NVIDIA Announces GeForce GTX 1060: Starting at $249, Available July 19th
by Ryan Smith on July 7, 2016 9:00 AM ESTNVIIDA Ansel, Simultaneous Multi-Projection, & VR Funhouse Status Updates
Along with today’s news about the GeForce GTX 1060 launch, NVIDIA is also offering updated news on a few of their technologies and related software projects.
We’ll start with Ansel, NVIDIA’s 360 degree high-resolution screenshot composition and capture technology. After initially announcing it alongside the GTX 1080 as part of their Pascal technology briefing, the company is announcing that it will finally be shipping in select games this month, with the first of those shipping today. The first two games to get Ansel-enabled will be DICE’s Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst and CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3. Ansel support for Mirror’s Edge is launching today (or as NVIDIA’s press release puts it, “immediate availability”), meanwhile The Witcher 3 will get support added later this month.
As the tech requires vendors to integrate it into games and game engines on a case-by-case basis, this is a gradual rollout, but one NVIDIA is hoping to accelerate over time. The company has already lined up a half dozen additional games that will support the technology, including Unreal Tournament and No Man’s Sky, but they are not announcing an availability date at this time.
Meanwhile, in a more general status update on their Simultaneous Multi-Projection technology, NVIDIA is announcing that they have lined up both Unity and Epic Games to add support for the technology to their respective Unity and Unreal Engine 4 game engines. To that end the company is also confirming that over 30 games are now in development to implement the technology, including Epic’s Unreal Tournament.
Besides being a marquee feature of the Pascal architecture, simultaneous multi-projection is seen by NVIDIA as a key element in establishing a lead in the VR market. Though the full benefits of the technology remain to be seen, any potential performance advantage would be in their favor, and we should expect to see it significantly promoted alongside the GTX 1060, which will be NVIIDA’s entry-level VR card. Of course as developers need to implement the technology first, which is why for NVIDIA is it so important to get developers on-board and to make sure potential customers are aware.
Finally, speaking of VR, NVIDIA is also announcing that their big tech demo for Pascal, VR Funhouse, will be shipping this month. Unveiled alongside Ansel and SMP at the Pascal launch, VR Funhouse is built on Unreal Engine 4 and is meant to serve as a testbed for NVIDIA’s latest GameWorks/VRWorks technologies, including SMP and VRWorks Audio. The tech demo will be released on Steam later this month and will support the GTX 1060 and above. Though Pascal owners will want to take note that as this is a VR demo, it will require a VR headset – specifically, the HTC Vive – in order to use it.
Meanwhile NVIDIA has also confirmed that the source code to VR Funhouse will be opened up to developers. Though the primarily goal here is to allow developers to add additional attractions/modules to the tech demo, more broadly speaking it’s another means to help encourage developer adoption of GameWorks/VRWorks, giving developers a starting point for using the various technologies in NVIDIA’s libraries.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
228 Comments
View All Comments
FMinus - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
I would expect a new architecture and a new process to deliver better performance regardless, and considering this is a 232mm(sq) chip which is on the low end I also find the price quite fitting and and in Europe a bit pushing.Frankly, not succumbing to the AMD hype that was spread before the RX 480, I was still expecting that Polaris chip to at least go head to head with the 3 year old Hawaii XT, which would seem, at least to me, expected from a new chip build at 14nmFF and in 2016, but that was before detailed specs were announced.
They castrated this 2304sp Polaris chip with 5 machetes not just one.
ACE76 - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I don't know where you get your information from but AMD's high end cards ARe coming out...in 4th quarter this year which is not too far out...the RX480 is definitely a card you could keep for 3-4 years...I don't know what gives you the impression it can't...I just finished building a new system in almost 7 years and was using onboard video because I wanted to buy one of the newer cards...I decided on the RX480 8gb...at $240 you can't go wrong with that...and if you really want more performance or 4k gaming, you can add another one for a Crossfire setup that will still be 25% cheaper than a single nVidia 1080...unless you are looking for bleeding edge performance that only gives you high benchmarks, wait till November/December when AMD r9 490 cards come out and compare them to the 1080...but if you just want a good gaming card that will play all current games well, the RX480 is a great card.tipoo - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
iirc they could still float for a number of quarters (~2 years I think?) on liquid funds if they stopped making a single dollar starting tomorrow. I hope for their sake the 480 still sells decently though.Communism - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
US companies cannot fail as long as they can still sell bonds. Fed interest rates are at 0%, making investors chasing yield on junk bonds all over the place.ACE76 - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
It will sell well and AMD's Zen architecture should vastly help them in the CPU market...they probably won't eclipse Intel or Nvidia but they will always be up there in competition and with cheaper prices.euskalzabe - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
And we should all be very worried about this. A faltering or possibly destroyed AMD is bad news all around for everybody. If that happens, forget about decent generational improvements from Nvidia. It'll be the Intel situation all over again.eddman - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
... because AMD going bankrupt will benefit consumers. Wait, what?fanofanand - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
re-read his comment again, I think you are missing what he said.Big Poppa Pump - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
You're absolutely clueless. Do you even know who's supplying the GPUs for consoles?iLLz - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
And yet AMD hasn't turned a profit in years, so what's your point? We all need AMD and nvidia to compete. We need that healthy competition between them, but let's face it, AMD mucked up the rx480 launch with under performing, out of spec card. How much longer can AMD not turn a profit? They surely don't have that much in the coffers to keep this up much longer. Here's to hoping Zen and Vega are hits and return AMD to glory and much needed market share.