Solfar Studios released a mixed reality trailer of the Everest VR experience, which to our knowledge, is the first Unreal Engine mixed reality VR trailer for any game.
Mixed reality video is arguably the best way to demonstrate what it's like to experience VR, without actually experiencing it firsthand. MR allows you to see a person embedded in a VR experience while watching on a traditional flat screen. Northway Games pioneered the technique in January 2016, and since then, HTC, Valve, and several game developers have embraced the concept. Radial Games and Northway Games, the partnered teams behind Fantastic Contraption, and Owlchemy Labs, which made Job Simulator, released mixed reality game trailers to promote their games before the Vive’s launch.
The trailers made an impression on the VR industry, and it spurred Valve into creating an MR plugin for Unity that allowed the company to film a mixed reality video of several games to promote the Vive hardware.
Since then, developers, YouTubers, and HTC have embraced mixed reality in various capacities. It’s easy to set up Unity games for mixed reality recording, thanks to Valve’s plugin, but Unreal Engine-based games are somewhat left out in the cold. In June, Epic Games’ lead programmer, James Golding, sent out a tweet indicating that Unreal Engine mixed reality support is in development, but we have yet to hear anything else about it.
In fact, we haven’t heard anything publicly about UE4 mixed reality support at all, but a new trailer for Everest VR suggests that Solfar Studios might be privy to a private build of the engine. To accompany the launch of Everest VR’s extended content through Viveport, Solfar Studios released a mixed reality trailer to show you what the experience is like.
Solfar Studios created the trailer with a moving camera, similar to how Valve filmed its mixed reality promotional video. The camera appears shaky, which indicates that the trailer was composited live, rather than in post-processing. Valve’s trailer had similar qualities, whereas the trailers for Job Sim and Fantastic Contraption show steady camera syncing, which was touched up during post-processing, according to Kert Gartner, the VFX specialist that produced the videos.
Epic Games hasn’t made any official announcements about the timeline of mixed reality support for Unreal Engine. Hopefully the Everest VR mixed reality trailer indicates that we’ll know more about UE4 MR support soon.
Arkane Studios continues to out more gameplay footage from the upcoming Dishonored 2. A few weeks ago we saw Corvo Attano in action, and now we get to see his counterpart, Emily Kaldwin, take on a mission in the game, and it serves to highlight the different ways you can complete a mission.
The main setting for the gameplay is the Clockwork Mansion, a massive house with rooms that can shift at the pull of a lever. The studio released two gameplay videos that center on the mansion. The first is an aggressive or “High Chaos” approach where Emily kills everyone in her path, including her target, Kirin Jindosh, aka The Grand Inventor. The second video is the stealthy, or “Low Chaos,” method. The main objective is to rescue Anton Sokolov, an old friend.
As you would expect, the High Chaos approach is swift and deadly. Emily will take the shortest route to the objective without any regard for stealth. The Low Chaos method (my favorite of the two) is more calculated. Instead of fighting her way through guards and tall, mechanical sentries, Emily will find ways around closed doors and large, open areas in an effort to stay silent. Either way, both approaches use the plethora of supernatural abilities shown in a previous trailer for the game.
In an attempt to get more players to get Dishonored 2, Bethesda announced that anyone who preorders the game will get to play it the day before its November 11 release date. We’ll obviously get more gameplay footage and trailers in the following weeks as well as the highly anticipated __hardware requirements for the PC version.
The iPhone 7 just came out, so of course rumors are already swirling about next year's model.
Credit: Apple
People are still lining up to snag a brand new iPhone 7, but that won’t stop anyone from speculating about next year’s iPhone. Why so early? Well, 2017 marks the iPhone’s 10th birthday, so Apple is reportedly gearing up to make its anniversary edition extra special.
We’ll keep track of the latest rumors and how plausible they are, and we’ll put them in one spot (this one!) so you can bookmark this link and just pop on over when you want to read the latest.
If you passed on the iPhone 7 to wait for the iPhone 8—or whatever name Apple decides to use—it sounds like next year’s phone could be the design refresh you were waiting for. Just don't expect the headphone jack to return.
