Get ready to take on Chuck’s Challenge as part of Holiday Ops 2021

2020 might have been a bit of a strange year, but it’s nice to see a familiar face: Holiday Ops in World of Tanks! This Christmas and New Year celebration will see players focused on two things: battles and baubles. From 9th December to 11th January, a cosy little mountain town will be ready for tankers to decorate as they wish, all while earning great and valuable rewards. But that’s not all… This town has an extra special resident: Chuck Norris!

Chuck has crafted his own challenge for every tanker: one which will test their resolve and mettle. Every day, a new mission will become available with 32 to take on in total. While all valuable, some of the rewards are extra special so players won’t want to miss out on them, including a special vehicle slot for Holiday Ops—which will allow players to choose their own vehicle bonuses—and Commander Chuck himself!

“Players like to say I must have been on the other side when they lose a battle; well, now it might just be true,” says Chuck Norris, World of Tanks Ambassador. “As you all know, even when the chips are down, I’m not one to shy away from a challenge and I hope that my fellow tankers do me proud when they take on Chuck’s Challenge!”

Just like last year, Holiday Ops is all about earning a collection of ornaments while decorating the special festive garage. There’s plenty to find in this snow-laden town, from a pianist performing for the residents to an enormous Christmas tree which takes center-stage. By dressing up the town, players will increase their festive atmosphere and their present yield. Tankers will be rewarded with various ornaments and decorations for creating their own firework displays (albeit, using enemy vehicles) and completing special missions. There are hundreds of ornaments to collect and 4 collections to complete so players will be able to decorate to their heart’s content.

Additionally, the Snow Maidens are back and are giving out special gifts daily. Each of the four Snow Maidens is responsible for a specific collection: Christmas, New Year, Lunar New Year or Magic New Year. By selecting rewards from the same collection each day, a special meter will fill up and lower-tiered ornaments will be excluded from your daily gifts.

“2020 is drawing to a close and we want to give the community something to remember,” states Max Chuvalov, World of Tanks Global Publishing Director. “Holiday Ops is always our biggest in-game event and it’s the perfect way to see off the year! We hope that this will really get everyone in the festive spirit!”

And finally, the holidays are a time for giving and this year, while crazy, is no different. All players—whether they’re on the Nice List or Naughty List—will be find a token of appreciation when they log in: the brand-new Pz.Sfl. IC, a Tier IV German tank destroyer with an autoloader! Thanks, Santa!

Watch the Holiday Ops: Presents, Bonuses, and Missions From Chuck Norris video HERE.

For more information about Holiday Ops 2021, click HERE.

Source: Blue’s News

Activision is pushing back the launch of Season One for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone from December 10 to December 16. A separate announcement notes the series has taken in over $3 billion in the past year, so they may be trying to protect their cash cow from the release of Cyberpunk 2077, but they do not specify whether or not this is their reasoning. They do say they are offering XP bonuses and free content to all players. This post has all the details and here’s a summary:

The release date of Season One across the new Black Ops Cold War and free-to-play, free-for-everyone Warzone has been moved from December 10 to December 16.

Season One is the largest free content drop in Black Ops history: a massive expansion of free content, including the comprehensive integration of Operators, weapons, player progression, and Battle Pass rewards across Black Ops Cold War and Warzone.

To thank players for their continued support and patience, Treyarch will be enabling Double XP and Double Weapon XP in Black Ops Cold War from 10AM PT Saturday, Dec. 12 until the launch of Season One.

Two free bundles will also become available to all Black Ops Cold War players through a new Pre-Season offer. Players simply need to log in between 10AM PT Dec. 8 and 11PM PT Dec. 15 to claim both bundles.

Source: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA has released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready drivers. Version 457.51 WHQL adds support for the new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card which goes on sale today. It also addresses a handful issues. To begin with, a BSOD noticed on machines with “Ampere” GPUs, when waking the machine from sleep, has been fixed. A bug seen with FreeStyle or Ansel launching and closing on “Star Wars: Squadrons” causing the feature to stop working on supported games, has been fixed. A BSOD seen when playing or browsing videos on the Google Chrome web-browser has been fixed. Lastly, display corruption noticed on the Lenovo Y740 notebook when waking up from sleep, has been fixed.

You can download the GeForce 457.51 WHQL drivers 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.

