It’s been a while since we’ve announced a new integration with Zwift’s Training API… but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening. In March, Final Surge announced their integration. Then last week, Wahoo SYSTM announced theirs.
As a reminder, these integrations make it super simple to see and complete workouts from third-party providers within Zwift. Specifically, Zwift’s Training API integration allows for the following:
Workouts scheduled on the partner’s side (eg, Final Surge or Wahoo) are automatically pushed to Zwift for you to execute on a given day (you may also manually push a workout from the partner’s app to your Zwift session)
Your completed activity is automatically pushed to the partner so it can be processed accordingly in their systems
We may never fully understand how TikTok’s “For You” algorithm works or why it sends users down the sometimes very specific rabbit holes it does. But the company is making it a bit easier to control what topics are likely (or not) to appear in recommendations.
The company is rolling out a setting to “manage topics” within the app to all users in an attempt to add more personalization to users’ feeds. The setting, which the company began offering in the United States last year, is a set of sliders that allow people to specify how often they want particular types of videos to appear in their recommendations. The sliders cover about a dozen general topics, like nature; food and drink; fashion and beauty; and pets. For each interest, you can drag the slider to “see more” or “see less.”
TikTok notes that these in-app controls “won’t eliminate any topics entirely,” so the sliders won’t, say, prevent any sports content from ever appearing in your feed. But the company says the setting “can influence how often they’re recommended as your interests evolve over time.”
For those who want more granular control over their feeds — at least when it comes to blocking specific types of content — TikTok is also expanding its keyword filtering option, which allows people to choose specific keywords they don’t want to see. Now, the app will use AI to make those filters smarter by adding extra keywords for similar content. For example, if you choose to filter “remodeling,” the app may also opt to add “renovations” to your filtered words. The app may also automatically block alternate spellings of topics, like “cat” or “c@t.” The company says it expects these “smart filters” to “get increasingly precise as more people use it over time” and that it will eventually allow users to add up to 200 keywords.
Both features are available now in TikTok’s settings in the app’s “content” preferences section.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-is-making-it-easier-to-control-what-is-and-isnt-in-your-for-you-feed-175301931.html?src=rss
According to people who have played Mario Kart World, the upcoming Switch 2 launch game from Nintendo, the new open-world kart racer is bigger than you might have expected, especially when compared to other open-world games like Forza Horizon 5.
Epic Games held its annual State of Unreal event today, offering a first look at some exciting new features coming to Unreal Engine 5 through a tech demo set in the world of The Witcher IV.
The team at Epic Games, together with CD Projekt Red — developers of the Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 — premiered a roughly ten-minute gameplay and cinematic demo that follows Ciri through a snowy mountain pass in Kovir and into the bustling port of Valdrest. The visuals in the demo are not truly final scenes from The Witcher IV but serve as a proof of concept intended to highlight the cutting-edge graphics and tech behind the new Witcher installment.
The demo ran on a PlayStation 5 at 60 frames per second with ray tracing enabled. This was made possible by a slew of new open-world building features coming to Unreal Engine 5.6, including a new “Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin.” Epic says the new plugin should help open-worlds load faster, though exactly how much faster is unclear. A marketplace scene set in Valdrest brimming with life also underscored the ability to create scenes full of high-fidelity characters and visual effects.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the demo was the vast foliage that made up the forests of Kovir. This is thanks to Nanite Foliage, a new system that renders every leaf and branch as real 3D geometry instead of flat textures. This new feature, slated for release with Unreal Engine 5.7, allows for dense high-fidelity foliage without a huge hit to performance.
Unreal Engine 5.6 is now available though many of the tools announced today are marked as experimental, including the Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin, new Control Rig Physics, improved motion capture tools and more. There is no specific release date for Unreal Engine 5.7 yet. As for The Witcher IV, we know not to expect it before 2027.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-witcher-ivs-lush-world-is-on-display-in-unreal-engine-56-demo-174048532.html?src=rss
Very soon, you probably will not need to worry that random people on WhatsApp are able to access your phone number. WhatsApp is reportedly working on a privacy feature that will allow WhatsApp users to mask their private phone numbers with a username.
