Items tagged with Star Wars
If you bought Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to play on previous generation consoles, a major update is now available to those who upgraded to next-gen Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 consoles. As promised, Electronic Arts and developer Respawn Entertainment announced that the free cross-generation upgrade is now available to existing owners of the game. While Jedi: Fallen Order already looked good on consoles like the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro, the is next-gen makes the game look even better all-around while ramping up performance. According to Respawn, here are the updates presents with the next-gen upgrade: Higher Resolution Textures & Assets 4K/HDR Resolution Improved 60 FPS Performance...
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Today is May 4th, better known as Star Wars Day. With this in mind, Disney dropped a bombshell on us this morning in the form of the first official look at the “real life” lightsaber that it’s been developing in [relative] secret. Although we doubt this realistic prop will sever limbs of cocky Jedi Knights that don’t have the high ground, it’s no doubt cool. The lightsaber is seen in a short video clip posted on the Disney Parks YouTube page and shows the “energy beam” extending, backed by the classic sound effect. The lightsabers will be available to use at the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel at the Walt Disney Resort. This interactive hotel will...
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Star Wars fans have a new video game to look forward to from EA called Star Wars: Squadrons. Recently EA showed off a nearly 6-minute long gameplay video that gives a glimpse at the beautiful graphics and starfighter action that players can expect. The game is a first-person space dogfighting title that will allow players to fight as either an Imperial pilot or a Rebel pilot in a single-player campaign mode. The Imperial pilot that players can choose is Case Kassandora, while the Rebel pilot is Rao Highmoon. Both of the pilots are customizable by the player, and there's also a multiplayer mode in the game. In the multiplayer mode, Squadrons offers 5v5 online fighting action with multiple game...
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One of the key selling points of the Disney+ streaming service is The Mandalorian, a new series based in the Star Wars universe set 25 years prior to the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It is a remarkable epic, and as you might imagine, computer graphics play heavily into its creation. Fortunately for geeks like us, Industrial Light & Magic posted a nearly 5-minute video highlighting some of what goes into shooting an episode of The Mandalorian. At the heart of it all is a massive 270-degree semicircular video wall and ceiling. It spans 20 feet high and is 75 feet in diameter, and is powered by seven high-powered machines. "Digital 3D environments created by ILM played back interactively...
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You have to hand it to Google, despite any misgivings you might have towards the company as a whole, it delivers some interesting products and services. One of them is Google Maps. I personally think it is an underappreciated service, though Google continues to improve it all the time. It also sprinkles in some fun features, the newest of which is a hyperdrive animation when traveling from one planet to the next. This is the sort of thing that tickles our inner nerd. It is also a well-timed feature update, with the newest Star Wars film now playing in theaters. Until someone builds an actual Millennium Falcon and offers affordable rides through space, this is perhaps the closest thing we will...
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You Too Can Feel The Fortnite Force With Lightsabers, Rey And Fin In Epic's Rise Of Skywalker Update
Fortnite fans who missed out on the special "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" event can now catch a look at what the Fortnite X Star Wars gameplay will include. The big draw here is that players get to duke it out with lightsabers in melee combat and shoot enemies with First Order blasters. The gameplay video seen below shows massive Imperial starships hovering in the sky and TIE fighters zooming around and trying to bring down the Millennium Falcon while the iconic Star Wars music plays in the background. The gameplay footage does show that players will be able to deflect projectiles from the blasters using their lightsabers, as Jedi can do in the film series. We also see Storm Tropers on the...
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Although Star War Jedi: Fallen Order was first announced back at E3 2018, we're getting our first real in-depth look at the game thanks to footage that Electronic Arts delivered today at E3 2019. As we already,Jedi: Fallen Order was developed by Respawn -- the same development studio being Titanfall and Apex Legends. The single-play Star Wars adventure centers on Cal Kestis, which managed to escape Order 66 (as portrayed in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) and is currently on the run from The Empire’s Second Sister and a band of Purge Troopers. The footage seen in the 14-minute gameplay trailer below takes place on the Wookie planet Kashyyyk, where Kestis...
