Save for a brief two-year run of Valkyrie Anatomia: The Origin on mobile devices, tri-Ace's tale of Norse mythology and gods hadn't seen a proper new entry in the greater part of a decade and a half since Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume launched on Nintendo's first dual-screened handheld. While the first two Valkyrie Profile titles dabbled with real-time aspects to combat, the series has largely still had a turn-based combat system lying underneath. Under the development of Japanese developer Soleil, Valkyrie Elysium marks the first time the series has been treated as a proper action RPG through and through, much as SEGA experimented with Media.Vision to realize Valkyria Revolution.
Valkyrie Elysium takes place in a world where the inevitable has already occurred. Whereas prior Valkyrie Profile titles were centered around recruiting Einherjar to stave off the end of the world, in Valkyrie Elysium, the end of days is already upon them. Gone are the humans who would pledge their loyalty to the gods. In their stead are undead left roaming the landscape and lingering memories from the recently departed in the form of ephemeral flowers.
Save for the All-Father himself, the Valkyrie Hilde, and a young boy named Armand, everyone else has either been taken away in Ragnarok or left to wander the landscape as an undead. While no Frost Giants are wandering the landscape in Valkyrie Elysium, there are a great number of undead beasts and humanoids to dispatch. Purifying those enemy souls serves to feed Odin’s power so that he might stand a chance in the second bout of mortal combat against the wolf Fenrir. That first match takes place during the open narrative to Valkyrie Elysium, with both Odin and Fenrir dealing each other blows that would’ve easily slain a lesser god.
As the Valkyrie previously known as Maria, the player’s task is to both purify the undead roaming Midgard but also to collect four sacred treasures that serve to give the All-Father a better chance against Fenrir once more. The main flow to Valkyrie Elysium is broken up into individual chapters, nine in total, with a variety of side quests and training missions that fill out the quest list available during brief respites back in Odin’s domain.
Within each of Valkyrie Elysium’s nine-story missions are a collection of flowers to collect of the Verdant and Hollow varieties. While the latter flesh out the histories of the deceased Midgard residents, it’s the former that impact how Valkyrie Elysium’s final chapter plays out. Depending on whether Maria collects all nine Verdant Flowers and has a final chat with Armand before departing to slay Fenrir affects which of the four endings players will see through until the conclusion in Valkyrie Elysium. Thankfully, players won’t have to live with the singular choice they’ve made; reloading a finished save file brings players back to before beginning chapter 9 and gathering that final Verdant Blossom. Gone are the cryptic Seal levels of the original Valkyrie Profile or trying to decipher what would otherwise lead to a true ending.
With so many changes streamlining Valkyrie Elysium into an action RPG, it’s clearly evident where corners were cut and concessions had to be made in other to create an RPG experience that can easily be cleared in twenty, if not fifteen, hours from beginning to end. The dozens of einherjar that typically accompany a Valkyrie into Valhalla from prior works are limited to just four that join Maria’s cause in this game. Valkyrie Maria has many more weapon types at her disposal, but these all ultimately have a similar combo flow and identical stats once fully developed that it’s difficult to recommend a single weapon type over another unless you really like the combo finishers of a given weapon. Likewise, the oversimplification extends to the mission and side quest structure as well. There isn’t a single mission to Valkyrie Elysium that offers more challenge than either killing a large wave of foes or a single boss encounter instead. Night every side quest plays out the save, although there will be some missions where quest areas are run through in reverse in an attempt to mix up and keep players from getting bored of running the same ten levels over and over again. Einherjar puzzles can be found infrequently throughout the levels and offer little more than the challenge of locking on and choosing the right einherjar for the job (such as burning away dried foliage as Taika or freezing a water spout to create a bridge with Cypher). Much of the intrigue that filled the prior three Valkyrie Profile titles and made the world feel alive is instead limited to static dialogues left behind across dozens of Hollow Blossoms.
Just as I praised Valkyrie Elysium’s combat during last month’s preview, the same holds true, especially with a full roster of Einherjar accompanying the Valkyrie. Being able to freely swap between two equipped weapons and unleash a flurry of combos feels great in Valkyrie Elysium’s action RPG combat and there’s little reason to ever go more than a second or two without attacking an enemy. The Einherjar that were merely teased during the preview’s tutorial mission serves to augment Maria’s combat potential, both through attacking on their own and also increasing the effectiveness of arts matching their element.
Early on in Valkyrie Elysium, Einherjar must manually be selected through a button combination to summon them briefly to the field by consuming soul points to bring the Einherjar for a predetermined amount of time (I typically stuck 15-second intervals throughout most of my playthrough as Einherjar gain a permanent stat boost each time they’re summoned, up to a predetermined limit). As Maria unlocks more skills, she can also acquire passive slots that allow a specific Einherjar to be brought to the field under specific combat conditions, such as finishing a standard combo or being overwhelmed by enemies. Juggling the uptimes of each Einherjar never felt like much of a chore and instead felt like an extension of Maria’s combos, especially when wanting to bring Eygon out to bolster a lightning bolt or two.
Maria rarely has time to stand still and consider her actions without dishing out some of her own. The Soul Chain ability that allows Maria to tether onto an enemy and pull herself in closer will perhaps be the most often used ability in her whole skillset and used to great effect to both clear the distance and keep a high combo count. Perfectly timed blocks and dodges similarly give the Valkyrie some additional perks and increase her damage output, leading to faster and flashier fights.
Take the combat away from Valkand you’re left with a simple, linear action RPG when it comes to Valkyrie Elysium. Had the combat not been enjoyable for my twenty-hour playthrough, I would be left with even more scathing thoughts about this mediocre experience. Perhaps it’s being attached to the Valkyrie Profile series by name alone (and Motoi Sakuraba soundtrack) that lead to higher expectations that Soleil simply couldn’t match this time around. While it certainly isn’t among the worst action RPGs out there for PlayStation, Valkyrie Elysium comes and goes without leaving much impact or memories whatsoever. At least there’s still the promise of replaying Valkyrie Profile Lenneth once more when the recently delayed PlayStation 4 port is released as part of Valkyrie Elysium’s deluxe edition.
Reviewed on PlayStation 5 (code provided by the publisher).
Security operations teams are overwhelmed trying to protect their organizations against an onslaught of cyberattacks, including a 92 percent rise in ransomware attacks.1 Too often, existing security tools are siloed or not designed to meet the needs of today’s hybrid cloud environment. The result is overworked security analysts, unaddressed alerts, and undetected threats. As the threat landscape evolves, protecting today’s hybrid cloud environment requires a comprehensive approach that gives security operations (SecOps) teams the context they need to protect their organization better and faster.
Microsoft Sentinel is a modern, cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) solution that collects security data from your entire organization. Using hundreds of connectors and AI to help SecOps teams prioritize the most important incidents, Microsoft Sentinel includes user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) and rich security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) capabilities.
We’re delighted to announce that Microsoft is named a Leader in the 2022Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for Security Information and Event Management and is positioned highest on the measure of Ability to Execute axis. We believe Microsoft’s placement in the Leaders quadrant validates our commitment to empowering our customers with a cloud-native SIEM powered by AI and automation.
Figure 1. 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management. (Source: Gartner, 2022)
It is fulfilling to see the ongoing value our customers realize from Microsoft Sentinel today. iHeartMedia, a multinational entertainment company, chose Microsoft Sentinel for its simplicity, ease of management, and cost efficiency. “One screen shows our analysts the intelligence to alert based on the data it combines from multiple systems, including firewalls, domain controllers, and everything else,” says Janet Heins, Chief Information Security Officer, iHeartMedia.
Another global operation, Pearson VUE, also chose to empower its cybersecurity team with consolidated visibility by migrating to Microsoft Sentinel, while benefitting from reduced infrastructure costs. “I appreciate the collaborative approach Microsoft takes by having its team meet with ours to share advice on implementation details and fast-track issue resolution,” explains Vladan Pulec, Enterprise Architect, Pearson VUE.
Industry-leading innovation
Our customers are our team’s biggest inspiration for delivering ongoing innovation. We’ve continued to make investments in Microsoft Sentinel over the last 12 months, including:
New data ingestion and transformation capabilities: With in-built normalization schemas, codeless API connectors, and low-cost options for collecting and archiving logs, we’ve made it easier to onboard new data sources.
Rich SOAR and UEBA capabilities: By leveraging additional UEBA entity pages, reducing response times, and correlating similar alerts to an incident, we’ve helped improve SOC performance.
Broad ecosystem integration: Connecting existing systems to Microsoft Sentinel is vitally important, and this year we added more than 180 solutions that not only connect data but also provide analytic rules, workbooks, automation playbooks, and more.
Microsoft’s overall vision for protecting customers from threats is unique compared to vendors that only offer a SIEM. Microsoft takes the best of SIEM and combines that with the best of extended detection and response (XDR) to deliver a unified security operations platform—the breadth of coverage only a SIEM can provide and the depth of insight that XDR provides. That means teams using Microsoft security solutions have more context to work from to resolve attacks faster. Customers using our XDR capabilities, such as Microsoft 365 Defender, also receive a discount on their data ingestion into Microsoft Sentinel.
Looking forward
We know that in today’s threat environment there’s no time to rest on our laurels. We’ll continue to listen to customer needs and innovate to enhance Microsoft Sentinel’s already sophisticated threat-protection capabilities so that SecOps specialists can efficiently investigate, track, and automate their response to stay ahead of attackers. While we already have comprehensive and integrated SIEM and XDR capabilities, we’ll continue to do more to bring these two capabilities together as an integrated and open security platform. Thank you to all our customers for your feedback and your inspiration.
To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management, written by Pete Shoard, Andrew Davies, and Mitchell Scheider. October 10, 2022.
Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the US and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
The graphic above was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
This post containsspoilersfor the season finale of "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law."
Season 1 of Marvel's "She-Hulk" ended on a surprising note, with She-Hulk/Jen Walters (Tatiana Maslany) breaking through the fourth wall and into the writer's room to question the cliched storylines inherent within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In this clever, super-meta self-callout, Jen questions the problem with regurgitated MCU plotlines (such as variations of the SUPER ORIGINAL Super-Serum plotlines) and how female pleasure is depicted in these superhero offerings. The results are fun, with Jen taking control over her own storyline (it is her show, after all) ... even though the episode ends with a formulaic reveal that potentially sets up a major Hulk storyline from the comics.
During Jen's family get-together, she brings Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) along, and we love to see the two looking awkwardly coy in this setting. Enter Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who had gone AWOL since we last saw him on a Sakaarian spaceship, and he introduces a new member to the family. It is none other than Skaar (played in motion-capture by Wil Deusner), Hulk's son, whose presence suggests potential storylines that the MCU could adapt in the near future.
Who is Skaar, and what's his deal? As the show's season finale says absolutely nothing about this new character, let's put our nerd glasses on and dive deep into Skaar's comics history.
Skaar, Son Of Hulk
Skaar made his first Marvel comics appearance in "What If? Planet Hulk #1" and then proceeded to be officially introduced in "World War Hulk #5," a comics miniseries by Greg Park and John Romita. Quick backstory: In Pak's "Planet Hulk" storyline, Bruce Banner gets together with Caiera the Oldstrong, a member of the Shadow People of Sakaar. Unfortunately, Caiera dies after a catastrophe on her home planet, but Caiera's child survives and emerges from a cocoon that falls into a lake of fire. Abandoned on a hostile planet, this child, Skaar, grows at an abnormal rate and is taken in by ferocious creatures. Growing up among them, Skaar learns that he needs to kill in order to survive and works towards claiming the Old Power from his mother's lineage.
In the course of a sprawling storyline, Skaar confronts a dude named Axeman Bone, which triggers a string of events that help him gain the Old Power. Instead of using this power to help prevent an impending Sakaarian catastrophe, Skaar intends to use it to destroy the planet instead, and he marches into battle with vengeance against Axeman in mind. The death of countless innocents prompts his mother's spirit to reason with Skaar, and he pays heed and is exiled to Earth (he still manages to invoke Galactus, but that's a whole other can of worms).
Also, a brief rundown of Skaar's powers includes superhuman strength, stamina, and durability, along with immunity to fire, and rapid wound regeneration. In the non-Hulk side of things, Skaar can use the Old Power to harden his skin to make it rock-solid, which allows him to destroy everything in his path with greater impact. This sounds like a powered-up version of the classic "Hulk smash" to me.
How Does Hulk's Run-In With Skaar Fit Into Comics Canon?
According to the comics storyline, Skaar's time on Earth was filled with run-ins with She-Hulk and the Fantastic Four, while he harbored increasing hatred towards his father for abandoning him. Comics-Skaar blamed his dad for every bad thing that happened to the planet of Sakaar, and the two engaged in a Hulked-out brawl even though Bruce seemingly had no memory of having a son. They eventually reconcile after some time and spend time together as a family.
As the events of "She-Hulk" mostly concern Jen, the Sakaar storyline only acts as a backdrop to set up the next phase of events in the MCU. Has Bruce's little excursion to Sakaar (where he lived for years before the events of "Thor: Ragnarok" sent him home) changed things between him and his son? Although Skaar did not look particularly elated at the family gathering, he seemed to be on okay terms with his father, although we cannot be entirely sure. No matter what happened back on Sakaar, and how Bruce managed to reconcile with Skaar, the latter's presence on Earth could very well lead to a host of events concerning Skaar's twin bro, Hiro-Kala. Skaar's presence also ties in well with the MCU's next phase, wherein long-held mantles are passed down to worthy superheros, which can usher in a bunch of unique storylines starring the next generation of characters.
Which Potential Skaar Storylines Could The MCU Bring To Life?
It would be difficult to adapt many Skaar storylines for the current MCU. Example: Skaar's seemingly evil twin wanted to destroy Earth as a way to enact revenge on his father (I cannot keep up with the daddy issues -- even Jen mentioned them to K.E.V.I.N. in the finale), which prompted Skaar to imprison him on a planet called K'ai. This gives rise to the Microverse storyline concerning Arcturus Rann, who brings K'ai back to the Microverse.
However, the mega-bombshell storyline that the MCU could be gearing toward is World War Hulk, a major crossover comics event where Bruce seeks revenge on the Illuminati after they exile him to Sakaar. Skaar plays a prominent role here, which explains why he was quickly introduced in the "She-Hulk" finale. Although K.E.V.I.N. jokes that we won't see Jen/She-Hulk on the big screen, the possibility is not out of the question, as Marvel might just grant us a revamped version of the World War Hulk storyline, especially considering that the Illuminati is already a part of MCU canon. However, the premise will need to be drastically retooled considering how the MCU differs from the source material.
Another potential storyline we might witness is Skaar's involvement with the Dark Avengers, where he is recruited as a double agent. Once again, the comics aspects of the narrative needs to be heavily altered in order to fit the current course of the MCU, but the events could still play out and become an essential part of the MCU canon. There's also a Green Springs Project storyline concerning Skaar that involves none other than Abomination/Emil Blonsky!