According to a report, you will need to abide by some rules to enable this feature when
Many Arsians are the go-to IT support representative for family and friends. If you’re lucky, your loved ones’ problems are easily resolved with a reset, update, or new cable. That wasn’t the case for a son who recently had to break the news to his father that the 20TB portable hard drive he purchased for about $50 was mostly just a plastic box with weights and a PCB.
Ars Technica spoke with the Reddit user who posted about his father bringing him a “new 20T[B] HDD to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.” The Redditor, who asked that we refer to him by his first name, Martin, revealed that his dad paid £38 (about $51.33) for what he thought was a portable HDD. That’s a red flag. HDDs have gotten cheaper over the years, but not that cheap. A 20TB external HDD typically costs over $200, and they’re usually much larger than the portable-SSD-sized device that Martin’s father received. A 20TB HDD in a portable form factor is rarer and can cost well over $300.
Taking a hammer to the device revealed that the chassis was nearly empty, save for some iron wheel weights sloppily attached to the black plastic with hefty globs of glue and a small PCB with some form of flash storage that could connect to a system via USB-A.
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is scheduled from June 9 to 13 this year, and you can expect several big announcements to come out of it. Although WWDC 2025 is a developer-focused event, Apple is expected to reveal new features for its operating systems for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and other devices, which makes it a fun watch for anyone who owns an Apple device. That said, don’t expect any major hardware releases. Here’s everything you can expect from WWDC 2025.
New names for all of Apple’s operating systems
According to a Bloomberg report from Mark Gurman, Apple is expected to rename all of its operating systems to align more with the calendar year than their actual version number. This means that the successor to iOS 18 could end up being iOS 26, presumably named after the year 2026. Similarly, if this prediction pans out, you can expect similar rebrands for macOS 26, watchOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, and so on. It’s not uncommon for software (or even video games) to use the upcoming year in the product’s name (think Windows 95), and it looks like Apple is trying to simplify its naming conventions as the number of its operating systems increases with each new product category it enters.
Expect a new look and feel for iOS, macOS, and more
Along with new names, Apple’s rumored to be revamping the look and feel of most of its operating systems. These include both iOS 26 and macOS 26, which are expected to follow the design language of visionOS (the operating system for the Apple Vision Pro headset). You can expect to see “squircle” icons (square icons with prominently rounded corners), translucent window elements, and some 3D elements. Apple has also already revealed the accessibility features coming to its products, which includes Vehicle Motion Cues coming to the Mac and a new Accessibility Reader for the iPhone.
YouTuber FrontPageTech has also shown off what looks like a redesigned iOS 26 Camera app. If the leak turns out to be real, you may see fewer options when you first open the Camera app, with swiping dedicated to switching between Photos and Videos. Tapping is likely to reveal more photo and video options, though. Still, it’s impossible to know for sure until Apple makes it official.
Apple Intelligence updates
The merging of Siri and Apple Intelligence is expected to continue this year, although no one knows when the AI’s final form will be released. When it’s out, you can expect a contextually aware Apple Intelligence that’s on par with competing AI services. However, quite a few Apple Intelligence features have been postponed, and it’s clear that Apple is still playing catchup, so you shouldn’t expect rapid progress here until you see some evidence. There’s a chance that we could hear more about Apple Intelligence integrations with the Health app, according to another Bloomberg report.
Enhanced battery life
Apple is reportedly planning to use AI to improve your iPhone’s battery life. The report claims that an AI-powered battery management mode will analyze how you use your iPhone and make tweaks to conserve battery life accordingly. That sounds great in theory, but so far my observation has been that enabling Apple Intelligence on my devices has led to a decrease in battery life.
A desktop mode on your iPhone
One leak suggests that you may soon be able to connect your iPhone to external displays and use the secondary display for presentations, viewing content on a larger screen, or video editing. This could be a game-changer for some, especially those who use Samsung’s DeX. Although the iPhone already already supports mirroring via AirPlay, it has a lot of limitations. A wired connection to larger display will theoretically be a lot less laggy.
