The G413 is a solid piece of kit, with an aluminum plate underneath the keys and a thick braided cord providing USB pass-through so you can plug stuff into it and reduce cable clutter on your desk. Even the feet feel pretty solid and are hard to pull off — and yes, I tried, as I’ve had a few go missing in the past. The keys are easy to remove, which makes the deck super simple to clean, as well as allowing you to swap out buttons if you have replacements on hand.

However, getting new keys isn’t as easy as it would be on rival peripherals that use the fairly common Cherry-brand switches. Like Razer, Logitech uses its own proprietary switches, known as the Romer-G. They don’t feel as sharp as Cherry switches or Razer’s brand, with a slightly soft impression on each key press. But the actuation point is only 1.5mm deep (with a force of 45g), so they’re just as responsive. They’re a huge improvement over the keys in Logitech’s low-cost G213, which was aimed at the same audience with a similar price point. That model wasn’t mechanical, using what the company called “Mech Dome” keys instead. That’s a fancy name for what are essentially high-quality membrane buttons.

Logitech at least supplies a set of contoured WASD replacement keys in the box for more serious gamers. Further customization is also offered via Logitech’s software, allowing users to program the function keys with macros. The ability to customize the lighting is not available, though — Logitech left out multicolored LEDs to bring the price down. This leaves users with an ominous red backlight under each key instead (it can be turned down or off). I was glad to see macro buttons omitted as well, as I have a bad habit of accidentally hitting those extra keys when trying to type. But I admit that I wouldn’t have minded some dedicated media controls at least — I’ve grown rather fond of them after using Corsair’s K95 for so long.

The black keys with their red glow contrast rather nicely with the G413’s backplate, but there’s also a pretty sweet-looking silver version available — however, it’s a Best Buy exclusive. Whatever your preference, both colors will run you $90 and can be picked up today.

I had the chance to try out Spaces for myself a few hours after it was announced at F8. As soon as I placed the Oculus Rift headset on my head and the Touch controllers were in my hands, I was transported to what appeared like a beautiful park with cherry blossom trees. On my right was my virtual helper, Justin, who appeared in the form of an animated cartoon avatar. In front of me was a tableau of sorts, with a little dashboard in front of me.

Justin told me to select Appearance, and voila, I could customize the appearance of an animated cartoon avatar of myself. You could design one from scratch by customizing individual features like your nose or your hair, but I decided to just have one automatically generated for me. I grabbed one of my profile photos, which were already on display, and Spaces was smart enough to translate it into a cartoon version of me. From there, I also changed the color of my glasses and my shirt, which you can do in the Appearance tab too.

What I noticed almost immediately is how real it seemed, which is really weird considering I was speaking to an animated avatar. Mike Booth, the product manager leading the Spaces development team, says that’s because the Rift and the Touch creates a little motion capture studio. “You get your actual body language,” he said. “It captures head movements, even hand gesticulation.”

What’s more, Spaces also infers what your eyes are looking at, creating what appears to be eye contact, which is integral to face-to-face communications. One of the reasons Spaces can do this so well is because these avatars are stylized and cartoon-like. “They’re not hyper-realistic, where you can find every little flaw,” says Booth.

The same goes with mouth movement. It actually listens to the voice coming through the Rift microphone and then it tries to guess what mouth shapes you’re making. It’s not always accurate — it sort of snaps the mouth around like a Wallace & Gromit cartoon — but that’s entirely on purpose. “We’re not trying to be super photorealistic,” says Booth. “We just want to show that you’re talking.”

There are other fun things you can do with your avatar too. If you point both thumbsticks up, your avatar will laugh. Point them out, and you’ll smile. Place both controllers on your face and you’ll make an “OH” face. Turn them outward, and your avatar will shrug and look confused. Gestures are basically to VR as emojis are to text. “You have to invoke them,” said Booth. “They’re not supposed to be accidental.”

Next, Justin showed me how to share different kinds of media. I could share photos and videos from my own album, or I could share ones from my newsfeed, or I could just share whatever on the web I found interesting. Once selected, I could resize them anyway I want and have them displayed in the background. What’s especially neat is that when you share 360-degree photos and videos, you can sort of throw them in the middle of the tableau and the image will completely envelop the world. It sounds sort of silly perhaps, but when Justin shared a 360-degree video of a CNN documentary of Iceland, I almost felt like we were right there, taking a tour of the glaciers.

You also have the option of using a marker to draw silly doodles, turning them into three-dimensional art. You can toss them around, make duplicates of them or just play silly games with them. And of course, I couldn’t not take a selfie. Yes, there’s a virtual selfie stick, and yes it works just as it sounds. Simply grab the selfie stick, frame the shot you want and snap the perfect shot. From there, you can share it with your friends just like you can with any other photo.

Last but not least, Spaces is also tied in with Messenger. So you can initiate video calls right when you’re in VR. Your friend’s video chat screen will show up in a little floating square (No, they don’t need a VR headset to participate) and only you can hear and see what he or she says — none of your other VR buddies can eavesdrop in the conversation. They can still hear what you say of course, but they can’t hear what your Messenger friend is saying. Facebook tells me there’s no way to enable that just yet, but that functionality might come later in the future.

