add entirely new content to games, such as dropping a functional disco ball into Portal. It's a powerful and dynamic modding platform built on the NVIDIA Omniverse hub for 3D applications and services, powered by AI and RTX GPUs, and capable of bringing DLSS, RTX, and Reflex features to decades-old titles.

I was shocked by how capable this platform seems to be and how modders can actually play with it right now. The NVIDIA RTX Remix open beta was released earlier this year, and it's absolutely worth exploring if you have an interest in modding games.

NVIDIA at GDC — Creating AI gaming experiences

Covert Protocol was a fascinating demo showing me the future of some genres of games. (Image credit: NVIDIA)

AI has increasingly grown in prevalence over the last few years, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. Countless companies are heavily investing in artificial intelligence, aiming for the top in an expanding market that threatens to upheave the entire tech industry. NVIDIA's rise to glory recently is built almost entirely on the backs of AI and servers, for example — not gaming, although gamers may also benefit from new AI tech.

Companies like NVIDIA, Ubisoft, and even Xbox are working together with new arrivals like Inworld (who I also spoke to at GDC) on how AI can be useful for creating new gaming experiences. NVIDIA showed me its contributions to the effort with a demo called Covert Protocol. This slick detective game utilizes an underlying AI framework built by Inworld and enhanced by NVIDIA's Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) to create realistic digital humans based on the generative AI models, Audio2Face (A2F) to convincingly animate speech for those digital humans, and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to allow players to communicate with these AI characters.

That may sound like a lot, but the results are effortless to understand. Game developers can use Inworld to define the parameters of a character's personality, traits, and in-world knowledge and provide prompts to help guide story progression and set scenes. Using language models, these generated characters can respond to basically any player input while remaining true to the universe in which they're placed and create a believable and dynamic world for players to explore. NVIDIA's tech helps translate the underlying AI into perceivable animations and expressions, making it easier for players to communicate with these AI characters via voice.

Covert Protocol sees players take on the role of a detective tasked with discovering the hotel room number of a target. You'll have to ingratiate yourself with a handful of NPCs, talking with them to uncover clues and slowly unravel the mystery. It's fascinating being able to talk directly to in-game characters and have them respond to you in turn, and it was interesting to see how those characters' responses differed based on personality, circumstance, and even what the player was or had been doing. Because of the AI language models, these NPCs were even capable of having entirely off-topic conversations while staying in character.

After playing through the demo, I returned to a character (Sophia, who manned the front desk of the hotel) and struck up a conversation about her hobbies. Eventually, I delved into the world of nonsense by relentlessly talking about my interests in bullfighting, and Sophia took it in stride, even going so far as to tell me how the hotel could potentially accommodate bullfighting events within its facilities. It was goofy, but it also gave me an experience you just don't get in other games, which are focused on delivering carefully tailored, focused lines of dialogue.

What I found interesting, though, is how this actually requires more work than writing straight dialogue. Rather than using writers to put themselves into the shoes of imaginary characters to write their dialogue, you have to build the brains of those characters themselves. You'll still need the writers to build those brains using in-game lore, in-depth personality and trait information, and scene prompts. Of course, AI-generated characters don't need full-time voice actors, though, with their voices also needing to be AI-generated, so you do lose a lot of the emotion, nuance, and power of great voice acting.

While you can create AI voice models with real human voices, it's still less work for that voice actor (and less of a job) and results in a less convincing performance. AI-generated lines can be convincing, too, but will lack the quality or conciseness of brilliant video game writing. As such, I don't ever expect (and hope I never see) these AI characters in every game. For certain genres like RPGs, detective and puzzle games, and more, though... NVIDIA and companies like Inworld can open up a world of new possibilities.

I'll cover it more in the next section, but the above game is one such example of using AI without taking jobs away from writers or voice actors.

NVIDIA at GDC — Digital humans in digital worlds

Related to the previous section, NVIDIA is also flexing its strengths with investments in digital humans. That means using AI to create believable, natural-looking digital humans in games and applications, either to be used as interactive characters or avatars for the user. Results in this space have been mixed, to say the least, but NVIDIA does seem to be at the forefront with the combination of NVIDIA ACE (discussed before) and NVIDIA NeMo, which is an end-to-end platform assisting developers with creating generative AI models.

One example of this is Covert Protocol, of course, but NVIDIA is working with other companies to explore other uses for this digital human tech. Ubisoft also partnered with Inworld, for example, leveraging NVIDIA products to demo "NEO NPCs" at GDC. I saw these NPCs myself; similar to Covert Protocol, Ubisoft's NEO NPCs are capable of communicating with the player directly, using Inworld's AI character models to remain a faithful part of the in-game world. However, Ubisoft's research adds another element to this.

The two NEO NPCs Ubisoft demoed at GDC also use NVIDIA's A2F technology for more natural facial and character animations but also have an in-depth understanding of the game world. The idea is that NPCs won't just be able to converse with the player using their provided knowledge — they'll be able to directly comment and interact with the game world in real-time. Players might be able to watch an in-progress mission with an NPC and have that NPC provide a dynamic narrative and tips or undergo a mission briefing and outline a detailed plan of action with another NPC.

The idea is to blend scripted scenes and story beats with the dynamism of generative AI characters. Dialogue was a little rough around the edges, and Ubisoft's implementation has the same weaknesses as NVIDIA's Covert Protocol demo, but it still shows a fascinating future of games that are more interactive and responsive to player input than ever before.

