Month: June 2021

Enlarge / This Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart image was captured while running in the game's new 40 fps mode. It offers the same amount of resolution, image quality, and ray-tracing fidelity as the prior 30 fps "quality" mode. (credit: Sony / Insomniac)

When it comes to action-filled video games, frame rates matter, and up until recently, traditional "frames per second" wisdom has landed at either 30 fps or 60 fps. Thirty, the rate seen in most standard TV broadcasts, is fine for slower cinematic games, while frantic battles and twitchy fights benefit from a higher rate, since it looks smoother and reduces button-tap latency.

This week, a surprising new number enters the conversation: 40 fps, a standard previously unattainable thanks largely to TV standards. It comes courtesy of a new patch to this month's Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PlayStation 5, which already includes a 60 fps "performance" option. So why would anyone pick 40 fps instead? And how does it work?

HDMI standards, menu picking, and math

Recent titles by Insomniac Games, particularly Marvel's Spider-Man and the 2016 Ratchet & Clank remake, launched on PS4 with a 30 fps lock, meant to guarantee higher pixel counts and more detailed shadow and level-of-detail (LoD) settings. Both of those games eventually got PS5 versions with 60 fps support, since they could leverage the newer hardware's power. As a native PS5 game, this month's R&C:RA launched with both 30 and 60 fps modes on day one. Its menus asked you what you preferred in your gaming: more pixels and higher image quality or more frames?

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  A small desktop tripod and a monitor mount are both included with the new UltraSharp, which magnetically attaches to either. [credit: Dell ]

Dell's new UltraSharp camera takes aim at Logitech's high-end Brio with the same $199 price along with 4K resolution and Windows Hello-compatible infrared sensor. But despite sharing a price tag and many of the same specifications, the two high-end webcams diverge noticeably on features.

Hardware

This 2008-era Apple iSight camera featured a similar "shotgun" chassis design to the UltraSharp—but only at 640x480 resolution, with FireWire interface. (credit: CC BY-SA 3.0)

The UltraSharp's most obvious differentiator is its vague physical resemblance to the Apple iSight, a discontinued FireWire camera with a similar "shotgun" chassis orientation. As compelling as that resemblance is for some Apple fans, the similarity between UltraSharp and iSight pretty much ends there.

Under the hood, the UltraSharp features a Sony STARVIS 8.3 megapixel primary optical sensor, featuring automatic focus, automatic white balance and light correction, and full HDR. There's also a Windows Hello-compatible IR sensor for biometric authentication—but, curiously, no microphone. UltraSharp users will need to supply their own mic—which might actually prove convenient for some high-end consumers with studio mics, who will therefore have one fewer useless input to deal with.

Enlarge

On Tuesday, HP launched a new line of lightweight consumer laptops called the Pavilion Aero 13.

The newest addition to HP's affordable home-targeted lineup sports a powerful AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPU and a 2.5k resolution display at a 16:10 aspect ratio (2560x1600) and 400 nits of brightness. It weighs less than 1 kg (2.2 lb).

AMD gets a chance to shine

Most of the concrete specifications for the Aero 13 lineup are still missing—all we know aside from the display specs and weight is that the Aero 13 begins at $749, and its maximum CPU spec is Ryzen 7 5800. We're still waiting for details on what CPU will be in that $749 system, as well as how much RAM and storage to expect.

Enlarge / A few of the older Google Nest products.

Google's latest blog post finally gives a minimum public support timeline for all of its "Google Nest" smart home products. The company has committed to supporting all Google Nest products with "critical bug fixes and patches" for at least five years.

Inconsistent branding means that it has been tough to pin down Google's definition of "Google Nest" products, but the company now has a support page that helpfully spells out every included model. Today's announcement applies to the Nest Audio speakers, Nest Hub smart displays, Nest Thermostats, Nest Protect smoke detector, Nest cameras, Nest Wi-Fi, the discontinued Nest Secure alarm system, the Nest x Yale lock, and less obvious devices like the Google Home smart speakers (which were replaced by Nest Audio), Google Wi-Fi (replaced by Nest Wi-Fi), and the entire Chromecast line, including the new Google TV dongle.

Anything on this list could last longer than five years, but a few notable products will be hitting the end of their guaranteed support timelines soon. The original Google Home smart speaker, which launched in 2016, will hit the end of its guaranteed life in November of this year, while the Home Mini and the discontinued Home Max could be shut down as early as late next year. Dumb speakers can last for decades, so hopefully these products will get better than bare-minimum support.

Enlarge (credit: Halil Sagirkaya / Anadolu Agency)

After years of relative calm, Google and Microsoft are tossing out their ceasefire, a move that—perhaps ironically—could bring each company additional antitrust scrutiny.

The non-aggression pact, signed five years ago, let the two companies set aside their numerous lawsuits. It also created a process by which they could resolve conflicts behind closed doors, requiring Microsoft and Google to follow that process before asking regulators to step in. During this time, the two companies have tussled over a number of issues, including whether search engines should pay news publishers. But Microsoft reached the end of its rope when it felt that Google wasn’t playing fair in ad tech.

Both companies attempted to solve the impasse through a series of escalating negotiations as laid out in the agreement. The matter ultimately reached the corner office, with CEOs Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai holding a series of talks that didn’t reach a solution. That lack of a resolution is what apparently led to the agreement’s unraveling, according to a new Bloomberg report.