Latest news with #ProjectOrion
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Cyberpunk 2077's next update may add more features to NCART metro system
Image credit: CD Projekt Red Cyberpunk 2077's next update may introduce additional features to its NCART metro system , aiming to expand its functionality beyond its current capabilities, a report claims. When the game initially launched, players expected a usable metro system for traversing Night City, but only hollow station shells serving as fast travel points were available. Years and multiple updates later, Cyberpunk 2077 has seen significant improvements, making it nearly unrecognisable from its initial release state. Despite these advancements, the metro system, even after update 2.1, has not yet reached its full potential. The latest update, version 2.1, introduced functional subway rides with 19 NCART stations across five colour-coded lines, offering an immersive, though passive, travel experience. However, this feature is reportedly seen by some as a partial measure compared to what was originally envisioned for a fully explorable and interactive metro system. Such an addition could fulfil an early promise, deepen the city's worldbuilding, and enhance moment-to-moment immersion. How Cyberpunk 2077's next update can upgrade NCART metro system Cyberpunk 2077's current NCART metro system focuses more on creating atmosphere than providing utility. After progressing past the Konpeki Plaza heist, players can access metro stations to fast travel or ride trains in real time, but the experience is largely passive. Players can't walk around trains, interact with NPCs, or explore station interiors beyond brief cutscenes. According to a report by Gamerant, modders have already shown that a more interactive and realistic metro experience is possible, suggesting CD Projekt Red (CDPR) could expand the system in future updates. Enhancements could include explorable platforms, embedded quests, and dynamic interactions that reflect Night City's social hierarchy, such as cleaner, secure stations in Corpo zones and rundown, graffiti-covered ones in gang territories. Moreover, introducing ambient NPC routines—like commuters, JoyToys, or recurring characters—could deepen immersion, the report adds. The current system lacks incentive, making fast travel and vehicles more efficient. CDPR may fix this in Update 2.3 by offering gameplay perks like stealth bonuses for using public transit or unlocking hidden objectives in gang zones, the report adds. Beyond narrative depth, a fuller NCART system could improve accessibility for players who prefer not to drive. Stations could act as mission hubs, vendors, and fixers, offering streamlined map navigation. Personal touches, like in-game messages from allies during train rides, could turn metro travel into a reflective, immersive part of the journey. Even if not fully realised in Cyberpunk 2077, these ideas could lay the foundation for a more robust system in the sequel, Cyberpunk 2 (Project Orion). Xbox Games Showcase 2025 Highlights: Biggest Game Reveals, New Consoles & More! AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Tom's Guide
5 days ago
- Business
- Tom's Guide
Exclusive: I asked Snap's hardware chief about the company's next-gen Specs — here's what I found out
So as we found out last week, Snap is finally launching Specs to the public in 2026 — after an exhaustive developer program that spans four years since its first Spectacles AR glasses. It's been a heluva journey, and with Meta's Project Orion on the horizon and Apple being 'hellbent' on delivering smart glasses, this is becoming a very competitive space. So far, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has said they will be smaller, lighter, and fully standalone with 'no puck' required. But there's a lot we don't know yet. What has been the story that's led to this point where Snap is ready to go for a full public release? What tech can we expect inside these future contenders for best smart glasses? What's the price? And is society ready for true AR glasses like this? I had a chance to sit down with Snap's VP of Hardware, Scott Myers, and put these questions to him. I have to be a little careful with what I say, because we have like fully announced everything. Yeah. But what he said was that it's substantially smaller. So we have been in this area for 11 years, and we have been building these things for a very long time. It's public information that we have made some acquisitions that like our entire opt optical engine is our own custom thing. We build it ourselves. We design it ourselves, which gives us a pretty unique position where we know exactly how these things are going. We have road maps for development and I really like where we're going. And because we're not just a bunch of companies strung together, we're all like one group working all toward the same goal. I can have the team designing, say, the waveguide, talking to the same team that's working on the rendering engine and SnapOS. And that like synthesis is how we end up still confident about where we're at. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. We've been getting feedback in a lot of different forms about the hardware. We've gotten some phenomenal feedback from the community, but also feedback like 'we wish the field of view was bigger,' you know, or that 'the device was lighter.' There's a joke with the team that like, this is what I want [points towards his reading glasses]. It's a question of what I want. It's how we get there. It's the trade-offs we make to go make these like the dream of true augmented reality, something people can wear and walk around. The social acceptability element is so critically important. Context: Since 2020, Snap has been on a bit of a shopping spree — acquiring AI Factory in 2020 (computer vision AI company), WaveOptics in 2021 (the company designing its waveguide displays), Fit Analytics in 2022 (shopping and ecommerce), a 3D-scanning startup called Th3rd in 2023, and GrAI Matter Labs in 2024 (an edge AI chip company), alongside many more. Well, I think this is one of the reasons we're standalone. I don't want to see people wearing a wire coming out of the back of their head. It makes people look like U.S. Government officials, and that's not how I want to see the world. The form factor obviously matters, but it's also the fit and finish of these things that also matter when you make that jump. Like they need to be robust, but like all of those are pulling the product in different directions. So like, I think one of our strengths is, like, the balance of all of these things. You can make a giant field of view. Some companies have, but you also need really high pixel count or pixels per degree, because it's important for text legibility. You need the ability to make it work indoors and outdoors. Why? Because I don't want to spend all my time inside. As I'm moving through my day, like some of that's inside, some of it's outside. It needs to work in both. So you can't just have a static tint like sunglasses, nor can you just make them clear because they don't work in both environments. So because we've been building these things for so long, we learned these things. We've learned how to solve those problems — what works and what doesn't — but it's all in that trade-off and exactly how you balance all those things. Like, obviously, I'd want the battery to last for days, but then you end up with this giant battery pack that's directionally incorrect, too. This has been a multi-year multi-generation arc. We've launched a pair of 26-degree field of view, augmented reality glasses in 2021 to developers. With that, we learned a ton, and it drove the way our development tool Lens Studio is constructed. So we've been just iterating and iterating and iterating. And what we learned is that like the breath of feedback, the depth of feedback, it's not like you release the product once — you get a long written document, and that's it. It's an active conversation with the community. We even iterate in public in collaboration with our Spectacles subreddit. We want to learn. And what we find is like, as the community grows, as people get better and better at building lenses, they start answering each other's questions. It's a back and forth, like, I personally know developers. That's what a successful community looks like, and we're building this together. And that's very, very intentional. It's in the way our pricing is structured. It's in the way our community is growing. We don't just sell it to anybody, because we want the people who are really going to move the platform forward. It's all very, very, very intentional, and we're very happy with the results as well. As we've had the product out a little bit longer, the lenses have been getting more and more engaging and we're learning together how different UI elements are. I think we are really here to build this with the community because it's an entirely new paradigm. There's a lot of things that will take time for people to understand and figure out. It's not just going to be like, 'oh, here you go, developers — come build for this!' That's not going to work, in my opinion. It is very, very much a community-led discussion. And I couldn't be happier with that. I think what Evan shared was more than Ray-Ban Metas, and less than a Apple Vision Pro. I recognize that's a huge scale!. Obviously we want to make it as low cost as possible. Yeah. But it's also pretty, as you pointed out, pretty advanced technology. And so there's a balance there. One of the things that may not be super intuitive is there's a lot of technology that there is not a ton of world capacity for. Like, we have to go off and work with our suppliers to create these new technologies. Then we have to build the capacity to actually produce them. It's a fun challenge, but there's certainly a ton of work to do. Like, this isn't a Snap-specific problem. This is industry-wide. This is an area where Snap is in a very good spot. Trust matters, privacy matters. And the way we're constructing all of this is a privacy centric way. Like, I want to personalize it. But, this is the most personal possible device. It is literally seeing exactly what I'm seeing. And so, of course, we're going to bring in all the personalization that AI kind of already has like memory. That's an element here, but like I'm actually more worried about how we do it in a privacy-centric