Author: Sam Machkovech

US vs UK: Which Ars country wore E3 better? We scoured the show floor for gems that didn't quite make our top-ten list. (video link)

Truth be told, Ars Technica walked into this year's Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) with pretty low expectations. Before the doors opened, Nintendo and Sony had already confirmed that they wouldn't show off any brand-new consoles, and companies like Activision and EA excused themselves from the proceedings. But we still wound up discovering a ton of great stuff, mostly in the form of new games—so many, in fact, that we made our own War of 1812 out of it.

On E3's second day, Ars UK's Mark Walton proposed that I square off against him in a battle of international tastes with our camera crew in tow, and I obliged him. The premise was simple: which Ars nation could find cooler stuff on the E3 show floor? Spoiler alert: we both did fine, at least in terms of parsing the quality stuff from the hype.

Columbia's researchers tested a few maximum FOV restriction levels before settling on the box here labeled (e). So long as VR users' views were reduced gradually, most of the testers didn't even notice—and the ones who did said they preferred their sit-down VR experiences that way. (credit: Columbia University)

The launch of the first consumer-focused VR headsets has researchers and 3D content developers focusing on the nausea issues that arise with head-mounted displays. The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive can make users feel immersed and comfortable in their virtual worlds, but that's easier in limited virtual environments, especially ones without movement. What can be done about the pukey feeling brought on by harsher forms of virtual movement, when the brain and the body don't agree on what's happening?

While some people recommend adding a fixed focal point to a VR world, like a cockpit or a peripherally visible nose, a group of Columbia researchers decided to test an idea that was patented years before the current VR boom: a dynamically shifting field of view [FOV]. The system works by recognizing rapid artificial movement during a seated VR experience—like when users press a joystick to rotate their first-person view, or when elevation rapidly changes thanks to objects such as stairs—and then gradually blacking out the peripheral edges of a VR headset's lenses until that upsetting movement dissipates.

In its report, which was published last week alongside a demonstration video (shown below), the Columbia team concluded that "even though we had a relatively small number of participants [24 after removing people who were considered "immune" to virtual motion sickness], our data indicates that FOV restrictors helped participants stay in the virtual environment longer and feel more comfortable than they did in the control condition." Users largely didn't notice the dynamic FOV changes until they were informed well after the study concluded, and the few who did notice reported preferring the limits, since they didn't obscure the primary VR viewpoint. Worth noting, this study's results included unanimous praise from its limited test audience, compared to mixed opinions on the aforementioned VR-nose study.

LOS ANGELES—Another E3 is officially in the books, and we at Ars are still forming opinions and parsing the real content from the hype and illusions. While we work on writing impressions and picking conference favorites, please enjoy our gallery of photos from the event's weirdest and largest stations. Click through to see selections from all three major publishers, along with a mix of indie fare, weird costumes, and, er, sex toys as game controllers.

Don't worry, the giant NES controller was back this year.

64 more images in gallery

These galleries are missing a few photos, including shots from EA's off-site event, as well as photos and videos we've already included in other E3 pieces, like our hands-on look at the new Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, coming in 2017 for Wii U and Nintendo NX.

We've included an additional gallery for any of you who want a better look at Microsoft's new Xbox Design Lab, which lets fans pick and choose colors and accents for every element of an Xbox One controller. It's one thing to see the product's website, but getting to handle the controllers and see how the colors pop is another. Full disclosure: Ars' Sam Machkovech placed an order after going hands-on with these suckers.

Sam and Kyle butt heads over Zelda's new direction. (video link)

LOS ANGELES—30 minutes with the newest Legend of Zelda game is enough to prove out what a dumb idea it is to play a game like this for only 30 minutes—especially one as huge, ambitious, and convention-busting as Breath of the Wild. Nintendo's 2017 title, slated to launch on both the Wii U and the unreleased Nintendo NX system, pushes the boundaries of what people should expect in a "Zelda" video game—or even what it means to be a "Zelda" game.

Before Ars' closed-door session at a private Nintendo booth, we'd all gotten a chance to watch the extensive preview footage that Nintendo had published during this year's E3. Watching video of a game never has the same impact as playing a game, and after putting in some controller time we've come to realize that Breath blows up a lot of Zelda series archetypes. Our demo was split into two portions: a 15-minute "sandbox" session in the middle of the game's opening zone (which we started with more armor and weapons) and a 20-minute shot at the retail game's cold open.

(video link)

LOS ANGELES—Oculus may be the best-known name in the virtual reality gaming space, but it's still lacking in one key category: motion controllers. The HTC Vive has proven how fun those devices can be in a VR game or app, and Oculus' answer, the "Touch" set of motion-tracked controllers, still doesn't have a price or a release date.

Thankfully, Oculus Touch is getting closer to a "fall" launch, and at this year's E3, Oculus Studios gave Ars a chance to try two brand-new games in wildly different genres—to prove how serious the company is about hand-tracking gaming.

SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Your history and experience with video games may very well be defined by the acronyms you hold near and dear. All-caps letter slams like WASD, LFG, GLHF, QTE, and HPB represent a lot for certain gaming genres or eras (and probably read like gobbledygook to outsiders), but in the console gaming space, one acronym may very well count as the longest-lasting of them all: ATB.

