The German Government today announced a nationwide ban on all major events until the end of August, effectively cancelling Gamescom 2020. Thankfully, this didn't come as too much of a surprise to the organizers and they had been preparing alternative options for some time. While the public in-person event won't be taking place a online digital alternative will be. Unlike E3 and GDC, Gamescom has time to prepare for proper a digital event and will announce more details shortly.

"Even though not all details are known at present, the nationwide ban on major events until the end of August will also affect the planning for #gamescom2020. Furthermore: gamescom 2020 will definitely take place digitally! We will provide further information shortly. "

Intel is revisiting the concept of asymmetric multi-GPU introduced with DirectX 12. The company posted an elaborate technical slide-deck it originally planned to present to game developers at the now-cancelled GDC 2020. The technology shows promise because the company isn't insulting developers' intelligence by proposing that the iGPU lying dormant be made to shoulder the game's entire rendering pipeline for a single-digit percentage performance boost. Rather, it has come up with innovating augments to the rendering path such that only certain lightweight compute aspects of the game's rendering be passed on to the iGPU's execution units, so it has a more meaningful contribution to overall performance. To that effect, Intel is on the path of coming up with SDK that can be integrated with existing game engines.

Microsoft DirectX 12 introduced the holy grail of multi-GPU technology, under its Explicit Multi-Adapter specification. This allows game engines to send rendering traffic to any combinations or makes of GPUs that support the API, to achieve a performance uplift over single GPU. This was met with lukewarm reception from AMD and NVIDIA, and far too few DirectX 12 games actually support it. Intel proposes a specialization of explicit multi-adapter approach, in which the iGPU's execution units are made to process various low-bandwidth elements both during the rendering and post-processing stages, such as Occlusion Culling, AI, game physics, etc. Intel's method leverages cross-adapter shared resources sitting in system memory (main memory), and D3D12 asynchronous compute, which creates separate processing queues for rendering and compute.

2020's Game Developers Conference (GDC), originally set to be live from March 16th through March 20th, was one of the first tech shows to be cancelled in wake of the Sars-Cov-2 outbreak. Now, the organization has announced that the event has been rescheduled a full 5 months later for August 2020. The event has been set for a three-day "GDC Summer" still taking place in Moscone Center in San Francisco, USA, starting August 4th and ending August 6th. Passes for the exhibition are already available, with early takers being offered heavy discounts over the on-floor passes.

GDC has been the stage for a number of high-profile gaming and services announcements, with the 2019 edition seeing announcements for Google's Stadia, EPIC Games detailing new features for its Unreal engine, and AMD taking the lid of their (then) upcoming 3rd generation Ryzen CPUs. Intel was first expected to detail their Xe graphics architecture at GDC 2020. It remains to be seen whether the blue giant will still be doing so in wake of this delay, or if the company will find an in-house (albeit likely online) alternative to get word of mouth flowing on their upcoming high performance graphics architecture.

Game Developers Conference is perhaps one of the biggest organizations in the gaming industry, covering everything from gaming hardware to games themselves. This year's GDC event was planned to happen on March 16th, however, due to the Coronavirus COVID-19 concerns, the GDC organization has decided to postpone the event. This doesn't mean that the conference will not happen at all. Instead, the GDC organizers plan to host the event sometime "later in the summer", when hopefully the COVID-19 concerns will settle. To add, Facebook also canceled its F8 Developer Conference, along with Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit which also got canceled due to virus outbreak fears.

Being that Computex is happening within three months, there are growing concerns that the event may not happen at all, however, we can hope that the situation will be resolved soon and that we can bring you live coverage of the event.

This year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) that will take place in March is forming to become a very interesting one. According to the GDC schedule platform, Intel is having a presentation about its upcoming Xe graphics card architecture. Saying that "Intel's brand new Xe Architecture, has been teased for a while, and is scheduled for release later this year! This update brings a significant compute, geometry and throughput improvements over today's widely used Gen9 and Gen11 graphics.", Intel is giving us a slight hint of what is to come.

Presented by Intel's senior developer relations engineer, Antonie Cohade, the talk will include an in-depth look of the Xe hardware architecture and its implementations. Said to introduce "powerful new features", the talk about Xe graphics should include a mention of the latest trend in the world of 3D graphics, ray tracing, and show us what are the capabilities of the new GPU architecture.