What’s the latest?
The rumor: Apple may take a page from its own book and release an iPhone 8 with a glass front and back, similar to the iPhone 4 and 4s. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus will, of course, be larger than those models, which were 3.5 inches. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who always has deep insight into Apple’s supply chain, predicted that Apple will make lower-priced models with aluminum casing and more expensive versions with stainless steel. The glass would give the phone a glossy look, like the popular jet black iPhone 7, but be less prone to knicks and scratches than the brushed aluminum.
Plausible? Yes. It’s all about the sourcing: KGI’s Ming-Chi Kuo is typically spot-on when it comes to Apple __hardware changes. It’s possible that Apple is basing future design decisions on the success of the jet black iPhone 7, which is currently sold out through December. According to the KGI report, 30–35 percent of preorders were for the jet black model worldwide, and in China that percentage was higher—45–50 percent.
An OLED display at last?
The rumor: So far, Apple has held on to LCD displays, which isn’t a bad thing—the LCD display on the iPhone 7 is just as good as the competition’s OLED screens. But Apple is reportedly in talks with Sharp to be one of its main suppliers of OLED displays to use in next year’s iPhones. According to Bloomberg, Apple wants to diversify its OLED sourcing so it has multiple options. Sharp is investing $566 million in OLED production factories which will start churning out displays by next June.
Plausible? Yep. The future is OLED, because the technology is more flexible than LCD and would allow Apple to make the iPhone bezel razor-thin and move the home button to the display itself. There are other applications made possible by switching to OLED screens, and we're sure Apple is exploring those for a future phone.
Spreadsheet __software that will understand natural-language questions about your data is certainly a cool concept. Microsoft Power BI's cloud service - its analytics platform, not Excel - has offered this capability for awhile, but having it percolate down to spreadsheets will put it before many more potential users.
I've been taking Google Sheets Explore for a test drive this afternoon. First thoughts? It's got a lot of potential, but at the moment I'd caution you not to depend on it to understand exactly what you mean in the same way that, say, Google search can sometimes figure out what you want even if you've misspelled a word.
Here's why. One of the sample problems Google uses in its blog post about Explore is "what are the top three items by sales price?" That's a pretty clear question and a fairly simple response: Return the three items with the largest sales price.
But what if your spreadsheet has catgories as well, and you want the three priciest items in each category? I tried to find out something similar, using a spreadsheet with a month's worth of commercial airline flights arriving in Boston. When I typed in a question asking for the top three delays by airline, I got the three most-delayed flights altogether (along with which airline was responsible for each). Typing "What were the top three ARR_DELAY grouped by Airline" didn't work. Neither did "What were the top three ARR_DELAY for each Airline?"
When I asked "What was the Mean ARR_DELAY by Airline" I received the appropriate response. "Average ARR_DELAY" worked as well. However, "What was the Median ARR_DELAY by Airline" returned the median for all flights. That's curiously inconsistent behavior, especially since Google Sheets pivot tables can calculate medians by group. For those who were hoping Explore would be a simple way to type out natural-language instructions whenever you want a pivot table, the platform isn't quite there, at least yet.
Next up: counts by group. "What is the COUNT of each Airline" just gave me the total number of rows in my spreadsheet. So did "What is the count by Airline." If I typed in "Airline," I got a list of unique Airlines in the data.
Was this an impossible request? No, it turns out that "Distribution of Airline" is the correct phrase to get a count grouped by Airline ("Airline Distribution," however, couldn't be understood.). "Count of [some other column] by Airline" also ended up giving me a count of records for each Airline.
I'll be the first to admit that "Distribution of [variable of my choice]" is a lot easier to remember than creating a new pivot table. But if Explore is truly designed to be "natural language" as opposed to a simplified SQL requiring specific syntax, it needs some better understanding.
