How my PC set-up is what the next generation of Xbox wants to be Readers FeatureGameCentralPublished March 15, 2025 9:00am A gaming PC set-up can already outperform any console (Microsoft)A reader suggests that the existing PC set-up in his living room already does everything the next gen Xbox is aiming for.As the gaming industry and fans eagerly anticipate the arrival of the next generation of consoles, I find myself ahead of the curve with a bespoke PC set-up in my lounge. This advanced configuration not only rivals but often surpasses the capabilities that upcoming consoles aim to offer, based on current rumours.My journey begins with a uniquely customised PC that loads without a password, ensuring quick access, allowing me to dive straight into the action. Coupled with a high quality gaming chair, I primarily use a controller, reserving the mouse for launching games and navigating Windows.Although options like Steam Big Picture mode facilitate controller-based operations, my gaming libraries, including Game Pass, Steam, Epic Games, GOG, and EA necessitates a more flexible approach. I use the mouse either on my lap or on a small side table a solution desk gamers wouldnt need to consider, though using the arm of a sofa is also an option.One of the primary challenges I face is the need for a keyboard to input login information. While the mouse and on-screen keyboard provide a workaround, its far from ideal. The necessity for Windows to be fully controllable by a controller, or the development of a dedicated gaming OS akin to Steams endeavours, is long overdue. Reports suggest that Microsoft is working on it, but progress is frustratingly slow they needed it a couple of years ago.My small form factor PC, inconspicuous in the living room, is connected to a large OLED TV with a 120Hz refresh rate. This setup delivers high-refresh gaming when needed, enabling features like path-tracing and full ray-tracing at a lower frame rate between 80-90fps. With an RTX 4080 graphics card, my system dramatically outperforms the Xbox Series X and the new PS5 Pro.The investment in superior hardware pays off as I witness tangible differences that certain consoles struggle to showcase. Features like DLSS and frame generation particularly excel, enhancing gameplay beyond console capabilities. Opting for a lower resolution like 1440p or even 1080p can push those frame rates even higher, or you could choose cheaper hardware for similar improvements. I get access to basically free remasters of games and tons of mods, something Ive done a ton of so far this year.Modern cross-play functionality allows me to connect with friends on consoles within supported games. The versatility of my PC enables the use of an extensive range of peripherals, such as a VR headset for Flight Simulator 2024 or a Stream Deck for autopilot controls. Consoles often dictate peripheral compatibility, whereas my setup embraces a broader, almost unlimited spectrum.Reflecting on my current setup, its clear that the next generation of consoles will strive to achieve similar advancements. The pursuit of higher performance at comparable costs, enhanced compatibility with other services like Steam, and user-friendly interfaces will define the next console moving beyond just another closed system that plays boxed games.More TrendingWhile the forthcoming Xbox promises exciting developments, my meticulously crafted PC configuration already embodies what the future of gaming could look like. If the setup is made far easier for the general gamer, it could be truly exciting offering a vision of gaming that is accessible to everyone, not just those who want to sit back and enjoy a few hours of fun.By reader McSherlock Traditional video game consoles may not exist in the future (Microsoft)The readers features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk or use our Submit Stuff page and you wont need to send an email.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

An Australian man has become a medical marvel thanks to his groundbreaking artificial heart. The mans doctors reported this week that he was the first person in the world to be discharged from the hospital with an implant developed to completely replace the hearts functioning. Doctors at St Vincents Hospital in Sydney performed the experimental procedure last November, installing the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart into a man suffering from severe heart failure. Though the man wasnt the first human to receive the technology, he was the first to live with it long enough to be released from the hospitalover 100 days. The implant acted as a bridge to a typical heart transplant, which the man obtained earlier this March. There are existing implants today that can perform some of an ailing hearts functions, at least for a time. But the BiVACOR heartinvented by native Australian and biomedical engineer Daniel Timmsis designed to fully take over the hearts many critical functions. Its intended for people with end-stage heart failure, and is outfitted with an external rechargeable battery that connects to the heart through a wire. The battery only lasts for four hours at a time, though the developers are hoping that future iterations can upgrade to a more convenient wireless charger. The implant has reached early clinical trials, with the sixth and most current patient being a man in his 40s from New South Wales. The previous five patients, all in the U.S., only had the implant for a brief period before they received heart transplants, short enough that they were never discharged from their hospital stay. So the mans discharge and his 100-plus days of survival with the implant are both record-breaking achievements. He is now recovering well from his heart transplant performed earlier this month, according to his doctors.Weve worked towards this moment for years and were enormously proud to have been the first team in Australia to carry out this procedure, Paul Jansz, a cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon at St Vincents, told The Guardian. Though the BiVACOR heart is currently being tested as a treatment to extend the survival of patients until they can get a donor heart, Timms and his colleagues ultimately hope that the device can become a long-lasting replacement for the heart and a suitable alternative to heart transplantation. Its a goal that wont be easy to reach, given that patients live for a median 12 to 13 years after getting a donated heart. But for now, the early progress is certainly encouraging. More patients are expected to receive their own implants this year through a program led by researchers at Monash University in Australia. The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart ushers in a whole new ball game for heart transplants, both in Australia and internationally, Chris Hayward, a cardiologist at St Vincents who monitored the mans health, told The Guardian. Within the next decade we will see the artificial heart becoming the alternative for patients who are unable to wait for a donor heart or when a donor heart is simply not available. Artificial implants like the BiVACOR heart arent the only emerging technology that could one day support or supplant the limited supply of donor organs. Elsewhere, scientists are working on developing genetically modified pig organs that can be safely tolerated by the human body.

