Sony has demonstrated the face-recognition and tracking capabilities of the upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld, using the portable console’s front-facing camera to track head movement and have on-screen avatars respond accordingly. In the demo, filmed by Siliconera and which you can see after the cut, Sony showed a two-way video chat being held between a pair of animated avatars, the head, mouth, eye and other movements being mapped to those of the gamer.

Although head-tracking has been done before, the system Sony demonstrated was able to track minor details like eye-blinking and eyebrow twitches, for a more lifelike animation. Sony wasn’t saying a video calling app would necessarily be the final use of the technology, 4gamer reports, but that the software was merely a demonstration of the power of the Vita’s abilities and its potential in augmented reality (AR) gaming.

Rather than using specific glyphs that can be identified and tracked by an AR system, Sony’s Yoshikatsu Kanemaru suggested that objects and even people could be distinguished by the Vita and have computer-generated graphics overlaid. It’s a technology that appears to have borrowed from Sony’s previous SmartAR research, which can intelligently spot unique elements -such as posters, magazines or more complex forms, like body outlines – in the camera’s frame and then track them accordingly.

All of the boards in the series use the dual intelligent Processors 2 tech with DIGI+ VRM power delivery for precision power adjustment and control. The boards also provide extra DRAM power to increase stability and has a feature packed BIOS. It sounds like the family will be overclocker friendly.

The mainboards also supports SATA 6Gb/s storage interface with RAID 0/1/10 support. The chipset in the boards also supports USB 3.0 natively with no need for a secondary controller. Intel still lacks native support for USB 3.0 and all Intel chipset boards are using a secondary controller for USB 3.0 ports. There is no word on when these boards will land and how much they will cost.

The recent refresh of the GeForce GTX 460M into the 560M was a welcome one, bringing Optimus support and higher clocks to what's liable to be their crown prince of budget mobile gaming. The GTX 560M is beginning to materialize in the market, but we were still left with an odd hole in NVIDIA's lineup at the top. That hole has now been filled, and thankfully it's at least a little more than the usual speedbump that goes along with a new moniker these days. Now every part in the 500M series can switch over to Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics while running on the battery, offering the best of both worlds.

NVIDIA's new top dog is the GeForce GTX 580M. Every spec on the press sheets is listed as "up to," but that's really par for the course. While NVIDIA's reps declined to comment on what chips are being used for the GTX 580M, you'll find the specs are a dead giveaway. The 580M seems to be a mobile version of the GF104/114 (more likely GF114), with 384 CUDA cores, with a main clock of 620MHz (yielding 1240MHz on the shader cores). Riding shotgun is a 256-bit memory bus supporting up to 2GB of GDDR5 clocked at an effective 3GHz. Those of you keeping score at home will note that's an improvement of 45MHz on the core (and thus 90MHz on the shaders), with the memory speed remaining constant. All told I'd expect performance in the neighborhood of the desktop GeForce GTX 460 1GB version (or at least, the original NVIDIA spec): not too shabby, but still an incremental improvement on the shipping GTX 485M. The major selling point is, again, Optimus support in the 580M.

On the heels of the GTX 580M is the GeForce GTX 570M. The 470M was a bit of an oddity in that while the 480M and 485M were easy enough to find, the 470M was largely a rarity. While the 580M sees the minor speedbump we've come to expect, the 570M is a major improvement over its seldom-used predecessor. The 570M likely uses the same silicon as the 580M (which is, again, more than likely a GF114), but while the 470M only had 288 CUDA cores, the 570M gets a healthy upgrade to 336. The 470M's 535MHz core clock also sees a boost to 575MHz, with the shaders clocked at 1150MHz. The 570M still retains the 470M's 192-bit memory bus, and will be configured with either 1.5GB or 3GB of GDDR5 clocked at an effective 3GHz, a marked improvement on the 470M's 2.5GHz memory clocks. All told performance should be somewhere between the desktop GeForce GTX 460 768MB and the GTX 460 SE. For mobile gaming, that's still not bad at all, and again it benefits from Optimus support.

NVIDIA also was able to point out specific models of notebooks that will be shipping with these parts. Availability in 17" Clevo notebooks should surprise no one, with the P270WN in particular supporting both 3D Vision and SLI'd GeForce GTX 580M's. Alienware's new M18x (which we have en route for review) will also be supporting the GeForce GTX 580M in SLI. And finally, the MSI GT780R shown above will be shipping with the GeForce GTX 570M.

NVIDIA expects notebooks featuring the new GPUs to be available for order from OEMs today.

Razer is back and that DeathAdder mouse is getting dressed up for fans of the Transformers franchise. The mice are for the tie in to the new flick that opens this week in theaters everywhere. The DeathAdder comes in both Autobot and Decepticon versions with the good guy mice in red for Optimus Prime and yellow for Bumblebee. The bad guys are in silver for Megatron and purple for the new baddies that pop out of the dust on the moon.

All of the mice have the same 3.5G sensor and 3500dpi sensitivity. You can pick up any of the four designs for $69.99 each. To complete your Transformers desk swag you can also get a Transformers Vespula dual sided gaming mouse pad with Optimus on one side and Megatron on the other for $44.99. Razer also has a line of laptop sleeve cases in Transformers style for $49.99 each.

