Gadgetory

this year at CES we've seen weird robots flying cars AI washing machines and of course a lot about the future of playing video games now gaming isn't typically part of the main event here at CES we have GDC III and a whole lot of other conferences for that but we're developers startups and game companies do you cs4 is hardware a lot of really weird experimental and awesome hardware Nvidia this week showed off new g-sync 65-inch 4k HDR gaming monitors that look absolutely incredible the company is working with Acer Asus and HP to develop the hardware and gsync monitors of this caliber at this size or reshaping how we think about PC gaming visuals and then there's Razer every year the company comes to CES with at least one wacky prototype to show off this year it was a laptop dock for the recently announced a Razer phone it's called Project Linda and it's a laptop dock for the phone itself even better the laptops trackpad is where the phone actually plugs in that the touchscreen acting is your mouse input we've also seen a few really neat gaming accessories including one standout invention from Asus that uses light refraction to remove monitor bezels called the bezel free kit the mountable lenses bend the image of your screen from one monitor to the next obscuring the black bezels in between we also saw some pretty out-there stuff take for instance the mirror of is projector screen which can handle two video inputs at the same time that will let gamers play co-op or compete without splitting the screen another is the Xena ma II skin smart shirt which basically turns your entire body into a video game motion controller ah now you can't talk about weird gaming hardware at CES without talking about virtual and augmented reality now it's been a couple of years since VR basically dominated the show floor you can trace that back to the commercial launches of the oculus rift and the HTC vive it used to be that CES was the best place to try these companies prototypes and it was an exciting time for a brand new product category of course oculus has its own annual conference now called oculus connect and sony has in the past typically reserved PlayStation VR announcements for more game focus shows like GC but we did get one VR Hardware announcement here at CES HTC's new vive pro it gives the company's headset a resolution bump built-in headphones and a wireless adapter for cordless play that's a big deal because it means HTC is really focusing hard on the premium PC powered VR market it will be interesting to see how oculus responds especially because oculus has been putting a lot of resources toward cordless self-contained headsets like in Santa Cruz prototype but here's the reality VR is in the show stealer it once was this year at CES it's mostly faded into the background and that's alright VR will only get better from here and that means so will the apps the games of the film's that we experience in VR here at CES in place of all the oculus and vive excitement of the last few years we now have a are taking the spotlight it feels like every company Under the Sun is trying to take advantage of a renewed interest in augmented reality it also helps that since the launch of Pokemon go about two years ago AR has been the coolest and most exciting mobile development in a long time out here in Vegas though we're not talking about mobile AR through an iPhone camera we're talking about full-fledged AR goggles and glasses that can float virtual images in your vision and help software interact with the physical world all hands-free and all without a phone since Microsoft debuted its hololens roughly three years ago we've all known that this style of AR tech is possible and then I could have a big impact on gaming and mobile computing AR has just been too early or too limited or too expensive to really take off yet even the hololens which is really really impressive stuff is a ways away from being a consumer product at CES this year we've seen a number of companies so some genuine AR advancements music's a rochester new york based company that's been trying this stuff for years finally managed to shrink its tech down into a device that looks almost like a standard pair of sunglasses the blade headset is a heads-up display that's basically a next-gen version of Google glass and it even has Amazon Alexa we also saw a number of other AR style displays for specific applications like motorcycle helmets now sure there's a ton of junk out there most of which will never become a successful consumer product everyone thinks AR is gonna take over the world and it might just 10 or 15 years from now that's not to say that eventually won't happen but these types of transitions and technology take time was a hololens 2.0 on the way and then even Apple is working on a rumored AR device and also this magic leap who's apparently groundbreaking goggles are coming out later this year so if there's anything to take away from CES about VR AR in gaming except there will be hype and there will be missed expectations but when all of that dies down we'll be left with products that are smaller better and more powerful because CES is a look around the corner and technology keeps getting better all the time now sure there's a ton of oh yeah get rekt yes