NVIDIA's AI technology for digital humans doesn't just have to be used with AI NPCs, however. Japanese MMORPG World of Jade Dynasty demoed how NVIDIA's audio-to-face AI technology can be used to easily animate characters in different languages, making it far simpler to add multi-language support to a game. Now, all you need is to handle the scripted writing and voice acting, and NVIDIA A2F will handle all the lip-syncing. Another game demo built in Unreal Engine 5, Unawake, also showed how the Unreal Engine's MetaHuman tools can be paired with NVIDIA's AI modules.

It's not just about gaming, though. NVIDIA worked with the medical-focused company HippocraticAI to create a safe, task-focused health assistant to handle mundane medical tasks like calling patients to schedule appointments, handling follow-up check-ins, and delivering instructions for post-operation or post-discharge care. HippocraticAI's digital assistants need to be fast, accurate, and protected from abuse and mishandling, but they also need to be comfortable for patients of all ages and backgrounds. The company uses NVIDIA's entire range of digital human tools and products to make that happen.

In a similar vein, AI company UneeQ demoed how NVIDIA's AI tools can help it build more believable and interactive digital avatars across a wide range of industries and applications, such as customer service. Underlying AI language models are rapidly evolving in their own way, but companies like NVIDIA are bridging the gaps between those brains and the interfaces through which we access them. You can read more about NVIDIA's digital human technologies on NVIDIA's website.

NVIDIA at GDC — Local AI to help you stay productive

ChatRTX is still in its early stages, but my time with it attracted my attention more than other AI applications.

(Image credit: NVIDIA)

One of the biggest areas of improvement we've seen in AI is with large language models, or LLMs. There are plenty out there now, like with Microsoft's Copilot, which in turn is built off of ChatGPT. Generally, though, applications utilizing these LLMs rely on an online connection, often even streaming from the cloud to deliver personalized answers and information. NVIDIA's addition to the market goes against the tide in that respect.

ChatRTX, which is now available to download on NVIDIA's website, is a unique AI app that lets you customize your own large language model situated entirely on your device. Yes, using the power of your NVIDIA RTX GPU, ChatRTX is 100% local, meaning it works offline and is specifically designed to tie in with your local files, programs, and media. Users can choose which underlying AI model they wish to use; for example, if you have limited VRAM, you can use a smaller AI model, or you can use an AI model that specializes in images rather than text.

What's important is that it's up to you to provide the data and train ChatRTX. You start with an underlying language model, and then you have a dedicated folder on your computer that acts as ChatRTX's dataset. The AI app can only access files and data within that dataset, meaning it doesn't have free reign to roam around your computer. You can even have various workloads or datasets within that master set and switch between them within seconds, giving ChatRTX different sets of data for different tasks to ensure that your answers are always focused and accurate (when I asked if ChatRTX could still return dataset-specific answers even when accessing its entire master dataset, NVIDIA tested it with me to prove that yes, yes it can).

It's as easy as moving files around your computer, but why would you want this? Well, ChatRTX uses natural language models to understand context in conversations, making it effective at certain tasks. If you download an article, PDF, or document, you can have ChatRTX provide succinct summaries based solely on that information (reducing the risk of made-up or inaccurate information you often get from online AI models).

Let's say you're working on a massive project that requires a large number of notes — ChatRTX can near-instantaneously pull specific information from those files and even answer abstract questions based on that information. Working on a game? Give ChatRTX access to your game notes and files as its dataset, and it can pull from the in-game lore to provide guidance on names, ideas, and more. I got to see ChatRTX do this all myself, and it's honestly impressive how quickly and effortlessly it works without the privacy or misinformation concerns associated with other AI apps.

NVIDIA told me that ChatRTX is also open-source. That means GitHub developers are already working on plug-ins for ChatRTX to expand its capabilities, including being able to pull information from specific websites you add to its directory or making it more effective at parsing information from images, abnormal file types, or massive datasets. As someone who hasn't been terribly interested in the onset of AI assistants and applications, ChatRTX actually seems useful. It can be a pain to keep organized when I'm working with years of images, notes, and files, but ChatRTX can parse through that for me and do so entirely locally.

NVIDIA at GDC — The rise to dominance with AI

NVIDIA Omniverse is a powerful platform for 3D applications and tools, and it's also being used to leverage AI

for programs like RTX Remix. (Image credit: NVIDIA)

NVIDIA wasted no time highlighting how it uses AI in 2024, and I had the privilege of seeing a lot of it... And talking to some of the people behind it. Artificial intelligence is a complex, nuanced topic with limitless potential for both greatness and harm, and NVIDIA is already one of the biggest players in the space. Many consumers may know NVIDIA for its gaming-focused GPUs, but it's actually a combination of AI and server blades that has elevated the company to one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

There are so many applications for AI, and more emerge every day, and it seems NVIDIA is dabbling in them all. From using large language models and RTX GPUs to run advanced, local processing to building believable digital humans in virtual spaces, NVIDIA seems to be in every AI-related conversation recently. I still see AI's potential to free people from an oppressive labor cycle to focus more on creativity, but I also see the adverse where AI is used to replace labor and creativity. What I've seen from NVIDIA makes me hopeful the company is investing in the right areas, but only time will tell if it made the correct choices.