San Michele Bar Installation / Trewhela WilliamsSave this picture! Marcello MarianaArchitects: Trewhela WilliamsAreaArea of this architecture projectArea:45 mYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2024 PhotographsPhotographs:Marcello MarianaManufacturersBrands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers: Marmi Faedo More SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. Trewhela Williams and Etraterra were commissioned by the Vicenza-based company Marmi Faedo, who operate the only Grolla stone quarry in the world, to design a stand from their signature limestone for a stone trade fair in Verona. The overall installation was conceived as a minimalist Grolla landscape and serene setting insulated from the bustle of the trade fair. Grolla's excellent technical mechanical characteristics of low water absorption, resistance to abrasion, salt, pollution and frost have lent it to external application over the centuries and meant that this ancient material that can be found across several historic civic buildings, city squares, fountains and monuments around Northern Italy. One notable example in Vicenza is the distinctive balustrades of the San Michele Bridge, which were carved from solid Grolla back in 1621. It is the abstracted curvature of these that has informed the central gesture of the stand - a 6m long monolithic bar.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The sculptural simplicity of the bar's frontage is distinguished by its base peeling away from the ground plane to form a pronounced belly, which inflects into a cantilevered countertop. The bar comprises of 3 sections of carved solid Grolla Beige and Rosato, with each section weighing 4.9 tonnes, which required their careful craning and positioning into place. The final geometry of the bar's profile was finessed in coordination with structural engineers Bailiss & Co who guided on the lateral stability of the object, factoring in characteristic live loads of bar users leaning on the edge of the cantilevered countertop (as the temporary nature of the installation prohibited base fixings into the ground).Save this picture!Save this picture!The heavy-set bar is complimented by a cluster of supporting elements - bar stools, coffee table, bench seating and plant troughs, all formed from Grolla and working together in unison as a harmonious whole. The strong, weighty geometry of these forms is offset by the wild informality of the Eucalyptus Gunnii screening bushes to the stand's perimeter. The limestone elements showcase a variety of finishes from the flamed floor tiles, sawn sides of the bar and honed countertop. At the end of the trade fair, the installation was dismantled and transported back to Marmi Faedo's workshop, where it was reassembled and now serves as a bar for the craftsmen who first shaped the elements.Save this picture!Quotation - "There is a beautiful, subtle character to Grolla's surface distinguished by its delicate webbed vein patterning and shifting palette of neutral tones with hints of pink and beige. It was felt that a design approach founded on sculptural simplicity and strong geometry would best showcase its enduring visual hallmarks. We sought to convey a weighty, monumental quality and as such looked to Grolla's rich history in Marmi Faedo's own hometown of Vicenza for inspiration in the shaping of the bar's monolithic form." Joseph WilliamsSave this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessProject locationAddress:Verona, ItalyLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this officeTrewhela WilliamsOfficeMaterialStoneMaterials and TagsPublished on March 15, 2025Cite: "San Michele Bar Installation / Trewhela Williams" 15 Mar 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1027916/san-michele-bar-installation-trewhela-williams&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Scientists have been building nuclear weapons for more than 80 years, but crafting this technology remains a challenge.

The Witcher video games include some of the most iconic video game characters, and The Witcher 4 is likely to include at least some of them. As many of The Witcher characters are long-lived or even immortal with stories that were left unfinished or with potential left, it's likely that some will make an appearance in The Witcher 4. Characters who do reappear will likely have a connection to Ciri, or otherwise challenge her in some way.

Modiphius Entertainments The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms has called upon fans to traverse its many chapters and challenges in its well-loved tabletop game. Every wise warrior knows, however, to never go on such an adventure alone, and this is where teaming up with a few good friends can make the journey that much more fulfilling. The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms resin sets are sure to give tabletop game enthusiasts and The Elder Scrolls fans something worth fighting dragons for.