No matter what the future holds, this is almost certainly not the last we will see of Skaar in the MCU.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last year, former Oculus CTO (and current company advisor) John Carmack threw down the gauntlet for Meta's near-term metaverse plans. By the 2022 Meta Connect conference, Carmack said last October, he hoped he'd be in his headset, "walking around the [virtual] halls or walking around the stage as my avatar in front of thousands of people getting the feed across multiple platforms." Carmack's vision didn't come to pass Tuesday, as a jerky and awkward Carmack avatar gave one of his signature, hour-long unscripted talks amid a deserted VR space, broadcast out as plain old 2D video on Facebook.
"Last year I said that I'd be disappointed if we weren't having Connect in Horizon this year," Carmack said by way of introduction. "This here, this isn't really what I meant. Me being an avatar on-screen on a video for you is basically the same thing as [just] being on a video." That set the tone for a presentation in which Carmack said that "there's a bunch that I'm grumpy about" regarding the current state of Meta's current VR hardware and software. While that grumpiness was somewhat tempered with talk of recent improvements and hope for the future of virtual reality, Carmack seemed generally frustrated with the direction Meta as a whole is taking its VR efforts.
[...] Carmack also seemed skeptical that the $1,499, feature-laden Quest Pro was the right product for Meta to be focusing on at this time. "I've always been clear that I'm all about the cost-effective mass-market headsets being the most important thing for us and for the adoption of VR," Carmack said. "And Quest Pro is definitely not that..." As a "counterpoint" to the push for the Quest Pro in the Meta offices, Carmack says he "personally still [tries] to drum up interest internally in this vision of a super cheap, super lightweight headset." His rallying cry, he says, is a target of "$250 and 250 grams" for a headset that cuts out as many extraneous features as possible while still being usable (the Quest Pro weighs 722 grams while the Quest 2 is 503 grams). That could help bring "super light comforts" to "more people at low-end price points. We're not building that headset today, but I keep trying," Carmack said with some exasperation.
US soldiers using Microsoft's new goggles in their latest field test suffered "mission-affecting physical impairments" including headaches, eyestrain and nausea, according to a summary of the exercise compiled by the Pentagon's testing office. From a report: More than 80% of those who experienced discomfort had symptoms after less than three hours using the customized version of Microsoft's HoloLens goggles, Nickolas Guertin, director of Operation Test and Evaluation, said in a summary for Army and Defense Department officials. He said the system also is still experiencing too many failures of essential functions. The problems found in the testing in May and June were outlined in a 79-page report this month. The Army marked it "Controlled Unclassified Information" to prevent public distribution, but Bloomberg News obtained a summary. Despite the device's flaws, Guertin doesn't deem it a lost cause. He recommended that the Army "prioritize improvements" before widespread deployment to reduce the "physical discomfort of users." He said improvements are also needed to the goggle's low-light sensors, display clarity, field of vision and poor reliability of some essential functions.
Mullvad VPN has discovered that Android leaks traffic every time the device connects to a WiFi network, even if the "Block connections without VPN," or "Always-on VPN," features is enabled. BleepingComputer reports: The data being leaked outside VPN tunnels includes source IP addresses, DNS lookups, HTTPS traffic, and likely also NTP traffic. This behavior is built into the Android operating system and is a design choice. However, Android users likely didn't know this until now due to the inaccurate description of the "VPN Lockdown" features in Android's documentation. Mullvad discovered the issue during a security audit that hasn't been published yet, issuing a warning yesterday to raise awareness on the matter and apply additional pressure on Google.
Android offers a setting under "Network & Internet" to block network connections unless you're using a VPN. This feature is designed to prevent accidental leaks of the user's actual IP address if the VPN connection is interrupted or drops suddenly. Unfortunately, this feature is undercut by the need to accommodate special cases like identifying captive portals (like hotel WiFi) that must be checked before the user can log in or when using split-tunnel features. This is why Android is configured to leak some data upon connecting to a new WiFi network, regardless of whether you enabled the "Block connections without VPN" setting.
Mullvad reported the issue to Google, requesting the addition of an option to disable connectivity checks. "This is a feature request for adding the option to disable connectivity checks while "Block connections without VPN" (from now on lockdown) is enabled for a VPN app," explains Mullvad in a feature request on Google's Issue Tracker. "This option should be added as the current VPN lockdown behavior is to leaks connectivity check traffic (see this issue for incorrect documentation) which is not expected and might impact user privacy." In response to Mullvad's request, a Google engineer said this is the intended functionality and that it would not be fixed for the following reasons:
- Many VPNs actually rely on the results of these connectivity checks to function,
- The checks are neither the only nor the riskiest exemptions from VPN connections,
- The privacy impact is minimal, if not insignificant, because the leaked information is already available from the L2 connection.
Mullvad countered these points and the case remains open.
Security teams face an expanding attack surface as organizations increasingly use cloud-native services to develop, deploy, and manage applications across their multicloud and hybrid environments. Their challenge is compounded by incomplete visibility, siloed processes, and a lack of prioritized mitigations that put defenders into a position where they often react to threats once they’ve already been breached. Unfortunately, bad actors capitalize on this by exploiting vulnerabilities much earlier in the development lifecycle—at the code itself. And what further complicates this is the reality that bad actor tactics look one way today and another tomorrow. This can frustrate businesses traditionally operating with a finite mindset, thinking a problem can be solved once and for all. Instead, organizations need a comprehensive approach toward cloud security and a centralized, integrated solution to mitigate risk from code to cloud to counter these threats. We have an opportunity to think bigger and differently—especially in cloud security, where the pace of innovation and complexity can be breathtaking.
At Microsoft, we’re approaching cloud security with an infinite mindset. In a constantly changing world, we use threat intelligence, AI, and automation to create a virtuous cycle of signals to evolve and respond faster to bad actors and events. We bring this vision to life with Microsoft Defender for Cloud, our integrated cloud-native application protection solution for hybrid and multicloud environments. Defender for Cloud strengthens security posture, accelerates protection against modern threats, and reduces risk throughout the cloud application lifecycle so organizations can stay protected.
I am thrilled to announce new innovations in Microsoft Defender for Cloud to expand our vision for cloud security, including the previews of Microsoft Defender for DevOps and Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management (Defender CSPM).
Unify DevOps security management across multiple pipeline environments with Defender for DevOps: Security teams will gain insights across multi-pipeline environments in a central console, including leading platforms like GitHub and Azure DevOps, with more to follow. Defender for DevOps can correlate with other contextual cloud security intelligence to prioritize remediation of code vulnerabilities throughout the application development lifecycle.
Gain full coverage, prioritize, and remediate the most critical risks with Defender CSPM: Defender CSPM builds on existing posture management capabilities in Defender for Cloud to help security teams get comprehensive coverage of their hybrid and multicloud environments, and prioritize and proactively remediate the most critical threats with contextual cloud security and attack path analysis.
With these new capabilities, organizations can adopt an infinite approach to cloud security and do more with less.
Empower security teams with unified DevOps security management across multi-pipeline environments
Security teams have a fragmented view of their DevOps security posture due to many disconnected security tools, and multiple DevOps and cloud platforms throughout their organization. Security and development teams continue to operate in silos, and security tools are not equipped to keep pace with developer speed. These disjointed tool stacks lack the capabilities to provide business risk context and to effectively drive remediation in the development lifecycle. Security teams waste precious resources tracking down the right owners who can fix identified issues. The result is that security practitioners grapple with overwhelming amounts of security issues in production. As bad actors continue to break records exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities, security teams need a unified and integrated approach to securing their cloud applications throughout the lifecycle.1
Defender for DevOps empowers security teams to unify, strengthen, and manage DevOps security to achieve more secure code development and strengthen their overall cloud security. It provides full visibility into the DevOps inventory and the security posture of application code and resource configurations across multi-pipeline and multicloud environments. Infrastructure-as-code and container image scanning help prevent cloud misconfigurations from ever reaching production environments. Security teams can streamline processes to fix security issues in code and get contextual insights connected from code to runtime resources, helping them prioritize and drive remediation in code.
Defender for DevOps integrates with GitHub Advanced Security to enable automated workflows across industry-leading platforms like GitHub and Azure DevOps, fostering stronger collaboration between SecOps and developer teams. Defender for DevOps is the result of close design partnerships with our customers on their journey to “shift left.” As one of our customers who participated in the creation of this product recently shared:
“If we shift left and bring security to the developers right away, code deployment will have tightened protection. Integrating DevSecOps results into Microsoft Defender for Cloud and having a single pane of glass that shows me what is in production, the code quality, and what is coming into the pipeline so that I don’t need to go into multiple places and reports to scan for code errors is going to be priceless for us.”
James Rajeshvincent, Managing Director Head of Platform Development at Rockefeller Capital Management
Proactively prioritize and remediate your most critical risk across multicloud resources
Security teams need to cut through the noise and quickly focus on the most critical issues that have a major business impact. But with multicloud deployments, multiple tools, and a lack of visibility into the threat or business value of each resource, it’s hard to know where to even begin remediation.
Defender CSPM helps businesses save time and focus on what matters with contextual insights and attack path analysis, built on top of the new intelligent cloud security graph. It provides comprehensive visibility with agentless scanning for real-time assessments across multicloud environments. Defender CSPM connects the dots for security teams, integrating insights from cloud workloads as well as signals from Defender for DevOps and Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management. Instead of sifting through long lists of vulnerable resources, customers can use the proactive attack path analysis to reduce recommendation noise by up to 99 percent and only focus on the most exploitable vulnerabilities along potential attack paths to begin remediation.
Security teams also get integrated recommendations from Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, the cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) solution from Microsoft, to understand the level of risk associated with the number of unused or excessive permissions across identities and resources. Also, the new Microsoft cloud security benchmark provides a standardized framework for fundamental cloud security principles, along with detailed technical guidance, so teams can implement best practices across cloud platforms. Microsoft is the only major cloud provider to offer a comprehensive cloud security benchmark across multiple clouds, now available in Defender for Cloud as a single pane of glass to consistently maintain your security compliance across clouds.
We have a thriving and passionate community of customers using Defender for Cloud to manage security across clouds. I am excited to introduce these new capabilities today and wanted to share an insight from one of our customers, Rabobank:
“It’s difficult to ensure that we have full insights from a security perspective when our platforms are so varied. We wanted protection and visibility everywhere. That’s why we use Defender for Cloud—it gives us single pane of glass visibility across our hybrid and multicloud environment.”
Raoul van der Voort, Global Service Owner, Cyber Defense Center, Rabobank
Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Cloud
From code to cloud, Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the platform, powered by intelligence, that will help you do more with less. Develop an infinite mindset to cloud security and learn more about the expansion of the security portfolio in Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Get started today with the preview of these new innovations.
To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
Now that you know the best time to carve your pumpkins so they won’t rot before Halloween, it’s time to move on to the next essential chapter in jack-o-lantern maintenance: How to keep them from becoming squirrel carnage and ruining the carefully curated Pinterest vibe on your front porch.
Rich and Julian chat about Dome Keeper, Peglin, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, Return of the Obra Dinn, Cult of the Lamb, RPG Time: The Legend of Wright, Downfall - A Slay the Spire Fan Expansion, and more!
Since its premiere, True Believers have been raving about "Werewolf By Night." One of the major points of praise is that the Marvel Studios' Special Presentation feels disconnected from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as opposed to the rest of the offerings in Phase Four. In other words, it required less "homework" for those looking for a taste of the MCU rather than a whole multi-course meal that requires all the cutlery and utensils in the fine dining set.
But what if famed composer Michael Giacchino's ode to classic monster movies starring Gael Garcia Bernal was more connected than you think? After all, there was one thing throughout the whole story that was presented in color (until the very end) and that thing seemed to be incredibly important. And we're not just talking about its importance to the monster hunters gathered at Castle Bloodstone. What if the Bloodstone actually does play a part in the future of the MCU?
Previously, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said that this story will be important to the interconnected world that they've built thus far over the past decade. Based on the emphasis on how important the Bloodstone is to the monster hunter community, it's fair to say that it could also be similarly important to others as well. So while there isn't a ton of evidence in the 54-minute Disney+ special to indicate whether this is completely sound or not, consider this theory: It's possible that the coveted Bloodstone is connected to the Chaos Magic that was previously wielded by the Scarlet Witch.
The History Of The Bloodstone
Before fully diving into the theory, let's look at the facts. In "Werewolf By Night," the narrator tells us that the Bloodstone is a "powerful supernatural relic" and "a weapon unlike any other." Later, when Elsa Bloodstone returns to her ancestral home, Verussa (played by the incomparable Harriet Sansom Harris) asks if the prodigal daughter of Ulysses Bloodstone only showed up to acquire the strength, protection, or longevity that the Bloodstone lends to its wielder. And in an interview with The Direct, executive producer Brian Gay confirms that the Bloodstone "has a specific ability to control the supernatural creatures," so that would explain why Man-Thing and Jack Russell are affected whenever they're near it.
But that's still not a lot to go on. According to Marvel Comics, the Bloodstone is a piece of a meteorite. Ulysses Bloodstone found it during the Hyborian Age while he was still a mortal man. But after encountering the servant of an entity known as the Hellfire Helix, a piece of the meteorite was embedded in Ulysses' chest. This piece, which would come to be known as the Bloodstone, granted him enhanced strength, agility, and healing. Plus, it made him immortal.
Following his death, Ulysses' three children Elsa, Cullen, and Lyra all had their own encounters with the gem. While Elsa also became a famed monster hunter and utilized a piece of the Bloodstone in a similar fashion to its MCU counterpart, Cullen used his piece to keep his inner monster at bay. Then, when Lyra returned to life after thousands of years, the mystical Nullgem also came back with her. Essentially the other half of the Bloodstone, the siblings used both items to rid their younger brother of his literal demons.
The Mysteries Of Chaos Magic
Though Brian Gay also said in that interview that they "lean into the comics lore" with the Bloodstone, all the history that I laid out in the last slide could be thrown out the window. If the next chapter of the Bloodstone's story calls for something narratively different, then the MCU has room to play with that history. Anything is possible in the multiverse.
Keeping that in mind, if you look at the Bloodstone when it's being used in "Werewolf By Night," it exhibits similar flourishes of energy as the Chaos Magic used by Wanda Maximoff in "WandaVision" and "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." It could be a coincidence since both energies are red. But it could also mean that the Bloodstone's power comes from Chaos Magic.
Both the Bloodstone and Chaos Magic are mysterious and supernatural in nature. Both took thousands of years to understand, as Ulysses and the writers of the Darkhold will tell you. And both have found ways to enhance the humans that adopted them. And am I basically saying this because they emit the same color? Basically, but it's a working hypothesis that will evolve over time.
What The Future Holds
Until then, if the Bloodstone is in fact a conduit for Chaos Magic, what could this mean for the future of the MCU? It's possible that the relic could play a part in "Agatha: Coven of Chaos." Maybe since she herself is a monster, Elsa Bloodstone needs to use her family heirloom to keep a recently freed Agatha under control (since she was likely freed from Wanda's spell when she died). Speaking of Wanda, maybe the Bloodstone is the key to bringing the Scarlet Witch back to life. And if so, it's possible that Sorcerer Supreme Wong or America Chavez or Baron Mordo or even Nico Minoru from "Runaways" might have something to say about that.