At GDC 2024, NVIDIA made it more clear than any other individual company how prevalent AI is, not just as a buzzword in the tech industry but also as a real-world product that's making a difference in people's lives right now. I'm glad NVIDIA invited me to demo many of these products during my time in San Francisco, and I look forward to seeing what comes next.

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To start off with the big news, No Man's Sky players will now find a Starship Fabricator in space stations, letting them create a custom fighter, hauler or explorer starship from scratch, part by part, and painted however they want. However, parts to fabricate these custom starships will need to be bought or found, with the latter using the game's salvage mechanic to loot specific components.

"For a while now, players have dreamed of the ability to create their own starships in their dream configuration," says Sean Murray from Hello Games. "This new function enables you to combine parts of salvaged ships together in a near-limitless array of permutations to create brand new form factors."

Moreover, space stations themselves have been completely overhauled to make use of procedural generation much like this universe's planets. Everything from the gigantic exterior modifications to interior designs based on the regional aliens are now generated by the game dynamically, making each space station a unique space for players to explore.

Frigates in fleets can now call home for player input on various decisions as well. These can range from asking for advice on various situations the fleet is facing, and Hello Games says the choices will impact the mission the fleet is currently attempting to accomplish. There may even be moments where the player will be requested to jump in and intervene directly with a situation.

The update also carries improved Guild rewards, reputation-based discounts from vendors, a demand-based market trading system for profit-chasing players, as well as screen space reflection rendering optimizations and a bunch of bug fixes. The full patch notes can be read here.

No Man's Sky update 4.6 - Orbital is now available across PC (Steam and Xbox app), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch systems.

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Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and AMD have all been pushing the idea of an “AI PC” for months now as we head toward more AI-powered features in Windows. While we’re still waiting to hear the finer details from Microsoft on its big plans for AI in Windows, Intel has started sharing Microsoft’s requirements for OEMs to build an AI PC — and one of the main ones is that an AI PC must have Microsoft’s Copilot key.

 

Microsoft wants its OEM partners to provide a combination of hardware and software for its idea of an AI PC. That includes a system that comes with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), the latest CPUs and GPUs, and access to Copilot. It will also need to have the new Copilot key that Microsoft announced earlier this year.

 

The AI PC requirements.

Image: Intel

 

This requirement means that some laptops, like Asus’ new ROG Zephyrus, have already shipped with Intel’s new Core Ultra chips and aren’t technically AI PCs in the eyes of Microsoft’s strict requirements because they don’t have a Copilot key. But they’re still AI PCs in Intel’s eyes.

 

“Our joint aligned definition, Intel and Microsoft, we’ve aligned on Core Ultra, Copilot, and Copilot key,” explains Todd Lewellen, head of the PC ecosystem at Intel, in a press briefing with The Verge. “From an Intel perspective our AI PC has Core Ultra and it has an integrated NPU because it is unlocking all kinds of new capabilities and functions in the AI space. We have great alignment with Microsoft, but there are going to be some systems out there that may not have the physical key on it but it does have our integrated NPU.”

 

I’m sure both Intel and Microsoft are hoping OEMs will simply adhere to Microsoft’s requirements and add the Copilot key over time, and it’s possible that Asus’ machines simply shipped before Microsoft was ready with its new requirements. Dell literally put a Copilot sticker on its keyboards at CES earlier this year, which suggests Microsoft’s Copilot key could have been a late addition to its CES plans.

 

It’s still not clear what OEMs will get in return for adhering to Microsoft’s own AI PC definition, though. I reached out to Microsoft to comment on its requirements, but the company isn’t discussing its AI PC plans yet. Microsoft did put the AI PC branding on its latest Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 devices for businesses earlier this month, but whether there will be stickers for laptops or additional marketing budgets for OEMs isn’t clear yet.

 

Beyond the AI PC requirements, Intel is also expanding its AI PC acceleration program that it launched in October. It’s designed to get software developers interested in AI-powered features for their apps, and it’s now being expanded to reach smaller developers through an AI PC developer program.

 

Intel’s AI PC development kit.

Image: Microsoft

 

Intel will host events throughout the year with hands-on time to help developers get used to utilizing AI models and tools, and there’s even an AI PC hardware development kit that’s essentially an ASUS NUC Pro 14 loaded up with preinstalled software, drivers, and dev tools.

 

Hopefully this focus on developers will translate into many more apps utilizing this new NPU hardware. At the moment, there aren’t many apps that do, with Microsoft’s Windows Studio Effects to blur out backgrounds on video calls and maintain eye contact the main use of the NPU inside Windows today.

 

Intel is also targeting hardware vendors with this AI PC acceleration program, trying to get them to optimize and enable their hardware for Intel’s AI PCs. It’s essentially a race for Intel to get as many software and hardware developers on its side to optimize apps and hardware as these AI PCs roll out. The race is against Qualcomm this year, which is about to launch a round of Snapdragon X Elite laptops that could offer a big performance leap for Windows on Arm.

 

Google is even releasing an optimized version of its Chrome browser for Windows on Arm this week, in a significant change of heart that will greatly improve the experience for Chrome users on Qualcomm-powered Windows laptops. Microsoft is also rumored to be moving solely to Arm for its consumer versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6. Microsoft will be holding an AI and Surface event on May 20th, where CEO Satya Nadella will outline the company’s vision for AI hardware and software.

 

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Developers can now request to attend an all-day event at Apple Park on June 10. In addition, Apple will let app makers watch video sessions online for free.

