Apple today previewed macOS High Sierra, the latest version of the world's most advanced desktop operating system, delivering new core storage, video and graphics technologies that pave the way for future innovation on the Mac. macOS High Sierra offers an all-new file system, support for High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and an update to Metal, Apple's advanced graphics technology that powers everything from machine learning to virtual reality content creation. macOS High Sierra also includes a number of refinements to the apps Mac users enjoy every day, including Photos, Safari and Mail.

"macOS High Sierra delivers important forward-looking technologies and new opportunities for developers wanting to tap into the power of machine learning and create immersive VR content on the Mac," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "The core technology innovations in macOS High Sierra, combined with our advances in hardware, will continue to push the Mac forward in exciting new ways."

AMD unveiled the high-performance, power-efficient Radeon Pro 500 series graphics, fueling beyond-UHD creativity in All-In-One computing. Available in the updated 21.5- and 27-inch iMac, Radeon Pro 500 series graphics enable extraordinary computing experiences, including stunning gaming, immersive VR on select models, and fluid content creation with exceptional performance and support for GPU acceleration across a range of creative applications on the Mac platform, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop and the Foundry Nuke, Mari and Modo. Moreover, Radeon Pro 500 series provides accelerated performance for the Radeon ProRender photorealistic ray-tracing rendering technology which is enabled for Autodesk Maya, and Maxon's Cinema 4D.

Radeon Pro 500 series graphics harness up to 5.5 TFLOPS of performance, unleashing the creativity of artists, designers, photographers, filmmakers, visualizers and engineers, and aspiring creative types across high-resolution canvases in the most popular creative applications, powering through the most demanding games, and bringing fantastic worlds to life in VR. The Radeon Pro 500 series makes use of the critically-acclaimed "Polaris" GPU architecture, delivering the perfect balance of performance and operating efficiency that makes them ideal for All-In-Ones.

Improbable, which was founded five years ago by Herman Narula and Rob Whitehead, has achieved a Softbank (the company that purchased ARM backing in a funding round that values the business at more than $1bn. >Despite this cash injection, it looks like Improbable will stay independent to work on their purported aim: to build large-scale virtual worlds and simulations. These could be leveraged by games developers, or some other, non-gaming investments and applications, such as transport systems modelling, virtual couch-travelling, and military applications.

Founder Herman Narula said that Improbable's vision "is to create completely new realities, massive virtual worlds that can change the way we live and work and can impact the way we understand some of the hardest problems." The company believes it has developed revolutionary technology with its Spatial OS operating system, which it has recently opened up to other developers. A Google partnership to put its system on the search giant's cloud, thus allowing small developers to create massive simulations without much infrastructure of their own, means real business for this company, and the backing of one of tech's giants lends credence to their ambitions. Let's see where this leads, but it seems that tales of VR's death were greatly exaggerated. You can discuss these finding here, on our very own TPU Virtual Reality Club.

Microsoft has been slowly building up its mixed reality endeavor, by baking in support for the platform in its latest Windows 10 updates, as well as the recent announcements of actual HMDs from hardware partners like HP and Acer. Acer's solution, their Mixed Reality HMD, will ship to developers and customers with a $400 price-tag for both the headset and a pair of 6 DoF controllers, which easily remind users of HTC's Vive and Oculus's Rift controllers. Microsoft's implementation, however, makes away with the Rift's and Vive's ouside-in trackers, only needing to be within "sight" of the sensors on the front of the HMD to which they're connected, thus making them truly world-scale (if at the expense of some sweet swordplay moves, but I digress.)

Pixvana, makers of the cloud-based 360 video creation studio SPIN, today announced a partnership with Valve to integrate their software services into the greater Steam platform. A beta version of the SPIN software will now let users directly publish 360 video content directly to the Steam Store, which will allow Steam VR enabled headset users to browse a new huge library of high quality (up to 12k according to Pixvana) 360-degree video content.

At GTC (GPU Technology Conference) today, NVIDIA has gone on to show how much VR is in the company's cards for future expansion. After giving us a ray-tracing solution for gaming audio with their VRWorks Audio SDK, and a VR stitching solution via their 360 Video SDK, NVIDIA has now showcased a system capable of running what could be defined as a "local VR party". I would like to point out, however, that such a system may find itself of much more use to businesses, education, and the military segments than local LAN parties, though I wouldn't mind embracing the skin of a VR-driven Darth Vader.