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The holidays are almost here, and we want to do our part to get you all worked up and in the holiday spirit. We thought there’s no better way to do that than to give away some HOT new tech gear brought you by Lenovo! Up for grabs in our latest HOT Holiday giveaway are two Lenovo Smart Displays with Google Assistant – one 10” model and one 8” – along with the Lenovo Star Wars Jedi Challenges AR Kit With Kylo Ren Lightsaber! 1st Prize: Lenovo 10” Smart Display 2nd Prize: Lenovo 8” Smart Display 3rd Prize: Lenovo Star Wars Jedi Challenges AR Kit With Kylo Ren Lightsaber To be entered to win one of these awesome prizes, please hit the widget below and...
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It's May 4th and at least one person near you has said "May the 4th Be With You Today" which is the official catchphrase of Star Wars Day. If you are a Star Wars fan and want to celebrate the day by spending some money, Google Play has a sale for you. To celebrate the day all sorts of audio books, comics, TV shows, and games are on sale. Most of the audiobooks are 25% off with some of the notable titles including The Last Jedi: Expanded Edition, Thrawn (Star Wars), Aftermath: Star Wars: Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Catalyst (Star Wars): A Rogue One Novel. If audiobooks aren't your bag, there are e-books and comics in the sale as well. Notable titles in those genres include...
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In this latest episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks webcast, we chat about our results with NVIDIA's monstrous Titan V and what could be coming next for consumers. We also talk about the Lenovo Star Wars Jedi Challenges in AR kit, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 in Samsung's Galaxy S9 rumor, storage advancements with Seagate, building your own personal cloud, and more... Show Notes: 02:02 - NVIDIA TITAN V Review: Volta Compute, Mining, And Gaming Performance Explored 13:56 - Lenovo Star Wars: Jedi Challenges Review: Battling Darth Vader In AR 24:17 - Seagate Unveils Breakthrough Multi Actuator Hard Drive Tech That Could Double Performance 29:58 - Building A Personal Cloud With Seagate 12TB...
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NVIDIA caused a great disturbance in the Force recently, as if millions of gamers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. We fear something terrible has happened, and they might not be able to get their hands on the glorious Star Wars TITAN Xp Collector’s Edition cards that were announced a few days ago, but arrive today, alongside EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II.Fear not young Padawan. If you can’t gaze upon a Star Wars TITAN Xp Collector’s Edition with your own eyes, we will do our best to convey what it’s like to game on one of these limited edition beasts and witness its customized, lightsaber-themed shroud illuminating your system.Embrace The Dark Side...Yes, we’ve got one...
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Microtransactions, for better or worse, have become a big business in the world of gaming. Ubisoft recently announced that its revenue from microtransactions now exceeds that of actual game sales. Electronic Arts isn't immune to this practice either, and has come under fire for nickel and diming customers to unlock fan-favorite heroes in Star Wars: Battlefront II. For example, the amount of credits necessary to unlock Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker stands at 60,000 credits. Actually completing the campaign "only" nets you 20,000 credits. In order to unlock these characters for "free", you have to devote roughly 40 hours to the game each, or fork over some hard-earned real cash. While many games,...
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Disney certainly isn't letting its Star Wars IP go to waste, not after purchasing Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion and gaining the distribution rights to all subsequent Star Wars movies, in 2012. And to Disney's credit, it has done a phenomenal job with the Star Wars universe. To keep the good times rolling, Disney announced it will create another Stars Wars trilogy, led by The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. "We all loved working with Rian on The Last Jedi," said Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm. "He’s a creative force, and watching him craft The Last Jedi from start to finish was one of the great joys of my career. Rian will do amazing things with the blank canvas of this new trilogy."...
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Late last week, NVIDIA released a rather cryptic teaser trailer for an upcoming enthusiast graphics card. All that we could make out from the video were a dueling theme with red versus green (which we assumed to be AMD versus NVIDIA) and the name TITAN X Collector's Edition, which was emblazoned on the card. Today, NVIDIA officially announced the TITAN Xp Collector's Edition, which is available in two Star Wars-themed variants to let you embrace the light/dark side. In the red corner, we have the Galactic Empire, which features a finish that NVIDIA describes as "simple, clean lines, emulating the high-end, orderly nature of the resource-rich Empire". We sure hope that force chokes are optional...