Apple announced the conference on its official developer.apple.com website:

Join us online for the biggest developer event of the year. Be there for the unveiling of the latest Apple platforms, technologies, and tools. Learn how to create and elevate your apps and games. Engage with Apple designers and engineers and connect with the worldwide developer community. All online and at no cost.

 

Apply for the opportunity to join us in person for an all-day event at Apple Park on Monday, June 10. Watch the Keynote and exciting new programming, meet with Apple experts, and take part in special activities.

 

Explore the new tools, frameworks, and features that’ll help you create your best apps and games yet. Learn new skills through video sessions, and meet one-on-one with Apple experts to advance your projects and ideas. Experience WWDC24 on the Apple Developer app, website, and YouTube channel.

As usual, the company will stream its main keynote, during which it is expected to unveil the next versions of iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and other developer-related products. iOS 18 is rumored to bring many features, such as new personalization options for the home screen and generative AI capabilities. To accomplish this, Apple has reportedly partnered with Google and Baidu. According to various leaks, iOS 18 should be the biggest iPhone update ever.

Apple will share more information about WWDC 24 in the coming weeks. You can learn more about Apple's main developer event on its official website.

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What you need to know

• Last week at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), AMD unveiled FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3.1, the latest iteration of the popular open-source upscaling and frame generation technology. 
• AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is an open-source upscaling solution that provides a major boost in frame rates in supported games, delivering amazing high-quality, high-performance gaming on virtually any hardware, including AMD GPUs and APUs, competitor hardware, and gaming consoles.
• AMD FSR 3.1 will decouple upscaling from frame generation, allowing AMD FSR 3.1 frame generation technology to work with other upscaling solutions.
• AMD FSR 3.1 also brings support for Vulkan and Xbox Game Development kits (Xbox Series consoles)
• AMD will provide more information when AMD FSR 3.1 is available for developers on GPUOpen and games supporting it will be available.

While GDC 2024 has wrapped up and there has been a lot of great news coming out of it, very few things are as important as the continuing evolution of supersampling/upscaling technology. It is one of the best arms races going on in the gaming industry right now as NVIDIA and AMD battle with DLSS and FSR respectively to try to improve game performance without giving up visual fidelity. 

We reported back in February that Xbox was set to reveal its own supersampling technology named DirectSR which should play nicely with AMD FSR 3.1 according to the changes announced by AMD. So what exactly is changing and most importantly, will my Xbox Series X|S and ASUS ROG Ally benefit from the changes? 

What is new with AMD FSR 3.1?

You can watch the announcement about FSR 3.1 for yourself in the above presentation by AMD from GDC. The FSR 3.1 segment starts at the 40-minute mark in the video. There isn't much that is covered though so I will break down the points here, or you can check out the coverage on the AMD site as well. 

• Upscaling image quality improvements:
  • Improved temporal stability at rest and in movement – less flickering and/or shimmering and “Fizziness” around objects in motion.
  • Ghosting reduction and better preservation of detail.
• Decoupling FSR 3 upscaling from frame generation:
  • Allows FSR 3.1 frame generation technology to work with other upscaling solutions.
• New AMD FidelityFX API:
  • Makes it easier for developers to debug and allows forward compatibility with updated versions of FSR.
• Vulkan® and Xbox Game Development Kit (GDK) support.

These all look like good changes and the addition of Xbox GDK support is huge as that not only includes the Xbox Series consoles but should also include Xbox Game Pass for PC on Windows 10/11, and cloud gaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Allowing frame generation to work on other upscaling solutions could mean that if Xbox works to integrate Microsoft's new DirectSR upscaling solution it could pair with frame generation to provide close to a 120 FPS feel in games targeting 60 fps. 

The future of upscaling for Xbox and the gaming industry. 

(Image credit: Jennifer Young / Windows Central)

AMD FSR 3 is currently competing with NVIDIA's slightly superior DLSS 3.5 and while it is working to catch up to DLSS with feature parity like frame generation as well as trying to get more games to support it, the fact that is open-source and works on any hardware give it more than enough advantage that it could win out in the end. 

I personally love FSR, and it makes playing games on my ASUS ROG Ally possible. I think the future of console gaming, and especially of the next Nintendo console, will rely heavily on upscaling. With Microsoft announcing DirectSR during GDC which we should be covering later this week, to the PlayStation 5 Pro reportedly having a "PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling" solution, the graphics war is giving way to a battle for performance through AI upscaling. 

These are the currently and upcoming FSR 3.0 supported games.  (Image credit: AMD)

Few things are more effective and potent in improving the gamer's experience in the long run than DLSS and FSR. While a development company could spend thousands of hours trying to optimize code to hit a 60 fps target at 4K for a game that is already 85% optimized, a much more cost-effective and simple option is to enable a built-in FSR 3 or other upscaling solution to achieve that 60 fps target.

AMD is once again a champion of the people as the company works to create a solution that can benefit all gamers while NVIDIA continues to focus on creating walled-off solutions like DLSS 3.5 that can only work with NVIDIA's proprietary Tensor Cores. We don't know what the future holds for Xbox as far as hardware goes, but we do know new hardware is in the works and I bet that it will more closely integrate superscaling and AMD FSR if it is AMD-based.

As always, some of the best games you can play that have AMD FSR in them are on Game Pass and Xbox. Check out the best deals on the Xbox Series X|S and Game Pass below.

