With today’s announcement, there are two major components to Reflex. The first is a set of APIs studios can leverage to add a Reflex Low Latency Mode setting to their games. Using a relatively affordable GPU like the GTX 1660 Super, NVIDIA claims users can expect a 33 percent improvement in their PC’s responsiveness when playing games that support the feature. The framework works by reducing the number of frames your GPU queues up in certain scenes, which in turn reduces pressure on your CPU.
The other major component of Reflex is a module that will ship inside the new 360Hz G-Sync displays coming from companies like Acer and Alienware. In conjunction with a compatible mouse from ASUS, Logitech, Razer and SteelSeries, the Reflex Latency Analyzer module will allow you to see a breakdown of how your mouse, internal hardware and display contribute to your system’s overall latency. In turn, this should allow you to address the problem at its source.
There is still information we don’t know about Reflex — such as how recent of a GPU you’ll need to take advantage of the low latency mode. NVIDIA will likely fill out those details as we get closer to the release of the company’s RTX 30-series GPUs in October.
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is officially official, but it’ll be a few weeks before Samsung starts shipping to the masses and we know some people just can’t wait that long. Since you’ve decided to click on this story, we’re assuming that means you, so why not join me and reviews editor Cherlynn Low this afternoon at 4PM Eastern/1PM Pacific — we’ll be cracking open a freshly delivered foldable and taking questions from straight from our audience. You get some answers and a first look at beautiful new hardware, and we get a better sense of what the people want us to focus on as we start working on our review. It’s a win-win!
There are just a few ground rules to keep in mind here. First, we’d love to hear from you in our chat, but be please be cool! Second, we won’t be drop-testing this thing on stream. This is our one review unit, and it’s in everyone’s best interest that it actually works while we’re evaluating it. Oh, and apologies to that one person who just keeps asking: We will not be tasting the phone. You know who you are.
Screen Pass, the Movies Anywhere feature that allows you to lend a digital film you own to a friend or family member, is now available to all users in the US. When you share a movie with someone (which you can do over text, email or instant message), they’ll have seven days to accept the invitation and 14 days to start watching. Once they begin the movie, they’ll have 72 hours to finish it. Users can lend up to three films per month — though, beyond that, you can share the same title as many times as you want.
At the moment, approximately 6,500 movies are Screen Pass-eligible, accounting for more than 80 percent of the platform’s library. To use the feature, you need to have redeemed a non-promotional digital code within the last six months.
“In total, our team has found and removed about a dozen deceptive campaigns connected to individuals associated with the IRA,” Facebook wrote in an update. “The IRA-linked campaign we removed in August was largely unsuccessful on Facebook, but it tricked unwitting freelance journalists into writing stories on its behalf.”
Similarly, Twitter said that it had identified five accounts it could “reliably attribute to Russian state actors,” which seem to have been associated with the same scheme. As on Facebook, Twitter says the accounts “achieved little impact on Twitter” and mostly posted spammy and other “low quality” tweets.
The Tweets from the Russian-linked accounts were low quality and spammy, and most Tweets from these accounts received few, if any, Likes or Retweets.
The accounts achieved little impact on Twitter and were identified and removed quickly.
But the company notes that the accounts, which were associated with a news website called “PeaceData” had hired freelancers to produce content. Twitter says that it will now block links to the PeaceData website and that “existing links will be de-amplified.”
Both Twitter and Facebook said they were tipped off to the IRA activity by the FBI, which helped them shut down the accounts before they could grow their influence.
Alienware has applied its 360Hz refresh rate technology to its latest and greatest laptops. The Alienware Area-51m R2 and m17 R3 will both support 360Hz FHD panels, bringing that esports vibe to mobile players. The Area-51m R2 runs on 10th Gen Intel Core i9 CPUs with NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs, while the m17 R3 is powered by Intel’s 10th Gen Core H and HK series.
Alienware m17
Alienware
The 360Hz refresh rate is ideal for esports pros and competitive players. It’s a step up from the standard gaming monitor refresh rate of 240Hz, populating artifacts with more clarity.