Not all news coming from EPIC covers its EPIC Games Store - though according to the relative attention they've been garnering with the constant scooping up of PC timed exclusives, perhaps it should. This piece of news, alas, covers the company's unreal Engine, which has been one of the hallmarks in games development for a while now, being used for a number of disparate games such as the gears of War games, or even a relatively obscure, Xbox 360 exclusive title, Lost Odyssey. At GDC 2019, EPIC showcased version 4.23 of its Unreal Engine, with particular attention to its improved destruction and physics engine, which they've aptly named "Chaos".

We knew this was coming, especially after Google's teaser from earlier this month. Project Stream was a proof-of-concept in collaboration with Ubisoft, to see whether AAA gaming was possible over the internet. Things were smooth most of the time in our own experience, but there remained questions over how the concept would translate over to a finished product, especially with infrastructure challenges on the client side of things. Google's keynote at GDC just wrapped up, and the main focus was Stadia- the now named cloud gaming service borne out of Project Stream.

Stadia is built with instant access in mind. An example demo came in the form of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which was used in the public test before. It is integrated with partner YouTube channels such that a trailer for a supported game would have an option to play said game, which would then launch immediately. Stadia is built with support from a wide partner network including AMD, Unity, id Software, and more, with details seen past the break.

Unity has grown from a relatively simple engine to one of the most flexible options available for developers, allowing everything from 2D platformers to 3D games and short cinematics, all rendered in real-time, in-engine. The new Heretic real-time demo, showcased at GDC 2019, is one such example of a 3D engine being used to render a breathtaking cinematic.

The Heretic builds upon learnings derived from both the Adam and Book of the Dead shorts, and take advantage of the latest technologies embedded into the Unity engine. Motion blur, bloom, depth of field, film grain, color grading, and Panini projection, including by real-time lights and usage of a probe-based lighting solution. Just take a look at the video yourself, right after the break, and read on for the other part of this Unity-related piece: the Megacity Tech Demo.

Google sent out a fairly cryptic invite to the game developers and associated press this week in the form of a GIF (converted into relevant images below). It teases a keynote on March 19, 2019 and more information was made available shortly confirming this would be in the form of a keynote to be held at 10 am PST during GDC this year. The media giant promises to "reveal all", and also has developer-focused sessions throughout the course of the event. An early report from The Information suggests the keynote will have Google talk about their new game-streaming service, code-named Yeti. This is in line with our own expectations, after having participated in the fairly successful Project Stream beta test that concluded recently.

Kotaku went further to suggest that Yeti is a streaming service in conjunction with a hardware platform- a simple streaming box, if you will, to take on the dedicated game consoles of 2019 and beyond. Indeed, Google has been wanting to get into this highly lucrative market, with intentions to take over Twitch before Amazon pulled one over them. There remain many challenges in general to a game-streaming world, not least of which were detailed in our own editorial linked above. But, with the next generation consoles getting ready for development and Microsoft willing to explore a game-streaming future themselves, perhaps Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and others should pay very close attention to said Google keynote in less than a month's time.

(Editor's Note: Hadean seems to be building a cloud-based OS that serves more than games via its Aether Engine: on its website, the company cites usages for gaming, multi-scale cellular models, and risk profile analysis with increased datasets than ever before. The idera of a cloud-based OS seems to stem from a desire to usher developers into an almost auto-sufficient system and interface, without the need for the layers of distributed engineeriuing, with multiple inputs and workflows for middleware, microservices, containers, and other parts. Users can take part in the 10,000 player stress test that's being planned for the end of February, and can register to partake in the experiment on the company's website.)

Hadean announced its Aether Engine will be powered by Microsoft Azure, allowing developers to more seamlessly scale their applications at increased speed and ease across the cloud. Hadean's technology will also be integrated with other parts of Microsoft's developer suite, including Visual Studio. Hadean's record-breaking 10,000 player gaming experience that will be unveiled at GDC 2019 will be powered by the Aether Engine running on Azure. Outside of gaming, this exact same technology is driving Hadean and the Francis Crick Institute's biomolecular simulation work in the field of cancer cell research.

AMD's Ryzen 3000 series is one of the most hotly anticipated hardware launches in recent times. I'd say that the hype surrounding AMD's processor launches, unlike Intel's, has become vested with an actual enthusiasm that is likely in our nature - to see the underdog come out with innovative products that reverse market expectations. AMD's processor launches have seen hype levels rivaling - and even surpassing, all of this anecdotally, of course - some GPU launches. It makes sense for AMD to embrace every opportunity it gets to build hype around its products - and it seems the company will be doing just so at GDC 2019, which will run from March 18th through March 22nd.