NVIDIA's proof-of-concept system can drive four different VR headsets. It makes use of four of the company's Quadro P6000 GPUs running four virtual machines on a PC server, which are paired with four HTC Vive Business Edition headsets and HTC's Lightroom tracking system. The system appears to be tiny for such a powerful configuration, though having a system powered by four video-cards shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone at this point in time - even if such an approach is now bordering on virtual impracticality for most consumers. NVIDIA is offering a look at the design guide technical document for such a system, though, which can prove an interesting read, right here.

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has recently announced plans to form a special working group within its ecosystem, whose mission will be to develop standards for XR (eXtended Reality) products and development. XR envelops both VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality), and VESA has apparently had enough of differing vendor implementations. According to VESA, "the lack of standardization is causing compatibility issues between products from different vendors, as well as increasing the complexity and cost of development, ownership and replacement. Lack of compatibility can also create confusion for end users and impede broader acceptance of AR/VR products."

Considering the XR market's value is expected to hit roughly $162 billion dollars by 2020, we can certainly see how "compatibility issues" and "lower acceptance of AR/VR products" could affect what is looking to be an extremely lucrative market. Let's just gloss over the fact (slightly paradoxical, actually) that we're now looking at two different XR standards groups, VESA's newly-announced initiative, and Khrono's OpenXR.

VR is one of the most important buzzwords in tech, not only for current development, but also for what studios and tech insiders deem to be our entertainment future. Oculus, which paved the way for VR with its Rift headset concept (before being snagged by Facebook), is one of the biggest, most recognizable players in this space. Now, after a series of hurdles such as the Oculus-ZeniMax sonata, which saw the former facing payments of $500 million, and Oculus' founder Palmer Luckey abandoning the company, a house of cards is crumbling. Namely, Oculus' VR-driven Story Studio.

While the Unity Engine isn't one used for cutting-edge triple-A releases, its workflow is considered by many to be one of the most scalable and platform-adaptable there is. The engine can be scaled all the way from 2D, text-based mobile games all the way towards 3D, VR presentations, which makes it a popular choice - particularly, to Indie studios. A slight sideline here as NVYVE Studio's P.A.M.E.L.A. is powered by Unity, and I have high hopes for that one piece of 3D interactivity.

According to Nvidia, adding VRWorks to titles created with the Unity Engine will now be significantly easier thanks to the recently released Unity 2017.1.0 Beta 2. Unity now doubles down as one of the most popular game engines for VR development (SuperHot VR was powered by it, for example), with Nvidia also stating that the Unity Engine is an important tool for other interactive experiences such as film, medical, tourism, design, education, and training, as well, proving the engine's versatility. As to VRWorks, it functions much like GameWorks: it's a suite of developer tools, APIs, libraries, and engines that are now available as a plugin in the Unity 2017.1.b2 update. Nvidia said that this provides developers an easy path to taking advantage of the SDK in their games and VR experiences. Namely, Unity Engine now includes plugins for Nvidia VRWorks technologies such as Multi-Res Shading, Lens Matched Shading, Single Pass Stereo, and VR SLI, and you can download the latest Beta version of the engine right from NVIDIA.

NVIDIA is giving away three VR games with bundles of Oculus Rift VR headset, Oculus Touch controller, and qualifying GeForce GTX graphics cards. Game codes to three of the hottest VR titles, "The Unspoken," "SUPERHOT VR," and "Wilson's Heart" will be given away for free when you buy bundles of the Rift VR headset, Touch controller, with GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1080, or GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards. The bundles will be sold exclusively through Amazon and Newegg.

On the special promotion pages of these stores, you can match an Oculus Rift headset and Touch controller with an applicable GeForce GTX graphics card of your choice. A typical GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB + Oculus Rift + Touch controller bundle is priced around US $850, a GTX 1070 based bundle around $980, a GTX 1080 based bundle around $1,090, and a GTX 1080 Ti based bundle around $1,300.

Today AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced the world's first dual-GPU graphics card designed for professionals: the Polaris-architecture-based Radeon Pro Duo. Built on the capabilities of the Radeon Pro WX 7100, the Radeon Pro Duo professional graphics card is designed to excel at media and entertainment, broadcast, and design and manufacturing workflows, delivering outstanding performance and superior flexibility that today's creative professionals demand.

