The second Creator DLC will add the Czechoslovak People’s Army and more 1980s Cold War content to Arma 3

Publisher Bohemia Interactive and third-party developer CSLA Studio are excited to announce the upcoming release of Arma 3′s second Creator DLC: CSLA Iron Curtain. Scheduled for release later this year, the CSLA Iron Curtain downloadable content pack will take players back to an alternate version of the Cold War in 1980s Czechoslovakia. The store page for the upcoming DLC is already live on Steam. CSLA (or ČSLA) stands for “Československá lidová armáda” in Czech and “Československá ľudová armáda” in Slovak, which refers to the Czechoslovak People’s Army.

These were the armed forces of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1954 until 1990. With both Bohemia Interactive and the CSLA Studio developers coming from the Czech Republic, this particular Creator DLC stays very close to home by exploring the country’s contemporary history and taking a look at what life in Czechoslovakia and its heavily-guarded border with West Germany during the 1980s could have been like.

The Arma 3 Creator DLC: CSLA Iron Curtain will include:

• Original 256 km2 “Gabreta” landlocked terrain, with deep forests, windy mountains, and calm valleys
• Cold War-era armed forces of the United States and Czechoslovakia, as well as local rebel fighters
• Ground and air vehicles
• Weapons and gear
• Singleplayer and multiplayer scenarios

Creator DLC is a label for original new Arma 3 projects made by third-party developers and published by Bohemia Interactive. It enables external talent to earn a financial reward for their work, while players get to enjoy more new quality content. The first Creator DLC, Global Mobilization – Cold War Germany, has managed to achieve over 50,000 sales since its launch in April 2019. More Creator DLC projects besides Global Mobilization – Cold War Germany and CSLA Iron Curtain are currently in development.

In response to community feedback on the initial release of the first Arma 3 Creator DLC, Bohemia Interactive – in close co-operation with CSLA Studio – have decided to host a small-scale, closed beta test in the coming weeks ahead of CSLA Iron Curtain’s planned full release. Starting today, selected members of the Arma 3 community will be invited to help report on any remaining technical issues as well as take the upcoming DLC for a test drive on a wider variety of PC systems.

Furthermore, as soon as the CSLA Iron Curtain DLC releases, Bohemia Interactive and CSLA Studio plan to make compatibility data for non-owners of the DLC available via the Arma 3 Steam Workshop – similar to how this is now also done for the Global Mobilization – Cold War Germany Creator DLC. This solution enables people who own the Creator DLC and those who do not to still play together on multiplayer servers that make use of the Creator DLC’s assets. Access to DLC terrains and singleplayer content will remain exclusive to the owners of the DLC, and restrictions to the in-game use of DLC assets by non-owners apply.

The release date and pricing of the Arma 3 Creator DLC: CSLA Iron Curtain will be shared at a later time. For more information about Arma 3 Creator DLC, please visit https://arma3.com/dlc/creator.

A new episode of the game’s Battle Royale event kicks off later this month

A brand-new episode of Steel Hunter, World of Tanks’ most popular event, kicks off on September 21. For one week, players will be able to see who’s the best on the battlefield in the game’s very own Battle Royale. Tankers can also expect more episodes to come in October and November of this year, each bringing unique rewards.

Steel Hunter sees 20 lone wolves or 10 platoons battle it out to be the last tank (or tanks) standing. Tankers will need to loot items found on the map (such as precious ammunition, Battle XP and HP refills) or take them from destroyed vehicles. Players must be careful though as a safe spot can become a Danger Zone, which will quickly see them leave the battlefield.

2020 has brought some changes to Steel Hunter: there are now more tanks: 5 compared to last year’s 3. Each of these vehicles has their own specific roles (Scout, Hunter or Survivor) to perform in battle, which is reflected by their in-game regular abilities and ultimates as well as the way they handle and their crew skills and/or perks. Also, players who’ve yet to brave the Steel Hunter mode this year will notice a brand-new map: Arzagir 4.04.

“The new episode of Steel Hunter is coming later this month, and in 2020, the experience of our most popular event has just gotten better,” states Max Chuvalov, Publishing Director, World of Tanks. “Players have been really enjoying the new additions, and what’s better the return of the same gameplay and battles they know and love!”

Along the Steel Hunter journey players will be duly rewarded and the main prize for each episode is something that tankers can show off on the battlefield to let people know just how skilled they are: a unique 2D style.

For more information on World of Tanks, visit the games official website.

By Joe Fonseca @ Wargamer

Red Storm, the latest expansion pack for Order of Battle, concludes its three-chapter arc focusing on the eastern front from the perspective of the Soviet Union. There’s a lot to like here for fans of the series. Newcomers might feel a little overwhelmed by the massive unit counts, but Red Storm does a bit to make the transition easier if you’re brand new.