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This new shift in management was made just six months after Davuluri was named as the leader of Microsoft's Surface hardware division in September 2023. Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft's head of Advertising and Web Services, was named as the leader of an all-new Windows and Web Experiences team at the same time.

Both of these changes were made following the surprise departure of Windows and Surface leader Panos Panay who was later named the new devices and services head at Amazon. Today's announcement means that Davuluri will be in charge of both Windows and Surface, similar to what Panay was doing before he left. Davuluri has worked at Microsoft since 2001, which included over eight years as the general manager of the Surface team.

The memo also stated that Parakhin will now report to Microsoft's chief technology officer Kevin Scott as he explores "new roles." The Verge speculates that Parakhin could eventually depart Microsoft, but that is not confirmed in today's company memo. Parakhin has been a very public voice at Microsoft for over a year, frequently using his X (formerly Twitter) account to answer questions from users about Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant.

Today's shift comes just a few days after the company revealed it would launch a new Microsoft AI division that will be led by Mustafa Suleyman, who co-founded the AI companies DeepMind and Inflection. Microsoft has moved its Edge, Copilot, and Bing teams under the new AI division. Today's memo stated that the Web Experience team will also be moved under the AI division, and Jordi Ribas will be in charge of Microsoft's Search, Maps, and Platforms team.

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With many PlayStation exclusives having made their way to PC over the last 18 months, it has been a rocky road for the many of them in the way of poor performance and/or a plethora of bugs to battle through at launch. In fact, many new PC titles often release with major technical problems to the point that this theme has become a meme within PC gaming communities.

The Last of Us Part 1 required many months of patching to mostly sort out the shader compilation stutter and mouse movement jitter issues, Dead Space Remake still has traversal stuttering and has essentially been abandoned by the developers, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor still has shader compilation stutters, Hogwarts Legacy still looks better on High than it does on Ultra and has broken ray tracing.

Even the newly released Dragon's Dogma 2 is facing a challenge, with fans being forced to seek out DLSS Frame Generation mods to mitigate the underlying poor performance the game has launched with, forcing CAPCOM to offer a public apology for the negative Steam reviews.

Many of us were dubious when no reviews were published even 24 hours before the launch of Forbidden West. This is typically not a good sign, especially given that Horizon Zero Dawn launched with several technical issues that required many patches to fully resolve, although to be fair, Zero Dawn was not originally ported by Nixxes, who came into the picture during later patching phases to fix the problems the first game faced.

Having played Zero Dawn a year after it launched in 2021, I found myself getting bored of traversing the open world after about 9.5 hours; it felt like a laborious grind. I've picked it up again here and there since then, but never truly felt connected to the gameplay and mechanics, so I was a bit hesitant about buying Forbidden West. That was until I watched the Digital Foundry technical preview just before launch and was convinced that my pre-order was a safe bet and there was no need to cancel.

The story is set 6 months after the ending of the first game. You do not need to have played Zero Dawn to know what's going on either, as a cinematic shows you everything you need to know before throwing you into the new world where Aloy embarks on a journey on the hunt to find clues to the mysterious plague called The Red Blight that has started to take over the world.

System requirements

We wrote about the requirements published by Nixxes at the start of the month. These specs remain the same post-launch and are very modest.

The game does not employ any ray-tracing effects. Nixxes told Eurogamer that they had considered this at first, but decided it already looked great as it was. This also explains the need for an RTX 4080 to achieve 60 fps at 4K resolution using rasterised effects. The demand at this resolution on the GPU is quite high, and whilst an RTX 4080 matches or beats a 7900XTX in many areas, the AMD cards tend to do better in raster performance, hence the 7900XT flanking the RTX 4800 in these requirements.

I have been playing this on my i7 12700KF and RTX 4090 system. The display is an ultrawide QD-OLED running at a native 3440x1440 144Hz.

First load & streaming textures

With many PC games today, there is a need to add a startup parameter to the Steam shortcut to skip intro titles and whatnot, or worse yet, need to download modified game files to bypass them. None of that is needed with Forbidden West. You can immediately press escape to skip them and get straight to the title menu.

If it's the first time the game is launched, or if the graphics card driver has recently been updated, then a shader compilation step is completed, this took about 30 seconds on my i7 12700KF.

The title menu defaults to continue, so pressing spacebar as soon as you see the title screen, your save will load into the game within 5 seconds. This is probably the fastest click-to-game load I have ever seen yet.

Once in the game, there are no stutters at all to be seen. Nixxes have confirmed that they don't use the full DirectStorage scope of features, but instead the most efficient parts for use within the context of Forbidden West. The technical details are mentioned in the Eurogamer article, but in short, the game will stream in assets as you play, with little to no impact on performance.

Input methods

Forbidden West fully supports controllers, including the PS5's dual sense with adaptive triggers (wired mode only). I gave motion controls for aiming a shot using the 8BitDo Ultimate and had no problems using Steam Input, which worked out of the box.

However, mouse and keyboard are unbeaten thanks to the quick reaction times and camera movement that only a mouse can afford you.

Performance

Even though I am on an RTX 4090, what I said about poorly optimised games in the introduction still affects high-end GPUs out there. The Last of Us, for example, struggled to get 100 fps without having to turn on upscaling, and even then, it did not exceed 115 fps average with regular dips to the 80 fps range for seemingly no reason.