No matter how the Bloodstone factors into future phases, it's sure to come in handy since the world (and the multiverse) is full of monsters.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Is Up To 60% Faster Than RTX 3090 Ti, and RTX 4080 12 GB Is Up To 30% Faster As Per Official Gaming Benchmarks
The benchmarks cover three games but show us comparisons of the GeForce RTX 40 series cards against the RTX 30 series offerings. We have already seen how well the GeForce RTX 4090 performs in games, delivering almost 2x the gains without DLSS and up to 4x gains with DLSS 3 enabled but eyes are now set upon the performance of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB & 12 GB variants.
RTX 4090 vs RTX 4080 16 GB at Native 4K = 50% Faster
RTX 4080 16 GB vs RTX 4080 12 GB at Native 4K = 28% Faster
RTX 4080 12 GB vs RTX 3090 Ti at Native 4K = 11% Slower
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB & 12 GB Versus RTX 3090 Ti In F1 2022
The performance numbers shared by NVIDIA give us a first look at both native and DLSS 3 gaming performance. Starting with F1 2022 at 4K & Ray tracing enabled, we see that the RTX 4080 16 GB is 16% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti with DLSS disabled and 44% faster with DLSS 3 enabled. The RTX 4080 12 GB is 6% slower than the RTX 3090 Ti at native 4K and 14% faster with DLSS 3 enabled. It also looks like the gap between the RTX 4080 16 GB & 12 GB models is quite significant which will explain the massive price difference. In F1 2022, the RTX 4080 16 GB is 24% faster at native & 27% faster with DLSS 3 enabled.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB & 12 GB Versus RTX 3090 Ti In A Plague Tale: Requiem
Moving over to A Plague Tale: Requiem, we see that the 4080 16 GB is 9% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti and RTX 4080 16 GB is 16% slower than the same card at native 4K with RT off. With DLSS 3 on, the cards are 41% and 16% faster than the 3090 Ti. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB is also a whole 30% faster than the 12 GB variant at native and 21% faster with DLSS 3 enabled.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB & 12 GB Versus RTX 3090 Ti In Microsoft Flight Simulator
In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB is 24% faster while the RTX 4080 12 GB is 1% slower than the RTX 3090 Ti at native 4K resolution. With DLSS 3 enabled, the cards gain a 94% and 60% boost over the 3090 Ti, respectively. Once again, the 4080 16 GB is 26% faster at 4K native and 21% faster with DLSS enabled versus the 12 GB variant.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB graphics card is expected to utilize a cut-down AD103-300 GPU configuration with 9,728 cores or 76 SMs enabled of the total 84 units whereas the previous configuration offered 80 SMs or 10,240 cores. While the full GPU comes packed with 64 MB of L2 cache and up to 224 ROPs, the RTX 4080 might end up with 48 MB of L2 cache and lower ROPs too due to its cut-down design. The card is expected to be based on the PG136/139-SKU360 PCB. The graphics card is said to offer a peak clock rate of 2505 MHz.
As for memory specs, the GeForce RTX 4080 is expected to rock 16 GB GDDR6X capacities that are said to be adjusted at 22.5 Gbps speeds across a 256-bit bus interface. This will provide up to 720 GB/s of bandwidth. This is still a tad bit slower than the 760 GB/s bandwidth offered by the RTX 3080 since it comes with a 320-bit interface but a lowly 10 GB capacity. To compensate for the lower bandwidth, NVIDIA could be integrating a next-gen memory compression suite to make up for the 256-bit interface.
For power, the TBP is now set to be rated at 340W, a 20W increase from the previous 320W spec that we got. This brings the TBP to the same ballpark as the existing RTX 3080 graphics card (up to 350W). The maximum BIOS TGP is said to be rated at 516W. Now it is not known whether the other RTX 40 series graphics cards will also be getting the faster GDDR6X memory treatment but we know that Micron has commenced full mass production of up to 24 Gbps GDDR6X memory modules so they have to go somewhere.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 will also feature a 12 GB variant that is expected to utilize the AD104-400 GPU configuration with 7,680 cores or 60 SMs enabled which is the full-fat SKU. The GPU will be packing 48 MB of L2 cache and features a 192-bit bus interface so that's why we are getting up to 12 GB of GDDR6X capacities. The memory is said to be running at 21 Gbps speeds for a memory bandwidth of 504 GB/s. The card is said to be clocked at a 2610 MHz boost clock however the peak frequency will be higher.
For power, the TBP is now set to be rated at 285W which is a 35W decrease versus the RTX 3080 10 GB model. The card is expected to offer better performance than the RTX 3080 but given the specs cut over the 4080 16 GB, there will be a big gap between both models. The maximum BIOS TGP is said to be rated at 366W.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Official Specs:
Graphics Card Name
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16G
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 12G
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
GPU Name
Ada Lovelace AD102-300
Ada Lovelace AD103-300
Ada Lovelace AD104-400
Ampere GA102-225
Process Node
TSMC 4N
TSMC 4N
TSMC 4N
Samsung 8nm
Die Size
608mm2
378.6mm2
294.5mm2
628.4mm2
Transistors
76 Billion
45.9 Billion
35.8 Billion
28 Billion
CUDA Cores
16384
9728
7680
10240
TMUs / ROPs
512 / 176
320 / 112
240 / 80
320 / 112
Tensor / RT Cores
512 / 128
304 / 76
240 / 60
320 / 80
Base Clock
2230 MHz
2210 MHz
2310 MHz
1365 MHz
Boost Clock
2520 MHz
2510 MHz
2610 MHz
1665 MHz
FP32 Compute
83 TFLOPs
49 TFLOPs
40 TFLOPs
40 TFLOPs
RT TFLOPs
191 TFLOPs
113 TFLOPs
82 TFLOPs
78 TFLOPs
Tensor-TOPs
1321 TOPs
780 TOPs
641 TOPs
320 TOPs
Memory Capacity
24 GB GDDR6X
16 GB GDDR6X
12 GB GDDR6X
12 GB GDDR6X
Memory Bus
384-bit
256-bit
192-bit
384-bit
Memory Speed
21.0 Gbps
23.0 Gbps
21.0 Gbps
19 Gbps
Bandwidth
1008 GB/s
736 GB/s
504 GB/s
912 Gbps
TBP
450W
320W
285W
350W
Price (MSRP / FE)
$1599 US
$1199 US
$899 US
$1199
Launch (Availability)
October 2022
November 2022
November 2022
3rd June 2021
In terms of performance, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB will have a bigger uplift versus the RTX 4080 12 GB. The 4080 12 GB will still be around 1.5 to 2.0x faster than the RTX 3080 Ti but its the RTX 4080 16 GB that will push things beyond 3X.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB and RTX 4080 12 GB graphics cards will be launching in November and be priced at $1199 US and $899 US, respectively.
Should NVIDIA rename the RTX 4080 12 GB to RTX 4070?
Today, NVIDIA released Game Ready driver 522.25, which mainly adds support for the new GeForce RTX 4090 and day-one optimization for upcoming titles like Scorn (out in two days), A Plague Tale: Requiem (out in six days), Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection (out in seven days), and Gotham Knights (out in nine days).
However, NVIDIA also has a surprise in store for existing GeForce RTX owners. The new Game Ready driver delivers substantial DirectX 12 performance improvements in several games, such as:
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: up to 24% (1080p)
Battlefield 2042: up to 7% (1080p)
Borderlands 3: Up to 8% (1080p)
Call of Duty: Vanguard: up to 12% (4K)
Control: up to 6% (4K)
Cyberpunk 2077: up to 20% (1080p)
F1 22: up to 17% (4K)
Far Cry 6: up to 5% (1440p)
Forza Horizon 5: up to 8% (1080P)
Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition: up to 8% (4k)
Red Dead Redemption 2: up to 7% (1080p)
Shadow of the Tomb Raider: up to 5% (1080p)
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: up to 5% (1080p)
Watch Dogs: Legion: up to 9% (1440p)
NVIDIA provided benchmark slides for three of the most popular titles in the above list: Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Cyberpunk 2077, and Forza Horizon 5.
As you can see below, the biggest improvements are registered at lower resolutions. It's also interesting to note that the most powerful Ampere GPUs received a bigger performance boost than the lower-end ones.
NVIDIA was fairly vague when it comes to describing these DX12 improvements available with Game Ready driver 522.25, though it did say they include shader compilation optimization, reduced CPU overhead, and Resizable BAR profiles. Overall, the optimizations allow for better usage of your graphics card, particularly in CPU-bound scenarios.
As always with new NVIDIA Game Ready driver releases, the full release notes reveal some fixed issues, such as:
[Teardown] Resolves lower performance observed when MSI Afterburner overlay is used
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands displays texture corruption after extended gameplay on NVIDIA GPUs
UE5.1 crashes when enabling path tracing on some drivers
Freezing is, as we all know, a great way to cut down on food waste. Storing food in the freezer pauses the clock, so to speak, for at least a few months, which is better than the few days or weeks we usually get from storing fresh foods in the fridge. But water is tricky. It’s the only (non-metallic) liquid that gets…
It has been a long, long time since John Carpenter, the director of "Halloween" and the unquestioned master of horror, has made a feature film. We have to go all the way back to 2010's "The Ward" for that, meaning it's been well over a decade since he stepped behind the camera to make a movie. So, when Carpenter speaks up and says he would like to make a movie, even if it's somewhat anecdotal, it's well worth listening to. Especially when he's talking about turning a video game franchise like "Dead Space" into a movie.
Carpenter recently spoke with The AV Club in anticipation of the release of "Halloween Ends" this week. But the focus of the interview was largely on video games, as the filmmaker and composer is a rather avid gamer. At one point, "Dead Space" came up and the man declared his love for the games, saying, "I even like the last one, the action one that nobody else liked." But the really interesting bit came when Carpenter declared that the games would make a great movie, and that he could do it:
"That would make a real great movie. I could do that."
Quick! Somebody get EA on the phone! And a major Hollywood studio looking for a horror franchise.
Carpenter's Last Ride?
I'm here to level with you, dear reader. I love video games but have never played a single second of "Dead Space." What I do know, though, is that Carpenter is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest filmmakers to ever live and if the man has even a little inkling that he would be willing to step back behind the camera for one last ride, that's an exciting prospect no matter what the material.
The story of the original "Dead Space," which hit shelves in 2008, focuses on an engineer named Isaac Clarke who is sent to repair a ship, the Ishimura, which is having communications issues. Upon arrival, he finds a floating vessel that has become a complete bloodbath. That sounds right up Carpenter's alley! Throw "The Thing" and the good ideas from "Ghosts of Mars" into a blender and boom.
Now, this is just a filmmaker who hasn't made a film in a long time saying a thing. It means right next to nothing as it is. The main point? It would be a hell of a treat to see Carpenter get back in the director's chair for one last go-around. It would just be an added bonus if it were something with this much flare and fandom.
NVIDIA recently introduced its new DLSS 3 technology that adds a new feature known as Frame Generation on supported GPUs. The company officially said that this feature was only available on their new GeForce RTX 40 series cards but it looks like a Redditor has bypassed the lock & enabled it on an RTX 20 series graphics card.
DLSS 3 Lock Bypassed? Redditor Enables Frame Generation on GeForce RTX 2070 With A Simple Config File
The Redditor who goes by the username, JusDax, posted in the NVIDIA subreddit under a thread talking about new settings and features being added to Cyberpunk 2077. One of the upcoming features within Cyberpunk 2077 will be DLSS 3 which enables AI-Assisted frame generation that does wonders in boosting the frame rate. We have more details and comparisons over here.
The user says that he was able to bypass the DLSS 3 lock on older GeForce RTX cards by adding a config file to remove the VRAM overhead in Cyberpunk. He ran the game at 1440p with HDR off & DLSS set to balanced mode. He was also able to select the Frame Generation tab under the Ultra ray tracing preset.
DLSS Frame Generation doesn't seem to be hardware locked to RTX 40 series. I was able to bypass a software lock by adding a config file to remove the VRAM overhead in Cyberpunk. Doing this causes some instability and frame drops but I'm getting ~80 FPS on an RTX 2070 with the following settings:
2560x1440 res
HDR off
DLSS Balanced
DLSS Frame Generation ON
Ray Tracing Ultra preset
(I get ~35-40 FPS without Frame Generation and DLSS at Quality)
Without frame generation, his NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 gets around 35-40 FPS but with DLSS 3 frame generation enabled, the user got 80 FPS. That's almost twice or a bigger performance jump. The user did use a different DLSS preset (Balanced) to test frame generation but still, switching from quality to balanced preset even in DLSS 2 won't net you a 2x gain.
While there's definitely a performance gain on older cards with DLSS 3 frame generation enabled, it should be pointed out that it wasn't without its fair share of issues. The user experienced instability and frame drops so running frame generation on DLSS 3 won't get you the most optimized gaming experience at the moment since it is designed with GeForce RTX 40 graphics cards in mind.
JusDax also hasn't really shared any images or the config file so we can't really test it or confirm this ourselves. What we did see in our own testing was that the frame generation switch can be toggled on and off on an RTX 30 and RTX 20 graphics card but we didn't see any difference in FPS or other performance metrics.
This is a fairly new development in a technology that was just recently introduced and we can't say for sure at the moment whether the lock for DLSS 3 was in place due to the lack of hardware capabilities or the lack of software optimizations for older GPUs when running the new feature. We will try to dig up more information as it comes.
There aren’t a lot of really tall office towers In London, except for a peninsula that’s surrounded on three sides by the Thames river. According to Google maps, this spot is called the Isle of Dogs. London is one of the major financial centers centres in Europe, and a lot of that power is focused on this small patch of the city.
This is a really good spot for a cool view, and so this is where we find the Olympus Financial building, which is where Everett wants us to meet.
Interlude: The Man Behind the Curtain
So our protagonist arrives in London to meet with the Head Conspiracy Guy. The rooftop landing pad should be really fancy. Fancy how? I dunno. Maybe a reflecting pool with some lights? A garden? Some statues of literally ANYTHING that isn’t Icarus? Whatever. It’s posh. You get the idea.
On top of the building is a glass enclosure that houses a really swank executive office where the hologram of a silver-haired man is waiting for him. Yes, Morgan Everett attends this “in person” meeting via hologram. Everett is perhaps sixty.[1] He’s got a friendly smile and a tasteful gray suit with an orange pocket square. He’s healthy and handsome for a man his age. He looks like the kind of guy that could have played James Bond in his prime.
I’ve always been bothered by hologram tech where the projected person fits seamlessly into the environment. I’d love it if we had a version where Everett paces around like he’s giving a TED talk. But he’s sort of oblivious or indifferent to the layout of the room he’s being projected into. So he ends up walking through bits of furniture, making parts of his hologram glitch out.
Look, I’m just saying this would be a cool effect. Please don’t pull a Ragtag and blow weeks of development time on this, okay?
There’s a chess board and a single chair on one side of the room. Morgan is standing beside a massive oak desk. The far wall is made of windows, looking out over the city lights.
