NVIDIA have released the application behind their recent human face-rendering technology video, so that home users can run it for themselves.

You can adjust the rendering options in real-time during the video, to see how NVIDIA’s FaceWorks technology copes with different lighting conditions. Getting creeped out by the Uncanny Valley effect is not part of the demo but you’re welcome to do it anyway.

If you’d like, you can download the demo right here from our file library which is, of course, quota-free for iiNet group customers.

Source: NVIDIA

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of NVIDIA’s GTX 780, Paul Miller’s return to the Internet, and Virgin Galactic’s plan for relatively affordable commercial space travel.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of AMD’s response to Nvidia’s “bitter” PS4 put-downs, possible Internet sabotage attempts, the lifting of electronics use during take-off and landing, and yet another amazing discovery that could change the way we make and use electronics.

Closing out today’s news is NVIDIA’s just-released-out-of-GDC tech demo, showing real-time destruction of a Roman-esque colosseum. In it, you can see the crosshair moving across the scene and initiating explosions of rubble and masonry, and looking generally very impressive. It’s not really textured or in-game so it’s hard to tell how heavy the required processing is, but the video claims that it’s running on a single GTX 680. Check it out:

Source: VG247

NVIDIA have released GeForce 314.22 drivers for you to download, claiming a boost of up to 41% in BioShock Infinite and an astonishing 71% in Tomb Raider.

“Other highlights include single-GPU and SLI performance improvements of up to 30% in Civilization V, 22% in Sniper Elite V2, and 12% in Sleeping Dogs,” reads the announcement. “314.22 WHQL also includes SLI profiles for Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter, Resident Evil 6, and Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army; 3D Vision profiles for Brutal Legend, MUD, and Tomb Raider; and a NVIDIA Control Panel Ambient Occlusion profile for BioShock Infinite.”

Head on over our file library (or to the GeForce website) and grab them for yourself.

Source: GeForce (Thanks, PalZer0)

It’s that time again; that time when every middleware and engine manufacturer suddenly remembers they haven’t told everyone how awesome they are lately – incidentally just ahead of the release of a bunch of new consoles, which, oh hey, developers need a new license for. Happily, for we the end users this just means we get to check out some great tech demos. Below you’ll find a demonstration of Nvidia’s new Face Works tech, which was shown at the company’s GPU Technology Conference this week.

You’ll want to skip to about 8:40 if you just want to see it in action; remember this is not pre-rendered, which makes up for the lack of hair and any real complexity in the scene. We probably won’t see tech like this in games for a very long time, alas, unless they’re games about disembodied heads floating in space.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of Nvidia’s dismissal of next-gen console processing power, a videogame controller for your feet, real-life Medi-gel, and more on science’s intention to destroy us all with robots.

We’ve already experienced the occasional crash and weird graphical artefact while trying to play Tomb Raider on our GTX670 here, and NVIDIA are on the case — but they need to collaborate with Crystal Dynamics to clean it up.

“We are aware of major performance and stability issues with GeForce GPUs running Tomb Raider with maximum settings,” claims NVIDIA’s Andrew Burnes on the GeForce web site. “Unfortunately, NVIDIA didn’t receive final code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided. We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible.”

Burnes also clarified that they would need time to collaborate with Crystal Dynamics on the fix. “Please be advised that these issues cannot be completely resolved by an NVIDIA driver. The developer will need to make code changes on their end to fix the issues on GeForce GPUs as well. As a result, we recommend you do not test Tomb Raider until all of the above issues have been resolved.”

“In the meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of their favorite PC games.”

NVIDIA overnight revealed their new GTX Titan, the card with the sort of power you’ll find in the Titan, the the Oak Ridge Supercomputer. Their site features a flashy video but it doesn’t tell you a lot about what’s inside, so — courtesy of Anantech, whose breakdown you should absolutely read — I’ve embedded the following chart below that shows where it falls on the NVIDIA GTX scale.

NVIDIA are pushing it hard on their site as the ultimate gaming solution, touting its TXAA, PhysX and GPU Boost 2 support with temperature control, overclocking and overvoltage all within the utility.

Note the launch price: $1,000, the same as the GTX 690. But that’s the US price — what will we see here in Australia? Fingers crossed.

More coverage at  Guru3D, Hardware Canucks, Hardware Heaven, Legit Reviews, and Overclockers Club (thanks, Blue’s News).

The open beta test for Crysis 3 will kick off later today, and games.on.net is doing our part by booting up our multiplayer servers so that you’ll have a solid Australian presence to kick ass and take names on.

But what can you do to prepare? Well, NVIDIA owners can grab the latest drivers for their cards, with the company promising that these 313.95 beta drivers can improve performance in Crytek’s latest rig-melter by 35%.

“Other highlights include sizeable SLI and single-GPU performance gains of up to 27% in Assassin’s Creed III, 19% in Civilization V, 14% in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, 14% in DiRT 3, 11% in Just Cause 2, 10% in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, 10% in F1 2012, and 10% in Far Cry 3,” claims NVIDIA in their announcement.

“Rounding out the release is a SLI profile for the newly released DmC: Devil May Cry, and an updated profile for the free-to-play, third-person co-op shooter, Warframe.”

We’ve uploaded these new drivers to our file library to save you the quota: grab the 64-bit Windows ones here and the 32-bit Windows ones here.

Source: Thanks, PalZer0!

Downloading drivers and optimising graphics settings is basically what PC gaming is all about, and NVIDIA are trying to make it easier with a new tool called ‘GeForce Experience’. It’s been in private testing for a while now but has just gone into open beta which means you can download it for yourself right here.

What does it do? Well, it automatically detects when there’s a new driver available for your card, and downloads it for you in the application. Secondly, it also allows you to optimise the graphics settings for your games and gives you examples of where and how increased settings will show improvement.

GeForce experience supports 41 titles, including Far Cry 3, Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands 2 and Skyrim. Check out their video below to see what it’s all about.

Fresh from yesterday’s reveal at this year’s CES, NVIDIA have deployed this demo footage of their ‘Project Shield’ Android console/Steam streaming device. A lot of tech sites are labelling this a ‘real-time’ demo but it’s not clear what, if anything, is being rendered here in real-time. Was this whole movie rendered on the chipset in the Shield? Even the footage of Hawken at the end is presumably just stuck on during the final cut. So! Take it with a grain of salt, but it sure is shiny:

NVIDIA have also deployed an official website for the device, which you can peruse if you’re keen for more info and shiny package shots.