Sucuuu

As any fule kno, the most conspicuous shortcoming of IPS screen tech is contrast, as in the relative lack of. By comparison, VA panels offer anywhere from twice to four times the contrast of a typical IPS alternative.

At least they did until LG rolled out its IPS Black tech with double the contrast of your typical IPS panel. The only problem is that IPS Black monitors have thus far been limited to 60Hz models aimed at corporate drones. Well, no longer.

Well, not quite. Dell has a pair of new IPS Black monitors that hum along at a more gamery 120Hz. They are still business monitors, not gaming panels. But that 120Hz figure creates the prospect of IPS gaming panels with better contrast, right? Hold that thought.

First, let’s cover off the speeds and feeds of these new Dell panels. The Dell U2724D and U2724DE, for it is they, are essentially peas in a pod. They’re both 27-inch 1440p panels with that IPS black tech, lifting contrast to 2,000:1 from the 1,000:1 you normally see from IPS panels, albeit some claim 1,300:1.

For the record, VA panel tech goes all the way up to 4,000:1 contrast, with 2,500:1 being achieved by even the worst performing examples.

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Last we heard something really concrete on the next Witcher game, it was in pre-production—that was what CD Projekt Red said about The Witcher 4, codename Polaris, back in early 2022. That’s definitely not the case anymore judging by CD Projekt’s latest earnings report, which shows that around half the studio’s developers are now working on the Witcher sequel.

As spotted by IGN, CDPR’s Q3 report indicates the game has moved into full development with some 300 developers working on the next Witcher RPG. “The team is steadily growing, having reached almost 330 developers at the end of last month,” CEO Adam Kiciński said in an earnings call today. “It’s expected to grow to over 400 by mid next year.”

Kiciński said that the 220 developers marked as working on Cyberpunk 2077 by the report’s October cutoff will soon be transitioning to other projects, including Polaris. Most of the rest, presumably, will be making their way onboard the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, which is also already early in production.

Despite the growing team committed to the Witcher sequel, it’s not the only Witcher project in the works at CD Projekt. There’s Project Serius, in develo…

Watch On

I can’t imagine why you’d leave both Karlach and Astarion out of your party, unless your version of Tav, the hero of Baldur’s Gate 3, is some kind of obscene rogue/barbarian multiclass who has both their specialties covered. That’s what happened at GenCon’s live Dungeons & Dragons show, however, when voice actors Samantha Béart and Neil Newbon explored what their characters get up to when they wander off on their own, live on stage with Dungeon Master Aabria Iyengar and fellow players Anjali Bhimani (DesiQuest) and Brennan Lee Mulligan (Dimension 20).

Their adventure begins at a dive bar so low it’s in the actual Underdark, but I won’t spoil where it goes from there. Suffice to say it’s an extremely silly good time, and the players get to take a couple of pot-shots at Gale and Lae’zel while they’re not around. This is for sure the kind of shenanigans the NPCs get up to when I leave them behind, and that’s canon.

The second half of the game includes a demonstration of Project Sigil, the 3D virtual tabletop Wizards of the Coast is currently working on. It looks a lot more graphically impressive than something like Roll20, which is what I’m using to …

It’s no secret that Valve scanned the faces of real people to use as 3D meshes for characters in Half-Life 2. Most of them are credited in the “Thanks to the following for the use of their faces” section of the credits in Half-Life 2 and its follow-up episodes. Thanks to Source Filmmaker and Garry’s Mod, many of them have enjoyed a memetic life beyond the Half-Life series too, with even the background citizens of City 17 developing followings in the SFM community.

YouTuber Richter Overtime did some digging to find out where the people behind those faces are now. Some are already well-known to Half-Life fans, like Jamil Higley, the actor and model who was scanned to create Alyx and also performed her motion capture (according to IMDb, she also did mocap on No One Lives Forever). But there are plenty more you might not know.

For instance, Father Grigori, the shotgun-toting priest Gordon meets in Ravenholm, was based on Daniel Dociu, who was the art director for Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. He ended up in the role because his son, Horia Dociu, was an environment artist on Half-Life 2.

While many of the citizens in Half-Life 2 are based on actors, Valve employees, …

First up, some good news. If you’re planning on staying with Windows 10 for a while longer, Microsoft will continue to provide support all the way up to October 14, 2025. The bad news? If you plan on sticking with it longer than that and receiving future security updates, you’ll need to sign up to the company’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, and that’s going to cost money.

Via Bleeping Computer, the upcoming Windows 10 22H2 version will be the final Windows 10 release, and it’ll be supported all the way up to October next year. Beyond that, unless you’re making use of the Long-Term-Servicing Channel releases which are primarily used for things like industrial equipment and medical applications, you’ll need to sign up for an ESU subscription to receive security fixes, with prices to be announced at a later date.

Given that organisations using Windows 7 PCs with an extended Enterprise Edition licence were charged $25 per device from year one and a surprisingly substantial $100 per device in year three, this announcement may represent excessive costs for business owners wanting to keep their current Windows 10 systems secure beyond October next year, if this p…

Ever wondered what it would be like to run around the maps of Armored Core 6 with your Elden Ring character? If not, why the heck not? I’m sure this modder who imported the AC6 maps into Elden Ring surely can’t be the only one interested in exploring them, sword drawn, and ready to fight mechs with magic.

Having posted the flythrough video on their YouTube account, there’s been quite a positive response to Dropoff’s idea to waltz around the Armored Core 6  maps with their Elden Ring character. Not least as it puts the maps into a human perspective, and manages to vindicate Redditors’ praise for the AC6 graphics.

You don’t usually get a chance to appreciate the detail when you’re speeding around in your mech going pew-pew.

Recently we wrote about Armored Core 6’s biggest boss being so unimaginably huge, it’d be its own landmark on Elden Ring’s world map, but I didn’t expect someone to actually combine the two games in some cursed sci-fi/fantasy mashup.

I am still trying to understand the reasoning behind putting Armored Core 6 maps in Elden Ring, but I suppose the game modding community never did need reasons to make anything other than a whim. <…