With Forbidden West, there are no such issues, and there is a wide selection of video and graphical settings to tweak. The Video settings are as follows:

The graphics options only go up to Very High. Whether Nixxes will add an Ultra preset or maybe even a ray-traced one in a future patch remains unclear, though they have hinted by saying to watch this space:

If I load up a save and then enter these settings screens, I can adjust each setting and see a preview of the game behind update with how that change affects what's on screen. GFX settings done right.

Whether I am running DLAA, DLSS, XeSS, or even FSR 2.2, the framerates are consistently high and evenly matched between them all. DLAA only being slightly behind due to it being a native resolution AA method:

For Nvidia users, the game ships with DLSS dll file version 3.5.10, but you can easily swap it out for the latest version, 3.6.0, from Techpowerup. I have not noticed any visual or performance differences, but it's an added peace of mind for me personally.

The below custom benchmark numbers were using the highest GFX settings at 3440x1440 and measured in a controlled area outdoors during daylight and with AI machines running around:

Note: My maximum framerate won't exceed 139 fps due to this being my global framerate cap since the refresh rate is 144Hz on a G-Sync monitor. Generally speaking, to avoid screen tearing, you don't want a game running at or above your refresh rate. A game like this supporting Nvidia Reflex will framerate cap by default anyway through Reflex, so no manual intervention is needed other than enabling Reflex in the game settings. For games not supporting Reflex, I would recommend a manual framerate cap of about 3-5 fps below your refresh rate for the best G-Sync (or FreeSync) experience.

Zooming in to pixel-peep at about 300%, it was evident that DLSS Quality was slightly sharper than DLAA. There is no general upscaler sharpness slider in the game at all; the only sharpness control is in the Graphics screen, which controls a global sharpness filter that is set to 5 by default.

The image reconstruction side of DLSS is doing a great job at matching DLAA. This isn't the first game I have seen where DLSS is as good or nearly as good as native resolution. This seems to bear strongly on the developer implementing any upscaler properly. It's great to see a game where you can be confident that no matter what preference you have toward native, upscaled, or dynamic resolution, you are getting the excellent picture quality.

I also tested out some of these settings using Nvidia DLDSR, which can render a game up to 2.25x native resolution, so in my case, that would be 5160x2160. There is obviously more overhead at this resolution, with it being higher than standard 4K, and a driver overhead as something needs to process the feature in realtime. The framerates dropped to the 70s at times but still maintained a high average of around 100-110 fps when combined with any upscaler in Quality mode or even higher in Performance.

What is surprising is how FSR 2.2 is implemented here. Generally speaking, FSR always performs the worst in games with visible temporal stability issues and ghosting of moving debris on-screen. None of these issues were obvious in Forbidden West, and here it even exceeds the framerates achieved by the other upscalers whilst looking nearly identical to them. Only in the far distance and around Aloy in very specific lighting conditions are some form of minor temporal instability noticed, but only when you zoom in closely, otherwise FSR looks similar to the rest.

This is the first time I have seen FSR output image quality at this level. It's clear that Nixxes put some care into making all of them perform and look excellent in this game.

The CPU optimisation sees healthy utilisation across all available cores with no single core being under or overworked, good use of multi-threading in a game like this probably explains why there are no stutters that I have noticed. It also means the chance of being CPU-limited could be higher as a result. The more cores that are available, the higher the framerate averages will be.

I found that at 3440x1440, the CPU usage hovered from 40% and reached all the way up to 70% at times, all whilst maintaining triple figure framerates with stable frametimes. This is likely due to the way the game is streaming in assets constantly.

Gameplay

The gameplay mechanics are unchanged from Zero Dawn, so if you liked that, then you'll be right at home here. What is different, though, is how much more enjoyable Forbidden West is now. I mentioned earlier that I got bored of Zero Dawn 9.5 hours into the quest, mainly due to the landscape traversal not feeling as dynamic as it does in the 2nd game. Each area you visit feels like its own biome, the verticality is exploited better I feel here too giving more room to explore without getting bored.

I also enjoy the combat more than in the first. The machine AI feels more brutal than before, something about them makes it a bit more challenging this time round requiring some pre-planning and on-the-fly strategy which is fun.

Overall, the key word is fun. There are a lot of parkour elements in Forbidden West, lots of exploring and crafting but once you're levelled up, you're good to go.

One thing that cannot be avoided, though, is the handholding when doing certain things like climbing. Aloy will always move or reach for the correct path; you never have to second-guess. Some may like this as it takes the tedious nature out of climbing, which is often the case in other games, but others want total control, which I can understand, too.

One part of the mechanics I don't like is that there is no way to disable the double tap of a direction key to roll in that direction. One too many times I have double-tapped by accident only to roll off a cliff or high point inside a cavern somewhere.

The combat is excellent, and with a mouse and keyboard, this is amplified even further. Playing on an ultrawide monitor helps with added immersion, thanks to the extra field of view. It feels like this is the way this game is meant to be played.

Verdict

With Nixxes doing the porting, a level of polish was always to be expected given the track record for solid PC ports, but the lack of pre-launch reviews and radio silence other than the PC system requirements did fill many minds with some concern, was it going to be another Zero Dawn with technical issues at launch?

Thankfully expectations were exceeded, and I find myself needing to nitpick to find faults in an otherwise excellent PC port of an already excellent PS5 title. We now get to play this game in ultrawide, with high framerates at much better resolutions.