I have to confess that the game is going to get very monologue-y from here on. This second half of the game isn’t as developed as the first, and I’m going to be dumping a lot of raw exposition on you. Obviously in a finished game you’d take the exposition and space it out, working it into multiple conversations broken up by large chunks of gameplay. But this blog post doesn’t have any gameplay, so I’m going to bombard you with walls of text.
This conversation should offer the player a choice of what posture to adopt with Everett. Do they want to be friendly, hostile, or do they want to play things close to the vest? It won’t impact the trajectory of the conversation, but this is a moment where players are going to have strong feelings on how they want to respond. We need to accommodate that or they will begin to resent their protagonist. For the purpose of this write-up, I’ll assume the player is mildly belligerent towards Everett.
After a cordial introduction, we get a dialog wheel or whatever we’re using to choose topics in this game.[2] I don’t want to map out full dialog trees here on a blog or this will become unreadable, but here are some of the major topics. You can probably figure out how they would fit together in a conversation…
——————
>Nice office. So this is where you pretend to run the world?
Morgan takes no offense, “I like to think I do more than pretend. For the last thirty years I’ve guided financial markets, held dangerous leaders in check, and guided global discussions on public policy. I’m not perfect, but I think I’ve lived up to my predecessors.
>So you’re, what? The Illuminati?
Mogan Everett is visibly pained by the suggestion. “Please. It’s a cute name, but we would never adopt something so flashy. We simply call ourselves ‘Upper Management’. Our leadership… perhaps you’ve run into a few of them already? They’re called The Board.”
——–
>So what gives you the right to spy on Americans? Or meddle in our elections?
“Please don’t think we’ve singled out your country. We keep an eye on everyone. As for having the ‘right’? That’s beside the point. The world needs our guidance, whether we have the right to give it or not. If not for us, the world would have collapsed into chaos a hundred years ago.”
>I don’t know if you’ve watched any news in the last few decades, but the world isn’t doing all that great. If you do run the world, you’re doing a lousy job of it.
Everett shrugs. He evidently expected this answer. “Originally we were just bankers. We kept an eye on financial markets, and we stayed out of politics. Then there were two world wars in three decades and a pair of nukes went off. We realized we couldn’t afford to leave the world to run itself. The stakes were too high. I know the world isn’t perfect, but it also hasn’t been turned to ash by an angry lunatic. Next year is the centennial anniversary of the end of World War II, and not a single nuke has been fired in anger since then. Our interventions have done far more good than harm.”
————-
>You’re trying to convince me you’re the good guy. But your organization killed a good man, and then framed me for it.
“I understand you’re angry. You have every right to be. And you have my condolences. President Ellis was indeed a good man. I actually met him ’33, when he was still a senator. He was a bit too idealistic to be a world leader in this day and age. But he was a charming fellow, and unusually smart for a politician. Anyway, I had nothing to do with his assassination. The blame for that belongs to Maggie Chow.”
If the player got intel X in Switzerland, then this option will be available:
>You can’t blame all of this on Maggie Chow. I read some of your reports in Switzerland. You would have taken him out yourself if your friends on the Board hadn’t beaten you to it.
“I would have taken him out of power with a scandal. Assassinations just make problems worse. My predecessors learned that the hard way during the cold war.”
————
“Scandal is less barbaric than assassination, but you’re still meddling with an election and overthrowing the will of millions of voters.”
Everett gives a good-natured laugh. “I need to get out more. I’ve spent so many years behind the curtain that sometimes I forget what the world looks like from the other side. While I admire your youthful idealism, I’m sorry to tell you that President Ellis was not elected by the American people.”
“Are you saying he rigged the election? Ridiculous.”
“He didn’t rig it, but it was rigged. They all are, in one way or another. Once you control the narrative, box out third parties, and gerrymander all of the voting districts, you don’t need to resort to something as clumsy and obvious as direct voter fraud.”
“If it wasn’t voter fraud, then what was it?”
“A computer error. I created an AI to help me monitor voting patterns. It was designed to be an analyst, a passive observer. I was hopeful that it would someday project future voting patterns. For reasons I’ve never been able to work out, at some point it began tampering with the results instead of simply reporting them.”
“So your AI supposedly stole the election for Ellis? Even though he was the most beloved president in a generation?”
“Beloved and electible aren’t the same thing. We engineered the US system to make third-party wins basically impossible. Without my AI helping, Ellis wouldn’t even have broken into double digits.”
—————-
There’s also an optional conversation here if Troy decides to ask about the Chess board.
Everett will launch into this extended chess metaphor where he explains that the American President is like the queen in chess: It’s the most powerful piece, so some people mistake it for the most important one. They get so obsessed with capturing the queen that they lose sight of winning the game. Troy shrugs and sarcastically says something about all of this being too much for “a pawn like me”.
“Don’t sell yourself so short. I see you more as the knight. It’s an unassuming piece. Often overlooked by novices. But with their unconventional movements, in the hands of a master they can change the game.”
—-
The previous games had their tortured Icarus metaphor for Adam Jensen, and so my game is going for a horse / knight motif for Troy. You can think of him as being a “white knight”, in the sense of filling a heroic role. But he also works as a “Trojan horse”, given how he was used for assassination. In fact, the Trojan Horse metaphor cuts both ways: He was betrayed by his own augmentations, and thus betrayed his boss. He’s both the perpetrator of, and a victim of, Trojan Horse-ery. Elsewhere we might use horse symbols to represent Troy.
If he has a computer login / password in the game, it should feed into this metaphor. Maybe we can find an excuse to put a horse head logo on one of his weapons, or on the heli. Maybe we want to be really comically blunt about it and make his last name “Colt”, or “Steed”.[3] If we want to make our protagonist of Arabic descent, the last name “Faris” means “knight”. Roswell is another surname that could work. It’s derived from an Old English place name meaning “horse spring”.
Whatever. I’m not changing his name, mid-story. I’m just saying if you actually wanted to produce this game, we’d have to come up with something better than reusing “Denton”.
—–
“But now we come to our mutual problem. Maggie Chow has wrested control from me. I don’t know how she got the Board to follow her, but she is very eager to use her new power. She’s not qualified to lead Upper Management. In fact, she’s exactly the kind of leader that Upper Management was designed to prevent.”
“This is a lot to take in.”
“There’s more you need to know, but I feel like we should get started. Maggie Chow’s coup needs to be put down before she does any more damage. Whether or not you believe me – or agree with my methods – I think we both know that she needs to go. Once we’ve removed the traitors, I’ll be free to grant you a new life with a new identity, so you don’t have to spend the rest of your days as a fugitive.”
Everett doesn’t know where Chow is right now, but the rest of her followers need to be dealt with as well. His first task is for you to head to Russia and track down Russian intelligence leader Leonid Sidorov.
Back outside, Alex asks[4] if we should work with Everett at all. Troy replies that we need Evett’s help to track down the rest of the conspirators. The message to the player is: You can try to kill Everett later if you want, but you have to work for him now to undo the conspiracy.
The conspiracy might call themselves “Upper Management”, but Alex is having none of it. She refers to all of them as “Those Illuminati dipshits” going forward. Including Everett.
The New Status Quo
I’d like to use Olympus Financial as our “home base” going forward. Maybe Denton can even have a small office here where he can check email or whatever. The important thing is that the player will come back to speak with holo-Everett and get a briefing for the next mission.
However, if this game is going to be cursed with long load times then I’d rather forgo the idea of Olympus being a home base. Imagine how this would feel for a gameplay-focused player: They sit through a long load, then sprint inside and click through the briefing in 10 seconds, then run back out and sit through another long load. Yuck.
Olympus should be a modest location in terms of space. There’s Everett’s office, where you talk to his hologram and poke through his belongings to learn who he is. Beyond that, there are a few other small rooms that the player might open up using keys and passwords they find on their missions. I’ll talk about these rooms later.
The elevator doesn’t work,[5] so the player is of course trapped on the top floor.
If it looks like load times are going to be a burden, then I’d just as soon skip these visits and move their exposition and loot into the missions themselves. If load times are going to exceed 45 seconds then I’ll just tell the team to switch to the 1999 build of the Unreal Engine like the original Deus Ex and we can make a giant game with no loading screens and then we can all go out for ice cream and free pony rides.
For the purposes of this series, I’m going to assume that load times are reasonable. I’m hoping that I can make these pitstop visits quick and painless by keeping our home base small. Olympus is just a few rooms and a skybox. It’s not a huge sprawling building like Sarif Industries or an open city like Detroit. And it’s not behind an extra loading screen and an elevator ride like Jensen’s apartment in Human Revolution.
So to sum up this location, a visit to Olympus will have the following content available:
Discuss a specific topic with Everett
This is optional, of course. This will give us a chance to ask him some questions or argue with him a bit, or squeeze extra exposition out of him. The topic will probably tie in to the previous mission in some way.
Like your discussions with Mr. House in Fallout New Vegas, you can bicker with him the whole way, or you can just shrug and do what you’re told.
Check out a side room.
There are a few smaller rooms adjacent to Everett’s office. These rooms belonged to the other members of the conspiracy, or to past members. The player will have a chance to find keys or passwords to these rooms during missions, and then they can come back here and open them for loot and lore.
Check Email.
Everett gives Denton a small office here, and we can use that office as a place for the player to check emails. I think a parting email from Edward Webb would be cool, and maybe one from Sam Carter if you managed to end things peacefully with him.
Beyond those, I don’t actually know if we’ll have a use for emails in this game. This high-level overview is pretty short on characters, and it’s hard to know what we’ll need without actually doing all the detail work. Deus Ex Human Revolution had emails, and they seem like a good tool for “Thanks for doing that sidequest, here’s how I’m doing as a result” type messages. I guess it depends on what kinds of sidequests we come up with.
Chat with Alex.
Let’s get Alex out of the drone cockpit during these visits, because we’ve already established that the thing is small. Maybe she leans on the heli like Malak in Human Revolution, or maybe she just hangs out the side and types on her laptop. Ideally she might be doing something slightly different for each visit.[6] We just want to make her feel alive and not like the voice inside your helicopter.
Alex can offer her perspective on things, often providing a counterpoint to the discussion you may have with Everett. Thematically, Everett and Alex are opposites. Everett represents the cynicism of “This isn’t nice, but we’re doing what’s necessary to keep order in a messy world”. At the other extreme, Alex represents idealism and faith in people. “The world can be better if we choose to do better.”
Mission briefing.
Everett will explain the next mission. These are all going to involve tracking down the other members of the conspiracy and dealing with them. This might mean killing them, or it might mean stripping them of their power. In at least one instance it will involve simply getting them to switch back to Everett’s team again.
This isn’t a Hitman game and we don’t want these missions to be a simple kill list, but all of the conspiracy members will need to be dealt with in one way or another.
I received a job description from a recruiter recently, along with the request that if I knew anyone who fit the bill and was interested, could I please forward the job description to them. The recruiter was looking for someone at an entry-level, with 1 - 3 yrs of experience, and the listed salary was for a low six-figure salary.
However, the list of Essential Skills were (copy-paste, with a few modifications):
- Practical mobile phone forensic analyst skills on hardware and software. - Ability to run network and sandbox analysis on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, and other platforms. - Ability to use compliers[sic] and other software analytical tools for different platforms. - Strong in tools such as <list of tools> and other analysis tools. - Strong TCP/UDP/IP networking and protocol understanding, how they work, what they do, and what ports they use. - Strong communication skills to relate findings in an understandable and useful way. - Strong self-disciplined and self-starter that can think outside of the box and bring fresh insight and experience to the team. - Comfortable with Linux shell and common GNU utilities. - Ability to analyze, summarize, visualize, and detect anomalies from raw network communications data in a clear and effective manner.
Yeah, okay. I saw it, too.
First, "1 - 3 yrs" of experience, entry-level, but "Essential Skills" for the role cover mobile (hardware *and* software), Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, and "other platforms".
Then, the applicant needs to understand TCP, UDP, IP, and "the ports they use".
Yes, there was a misspelling.
The last thing I'll mention is that, again, this is an entry-level position, but looking to "bring fresh insight and experience to the team". If someone is entry-level, what *experience* are they bringing to the team?
Okay, just to be clear...this is NOT a post to bash the job description...not at all. I'm not interested in calling anyone out, or putting anyone on the spot. All of the above is meant solely to let others know, yes, I'm seeing the same things and having similar thoughts as you are, so you're not alone in that sense.
What this post is to say is that when someone who's entry-level, someone with 1 - 3 yrs of experience in the field sees a job description such as this, they're going to immediately look at it and not apply. "But...why", you ask? Because there's no way you're going to be able to fulfill the stated "essential skills" with under 3 yrs of experience. Even folks looking at this description with a dozen years of experience are going to know that you're not going to be able to attain an "essential" level of all of these skills.
Ultimately, what's going to come of job descriptions such as this will be continued, circular reporting on how there aren't enough skilled people in the industry to fill all of the open positions.
But there is a solution! If' you're new to the cybersecurity field and thinking about looking around for a new role, or if you're looking to get into the field, even as a transitioning veteran...find a mentor. Find someone you trust, someone you can engage with to help you navigate the myriad twists and turns of the maze. Find someone with more experience who can help you navigate job descriptions, certifications, etc., or even just help you figure out which area of "cybersecurity" might be the most interesting to you.
Finding a mentor can help you get over what might be preventing or dissuading you from applying for the above described role. As an example, my reaction to the job description was to respond to the email, saying, "...I'm sorry, but this makes no sense to me...", and why. I wasn't expecting a response, but I did get one. The recruiter shared that they were most interested in filling an entry-level role, and the message was that the "essential skills" really weren't so "essential". As a result, I'd come back with the message, "yes, go ahead and apply."
So, again...getting into the cybersecurity field can be daunting. Wait...no, I take that back. Not "can be"...is. It is daunting. There are so many options, so many opportunities, and the best way to go about deciphering and unraveling the process of getting into the field is to engage with someone who's already done it. If you're new to the field...a student, a transitioning vet, or if you're transitioning careers...reach out, engage, and find yourself a mentor.
Miike Takashi becomes the first Japanese director to dip his toe into the ever-expanding world of K-dramas, helming all six episodes of Disney’s upcoming fantasy horror series Connect. Adapted from Shin Daesung’s webtoon of the same name, this ghoulishly entertaining meld of soap opera and body horror follows a young man (Jung Hae-in), who has his eye stolen by backstreet organ harvesters, only for his errant eyeball to wind up in the skull of a prolific and flamboyant serial killer. The first three episodes of Connect were screened at the Busan International Film Festival ahead of its December debut. The notion of Miike working abroad within the melodramatic confines of the K-drama format raises a number of tantalising questions right off the bat, not...
