T3 India

Darren Allan

System Shock 3 is coming – and should be a reboot true to its roots

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Otherside, which was founded by Paul Neurath (who co-founded Looking Glass Studios, originally responsible for the System Shock franchise), is a studio that specialises in rebooting franchises and is currently working on Underworld Ascendant, a reprise of the classic Ultima Underworld (also from Looking Glass).

So the cap certainly fits, and as PC Gamer reports, a teaser web page is up which shows the letter ‘S’ and a countdown displaying five and a half days remaining.

‘S’ could mean anything, of course, but elsewhere there’s a second page which was dug up with ‘System Shock 3’ emblazoned across it and links to sign up for promotions and updates from Otherside.

It would seem likely that just as the case was with Ultima Ascendant, this will be a crowdfunded project – and given the love for System Shock, which is regarded as a classic series in so many ways, it will doubtless find no shortage of willing donors.

Underworld Ascendant picked up some $860,000 (around £570,000) in funding, and has a release date of November 2016 pencilled in. So presumably, development of any new System Shock game wouldn’t begin until after Ascendant, so not until 2017 at the earliest – and of course, there will be a long road to travel from there onwards.

If this potential project does become a reality, fans of the System Shock games would be wise to hope Otherside takes its time in making a worthy threequel– and given that Neurath’s team is involved, one that should stick to its true roots (though some are already voicing fears that we could see a watered-down third instalment, a la Bioshock – we don’t believe this will be the case, though).

If the timer is anything to go by, with any luck we’ll have official confirmation of the existence of this title at the start of next week.

Image: System Shock 2, Ultra HD Gaming (Flickr)

New Skylake laptops from Asus boast stunning 4K displays and cinematic sound

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There are two Windows 10 notebooks being launched – the 15.6-inch N552 and a larger 17.3-inch N752 model. Both of these offer very tasty screens, namely IPS panels with up to 4K resolution (for a super-sharp pixel density of 282 ppi in the case of the 15-inch model).

The display also boasts an ultra-wide colour gamut of 100% sRGB and 74% Adobe RGB coverage, meaning colours are impressively vibrant and accurate (an ‘Eye Care’ mode is also present to reduce levels of blue light by up to a third, helping to combat eye fatigue – this is becoming more and more common with computer screens).

Powering this you get a Skylake Core i7 processor backed by up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and on the graphics front there’s an Nvidia GTX 960M for pixel shifting duties. Level loading times certainly won’t be sluggish either, given that you get a PCIe x4 SSD on board (up to 512GB in size).

Asus also wants to have some impressive sound for your games and films as well, incorporating SonicMaster front-facing speakers to deliver clear vocals and deep bass, the company claims (although there’s always a limit to the low-end sonic power a notebook can manage to muster).

There are six preset audio modes so you can switch between them as necessary depending on whether you’re listening to a ‘banging tune’ or blazing away with a submachine gun in an online shooter.

These are smart looking machines, featuring an aluminium lid and keyboard surround, along with a ripple effect design around the speaker grilles, and a softly illuminated logo on the laptop lid.

As well as a light on the lid, you also get a backlit keyboard, and Asus claims the ergonomically designed keys provide a comfortable typing experience. There is a sizeable trackpad on board too.

As for the launch date of these machines, Asus has yet to confirm that or indeed the pricing. Given the components on board, particularly if you load these laptops up with RAM and storage, they’re obviously not going to be cheap…

Via: Hexus

Windows 10 growth slows as Windows 7 and 8.1 users stay put

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Both the big desktop OS market share monitoring firms, StatCounter and Netmarketshare, have revealed their figures for October. Let’s look at StatCounter first.

StatCounter has Windows 10 pegged at a market share of exactly 9% – meaning that it’s now practically level with all the diehards still taking risks on the unsupported Windows XP.

That’s a 1.36% increase on September, which is considerably less than the 2.26% jump seen back in August.

Windows 8 and 8.1 users, by the way, was used by 13.09% of people – down just 0.10% on September . Windows 7, which runs on more than half of all computers, dropped a similarly fractional 0.82 percentage points over October.

As for the figures from Netmarketshare, they don’t indicate such a drop in momentum, with the company having Windows 10 on a market share of 7.94%, up from 6.63% in September – an increase of 1.31%.

In this case, that’s not much of a slowdown compared to the previous month which witnessed a 1.42% increase in share for Windows 10.