A free account will have limited inventory slots, reduced trading capability and will be limited in the type of weapons that can be crafted. A premium account will not have any of these restrictions and will be given to anybody who has paid for the game or spent any money in the online microtransactions store. Premium accounts will also have access to rare and cosmetic items.

The announcement is part of the Uber Update patch that has been adding new items every day of this week and includes a new payload map and new items for several classes.

Some players have voiced fears that going free to play will result in more griefers and cheaters plaguing the game, but Valve has assured everyone that they are keeping a close eye on this, in particular with people making multiple free accounts to escape bans.

Team Fortress 2 was released in 2007 as part of the Orange Box compilation and has been adding new features on a regular basis. There have been over 200 updates.

Valve had been teasing that they were making one of their titles free to play earlier in the week and many sites correctly guessed that it would be Team Fortress 2. This follows the introduction of several free to play MMOs to Steam including Champions Online and Global Agenda.

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm will be offered like an expansion, but is actually a full new game with a new story and a new set of characters. The trilogy has always been planned to be three different stories told from the point of view of a different race. This new chapter will continue where the previous Wings of Liberty left off and delve deeper into the life of the Zerg.

Blizzard has released the below trailer as well as a gameplay preview ahead of the E3 conference. However, the Heart of the Swarm most likely will not be available until sometime next year.

LUCID TAKES VIRTU GRAPHICS VIRTUALIZATION TO MORE PLATFORMS, MORE SYSTEMS
New Virtu Universal Immediately Available for Notebooks, All-in-One and Desktop PCs based on Either AMD or Intel Integrated GPUs

KFAR NETTER, Israel and TAIPEI, Taiwan – COMPUTEX 2011 – June 1, 2011 – LucidLogix demonstrated today for the first time at Computex 2011 its Virtu™ Universal® GPU virtualization software, on notebooks, All-in-One (AiO) and desktop PCs based on both Intel® and AMD integrated graphics processing units (GPUs). Virtu Universal is a new product that builds on the capabilities of the popular LucidLogix Virtu™ GPU virtualization software for Intel Sandy Bridge H61, H67 and Z68-based motherboards.

Virtu Universal dynamically allocates graphics resources between integrated and discrete GPUs on Intel second-generation Core processors and AMD Brazos and Bulldozer platforms, allowing the systems to take full advantage of the processing power provided by both GPUs. Consumers will no longer have to choose between popular media processing features like Intel QuickSync video transcoding and DirectX 11 3D gaming performance. Virtu provides consistent, simultaneous performance with both.

“We’ve had an amazing adoption of Virtu on select Intel Sandy Bridge-based systems,” said Offir Remez, president and founder of Lucid. “It was a natural step for us to extend this capability to all Sandy Bridge platforms including notebooks and AiO PCs as well as sharing it with the AMD fanbase.”

Virtual Vsync Delivers No Compromise Game Performance and Quality

In addition to the recently introduced Lucid Virtu software benefits of complete media and 3D gaming performance, LucidLogix Virtu Universal also features Virtual Vsync benefiting all gamers from casual to hard-core who no longer have to compromise between visual quality and performance. Virtual Vsync delivers maximum gaming frame rates and responsiveness, while eliminating distracting and image-distorting visual tearing. Virtual Vsync breaks past the limits of standard Vsync (60 FPS) to deliver:

• Unlimited frame rates – some as much as 120 FPS and beyond with in-game Vsync on.
• User-defined frame rate and visual quality selection
• Flawless visual quality without tearing
• Maximum responsiveness to mouse and keyboard – some as much as 250 percent or more
• The infrastructure to support for next-generation platforms

“Once again, Lucid’s ongoing innovations in GPU virtualization keeps the end customer in mind and eliminates common performance and feature compromises on PCs,” added Remez. “We believe gamers will be amazed at the boost in visual quality and keyboard responsiveness provided in Virtu Universal enabled systems.”

Virtu Universal is available to system manufacturers using AMD Brazos and Bulldozer, Intel Sandy Bridge Z68/H67/H61, and other Intel integrated graphics, like the G41 platform. To date Virtu technology has been verified with hundreds of games and applications and is bundled with motherboards from many of the worlds’ leading brands. The flexible nature of Virtu Universal makes the technology highly likely to be found on a variety of upcoming mobile and desktop PCs this year. For more information, visit www.lucidlogix.com.

“We basically put it back up in the shop and did some massive overhauls to some things, which I’m not going to go into specific detail about,” Sigaty told Joystiq at a press event last week. “But yeah, we are working on Blizzard Dota, and we do intend to launch it at or around the time of Heart of the Swarm, but the official details will be online later.”

Will the mod eventually require the upcoming Heart of the Swarm expansion to play? Sigaty’s got nothing yet: “We’re not even talking about the business level decision of it at this point.” But rest assured that, somewhere on Blizzard’s Irvine, CA campus, there are still developers fighting over who’d win in a fight, Thrall, Diablo, or Tychus Findlay.