AMD will be hosting a time slot at GDC 2019 in San Francisco. Hosted by Ken Mitchell, the presentation that has been slotted in to GDC's panels is titled ""AMD Ryzen Processor Software Optimization (Presented by AMD)". As the announcement reads, this presentation is meant to "Learn about the Ryzen line up of processors, profiling tools and techniques to understand optimization opportunities, and get a glimpse of the next generation of "Zen 2" x86 core architecture. Gain insight into code optimization opportunities and lessons learned with examples including C/C++, assembly, and hardware performance-monitoring counters." So no, there won't be any architecture deep dives. But there will be some new information - and we all know that speculating and running through the breadcrumb trail is a huge part of the fun.

AMD announced at GDC widened support for Radeon Rays with Unity Lightmapper. Its open-source, high efficiency, high performance GPU-accelerated ray tracing software helps game developers to achieve higher visual quality and stunningly photorealistic 3D images in real-time. Radeon ProRender now supports real-time GPU acceleration of ray tracing techniques mixed with traditional rasterization-based rendering, to combine the value of ray tracing with the interactivity of rasterization.

For gaming, ray tracing is in its early stages. For professional applications, however, real-time ray tracing is a well-established rendering technique. Today, AMD is announcing ProRender support for real-time GPU acceleration of ray tracing techniques mixed with traditional rasterization based rendering. Now built on Vulkan, ProRender is continuing to enable developers to deliver interactive photorealistic graphics. We are actively engaging with professional developers to make real-time visualization a reality.

It's being reported by Tom's Hardware, citing industry sources, that NVIDIA isn't looking to expand upon its graphics cards lineup at this years' GDC (Game Developers Conference) or GTC (GPU Technology Conference). Even as reports have been hitting the streets that pointed towards NVIDIA announcing (if not launching) their two new product architectures as early as next month, it now seems that won't be the case after all. As a reminder, the architectures we're writing about here are Turing, reportedly for crypto-mining applications, and Ampere, the expected GeForce architecture leapfrogging the current top of the line - and absent from regular consumer shores - Volta.

There's really not much that can be gleaned as of now from industry sources, though. It's clear no one has received any kind of information from NVIDIA when it comes to either of their expected architectures, which means an impending announcement isn't likely. At the same time, NVIDIA really has no interest in pulling the trigger on new products - demand is fine, and competition from AMD is low. As such, reports of a June or later announcement/release are outstandingly credible, as are reports that NVIDIA would put the brakes on a consumer version of Ampere, use it to replace Volta on the professional and server segment, and instead launch Volta - finally - on the consumer segment. This would allow the company to cache in on their Volta architecture, this time on consumer products, for a full generation longer, while innovating the market - of sorts. All scenarios are open right now; but one thing that seems clear is that there will be no announcements next month.

At GDC 2017, Microsoft trickled out a few more details regarding its upcoming "Game Mode" for Windows 10. If you remember, "Game Mode" is an upcoming Windows feature which is currently going through its "Beta" phase on Windows 10's Creators Update, which will purportedly improve performance in games or similar full-screen applications.

According to the details Microsoft let out, Game Mode will ultimately dive deeper than the simple attribution of higher priority to a game's process. Instead, "Game Mode" will be able to allocate entire CPU cores (whether there is any distinction between physical or logical cores wasn't disclosed) solely to the purpose of processing your game of choice. This will probably end the dynamic allocation of threads that currently occurs, where game processing can jump around in the cores employed, while also looking to ensure that the entirety of the CPU and cache is dedicated to the game. This could, theoretically, aid performance in some more exotic core complexes (I'm looking at you, CCX).

At their GDC event yesterday, NVIDIA announced a change to how partners are able to outfit their GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 6 GB models in regards to video memory. Due to improvements in process and scaled-down costs, NVIDIA has decided to allow partners to purchase 11 Gbps GDDR5X (up from 10 Gbps) and 9Gbps (up from 8 Gbps) GDDR5 memory from them, to pair with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1060 6 GB, respectively. These are to be sold by NVIDIA's AIB partners as overclocked cards, and don't represent a change to the official specifications on either graphics card. With this move, NVIDIA aims to give partners more flexibility in choosing memory speeds and carving different models of the same graphics card, with varying degrees of overclock, something which was particularly hard to do on conventional 10 Gbps-equipped GTX 1080's, which showed atypically low memory overclocking headroom.