Google has announced what it's calling "the world's first laptops built for cloud gaming," less than two weeks after announcing plans to shut down Stadia. Forbes reports: Google says the Acer Chromebook 516 GE, ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip and Lenovo Ideapad Gaming Chromebook all have refresh rates of at least 120Hz, displays with up to 1600p resolution, immersive audio and, critically for cloud gaming, WiFi 6 or 6E connectivity. Some models have RGB keyboards too. Subject to availability, you may get a SteelSeries Rival 3 gaming mouse at no extra cost if you pick up one of these Chromebooks. All three laptops were benchmarked by GameBench to ensure that they're capable of running games at 120 frames per second at 1080p resolution. You should get input latency of under 85 ms as well. Google notes that's "console-class" input latency.
[...] Google is bringing some neat cloud gaming features to these Chromebooks. For one thing, the devices will support Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna and NVIDIA GeForce Now. In the latter case, Google worked with NVIDIA to ensure these Chromebooks support GeForce Now's highest RTX 3080 tier. That enables cloud gaming at 120 fps at a resolution of 1600p on these systems, which come with the GeForce Now app preinstalled. You'll also be able to install Xbox Cloud Gaming as a web app on your Chromebook. Additionally, these Chromebooks will come with three-month trials for both the GeForce Now RTX 3080 tier and Amazon Luna. Meanwhile, it could be pretty easy for you to find and start playing games on these services through ChromeOS. If you search for a game in the launcher (i.e. through the Everything Button), you'll see where it is available. You'll then be able to load up the game with a single click. To begin with, this feature will be compatible with GeForce Now and the Play Store. "It's good to see that Google hasn't entirely given up on cloud gaming," adds Forbes. "Still, the timing of this announcement comes at a very odd time."
It unforunately ends with “Before, admins would try hard to prevent security holes, now they call themselves "devops” and happily introduce them to the network themselves!“.
With that closing statement, which was an update to the original article, it reframes the context to read like devops sysadmins don’t worry about security, only old-school sysadmins do.
Disclaimer: I consider myself both. I started Systems Administration in the 90’s, running slackware on both servers and my workstation for a medium sized business. Even gosh darn compiled my own kernel and taught myself C using the ‘info c’ command back when it was an amazing C tutorial.
For devops: My current environment was (and still is) using chroot’s for everything since long before docker was even an idea. I spend parts of many days writing chef recipes and custom nagios monitors. I even have crossed to the dark side and am writing powershell scripts to be processed by NCPA and using GPO to do all kinds of stuff on Windows.
The author does make some really good points, especially about how nice it would be if people would start signing binaries they ship. This happens a lot in the Windows side of the shop where shipping binaries has long been how they’ve done it. Believe it or not, there are entire enterprise operating systems that ship without a compiler.
There’s also plenty of devops guys who pull binaries down and modify the distributed scripts to pull from a local repo. If I was deploying docker images I’d certainly pull them locally and deploy from the copy. That’s how you do dev/stage/prod, right? You pull from the internet, deploy to dev then make sure you deploy the exact same thing to stage/prod from a local copy so you don’t introduce any risk of changes happening to the gold copy. Plus, with the size of many of these things it’s also faster to only pull it down once.
It’s the job of the software developer to figure out how to get it to you simply. It’s up to the system administrator to figure out how to get it securely. Sometimes the software developer’s simplifications make doing it securely difficult, that’s life (or job security).
Devops isn’t a change from the old-school way of doing things. It should and I believe in most cases is a way to reinforce the correct way of doing things. The old-school sysadmin has a file tree full of documentation, maybe even a wiki. The devops sysadmin has gone through that documentation and figured out how to script a lot of it so repeatable processes are now repeatable without the risk of a typo.
Containers, are a great security mechanism. They isolate your app to running in a tree that attackers will have a harder time breaking out of. They solve library dependency problems allowing us to run more things on our over powered hardware without having to go all the way in to deploying virtual machines.
I think the original author gets it. But, over all the article to me read as a complaint about the tools and a knock on devops. The core problem is that in some cases it sounds like the tools are being used the wrong way. Don’t complain about the sledgehammer, teach the new guy not to use it to drive a nail.
Lastly, I guess I’m fortunate to not have to support hadoop yet. I get the same problems from other enterprise applications from vendors I won’t name as I do value my job enough to not start a finger pointing game. I’m old-school enough to realize that at the end of the day it’s my job to support my business and give them what they need to best get their work done. This means I don’t waste time complaining about the old version of java or the other pieces of the stack that’s shipped to me to deploy. It’s pointless. I instead spend the time figuring out how to best isolate, firewall and otherwise protect the the application, the data and the network on which it resides.
When you’ve been doing this long enough to consider yourself old-school then you should already know nothing is secure and it’s all about minimizing risk to a level that’s cost appropriate.
Installing an Ortech Thermostat on a Traeger Junior
I got a Traeger Junior wood pellet smoker over the summer. Great tool, a little on the small side but I haven’t touched my Weber Charcoal grill since we got it. That says a lot for it.
The one knock on it is the thermostat. While the other more expensive models have digital thermostats with precise temperature controls, the Junior came with a simple thermostat that just offers smoke, medium and high. I did some research and found this thermostat by Ortech, which fixes the issue and is a few bucks cheaper than the Traeger one.
For this installation you’re going to need a phillips head screwdriver, a tiny flathead and some extra wire tires if you have them. The controller comes with one, we used more.
This is the grill, we pulled it in the house to work on because it was a little on the cold side that day.
Here’s the old thermostat, as you can see very simple controls.
This is the new controller from Ortech, it also comes with a thermostat as the digital display displays the current temperature inside the grill.
Everything comes out the bottom of the hopper. To start unscrew the two holes at the bottom of this picture and the two matching screws on the other side of the hopper.
This will allow the bottom panel to slide down and away from the hopper. The instructions says to slide it down the power cord but in my case…
It actually wasn’t moving because of that little nub. I played with it a bit and didn’t see an easy way to loosen it. Was more worried about keeping it in tact so left it.
Crawl under and take a look and this what you’ll see. All you need to do is clip those wire tires and unplug the four plugs you’ll find in there. If you’re replacing a non-digital thermostat, it slides right out. If you’re replacing a digital one, you’ll have a thermometer wired to the board. I don’t have disassemlby instructions, however, since I added one I can tell you what you need is a tiny flat head screw driver. You’ll unloosen 2 screws and pull the wires out of the box. I have some pictures below of installing the new one you can use as a reference. It’s not complicated. The hardest part will be finding a flathead screwdriver blade small enough.
If you didn’t already have a thermometer installed, you need to install the one that came with the controller. Or… maybe you just want to use the new one. Up to you. If you do, as you can see in the picture above, I’ve removed the grill and the drip pan.
Now is a great time to clean up in there. I just used the brush extension on my shop vac, cleaned it up real quick.
On the left side of the grill, above the fire box, there a little lip that as these two holes in it. This is where you mount the thermometer.
Run the cable down the larger hole and through the hole in the side of the grill between the drum and the hopper.
Then run the wire down the side of the hopper, and back up in then out the front through the hole the thermostat mounts in. This way you can connect it to the thermostat.
In the top corner of the thermostat circuit board on the back you’ll find the little box with two screws that looks like this. You loose those screws and the clamp loosens so you can get the wires in. Then just tighten them back up.
It will look like this. Then just feed all the wires connected to the thermostat back in through the hole in the front and get the thermostat in place.
The book comes with instructions for how to do the wiring.
In our case, there was no purple wire on the thermostat. However, they did put a purple sticker on the plug. I’m not sure if this standard or if they just ran out of purple wire for the batch mine came from.
Once you get everything plugged in, you want to use wire ties to get everything in there as snug as possible. Maybe it’s just too many years of PC building for me but, there’s a fan there and we did our best to not impact air flow.
With the digital thermostat you can now watch the shut down cycle. So make sure to leave it plugged in until that’s fully run. It usually starts at C10 and counts down.
The thermometers on the grill top and the digital read out will not match. If you notice their placement, the thermostat one is right next to the fire box while the built in analog one is at the top of the smoker. The thermostat one will read hotter, I’d go by that. Interestingly enough cooking a turkey in there I deduced the right side actually gets hotter so you’re still not getting a read out of the hottest spot. Good to know if you’re going to grill on it.
My final test was a baccon wrapped turkey, I’ve been cooking them for years in the oven. Came out delicious in the smoker.
If you were hoping to bag an Nvidia RTX 4090 Ti graphics card in the near future, you may want to rethink your plans as it appears that team green is reportedly cancelling its potentially most powerful Lovelace GPU for now. This isn't without good reason, though, as reports suggest that the would-be RTX 4000 flagship in its current state is prone to melting itself.
How do you go about reviewing something like NVIDIA's RTX 4090? Just looking at its specs alone, it's obviously the fastest consumer GPU we've ever seen. So sure, I can tell you that I can play just about anything in 4K with ray tracing and every graphical nicety turned on. Hell, it can even scale up to 8K if you're a masochist. For a $1,599 video card, it damn well better. But the real question is, who is this thing actually for?
Benching the RTX 4090 against NVIDIA and AMD's older hardware is practically pointless. Of course it's far faster. Of course it'll make you jealous. If you've got the cash and you're itching to upgrade, go with God (or NVIDIA's leather-clad CEO Jensen Huang, as the company's fans see him). But for anyone else who doesn't need bleeding edge hardware, it exists purely as an object of lust. Sure, you could wait for the upcoming RTX 4080 cards, or whatever AMD has in the works, but it's not a 4090. Just like the last generation of GPUs, NVIDIA is throwing down the gauntlet with a power-hungry card for the most hardcore gamers and creators.
If your mind isn't made up, I assume you're here just to see how much of a beast the 4090 is. And let me tell you, it's a stunning thing to behold. Weighing in at 4.8 pounds, and approaching the size of the PlayStation 5, the RTX 4090 is a triple-slot GPU that will dominate whatever case it’s in. Seriously, if you're thinking of getting it, be sure to measure your PC to ensure you can fit a nearly foot-long card that's close to 5 inches thick.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Be prepared to upgrade your power supply too: The 4090 has a high 450W TDP (the same thermal design profile as the 3090 Ti) and it requires an 850W PSU. (Some third-party companies are pushing that demand to 1200W PSUs!) While it can be powered by a single PCIe 5.0 cable, there still aren't many of those PSUs on the market, so most people will likely end up using four 8-pin adapters. I cursed Jensen's name when I realized I needed to string another PSU line, after tidying up all of my cables.
Beyond its obscene power demands, though, NVIDIA hasn't changed much about the 4090 Founder Edition's design from its previous model: It's still a high-end, all-metal card with a massive vapor chamber, heatsink array and two fans on opposite sides. NVIDIA claims they can push 20 percent more air than the 3090 Ti – in my testing, that meant the 4090 stayed at a relatively cool 70C under load.
What's truly special about the RTX 4090, though, is everything under the hood. It features the company's new "Ada Lovelace" architecture (named after the world's first computer programmer, though I wonder if NVIDIA pays any royalties to turn her name into marketing). It has 16,384 CUDA cores (almost 6,000 more than the 3090 Ti), a base clock speed of 2.23GHz (boost to 2.52GHz), and 24GB of GDDR6X RAM. With figures like these, the upcoming RTX 4080 cards (which start with 7,680 CUDA cores) seem puny in comparison.
And really, that seems like the point of dropping the 4090 before the rest of NVIDIA's new GPUs. It's like a heavenly body so massive it warps space time around it. This is the new standard. What other GPU can get you 135fps in Cyberpunk 2049 while playing in 4K with maxed out graphics and ray tracing?
To be clear, though, the 4090 isn't just about brute-force power. It was able to reach that killer Cyberpunk framerate by using DLSS 3, NVIDIA's latest AI upscaling technology that can now generate entire frames of imagery on its own. (That's in addition to upscaling lower resolution textures using AI, like earlier versions.) DLSS 3 helped A Plague Tale Requiem perform more than twice as fast while running in 4K, delivering around 175fps (up from 74fps).
None
3DMark TimeSpy Extreme
Port Royal (Ray Tracing)
Control
Blender
NVIDIA RTX 3090
16,464
25,405/117.62 fps
4K (Native) High RT: 107 fps
12,335
NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti
8,683
12,948/59.95fps
4K (Native) 43fps Med RT
5,940
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
7,713
9,104/42.15fps
4K (Native) No RT 28-40
N/A
The RTX 4090 had no trouble delivering 107 fps in Control while playing in 4K with high ray tracing settings. But you know what's even better? Getting a solid 128 fps when I flipped on an older version of DLSS. It's just unfortunate it doesn't support DLSS 3 yet, because I'm sure it would eke out even better performance. Even though the game was actually being rendered in 1,440p, to my eye, DLSS still does a stunning job of making that seem like 4K. (I tested the 4090 alongside Samsung's 55-inch Arc monitor, giving me a much larger view than my typical 34-inch ultrawide screen. If there were graphical anomalies, I would have seen them.)
I was particularly interested in stressing ray tracing performance on the 4090, because that was a feature that still managed to bring NVIDIA's 30-series cards to their knees. It enables more realistic lighting, shadows and reflections. For most, I'd wager the graphical facelift it delivers would be more impressive than a skyrocketing framerate count. So it's a wonder to see an NVIDIA card that can finally deliver 4K and solid ray tracing beyond 100fps. Is that worth $1,599, though? That remains unclear, especially since we don't know how the rest of the 40-series cards will compete.
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
If you're looking for a video card that can do more than just game, the 4090 may make more sense. In the Blender 3D rendering benchmark, it scored twice as high as the RTX 3090 Ti, a GPU released earlier this year for an eye-watering $1,999. (Let's have a moment of silence for the poor souls who jumped on that card.) When it came to transcoding a short 4K clip into 1080p, the RTX 4090 was also 10 seconds faster than the 3080 Ti. That could certainly add up if you're rendering longer clips, episodes or feature films.
It's hard not to covet the RTX 4090, especially once you see what it's capable of. It's a glimpse into a world where we can finally get uncompromised ray tracing. But with the $899 and $1,199 RTX 4080 cards on the horizon, it’s tough to drop the price of an entire computer just to get the best frame rates in town There's just so much more to consider these days. You could pair up one of those 4080s with a Steam Deck, for example, and bring the joys of PC gaming on the road and all over your home. Sure, you won't have the prestige of being in the 4090 club, but you'll probably end up having more fun.
When NVIDIA unveiled the GeForce RTX 4000 Series graphics cards as the big announcement of the GTC 2022 GeForce Beyond special broadcast, it was immediately clear that DLSS 3 played an important role in achieving the unprecedented generational performance jump (2x-4x) claimed by NVIDIA.
Almost all of the benchmarks shared by the manufacturer included the new DLSS 3 technology, and the few that didn't showed performance improvements over the GeForce RTX 3000 Series that were more in line with what we have come to expect from a new generation of graphics cards.
Now that the GeForce RTX 4090, the flagship GPU (at least until the inevitable Ti model) and also the first from the brand new Ada Lovelace architecture to launch, has been in reviewers' hands for a while, we've been able to verify just how much DLSS 3 supercharges performance. First things first, though, let's take a look at what's behind the hood.
The new GeForce RTX graphics cards are equipped with fourth-generation Tensor Cores, which include a new 8-Bit Floating Point (FP8) Tensor Engine, increasing throughput by up to 5X to an estimated 1.32 Tensor-petaFLOPS on the RTX 4090.