The Radeon Pro Duo is equipped with 32GB of ultra-fast GDDR5 memory to handle larger data sets, more intricate 3D models, higher resolution videos, and complex assemblies with ease. Operating at a max power of 250W, the Radeon Pro Duo harnesses a total of 72 compute units (4608 stream processors) for a combined performance of up to 11.45 TFLOPS of single-precision compute performance on one board, and twice the geometry throughput of the Radeon Pro WX 7100. The Radeon Pro Duo enables professionals to work up to four 4K monitors at 60Hz, drive the latest 8K single monitor display at 30Hz using a single cable, or drive an 8K display at 60Hz using a dual cable solution.

ASUS today announced the availability of the VivoPC X, an elegant and compact desktop PC designed for immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences. The VivoPC X is powered by a 7th Generation Intel Core processor with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10 series graphics, and is fully compatible with the latest VR headsets. Its compact 5-liter chassis can be placed anywhere in the home, and has extensive connectivity features including four USB 3.1 Gen 1 and two USB 2.0 ports for VR peripherals and controllers. The VivoPC X is designed for general consumers who are looking for a VR-ready PC that meets the hardware demands of VR tasks and entertainment.

From April 25 to June 13, users can purchase the Oculus Rift + Touch and ASUS VivoPC X Bundle at select resellers. ASUS, Oculus, and NVIDIA have partnered to bring you a complete package with everything needed to experience an immersive VR experience right out-of-box: an Oculus-Ready Desktop PC, Oculus Headset, and Touch Controller at a discounted price. In addition, users will receive 4 of the latest VR titles for free: Insomniac Games' The Unspoken, Superhot VR, Twisted Pixel's Wilson's Heart, and Oculus' VR Sports Challenge.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading gaming hardware manufacturer, expands its AORUS graphics card portfolio with the announcement of the AORUS Radeon RX 580 and RX 570 lineup. Powered by the third-generation Polaris architecture, the new AORUS graphics cards provide excellent power switching and thermal efficiency thanks to the GPU Gauntlet Sorting technology. Combining faster clock speeds with the highly-acclaimed WINDFORCE cooling solution and customizable RGB illumination, the AORUS RX 500 Series graphics cards together deliver outstanding performance on both gaming and style to gamers seeking a significant upgrade at a great value.

The AORUS RX 580 XTR is the top-of-the-line model that boasts the WINDFORCE 2X cooling system, featuring dual 100mm fans paired with 4 composite copper heat pipes which directly touch the GPU to keep the card cool under load. Excessive heat from GPU can also be dissipated through the back side with the advanced copper back plate. The airflow is enhanced by the unique blade fan with an alternate spinning mechanism for minimal turbulence. The fans are also semi-passive for keeping the operation silent along with a Fan Stop indicator. The card is backed by a 6+2 power phase design for greater overclocking capability and reliability, reinforcing higher, stable boost clocks at heavy load.

MSI, world leading in motherboard design, launches five new ATX GAMING motherboards based on the AMD AM4 X370 and B350 chipset. These new GAMING models are positioned in the Performance GAMING segment, a series all about Gaming In style. Its new flagship is the X370 GAMING PRO CARBON AC with Mystic Light RGB, to fully customize its looks, but now also available with Intel WIFI AC. The new X370 and B350 GAMING motherboards all support the upcoming AMD RYZEN Series processors and 7th Gen A-series / Athlon Processors and are ready to fully utilize performance on AM4 with the exclusive MSI A-XMP feature, maximizing DDR4 speed & stability.

AMD today announced it has acquired intellectual property (IP) and key engineering talent from Nitero, a pioneer in millimeter wave solutions capable of enabling future generations of wireless Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) headsets. The acquisition provides AMD with a broader portfolio of IP capable of enabling VR headset and solution providers with key technology required to create more immersive computing experiences.

"Unwieldly headset cables remain a significant barrier to drive widespread adoption of VR," said Mark Papermaster, AMD chief technology officer and senior vice president. "Our newly acquired wireless VR technology is focused on solving this challenge, and is another example of AMD making long-term technology investments to develop high-performance computing and graphics technologies that can create more immersive computing experiences."

