Despite claims to the contrary as recently as July, Google is shutting down its Stadia games streaming service after just three years. The company says players will still have access to their games and be able to play them until January 18, 2023. After that, Stadia will join the long, long list of products that have been killed by Google.

Those who have invested money into Stadia will be fully reimbursed. “We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store,” Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison wrote in a blog post. “We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023. We have more details for players on this process on our Help Center.”

The reasoning behind the “difficult decision” isn’t surprising. Google said the service “hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected.” It’s a shame, though, since the streaming tech at the core of Stadia works very well and the service had a passionate, if ultimately small, community. The decision leaves Xbox Game Pass, NVIDIA GeForce Now and Amazon Luna as the vanguards of cloud gaming for now.

It seemed like the writing was on the wall for Stadia when Google closed its internal game development studios early last year. There have been other indications in recent months that Google was shifting resources away from Stadia to focus on licensing the underlying tech to other companies. We’ve seen that in practice over the last year or so, with AT&T offering its subscribers the chance to play Batman: Arkham Knight and Control at no extra cost. Capcom used Stadia tech for a streaming demo of Resident Evil Village as well.

Back in March, Google formally announced Immersive Stream for Games, a version of Stadia that third parties can license. It seems the Stadia tech will live on there and in other Google products. “We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed,” Harrison wrote. “We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators.”

Harrison noted that many members of the Stadia team will continue their work in other parts of the company. It’s not clear if there will be any layoffs as a result of the Stadia closure. Engadget has asked Google for comment.

Source: Engadget – Google is (unsurprisingly) shutting down Stadia in January

NASA made history this week after an attempt to slam its DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft into an asteroid nearly 7 million miles away proved successful. While NASA shared some close-up images of the impact, it observed the planetary defense test from afar as well, thanks to the help of the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes. On the surface, the images aren’t exactly the most striking things we’ve seen from either telescope, but they could help reveal a lot of valuable information.

This was the first time that Hubble and JSWT have observed the same celestial target simultaneously. While that was a milestone for the telescopes in itself, NASA suggests the data they captured will help researchers learn more about the history and makeup of the solar system. They’ll be able to use the information to learn about the surface of Dimorphos (the asteroid in question), how much material was ejected after DART crashed into it and how fast that material was traveling.

JWST and Hubble picked up different wavelengths of light (infrared and visible, respectively). NASA says that being able to observe data from multiple wavelengths will help scientists figure out if big chunks of material left Dimorphos’ surface or if it was mostly fine dust. This is an important aspect of the test, as the data can help researchers figure out if crashing spacecraft into an asteroid can change its orbit. The ultimate aim is to develop a system that can divert incoming asteroids away from Earth.

NASA says that JWST picked up images of “a tight, compact core, with plumes of material appearing as wisps streaming away from the center of where the impact took place.” JWST, which captured 10 images over five hours, will continue to collect spectroscopic data from the asteroid system in the coming months to help researchers better understand the chemical composition of Dimorphos. NASA shared a timelapse GIF of the images that JWST captured. 

At around 14,000 MPH, Dimorphos was traveling at a speed over three times faster than JWST was originally designed to track. However, the telescope’s flight operations, planning and science teams were able to develop a way to capture the impact.

As for Hubble, the 32-year-old telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured its own images of the collision. “Ejecta from the impact appear as rays stretching out from the body of the asteroid,” according to NASA. The agency noted that some of the rays appear curved, and astronomers will have to examine the data to gain a better understanding of what that may mean.

According to their initial findings, though, the brightness of the asteroid system increased threefold after impact. That level of brightness stayed the same for at least eight hours. Hubble captured 45 images immediately before and after DART’s impact. It will observe the asteroid system 10 additional times over the next few weeks.

It took 10 months for DART, which is about the size of a vending machine, to reach Dimorphos. The football stadium-sized asteroid was around 6.8 million miles away from Earth when DART rammed into it. Pulling off an experiment like that is no mean feat. The learnings scientists gain from the test may prove invaluable.

Source: Engadget – James Webb and Hubble telescope images capture DART asteroid collision