Even as most users are still transitioning from their Full HD panels to 4K ones (less than 40% of users have a 4K-capable panel), the 8K panel onslaught should begin as early as the first half the current year. AU Optronics, one of the world's foremost panel makers, is expected to start shipping 8K-enabled panels between the 65-85 inch range in the first half of this year, thus moving the goalpost once again on what the top of the line in the display market is.

Liao Wei-lun, president of AUO's video products business group, said that global sales of 65- and 70-inch TVs and display products are expected to grow 40% and 50% on year, respectively, in 2018. As yields have improved, so has pricing come down, which means users will be looking to upgrade their panels to higher diagonal sizes. But the bigger the size, the higher the resolution of the panel has to be, and that's where AUO wants to do business. AUO expects the penetration rate of 65-inch and above sizes of 8K TVs will start gaining momentum in 2018 and reach 10% in 2020. Naturally, AUO plans to start 8K panel production on the higher margin products - high diagonal TVs - and will scale down from there, eventually hitting PC monitor's screens. Maybe by that time we'll have graphics card options that can actually push that gargantuan number of pixels.

At HTC VIVE Spring Product Show event in Shenzhen, China, virtual reality (VR) technology company Visbit launched Visbit 8K VR Player, the industry's first foveated rendering-based 8K 360° 3D video player, on the Viveport content store of the Vive Focus, the ready-to-ship premium standalone VR headset made by Vive. With this launch, for the first time the pipeline to deliver high-end VR video experience is completed. VR users can now enjoy premium quality 8K 360° 3D VR videos without being tethered. This is an important user experience upgade for the VR industry.

Applying Visbit's View-Optimized Viewing (VVOS) technology, Visbit 8K VR Player is capable of playing up to 8K stereoscopic 360° VR videos at both stream-to-play and download-to-play modes. It also features spatial audio support and video encryption to protect IPs. Starting today, Visbit's 8K VR Player is now one of the top featured apps in Viveport store, and available for free to download for a limited period. In the coming months, Visbit 8K VR Player will also gradually support other standalone and mobile VR headsets.

The ultimate version of the fifteenth Final Fantasy (how many fantasies can really be final, eh?) has been outed, and now PC gamers now when they can expect to go around the most perfect iteration of the Final Fantasy XV game world. The latest, greatest, and heavily graphically-revised Final Fantasy will finally hit the PC platform on March 6.

The PC version of Final Fantasy XV, will include all previously released DLCs (Episodes Gladiolus, Prompto and Ignis as well as multiplayer), extra bosses, a new dungeon, an in-game vehicle and a first-person mode (this is the one I really have to see). As previously covered, the new PC version has been developed with heavy input from NVIDIA, offers up to 8K resolution in HDR, and includes many NVIDIA GameWorks technologies, such as NVIDIA Flow, NVIDIA HairWorks, NVIDIA Hybrid Frustum Traced Shadows, NVIDIA Turf Effects, NVIDIA Voxel Ambient Occlusion, and more. With all of that NVIDIA technology being built-in, it's somewhat expected that the game will only run the way the developers envisioned on a green team graphics card. Read on after the break for the latest system specs and the Royal Edition release trailer (a special version that's equivalent to the Game of the Year versions of other video-games, with all the released DLC for console players.)

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced that DP8K Certified DisplayPort cables-native DisplayPort cables that are guaranteed to support DisplayPort High Bit Rate 3 (HBR3)-are now available in the marketplace. HBR3 is the highest bit rate (8.1 Gigabits per second (Gbps) per lane) supported by DisplayPort standard version 1.4, and provides the speed required to drive 8K video resolution at 60 frames per second (fps) using a single cable, as well as multiple 4K displays. Key applications supported by HBR3 include high-performance gaming, augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) and television broadcasting. With HBR3 already available in a wide array of consumer products, including GPUs and monitors, the availability of cables that have been certified by VESA to support HBR3 provides a crucial final link to the ecosystem.

HDMI Forum, Inc. today announced the release of Version 2.1 of the HDMI Specification which is now available to all HDMI 2.0 adopters. This latest HDMI Specification supports a range of higher video resolutions and refresh rates including 8K60 and 4K120, and resolutions up to 10K. Dynamic HDR formats are also supported, and bandwidth capability is increased up to 48Gbps. Supporting the 48Gbps bandwidth is the new Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable. The cable ensures high- bandwidth dependent features are delivered including uncompressed 8K video with HDR. It features exceptionally low EMI (electro-magnetic interference) which reduces interference with nearby wireless devices. The cable is backwards compatible and can be used with the existing installed base of HDMI devices.

Version 2.1 of the HDMI Specification is backward compatible with earlier versions of the specification, and was developed by the HDMI Forum's Technical Working Group whose members represent some of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer electronics, personal computers, mobile devices, cables and components.

Philips is now the second company to announce a mass-market 8K monitor with the 328P8K. It boasts of a 31.5" IPS panel with a mind-boggling 7680 x 4320 resolution, and delivers on the professional space with 100% AdobeRGB/SRGB color space support. Since availability of these panels is still scarce, this is likely the same panel that Dell is using on their own 8K UltraSharp UP3218K monitor.