Read on…

Source: Blue’s News

Crysis Remastered is now available for Windows on the Epic Games Store and for consoles on their respective storefronts. This offers the chance to return to the jungle in the updated version of Crytek’s first-person shooter. Here’s the Official Launch Trailer and here’s word on how the game has been modernized to take advantage of modern hardware to make “can it play Crysis?” relevant again:

“Our aim was to upgrade the visual fidelity for a wide range of PCs and to use all the technical capabilities of current-gen consoles while offering the same great gameplay that Crysis is known for,” said Project Lead Steffen Halbig. “Naturally, we are thrilled to invite a new generation of players to suit up and experience Crysis, upgraded and remastered to take advantage of today’s hardware and advances in CRYENGINE.”

Crysis Remastered features the all-action, sandbox, single-player gameplay from the acclaimed shooter, upgraded with remastered graphics, including high-quality textures, improved art assets and more. For the first time this console generation, Crytek’s software-based ray tracing comes to PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. On PC, CRYENGINE’s hardware-agnostic technology brings ray tracing to a wide range of contemporary GPUs. Additionally, Crysis Remastered supports hardware-based ray tracing using NVIDIA’s VKRay Vulkan extension on launch, and NVIDIA® DLSS technology will be added soon for the NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX GPU.

In Crysis Remastered, players face down an alien invasion armed with the powerful Nanosuit, which provides super strength, armor, speed and cloaking abilities. Choose your own path as you fight through the open world of Crysis, destroying obstacles, driving vehicles, and using a huge arsenal of modular weaponry to dominate enemies on ever-changing battlefields.

Red Storm is available now and is the third and final DLC in the Soviet Trilogy for Order of Battle: World War II franchise. The new expansion covers the battles of the Red Army from 1943 to 1945.

The campaign begins with the fierce tank battle near Prokhorovka during Operation Citadel which was the last grand German summer offensive on the Eastern Front in mid-1943. The failure of Operation Citadel led the Red Army to be almost always on the offensive after. The ultimate goal of this campaign, therefore, is the defeat of the Third Reich in the Battle of Berlin.

Watch the Order of Battle: Red Storm in 2 minutes trailer HERE.

You will now be able to purchase light Ba-64 armored cars, devastating BM-31 Katyusha rocket launchers or hard-hitting 100mm anti-tank guns. Improve your air forces with the agile Yak-3, the heavily armed Yak-9T and the more advanced Yak-9U as well as the improved medium Tu-2 and heavy Yer-2 bombers.

It is not just the allies getting new equipment, however, as the enemy is also fielding brand new equipment: the Germans now deploy their deadly 8.8cm Pak 43 as well as the nimble Pzkw II Luchs and new He-162 jet fighters in 1945. Their Hungarian allies will also field Turan tanks, Zrinyi SP guns as well as the Bf-109 and Me-210 aircraft.

To celebrate the end of the Soviet Trilogy, we’re running a 50% week-long discount on Order of Battle: Red Star and Order of Battle: Red Steel. Check it out and complete your collection.

Source: TechPowerUp!

AMD has released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 20.9.1 beta is focused mainly on fixing issues, there are no new game optimizations to be had. To begin with, the drivers fix a system crash while task-switching from games, enabling performance overlay, or having web-browsers/video-playback open on additional displays on Radeon “Navi” graphics cards. Performance issues with Project CARS 3 with performance metrics overlay has been fixed. A couple of installer errors when installing the drivers on Ryzen Mobile processors with Radeon graphics have been fixed. Power-cycling certain displays with FreeSync enabled causes them to remain black, this has been fixed. A screen flickering with Borderlands 3 with Radeon Boost enabled, has been fixed. Decoding HEVC content using AMF decoder resulting in video output corruption has been fixed. Bugs related to the application of performance fan profiles have been fixed. Intermittent random color corruption in CS:GO when playing matchmaking, has been fixed. VP9 playback issues have been fixed.

The Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.9.1 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.

• iBUYPOWER Announces Gaming System Update With NVIDIA RTX 30 Series Graphics
• CORSAIR to Releases New Hydro X Series XG7 RGB 30 Series GPU Water Blocks
• CORSAIR Announces VENGEANCE PC Lineup Featuring NVIDIA RTX 30 Series Graphics
• EK Releases Water Blocks for Reference Design NVIDIA RTX 30 Series Graphics Cards
• Klevv Announces Two New DDR4 Memory Lines: Cras XR RGB and Bolt XR
• Sharkoon Launches the ELITE SHARK CA300T PC Case
• Acer Releases the CB342CKC OmegaLine Monitor: 34″ IPS, UWQHD, 21:9, 1 ms, AMD FreeSync
• SteelSeries Arctis 9 Dual Wireless Headset for PC and PlayStation
• In Win Launches 140mm Variants of Saturn and Jupiter Daisy-Chainable Case Fans

By Hilbert Hagedoorn @ Guru3D

It’s obvious that an RTX 3080 will be hard to get. The founder edition however was out of stock the second it went life yesterday. That raised some questions.