However, with DLSS 3, NVIDIA is taking one step beyond DLSS Super Resolution. There is now a new DLSS Frame Generation convolutional autoencoder that generates an entire frame on its own based on optical flow fields calculated with the Optical Flow Accelerator.
Optical Flow Accelerators have been available in NVIDIA GPUs since the Turing architecture. However, as previously explained by VP of Applied Deep Learning Research Bryan Catanzaro, the new graphics cards are equipped with a significantly faster and more advanced version of the OFA, which is why DLSS 3 is currently an exclusive of GeForce RTX 4000 graphics cards.
The generated frame sits in-between frames reconstructed with DLSS Super Resolution. As such, NVIDIA claims that in every two frames, only one-eighth of the displayed pixels were rendered normally, while the rest were reconstructed between Super Resolution and Frame Generation, delivering massive frame rate improvements.
To account for the increased latency caused by Frame Generation, NVIDIA has embedded its latency-lowering Reflex technology to ensure responsiveness would remain optimal.
Our Hassan has been able to test the GeForce RTX 4090 with all the DLSS 3 compatible games that NVIDIA shared with reviewers. He chose the Quality preset (at 4K resolution, obviously) because he felt that the new graphics card already ran most games fast enough that it wouldn't make sense to drop the base rendering resolution by lowering DLSS presets.
Cyberpunk 2077
First up there is CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077, the last game to use the studio's in-house Red Engine before the switch to Unreal Engine 5. Do note that the Cyberpunk 2077 build did not include the upcoming Ray Tracing Overdrive Mode, which was also announced during the GeForce Beyond broadcast. Overdrive Mode will add advanced, taxing ray traced techniques like RTX Direct Illumination, full-resolution reflections, and multiple bounce indirect lighting. NVIDIA estimates it will reduce performance by around 51 FPS at 4K with DLSS 3, though it may also be able to absorb the hit better than DLSS 2.
With the current game, though, DLSS 3 only improved average FPS by 16.1% and one percentile frame rate by 15.3% over DLSS 2.
Cyberpunk 2077 (Quality)
4090 DLSS3
4090 DLSS2
3090 Ti DLSS2
4090 Native
3090 Ti Native
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
Avg
170
141
85
88
52
Min
153
125
78
80
45
Latency
5
7
11
11
14
DLSS 3 Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
Native Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
A Plague Tale: Requiem
Next, one of the first games to be publically released with DLSS 3 support, Asobo Studio's A Plague Tale: Requiem (due next week - look forward to our review shortly). Powered by Unreal Engine 4, A Plague Tale: Requiem features updated tech that can support a much higher number of rats compared to the original game, as well as improved dynamic lighting. The final version will also include some form of ray tracing, but the tested build did not.
In this case, DLSS 3 provides a 29% performance increase over DLSS 2 in average FPS and a 39.1% improvement in one percentile frame rate. The boost will likely be greater once ray tracing is enabled, though.
A Plague Tale Requiem (Quality)
4090 DLSS3
4090 DLSS2
3090 Ti DLSS2
4090 Native
3090 Ti Native
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
Avg
142
110
64
74
41
1% Low
128
92
52
60
30
Latency
7
10
15
15
19
DLSS 3 Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
Native Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
F1 2022
Codemasters' F1 22, powered by the EGO Engine 4.0, is by far the least taxing out of all the games tested, delivering the highest frame rate even with its ray tracing option enabled.
As such, in this year's edition of the officially licensed Formula 1 game, DLSS 3 can only further boost average FPS by 20.5% and minimum FPS by 22.4%.
F1 2022 (Quality) 4K (Maxed RT)
4090 DLSS3
4090 DLSS2
3090 Ti DLSS2
4090 Native
3090 Ti Native
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
Avg
170
141
85
88
52
Min
153
125
78
80
45
Latency
5
7
11
11
14
DLSS 3 Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
Native Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
Microsoft Flight Simulator
The real power of DLSS 3 can be seen in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Whereas DLSS 2 could not improve upon CPU-bound games in any meaningful way, the key component of the new version of DLSS 3, Frame Generation, is completely independent of any CPU bottleneck.
As such, there is a massive 106% increase in average FPS and an even greater 115% improvement in minimum FPS over the DLSS 2 implementation.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2022 (Quality) 4K (Maxed)
4090 DLSS3
4090 DLSS2
3090 Ti DLSS2
4090 TAA
3090 Ti TAA
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
Avg
128
62
32
58
31
Min
112
52
24
50
22
Latency
9
19
30
20
33
DLSS 3 Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
Native Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
Unity Enemies Demo
The last DLSS 3 test provided by NVIDIA was the gorgeous Unity Engine Enemies tech demo, originally showcased at GDC 2022. In this case, though, we could not make a direct comparison with DLSS 2 as it was not available as an option in the demo. Compared to native rendering, DLSS 3 provides a 235% average FPS uplift and a 319% boost in one percentile frame rate.
Unity Engine (Enemies) Demo 4K
4090 DLSS3
4090 Native
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Avg
94
28
1% Low
88
21
Latency
10.8
35.4
DLSS 3 Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
Native Screenshots (Click To Zoom In):
2 of 9
Summary
As NVIDIA noted during its presentation of the technology, DLSS 3 can really supercharge performance during CPU-bound scenarios like Microsoft Flight Simulator as well as in the most advanced ray traced games. As such, its true potential will be unlocked with tomorrow's games.
When tested in titles that already run at very high frame rates, its boost compared to regular DLSS 2 is more limited (at least when using the Quality preset - I reckon the Performance and Ultra Performance preset may widen the gap). That's mostly because the RTX 4090 is a beast of its own, delivering substantial performance gains over the previous generation's top cards even when using DLSS 2 or native rendering. If you've ever wanted to play games at 4K, 144+FPS with all graphics settings turned to the max, RTX 4090 and DLSS 3 can easily deliver that.
As first noted in Digital Foundry's initial hands-on with the technology, the Frame Generation component can sometimes introduce artifacts. However, those are really hard to notice during regular gameplay. It's also possible that the Frame Generation algorithm will be improved over time to diminish these glitches, much like NVIDIA did with DLSS Super Resolution.
Last but not least, I must admit that I was most impressed by the latency measurements. During press presentations, NVIDIA engineers had kind of hinted that the lowest latency would be obtained by a combination of DLSS 2 and Reflex rather than DLSS 3 due to its Frame Generation component. However, the data shows DLSS 3 coming out on top in all cases, sometimes with a meaningful difference over DLSS 2 + Reflex. More testing will be required, but it seems like RTX 4000 Series owners may not have a reason to turn off Frame Generation.
Keeping their tradition alive of launching a new graphics architecture every two years, this year, NVIDIA introduces its Ada Lovelace GPU. The Ada GPU is built upon the foundation set by Turing. NVIDIA terms the Ada Lovelace GPUs as a quantum leap over Ampere, and the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition based on NVIDIA Ampere GPU excels at everything versus the previous gen.
The Ada GPU architecture has a lot to be talked about in this review, but so does the new RTX lineup. The Ada lineup offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, and faster AI performance. Built on a brand new process node and featuring an architecture designed from the ground up, Ada is a killer product with lots of numbers to talk about.
The fundamental of Ada was to take everything NVIDIA learned with its Turing & Ampere architectures and not only refine it but to use its DNA to form a product in a completely new performance category. Tall claims were made by NVIDIA when they introduced its Ada lineup last month with up to 4x performance claims & we will be finding out whether NVIDIA hit all the ticks with its Ada architecture as this review will be your guiding path to see what makes Ada and how it performs against its predecessors.
Today, we will be taking a look at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card. The card was provided by NVIDIA for the sole purpose of this review & we will be taking a look at their technology, design, and performance metrics in detail.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Gaming Graphics Cards - The Biggest GPU Performance Leap in Recent History
Turing wasn't just any graphics core, it was the graphics core that was to become the foundation of future GPUs. The future is realized now with next-generation consoles going deep in talks about ray tracing and AI-assisted super-sampling techniques. NVIDIA had a head start with Turing & Ampere and its Ada generation will only do things infinitely times better.
The Ada GPU does many traditional things which we would expect from a GPU, but at the same time, also breaks the barrier when it comes to untraditional GPU operations. Just to sum up some features:
New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
New Turing Tensor Cores
New Real-Time Ray Tracing Acceleration
New Shading Enhancements
New Deep Learning Features For Graphics & Inference
New GDDR6X High-Performance Memory Subsystem
New HDMI 2.1 Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC
The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Ada GPU, but there's more within the graphics core itself which we will talk about in detail so let's get started.
Let's take a trip down the journey to Ada. In 2016, NVIDIA announced their Pascal GPUs which would soon be featured in their top to bottom GeForce 10 series lineup. After the launch of Maxwell, NVIDIA gained a lot of experience in the efficiency department which they put a focus on since their Kepler GPUs.
Four years ago, NVIDIA, rather than offering another standard leap in the rasterization performance of its GPUs took a different approach & introduced two key technologies in its Turing line of consumer GPUs, one being AI-assisted acceleration with the Tensor Cores and the second being hardware-level acceleration for Ray Tracing with its brand new RT cores.
Then came Ampere with its brand new Samsung 8nm fabrication process, NVIDIA added even more to its gaming graphics lineup. In the Ampere GPU architecture, NVIDIA provided its latest Ampere SM along with next-gen FP32, INT32, Tensor Cores, and RT cores. The focus was to boost both rasterization and ray tracing capabilities to new heights.
Now enter Ada, a brand new architecture that aims to take everything from the first two RTX GPUs and perfect it. The graphics architecture is designed for speed and that it excels at. So let's see the architecture in detail. Following are the few main highlights of the Ada Lovelace GPU architecture:
Revolutionary New Architecture: NVIDIA Ada architecture GPUs deliver outstanding performance for graphics, AI, and compute workloads with exceptional architectural and power efficiency. After the baseline design for the Ada SM was established, the chip was scaled up to shatter records. Manufacturing innovations and materials research enabled NVIDIA engineers to craft a GPU with 76.3 billion transistors and 18,432 CUDA Cores capable of running at clocks over 2.5 GHz while maintaining the same 450W TGP as the prior generation flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU. The result is the world’s fastest GPU with the power, acoustics, and temperature characteristics expected of a high-end graphics card.
New Ada RT Core for Faster Ray Tracing: For decades, rendering ray-traced scenes with physically correct lighting in real-time has been considered the holy grail of graphics. At the same time, the geometric complexity of environments and objects continues to increase as 3D games and graphics continually strive to provide the most accurate representations of the real world. The Ada RT Core has been enhanced to deliver 2x faster ray-triangle intersection testing and includes two important new hardware units. An Opacity Micro map Engine speeds up ray tracing of alpha-tested geometry by a factor of 2x, and a Displaced Micro-Mesh Engine generates Displaced Micro-Triangles on-the-fly to create additional geometry. The Micro-Mesh Engine provides the benefit of increased geometric complexity without the traditional performance and storage costs of complex geometries.
Shader Execution Reordering: NVIDIA Ada GPUs support Shader Execution Reordering which dynamically organizes & reorders shading workloads to improve RT shading Introduction efficiency. This improves performance by up to 44% in Cyberpunk 2077 with Ray Tracing Overdrive Mode.
NVIDIA DLSS 3: The Ada architecture features an all-new Optical Flow Accelerator and AI frame generation that boosts DLSS 3’s frame rates up to 2x over the previous DLSS 2.0 while maintaining or exceeding native image quality. Compared to traditional brute-force graphics rendering, DLSS 3 is ultimately up to 4x faster while providing low system latency.
The NVIDIA Ada Lovelace AD102 GPU features up to 12 GPC (Graphics Processing Clusters). These are 5 more SMs compared to the Ampere GA102 GPUs. Each GPU will consist of 6 TPCs and 2 SMs which is the same configuration as the existing chip. Each SM (Streaming Multiprocessor) will house four sub-cores which is also the same as the GA102 GPU. What's changed is the FP32 & the INT32 core configuration. Each sub-core will include 64 FP32 units but combined FP32+INT32 units will go up to 128. This is because half of the FP32 units don't share the same sub-core as the IN32 units. The 64 FP32 cores are separate from the 128 INT32 cores.
So in total, each sub-core will consist of 16 FP32 plus 16 INT32 units for a total of 32 units. Each SM will have a total of 64 FP32 units plus 64 INT32 units for a total of 128 units. And since there are a total of 144 SM units (12 per GPC), we are looking at a total of 18,432 cores. Each SM will also include two Wrap Schedules (32 thread/CLK) for 64 wraps per SM & their own L0 i-cache. This is a 33% increase in Wraps/Threads vs the GA102 GPU. The Register file size is 16,384 across a 32-bit lane. Each SM also carries its own 128 KB of L1 data cache and shared memory so that's 18 MB of L1 cache.
Moving over to the cache, this is another segment where NVIDIA has given a big boost over the existing Ampere GPUs. The L2 cache will be increased to 96 MB as mentioned in the leaks. This is a 16x increase over the Ampere GPU that hosts just 6 MB of L2 cache. The cache will be shared across the GPU. The GPU will also feature up to 192 ROPs for the full-die.
There are also going to be the latest 4th Generation Tensor and 3rd Generation RT (Raytracing) cores infused on the Ada Lovelace GPUs which will help boost DLSS & Raytracing performance to the next level. Overall, the Ada Lovelace AD102 GPU will offer:
71% More GPCs (Versus Ampere)
71% More Cores (Versus Ampere)
50% More L1 Cache (Versus Ampere)
16x More L2 Cache (Versus Ampere)
71% More ROPs (Versus Ampere)
4th Gen Tensor & 3rd Gen RT Cores
The full die has not been featured on any GPU so far, not even the L40 which has 2 SMs disabled. It is likely that as yields progress, we will eventually see a gaming and workstation product using the full-fat AD102. Till then, the RTX 4090 is the top gaming graphics card while the RTX 6000 Ada is the top workstation solution.
82.6 TFLOPS of peak single-precision (FP32) performance
165.2 TFLOPS of peak half-precision (FP16) performance
660.6 Tensor TFLOPS
1321.2 Tensor TFLOPs with sparsity
191 RT-TFLOPs
At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card lies the Ada Lovelace AD102 GPU. The GPU measures 608,4mm2 and will utilize the TSMC 4N process node which is an optimized version of TSMC's 5nm (N5) node designed for the green team. The GPU features an insane 76.3 Billion transistors.