At CES 2020, NVIDIA showed off the “world’s fastest” esports display, the ASUS ROG Swift 360, a monitor with a 360HZ refresh rate. That display should go on sale this September, and NVIDIA is already announcing another super-fast gaming monitor. Acer’s upcoming Predator X25 will boast the same NVIDIA-powered 360Hz refresh rate.
Like the Swift 360, the Predator X25 is designed for professional gaming and training. It will give players ultra-low latency and smooth animation. With a 360Hz refresh rate, game frames are displayed every 2.8 milliseconds. For comparison, predecessors to the Swift 360 and Predator X25 tend to cap out between 120Hz and 240Hz.
If refresh rates aren’t your primary concern, you may be interested in the new Alienware 38 Curved Gaming Monitor. The 37.5-inch monitor has NVIDIA G-Sync Ultimate certification and VESA’s DisplayHDR 600 specifications. The Alienware 27 Gaming Monitor has an edge-to-edge design with NVIDIA G-Sync Ultimate and VESA DisplayHDR 600 certifications. It’s pretty zippy, too, with a 240Hz refresh rate.
Alienware
Alienware’s gaming laptops are getting a boost as well. The 17-inch Area51m now comes with 10th-gen Intel Core i9 CPUs and NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX GPUs. It packs 360Hz FHD panels and Alienware’s Cryotech cooling and vapor chamber tech. If you’re looking for something a bit thinner, you may be interested in the Alienware m17. It offers the same 360Hz FHD panels and cooling system, but it’s slimmed down a bit and packs Intel’s 10th Gen Core H and HK series.
Finally, Alienware is introducing custom-engineered graphics card options to its Aurora gaming desktops. The Aurora and Aurora Ryzen Edition will soon come with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 and 3080 graphics options, as well as cooling and thermal designs meant to prioritize gaming performance.
Alienware says it will share more details on all of this new gear later this month.
The next time you need to fill up your car, you might pay for your gas using your voice. Amazon, ExxonMobil and payment provider Fiserv have announced that you can pay with Alexa at some pumps. The Alexa skill was announced at CES in January, and it’s now available at more than 11,500 Exxon and Mobil stations across the US.
When you pull up to a pump, you can simply ask the voice assistant to “pay for gas” using your phone or through your car itself if you have an Alexa-enabled vehicle or Echo Auto. Alexa will confirm the station and pump number with you, then it’ll activate the pump. Payment will automatically be handled through Amazon Pay. While you might have already been using contactless payments at the pump anyway, this option could make your trip to the gas station a bit more seamless.
Throughout all of this, Ismail was traveling the globe, speaking at gaming conferences and telling Vlambeer’s story to other developers. Conference organizers at one show would see him speak and offer opportunities at other events, and Ismail saw first-hand how powerful this brand of marketing could be. Every time he spoke, not only was he offering sound advice to other indies, but he was promoting Vlambeer, solidifying it as a voice of authority in the industry. He created talks and toolsets to help a fresh influx of indie developers navigate contracts, press and marketing, including the widely used presskit() template. He advocated for equality on-screen and behind the scenes, and highlighted the sorry state of Muslim representation in games.
In the early days, Ismail would string together conference appearances on the fly, accepting if organizers would cover flight and lodging costs. Often, he didn’t even have a plan to get back to the Netherlands.
“I chained together talks,” Ismail said. “And I genuinely had times where I was in foreign countries with no idea how I was going to fund getting home. Because, like, I needed a talk in Europe to fly me back home from the US or from wherever the hell I was.”
Nijman added, “And also if you look through Rami’s speaking throughout the years, you can see that he was just learning so much. You very quickly found your voice, but at some point you started giving speeches that were a bit like Obama’s… and I think now you’ve finally really found your own voice, but it was like watching someone learn to rap.”
This entire time, Vlambeer was sustained by the momentum of a rapidly growing indie scene, and the kind of personal hunger that often manifests in early-20-somethings. Ismail and Nijman released project after project, attended conference after conference, and kept their profile high. They released Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, Gun Gods and Luftrausers, and got right to work on Nuclear Throne, the most ambitious game in their roster. It took three and a half years to complete, and by the end, Ismail and Nijman were running on empty.