So perhaps Microsoft doesn’t have too much to worry about after all, and indeed there’s bound to be a little slowdown expected as time passes.

Netmarketshare has Windows 8.1 on 10.68%, so Windows 10 is closing even faster on its predecessor according to them.

Certainly no one would argue that Windows 10 hasn’t been a big success so far, particularly compared to Microsoft’s previous desktop operating system, which was about as well received as a data breach at a large financial services firm.

Toshiba unveils Surface-like dynaPad, thinnest 12-inch Windows 10 tablet in the world

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And there's no arguing with the fact that this is a very svelte sounding device, and much thinner than Microsoft’s tablet at 6.9mm (the Surface 3 is 8.7mm thick), weighing 569 grams. Toshiba says it's the thinnest and lightest 12-inch Windows 10 tablet in the world.

The same size as a B5 notebook, the dynaPad boasts a WACOM Active Electro-Static stylus and apparently replicates the feeling of natural handwriting with considerable accuracy, with 2048 levels of pressure sensed whether you’re jotting or sketching on your tablet.

Palm-rest rejection tech is also incorporated with the 1920 x 1280 resolution display to avoid accidental hand presses around the edges of the screen causing mistakes.

Toshiba has thrown a load of note-taking and related apps into the mix, including TruNote, TruCapture, TruRecorder, TruNote Clip and TruNote Share. These can be used for scribbling notes, snapping an image of some text, or making a voice recording and so on.

Of course, the dynaPad has a keyboard attachment to turn it into a laptop, and this is lightweight as well, featuring a satin gold carbon body.

It connects to the tablet using magnets, and Toshiba claims the keyboard sports a strong chassis with a comfortable typing experience. When not being used, the keyboard also attaches magnetically to provide protection for the slate when you're out and about.

The Toshiba dynaPad is set to be released in the first quarter of 2016, with pricing yet to be confirmed.

Microsoft reveals Skylake-powered Surface Pro 4 – now 50% faster than MacBook Air

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The size of the actual device remains the same – save for the fact that it has got thinner, as you would expect, being shaved down to 8.4mm – but within that same frame, the screen size has been increased to 12.3-inches, with 60% more pixels on the screen compared to the Surface Pro 3. That makes for a ‘PixelSense’ display with a pixel density of 267 ppi.

The thin layer of Gorilla Glass and refined touch engine apparently means the touchscreen is now more responsive, and coupled with improvements to the pen, makes for a slicker overall user experience.

The new stylus has an eraser on the top, and can differentiate between 1024 different levels of pressure – there are even different tips for different tasks, such as one for drawing and sketching.

As for performance, the Surface Pro 4 is now driven by a Skylake CPU, and it’s 30% faster than its predecessor, and Microsoft claims that its 50% faster than a MacBook Air.

The new tablet also offers up to 1TB of storage and 16GB of RAM.

Redmond showed off a new Type Cover which is thinner, has a 40% larger trackpad, and new keys with an improved typing action. There was also a new ‘Pro’ docking station with two 4K DisplayPorts, four USB 3 ports, and an Ethernet connection. These will work with your Surface Pro 3, by the way.

The company also introduced the Surface Book, a nifty-looking machine which it billed as the “ultimate laptop”, with a 13.5-inch screen that has a pixel density of 267 ppi, and the same PixelSense technology as seen on the Pro 4.

While it does indeed look like a full notebook with a stylish machined aluminium body, the Surface Book is actually a convertible, as it has a ‘dynamic fulcrum’ hinge which allows for the release of the screen – the display simply slips off easily, so you can use it as a tablet.

Microsoft said that this is the fastest 13-inch laptop ever made, and that the Surface Book with its Skylake processor and discrete GeForce GPU is twice as fast as a MacBook Pro (presumably the base model).

He also showed the laptop playing Gears of War very briefly, and it seemed to be running fairly smoothly. Microsoft is claiming a 12 hour battery life for this piece of hardware.

The new Surface Pro 4 starts at $899, and the Surface Book kicks off at $1499 (no word on exact Indian pricing or availability), with an on-sale date of October 26. Pre-orders are set to begin tomorrow.

Microsoft will certainly expect to sell a fair few of these devices, and Terry Myerson, who introduced the event, said that sales of the company’s tablets have doubled in the last year.