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Khronos Group has announced the release of its latest ray tracing extensions for the Vulkan API which is built upon the NVIDIA RTX standard. Opening up ray tracing support for Vulkan API allows it to become the industry's first open, cross-vendor, cross-platform standard for ray tracing acceleration. Khronos Groups Opens Up Ray Tracing For Vulkan API With The Latest Extensions - Open-Source, Cross-Vendor & Cross-Platform Ray Tracing Acceleration According to Khronos Group, Vulkan Ray Tracing is built upon NVIDIA's own ray tracing extensions but adds upon it in a relatively smaller way. In its presentation, Khronos Group stated that a set of provisional extension specifications are publicly available today for industry feedback and the first Beta developer drivers are shipping today. In fact, NVIDIA is fully supporting the new Vulkan API & will be shipping its Beta Linux drivers today, too. “There has been strong developer demand for a truly cross-platform ray tracing acceleration API and now Vulkan Ray Tracing is here to meet that industry need,”. “The overall architecture of Vulkan Ray Tracing will be familiar to users of existing proprietary ray tracing APIs, which enables straightforward porting of existing ray-traced content, but this framework also introduces new functionality and implementation flexibility.” Daniel Koch, senior graphics system software engineer at NVIDIA and Vulkan Ray Tracing task sub group chair at Khronos Vulkan API is titled as the industry's first open, cross-vendor and cross-platform standard for ray tracing acceleration. It is also to note that this move brings the Vulkan API on par with Microsoft's DXR (DirectX Ray-Tracing) API. Some features of Vulkan API would include: Coherent Ray Tracing Framework - Seamlessly integrated into existing Vulkan functionality - a flexible merging of rasterization and ray-tracing. Familiar to users of existing proprietary ray-tracing APIs but also introduces new implementation flexibility Primary focus on meeting desktop market demand for both real-time and offline rendering Vulkan RT consists of a number of Vulkan, SPIR-V, and GLSL extensions, some of which are optional. The primary VK_KHR_ray_tracing extension provides support for acceleration structure building and management, RT shader stages and pipelines, and ray query intrinsics for all shader stages. VK_KHR_pipeline_library provides the ability to provide a set of shaders that can be efficiently linked into ray tracing pipelines. VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations enables intensive driver operations, including RT pipeline compilation or CPU-based acceleration structure construction to be offloaded to application-managed CPU thread pools. Vulkan RT shaders are SPIR-V binaries that use two new extensions. The SPV_KHR_ray_tracing SPIR-V extension adds support for RT shader stages and instructions. Engineers at Khronos member companies, including NVIDIA, have also added support for the SPIR-V extensions to DXC, Microsoft's open-source HLSL compiler, enabling Vulkan RT SPIR-V shaders to be authored in HLSL using the syntax defined by Microsoft, with minimal modifications. Following is what the industry has to say about Khronos Group's newly added support for Ray-Tracing in its Vulkan API: NVIDIA - “NVIDIA ships beta drivers today with support for the provisional standardized ray tracing functionality in Vulkan,” said Morgan McGuire, research director at NVIDIA. “Bringing accelerated ray tracing to the Vulkan cross-platform, open standard API is another significant step towards enabling the highest quality of visual realism for real-time games and applications everywhere.” AMD - "Standardizing ray tracing in Vulkan is an important step towards making ray tracing available across a wide range of devices, as well as enabling developers to use this technology to its full advantage. AMD intends to provide support for all of the major features in this extension, including ray shading, ray queries, and CPU acceleration structure management. We will be working with developers to ensure great performance from our Vulkan Ray Tracing implementation; these efforts will help us to provide end-users with even more visually stunning graphics on AMD Radeon™ GPUs,” said Andrej Zdravkovic, senior vice president, software development, AMD. Intel - "The Intel Xe architecture roadmap includes support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and we're excited to work with Khronos to implement full support into Vulkan," said Joshua Barczak, graphics software architect at Intel. Khronos Group also showcased an example of Vulkan Ray Tracing in Wolfenstein: Youngblood. The title used a typical hybrid combination of a rasterized scene with some ray-traced aspects included in it. While the changes aren't as significant and more trivial of sorts, there's still a lot of good reason to be excited about this move by Khronos Group. The Vulkan (VK_KHR_ray_tracing) is hardware agnostic and supports ray-tracing in both explicit and implicit modes. While it is primarily designed to utilize hardware that is purpose-built for ray-tracing (e.g. NVIDIA RTX & AMD RDNA2 GPUs), it is also able to use the compute capabilities of a GPU for ray-tracing. But with decent ray-tracing cores available on next-generation GPUs, that option may not be widely supported. It's probably that MS would support its own DXR standard for the next-generation Xbox Series X console but Sony may go the Vulkan route as it offers more flexibility to developers. With that said, we can also see some good performance impact with Vulkan API on PC titles and with all three giants, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA landing in this year with its next-generation GPUs, interesting times definitely await us!