Live translation for AirPods
Rumors also suggest that Apple may announce a live translation feature for your AirPods. This feature could be made available for the AirPods Pro 2. For anyone who travels to different countries, this feature could be immensely useful, so here’s hoping that it does get launched and that it works well. While there are no leaks that hint at a new AirPods Pro yet, I really hope to hear some news about a new model in the lineup. Perhaps we’ll have to wait until the iPhone launch event for more news on this front.
Meta has struck a 20-year deal with energy company Constellation to keep the Clinton Clean Energy Center nuclear plant in Illinois operational, the social media giant’s first nuclear power purchase agreement as it seeks clean energy sources for AI data centers. The aging facility, which was slated to close in 2017 after years of financial losses and currently operates under a state tax credit reprieve until 2027, will receive undisclosed financial support that enables a 30-megawatt capacity expansion to 1,121 MW total output.
The arrangement preserves 1,100 local jobs while generating electricity for 800,000 homes, as Meta purchases clean energy certificates to offset a portion of its growing carbon footprint driven by AI operations.
For better or worse, Fortnite will let creators make NPCs that ditch the script and go freestyle. A new tool in the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) will allow developers to create their own generative AI-powered NPCs. Their voice types, delivery styles and personality traits are all customizable.
Epic demoed the tech on Tuesday during its “State of Unreal” keynote. The company said the NPC generated its responses in real-time during the presentation. It was created using “about 20 lines” of prompt text.
The demoed character, Mr. Buttons, was created solely to persuade the player to press a large red button in a room. After the presenter asked about the signs in the environment warning against pressing the button, the AI bot persisted. “Signs, you say? Mere suggestions from those who lack imagination. After all, rules are made to be gently nudged aside. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Impressive as it was, the demo also showed the tech’s current limitations. First, it’s a turn-taking AI chat, not a live one with interruptions and overlapping. In addition, the presenter could only speak when holding a button to activate the microphone. After each question, Mr. Buttons would pause for a few moments to process. It tried to mask this with vocal fillers like “Hmmm,” “Ahhhh,” and “Ummm.”
Epic Games
The tech builds on Darth Vader’s appearance last month in Fortnite: Galactic Battle. Gemini 2.0 Flash generated the Sith Lord’s dialogue, which was made to sound like James Earl Jones’ voice using ElevenLabs AI tech. (His estate approved it.)
How did it go? Well, AI Vader went viral for… probably not the reasons Epic hoped. On the bright side, it didn’t quite devolve into AI Seinfeld levels of offensiveness. But a widely shared video showed Darth dropping an F-bomb. In response to a streamer using “freaking” and “fucking” in a voice prompt, Vader repeated the words. (Ironically, he then scolded the player for using harsh language.) Epic pushed a hotfix and promised it wouldn’t happen again.
Fortnite creators will be able to make the NPCs in the UEFN Editor later this year. You can check out the Mr. Buttons demo below.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fortnite-is-about-to-unleash-ai-powered-npcs-172728548.html?src=rss
For a long time, the play when you need critical real-time performance has been to set up a specialized embedded system for that task, meaning you need a whole other system for general-purpose computing. Intel wants its customers to know that its hardware and software support for “Time Coordinated Computing” means you can do it all on one
Skydance’s Behemoth gets a revamped arena and boss rush mode in today’s free update.
Now live following a brief tease last week, Skydance Games confirmed that “The Rites of Wrath” update introduces a brand-new boss rush mode called The Behemoth Trials. This lets you fight any of the campaign’s Behemoths immediately using bespoke loadouts, allowing you to challenge Nightscraper, Dreddstagg, and Shacklehide individually or in a set order of your choosing. Accessing this mode is not restricted by campaign progression, either.
This major update also revamps the Arena Mode, which has been available as a beta since Skydance’s Behemoth launched in December. Now in full release, this involves fending off enemies across various waves. Collecting coins from downed enemies lets you pick up one of 15 powerful golden weapons, though a durability system means these weapons can break over time.
Victory in The Arena means surviving with only one life, and succeeding unlocks an endless version. The Arena contains three maps with daytime and nighttime variants, two of which are brand-new alongside the Beta’s original map with new features.
