 This year at CES we've seen weird robots, flying cars, AI washing machines, and of course, a lot about the future of playing video games. Now gaming isn't typically part of the main event here at CES. We have GDC E3 and a whole lot of other conferences for that. But where developers, startups, and game companies do use CES for is hardware. A lot of really weird, experimental, and awesome hardware. NVIDIA this week showed off new G-Sync 65 inch 4K HDR gaming monitors that look absolutely incredible. The company is working with Acer, Asus, and HP to develop the hardware. And G-Sync monitors of this caliber at this size are reshaping how we think about PC gaming visuals. And then there's Razer. Every year the company comes to CES with at least one wacky prototype to show off. This year it was a laptop dock for the recently announced Razer phone. It's called Project Linda, and it's a laptop dock for the phone itself. Even better, the laptop's trackpad is where the phone actually plugs in, with the touch screen acting as your mouse input. We've also seen a few really neat gaming accessories, including one standout invention from Asus that uses light refraction to remove monitor bezels. Called the bezel-free kit, the mountable lenses bend the image of your screen from one monitor to the next, obscuring the black bezels in between. We also saw some pretty out there stuff. Take for instance the Miraviz projector screen, which can handle two video inputs at the same time. That will let gamers play co-op or compete without splitting the screen. And then there's the Zenima eSkin SmartShirt, which basically turns your entire body into a video game motion controller. Now you can't talk about weird gaming hardware at CES without talking about virtual and augmented reality. Now it's been a couple of years since VR basically dominated the show floor, and you can trace that back to the commercial launches of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. It used to be that CES was the best place to try these companies' prototypes, and it was an exciting time for a brand new product category. Of course, Oculus has its own annual conference now, called Oculus Connect, and Sony has in the past typically reserved PlayStation VR announcements for more game-focused shows, like GDC. But, we did get one VR hardware announcement here at CES, HTC's new Vive Pro. It gives the company's headset a resolution bump, built-in headphones, and a wireless adapter for cordless play. That's a big deal, because it means HTC is really focusing hard on the premium PC-powered VR market. It will be interesting to see how Oculus responds, especially because Oculus has been putting a lot of resources toward cordless, self-contained headsets like its Santa Cruz prototype. But here's the reality. VR isn't the show-stealer it once was. This year at CES, it's mostly faded into the background, and that's alright. VR will only get better from here, and that means so will the apps, the games, the films that we experience in VR. Yet here at CES, in place of all the Oculus and Vive excitement of the last few years, we now have AR taking the spotlight. It feels like every company under the sun is trying to take advantage of a renewed interest in augmented reality. It also helps that, since the launch of Pokemon Go about two years ago, AR has been the coolest and most exciting mobile development in a long time. Out here in Vegas, though, we're not talking about mobile AR through an iPhone camera. We're talking about full-fledged AR goggles and glasses that can float virtual images in your vision and help software interact with the physical world, all hands-free and all without a phone. Since Microsoft debuted its HoloLens roughly three years ago, we've all known that this style of AR tech is possible, and that it could have a big impact on gaming and mobile computing. AR has just been too early or too limited or too expensive to really take off yet. Even the HoloLens, which is really, really impressive stuff, is a ways away from being a consumer product. At CES this year, we've seen a number of companies show some genuine AR advancements. Vuzix, a Rochester, New York-based company that's been trying this stuff for years, finally managed to shrink its tech down into a device that looks almost like a standard pair of sunglasses. The Blade headset is a heads-up display that's basically a next-gen version of Google Glass, and it even has Amazon Alexa. We also saw a number of other AR-style displays for specific applications, like motorcycle helmets. Now, sure, there's a ton of junk out there, most of which will never become a successful consumer product. Everyone thinks AR is going to take over the world, and it might just 10 or 15 years from now. That's not to say that eventually won't happen, but these types of transitions in technology take time. There's a HoloLens 2.0 on the way, and then even Apple is working on a rumored AR device. And also, there's Magic Leap, whose apparently groundbreaking goggles are coming out later this year. So, if there's anything to take away from CES about VR, AR, and gaming, it's that there will be hype, and there will be missed expectations. But when all of that dies down, we'll be left with products that are smaller, better, and more powerful. Because CES is a look around the corner, and technology keeps getting better all the time. All right. Now sure, there's a ton of junk. Oh, sorry. I had to just get by. Yeah. Sorry. Get wrecked. You good?