By Adam Bankhurst @ IGN

The Call of Duty Endowment has announced that it has helped over 54,000 veterans find high quality careers, with 10,686 veterans being placed into well-paying jobs in 2018 alone. Since it began operations in 2009, the Call of Duty Endowment has been focused in its mission to help find veterans high quality careers by “supporting groups that prepare them for the job market.”

According to the Call of Duty Endowment, one third of working veterans are underemployed, and the amount of veterans asking for help in this regard has increased 59%. In 2018, the average cost-per-placement for veterans in jobs was $522 for the Endowment, which is “nearly six times as effective as United State Government efforts.” 93% of these job placements were for full-time work, with an average starting salary of over $58,000, and those in positions showed a 87% six-month retention rate.

The Endowment helped 11 organizations, awarding over $5.2 million in 2018 grants and $36 million in grants since 2009.

Read on to find out how you can help Veterans in the US or UK through the Call of Duty Endowment.

Source: Blue’s News

Activision announces that the promised free month of free play is now available in Blackout, the battle royale mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. This is live on all platforms through April 30th, and all progress will carry over for players who choose to buy the full game. This trailer accompanies the news, which follows:

Blackout Free Access features all the intense action from Black Ops 4’s battle royale game mode, with both the original Blackout map that brings together characters, locations, weapons and gear from across the series, all in the biggest map in franchise history, as well as the brand-new Alcatraz map (Alcatraz map live today on PS4 with other platforms to follow).

During the Free Access window, fans will be matchmade with all Blackout players, and be able to play in solos, duos and quads. All progression made will be saved and transferred if players choose to upgrade to a full version of the game.

Another year of Upgrades, Fixes and Additions have arrived

Shrapnel Games and Developer Camo Workshop announce that the 2019 winSPWW2 and winSPMBT upgrade patches are now available for download! We are bringing a storm of brand new content, revisions, and bug fixes that will leave you militarily motivated. Some enhancements are only available to Enhanced users. The 2019 winSPWW2 patch will upgrade v. 9.0 or above to v. 12.0 and the 2019 winSPMBT patch will upgrade v. 10.0 and up to v.13.0. As always, announcements first. DO NOT apply the upgrade patches while in the midst of a secure PBEM game as the game will fail.

Head on over to the Shrapnel Games website and check out the press release detailing the full list of changes in these two great games!

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD has released their Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.4.1 Drivers. This beta release features no performance enhancements, and it also doesn’t add any support for new games. Instead, it is centered around fixing various issues seen within AMD’s software and a couple of games. The biggest of these fixes is the elimination of crashes and application hang in World of Warcraft with Patch 8.1.5 or later when using MSAA. They have also eliminated graphical corruption seen in World of Tanks when in-game settings are set to the minimum when using Radeon RX Vega graphics products. Considering how popular both of these titles are it is likely more than a few gamers will be quite happy with these fixes. AMD has made sure to note a few unresolved problems as well. The most annoying of which is likely going to be screen flicker with multiple displays at the desktop or with applications running on AMD’s Radeon VII.

The new Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.4.1 drivers are available online at the AMD driver download page.

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• SilentiumPC Announces Signum SG1X TG RGB Case
• Cooler Master Launches the MasterBox Q500L
• EK Water Blocks Announces EK-Scalar Quantum Line Multi-GPU Terminals
• Roccat Unveils the Noz Ultra-light Gaming Headset
• ADATA Announces SD600Q Rugged External SSD
• EK Water Blocks Releasing Gold-plated EK Vector Titan RTX Full Cover GPU Water Block for NVIDIA Titan RTX
• Alphacool Outs Eisbaer Refill Kit
• Team Group Releases MP34 M.2 Solid State Drive (3000MB/s)
• EK Water Blocks Releasing New Quantum Line Series EK-Velocity sTR4 Water Blocks for AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs
• ASUS Rolls Out ROG Swift PG349Q, a 120Hz Curved Ultrawide
• Corsair Issues Recall for Lot of H100i RGB Platinum SE Coolers
• Galax to Launch HoF Phison PS5012-E12 Based M.2. and Add-in SSDs
• Silverstone Unveils Compact Krypton KR02 CPU Cooler
• Phanteks Announces Universal Fan Controller PH-PWHUB 02
• Silverstone Adds More Strider Plus Bronze Modular PSUs to Its Lineup
• Spire Intros LCG-HSR Line of AIO Liquid CPU Coolers
• Patriot Launches Viper VPN100 SSDs: Up to 2TB, Massive Heatsink
• COLORFUL Officially Announces CVN B365M Gaming Pro V20 Motherboard
• Netgear Nighthawk AX4 Wi-Fi 6 Router Arrives on April 9th

COMBATSIM.COM enters the 21st century with its first video review.

