Nvidia Shield Tablet Gets Android Lollipop Update, Half Life 2 EP1 and GRID

MojoKid writes Nvidia's Shield Tablet is only a few months old, but Nvidia is already updating the device with a freshly minted OS, a refreshed Shield Hub and access to the company's newly upgraded GRID Game Streaming service. A number of new Tegra K1 optimized games are arriving as well, as well as a new game bundle which includes Half Life 2 Episode 1. The SHIELD Tablet Android Lollipop update will feature Android's new "material design" interface and improved app performance, according to Nvidia. The update will also come preloaded with a new version of Nvidia's own Dabbler drawing and painting app (Dabbler 2.0). In addition to a new interface inspired by Lollipop's design language, Dabbler 2.0 will offer full support for layers and it'll allow users to share their sessions over Twitch. Previously, accessing the Nvidia's GRID beta meant streaming games from a GRID server cluster on the west coast, but Nvidia is expanding the service with server clusters located in Virginia, Europe and Asia. For the best possible user experience, streaming games from the cloud must incur minimal latency, and adding more servers in strategic locations not only affords Nvidia greater capacity, but minimizes latency as well. Nvidia says the GRID service will be available in North America this month, Western Europe in December and Asia sometime next year. The company's GRID service gives gamers access to 20 top titles currently, including Batman Arkham City, Borderlands 2 and Psychonauts, among others, and Nvidia is planning to add new games every week.

nVidia sucks

[ArcadeMan]

And their new GeForce GTX 980 graphics card is really fucking amazing!

Hmmm ...

[gstoddart]

For the best possible user experience, streaming games from the cloud

is a dumb idea?

Sorry, but why would I want to stream the damned game every time I play it?

No, I like the model where I download once, and ideally can play while my tablet is in airplane mode. In fact, any game I can't play in airplane mode gets deleted.

I wonder how many people are interested in this tablet, or if it's likely to be a complete failure as everyone things "who cares?".

Re:

[xaotikdesigns]

It's like Netflix for games. If they can get it to stream everything good and it's decently priced, I wouldn't mind checking it out.

Re:

[Wing_Zero]

The time it would take to take light to make a loop around the earth is 7.5 seconds, IF the light was strong enough to make it around the earth through a fiber cable, uninterrupted. (I couldn't find a max length of fiber, but it is used in the intercontinental network of 250,000 km, so at least that per stretch)

Satellite internet has a minimum latency of 1/4 seconds, not counting congestion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[tehcyder]

The time it would take to take light to make a loop around the earth is 7.5 seconds

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. The Earth is 24,000 miles round. I make that 0.13 seconds to loop round the Earth. Did you take c as 186,000 miles per hour by any chance, as you are out by a factor of about 60?

Re:

[Wing_Zero]

hmmm, i may have a conversion issue somewhere, i had alot of converting from goggle's answers, but the satellite ping is straight off Wikipedia, so i won't take blame for that one ;) (I was using km as a base and used a few conversion tools online to help me) (i used 299,792,458 metres per second as my measurement)

299792.458 km/s light
40075.017 km Earth Circumference
0.1336758678565556 Seconds around earth

7.480781804783763 if you flip the numbers. my bad.

Re:

[xaotikdesigns]

They've said that it's not for multiplayer FPS games where you'll definitely feel the latency, but playing by yourself shouldn't be a problem for most games. And as to pricing, well, Netflix is more expensive than buying the movie, after all, I'm paying over a hundred a year for it, but it does let me watch as many movies as I want, and if I play a game I don't like, it's probably cheaper than buying it on steam and finding out the same thing. Especially since I can just move on to the next game without h

Re: Hmmm ...

[gavin sumner]

I live in England and I've been using the Grid beta since august with no problems, it works better than PlayStation Now which is really impressive when you consider the fact that the beta isn't even meant to work outside the US

Re:

[xaotikdesigns]

Oh no! A cloud service isn't available anywhere that you can't connect to the cloud. I better cancel my netflix account since I can't watch it on the road without a connection.

Re:Hmmm ...

[gstoddart]

Because when we network speeds are fast enough, this WILL be the best possible user experience.

As long as bandwidth is charged for by ISPs, then I disagree.

See, everyone has said "ZOMG, the cloud and teh streaming". Meanwhile, your ISP is thinking "go ahead, suckers, stream all you want, it only makes us money".

