VIRTUAL FUTURES
I’VE ALWAYS had a soft spot for virtual reality, but it stems perhaps from something a little more abstract than what we can see today. Back in the day, when I was but a mere toddler, wobbling around my family home, my old man would religiously watch StarTrek:The NextGeneration on TV every week. I grew up with that and the voice of JeanLuc Picard, along with other sci-fi series and actors, in the background, and became obsessed myself. The one thing in particular that always fascinated me with almost all of the StarTrek sagas was the idea of a Holodeck. A virtual playground in which light itself could be warped into any form and take you anywhere you wanted.
Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the far future was equal parts terrifying and exciting, and likely a long way away from where we’re headed, but the basic concept of the Holodeck, and by extension virtual reality, is inherently enticing to anyone looking for an escape from the mundane everyday. VR headsets are the first step on that path, and it got us thinking: Although virtual reality exploded with much fanfare back at its launch in 2016, we haven’t heard much about it since. So, I set Sam to task with one simple question: Where are we today? And I’m glad to say, the young ’un’s done good, with a full eightpage feature on where we are, how we got there, and how the latest offerings stack up to the virtual gods (i.e. me, you, and every other PC enthusiast).
To go alongside that, I got my hands dirty this issue and went on the hunt for some VR greatness myself, but in the form of pure performance, aka a super-small-form-factor ITX build, packing some kick-ass tech, housed in Phanteks’ latest and greatest Shift 2 Air chassis. It was a doozy to build, that’s for sure, and I hope you stick around for that one!
If that’s not your fancy, Jarred’s on task this issue with an in-depth look at the state of cryptocurrency, how to mine it, and the ramifications of that for the world at large. Neil gives us a complete tour of the origins of Linux and operating systems as a whole, while Ian introduces us to the men and women who cracked one of the most advanced forms of encryption you could possibly imagine in World War II, by accidentally inventing the first CPU nearly 30 years before Intel did. Honestly, it’s an incredible piece that last one, and just goes to show how history has got us where we are today.
Speaking of CPUs, we have a review of Intel’s latest and greatest Rocket Lake Core i9-11900K, of course, plus a first look at an RTX 3000-series Gigabyte laptop, and a bevy of other reviews, tutorials, columns, builds, and more, including a little four-page follow-up guide to last month’s NAS OS installation feature, concerning Docker, from our good friend Nick Peers.
I do hope you enjoy the latest issue of MaximumPC. As always, stay safe out there, and until next time….
ZakStoreyis Maximum PC’s editor and longtime staff member. He’ s been building PCs since he was 10, and is more than capable of butting heads with the biggest names in tech.