way. Back to your previous question, I'm very happy with our direction there. And we've shared a little bit about it, but like having built these for a while, having lived with them, like, it's very much one thing to say, like, hey, but what is this use case? Which I personally don't think is that valuable. It's more about that responsiveness — when I want it, I can go as deep as I want on any topic with it. But do so in a way that maintains my privacy for the times when I don't really need it. But I think that's maybe an undervalued, underexpected problem. Like, you don't want to just share camera images of your entire day! I like that you said battery life, and not just battery capacity. Like, it's all about the way you use it smartly. I used to work on smartphones for a very long time. And yeah, the battery capacity has grown pretty consistently, to be honest — X percent per year. But really, software has gotten much better in how it's being used. This is one of the reasons we built Snap OS, so that we have complete control of exactly how every little bit of energy is consumed across the entire device. It also goes to the way we design the displays, how we make them just super duper efficient, how we do the processing and how we distribute the heat. All of these things have to be balanced, and that's why it's so important to build these, again, where engineers can talk to engineers, and really look at everything as precisely as I can. The other thing I would say is I think if you were to have like in the limit, you have full display, including everything in your world all the time. That would probably be visually overwhelming. I don't personally want a world where I'm walking around and everything's an ad all the time. That would be terrible. So like, I think it'll be about like, what is shown and when, how it's used, and then just generally technology progressing. You know, if you look at some of the initial talk times of very early phones, we're not that long in our developer models. But I think we have some good strategies to increase the battery life now, and it'll just get better and better over time.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cyperpunk 2 goes beyond Night City to a new location that "feels more like Chicago gone wrong," according to the creator of the original tabletop RPG
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Cyberpunk 2 – currently only officially known by the codename Project Orion – was officially announced way back in 2022, but the devs at CD Projekt Red have spent the past few years being pretty reticent to reveal any details about the new game. But Mike Pondsmith, creator of the original tabletop RPG that the games are based on, has just let slip a few new details on Project Orion's setting. During an interview presented at the Digital Dragons conference earlier today, Pondsmith said he's "not as involved directly" with Project Orion has he was with Cyberpunk 2077, but also that he recently visited the devs at CDPR. "I was wandering around talking to different departments and seeing what they had," Pondsmith explained, offering his opinions on features like new cyberware. "I spent a lot of time talking to one of the environment guys," Pondsmith continued. "He was explaining how the new place in Orion, because there's another city we visit – I'm not telling you any more than that, but there's another city we visit." You can see this moment for yourself at the 3:45:47 mark in the video above, and the brief hesitation Pondsmith has really makes it feel like he's revealed a bit more about the game than he was supposed to. Nonetheless, he went on to give us a few more details. "Night City's still there," Pondsmith said. "But I remember looking at and going 'yeah, I understand the feel that you're going for in this, and this really does work.' It doesn't feel like Blade Runner. It feels more like Chicago gone wrong. I said 'yeah, I can see this working.'" Rumors and fan theories have persisted for years that the Cyberpunk sequel might go to Chicago, but it now seems certain that even if the game doesn't go to the Windy City itself, it is going someplace very similar. Here are all the upcoming CD Projekt Red games you need to know about.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cyberpunk 2 has entered pre-production, as The Witcher 3 leaps above Super Mario Bros to sell 60 million copies
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The Cyberpunk 2077 sequel has officially entered its pre-production phase, according to CD Projekt Red. In a new investor relations presentation, one slide simply reads that "Cyberpunk 2 has entered pre-production phase." More information is likely to be available as part of the overall presentation, but for now these slides do offer some interesting information to pick over. Chief among that is the fact that, externally at least, CDPR is still referring to the game - previously referred to as Project Orion – as Cyberpunk 2. That's likely to prevent giving away too much information about its setting. While original Cyberpunk author Mike Pondsmith did recently reveal that the new game would be set in a second location after Night City, the developers are yet to attach anything