That stands for the Active-Time Battle system from Final Fantasy, which debuted in its fifth game and has remained a constant in a series that otherwise revels in full memory-slate wipes with its every sequel. Sure, the games share constants like Chocobos, mechanics named Cid, and elemental magic mixed with giant-monster summons, but the RPG series is probably best known for, and identified by, its meter-charging twist on turn-based combat.

The upcoming release of Final Fantasy XV is interesting in a lot of ways, from its enormity to its car-cruising "band of bros" premise. But after being given full room to roam in the game's entire first chapter, the largest takeaway by far is its battle-system shift. Forget the teases and dances with real-time active combat in games like FFXIII; Square Enix has finally, truly pushed its golden child into the real-time combat realm.

Get hyped: the next Legend of Zelda game has finally received a trailer loaded with a significant amount of gameplay and feature previews. From the look of things, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild seems like it will live up to some very lofty expectations.

The 2017 Nintendo game, set to launch on both Wii U and the still-unnamed Nintendo NX system, shows an apparent Link hero traversing a giant, colorful world in many ways, including horseback, parasailing, and Tomb Raider-esque cliffside scaling. Our hero gets up to a lot of new activities in a mere three-minute trailer runtime. Most notably, Link gets his first-ever Grand Theft Auto-styled maneuver: hijacking a rogue horse after stealthing up to it in some tall grass.

Link is also seen wielding new kinds of main weapons, including a few staves and a strangely styled sword that looks axe-like. He's even seen putting together various ingredients to cook dishes of food. Puzzle solving via environmental shoves and magical ice-block formations, not to mention a few giant baddies and a long look at the series' famous Master Sword, round out the trailer's most spine-tingling moments.

Ars' Mark Walton and Sam Machkovech discuss the awesome processing power of Scorpio. But what do all those specs mean for the gamer? Where does the Xbox One S fit in? And will existing Xbox owners upgrade? (video link)

LOS ANGELES—A few E3 press conferences have already come and gone in the past day and a half, but only one has announced a new game console so powerful that it will power 4K, 60 frames-per-second gaming. That honor goes to Microsoft and its smashing E3 conference on Monday, which ended with the reveal of the long-rumored Project Scorpio.

Between that "coming in 2017" hardware unveil, the formal introduction of the "slim" Xbox One S, and a giant slew of new games, Microsoft came out swinging in a pretty big way—so Ars' Sam Machkovech and Mark Walton came together to chat about the company's hardware and software unveils in two separate videos. We still have impressions about PlayStation's press conference coming later, so it remains to be seen if Microsoft will be declared the ultimate "winner" today, but at the very least, they were no slouches.

AMD CEO Lisa Su shows off two new Polaris 14mm process video cards. Boy, the RX 460 and RX 470 sure are tiny, ain't they?

LOS ANGELES—At E3's second-annual PC Gaming Show, AMD CEO Lisa Su came to the event with a briefcase in hand, which she cracked open to reveal more video cards from the company's new Polaris line: the RX 460 and RX 470.

These new 14mm process cards looked itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie in Su's hands, and they will be matched with lower-end specs than the $199 RX 480 card, which received a separate reveal two weeks ago. Su described the RX 470 as an ideal card for "1080p gaming," while the RX 460 promises to offer serious power for the low energy requirement of 75 watts, meant for simpler visual games like League of Legends and other MOBAs. Impressively, neither appeared to have full-shroud cooling units attached; we'll have to wait to see how these low-energy, low-heat units react to overclocking.

VR with a backpack. Doesn't look silly at all...

Specs, prices, and release dates for these two Polaris cards were not formally announced at the event. Su also brought on a representative to walk around the stage wearing a backpack complete with an Alienware PC installed inside—which could actually be light and comfortable if AMD pulls off a small form factor with the "disruptive" $199 RX 480 card packed inside.

This big-eyed pyramid dude watches over your progress in the Necropolis and doles out sarcastic commentary after you complete every level. He also gives you perks on occasion. (credit: Harebrained Schemes)

KIRKLAND, Wash.—As I made my way out of Harebrained Studios' modest, Seattle-area office on a gray June afternoon, I heard a shout: "Hold that elevator!"

Studio co-founder Mitch Gitelman was running in my direction, the way someone might dash if a visitor left a wallet or set of keys behind, but it wasn't that. "Now do you see why we left permadeath in our multiplayer mode?"

You're stopping the elevator for that question? Actually, what sounded like a generic, nerdily phrased exclamation was pretty important in this case. An hour earlier, Gitelman had sat me down with my second-ever demo of Necropolis, a Dark Souls-inspired dungeon crawler, and I went into that playtest with raised eyebrows and low expectations. The single-player demo I'd played at a press event in Santa Monica a few weeks prior was fine enough, and I asked for a studio visit and a little more gameplay, having not been entirely sold by my first session. I thought to myself, maybe I'd write the game up soon, but certainly not during my busy E3 schedule.