• BIOSTAR Rolls Out B550M-Silver Motherboard
• Razer Announces Hammerhead True Wireless Pro Earbuds
• Sharkoon Announces Light² S Lightweight Gaming Mouse
• Phanteks Announces Evolv Shift 2 and Shift 2 Air mITX Chassis
• ADATA XPG Levante 360 AIO Cooler Revealed
• MSI Gaming Desktops with NVIDIA Ampere Graphics Hit the Shelves
• Alphacool Announces Eisblock Water Blocks for EVGA RTX 30-series FTW3 Graphics Cards
• Antec Announces the P10 Flux PC Case
• Lexar Announces New NQ100 2.5″ SATA III SSD
• PowerColor Announces Radeon RX 6800 FIGHTER Graphics Card
• ASUS Launches GeForce RTX 3090 TURBO with a Blower-type Cooler
• GAINWARD Announces GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Phoenix GS and Ghost OC
• Palit Releases GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GamingPro and Dual Series
• HyperX Releases the Cloud Revolver Headset with 7.1 Surround
• Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme Thermal Grease has Thermal Conductivity of 14.2 W/mk
• ASUS Announces GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Series Graphics Cards Including KO Edition

By Wesley Yin-Poole @ Eurogamer

Treyarch has tweaked Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War so players level up weapons faster.

The developer released a patch for the shooter this evening just as Black Ops Cold War’s double XP and double weapon XP event came to a close.

“Coming out of last week’s 2XP + 2WXP event, we’ve made some additional tuning changes to global Weapon XP earn rates across the board,” Treyarch said in the patch notes.

“Starting today, you’ll now level up your weapons and unlock more attachments faster than the previous standard rate in both MP and Zombies.”

Treyarch had tuned progression for the launch of the game so that it took around 1200 kills to max out a weapon – and unlock all of its attachments along the way. I’ve only managed to max out one weapon so far, the AK-47, and that was only possible with the help of Nuketown, the recently-added close quarters map on which you tend to get more kills than any other because it’s so small and plays so fast, in combination with the double XP buff.

Read more…

NVIDIA has released its new RTX 3060 Ti graphics card. The review embargo has been lifted, and we have gathered together a number of reviews on the Founders Edition and on various Custom cards from different manufactures. Here’s a bit from NVIDIA:

Priced at just $399, built on the world’s most powerful PC gaming platform and featuring ray tracing and AI-powered DLSS, the RTX 3060 Ti is faster than the previous generation GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, priced at $699, and delivers blistering 1080p and 1440p gameplay.

Check out the reviews via the links listed below.

NVIDIA RTX 3090 Founders Edition Reviews:

• GURU3D
• EUROGAMER
• HOT HARDWARE
• LEGIT REVIEWS

NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti Custom Card Reviews:

• TECHPOWERUP! - ASUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti STRIX OC
• GURU3D - GIGABYTE RTX 3060 TI GAMING OC PRO
• TECHPOWERUP! - Palit GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GamingPro OC
• GURU3D - MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti TRIO X
• TECHPOWERUP! - ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD late Monday released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 20.11.3 beta adds support for Vulkan Ray Tracing Extensions. Khronos had recently finalized the Vulkan RT specification. Additionally, the drivers add optimization for Immortals: Fenyx Rising. The drivers also address a fairly long list of issues. For starters, it addresses lower performance observed for the RX 6800 series GPUs on Watch Dogs Legion and DiRT 5; and low performance noticed for the RX 5000 and older GPUs on Godfall. Some character models facing display corruption in Crysis Remastered on RX 6800 series has been fixed. Intermittent game crashes with Troy: A Total War Saga, and WoW Shadowlands have been fixed.

A bug that caused WoW Shadowlands to fail to launch on Windows 7 machines with DirectX 12 renderer selected, has been fixed. Some intermittent game crashes seen in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War with DXR enabled on RX 6800 series, have been fixed. Doom Eternal with HDR enabled disabling HDR on Windows 10, has been fixed. Certain issues found with Adobe Illustrator and AIDA 64 have been fixed. Some display corruption issues with RDR2 using RX 6800 series at 1080p, has been fixed.

The Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.11.3 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.