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There's a new Star Wars movie on the horizon, and Electronic Arts (EA) is looking to leverage the hype surrounding that film to fuel a spectacular launch for Star Wars Battlefront II. Battlefront II is the follow-up to its 2015 predecessor, and EA wants you to know that this game is bigger, badder and loaded to the brim with content (something that was quite lacking with the original Star Wars Battlefront). EA has released a nearly 5-minute-long trailer for the game that is narrated by none other than John Boyega, one of the stars of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Boyega runs you through everything that's new with the game including class levels -- Assault,...
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Hardcore geeks are typically split into two factions—Star Trek and Star Wars fans. If you fall into the latter category, we have good news. Disney has released the first trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which picks up where Star Wars: The Force Awakens left off. It is the eighth episode in the Star Wars saga, which can get a little confusing with Star Wars: Rogue One thrown into the mix. Let us explain. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm from George Lucas for a cool $4.05 billion in 2012, it announced plans to release three more main episodes every two to three years, those being Episode 7 (Force Awakens), Episode 8 (The Last Jedi), and Episode 9 (not yet named). Rather than make rabid...
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What was simply known as Episode VIII is now Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Lucasfilm announced the official name for the next Star Wars movie in the ongoing Skywalker saga, though stopped way short of providing any details about the plot or who exactly is being referenced in the title. In other words, Lucasfilm answered one question and raised many others, all just by revealing the title. Here is what little we do know. The Last Jedi is written and directed by Rian Johnson, who's resume includes directing three episodes of Breaking Bad (Fly, Fifty-One, and Ozymandias), as well as The Brothers Bloom and Looper. He also won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the 2005 Sundance Film...
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Like a massive army of Storm Troopers willing to follow devious commands, a pair of researchers from the University College London warn that a "large number of Twitter users are bots" that are ready to "contaminate the Twitter API stream." There are more than 350,000 in all, comprising what the researchers have named the Star Wars botnet. It has been dormant and "well hidden" since it was created in 2013. Juan Echeverria, a research student at UC London, and his supervisor and senior lecturer Shi Zhou outlined the threat in a research paper that is awaiting approval in a scientific journal. The have not present their findings to Twitter yet for that reason. Their main concern is not that the...
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“I don't want my life to imitate art, I want my life to be art”.I remember the first time I saw Star Wars: A New Hope. I was six years old and watching the re-releases in a Southern Californian theater. At this point in time, there were not a ton of strong, female characters in science fiction and fantasy for me to admire or emulate. This all changed with Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. Not only did she put the often whiny and snarky male characters in their place, but she was a compelling, respected leader for a cause she believed in. Image from Jimvir on FlickrCarrie Fisher passed away today at the age of sixty, after suffering from a heart attack last Friday on a flight from London to Los...
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It does not matter what your political affiliation is, if any, we should all be able to agree that more can be done to take care of our military veterans. That is why DARPA (Defense Advanced Researched Projects Agency) deserves major kudos this holiday season. DARPA has developed a sophisticated bionic arm and is offering these upper-limb prostheses to amputees who are U.S. war veterans. The prosthetic system is cleverly named LUKE, which stands for Life Under Kinetic Evolution, but is also an intentional reference to the limb Luke Skywalker wielded in Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. It is a battery powered limb that is about the size and weight of a flesh and blood arm. The prosthetic...
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Have you ever dreamed of racing through the forests of Endor on a top-of-the-line speeder bike? YouTuber Devinsupertramp has made this childhood dream into a reality -- sort of. The vlogger refashioned hydro-powered Jetovators into the iconic Star Wars speeders from Return of the Jedi. The video was filmed on the Sacramento River in California, while the speeders were essentially Jetovators modified with duck tape. According to one of the creators, “If you think of the Jetovator as a Kawasaki Ninja, this is like a custom chopper.” They estimated that they used roughly 75 rolls of duct tape. The three bikes also survived a total of twenty crashes with only a few scratches. The Jetovators in the...
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In a galaxy not so far away, the final trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was released. Some new information was released alongside cinematic action-packed shots. It turns out that the Skywalkers are not the only members of the Star Wars universe with daddy issues. The trailer begins with Galen Erso, father of the protagonist Jyn Erso, telling his young daughter, “Whatever I do, I do to protect you. Do you understand?” It seems that Galen Erso is one of the main reasons the Rebellion has sought out Jyn. Galen is the key architect of the notorious Death Star. A member of the Rebellion is shown breaking Jyn out of prison so that they may learn more information about her father. Later in the...
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