Microsoft has announced the latest version of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 adds new XAML, .NET, C++, and debugging features. XAML This release adds the XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms, which helps accelerate development by making it easier to build, experiment, and iterate over a mobile app’s user interface. With this update, as changes are made to an application, the state of the application is not lost as changes are saved. In addition, developers don’t have to recreate the repo like they previously did. .NET This release introduces a number of .NET productivity features. It adds the ability to convert if statements to switch statements or switch expressions. With this release, IntelliSense now supports completion for unimported extension methods. Microsoft also added the ability to simplify string interpolation refactoring, which makes string interpolation more legible and concise. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 also features updates to the .NET Object Allocation tool. The backtrace view is now in a separate panel to make it easier to distinguish between allocation type and functions within the type being called. A new average size column has also been added to the allocation type panel and backtrace view. Finally, new icons have been added to the allocation, call tree, and functions view, making it easier to visualize classes and structures being allocated. C++ This release also adds a number of improvements to the C++ cross-platform and CMake development experience. Developers will now be able to interact with stored remote connections via the command line, which is useful for situations like provisioning new development machines or setting up Visual Studio in continuous integration. This release also adds the ability to leverage support for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) when separating the build system and remote deploy machine. This allows developers to build natively on WSL and then deploy build artifacts to a second machine for debugging. In addition, developers will be able to add, remove, and rename source files and targets in CMake projects from the IDE without having to manually edit CMake scripts. Finally, Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 adds CMake code navigation features like Go To Definition and Find All References. These features will make it easier to understand complex CMake projects. Debugging in C++ and .NET According to Microsoft, Pinnable Properties has been a po[CENSORED]r debugging tool. In this release, Microsoft added a new feature to Pinnable Properties that helps with debugging multithreaded applications. According to the company, this new feature will eliminate the issue of determining the source of a deadlock or other bug. Another debugging update is the ability to debug processes running in Docker Windows containers. Previously, this had been an option only for Docker Linux containers. In addition, the company has added debugging support in Visual Studio for developers building applications on top of Open Enclave SDK.

Name game: Red Dead Redemption 2 Price: $47.99 USD $59,99 (-20%) Link store: Click Here Offer ends up after: March 24 Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 - Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) Processor: Intel® Core ™ i5-2500K / AMD FX-6300 Memory: 8 GB of RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 150 GB of available space Sound Card: Direct X Compatible

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The deadly coronavirus has now hit all 50 states in the US as West Virginia reported its first case of the infection on Tuesday. Announcing West Virginia's first Covid-19 patient, Governor Jim Justice said: "We knew this was coming." New York City said it was considering a lockdown similar to one in the San Francisco Bay area. There have so far been 108 deaths in the US from coronavirus and more than 6,300 confirmed cases nationwide. Globally, there are about 200,000 cases and nearly 8,000 people have died. As the Trump administration seeks a $1tn economic stimulus package, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reportedly warned Republican senators privately on Tuesday evening that if Congress failed to act, US unemployment could hit 20% - almost double the jobless rate during the Great Recession after the 2008 financial crisis. What is New York City considering? Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would decide within two days whether to order the city's 8.5 million residents to "shelter in place". Such a move could largely confine people to their homes, while allowing them to make necessary trips to buy groceries or medicine, walk a dog or exercise as long as they avoid public interaction. "It's a very, very difficult decision," Mr de Blasio said. "We've never been here before. I have never heard of anything like this in the history of New York City." Officials in the San Francisco Bay area have already ordered 6.7 million residents to stay home for all but the most crucial outings until 7 April. What role might the US military play? US Vice-President Mike Pence said the White House may call on the US military to establish field hospitals in virus hot spots if requested by state governors. He told a White House news conference on Tuesday that the Army Corps of Engineers could be asked to set up field hospitals, known as Mash (mobile army surgical hospital) units, or help expand existing hospitals. Pentagon chief Mark Esper said the US military would make available five million respirator masks and up to 2,000 ventilators to the US health department. He said the military would also open its 14 certified coronavirus labs to test non-military personnel. What are the other latest US developments? On Tuesday, Florida joined 11 other states in closing bars and restaurants in one of the most subdued St Patrick's Day celebrations the US has marked in peacetime. Organisers of the Kentucky Derby - America's longest continuously held sports event - postponed the horse race until September. It was the latest rite of spring to fall from the calendar because of the coronavirus, along with the Masters golf tournament, the March Madness basketball extravaganza andbaseball season. The country's largest enclosed shopping centre, the Mall of America in Minnesota, said it would close until the end of the month. Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies were ordered to make fewer arrests to avoid jail crowding where the virus could spread. Twenty-two people were infected with the respiratory illness at a nursing home in suburban Chicago. Meanwhile, the US and Canada are reportedly finalising an agreement to suspend non-essential travel between the two countries and are expected to issue a statement in the coming days. How is President Trump responding? President Donald Trump - who is seeking re-election in November - told a press briefing on Tuesday afternoon that travel restrictions within the US were on the table. "You can do a national lockdown," Mr Trump said. "Hopefully, we're not going to need that. It's a very big step." He also defended his tweet on Monday calling the infection the "Chinese virus", which his critics said was racist. "It did come from China," he told reporters. Mr Trump also said on Tuesday of the outbreak: "I've felt that it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic." Last month he struck a more optimistic tone, saying the US coronavirus outbreak "within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero".