There are tons of cool sci-fi films to look forward to in the coming weeks. From Flying Lotus psychedelic horror thriller Ash to David Cronenbergs The Shrouds, theres no shortage of exciting new releases to catch in theaters. If youre looking for the best sci-fi movies to watch from the comfort of your own home, though, weve got a couple in mind thatll give the latest slate of films a run for their money and then some.This week, weve picked an indelible sci-fi classic starring Harrison Ford and Sean Young, a critically panned superhero reboot thats actually pretty good, and a maximalist action horror movie with guns and guts galore.Lets take a look at what this month has to offer!Editors pick: Blade Runner: The Final CutDirector: Ridley ScottCast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean YoungImagine this: Youre in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden, you look down and you see a tortoise thats crawling toward you. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it cant, not without your help, but youre not helping. Why is that?You already know the answer, dont you? Ridley Scotts 1982 neo-noir opus is essentially a litmus (or Voight-Kampff) test for whether or not youll enjoy cyberpunk as a whole, as almost the entirety of the genres tonal, thematic, and aesthetic touchstones are attributable to the films singular vision of a petro-capitalist future teetering on the brink of collapse. It is, in many ways, a perfect sci-fi film, if not a perfect film, full stop. More than four decades since its theatrical release, Blade Runner remains a timeless and essential work of art. Toussaint EganPower RangersDirector: Dean IsraeliteCast: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ CylerNo matter who you ask, just about anyone will tell you that making a Power Rangers reboot movie in 2017 seemed like a terrible idea. And yet, director Dean Israelite pulled off one of the most fun, interesting, and inventive blockbusters of the 2010s.The plot of the movie is mostly a copy of the original shows first episode. A group of five kids find magical coins that grant them incredible powers and the ability to transform into colorful-suited Power Rangers and talk to Zordon, a floating hologram head voiced by Bryan Cranston. At the same time that they gain this power, the evil Rita Repulsa, played by Elizabeth Banks in a ridiculously fun performance, awakens from her 65 million-year slumber with a new plan to take over the world that only the Power Rangers can stop.The fact that all this works is due in large part to the movies excellent cast, which includes a few stars, like Banks and Cranston, and several young actors who were about to break out, like Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, and RJ Cyler. On top of that, the movie is smart enough to play everything straight, rather than being ashamed of its source material or overly nostalgic. Austen GoslinResident Evil: RetributionDirector: Paul W.S. AndersonCast: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Kevin DurandPaul W.S. Anderson is back in theaters with his new movie In the Lost Lands, which means its a perfect time to revisit one of the best entries in his excellent Resident Evil franchise. Resident Evil: Retribution is the fifth movie in the series, the third directed by Anderson, and it feels like the first time in the series he was given the space to go all out with his action.Alice (Milla Jovovich) has been captured by the evil Umbrella Corporation and is being held inside its top-secret base somewhere in Russia. The base itself has dozens of massive rooms, each designed to simulate some of the biggest cities in the world, like New York, Tokyo, and Moscow. This provides Retribution with the perfect excuse to stage some extremely cool action set-pieces in each of these locations, with thousands of teeming zombies attacking Alice and her allies.This premise makes Retribution a surprisingly strong jumping-on point for the series, and turns the whole movie into a fantastic sci-fi action romp. AG

Apple could follow the iPhone 16 Pro Max with the iPhone 17 Ultra, according to a new leak.