MSI has been doing the round with its Trident line of "console-sized" PCs. After upgrading its original model to a Kaby Lake-based platform, the new, limited Arctic edition of the Trident 3 features a bolster to its GPU computing power, RGB lighting - and a price hike to boot. MSI has also included an HDMI port on the front of the Trident 3 Arctic, gearing it up towards the VR market.

The new Arctic variant features a GTX 1070 graphics card in an ITX format, which is fed by a Core i7-7700, on the H110 chipset. The memory subsystem delivers 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4, expandable up to 32GB. A 256GB M.2 SSD (SATA) and a 1TB spinning HDD handle storage. MSI claims the system only reaches 32dB at full load, taking power off a 330W adapter. For the hardware specs and the neat, icy, small-sized package (346.25 x 232.47 x 71.83 mm), MSI is asking for a neat $1500.

Gigabyte has just revealed the specs for their custom, AORUS-branded GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. This keeps the tradition of the AORUS line of products, where the AORUS GTX 1080 Ti features Gigabyte's Windforce (triple-slot, 3x 100 mm fans) cooler with RGB lighting (16.8 million colors). Aiding its triple-fan cooling prowess is a direct copper contact through a 6-heatpipe design, as well as a built-in backplate. Gigabyte is marketing this card as "Built for Extreme Overclocking", through its usage of 12+2 Power Phases. These help deliver substantial clock speed, in the form of two modes: an OC Mode, with boost clocks of 1708 MHz and base clocks at 1594 MHz; and a Gaming Mode, with 1683 MHz boost and 1569 MHz base.

The 1080 Ti AORUS only has a single VR-link HDMI port on its front corner (while the GTX 1080 had two). On the rear IO however, you'll find 2x HDMI ports (ideal for VR-link), 3x DisplayPort, and 1x DVI. The card is expected to hit shelves mid-April. And on another note and slight update, its more powerful sibling, the AORUS GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition, has had its clock revealed as well: its OC Mode shows boost speeds of 1746 MHz and 1632 MHz base; and its Gaming Mode lowers those to 1721 MHz boost, and 1607 MHz base clocks.

As the world's leading GAMING graphics card vendor, MSI is proud to announce a full line up of graphics cards based on NVIDIA's new flagship gaming GPU with fierce new looks and supreme performance to match. Building on the monumental success of MSI's award winning GAMING X series, the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X 11G uses the full force of the TWIN FROZR VI cooler, allowing for higher core and memory clock speeds for increased performance in games.

The famous shapes of the eye-catching TWIN FROZR cooler are intensified by a fiery red GAMING glow piercing through the cover, while the MSI GAMING dragon RGB LED on the side can be set to any of 16.8 million colors to match your mood or build. A completely new custom 10-phase PCB design using Military Class 4 components with two 8-pin power connectors enables higher overclocking performance to push your graphics card to the max. The classy matte black solid metal backplate gives the card more structural strength and provides a nice finishing touch.

ARM processors have been making forays into hitherto shallow markets, with it's technology and processor architectures winning an ever increasing amount of design wins. Most recently, Microsoft itself announced a platform meant to use ARM processors in a server environment. Now, ARM has put forward its plans towards achieving a grand total of 100 billion chips shipped in the 2017-2021 time frame.

To put that goal in perspective, ARM is looking to ship as many ARM-powered processors in this 2017-2021 time frame as it did between 1991 and 2017. This is no easy task - at least if ARM were to stay in its known markets, where it has already achieved almost total saturation. The plan: to widen the appeal of its processor design, with big bets in the AI, Automotive, XR (which encompasses the Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality markets), leveraged by what ARM does best: hyper-efficient processors.

It was only a matter of time before Gigabyte applied its custom works to the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. The company has released some pictures of its upcoming AORUS Xtreme Edition - the company's take on what is the world's most powerful gaming graphics card ever released. As an AORUS branded card, the AORUS Xtreme will feature Gigabyte's Windforce (triple-slot, 3x 100mm fans) cooler with RGB lighting (16.8 million colors). Aiding its triple-fan cooling prowess is a direct copper contact with a 6-heatpipe design, as well as a built-in backplate.