“We had a lunch meeting, I think,” Ismail said. “And we just looked at each other and we’re like, I need time off. We need to not talk for like a year or something.”
“Not even that we didn’t need to talk, it was just that we needed a big, big fucking vacation,” Nijman said.
Ismail and Nijman took a break. In 2016, they stepped away to work on their own projects, separately. Nijman traveled the globe and built MINIT with Kitty Calis, Jukio Kallio and Dominik Johann. It was nominated for a handful of awards, including Seumas McNally Grand Prize at IGF 2019 and Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game at that year’s DICE Awards. Ismail expanded his advocacy efforts and launched GameDev.World, a global effort to connect and support developers trying to make it on their own.
Vlambeer’s momentum stopped.
Ismail and Nijman reconvened and attempted to pick up where they left off. They created plans for ULTRABUGS and started coding. And coding. And coding.
“We noticed that just getting ULTRABUGS out has just kind of been this, I don’t know,” Nijman trailed off.
“Long, drawn-out process,” Ismail finished.
“It’s not necessarily hard, but it’s just not happening,” Nijman said. “I think we both realized that our interests are now kind of in different places.”
“We reorganized our lives during that year,” Ismail said. “And it turns out that I guess part of Vlambeer was momentum, and that went out for a bit. So we both grew in different directions. And this was sort of the first opportunity for us to fully grow in different directions.”
ULTRABUGS is still coming, and it’ll be the last game under the Vlambeer banner. Ismail and Nijman will work on it in their own time, release it, and then turn off the lights for good. There’s no release date for ULTRABUGS.
Nijman and Ismail will continue to do their own thing in the video game industry. Nijman is collaborating with other developers and building games like Disc Room, which is being published by Devolver Digital. Ismail is focused on GameDev.World and other advocacy efforts, as well as his own development projects.
Vlambeer
“I’m a little nervous, but also excited,” Ismail said.
Nijman cut him off to say, “I’m not worried for you. I totally trust that you’re gonna do your thing, do your Rami thing.”
Even though they’ve never been friends, per se, Nijman and Ismail respect the hell out of each other, and this partnership served them well for 10 years. They’re now approaching their early 30s, shifting their goals and finding new perspectives. However, one core mission remains the same for both of them: help the indie industry grow. Vlambeer served that purpose for a while, but now it’s time for something new.
“People don’t necessarily need a Vlambeer anymore,” Nijman said.
“We’ve said what we wanted to, we’ve said when we needed to, we’ve grown along with the industry in such interesting ways,” Ismail added. “If I’m honest, I would much rather close this chapter with one last good choice than bleed out over the years, doing less and less.”
The indie industry may not need Vlambeer anymore, true. But more importantly, Ismail and Nijman don’t need Vlambeer any longer.
Android users will also be alerted when exposure notifications are available in their state, then will be prompted to download a customized app developed by Google. This functionality will appear in Android 6.0 and higher later this month.
Meanwhile, iOS 13.7 will be released today with the new exposure notification system. The first states on the system will be Maryland, Nevada, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
The unprecedented collaboration between Apple and Google was first announced in April. The interoperable system has been available for public health agencies to develop their own apps on — Virginia launched the first one in the U.S. in August and five more states have followed.
The more people who opt in, the better for public health. In a statement from Apple and Google, Christophe Fraser, from Oxford University’s department of health said: “We estimate that a well-staffed manual contact tracing workforce combined with 15% uptake could reduce infections by 15% and deaths by 11%.”
Contact tracing — the practice of identifying anyone an infected person has interacted with — is vital to a pandemic response. But the U.S. has struggled with it through a deadly mixture of overwhelming case loads, slow testing and uncooperative civilians. There is no federal contact tracing program, even as people can travel freely from state to state. The two dominant makers of smartphone operating systems can’t snap their fingers and create faster testing, responsible self-quarantining and widespread mask wearing, but the hope is that comprehensive exposure tracking can get people to assist in one fundamental of public health with as little friction as possible.