Resolution Games today showed off its first gameplay clip of the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons-themed version ofDemeo (2021), the hit VR-supported tabletop action RPG.
Initially announced in January, Resolution Games and Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast have finally showed off Demeo x DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Battlemarked in action, including a brief look at gameplay, environments and settings.
As we imagined, gameplay looks largely to be the same as Demeo, pitting up to four online players against monster-filled dungeons.
Image courtesy Resolution Games
If you’ve never played Demeo before, here’s how it works: the tabletop action RPG is all about quick, turn-based battles set across various gridded dungeons, letting you move according to action points and engage in battles by rolling a single simplified die.
Battlemarked appears to feature the same game die too, which includes three faces: a single sword for a successful hit, double swords for a critical hit, and the skull for critical fails. Various action cards provide players with a rotating library of attacks, defenses, heals and buffs to play, each unique to your chosen character class.
And like Demeo, Battlemarked is said to launch with hybrid VR/flatscreen gameplay, supporting traditional monitors on Steam and PlayStation 5, and VR on Quest 3/S, PSVR 2, and PC VR headsets.
Image courtesy Resolution Games
Resolution Games additionally announced that Battlemarked is launching on those platforms in late 2025. The studio says more details are coming soon, which includes the game’s exact launch date, additional supported platforms, and the first details of the game’s planned second adventure, which will be included at launch.
Promising to bring over the tone and lore of the D&D universe, Resolution Games also says they’ve been working with story designer Matt Sernett as the project’s narrative lead, who previously worked as a designer of the D&D tabletop game in addition to working on numerous D&D video games over the years, including Baldur’s Gate (1998), Baldur’s Gate II (2000), and Icewind Dale (2000).
In the meantime, you can now wishlist Demeo x DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Battlemarked on the Horizon Store for Quest 3 and Quest 3S, the PlayStation Store for PSVR 2, and Steam for PC VR headsets.
Demeo X Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked received its first gameplay trailer before launching later this year.
Officially announced back in January, publisher Resolution Games has released a first look at Demeo X Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked, an official crossover game with Wizards of the Coast. Showcasing a familiar location for DnD fans, the game’s first adventure takes place in Neverwinter, and you can see that in action below.
Speaking in a prepared statement, Tommy Palm, founder and CEO of Resolution Games, confirmed that the upcoming game features “dramatic cut scenes, richer dialogue, and deeper player choices.” Resolution’s hired Matt Sernett as the narrative lead, whose previous experience includes working on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game alongside Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate I & II.
“When Dungeons & Dragons launched fifth edition back in 2014, the first adventure that many players went on ventured into Neverwinter Wood, and I can think of no place better for Battlemarked players to begin their journey,” said Sernett in a press release. He also advised that Cragmaw Castle and Mount Hotenow will feature in this campaign.
As announced in its initial reveal, Battlemarked mixes Demeo’s tabletop RPG’s mechanics with Dungeons & Dragons’ setting. Cross-platform co-op multiplayer is confirmed, and the game doesn’t use a Dungeon Master (DM) to run campaigns like D&D requires. Two campaigns will be featured at launch, while further DLC campaigns are planned with different D&D settings.
Screenshots provided by Resolution Games
Beyond this, Resolution Games confirmed that more details about additional platforms and an exact launch date “will be revealed later this year.” This includes more details about Battlemarked’s second adventure, which the studio states will be included at launch. The studio’s also planning to release a series of developer diaries in the coming months.
Demeo X Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked is expected to launch in late 2025 on PC VR, PlayStation VR2, Quest, PC and PS5. Resolution Games informed UploadVR that while the game is “optimized for the Quest 3 line of devices,” Quest 2 and Pro are also supported.
Skydance’s BEHEMOTH (2024) just got a major update called ‘The Rites of Wrath,’ which brings two new game modes to the VR adventure game—’The Arena’ and ‘The Behemoth Trials’.
Arena Mode Leaves Beta
Arena Mode was initially available in beta when the game launched in December 2024, although it lacked a progression system and only had on map to play through.
In today’s update, Arena Mode is adding two new maps, including both daytime and nighttime modes for all three on offer, making for six total randomized maps.