The 1080 Ti AORUS Xtreme Edition only has a single VR-link HDMI port on its front corner (while the GTX 1080 had two). On the rear IO however, you'll find 2x HDMI ports (ideal for VR-link), 3x DisplayPort, and 1x DVI. No information on pricing or clock speed is available at the moment, though the card is expected to hit shelves mid-April.

Update: Clock speeds have been revealed by Gygabyte itself, and the card's OC Mode shows boost speeds of 1746 MHz and 1632 MHz base; while its Gaming Mode lowers those to 1721 MHz boost, and 1607 MHz base clocks.

Tough breakups aren't easy by definition, and the breakup between legendary programmer John Carmack and former employer ZeniMax has probably been one of the most worded of all. Now, Oculus Chief Technology Officer John Carmack has filed a lawsuit against ZeniMax for $22.5 million, money he claims ZeniMax still owes him from id Softwares' $150 million sale to ZeniMax back in 2009. Carmack says the amount he is filling for is part of the $45 million owed to him for the sale, of which he has already been able to convert 22.5 million (the non-missing half) in ZeniMax shares. However, Carmack says ZeniMax is unlawfully withholding the remaining $22.5 million because of "sour grapes".

Carmack claims ZeniMax is holding back the payment as payback for "a series of allegations regarding claimed violations of Mr. Carmack's Employment Agreement", referencing the Zenimax/Facebook lawsuit over the supposed theft of trade secrets. However, Oculus was recently found not guilty of stealing trade secrets, though the court ordered the company to pay $500 million for copyright infringement, false designation and the violation of Palmer Luckey's NDA. Oculus is appealing the case, calling the prior ruling "legally flawed and factually unwarranted."

One of the things keeping OSVR from becoming a de facto platform for VR is that its software stack, being open source, still hasn't received as much development as Facebook's Oculus or HTC's Vive platforms. However, Sensics, one of the players which has put its stock on the OSVR ecosystem from the beginning, is aiming to gradually change that. Its recent introduction of the Sensics Home Suite brings, in itself, some much-needed quality of life improvements for any VR platform.

Besides the NVIDIA reference-design $699-ish GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, which doesn't come with a $100 Founders Edition sucker-tax, ASUS is giving final touches to at least two custom-design models, the GTX 1080 Ti ROG STRIX, and the GTX 1080 Ti Turbo, pictured in a leaked press image, below. The GTX 1080 Ti Turbo is positioned to be the more affordable of the two, and it won't surprise us if ASUS prices it cheaper than even its reference-design SKU. The card features a lateral-flow cooling solution strapped onto a PCB that closely resembles the reference-design.

Next up, is the company's Republic of Gamers (ROG) STRIX card, which could likely come in two variants, an OC variant with factory-overclocked speeds, and a standard variant that either ticks at reference speeds, or close-to-reference speeds. These cards feature a beefier variant of the DirectCU III cooling solution the company launched with its GTX 1080 STRIX cards, which comes with ASUS Aura Sync RGB LED lighting. The cooler will be mated to a custom-design PCB with a strong VRM, multiple case fan-headers (yes, case fan headers), and preparation for front-panel VR HMD connectivity.

After introducing Rift at a less than amenable price-point, consumers with an eye for VR have been left with the slight hope of decreasing product prices over time (I know I have). Now, Oculus has announced a "slash" in the Oculus Rift pricing - though this isn't as much a straight-up price slash as it is a bundle deal. Case in point: Oculus appears to have stopped selling standalone Oculus Rifts.

Before, you had to pony up 600$ for the Oculus package, with an extra $199 cost for the Touch controller package. After Oculus has moved an estimated 200,000 units, apparently the company is willing to entice more users by now selling a complete Oculus Rift + Touch controllers package for the same price as a standalone Oculus Rift would go for - $600. The company also slashed the price of the standalone Touch controllers to $99 (from the $199 they launched at) and dropped the price of the extra Constellation cameras from $79 to $59.

The OpenXR working group - previously known as the Khronos VR Initiative - is creating an open and royalty-free standard for VR and AR applications and devices.

The Problem:
Without a cross-platform standard, VR applications, games and engines must port to each vendors' APIs. In turn, this means that each VR device can only run the apps that have been ported to its SDK. The result is high development costs and confused customers - limiting market growth.

The Solution
The cross-platform VR standard eliminates industry fragmentation by enabling applications to be written once to run on any VR system, and to access VR devices integrated into those VR systems to be used by applications.