Esta edición especial que como su nombre precisa, nace para celebrar el 30 aniversario del lanzamiento del primer M3 descapotable llega a México en una serie limitada a tan solo cinco unidades. Después de todo, no hay que olvidar que, pese a los cambios de denominación, este auto es el legítimo sucesor del E30, cuyo arribo a los escaparates internacionales se dio en el verano de 1988. Es así, que el BMW M4 Convertible Edición 30 Años trata de rememorar a su exitoso antepasado. Para hacerlo, su producción se limita a 300 unidades a nivel mundial, todas equipadas de serie con el M Competition Package, un sistema de escape M Sport, suspensión M adaptativa con modo SPORT específico y una configuración extremadamente deportiva del sistema de control de estabilidad DSC y el diferencial M activo. En el apartado estético, existen dos opciones de carrocería. El color Macao Blue metálico hace referencia al mencionado M3 E30 (cuya prueba puedes ver dando click aquí), mientras que el tono Mandarin II es una reminiscencia al Dakar Yellow, que estuvo disponible para la segunda generación del BMW M3 Convertible. La ornamentación incluye molduras en color negro para el contorno de la parrilla, branquias laterales M, el distintivo del modelo y los rines de aleación ligera M de 20 pulgadas en color Orbit Grey mate, que presumen un diseño de radios en forma de estrella. En el habitáculo, el BMW M4 Convertible Edición 30 Años se caracteriza por las vestiduras en piel Merino, cuyo patrón de color se combina con el tono de la carrocería. También se encuentran las costuras contrastantes en las cabeceras, así como en los tapetes M con borde contrastante, además de las molduras interiores de fibra de carbono. Esto sin olvidar la inscripción “Edition 30 Jahre”, así como un grabado con el número “1/300”, haciendo referencia a la producción limitada. Por último, bajo el cofre se encuentra un seis cilindros en línea biturbo de 3.0 Litros con 450 Hp y 406 lb-pie de torque que se acopla a una transmisión automática de doble embrague de 7 velocidades. Esta combinación, le permite acelerar de 0 a 100 km/h en 4.3 segundos.

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Name game: Far Cry® 5 Price: $14.99 USD $59,99 (-75%) Link store: Click Here Offer ends up after: March 26 Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only) Processor: Intel Core i5-2400 @ 3.1 GHz or AMD FX-6300 @ 3.5 GHz or equivalent Memory: 8 GB of RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 or AMD R9 270 (2GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better) DirectX: Version 9.0c Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 40 GB of available space Additional Notes: Game contains EasyAntiCheat (https://www.easyanticheat.net/) anti-cheat technology, and Denuvo (https://www.denuvo.com/) and VMProtect (http://vmpsoft.com/support/ user-manual / introduction / what-is-vmprotect /) anti-tamper technology.