Cloud gaming is the way of the future.

We shall see.

Me, I'll stick with an XBox 360 disconnected from the interwebs.

Don' need no steenking cloud. Don' need to steenking interweb connection. Don' need no steenking ads.

Re:

[bananaquackmoo]

I have the tablet. It's well built, bloat free, gets quick updates, has a tablet, has a good screen, is very fast, and is sized just right for me. Maybe it's not for everyone but I love mine. It IS a little pricey but I feel like I got my money's worth, which is the important part.

Re:

[bananaquackmoo]

* I meant to say has a stylus, not has a tablet

Re:

[aliquis]

It's a service with lots of games.

But mostly it render games over at the Nvidia Grid so you get games which look better than what the Nvidia Shield could render itself.

So if you have no PC to run the games with and stream from yourself this is the solution.

As long as lag is acceptable or if there was none I think it's just perfect to use processing in the cloud rather than have the capacity at home but most often not use it.

Re:

[smithmc]

Whether you like the idea of streaming games or not is immaterial. It's not as though you can't play downloaded games as well, and also, at least IMO, it's a pretty solid tablet regardless of where the games come from.

Re:

[rogoshen1]

why mod down? this is a valid question. I find that I ask myself many times each day (before even the most minor of things): "WWBHD?"

Short review

[novitk]

Had it for a month, comparing to Galaxy Tab...
Positives: usable stylus for $300, fast, speakers, minimial bloatware
Negatives: drains battery pretty good even when idle(can't survive 2 days for me), slow charging from PC USB port, glitches in Write stylus app

Re:

[xaotikdesigns]

I'm considering one, the con's you list aren't that bad for me since I'd probably use it as my "around the house tablet" and take my Tab if I'm going to be out and about where I couldn't charge it as needed.

I probably wouldn't expect good battery life while playing games and such anyways.

Re:

[bananaquackmoo]

I have one and haven't had the battery problem you did. Maybe yours is defective? The USB port charging is fine and mine idles for about a week (but then I have nothing running in the background).

Re:

[aliquis]

I haven't had one.

1) Best in class hardware (computing) performance, really only Apple Air2 come close/beat it in reality it seem - that one cost ~67% more though.
New Nexus9 seem have about equal graphics performance but be weaker in the CPU department.
AFAIK the screen is supposed to have a narrow range of colors it can produce though which is bad. Also I wish it was 10" rather than 8".

2) The controller at first impression feel like it have less quality than the Xbox One especially but in actual usage it's

Re:

[tehcyder]

Also I wish it was 10" rather than 8".

Nice problem to have.

Not a good move, Valve.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Getting the Half Life 2 Episodes is just heartbreaking.

It's like somehow the double reverse inverse(or something) of the Star Wars prequels. They're really REALLY good... but leave you hanging. You're actually better off acting like the Star Wars prequels and just pretend they don't exist.

Perhaps when NVIDIA's NDK supports Netbeans....

[mark-t]

I'll probably start to pay attention to their android offerings

Which probably means never. But hey...

As an aside, I now predict that this post will rapidly be replied to by at least 3 or 4 commenters who will attempt to argue that eclipse is infinitely better than Netbeans, either completely unsubstantiated, or positing only subjective points of comparison, and if I weren't mentioning it here, it would also be replied to by at least one 'insentive clod' remark by somoebody who uses vi. The latter may

Re:

[mark-t]

...

And you accuse me of starting a religious rant?

Of course I know that no single tool is good for every possible job... but believe me when I say that I've used plenty of different IDE's, and have found that of the ones currently available that I have tried, Netbeans has the best overall offerings.

For example, a wysywig editor for designing swing user interfaces, live connections to a database, allowing editing of the database without leaving the IDE, and probably most important of all, projects de

Re:

[mark-t]

I suspect you were just trying to be contrary with that remark, but if you don't believe what I'm saying about what I've tried, then it really seems kind of pointless to be trying to convince me that I'm wrong about what I've said I prefer to use.

Re:

[Cederic]

But at least you were able to draw our attention to the issues some people are suffering.

Me, I'm pissed off that the Shield already has Lollipop and my Nexus 5 doesn't. But I guess I should be impressed by Nvidia's turnaround time.

Any relation to Metacreations' Art Dabbler?

[WillAdams]

Always was rather fond of it --- owned by Corel now?