With Windows 10 mere days away as a free upgrade for the majority of consumer Windows 7 and 8 users, many have found their excitement for the latest version of Microsoft's OS hampered somewhat by the news that out of the box further updates will be forced. As in, without asking for your permission first, all updates to Windows 10 and (optionally) Windows-related software and services will download, install, and even reboot your PC if necessary. Good news? Hardly. While the word 'update' sounds like a good thing and it makes sense that Microsoft doesn't want their OS to fragment among their userbase, it can be pretty inconvenient to be in the middle of work or play and suddenly have your PC take the reigns to do its thing. Worse, if you're a frequent user of Windows' hibernate feature, you'll find that your PC turns itself on when it needs to update and freezes on BIOS-based motherboards due to the updated session mismatching the session you saved when the PC...

Add another to the list of unplanned Edge Engine updates! Edge VN 1.1.2--not to be confused with 1.2, which is still on its way--is now live on the marketplace. This is just a minor usability update, but it is still recommended to jump on it as soon as possible, because there are a few syntactical changes that will be easier to adjust to sooner rather than later. The first change is a new option to draw Edge VN scenes as foregrounds, covering up all other assets. This is particularly useful for fading scenes out, and a solid black scene is included to do just that. The other change is the addition of a new transition for textboxes--or rather, the addition of no transition at all. In the past the default transition was a brief fade, which though subtle can still be jarring when changing text blocks. With this new addition, it is now possible to set both textboxes and characters to appear instantaneously, creating seamless transitions from one text block to another. However, this also me...

Not all advances in technology are about being faster or stronger. Sometimes the most interesting developments come in small packages—both literally and figuratively. Such is the case with the NVIDIA GTX 960, a GPU on the low end of the current Maxwell generation that thanks to some aftermarket tinkering might just be able to replace last generation's Kepler mid-range cards despite some rather odd limitations. NVIDIA's X60 cards have long been an attractive consumer product—the 'sweet spot', as they call it, of price versus performance. But while in the past X60 cards have been some logical combination of good and average features, lately it seems much less effort has been put into making these GPUs as good as they can be in the target price range. As such, while even the Fermi-based GTX 460 had a 192-bit bus, the GTX 960 has only a 128-bit bus. While the 460 had only 100 or so fewer CUDA cores than its bigger brother the GTX 470, the GTX 960 is lacking well over 500 CU...

Another weekend, another update to Edge Engine, this time again for the popular Edge Display Scaler. The new 1.2.8 update builds off of what was introduced in 1.2.6, improving support for mobile devices with super high-resolution screens exceeding GameMaker Studio's 2K limitation, as well as dramatically improving the performance of both single-axis and forced-resolution scaling scripts. On capable PCs the FPS gain will likely be relatively insignificant, but mobile devices should see gains of up to 1,000% over 1.2.6, depending on the hardware and target resolution. On top of all that, 1.2.8 also packs a few minor other improvements and bug fixes. You all know what to do: it's updating time! Grab the new version now!

Wait, what? Edge Splash is already at 1.5? Yes, it is, and for good reason! This new version of Edge Splash is not a mere update--it is a completely rewritten, overhauled module. A new product, in essence, just one that happens to imitate the functionality of the older product. Why the rewrite? A number of reasons, most of them marinated in technical jargon. So, put simply: Edge Splash 1.0 was bad. Clever, yes, and an achievement in its own right for being a one-line code solution, but this one-line focus convoluted the product as a whole and limited usability to a certain set of admittedly unimpressive features. Things only got worse as the rest of Edge Engine developed and evolved to a certain set of code standards that Edge Splash 1.0 simply did not and could not adhere to. So it was rewritten. Completely. The basic goals of Edge Splash remain the same: be as simple to use as possible, and create really slick looking splash screens. But with the 1.5 rewrite, Edge Splash truly pushe...

Though it's not available in the west and Square Enix has not announced any intentions to make it so (though it probably will— just look at Chaos Rings 3 ), yesterday I had the opportunity to go hands-on with Mobius Final Fantasy, recently released in Japan on iOS and Android. The game was pushed as a full-scale console RPG on smartphones, but in the end it looks and plays more like a tech demo for the new Unity 5 engine than a direct companion to previous entries in the Final Fantasy series. The combat is fun enough—the controls are simple enough to execute with one hand (which is the intention—the entire game is designed in portrait orientation) and yet it doesn't sacrifice depth in being easy to maneuver. Of the Final Fantasy series it's most like Final Fantasy XIII's battle system, except it actually feels quite at home on a smartphone. The problem is...that's about all there is to the game. Despite its pretty visuals, Mobius Final Fantasy is more akin to Recor...

While TV sets slowly limp from 1080p to 4k and by and large have yet to come down to equilibrium pricing, projectors have also gained popularity as TV alternatives, but with one caveat: most affordable projectors aren't even up to full HD yet, if HD at all. In recent years cheap LED projectors have given projectors new life on the home user market, but at the cost of brightness, pixels, and most advanced features considered standard on higher-end models. Not to mention that while these days practically all projectors brag about being HD, most only accept a 1080p input and then project it at 720p or 480p instead. The BenQ MH630 falls in neither the high-end nor deceptively low-end category, instead offering an affordable set of compromises without sacrificing image quality. And if you're a home user looking to watch movies or play games on the largest display possible, it may just be the best option for you currently out there. The Unit The BenQ MH630 was released onto the marke...