NVIDIA had been preparing something spicy for release at GTC this year. This much is obvious from how much the company tried to salvage any semblance of a "show" and get their major product announcement out. It seems, however, that they have accepted COVID's impact in a blog titled "GTC News Can Wait". Either that or the company expects the coronavirus to have a significant impact on the economy and want to rethink their strategy with regards to whatever product announcement they had ready (likely a flagship GPU architecture). NVIDIA postpones major GTC product announcement due to Coronavirus impact I do feel for the company. From their actions, they were really excited to share whatever it was. GTC is usually home to the professional side of things and it is possible the company was planning on announcing their professional Ampere-based GPUs on this iteration. You can see NVIDIA's increasingly desperate attempts to salvage the show from the GTC timeline, which went something like this: First, the company insisted it would not cancel GTC and would take extra security measures. GTC was then moved to an online-only event with the full show live-streamed. The live stream got canceled and the "product" announcement was supposed to come out on time as regular news. Now it seems NVIDIA has completely postponed that major product announcement as well (the talks and research portions will still be live-streamed as per schedule). NVIDIA posted the following on their blog earlier today: "We have exciting products and news to share with you. But this isn’t the right time. We’re going to hold off on sharing our GTC news for now. That way, our employees, partners, the media and analysts who follow us, and our customers around the world can focus on staying safe and reducing the spread of the virus. We will still stream tons of great content from researchers and developers who have prepared great talks. This is a time to focus on our family, our friends, our community. Our employees are working from home. Many hourly workers will not need to work but they’ll all be fully paid. Stay safe everyone. We will get through this together." While its a pity considering NVIDIA is the only company innovating in high-end graphics right now, the health of employees (and attendees) comes first so it is not surprising to see this. That said, considering the panel live streams (of researchers) are still going ahead as scheduled, this makes me think that this delay has more to do with an internal reassessment with regards to COVID impact to the business cycle than anything else. What do you think?

Microsoft has announced its UI library for web components UI Fabric will now be known as Fluent UI. According to the company, Fluent UI is a cross-platform design system that will speak a common language tacross Microsoft. “Fluent UI will directly connect that effort to a broad set of products, through code, specifically the convergence of our most used web engineering frameworks – Fabric and Stardust,” the Microsoft 365 team wrote in a post. Under this new direction, the two Microsoft repositories, UI Fabric and Stardust GitHub repos, will be merged and will live under the Microsoft GitHub organization as Fluent UI. “This allows our teams to collectively work together on a shared code base with a shared set of build and development tools to support our products and community more efficiently. It also allows us to get to a single UI library for Microsoft 365,” Microsoft wrote. Microsoft also said that its next major release will be the first batch of major changes in uniting collective efforts, and is targeted for summer 2020. The next major release will focus on performance and theming. This includes improved runtime performance through styling optimizations, improved flexibility and composition of components, a more flexible and powerful theming system, and the elimination of deprecated React API usage. “We’re bringing design and engineering together more than ever, to contribute to and leverage a shared foundation, and reach our shared goals. We’re not suggesting that one size fits all, and we got here honestly, so we must evolve collectively,” Microsoft wrote. “Our goal is simple—a shared foundation with open source engineering processes to create experience coherence, efficiency, and effectiveness. It enables us to do more with less.”

Puede que a primera vista no haya mayores cambios, después de todo se trata de un facelift ligero, pero en realidad, las pocas o muchas mejoras están aplicadas de forma correcta para rejuvenecer a este icónico modelo. Al exterior, es fácilmente reconocible como un Maxima, y aunque mantiene elementos como la parrilla V-Motion, añade algunos elementos mejorados como las remozadas fascias (delantera y trasera), los faros “boomerang” LED con estilo joya, rines de 19 pulgadas con corte diamante, así como las salidas de escape cuádruples. Puertas adentro, encontramos nuevos acabados en costuras y materiales que contribuyen a brindar una atmósfera de mayor lujo, después de todo es el sedán más costoso de la marca. El panel de instrumentos, los paneles en las puertas, insertos del volante, materiales de los asientos y las rejillas de las bocinas han rediseñados. Por cierto, el Maxima SR presenta una nueva costura de acento naranja, detalles de Alcantara y acabados cromados. En materia de equipamiento, resalta la integración del Safety Shield 360°, un paquete de tecnologías de asistencias que incluye Frenado de Emergencia con Detección de Peatones, Alerta de Punto Ciego, Alerta de Tráfico Cruzado, Alerta de Desvío de Carril, Asistencia de Luces Altas y de Frenado Trasero Automático, disponibles en la versión Exclusive. Adicionalmente Nissan también cuenta con Control Crucero Inteligente, Monitor de Visión periférica, Detección de Objetos en Movimiento, Alerta de Colisión Frontal y Alerta Preventiva de Colisión Trasera. En el apartado mecánico no hay mayores cambios, por lo que el Maxima es impulsado por el conocido V6 de 3.5 litros con 300 hp y 261 lb-pie de torque que se acopla a una transmisión automática CVT. Con esto, es capaz de acelerar de 0 a 100 km/h en 6.3 segundos. Aunque el VQ35 es un excelente motor, nos hubiera gustado que el faclift hubiera estado acompañado por el 2.0 litros turbo de compresión variable estrenado en el Altima.