Philips is boasting of something they are calling HDR 400 support in this monitor, due to its brightness being set at 400 nits. This would be enough for AMD's baseline luminance requirements for FreeSync 2 HDR, but stands a far cry behind the HDR10 standard with its 1,000 nit peak brightness target (not to speak about Dolby Vision's 4,000 peak brightness target). Contrast ratio should stand at 1300:1, with a 60 Hz refresh ratio. Connectors-wise, the new Philips 328P8K 8K UHD Monitor boasts of 2x DisplayPort 1.3 (needed for display of the resolution, and in a bid to avoid using DP 1.4 with Display Stream Compression 1.2 and ensure a flawless and accurate image quality) and features a USB hub with USB type-A and type-C ports. Expect this panel to come in at a pretty penny, most likely in the same ballpark as Dell's offering, which now costs less than $4,000. Expect Philips' take on 8K to be available for purchase around Q1 2018.

AMD today is announcing the latest update to their Radeon Pro Hardware and Software, which brings with it enhanced features designed to fully take advantage of the company's new high-performance Vega graphics micro-architecture. Namely, AMD has announced the Radeon Pro WX 9100, the Radeon Pro SSG, and Radeon Vega Frontier Edition (already launched) along with new Radeon Pro Software for the same.

As per AMD, the Radeon Pro WX 9100 workstation graphics card is designed to excel in the most demanding media and entertainment, and design and manufacturing workloads. Delivering up to 12.3 TFLOPS of peak single precision compute performance, the Radeon Pro WX 9100 graphics card represents a new era of professional graphics capabilities fueled by powerful Next-Gen Compute Units3 with Rapid Packed Math and an Enhanced Geometry Pipeline which improves processing efficiencies. Compared to the AMD FirePro W9100, the Radeon Pro WX 9100 runs models more than twice as fast, delivering over 2.6X the peak throughput-per-clock.

(Re)member that dazzling-looking Superposition benchmark from Unigine - the one that was supposed to have arrived late 2016? The one that apparently wasn't good enough for Steam? Well it has been released, and you can now gobble up all of those realistic graphics for yourself and your GPU of choice. Some standout features include the ability to scale rendering resolution all the way up to 8K, so... Go on ahead, click that link below, make your graphics cards scream, and elbow one another for the top result. I will be with you in a little while. Go on after the break for some more features and a little teaser on what the benchmark is all about.Download Link: Unigine Superposition Benchmark 1.0Can I just say I love me some Nicola Tesla on the walls?

Dell today started selling its flagship 32-inch (31.5-inch viewable) 8K monitor on its website. The Dell UltraSharp UP3218K boasts of "visuals that rival life," thanks to its gargantuan 7680 x 4320 pixels resolution, which is four times that of 4K Ultra HD, and sixteen times that of Full HD. At its size, the display offers a stellar pixel density of 279 ppi. Under the hood is an IPS panel with 178°/178° viewing angles, 60 Hz refresh rate, 6 ms response time (GTG), 1,300:1 static contrast ratio with dynamic mega-contrast, and 400 cd/m² maximum brightness. The display takes input from two DisplayPort 1.4 connectors. Backed by a 3-year warranty, the UltraSharp UP3218K is priced at USD $5,000.

At CES 2017, Dell has unveiled yet another addition to their monitor product line, and this one is drool worthy: an 8K, 32" UltraSharp monitor, with an insanely high resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 at 60Hz. Labeled as the world's first 32-inch 8K resolution display with Dell PremierColor, the UP3218K offers 1.07 billion colors and packs in more than 33 million pixels - four times as many as a 4K display and 16 times more than Full HD. That means it offers a PPI rating of 280 - which translates into "very high" settings for a desktop screen.

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today published the Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) Standard version 1.4a. Replacing eDP v1.4, published in February 2013, eDP 1.4a enables a higher video data transfer rate for increased panel resolution, greater color depth and higher refresh rates. It also incorporates the VESA Display Stream Compression (DSC) Standard v1.1, and includes a new segmented panel architecture that enables higher panel integration. These and other refinements were made to the eDP 1.4a standard to take advantage of higher GPU video performance and newer display technologies, while also enabling reduced system power and form factor.

The eDP v1.4a standard leverages the VESA DisplayPort (DP) Standard v1.3, published in September 2014, as a base specification. That standard's new higher HBR3 link rate, which operates at 8.1 Gbps per lane, is now also part of eDP v1.4a. With both HBR3 and the DSC v1.1 standard included, the latest eDP standard can support embedded panels with up to 8K resolution. For embedded display applications, DSC is most often used to decrease video interface data rate or wire count, as well as reduce display frame buffer size, thereby reducing system power usage to extend battery life. It also enables reductions in system complexity and form factor.

Even as 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) is beginning to enter the consumer mainstream, with 28-inch displays being priced around $600, and Apple toying with 5K (5120 x 2880), with its next-generation iMac Retina desktops, Japanese display maker Sharp threw a spanner in the works, by unveiling a working prototype of its 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels) display, at the CETAC trade-show, held in Japan.

Two of the industry's biggest graphics processor makers, NVIDIA and AMD, reacted similarly to the development, calling 8K "a great challenge." Currently, neither company has a GPU that can handle the resolution. 8K is four times as many pixels as 4K. Driving an Ultra HD display over DVI needs two TMDS links, and DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 have just enough bandwidth to drive Ultra HD at 60 Hz. To drive 8K, both NVIDIA and AMD believe you would need more than one current-generation GPU, the display should connect to both cards over independent connectors, and somehow treat the single display as four Ultra HD displays. We imagine Sharp demoed its display at a very low refresh rate, to compensate for the bandwidth limitation. After 10 years of Full-HD tyranny, display resolutions are finally beginning to see their normal rate of development. It's time now for GPU developers and display interconnects to keep up.