like the original's naming convention to the project. A sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 conjures images of Cyberpunk 2078, but as soon as we know if that's the case, players can start making guesses about the narrative – if there's no date, there are no theories to be drawn up. Importantly, pre-production also doesn't give us much information about the timeline for the game. We do know that The Witcher 4 - CDPR's next game - is in full production, and the studio has offered hints about its timeline for the new Witcher saga over the past couple of years. But pre-production is a very different beast to full production – it's often a period of ideation and trial-and-error, rather than actually building the final project, and it can often last for years. We do know that CD Projekt Red has built a new, US-based studio to make Cyberpunk 2, so it won't interfere with The Witcher 4 too much, but it's still anyone's guess as to how long we could be waiting. Speaking of The Witcher, the studio has unveiled new sales figures for The Witcher 3, confirming that it's now shifted 60 million copies. That jump puts it further up the list of the best-selling games of all time, clear of Overwatch and even Super Mario Bros. Given the recent celebration of the game's tenth anniversary, it's likely that CD Projekt is very happy with the timing of that particular milestone. "Even people in the studio had problems" with Cyberpunk 2077's most uncomfortable quest, but CDPR stood by it because "we don't do heavy things for the sake of edginess."
Metro
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Cyberpunk 2 release date narrowed down as production ramps up
CD Projekt has confirmed pre-production is underway on the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, which they've given a new name. We've known developer CD Projekt has been working on a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 for a while now, as one of several projects planned by the developer after The Witcher 4. The sequel to the sci-fi role-player has previously been referred to as Project Orion, but the studio provided a significant update on the title (quite literally) in its latest Q1 2025 earnings call. In the report, CD Projekt confirmed development on Project Orion has advanced from the conceptual stage to the pre-production phase. Also, the studio referred to the sequel as 'Cyberpunk 2' for the first time. While it's unclear if this is the final name or just a placeholder, it's a sign that development is progressing well on the sequel In the past, CD Projekt has used subtitles when it comes to naming sequels in The Witcher series, like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, so it's possible Cyberpunk 2 will have some kind of additional name bolted on when it is revealed. Don't expect it to be shown anytime soon though. During a Q&A segment, CD Projekt's co-CEO, Michał Nowakowski, was asked when we can expect Cyberpunk 2 to come out, now it's entered the pre-production phase, and if it will match The Witcher 4's timeline, which entered the same stage in 2022 and is expected to launch in 2027. 'Our journey from the pre-production to the final release takes four to five years on average,' Nowakowski replied. 'Having said that, keep in mind that each project is unique and there are many variables which influence the final outcome, so I will not lead you into specific years. But this is pretty much how it looks like.' If CD Projekt sticks to this timeframe, Cyberpunk 2 will likely not be released until late 2029 or 2030, at the earliest. That's a whole decade after the original game came out on December 10, 2020, when it caught a lot of negative attention for its bug-ridden state. Development on Cyberpunk 2 might be a smoother process, however, considering CD Projekt recently opened a new studio in Boston, Massachusetts primarily for the sequel. The Witcher 4's development, meanwhile, is being done at its main offices in Warsaw, Poland. More Trending Elsewhere, the studio announced Cyberpunk 2077 expansion Phantom Liberty has surpassed 10 million copies sold, an increase of two million from November last year. CD Projekt is hoping for an extra wave of sales with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on Switch 2 next month. CD Projekt has several other projects in the works beyond The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, including a new IP codenamed Project Hadar and a new game set in the Witcher universe codenamed Project Sirius. However, there's no indication of when these could come out. The next new release from the company is likely to be the remake of The Witcher 1, although that's being made by a third party studio and has no confirmed release year. The Witcher 4 will be the next game from CD Projekt Red, which will feature Geralt of Rivia's adoptive daughter, Ciri, as the protagonist. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Xbox handheld delayed claims report as Microsoft refocuses on Windows MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 release date, price, games and everything else you need to know MORE: UK retailer cancels Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders a week before launch