At GDC's AMD Capsaicin Event, AMD's Raja Koduri reaffirmed Radeon's commitment to Multi-GPU setups by remembering his RX 480 launch event claim on a RX 480 dual setup beating their competition's high-end solutions. Then, Rebellion's Chris Kingsley took stage, who attributed the fact that his team was able to get Sniper Elite 4 to run with 100% scaling on a RX 480 dual GPU setup to Rebellion's previous work with Mantle. Next to it, for perspective, AMD showed a dual-GPU RX 480 system running the same game and settings at virtually double the frame rate - a perfect, 100% scaling. Rebellion's Chris Kingsley also elaborated on the importance of DX 12 and Vulkan on making such a thing even possible in the first place, reiterating the software and coding investment necessary to make that happen.

LG Electronics has just made one of the most cryptic, devoid-of-any-real-information announcements we've seen in recent years. The company will apparently enter the VR HMD field, and is looking to unveil its first prototype at this year's GDC in San Francisco, CA. LG will make use of Valve's GDC booth to showcase an HMD capable of delivering "a high fidelity, next generation VR experience".

That's about all the information we were given at face value. However, some other tidbits serve to paint a picture on how premature this announcement may have been: LG will purportedly be meeting with developers to "collect feedback and impressions as part of its effort to define the first commercial units". This means that the HMD is likely still in a proof of concept phase, early enough in development to cater to developers' expertise, needs and suggestions, which means it's probably still far removed from retail to be of any real import in the grand scheme of things. However, it Is a confirmed dip from another tech giant in the fully-fledged, high-performance VR HMD game. And judging by the proximity with Valve, we would expect LG's unit to borrow heavily from that company's input and vision for VR.

NVIDIA could attempt to steal the limelight from AMD's 2017 "Capsaicin & Cream" launch event for its Ryzen desktop processors, slated for February 28, with a parallel GeForce GTX event along the sidelines of the 2017 Game Developers' Conference (GDC). At this event, the company is expected to launch its next enthusiast-segment graphics card, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. This could at least be a paper-launch, with market availability following through in March.

While the GTX 1080 Ti is a graphics card, and Ryzen a processor (they don't compete), NVIDIA's choice of launch-date could certainly steal some attention away from AMD's big day. Besides launching Ryzen, it wouldn't surprise us if AMD teases its upcoming Radeon "Vega" graphics cards a little more. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is expected to be based on the same "GP102" silicon as the company's flagship TITAN X Pascal graphics card, and could be positioned very close to the USD $1,000 mark, given that NVIDIA priced the TITAN X Pascal at a wallet-scorching $1,199.

Not to be outdone by AMD, and making sure to keep the landscape populated with enough green, NVIDIA has announced its presence in the upcoming GDC 2017. Could this be the choice battleground for an announcement regarding the (now) almost mythical GTX 1080Ti?

Let's see what the company has to say: "You're invited to attend the GeForce GTX gaming celebration! Come join us for an evening of awesome PC gaming, hardware, tournaments and of course free food, drinks and a few other amazing surprises. Doors will open at 6:30 PM and the event will start promptly at 7 PM. The celebration will take place in downtown San Francisco, CA."

Let's just say that the company has history of announcing its top-of-the-line Ti models on GDC (much like it did with 2015's GTX 980 Ti), and that NVIDIA closes their announcement with a very tentative (if generic) "You won't want to miss this". And with rumors of AMD being prepared to show off its Vega architecture on the same day, as well as the expected release of its highly anticipated Ryzen CPUs, February 28th is looking out to be one of the best days of the year for enthusiasts.

AMD has announced that they will be holding a Capsaicin Event at GDC 2017 on February 28th. Named "Capsaicin & Cream", this event could serve as a playground for its highly-awaited Ryzen launch, whilst allowing AMD to pair a showcase of its new CPUs (and thus borrowing some of the hype) with some tentative tasting of its upcoming graphics products.

The will be split up in two sections: first up is a Livestream (much like AMD's previous New Horizon celebration), taking place between 10.30am and 11.30pm PST, a " feature-packed show highlighting the hottest new graphics and VR technologies"; secondly, AMD will be hosting a private developers session, running between 2.30pm and 5pm PST, "with a special talk featuring Unity and Epic", followed by a private, GDC-attendees-only afterparty.

It would appear as if AMD has seemingly (and not purposely) given us some lights as to when their hotly anticipated Ryzen chips will hit the wild - and some of our wallets. While they haven't specifically given an exact date, the talk to be given by AMD at the annual Game Developer Conference (GDC) reads: "Join AMD Game Engineering team members for an introduction to the recently-launched AMD Ryzen CPU followed by advanced optimization topics". The "recently-launched tidbit is the most important, since it places Ryzen's launch necessarily before the end of GDC - which will happen between February 27th and March 3rd. AMD has, in the meantime, altered the original headline by cutting the "recently launched" tidbit altogether.