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Image courtesy Skydance Games
Image courtesy Skydance Games
Image courtesy Skydance Games
While you shouldn’t rely on your trusty old Bastard Sword for too long—weapons can break in The Arena—the update includes a new feature to keep you hunting for some ultimate blades. Now, players can collect coins from fallen enemies and exchange them for an array of 15 golden weapons, each with their own special power.
The Behemoth Trials
One of the biggest updates to Behemoth is the new Trials Mode, which lets you face off against any of the game’s massive bosses, letting you take on Shacklehide, Nightscraper, Dreddstagg, as well as the game’s final boss.
Skydance says play time for The Behemoth Trials ranges from “15 to 90 minutes, depending on which Behemoths are chosen,” while the Arena Mode adds an estimated “40 to 60 minutes” to beat.
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Image courtesy Skydance Games
Image courtesy Skydance Games
The Rites of Wrath update is available across all supported platforms, which includes the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above, the PlayStation Store for PSVR 2, and Steam for PC VR headsets.
If you don’t already own Skydance’s Behemoth, there are a few sales to watch out for too that mark it down to just $20. The Horizon Store currently features 50% off, available for the whole month of June. From June 4th – 18th, it’s also going to be on sale for 50% off on PlayStation Store, and 50% off on Steam from June 26th to July 10th.
Animal cloning has evolved from experimental science into a thriving commercial industry producing thousands of genetic copies across nearly 60 species, despite sustained public opposition to the technology. ViaGen Pets & Equine, the world’s leading producer of cloned cats, dogs and horses, charges $50,000 to clone a pet and $85,000 for a horse, with customers joining waiting lists for the service.
The technology has found applications ranging from preserving exceptional beef cattle genetics to creating armies of polo horses. Top polo player Adolfo Cambiaso owns more than 100 clones of his best mare and once fielded an entire team riding copies of the same horse. West Texas A&M professor Ty Lawrence successfully cloned superior beef cattle from meat samples, with ranchers subsequently purchasing thousands of straws of semen from his cloned bulls. A 2023 Gallup survey found 61% of Americans still consider animal cloning “morally wrong,” nearly unchanged since Dolly the sheep’s 1996 debut, yet the industry continues expanding globally.
Big tech players like Meta and Apple see the ultimate destiny of XR as a replacement for the smartphone. One of VR’s leading studios makes the case that there’s much to be lost in the transition to that future of XR if the talent and techniques built over the last decade of virtual reality aren’t carried through.
Hi there! My name is Denny Unger. I am the CEO (and professional VR snob) at Cloudhead Games. I founded Cloudhead because I saw pure magic and unlimited potential in virtual reality. Since 2013, we’ve grown to 60 VR pro’s, formed deep relationships with the key OEMs, all while creating, innovating, and shipping multiple top-selling and award-winning titles. This year marks our 13th year, and from this vantage I’d like to speak in broad terms on the state of VR, its future and why it’s so important not to lose focus on this incredible medium.
Denny Unger, CEO of Cloudhead Games, stands in front of 13 years of VR headset prototypes
VR’s Growing Pains
I’m going to speak to VR’s growing pains, but before I do, I think it’s important to point out that year-on-year, key competitors are spending more on XR development, not less. VR hardware development has shifted in branching and accelerated ways, but its overall fit within a broad consumer landscape has always been an act of pathfinding. I would also like to reinforce that the data clearly points to ‘games & gaming’ as the primary revenue generator in this market. Productivity and general ‘apps’ still haven’t found their footing, but there are important reasons for that.
The first ‘VR downturn’ was focused around glacially slow adoption in the PCVR market in 2018, after its 2016 rebirth. This was based on various points of consumer friction (cost, setup, and technical know-how, form factor, onboarding friction, and lack of content), generally minimal investments in studios/software, a lack of publisher interest, and a tech community fixating on the next shiny thing. Most VR studios just weren’t finding the support or margins they ultimately needed in this nascent market to build multi-year projects at scale. But in that very same year, Meta (then Facebook) introduced the Oculus Quest: a stand-alone VR headset that removed some of the biggest points of friction for consumers, and offered developers an outlet for more curated, high-quality content. This was further bolstered by significant growth with the launch of Quest 2 in 2020 against the backdrop of a world held captive by lockdowns and uncertainty. Our 2019 release Pistol Whip participated in this wave of success maintaining a top spot in the list of ‘all-time gross revenue’ earners globally.