The 3080 was made available to consumers yesterday, but it appears to be nowhere in stock as it ran dry way too fast, and that as always will drive up prices in the entire channel for AIB cards as well. NVIDIA has shared a word or two about this ordeal. NVIDIA apologizes to customers. The demand is roaring, yesterday at places like US-based Microcenter you might have seen 100 people in one line to get a card (see video below). E-tailer websites yesterday even went offline. NVIDIA had 50 major retailers worldwide supplied (which does not sound like a lot?). All of them had stock at launch.

An employee of Microcenter in Tustin, USA, stated on Reddit that the store only had 85 cards in stock. Nvidia’s own site also struggled, which was flooded with buy orders and crashed as well. Another side effect has been that bots and speculative pa[rties tried to order, so NVIDIA now is taking orders manually. NVIDIA commented that its new cards are at an “excellent” production level, which gives some hope to those who did not get to buy one. Yesterday we launched the first reviews of the RTX 3080 (which if you have not seen yet, we recommend that you do so) and is that taking into account the performance offered by this graphics card and its launch price. This does not bode well, as we expect the GeForce RTX 3070 launch is going to ruffle feathers even worse.

Source: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA has released the latest version of GeForce Game Ready software. Version 456.38 WHQL comes with support for the new GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 “Ampere” graphics cards. The mammoth software release also adds optimization for “Fortnite” with RTX and DLSS on all GeForce RTX GPUs. The new NVIDIA Reflex technology is formally launched, with support for “Fortnite” and “Valorant.” Reflex is supported on all NVIDIA GPUs going back to the GTX 900 series “Maxwell.” Optimizations are also added for “Halo 3: OSDT” and “Mafia: Definitive Edition.” Also introduced are the NVIDIA Broadcast app, and a host of new GeForce Experience features, including in-game performance/overlay, one-click performance tuning, HDR ShadowPlay Capture, AV1 decoding, support for new G-SYNC compatible displays.

Buried in the bowels of the driver change-log is a big disclosure, that the RTX 30-series “Ampere” GPUs don’t support SLI (as in implicit multi-GPU), only explicit multi-GPU through modern APIs such as DirectX 12 and Vulkan (if supported by the game). NVIDIA has already restricted the NVLink interface needed for SLI only to its topmost RTX 3090 SKU, so the lack of implicit multi-GPU effectively marks the end of SLI for future GPUs. That said, the technology itself is very much present on all GPUs that support it, provided games do. NVIDIA announced the GeForce RTX 30 series “Watch Dogs: Legion” + GeForce NOW bundle. Buying a new GeForce RTX 30-series graphics card now comes with a year’s membership of the GeForce NOW cloud gaming service, plus you get the next chapter in the Watch Dogs franchise, which supports a ton of NVIDIA RTX features, possibly including DLSS 8K.

You can download the GeForce 456.38 WHQL Game Ready drivers via GeForce.com.

NVIDIA  has released its new RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics cards, along with custom cards from MSI, ASUS, Zotac and more.  Here’s a bit from NVIDIA about its new RTX 30 series cards…

Powered by Ampere, NVIDIA’s 2nd gen RTX architecture, GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards feature faster 2nd gen Ray Tracing Cores, faster 3rd gen Tensor Cores, and new streaming multiprocessors that together bring stunning visuals, faster frame rates, and AI acceleration for gamers and creators.

GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs also feature several world firsts: they’re the first gaming-class graphics cards with up to 24GB of new, blazing-fast GDDR6X VRAM; they’re the first GPUs with HDMI 2.1, for 4K high refresh rate and 8K gaming; they’re the first discrete GPUs with support for the AV1 codec, enabling you to watch high-resolution streams using significantly less bandwidth; and our Founders Edition cards are the first with innovative dual axial flow through cooling solutions.

We’ve gathered a large number of reviews for your convenience and posted the links to the reviews below.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition:

• TECHPOWERUP!
• PC PERSPECTIVE
• GURU3D
• HOT HARDWARE
• TOM’S HARDWARE

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Custom Cards

• HOT HARDWARE - Palit GeForce RTX 3080 GamingPro OC
• TECHPOWERUP! - MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio
• GURU3D - ASUS GeForce RTX 3080 TUF Gaming OC
• OC3D - Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 10G
• TECHPOWERUP! - Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 Trinity