Pearl drops

At the Microsoft Ignite conference, the company's Alex Kipman unveiled a new hologram-based mixed-reality communication platform called Microsoft Mesh. This thing is jaw-dropping. Its most basic purpose is allowing people in different physical locations to join a shared environment, with 3D capture technology creating a hologram of each person therein (a process Microsoft insists on calling 'holoportation'), all running atop the company's cloud platform Azure. There's some forgiveable exagerration at points in the above precis of the Ignite presentation (no, this is not 'teleporting' people), but it showcases the potential for this technology far beyond mere business meetings. A family watching huge shoals of fish on the ocean floor, the software highlighting certain species with information as the father points (yes the world is becoming a video game). Engineers and mechanics messing around with hologrammatic equipment, finger-controlled UI overlays altering the working … [Read more...] about Microsoft Mesh is humanity’s jaw-dropping hologram future

The recent demo for upcoming looter-shooter Outriders has been played by over two million people in just a week. Developer People Can Fly isn't resting on its laurels, however, with a significant patch set to arrive at some point next week that fixes a number of issues ahead of the game's full release on April 1 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Stadia. Connectivity issues were a problem when the demo launched last week, so People Can Fly is currently working on the game's backend to ensure the same thing doesn't happen when the full game launches. The developer says that while its infrastructure was ready for the raw number of expected players, the speed with which they were joining exceeded its expectations and the backend systems were unable to scale in time. People Can Fly also reiterated that any changes to the demo need to be carefully balanced with its work towards launching the full game. With that in mind, a patch for the demo is set … [Read more...] about Outriders Demo Patch Is Coming Next Week

Death-from-a-distance simulator Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 was, we were told last summer , expected to be out in the fall of 2020. That plan ultimately went sideways twice, first in a delay to early 2021, and then to the second quarter of the year. Now, however, we've got a proper (and hopefully final) release set for June, and a new trailer showcasing the skull-popping action we've all come to see. Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 features a singleplayer campaign set in the modern-day Middle East (of course), with five sandbox maps, replayable missions and unlockable rewards, and "extreme-range sniping" that gives players the opportunity to put bullets into brains from more than 1,000 meters away. (That's also two-thirds of a mile, for our non-metric readers.) Pulling off shots like that will be tricky business. Unlike most videogames, which use a simple point-and-kill system for sniping, the Sniper Ghost Warrior series attempts to inject some realism into the … [Read more...] about The new Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 gameplay trailer really pops