VR was apparently booming, it outsold Xbox Series X|S, it was competing with consoles for the first time, and it was paired with some of the best VR content available.
But from 2022 forward, VR’s climb up the Slope of Enlightenment appeared to meet a great Chasm of the Unknown, a slow but steady storm, predicated by a challenging global economy, a decline in consumer spending, layoffs and game studio closures, and a rapidly shifting investment focus towards AI over XR and Metaverse ambitions.
A ‘VR Amended’ Gartner Hype Cycle punctuated by a Chasm of the Unknown
Technological Impatience
VR’s extraordinary ambition to penetrate into all human activities appears to be held back by a kind of technological impatience. To many of us working within the industry, XR is taking an appropriate amount of time to work out the kinks of this completely transformative new medium, bringing both hardware and software to a place which matches consumer expectations. But mainstream consumers, while very impressed with VR, remain skeptical due to critical points of friction (comfort, isolation, software ecosystem, utility, cost). I have often compared modern VR to putting on your shoes to go outside, in order to do X activity for 30 minutes. Humans have a tendency to opt for the lowest energy requirement possible, especially when it comes to their entertainment. So the simple act of donning a headset is often an additive point of friction, which in some ways is keeping current XR tech and form factors in limbo. This has profound relevance to our future approach to XR technologies.
So instead of the world-dominating technology we all thought it might be at this time, VR resonates most deeply with a market of core gamers, enthusiasts, and a growing youth segment, all of them willing to endure VR’s growing pains for the raw experience. And while that market is significant, it is in some ways antithetical to a broader mission where VR dominates at smart phone adoption levels. And more recent attempts to capture the market segments of Productivity, or even Media Consumption, are a challenge due to social isolation, long-term wearability, and mostly barren ecosystem choices.
All of this in turn has softened investment prospects and left a lingering question mark over XR’s future for those that are unable to see where this is all headed. Stay with me here!
Into the Chasm
The greater frustration for modern VR studios (of which there are fewer every year) lay between where we are now, and that ‘Chasm of the Unknown,’ which we must leap past in order to see VR’s true rebirth. The thing is, VR will become profoundly relevant when consumers are opting to wear a device which is comfortable for long periods, fashionable, and does ‘everything’ (no small order). A device that is your supreme portal to other realities, entertainment, work, education, and everything in between. Something you live with, and within.
But where does VR fit when we usher in this new age of malleable realities, and will there be enough VR studios around to meet the moment?
There has been a significant refocus around Augmented Reality, but this is just one complementary aspect required for a true ‘metaverse’ future. MR/AR is more narrowly focused on anchoring information spatially, as opposed to deeply exploring new realities, which is to say it’s part of a constellation of complementary ‘modes’ that will comprise future XR tech (Modal switching between Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality). MR/AR is great, emulating functions of your phone on your head is interesting, it’s just not that ‘sexy,’ and in isolation it is not a complete picture of our XR future.
So what, then, is the primary draw to XR? In some ways it might be better to think of Mixed Reality as a ‘gateway drug’ to VR. We can say one thing fairly confidently here with respect to how consumers interact with current XR tech: true awe generally doesn’t come from spatial widgets, it comes from spatial experiences that draw users into whole new realities which play into deep areas of wish fulfillment. So while our future certainly includes MR based applications, XR’s true ‘killer app’ is spatially aware, adaptive, replacive reality.