To be fair, Power BI has similar problems understanding my queries, although it sometimes seems to provide a bit more guidance while developing questions. Being a BI tool, it has some other advantages, such as natural-language requests for visualizations -- you can ask it to generate a graph of your results. Google Sheets Explore offers some automated visualizations of your data, and you can easily add those to your spreadsheet with a single click. But as far as I can tell, if a visualiation isn't generated in Explore automatically, there isn't a way to ask it to make you one.
But back to Explore's natural-language capabilities. One of the best tips for using this new functionality is to look carefully at the Answer text which displays just under your question and above your results. It will tell you how it interpreted your question, such as "Average of DEP_DELAY by Airline" if you asked it "What is the mean of DEP_DELAY by airline?" That's probably the best way to ensure what you've requested is also what Sheets has understood.
The Best PC Builds. Our title is practically self-explanatory. Unlike the System Builder Marathon, these configurations are not chosen by Tom's Hardware's editors. They are submitted and selected by our forum members based on defined pricing tiers. Every so often, we ask the community for its help picking parts based on performance and features for the price. Feel free to quibble in the comments, as always, and submit your own ideas next time around.
The Tom's __hardware editors and forum team believe this is a great place to come together and showcase the fusion of content and community. For nearly two decades (2016 marks our 20th anniversary) Tom's Hardware has brought you the news and reviews of the latest in PC hardware, but also the famous Tom's Hardware forum, now more than 2 million members strong, a remarkable milestone we recently surpassed.
The forum attracts technology enthusiasts of all stripes and levels, connected by their interest in discussing computer __hardware and helping solve technical challenges. Many are ultimately seeking help in building a PC, and they receive that help not only through our editorial content but thanks to the dedicated moderators and forum members who put countless hours into assisting others. Because of their expertise and the constant requests for help with PC builds, our members have developed a talent for finding the best prices and putting together the best system builds.
The following selections showcase all of that. We received numerous submissions and enjoyed examining all of your PC builds, but we could ultimately only select one system per price range — thanks to the readers and forum members who participated!
MORE: How To Build A PC
MORE: All PC Builds Content
September 2016 Update
With the new wave of AMD and Nvidia graphics cards flooding the market, it’s time to update our community-driven Best Builds feature. We asked you for your best builds at various budgets, and we received some excellent submissions. We narrowed those down with the help of our dedicated readers, and we’re ready to show you the results.
Best PC Builds
Homeless Overclocker
Best @ $500
No Review
$493.93 Suggested price
Case
DIYPC P48-BK
Cooling
✗
CPU
Intel Core i3-6100
Graphics
PowerColor RED DRAGON Radeon RX 460
Memory
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB)
Motherboard
ASRock Z170M Pro4S
PSU
Rosewill 450W 80+
Primary Storage
OCZ TRION 150 240GB
Secondary Storage
✗
Other
✗
Built By
damric
My PC Costs As Much As My Vive!!
Best @ $750
No Review
$744.90 Suggested price
Case
Corsair 200R ATX
Cooling
✗
CPU
Intel Core i5-6500
Graphics
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060
Memory
Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB)
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-H170-GAMING 3
PSU
SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze
Primary Storage
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB
Secondary Storage
✗
Other
✗
Built By
g-unit1111
i5-6600K GTX1070 Build
Best @ $1000
No Review
$995.89 Suggested price
Case
NZXT Source 210 (Black)
Cooling
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
CPU
Intel Core i5-6600K
Graphics
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Windforce OC
Memory
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)
Motherboard
ASRock Z170 Pro4S
PSU
Corsair RMx 750W 80+ Gold
Primary Storage
A-Data Premier SP550 120GB
Secondary Storage
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB
Other
✗
Built By
King Dranzer
Broken Flames
Best Mini ITX @ $1000
No Review
$1006.64 Suggested price
Case
Cooler Master Elite 130
Cooling
✗
CPU
Intel Core i5-6500
