Geek News

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) takes place in San Francisco next month and this year's event includes the GDC's first ever film festival. For three days starting March 19th, the GDC will host a selection of documentary and narrative films focused on the art and culture of video games, and Q&As with the filmmakers will follow most of the screenings. Each day of the festival with be themed. The first day, focused on international works, will feature screenings of Branching Paths , Moleman 4 -- Longplay and the premiere of Heting Chen's Indie Games in China . The second puts the spotlight on webseries with the premiere of the feature-length version of The CheckPoint Series and two work-in-progress screenings of Noclip: Horizon: Zero Dawn and Area 5's Outerlands . The last day features works on arcade history and includes Touching Sounds , The Lost Arcade and the premiere of Josh Tsui's Insert Coin: Inside Midway's 90s Revolution . Anyone with a ...

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL include Pixel Visual Core , Google's first custom imaging chip that allows for HDR+ quality pictures in third-party apps like Instagram and Snapchat. But Pixel 2 users haven't been able to take advantage of those capabilities because the co-processor hasn't been enabled. Well, they'll be able to soon because Google announced today that it's turning on Pixel Visual Core, bringing the HDR+ technology that's been available through the Pixel 2's main camera app to other photography, social media or camera apps. Pixel Visual Core uses computational photography and machine learning to boost image quality in third-party apps that allow users to take photos. Now that it's enabled, Pixel 2 users can just take a pic in another app, and Pixel Visual Core will automatically make it brighter, more detailed and clearer. You can check out a before and after above. Google says the update that will switch on Pixel Visual Core is rolling ou...

When skiers and snowboarders prepare for a competition, they often have incredibly limited access to their race routes ahead of time. But the US ski and snowboard team is doing things a little differently than it has in the past, using VR to review routes multiple times before competing. It's working with a company called STRIVR , which has developed VR training programs for professional sports teams , college sports teams and even companies like Walmart, Visa and Lowe's. Now, STRIVR is helping US Ski & Snowboard prepare for competitions like the World Cup and the upcoming Olympic Games by letting the team relive particular routes in VR. "One of the rules of thumb I use for VR is that the technology is especially useful for teachable moments that are rare in the physical world. Getting mere minutes to prepare on the ski race course is the definition of rare," Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, said in a state...