NVIDIA Ampere "GeForce RTX 30" GPUs Full Breakdown:
Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
NVIDIA Titan RTX
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
GPU Codename
TU106
GA104
TU104
GA102
TU102
GA102
GPU Architecture
NVIDIA Turing
NVIDIA Ampere
NVIDIA Turing
NVIDIA Ampere
NVIDIA Turing
NVIDIA Ampere
GPCs
5 or 6
6
6
6
6
7
TPCs
20
23
23
34
36
41
SMs
40
46
46
68
72
82
CUDA Cores / SM
64
128
64
128
64
128
CUDA Cores / GPU
2560
5888
2944
8704
4608
10496
Tensor Cores / SM
8 (2nd Gen)
4 (3rd Gen)
8 (2nd Gen)
4 (3rd Gen)
8 (2nd Gen)
4 (3rd Gen)
Tensor Cores / GPU
320 (2nd Gen)
184 (3rd Gen)
368
272 (3rd Gen)
576 (2nd Gen)
328 (3rd Gen)
RT Cores
40 (1st Gen)
46 (2nd Gen)
46 (1st Gen)
68 (2nd Gen)
72 (1st Gen)
82 (2nd Gen)
GPU Boost Clock (MHz)
1770
1725
1800
1710
1770
1695
Peak FP32 TFLOPS (non-Tensor)
9.1
20.3
10.6
29.8
16.3
35.6
Peak FP16 TFLOPS (non-Tensor)
18.1
20.3
21.2
29.8
32.6
35.6
Peak BF16 TFLOPS (non-Tensor)
NA
20.3
NA
29.8
NA
35.6
Peak INT32 TOPS (non-Tensor)
9.1
10.2
10.6
14.9
16.3
17.8
Peak FP16 Tensor TFLOPS
with FP16 Accumulate
72.5
81.3/162.6
84.8
119/238
130.5
142/284
Peak FP16 Tensor TFLOPS
with FP32 Accumulate
36.3
40.6/81.3
42.4
59.5/119
65.2
71/142
Peak BF16 Tensor TFLOPS
with FP32 Accumulate
NA
40.6/81.3
NA
59.5/119
NA
71/142
Peak TF32 Tensor TFLOPS
NA
20.3/40.6
NA
29.8/59.5
NA
35.6/71
Peak INT8 Tensor TOPS
145
162.6/325.2
169.6
238/476
261
284/568
Peak INT4 Tensor TOPS
290
325.2/650.4
339.1
476/952
522
568/1136
Frame Buffer Memory Size and
Type
8 GB GDDR6
8 GB GDDR6
8 GB GDDR6
10 GB GDDR6X
24 GB GDDR6
24 GB GDDR6X
Memory Interface
256-bit
256-bit
256-bit
320-bit
384-bit
384-bit
Memory Clock (Data Rate)
14 Gbps
14 Gbps
14 Gbps
19 Gbps
14 Gbps
19.5 Gbps
Memory Bandwidth
448 GB/sec
448 GB/sec
448 GB/sec
760 GB/sec
672 GB/sec
936 GB/sec
ROPs
64
96
64
96
96
112
Pixel Fill-rate (Gigapixels/sec)
113.3
165.6
115.2
164.2
169.9
193
Texture Units
160
184
184
272
288
328
Texel Fill-rate (Gigatexels/sec)
283.2
317.4
331.2
465
509.8
566
L1 Data Cache/Shared Memory
3840
5888
4416 KB
8704 KB
6912 KB
10496 KB
L2 Cache Size
4096 KB
4096 KB
4096 KB
5120 KB
6144 KB
6144 KB
Register File Size
10240 KB
11776 KB
11776 KB
17408 KB
18432 KB
20992 KB
TGP (Total Graphics Power)
215 Watts
220W
225W
320W
280W
350W
Transistor Count
13.6 Billion
17.4 Billion
13.6 Billion
28.3 Billion
18.6 Billion
28.3 Billion
Die Size
545 mm2
392.5 mm2
545 mm2
628.4 mm2
754mm2
628.4 mm2
Manufacturing Process
TSMC 12 nm FFN
(FinFET NVIDIA)
Samsung 8 nm 8N NVIDIA
Custom Process
TSMC 12 nm FFN
(FinFET NVIDIA)
Samsung 8 nm 8N NVIDIA
Custom Process
TSMC 12 nm FFN
(FinFET NVIDIA)
Samsung 8 nm 8N NVIDIA
Custom Process
NVIDIA Ada GPUs - AD102, AD103, AD104 For The First Wave of Gaming Cards
NVIDIA is first introducing three brand new Ada GPUs which include the AD102, AD103 & AD104. The AD102 GPU is going to be featured on the GeForce RTX 4090, the AD103 is going to be used by the GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB graphics cards and the AD104 GPU is going to be featured on the GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB graphics cards.
The Ada GPUs are based on the TSMC 4N process node which is a custom process designed exclusively for NVIDIA. It is essentially an optimized version of the N5 (5nm) process, offering drastic increases in transistors, cores, and frequency. The top AD102 GPU packs 70% more cores and also offers 76.3 Billion transistors while offering over 2x the performance per watt.
NVIDIA Ada AD102 GPU
The full AD102 GPU is made up of 12 graphics processing clusters with 12 SM units on each cluster. That makes up 144 SM units for a total of 18432 cores, 144 RT cores, 576 Tensor Cores, 576 Texture Units, and a 384-bit bus interface in a 76.3 billion transistor package measuring 608,5mm2.
NVIDIA has also introduced its 4th Generation Tensor core architecture and 3rd Generation RT cores on Ada GPUs. Now Tensor cores have been available since Volta and consumers got a taste of it with the Turing & Ampere GPUs. One of the key areas where Tensor Cores are put to use for AAA games is DLSS. There's a whole software stack that leverages from Tensor cores and that is known as the NVIDIA NGX. These software-based technologies will help enhance graphics fidelity with features such as Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), AI InPainting, AI Super Rez, RTX Voice, and AI Slow-Mo.
While its initial debut was a bit flawed, DLSS in its 2nd iteration (DLSS 2.x) has done wonders to not only improve gaming performance but also image quality.
Let's dive into the technological advancements that allow these incredible achievements. To begin with, NVIDIA engineers started with DLSS Super Resolution and added something called Optical Multi Frame Generation based on Ada's Optical Flow Accelerator.
2 of 9
This accelerator analyzes two sequential frames from a particular game, capturing pixel details such as particles, reflections, lighting, and shadows.
On top of that, NVIDIA DLSS 3 also takes into account conventional game engine information such as motion vectors. The DLSS Frame Generation AI convolutional autoencoder network will then decide how to use each of the four inputs (current and prior frames, optical flow field, and motion vectors) to recreate intermediate frames in the best possible way.
NVIDIA DLSS 3 is said to reconstruct 3/4 of the first frame with DLSS Super Resolution and the full second frame with the help of the aforementioned DLSS Frame Generation. Overall, NVIDIA DLSS 3 reconstructs 7/8 of the two total frames displayed, which explains the massive performance uplift.
Additionally, the new version of the Deep Learning Super Sampling image reconstruction technique also includes the latency-lowering NVIDIA Reflex technology.
Cyberpunk 2077 has been shown running NVIDIA DLSS 3, the brand new Ray Tracing Overdrive, and NVIDIA Reflex with up to 4x improved performance and up to 2x reduced latency. That's not all, as NVIDIA is even promising benefits for CPU-bound games, which generally didn't run much faster with DLSS 2.0. For example, the notoriously CPU-heavy Microsoft Flight Simulator gets up to 2x improved performance with the new DLSS.
Overall, NVIDIA said the following over 35 games and apps already pledged support to NVIDIA DLSS 3.
A Plague Tale: Requiem
Atomic Heart
Black Myth: Wukong
Bright Memory: Infinite
Chernobylite
Conqueror's Blade
Cyberpunk 2077
Dakar Rally
Deliver Us Mars
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed
Dying Light 2 Stay Human
F1 22
F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch
Frostbite Engine
HITMAN 3
Hogwarts Legacy
ICARUS
Jurassic World Evolution 2
Justice
Loopmancer
Marauders
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Midnight Ghost Hunt
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
Naraka: Bladepoint
NVIDIA Omniverse
NVIDIA Racer RTX
PERISH
Portal with RTX
Ripout
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Scathe
Sword and Fairy 7
SYNCED
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
THRONE AND LIBERTY
Tower of Fantasy
Unity
Unreal Engine 4 & 5
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
The green company also released a performance chart on some of those games running on NVIDIA DLSS 3; check it out below.
3rd Gen RT Cores, RTX, and Real-Time Ray Tracing Dissected
Next up, we have the RT Cores, which are what will power Real-Time Raytracing. NVIDIA isn't going to distance itself from traditional rasterization-based rendering but instead follow a hybrid rendering model. The new 3rd Generation RT cores offer increased performance and offer double the ray/triangle intersection testing rate over Turing RT cores.
the Third-Generation RT Core found in Ada GPUs includes dedicated units known as the Opacity Micromap Engine and the Displaced Micro-Mesh Engine. The Opacity Micromap Engine evaluates Opacity Micromaps (represented by the triangle with foliage on the bottom left), which are used to accelerate alpha traversal. The Displaced Micro-Mesh Engine generates meshes of micro-triangles that are known as Displaced Micro-Meshes (represented by the triangle on the bottom right in the diagram below). Displaced Micro-Meshes allow the Ada RT Core to ray trace geometrically complex objects and environments with significantly less BVH build time and storage costs. Finally, ray-triangle intersection testing is 2x faster in Ada’s Third-Generation RT Core compared to the Ampere GPU generation.
NVIDIA engineers have developed three new features in the Ada RT Core to enable high-performance ray tracing of highly complex geometry:
First, Ada’s Third-Generation RT Core features 2x Faster Ray-Triangle Intersection Throughput relative to Ampere; this enables developers to add more detail to their virtual worlds.
Second, Ada’s RT Core has 2x Faster Alpha Traversal; the RT Core features a new Opacity Micromap Engine to directly alpha-test geometry and significantly reduce shader-based alpha computations. With this new functionality, developers can very compactly describe irregularly shaped or translucent objects, like ferns or fences, and directly and more efficiently ray trace them with the Ada RT Core.
Third, the new Ada RT Core supports 10x Faster BVH Build in 20X Less BVH Space when using its new Displaced Micro-Mesh Engine to generate micro-triangles from micro-meshes on-demand. The micro-mesh is a new primitive that represents a structured mesh of micro-triangles that the Ada RT Core processes natively, saving the storage and processing compared to what is normally required when describing complex geometries using only basic triangles.
Taken together, these three advances incorporated into the Ada RT Core enable order-of-magnitude increases in richness without commensurate increases in processing time or memory consumption.
2x Faster Ray-Triangle Intersection Testing
Ray-triangle intersection testing is a computationally expensive operation that is commonly performed when rendering a ray-traced scene. Recognizing the importance of this function, with each new RTX GPU NVIDIA engineers have strived to improve intersection testing performance and efficiency. The Third-Generation RT Core in the Ada architecture provides double the throughput for ray-triangle intersection testing over Ampere (and 4x faster than the first-generation RT Core used in Turing GPUs).
2x Faster Alpha Traversal Performance with Opacity Micromap Engine
Developers frequently use a texture’s alpha channel to economically cut out complex shapes or more generally to represent translucency. A leaf might be described using a couple of triangles, employing a texture’s alpha channel to economically capture the complex shape. A flame’s complex shape and translucency can also be approximated by alpha.
Prior to Ada’s RT Core, a developer could incorporate these kinds of content into a ray-traced scene by tagging them as not opaque. When a leaf is hit by a ray, a shader is invoked to determine how to treat the intersection, even if the ray is simply characterized as a hit or a miss. This incurs a noticeable cost. Specifically, when a warp of rays is cast towards non-opaque objects, individual ray queries may require multiple shader invocations to resolve, while other rays terminate immediately. The result is lingering live threads and commensurate inefficiency.
To efficiently handle these kinds of content, NVIDIA engineers have added an Opacity Micromap Engine to Ada’s RT Core. An opacity micromap is a virtual mesh of micro-triangles, each with an opacity state that the RT Core uses to directly resolve ray intersections with non-opaque triangles. Specifically, the barycentric coordinates of an intersection are used to address the corresponding micro-triangle’s opacity state. The opacity state may be opaque, transparent, or unknown. If opaque, then a hit is recorded and returned. If transparent, the intersection is ignored and the search for an intersection continues. If unknown, then the control is returned to the SM, invoking a shader (“anyhit”) to programmatically resolve the intersection.
The new Opacity Micromap Engine evaluates the opacity mask, which is a regular triangular mesh defined using the barycentric coordinate system used for reporting ray/triangle intersections. These meshes may be sized from one to sixteen million micro-triangles, with one or two bits associated with each micro-triangle. As a simple illustrative example, consider a detailed maple leaf described using two triangles and an alpha texture
10x Faster BVH Build in 20X Less BVH Space with Ada’s Displaced Micro-Mesh Engine
Geometric complexity continues to rise with every new generation. Ray tracing performance scales attractively with increases in scene complexity. When we ray trace complex environments, tracing costs increase slowly, a one-hundred-fold increase in geometry might only double tracing time.
However, creating the data structure (BVH) that makes that small increase in time possible requires roughly linear time and memory; 100x more geometry could mean 100x more BVH build time and 100x more memory. Ada’s Third-Generation RT Core with Displaced Micro-Meshes (DMM) helps significantly with both of the challenges of high geometric complexity - BVH build performance and memory/storage footprint. Asset storage and transmission costs are reduced as well.
Secondary rays are generated at each primary ray hit point in the middle scene. Starting at the primary hit surfaces they shoot off in different directions, hitting different objects. Secondary hit shading tends to be less ordered and less efficient when executing on the GPU, because different shader programs are running on different threads, and often must serialize execution. Examples of secondary rays that can benefit from SER include those used for path tracing, reflections, indirect lighting, and translucency effects.
Shader Execution Reordering adds a new stage in the ray tracing pipeline which reorders and groups the secondary hit shading to have better execution locality, thus much higher overall ray-traced shading efficiency. SER can often provide up to 2X performance improvement for RT shaders in cases with a high level of divergence (such as path tracing). In testing with Cyberpunk 2077 running in RT: Overdrive Mode, we’ve measured overall performance gains of up to 44% from SER.
The Micron GDDR6X memory brings a lot of new stuff to the table. It is faster, doubles the I/O data rate, and is the first to implement PAM4 multi-level signaling in memory dies. With the Geforce RTX 3090 class products, Micron's GDDR6X memory achieves a bandwidth of up to 1 TB/s which is used to power next-generation gaming experiences at high-fidelity resolutions such as 8K.
Micron GDDR6X graphics memory doubles input/output (I/O) performance while minimizing the cost of memory. Working with AI-innovation leader NVIDIA, Micron delivers higher bandwidth by enabling multi-level signaling in the form of four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) technology in this memory device via Micron
The new GDDR6X SGRAM:
Doubles the data rate of SGRAM at a lower power per transaction while enabling the breaking of the 1 Terabyte per second (TB/s) system memory bandwidth boundary for graphics card applications;
Is the first discrete graphics memory device that employs PAM4-encoded signaling between the processor and the DRAM, using four voltage levels to encode and transfer two bits of data per interface clock.
Can be designed and operated stably at high speeds and built-in mass-production.
As mentioned, GDDR6X features the brand new PAM4 multilevel signaling techniques, which help transfer data much faster, double the I/O rate, pushing the capability of each memory dies from 64 GB/s to 84 GB/s. The Micron GDDR6X memory dies are also the only graphics DRAM that can be mass-produced while featuring PAM4 signaling.