Graphics
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB
Memory
G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series 16GB (2 x 8GB)
Motherboard
ASRock H110M-ITX/ac Mini ITX
PSU
EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze
Primary Storage
A-Data Premier SP550 240GB
Secondary Storage
Hitachi Ultrastar 1TB
Other
✗
Built By
logainofhades
i7-6700K GTX1080 Build
Best @ $1250
No Review
$1286.90 Suggested price
Case
NZXT Source 210 (Black)
Cooling
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
CPU
Intel Core i5-6700K
Graphics
Asus GeForce GTX 1080 8GB TURBO
Memory
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)
Motherboard
ASRock Z170 Pro4S
PSU
Corsair RMx 750W 80+ Gold
Primary Storage
A-Data Premier SP550 120GB
Secondary Storage
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB
Other
✗
Built By
King Dranzer
ANXIETY
Best @ $1500
No Review
$1501.58 Suggested price
Case
Deepcool TESSERACT SW
Cooling
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
CPU
Intel Core i7-6800K
Graphics
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB
Memory
Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (2 x 4GB)
Motherboard
MSI X99A Raider ATX
PSU
EVGA BQ 650W 80+ Bronze
Primary Storage
Seagate Barracuda 1TB
Secondary Storage
✗
Other
✗
Built By
SR-71 Blackbird
Little Monster
Best @ $2000
No Review
$2002.36 Suggested price
Case
Corsair 350D Window
Cooling
CRYORIG A80
CPU
Intel Core i7-6800K
Graphics
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB G1
Memory
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (4 x 4GB)
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-X99M-GAMING 5
PSU
EVGA SuperNOVA P2 850W 80+ Platinum
Primary Storage
Sandisk X400 512GB M.2-2280
Secondary Storage
Seagate Barracuda 2TB
Other
LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer
Built By
logainofhades
ROSWELL REALITY
Best VR @ $2000
No Review
$2500.83 Suggested price
Case
Phanteks Enthoo Pro M
Cooling
CRYORIG H5 Universal
CPU
Intel Core i7-6850K
Graphics
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB x2
Memory
Team Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB)
Motherboard
MSI X99A Raider ATX
PSU
EVGA 850W 80+ Bronze
Primary Storage
Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB
Secondary Storage
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB
Other
✗
Built By
SR-71 Blackbird
MORE: Best Cases
Best $500 PC Build
Homeless Overclocker - Built By: damric
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NOTE:
These days, gaming on a budget has never been easier. Despite its name, the Homeless Overclocker designed by damric does not use a typical overclockable CPU. Instead, it uses an Intel Core i3-6100 processor with a locked core multiplier. Although Intel doesn’t want you to overclock its Core i3 processors, you can still base clock overclock them with select motherboards, such as Asrock’s Z170M Pro4S. Even if overclocking isn’t in your wheelhouse, the Core i3-6100 comes clocked at 3.7GHz and should offer decent performance out of the box.
For gaming, the Homeless Overclocker uses AMD’s budget friendly Radeon RX 460 GPU. This graphics card isn’t going to max out the latest games, but it should get them running with modest detail settings.
Although this system was compiled on a tight budget, it is important to point out the weak points in the build. The biggest issue is its rather limited storage space, with its 240GB SSD and no other storage devices. An SSD is a clear advantage in terms of performance, but you may find it difficult to fit many games on an SSD this size. The system also has less RAM than we would like to see in a 2016 gaming PC, but it would be exceptionally difficult to accommodate 16GB of RAM at this low budget.
MORE: Best CPU Cooling
MORE: How To Choose A CPU Cooler
Best $750 VR Build
My PC Costs As Much As My Vive - Built By: g-unit1111
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This system, designed by g-unit1111, takes advantage of Nvidia’s recently released GeForce GTX 1060 GPU to achieve high-performance gaming on a relatively tight budget. The build also includes an Intel Core i5-6500 CPU and a Gigabyte GA-H170-Gaming 3 motherboard. No overclocking features here, but the Core i5-6500 should easily outpace the Core i3-6100 on the $500 build.
Although this system is clearly more powerful, the system’s storage and memory are weak points again. Because the budget is somewhat higher, it would be much easier to fit a 16GB RAM kit in this build, but these are always the tough choices when picking parts. Unlike the $500 build, this system has plenty of storage space for the average user, but an SSD didn’t fit into the budget.
MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy
Best $1,000 PC Build
i5-6600K GTX 1070 Build - Built By: King Dranzer
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King Dranzer’s i5-6600K GTX1070 Build pushes performance higher still, with an unlocked Core i5-6600K CPU and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. With $1,000 to spend, it becomes increasingly easy to build a powerful PC without significant weak points. The extra $250 allowed King Dranzer to push RAM capacity up to 16GB, and the system features both an SSD and an HDD. The weakest aspect of this system is its rather small 120GB SSD.
MORE: Best Graphics Cards
MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table
Best $1,000 Mini-ITX PC Build
Broken Frames - Built By: logainofhades
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Every PC gamer wants a powerful computer, but many of them also want a compact system that doesn’t clutter up their room. This build takes space into consideration, and it is limited to hardware that fits inside a mini-ITX case. Overall, Broken Frames is nearly as powerful as the i5-6600K GTX1070 build from King Dranzer. This system’s designer, logainofhades, also opted for an EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card and a 16GB RAM kit. Moreover, this system SSD is less problematic, with its 240GB capacity.
Broken Frames falls behind the i5-6600K GTX1070 Build in CPU horsepower with its slightly less expensive Core i5-6500. The system also uses a somewhat-lackluster ASRock H110M-ITX/ac motherboard, which uses the low-end H110 chipset. Finding an affordable high-quality mini-ITX motherboard is the hardest part of building a mini-ITX system, though, and this one is quite functional and shouldn’t hurt performance.
MORE: Best Memory
Best $1,250 PC Build
i7-6700K GTX1080 Build - Built By: King Dranzer
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King Dranzer also submitted the best $1,250 build, improving on the $1,000 build by replacing the Core i5-6600k with a Core i7-6700k. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 gets an upgrade to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080. While overall performance has increased, the 120GB SSD remains.
MORE: Best Motherboards
MORE: How To Choose A Motherboard
Best $1,500 PC Build
Anxiety - Built By: SR-71
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Having reached the limits of the LGA1151 platform, SR-71 Blackbird was forced to use an LGA1166-3 CPU to further increase processor performance. This, however, comes with a heavy price tag, because X99 motherboards and LGA1166-3 CPUs are considerably more expensive than their LGA1151 counterparts. As a result, this build backtracks on RAM capacity to 8GB, and it also lacks an SSD. These are fairly significant trade-offs for a $1,500 build, but it is technically the fastest system so far (on paper).
MORE: Best Power Supplies
MORE: How We Test Power Supplies
MORE: How To Choose A PSU
Best $2,000 PC Build
Little Monster - Built By: logainofhades
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Additional funds in your PC build budget can fix just about anything, and that is essentially what happened with Little Monster. This build uses the i7-6800K CPU, an X99 platform, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080. Unlike Anxiety, however, Little Monster beefs up the rest of the system with 16GB of DDR4 clocked at 3200 MHz, and a 512GB M.2 SSD.
Logainofhades also equipped the Little Monster with a higher-quality Platinum efficiency power supply. Although this build isn’t necessarily faster in terms of its processing hardware, the advantages it gains from the additional component hardware make it a much more well-rounded, feature-rich build.
MORE: Best SSDs
MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs
Best $2,500 VR Build
Roswell Reality - Built By: SR-71
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SR-71 Blackbird’s Roswell Reality is designed to be the best $2,500 build for VR gaming. It far surpasses all other builds by using two EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics cards in SLI. It also has the fastest CPU so far, with its choice of the i7-6850K. The power supply and SSD used in this build are lower quality components compared to the Little Monster build, but when you pack in multiple flagship graphics cards, even a budget of $2,500 can get tight. It’s doubtful you will have any issues running games in VR, though.
MORE: Best Monitors MORE: How To Build A PC MORE: Systems in the Forums
Solfar Studios released a mixed reality trailer of the Everest VR experience, which to our knowledge, is the first Unreal Engine mixed reality VR trailer for any game. 