A Modal VR Future
Let me double down on that statement a little bit. I have always looked at the technologies evolving out of AR as a solution for VR locomotion and discomfort. When consumers are finally living with ‘all-day XR glasses,’ which can map their living or working spaces in real-time and allow them to dip in and out of VR and MR modally, users will begin to actively reskin their real-world environments (spaces, objects, people, etc.) to look and behave however they want. It won’t be enough to look at anchored apps against the backdrop of a dirty laundry bin or a sink full of dishes; consumers will customize their living rooms to be castles, resorts, Minecraft landscapes, etc. They will dine in the halls of gods and have meetings at the bottom of the ocean. Some may think it dystopian, but I believe the true Metaverse levels the playing field between the haves and have nots, allowing for a landscape of human activities in fantastic environments custom tailored to the user, or a consensual experience tailored to a group. It will eventually be done completely on the fly, and will likely be the true ‘killer app’ of future XR devices.
Lifeskin’ video by Reddit user Jesser722
But when users come down from their slightly hollow (but very cool), potentially ‘auto-generated’ fever dream, they will also crave high-quality, hand-architected VR experiences. Expertly crafted stories, games, Virtual Reality entertainment, from a human perspective which guides them on a journey of play and discovery.
Not-So-Hidden Opportunities
This is why it is so vitally important that the VR studios of today are supported and invested in over the next 5-10 years. Critical domain knowledge and unique skillsets have been mastered over the last decade, and yet the landscape of remaining VR studios face an existential risk. Building for VR is VERY different from building for traditional mediums, and we’ve cracked the code on many things that still aren’t universally adopted as best practices. A future without that domain knowledge, infrastructure, and experience will guarantee a poorly timed reinvention of the wheel, which could jeopardize the stability of the moment and longevity of future XR technologies. And that moment requires powered-up studios, content, technology, and investments, which can cover the entire spectrum of how users will want to interact with the technology. It will be a wide and deep breadth of augmentation dipping in and out of an increasingly malleable reality, where new experiences are just a click away. VR does not live outside of that future, it IS that future.
If you are on the edge of XR, directly invested in it, or frustrated by how long it’s taking, I don’t want you to miss out on potentially one of the biggest booms mankind will experience: an incoming cultural shift into unfathomable augmentation and customization of how we live our lives. The right device, the right software, the right investments, the right balance, all takes time. And at the risk of sounding like an entrepreneur…it won’t be long now.
Why VR?
I founded Cloudhead Games in 2013 because I saw pure magic and unlimited potential in VR. This was a technology which could literally take you anywhere, let you be anyone, could evoke powerful emotions, perspectives, and knowledge that was simply not possible in any other medium. VR was going to change the world, transform the entire media landscape, entertainment, training, education, and in many ways it already has (for those looking at the right places). I still very much believe in VR’s raw power, giving the average person limitless possibilities and potential. That’s how big it is and despite all reports to the contrary, it’s on its way.
Over a decade later, I for one can firmly say that VR is not dead, it’s just getting started!
Adobe has spent years releasing mobile apps that aren’t Photoshop, and now it’s finally giving people what they want. Yes, real Photoshop. After releasing a mobile version of Photoshop on iPhone earlier this year, the promised Android release has finally arrived. You can download it right now in beta, and it’s free to use for the duration of the beta period.
The mobile app includes a reasonably broad selection of tools from the desktop version of Adobe’s iconic image editor, including masks, clone stamp, layers, transformations, cropping, and an array of generative AI tools. The app looks rather barebones when you first start using it, but the toolbar surfaces features as you select areas and manipulate layers.
Depending on how you count, this is Adobe’s third attempt to do Photoshop on phones. So far, it appears to be the most comprehensive, though. It’s much more capable than Photoshop Express or the ancient Photoshop Touch app, which Adobe unpublished almost a decade ago. If you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of Photoshop, the new app comes with a robust collection of tutorials—just tap the light bulb icon to peruse them.
If you’re playing Elden Ring Nightreign you’ve probably beaten a few bosses by now. Maybe you’ve finished the whole game. Maybe you’re already thirsting for more challenges to overcome in the ever-shifting land of Limveld. Good news: more Nightreign DLC is on the way. In fact, FromSoftware’s post-launch plans for the…
For decades, astronomers have said of our Milky Way galaxy is headed for an inevitable, head-on collision with its colossal neighbor, Andromeda, in approximately 4.5 billion years. This collision, often depicted as a spectacular, transformative event, has been a cornerstone of our understanding/presumption of galactic evolution. However, new