As a legal challenge is brought against the UK, we see what TechRadar readers think.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump staged what historians believe to be a presidential first: a stilted, fumbling White House press conference convened to boost the fortunes of a valuable donors floundering car company.Wow, thats beautiful! Trump said to Tesla CEO Elon Musk as they climbed into a red Model S parked on the South Lawn. Everythings computer! Holding a scripted sales pitch touting the brands safety features, self-driving technology, and low monthly payments, Trump assured reporters that Tesla is a great product, as good as it gets, and complimented Musk as a great patriot. He promised to buy a car himself, and pay with a personal check. In what I am sure is an unrelated story, Musk, who has spent most of his time of late laying waste to the federal government at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, is reportedly preparing to donate $100 million to Trumps political operation.Trump did not stage this glorified infomercial because of his passion for hawking overpriced consumer products. Across the country, people have taken to registering their displeasure with Musks presidential cosplay by using the one tool available to them: protest. Demonstrations outside Tesla showrooms have become weekly events. Many Tesla owners, embarrassed to be associated with Musk, are trading in their cars, often at a loss. Tesla cars, dealerships, and charging stations have been targeted by vandals wielding everything from Molotov cocktails to dog poop. As it turns out, when the act of driving to the grocery store incurs a real risk that angry strangers will flip you off, cars manufactured by companies that arent helmed by too-online reactionaries become much more appealing.The backlash has made a bad year worse for Tesla shareholders, who have watched the stock plummet from an all-time high of around $480 in December to $220 as of Monday. Tuesdays little dog-and-pony show helped the price to recover a bit, but by Friday afternoon, shares were trading at about $250roughly half of their value just four months earlier. Musk, Teslas largest shareholder, has paid dearly for this collapse: His net worth, which Bloomberg estimated at nearly $500 billion in mid-December, now sits at around $315 billion. The companys sales numbers, which are down by double digits in key international markets, do not suggest that a robust performance-based surge is on the horizon anytime soon.Pledging to buy a Tesla is not the only way Trump has used his bully pulpit for Musks benefit. Also on Tuesday, the president vowed to treat Tesla vandalism as domestic terrorism and to put perpetrators through hell, dispensing with typical politician rhetoric about bringing people to justice. In a March 10 post on Truth Social, Trump excoriated Radical Left Lunatics for trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, which raises the possibility that the president believes people have a legal duty to buy cars to ensure that the worlds richest person stays that way.Teslas struggles, which yielded the enduring image of Trump grimly answering press questions in front of a hulking Cybertruck, expose the toll of Musks unpopularity in ways that the fates of his other companies cannot. X, the social media platform he bought in 2022, is a right-wing echo chamber where Musk can speak directly to an audience of acolytes willing to lap up any excuses for his failures like dogs on a warm afternoon. Earlier this week, Musk shrugged off a temporary X outage by blaming a massive cyberattack originating from Ukrainean explanation that experts dismissed as wholly unconvincing and pretty much garbage.SpaceX, which has also sustained setbacks of the explosive variety of late, is a privately held company that relies heavily on government contracts worth billions of dollars. Even if this particular administration werent in Musks pocket, much of SpaceXs business would be relatively safe, as there are only so many companies that manufacture rockets that deliver cargo to the International Space Station.Tesla is different. As a publicly traded company that manufactures consumer products, its performance is a pretty good barometer of the approval rating of the man who leads it; the numbers, as they say, do not lie. Trump is trying to bail out the company because it would be embarrassing for him, the Business Genius President, to preside over the spectacular implosion of the source of a valuable political allys wealth. Musk is glad to accept the help, of course, because the reality hed otherwise have to confront is that normal people do not like it when an unelected, unaccountable tech executive attempts to take their jobs, splinter their communities, and ruin their lives. Protestors might not be able to stop Musk from hollowing out another agency, but if they can persuade fewer people to buy his ugly cars, they can at least make sure he pays for it.Shareholders have watched Musks extracurricular activities create and destroy value before: In late 2022, for example, Teslas stock price plunged to a two-year low after Musk took over at Twitter, as investors wondered if a man suddenly preoccupied with doing cringe memes was simply out of EV-related ideas. If youd bought the dip and sold today, youd still be doubling your money.But the furious national response to DOGEs lawlessness is manifesting in the real world in ways that fleeting concerns aboutTwitters disintegration did not. Teslas brand is becoming more poisonous with each passing week. Tesla owners who arent yet ready to sell their cars are searching desperately for interim half-measures, slapping I GOT THIS BEFORE ELON WENT CRAZY stickers on bumpers. A few owners have even tried adorning their cars with other logos in an effort to go incognitoa gambit I cannot help but admire, given that putting Rivian iconography on a Cybertruck, one of the most distinctive-looking vehicles on the road today, is roughly the equivalent of affixing novelty cat ears to a Tyrannosaurus rex.Maybe the most ominous sign for Teslas future is that this time around, the investment community appears skeptical that Musks packed schedule of playing video games at the office will give him time to course-correct. A recent Morgan Stanley survey found that 85% of respondents believe Musks venture into politics has had a negative or extremely negative impact on the fundamentals of the business, and a bit more than half expect Tesla shares to continue to sink in 2025, or, at best, to remain flat. Because Musk has often obtained capital by borrowing against the value of his Tesla holdings, the companys continued struggles could force him to sell off his shares, which would only cause the price to fall further.To a certain extent, Teslas value has always been inflated by Musks carefully curated image as a once-in-a-generation business talent, which he managed to parlay into the sort of household-name celebrity status that most CEOs only dream of achieving. Part of the reason Trump brought Musk into his inner circle in 2024besides that sweet, sweet Silicon Valley cashis that Trump built his political career on the idea that strong, respected businessmen possess the wisdom to govern in ways that career politicians cannot. Musks failures reveal just how wrong this premise has always been, which is why Trump was out on the South Lawn, demanding that people buy Teslas and pretending to marvel at a touchscreen panel: plutocracy is harder to maintain when the plutocrats look this feckless.