So, what are the flaws? There are a few, and these are not anything to do with Nixxes. The main ones are screen space shadows and reflections. These are implemented in the base game in such a way that in general they look great, but as a PC gamer they do catch the eye as you're walking past certain regular scenes in the game.

Take, for instance, water reflections, as you move the camera around a large body of water, the typical flaw in screen space reflections rears its ugly head:

See how reflections of the distant scenery disappear? This is a common theme in all games using screen space reflections, some worse than others.

Screen space shadows also exhibit a more subtle side effect at times. In the GIF below, I zoom into a dark area of the rocks where no light is entering; simply zooming into it brightens up the crevice. This same effect is observed to a greater degree in larger scenes, like entering a dark cave when it's daylight outside.

Then there's the forced double tap to roll, there is no way to turn this off it seems, so accidental rolling off a ledge is a regular occurrence for me.

Other than that, an excellent new release for PC gamers to enjoy, and if this is a sign of what future PC ports look like then I'll be very happy indeed.

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In a post on X (formerly Twitter) today, Bethesda Game Studios celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls: Arena and the entire Elder Scrolls series. It has included five mainline RPG games, along with remakes and spin-offs that include the MMO The Elder Scrolls Online, and even mobile games including the recently launched The Elder Scrolls: Castles.

As you might expect, many fans of the series have been waiting patiently for Bethesda to offer up some more information on the next major game in the series, The Elder Scrolls VI. The developer released a very brief teaser trailer to announce the game nearly six years ago at E3 2018.

There has been little to no news about the game's development since then. That's mainly because Bethesda Game Studios decided to focus most of its work on its space-based RPG Starfield, which was released in September 2023.

In today's X post, Bethesda offered a small hint at the development of The Elder Scrolls VI:

Last but not least, yes, we are in development on the next chapter – The Elder Scrolls VI. Even now. returning to Tamriel and playing early builds has us filled with the same joy, excitement, and promise of adventure.

Bethesda and Microsoft will likely not offer any major public updates on the development of The Elder Scrolls VI for a few more years at least, so fans of the five previous main games in the series may have to settle for expansion packs for The Elder Scrolls Online, or updates for The Elder Scrolls: Castles to get their fix for content in this series.

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Table of contents:

1. New Surface
2. Windows 10 and 11 news
3. Windows Insider Program
4. Updates are available
5. Gaming news
6. A blast from Microsoft's past
7. Random fact about Microsoft

New Surface

The biggest news of this week was the announcement of new Surface computers. Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro 10 for Business and the Surface Laptop 6 for Business, the company's first so-called AI PCs, a category that is expected to make up almost half of PC shipments in 2025. The latest models kept their previous designs but received better displays, more powerful hardware, hardware Copilot keys, and more. In addition, Microsoft revealed a new Surface Pro keyboard with improved accessibility and launched its Adaptive Accessories for business customers.

If you want to learn more about the new Surface, check out our Specs appeal articles:

• Surface Pro 10 for Business vs Surface Pro 9 vs Surface Pro 7 Plus
• Surface Laptop 6 vs Surface Laptop 5 vs Surface Laptop 4

If you are wondering what happened to the consumer versions of the Surface Pro 10 and the Surface Laptop 6, don't worry; Microsoft will announce them at another event later this year, on May 20. Those computers will be available with the Snapdragon X Elite processor, which, besides offering snappy performance and great battery life, should work well with most Windows games.

Windows 11

Here we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And of course, you may find a word or two about older but still supported versions.

Let's talk bugs and deprecated features.

Microsoft confirmed a nasty issue in most Windows Server versions. According to the company, a memory leak on domain controllers can lead to crashes and unscheduled reboots. Luckily, Microsoft released a fix relatively quickly, albeit one for Windows Server 2019 is running a bit late.

As for deprecated features, Microsoft added two more things to the list of Windows components it no longer develops: password payloads in MPR notifications and Test Base for Microsoft 365. Interestingly, the latter is now deprecated because, according to Microsoft, Windows 11 "solved high percentage of compatibility issues," thus making cloud-based app testing services redundant.

If you accidentally installed the wrong Windows SKU, this neat script may help you fix things without clean-installing everything. You are unlikely to need it very often, but it is nice to have it in your Windows toolbox. Winpilot is another neat tool to have, especially if you have the new Outlook app.

Windows Insider Program

Here are the new Windows 11 builds Microsoft released this week for testing in the insider program:

Probably the most exciting part of the latest Windows Insider preview builds is the updated lock screen in both Windows 10 and 11. They can now show more information, such as sports results, stocks, traffic, and more. You can try those widgets by updating to the latest Windows 10 and 11 preview builds. Click here to learn how to enable them on Windows 11.

In addition to new preview builds, Microsoft released a new Windows Hardware Lab Kit Insider Preview. In case you are not familiar, Windows HLK is a special kit that "helps you ensure that the drivers and the system you develop are certified as compatible with Windows."

Windows Insiders also received a few app updates. The recently released Phone Link update, which allows you to use your Android smartphone as a wireless webcam, is now available for all Insiders regardless of the selected channel. Also, Notepad now has a built-in spellchecker with a few customization options (Microsoft made it official shortly after an early leak).

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

Besides announcing new Surface devices this week, Microsoft revealed a new division called "Microsoft AI." Led by Mustafa Suleyman, a DeepMind and Inflection co-founder, it will govern Microsoft's AI efforts and related products, including Copilot, Edge, and Bing. Interestingly, there is no word on how Windows is going to be related to Microsoft AI.

