It's almost upon us: after decades of efforts and dreams, consumer virtual reality won't be a thing of science fiction much longer. In just over a month both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive will make their debut, and you'll need a pretty decent PC to power them—your graphics card being of particular importance. Both headset manufacturers are recommending an NVIDIA GTX 970 at minimum, and your time to upgrade before the big launch is fading fast. But what exactly will you get for your money if you decide to take the plunge? Let's find out! Out of the Box... As the premier 'VR-ready' graphics card, the GTX 970 comes in many shapes and sizes and configurations, creating a sort of low-end, high-end scenario within a single GPU model. For this post I chose to go with an EVGA GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0 card—which is to say, it ships pre-overclocked and has a fancy cooling system. As a frequent sale item it's one of the most affordable 970s currently on the market, often lan...

If you hadn't noticed, things have looked a bit different around here at ThinkBoxly for a few weeks now! While the latest version of ThinkBoxly was released to less fanfare than usual, it was for good reason--that reason being, the reasons for the updates had to be kept under wraps! While some of those reasons must remain secrets for a while longer, today the first step of those plans comes to completion: Edge Engine is now fully assimilated into ThinkBoxly, and ALL modules have received updates to help them settle into their new home and just be better than ever before! Note the change in URL in particular--Edge Engine can now be found at engine.thinkboxly.com , NOT edgeengine.net ! In less than a month that domain will expire, so take your time but be sure to point your browser to the new location from now on to receive support and news of updates! What sort of updates? Read on to find out! A New Paradigm First of all, to simplify and better strategize development, Edge Engine h...