As cool as all of that is though, what really sold me the most on Spaces are those animated avatars. And they also happen to be one of the factors that was really hard for Facebook to get right. “The biggest challenge was how the avatars were going to look,” said Booth. “You know the uncanny valley? Well the uncanny valley in VR is a lot wider. Anything that’s attached to your head is going to have biological motions; it’s going to seem alive.” That means that anything that was too life-like would look weird.

“Finding the right balance of charming and being human recognizably without being too realistic and creepy, was harder than expected,” said Booth. “One of our early experiments was to have the lips smoothly blend with the shapes, thinking it would be realistic. And it was just way too creepy.” There were also some experiments on non-human avatars, like you’d see on Zootopia, but that was nixed as well. “Facebook is about authentic identity, which is fundamentally about humans.” Still, that doesn’t mean that costumes won’t be an option later on.

“The core of Spaces, the reason it exists, is so you can feel like you’re in person with your friends,” said Booth. “And then it’s having interesting things you can do with your friends. It’s not a chatroom where you’re just talking.

Of course, Facebook Spaces isn’t the only social VR app out there. Oculus even has its own version called Oculus Rooms. The difference between the two, Booth says, is that Oculus’ version is made just for Oculus hardware and is made to drive that particular platform. Facebook Spaces, on the other hand, is supposed to be much more widespread. That’s why even though it’s an Oculus exclusive right now, Booth wants it to be on all VR hardware. Yes, even the Vive.

When I asked what Booth would say to the skeptics of social VR, he said he doesn’t quite know. But what he thinks would really happen, is that VR skeptics would finally be persuaded to use VR because of social. “There are people that are looking at VR, thinking it’s not for me, because they think it’s all about gaming,” he said. “But what we’re trying to build is for everyone.”

“We want to bring you and your friends to VR,” said Booth. “I hope it’ll make more people look at VR as someone that people will actually want.”

While these cards aren’t enough of an improvement for 400-series owners to upgrade, their hardware changes are worth noting. They’re second-generation Polaris GPUs built on a third-gen FinFET (a type of 3D transistor) architecture. The 400-series cards, meanwhile, were manufactured on a much earlier FinFET process. All of that means AMD was able to make the new cards more efficient, as well as clock them to higher speeds (the RX 580 is around 150MHz faster than the RX 480).

Just like last year, AMD is targeting dedicated gamers who are still running older GPUs, so it’s placing a priority on affordability. Prices will fall in line with the previous models, with the RX 580 going for around $229 with 8GB of RAM and $200 with 4GB. The RX 570, which aims for “maximum” 1080p gaming, will go for around $169, while the slightly slower RX 560 will start at $99. At the lowest end there’s the RX 550, which AMD sees a step up from integrated graphics for $79. The RX 580 and 570 should hit stores today, while the 550 will come on the 20th. You’ll have to wait until May to see the RX 560, unfortunately.

While the 500-series are improvements, they’re still very much mid-range video cards. We’re still waiting for AMD to announce its high-end Vega GPUs, which will likely go toe-to-toe with NVIDIA’s powerful GTX 1080 Ti in the 4K gaming arena. Rumors previously pointed to a Vega announcement in the second quarter, but at this point it seems more likely we’ll get something around E3 in June.

This is the first time the Guardians are starring in their own video game. Prior to the 2014 film, they weren’t popular enough to warrant one. If the trailer’s any indication, Telltale’s episodic series will have the same light-hearted tone as the movies, featuring jokes about Thanos’ chin, elevators and creepy Kree temples.

Telltale has a long history of adapting comic book franchises like The Walking Dead and Batman into adventure games. This is the first time it’s tackling a Marvel property though, and it’ll be interesting to see its take on Guardians of the Galaxy. The studio’s already proven it can pull off comedy in video games (see Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island and Tales From the Borderlands), and it looks like Tangled Up in Blue is going to bring plenty of wisecracks and classic rock tomorrow.

The series’ five episodes will be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Mac, as well as the Apple App Store and Google Play. Episode One: Tangled Up in Blue, and subsequent episodes, will cost $4.99, or you can buy a special Season Pass disc for $29.99 on May 2nd. The disc includes the first episode and will grant access to the others via online updates as they’re released.

Other specs include an Intel Core i7-7700HQ “Kaby Lake” CPU (the same in last year’s model, unfortunately), or i5-7300HQ and i3-7100H models if your budget can’t support that. You can also get up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, 6TB of storage, including M.2 SSD support, an RGB backlit keyboard and an “optional custom automotive finish paint to any color or design of choice,” Origin says.

That price will go way up depending on the options, of course (Origin didn’t specify what you get for $999 other than the NVIDIA graphics). Still, that’s a decent price point for an NVIDIA-equipped laptop, and five pounds makes it just light enough to function as a portable laptop for videographers or gamers on the go.

One of the chief complaints with last year’s model was the fan noise, and with no change in processor, it’s hard to say whether that’s been addressed with the new model. Comparable options include the 5.2-pound MSI GS62M Stealth Pro, with roughly the same specs and price, or Dell’s Inspiron 15 7000 model with a GTX 1050Ti card and the same chip for under $1,000.

There are plenty of other options, and for a big jump in price but equally big performance bump, you can get Razer’s 14-inch, $1,899 Blade with the far superior NVIDIA GTX 1060 card. In other words, it’s a great time to be in the market for a gaming laptop.

[ Source:-http://q.gs/DgCOH ]