By the way, Copilot is now rolling out to more devices. Microsoft published a new message in the official documentation, claiming that its new assistant is now available on more eligible devices. The company plans to finish the rollout by the end of May 2024.

Microsoft Edge has been updated to version 123. The latest release in the Stable Channel includes minor bug fixes, security patches, and a bunch of new features and policies for enterprise users. Thanks to automatic updates, Edge 124 is probably already on your system. You can check that by heading to edge://settings/help.

Speaking of Microsoft Edge, the software giant announced that the old PDF viewer in its browser will stick with us for a little longer. According to revised plans, Microsoft plans to remove Microsoft Edge Legacy PDF at least in early 2015, if not later. As a reminder, Microsoft started replacing the old PDF viewer with one powered by Adobe Acrobat in 2023.

Other mainstream browsers also received big updates this week. Chrome got version 123, and Firefox was updated to version 124. Brave also updated its browser with multiple changes, and it no longer installs its VPN services by default.

Other notable updates released this week include the following:

• Microsoft Edge 124 Dev received a new Copilot button for the PDF viewer and various fixes.
• Microsoft announced multiple improvements for Teams apps, including reviews and ratings.
• 7-Zip received ZSTD support in version 24.01.
• Files 3.3 is out with a reworked layout selector, better DPI support, and other changes.
• Stardock released a big update for ObjectDock with new features and proper support for modern Windows versions.
• Microsoft Dev Home app has been updated to version 0.12 with accessibility and bug fixes.

Here are the new drivers you might want to check out if you use supported hardware:

• Nvidia Game Ready 551.86 WHQL with Horizon Forbidden West support and a couple of fixes.
• AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.3.1 with Dragon's Dogma 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and Outpost: Infinity Siege support.
• Intel 31.0.101.5379 Beta with support for Diablo IV Ray Tracing Update, Dragon's Dogma 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and more. In addition, the driver significantly improves performance in various games on supported hardware from Intel.

Finally, here is the latest edition of Microsoft 365 Roadmap Weekly, a series where we track features coming soon to Microsoft's productivity apps. The latest additions include intelligent message translation in Teams chats, recurring meetings in OneDrive for the web, and more.

On the gaming side

Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts and more.

Starfield received a massive update with almost 500 fixes and plenty of new features for photo mode, scanner, settings, and more.

Microsoft also dropped the second batch of new games for Xbox and PC Game Pass subscribers. The latest additions include nine games, such as Diablo IV, F1 23, The Quarry, Evil West, Open Roads, and more.

If you are still on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 32-bit Windows 10, Epic Games has some bad news for you: the store will soon stop supporting your ancient (not you, Windows 10) operating system. According to the recently published message on the official website, Epic Games will pull the plug on unsupported Windows versions and 32-bit Windows 10 in June 2024.

Other news about "pulling the plug" includes the Microsoft Rewards app on Xbox. Microsoft has discontinued it in favor of the new Rewards Hub on Xbox, Windows, and mobile devices. Microsoft will stop publishing offers in the Microsoft Rewards app on April 15, 2024.

Here is a big review to finish the gaming section. This week, Pulasthi Ariyasinghe reviewed Dragon's Dogma 2, a new RPG from Capcom. The game offers player freedom, immersive exploration, and great class variation and combat. It is not perfect, though. Beware of crashes in cutscenes, not-so-great inventory management, and some performance issues.

This week, a new report about a handheld Xbox console emerged. According to unconfirmed reports, Microsoft is testing internally a "fully native" portable console that does not rely on cloud gaming and processes everything locally.

Of course, that does not guarantee that a portable Xbox is coming soon to the market. Microsoft is a big company with plenty of experimental hardware in its labs, most of which will never see the light of the day. Still, it is good to know that the company's gaming division is not ignoring the portable console market.

Finally, here is our updated list of the most anticipated games coming to Xbox Series X|S later this year.

Deals and freebies

Check out this week's Weekend PC Game Deals article, which features a new freebie from the Epic Games Store, fresh bundles from Humble Bundle, and a big sale of DRM-free titles.

A blast from Microsoft's past

John Callaham's weekly "Look back" series provides throwbacks into the past, detailing the company's products, partnerships, mishaps, and successes from years ago.

This week's look-back article is about the lawsuit Apple threatened to file against Microsoft 36 years ago. The company accused Microsoft of stealing its operating system's user interface design ideas to implement them in the original version of Windows (released in November 1985). After some back-and-forth, the two companies agreed to settle the dispute, which resulted in Microsoft paying Apple an undisclosed amount of money. You can learn more about this interesting piece of Apple and Microsoft history here.

Random fact about Microsoft

And here is a randomly selected piece of trivia about the company, Windows, and other Microsoft-made things.

Most Windows users know the purpose of the three buttons in the top-right corner of every open window. They are called "close," "maximize/restore," and "minimize." Did you know that the original names were "iconize" and "zoom?" In Windows 2.0, which was released in late 1987, Microsoft renamed "iconize" and "zoom" to "minimize" and "maximize," and they are still named so in the latest versions of Windows 11.

Here is another one: Remember all that "Windows 10 is the last Windows ever" thing? It turned out Microsoft was petty serious about making the soon-to-be-unsupported OS the last one. You can read about that in the seventh edition of the Windows Internals book.

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