The subject of this review is Thrustmaster’s T.Flight HOTAS 4, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown Edition.

Check it out on our new Combatsim YouTube channel.

Review Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMVWY3D-4ow

Deep Silver and 4A Games are happy to announce the release of the Metro Exodus ‘Ranger Update’ today for Xbox One, the all-in one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PlayStation® 4 computer entertainment system, and PC. This free update adds a host of new features, makes improvements across the board and addresses numerous bugs and issues.

New Game + offers players a new way to experience the game, granting them access to all weapons and attachments unlocked through prior play-throughs. The mode also allows players to adjust a range of variables to create their own personal and uniquely challenging experience.

Included in New Game + is the Developer Commentary feature, which allows players to find special tape players on which members of the 4A Games team discuss some of the design choices that went into making Metro Exodus in that area.

4A Games have further refined the control scheme with a new Controller Preset that improves sensitivity and dead zone per platform. There are also some platform specific new features and improvements in the update. 4A Games has added Mouse and Keyboard support for Xbox One, further improved RTX and DLSS support on PC, Dual Shock Controller Light support for PS4 and many more.

The Ranger Update also addresses a large number of player-reported issues as well as improving gameplay, balance and performance throughout.

To view the full notes for the update, please visit this page on the Metro Exodus website.

By Krzysztof Hukalowicz @ Guru3D

The Patriot brand is known more widely for making flash drives, SSDs, and RAM. On the 24th of October last year, they announced a new gaming keyboard with RGB backlighting – the Viper V765. It will be the next model in the Viper gaming series, which includes not only keyboards, but also mice, headphones, and other accessories. The V765 is, next to the V760, a keyboard designed for intermediate users, which means that it offers not only basic but also some more advanced functions, while keeping the price reasonable. The Patriot Viper V765 is priced at only USD 99, and for this amount you get Kailh White Box mechanical switches, water resistance, RGB backlighting, and a detachable magnetic wrist rest – which sounds like a good package.

Read The Review Here

Source: TechPowerUp!

After the oddity that was its GeForce 419.67 WHQL Creator Ready drivers, NVIDIA launched new GeForce drivers with the same 419.67 version number, but with “Game Ready” branding. It’s now clear that Creator Ready is a fork of the GeForce software, released at a slightly lesser frequency, targeting creativity and productivity software that don’t quite need Quadro feature-set or certifications. GeForce 419.67 WHQL Game Ready, on the other hand, add day-one optimization for “Battlefield V: Firestorm,” a new update that brings the highly addictive Battle Royale gameplay mode to the Battlefield franchise. Optimization is also added or refined for “Anthem,” “Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” and “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.” NVIDIA expanded the list of Adaptive Sync monitors that are now capable of G-Sync.

Among the bugs fixed are a performance drop noticed in DaVinci Resolve, overexposed brightness and color seen in “Far Cry: New Dawn” with HDR turned on; performance issues with “Total War: Warhammer 2″ with AA turned on; artifacts seen in certain Adobe applications; screen corruption when switching display modes with HDR turned on in “Apex Legends,” FOV reduction when recording with GeForce Experience; flickering noticed in “Star Citizen” followed by a CTD on “Turing” GPUs, abnormal time taken on GeForce GTX 980 responding to NVAPI calls; TITAN RTX overheating when enabling TCC mode via NVLink; and second monitor flickering with two monitors connected to an RTX 2070.

You can download the new GeForce 419.67 WHQL Game Ready drivers through GeForce Experience or via GeForce.com.

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• DIYPC Introduces the DIY-Line-RGB Chassis
• Thermalright Intros Silver Arrow IB-E Extreme Rev. B CPU Cooler
• ASUS Unveils 27-Inch QHD Gaming Monitor With 165 Hz Refresh Rate
• EK Water Blocks Releases EK-Vector Series Water Blocks for AMD Radeon VII
• ENERMAX Announces LIQMAX III AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
• TP-Link Introduces New Line of Value Packed Archer A Series Routers
• ENERMAX Readies SABERAY ADV, the Top-end Addressable RGB Gaming Case
• Roccat Announces the Kova AIMO Gaming Mouse
• EK Releases Aluminum Based Water Blocks for NVIDIA RTX Series Graphics Cards
• Nitro Concepts Releases the New S300EX Gaming Chair
• Scythe Presents Kotetsu Mark II & Choten TUF Gaming Alliance Coolers
• Zotac Releases Compact MEK Mini PC with RTX 2070 Video Card
• ASUS TUF B450M-Pro Gaming Motherboard Released