What is interesting is that Micron quotes that its GDDR6X memory can hit speeds of up to 22.4 Gbps whereas we have only got to see 21 Gbps in action on the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. It is likely that AIBs could utilize higher binned dies as they are available. Micron does has faster chips but those aren't coming to NV 40 series graphics cards for now.
It's not just faster speeds but Micron's GDDR6X provides higher bandwidth while sipping in 15% lower power per transferred bit compared to the previous generation GDDR6 memory. PAM4 signaling is a big upgrade from the two-level NRZ signaling on the GDDR6 memory.
Instead of transmitting two binary bits of data each clock cycle (one bit on the rising edge and one bit on the falling edge of the clock), PAM4 sends two bits on each clock edge, encoded using four different voltage levels. The voltage levels are divided into 250 mV steps with each level representing two bits of data - 00, 01, 10, or 11 sent on each clock edge (still DDR technology).
Micron GDDR6X Memory
Feature
GDDR5
GDDR5X
GDDR6
GDDR6X
Density
From 512Mb to 8Gb
8Gb
8Gb, 16Gb
8Gb, 16Gb
VDD and VDDQ
Either 1.5V or 1.35V
1.35V
Either 1.35V or 1.25V
Either 1.35V or 1.25V
VPP
N/A
1.8V
1.8V
1.8V
Data rates
Up to 8 Gb/s
Up to 12Gb/s
Up to 16 Gb/s
19 Gb/s, 21 Gb/s,
>21 Gb/s
Channel count
1
1
2
2
Access granularity
32 bytes
64 bytes
2x 32 bytes in pseudo 32B mode
2 ch x 32 bytes
2 ch x 32 bytes
Burst length
8
16 / 8
16
8 in PAM4 mode
16 in RDQS mode
Signaling
POD15/POD135
POD135
POD135/POD125
PAM4 POD135/POD125
Package
BGA-170
14mm x 12mm 0.8mm ball pitch
BGA-190
14mm x 12mm 0.65mm ball pitch
BGA-180
14mm x 12mm 0.75mm ball pitch
BGA-180
14mm x 12mm 0.75mm ball pitch
I/O width
x32/x16
x32/x16
2 ch x16/x8
2 ch x16/x8
Signal count
61
- 40 DQ, DBI, EDC
- 15 CA
- 6 CK, WCK
61
- 40 DQ, DBI, EDC
- 15 CA
- 6 CK, WCK
70 or 74
- 40 DQ, DBI, EDC
- 24 CA
- 6 or 10 CK, WCK
70 or 74
- 40 DQ, DBI, EDC
- 24 CA
- 6 or 10 CK, WCK
PLL, DCC
PLL
PLL
PLL, DCC
DCC
CRC
CRC-8
CRC-8
2x CRC-8
2x CRC-8
VREFD
External or internal per 2 bytes
Internal per byte
Internal per pin
Internal per pin
3 sub-receivers per pin
Equalization
N/A
RX/TX
RX/TX
RX/TX
VREFC
External
External or Internal
External or Internal
External or Internal
Self refresh (SRF)
Yes
Temp. Controlled SRF
Yes
Temp. Controlled SRF Hibernate SRF
Yes
Temp. Controlled SRF Hibernate SRF
VDDQ-off
Yes
Temp. Controlled SRF Hibernate SRF
VDDQ-off
Scan
SEN
IEEE 1149.1 (JTAG)
IEEE 1149.1 (JTAG)
IEEE 1149.1 (JTAG)
With each new generation of graphics cards, NVIDIA delivers a new range of display technologies. This generation is no different, and we see some significant updates to the display engine and the graphics interconnect. With the adoption of faster GDDR6X memory, which provides higher bandwidth, faster compression, and more cache, gaming applications can now run at higher resolutions, supporting more details on the display.
The Ada Display Engine supports two new display technologies, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a with DSC 1.2a. HDMI 2.1 allows up to 48 Gbps of total bandwidth and up to 4K 240Hz HDR and 8K 60Hz HDR.
DisplayPort 1.4a allows for up to 8K resolutions with 60Hz refresh rates and includes VESA's display stream compression 1.2 technology with visually lossless compression. You can run up to two 8K displays at 60 Hz using two cables, one for each display. In addition to that, Ampere also supports HDR processing natively with tone mapping added to the HDR pipeline.
Ada GPUs take streaming and video content to the next level, incorporating support for AV1 video encoding in the Ada eighth-generation dedicated hardware encoder (known as NVENC). Prior generation Ampere GPUs supported AV1 decoding but not encoding. Ada’s AV1 encoder is 40% more efficient than the H.264 encoder used in GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs. AV1 will enable users who are streaming at 1080p today to increase their stream resolution to 1440p while running at the same bitrate and quality, or for users with 1080p displays, streams will look similar to 1440p, providing better quality.
Ada GPUs are also equipped with dual NVENC encoders. This enables video encoding at 8K/60 for professional video editing or four 4K/60. (Game streaming services can also take advantage of this to enable more simultaneous sessions, for instance.) Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve, the popular Voukoder plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro, and Jianying — the top video editing app in China — are all enabling AV1 support, as well as a dual encoder through encode presets. Dual encoder and AV1 availability for these apps will be available in October. NVIDIA is also working with the popular video-effects app Notch to enable AV1, as well as Topaz to enable support for AV1 and the dual encoders.
2 of 9
In addition to NVENC, Ada GPUs also include the fifth-generation hardware decoder that was first launched with Ampere (known as NVDEC). NVDEC supports hardware-accelerated video decoding of MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264 (AVCHD), H.265 (HEVC), VP8, VP9, and the AV1 video formats. 8K/60 decoding is also fully supported. In the future, NVIDIA is also working to enable high-quality video production using AI.
NVIDIA RTX IO - Blazing Fast Read Speeds With GPU Utilization
As storage sizes have grown, so has storage performance. Gamers are increasingly turning to SSDs to reduce game load times: while hard drives are limited to 50-100 MB/sec throughput, the latest M.2 PCIe Gen4 SSDs deliver up to 7 GB/sec. With the traditional storage model, game data is read from the hard disk, then passed from the system memory and CPU before being passed to the GPU.
Historically games have read files from the hard disk, using the CPU to decompress the game image. Developers have used lossless compression to reduce install sizes and improve I/O performance. However, as storage performance has increased, traditional file systems and storage APIs have become a bottleneck. For example, decompressing game data from a 100 MB/sec hard drive takes only a few CPU cores, but decompressing data from a 7 GB/sec PCIe Gen4 SSD can consume more than twenty AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X CPU cores!
Using the traditional storage model, game decompression can consume all 24 cores on a Threadripper CPU. Modern game engines have exceeded the capability of traditional storage APIs. A new generation of I/O architecture is needed. Data transfer rates are the gray bars, CPU cores required are the black/blue blocks.
NVIDIA RTX IO is a suite of technologies that enable rapid GPU-based loading and decompression of game assets, accelerating I/O performance by up to 100x compared to hard drives and traditional storage APIs. When used with Microsoft’s new DirectStorage for Windows API, RTX IO offloads dozens of CPU cores’ worth of work to your RTX GPU, improving frame rates, enabling near-instantaneous game loading, and opening the door to a new era of large, incredibly detailed open-world games.
2 of 9
Object pop-in and stutter can be reduced, and high-quality textures can be streamed at incredible rates, so even if you’re speeding through a world, everything runs and looks great. In addition, with lossless compression, game download and install sizes can be reduced, allowing gamers to store more games on their SSD while also improving their performance.
NVIDIA RTX IO plugs into Microsoft’s upcoming DirectStorage API, which is a next-generation storage architecture designed specifically for state-of-the-art NVMe SSD-equipped gaming PCs and the complex workloads that modern games require. Together, streamlined and parallelized APIs specifically tailored for games allow dramatically reduced IO overhead and maximize performance/bandwidth from NVMe SSDs to your RTX IO-enabled GPU.
Gene Wilder's film career shone brightly but burned out quickly. He was only in 23 movies in his life, 22 of which were between 1967 and 1991. Wilder was a revelation on the silver screen, making such roles as Willy Wonka in "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory" an indelible part of the fabric of cinema. Wilder was also a frequent collaborator with director Mel Brooks, with whom he made a number of spoofs including "Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein," and "The Producers." He was a joyful addition to any movie, able to crack jokes and elicit tears in equal measure.
For an actor doing as well as Wilder was, it was odd that he was only actively in films for a 24-year period; it's not like Wilder's soft-spoken nature and kind eyes wouldn't have made him great at playing older characters. But according to a piece by Insider following the actor's death at age 83, Wilder simply wasn't receiving offers that interested him. "If something comes along that's really good and I think I would be good for it, I would be happy to do it," said Wilder in 2013. "But not too many came along."
Wilder wasn't worried about his own film career. He'd done plenty of projects that interested him personally. What he took issue with was where the film industry as a whole was headed, and he had no interest in continuing to be a part of it.
'Can't They Just Stop And Talk?'
In the Insider piece, Wilder explained why he wasn't all that interested in the types of films that had come out recently:
"I didn't want to do 3D, for instance. I didn't want to do ones with bombing and loud and swearing, so much swearing going on. Someone said, 'Oh, go f--- yourself.' Well, if it was coming from a meaningful place I would understand it. But if you go to some of the movies, I don't want to say which ones, can't they just stop and talk? Once in a while it comes in handy but not running all the way through the film, and that put me out a lot."
Some of Wilder's complaints can come off as somewhat "old man yells at cloud," but he has some extremely solvent points as well. 3D is an awful headache gimmick that has been worthwhile in maybe three movies ever, and it's not difficult to see that the current cinema marketplace is oversaturated with loud, fast action films.
If an actor as esteemed and well-liked as Wilder wasn't being offered any roles that intrigued him or moved him, I'd definitely call that a failure of the industry as a whole. There were so many filmmakers out there and none of them had ideas that appealed to Wilder's sensibilities? Sure, Wilder not loving cursing was a bit weird, considering his work with Mel Brooks had plenty of that, but surely something could have been worked out to get Wilder in a children's movie?
'Actors Fall Into This Trap'
Wilder had always had a skeptical view of acting as a profession, often referring to the behavior of actors as "childlike," which he explained in a Newsweek interview:
"What I meant by child in that case was the love that you were looking for that you didn't find when you were a kid. You're fooled by the applause into thinking that they love me. They really, really love me. Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do -- sing, dance, joke about -- then they take that as love."
With that view of the art form in mind, it makes sense that not many were able to reach him on the same wavelength. But his absence was definitely a huge loss for the film medium, as Wilder was capable of bringing a unique magic to certain scenes that it's hard to imagine another performer replicating.
At one point in his career, Wilder almost lost out to John Wayne for a part in "Blazing Saddles." One of the biggest movie stars ever was considered for a role, and when he could not take it, Wilder stepped in. If that doesn't indicate the level of performer Wilder was, I don't know what to tell you. He was a generational talent, and the relatively few times we saw him on screen are now, in hindsight, even more precious.
Steam has a library of thousands of games, and many of them see updates every few days or weeks. While this is mostly a good thing, new updates can remove features that you enjoyed and occasionally bring about new bugs and glitches.
Although "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" has more than justified its existence, there was a lot of (warranted) skepticism about the project. I'm not talking about the ignorant backlash towards the casting, but the fact that mega-company Amazon wanted to adapt J. R. R. Tolkien's work on the small screen. What more could be done in the lands of Middle-earth that Peter Jackson's seminal trilogy didn't cover? Well, an actor from those films shared that same sentiment.
To give a quick history lesson, Amazon was not the only entity that wanted to purchase the rights to the fantasy franchise. Even worse so, other studios bidding for the rights wanted to remake "The Lord of the Rings" into an MCU-style franchise. Amazon won out not just because of the price tag ($250 million), but their commitment to honoring the canon and not telling the same story already seen on the big screen. Of course, the monetary focus of the entire debacle did not really help the optics.
John Rhys-Davies, who played the Gimli in "The Lord of the Rings" films, expressed distrust in the latest adaptation of Tolkien's work. His words were valid, but it now seems as if "The Rings of Power" has firmly proved him wrong.
Some Valid Skepticism
Rhys-Davies discussed the TV adaptation with Den of Geek back in 2017, five years before "The Rings of Power" hit streaming. With very few details available at the time about the project, Rhys-Davies made it clear that he saw it as a clear cash-grab, an unnecessary return to Middle-earth: "...it's not about doing it better, it's about making more money that's all."
Of course, he has a fair point. The reason Amazon bought and spent billions on acquiring the "Lord of the Rings" property is the expected return on investment. However, the same can be said for "The Hobbit" trilogy. Perhaps worse so, as it stretches the source material to force more films out of it. "The Rings of Power" goes another route, filling in the blanks of the canon where it makes sense.
Instead of revisiting the "The Lord of the Rings," Rhys-Davies proposed another solution to the fantasy drought.
"Lord Of The Rings spun-off an awful lot of imitations about elves and dwarves and things like that and I would simply buy those up and put them together and make a wonderful elvish... That would make a far more interesting account of Tolkien's words, in a world like that. And you know there are hundreds and hundreds of young writers, who have made their contributions and if was a well-heeled film producer, that's where I'd be looking, because that gives more actors more chances and it's still a great tribute to Tolkien. It costs less to make and it would be original and fresh, but then what the hell do I know!?"
Coincidentally, Rhys-Davies' suggestion may actually apply to what "The Rings of Power" is trying to do.
A Worthwhile Endeavor
We've already discussed what makes something Tolkien-esque, but to Rhys-Davies' point, I think "The Rings of Power" establishes that it does not want to tread familiar ground unless warranted. Focusing on the events of the Second Age previewed in the opening of "The Fellowship of the Ring," the series sets its sights on never-before-seen parts of Middle-earth history. Moreover, it expands on aspects of the canon otherwise not explained by Tolkien without losing the thematic value of his words.
"The Rings of Power" does try to adhere to what worked in the film trilogy in some ways — like that musical score, for example — but it forges its own path by reimagining characters and adding worthwhile details to the source material. In fact, it outdoes some aspects of the movies, including the already-brilliant dwarf-elf bromance between Legolas and Gimli with Elrond and Durin. But that's not the show's motivation, either. It is unfathomable that any film or television series will recapture what the original trilogy pulled off. However, if "The Rings of Power" can do things their own way without veering too far off, I think Rhys-Davies may enjoy what it has to offer.
for Security Information and Event Management.
Miike Takashi becomes the first Japanese director to dip his toe into the ever-expanding world of K-dramas, helming all six episodes of Disney’s upcoming fantasy horror series Connect. Adapted from Shin Daesung’s webtoon of the same name, this ghoulishly entertaining meld of soap opera and body horror follows a young man (Jung Hae-in), who has his eye stolen by backstreet organ harvesters, only for his errant eyeball to wind up in the skull of a prolific and flamboyant serial killer. The first three episodes of Connect were screened at the Busan International Film Festival ahead of its December debut. The notion of Miike working abroad within the melodramatic confines of the K-drama format raises a number of tantalising questions right off the bat, not...