The European Commission is planning to ban all non-essential travel throughout Europe's Schengen free travel zone as more countries close their borders in a bid to limit the spread of coronavirus. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said she will ask leaders to implement the measures on Tuesday. "The less travel, the more we can contain the virus," she said. French President Emmanuel Macron earlier said the EU's external borders would be closed to travellers. "Concretely, all trips between non-European countries and EU countries will be suspended," Mr Macron said in a televised address on Monday. Long-term residents, family members of EU nationals and diplomats would be exempt as well as cross-border and healthcare workers and people transporting goods. The measures would be in place for at least 30 days, Mr Macron said. The Schengen agreement allows people to move freely between EU countries without border checks. Citizens of non-Schengen EU member states will also be invited to apply the travel ban, including the UK. The comments came ahead a video-summit with EU leaders on Tuesday hosted by European Council chief Charles Michel. Meanwhile, Germany has also implemented stringent measure. Chancellor Angela Merkel has banned religious services and told people to cancel any domestic or foreign holiday travel. Most non-grocery shops and venues have been ordered to shut. Schools across the country have already been closed. What is France doing? President Macron has ordered people to stay at home and only go out for essential duties. He said the previous measures, including the closing of schools, cafes and non-essential shops, had proved insufficient. "Even while medics were warning about the gravity of the situation, we saw people get together in the parks, busy markets and restaurants and bars that did not respect the order to close," he said in the 20-minute televised address. "We are at war... we're fighting neither another army nor our own nation. But the enemy is here, invisible, untouchable... and is advancing." The restrictions in France will be in place for at least 15 days, Mr Macron added, vowing to punish any infringement. The government later said more than 100,000 officers would be deployed nationwide to enforce the lockdown. President Macron also said the army would be used to help transport the sick to hospital and that the second round of local elections due this weekend was being postponed. He also offered reassurance to businesses, saying: "No French company, whatever its size, will be exposed to the risk of collapse". On Monday, the head of the country's health service, Jerome Salomon, said the outbreak was "very worrying" and "deteriorating very fast". France has so far registered more than 6,000 infections and 148 deaths. The country will close its land borders from midday (11:00 GMT) on Tuesday, when the EU's external borders and the Shenghen borderless zone will also be shut, Mr Macron said. What is Germany doing? Chancellor Merkel announced that venues including clubs, bars, leisure facilities, zoos and playgrounds would be closed. Restaurants will have to enforce a minimum distance between tables and work under restricted hours. "The better everyone sticks to these rules, the faster we'll get through this phase," she said at a news conference in Berlin, vowing that the government would try to minimise the economic impact of the outbreak. Germany now has close to 7,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, and 14 deaths. Large gatherings nationwide had already been banned. Traffic crossing Germany's borders with France, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg is now restricted to goods and people commuting for work. Only the borders with the Netherlands and Belgium are as yet unaffected. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas responded to reports that US President Donald Trump wanted to buy exclusive access to a potential vaccine developed by a German biotech firm, saying: "We cannot allow others to seek exclusive results." How are other Europe countries responding? Spain implemented controls at land borders at midnight on Monday and only Spanish citizens, residents and special cases are allowed in the country. The Spanish government imposed a partial lockdown on its 47 million inhabitants on Saturday, as part of a 15-day state of emergency. People are barred from leaving home except buy essential supplies and medicines, or for work. Italy, the worst-affected nation outside China, where the virus originated, has more than 20,000 cases and has suffered more than 2,150 deaths. Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that damage from the virus would be "serious and widespread", adding: "After the coronavirus, nothing will be as before, we will have to sit down and rewrite the rules of trade and the free market". Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Europe was now the "epicentre" of the virus and urged governments to act aggressively to control the spread of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The head of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also told other countries to follow the containment strategies used in China and South Korea, saying they showed the pandemic was controllable. In other European nations: Greece is shutting all shops, bars, chemists and petrol stations and putting all arrivals from abroad into quarantine for 14 days The Czech authorities sealed off an area in the east of the country - Unicov, Cervenka and Litovel Poland suspended all domestic flights, following similar moves on international air and rail travel Georgia banned all foreigners from entering the country Serbia declared a state of emergency Ukraine's capital Kyiv to shut restaurants, cafes and bars from Tuesday and restricted movement to other towns Poland, the Czech Republic and Denmark have already closed borders or introduced severe restrictions