• NVIDIA Announces the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Graphics Card
• Introducing the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming Cards
• Inno3D Announces iChill GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Series Graphics Cards
• COLORFUL Launches GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Series Graphics Cards
• MSI Unveils NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Series Graphics Cards
• ZOTAC Announces its GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Graphics Card Series
• GIGABYTE Launches GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Series Graphics Cards
• PNY Announces its GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Series Graphics Cards
• GeIL Announces the Availability of ORION RGB Gaming Memory
• Sharkoon Launches the TG5 RGB Silent PCGH Edition Case
• TEAMGROUP is Taking the Global Lead in the New DDR5 Generation
• EK Launches First Magnitude-Based Multiblock Made for Z490 Aorus Xtreme Motherboard
• ASRock Launches X570 and B550 Taichi Razer Edition Motherboards
• NZXT Scrambles to Fix a Safety Issue with the H1 Case
• Lian Li Launches ST120 Fans and ARGB Cable Kit
• Alphacool Announces a Pair of New AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series Products
• GELID Announces AMBER5, 5-channel ARGB Controller with Remote
• PowerColor Launches its RX 6800 (XT) Red Devil and Red Dragon GPUs

Comanche is now available for free – at least with the multiplayer part of the game. Everyone can simply download this new additional version of the game, familiarize him- or herself with the game in the brand new tutorial, and start competing online against other pilots from all over the world. The Comanche multiplayer experience will be completely free and will offer the full multiplayer content.

Players can choose between two different game modes, five different versions of the Comanche attack helicopter, four interesting combat drones, and fight on three large-scale maps. Everyone who bought Comanche in the past will be rewarded with a special skin to show off their status as a Comanche veteran pilot.

Additionally, Comanche will get a new Early Access Update including a full new mission: Operation Fire Sale. Operation Fire Sale will command the pilots to the majestic Alps on board the Horizon variant of the Comanche, equipped with long-range weaponry. The mission is to scout and observe a vital Kude Core military site and make good use of the ranged weapons in dealing devastating blows to the enemy.

Check out the new Comanche Free Multiplayer Trailer HERE.

Find out more about Comanche from the games official website.

The ‘New Power’ update brings a new engine, next-gen consoles version, battleships, new aircraft carriers, VTOL aircraft and more

Gaijin Entertainment announces that the military online action War Thunder just got “New Power”, which is the biggest update in the history of the game, as well as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of War Thunder that fully utilize the next-gen consoles power. War Thunder has also switched to the Dagor 6.0 engine, thus significantly upgrading the game visuals on all platforms. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X players can enjoy the new look at a steady 4K@60FPS resolution, while the PC version supports DLSS technology for RTX graphics cards. The ‘New Power’ update also introduces battleships, VTOL aircraft and lots of other new military vehicles, i.e. the T-90A and Leclerc S2 tanks.

Visual enhancements are the first thing that players will notice in the updated game. The War Thunder engine simulates a natural-looking sky with clouds of various types, fog and the correct distribution and scattering of sunlight. The game now has the means to draw a realistic sunset on Mars or a nuclear bomb explosion if needed. Shot and explosion effects, as well as fires and vehicle destruction physics are also enhanced. Physically correct armour scars appear on ground vehicles in places where shells hit and in some cases the projectile can even get stuck in the armour.

War Thunder naval players will now have the chance to fight using battlecruisers and battleships – like the famous HMS Dreadnought that marked the beginning of a new era in military shipbuilding or the Imperatritsa Mariya (“Empress Maria”), which is one the dreadnought-class battleships built by the Russian Empire right on time for World War I. USA, Germany and Japan also got their own battleships. The update also changes the naval fleet progression system, allowing new players to skip torpedo boats and start with destroyers to get to the largest ships much faster.

Aircraft fans are getting VTOL machines in the Harrier and Yak-38 families. They are equipped with a thrust vectoring propulsion system. In flight, pilots can vary the thrust nozzles’ angle to alter the flight characteristics of the aircraft – for example to perform tighter turns. Additionally, pilots will be able to perform helicopter-style attack runs or avoid enemy detection at low altitude. War Thunder players are also getting aircraft carriers that are suitable for machines of this era, namely, HMS Ark Royal, USS Forrestal and the Soviet aircraft cruiser Baku.

T-90A tank is finally arriving in War Thunder. It’s most distinctive feature is the Shtora electro-optical jammer and laser/IR warning system. Two groups of Shtora sensors on the tank turret look like giant eyes – that’s how you can easily recognise the T-90A in photos. Other nations also get interesting examples of modern armoured vehicles, like the US M1128 Stryker MGS, German Leopard 2A6 and French Leclerc S2.

“New Power” update brings numerous new features, like the interactive hangar or illuminating shells. There is going to be a Battle Pass system as well, allowing players to get prizes for participating in battles and completing daily and seasonal tasks. Rewards include not only cosmetic items, but premium vehicles as well, i.e. US F2G jet and Soviet Т-10А tank. Reward vehicles can be added to a player’s hangar or sold to other players on the market.

The full list of updates is available at the official War Thunder website.