OGRE, Object-oriented Graphics Rendering Engine, an open source MIT licensed 3D renderer just released version 1.12 after almost a year in development.  The release is heavily focused on internal rearchitecting for future development.

Key features from the 1.12 release:

• #include directive supported for GLSL shaders
• PF_DEPTH support for shadows with the RTSS and the Terrain component
• RTSS 3.0: vastly improved internal API and refactored shader library
• Per pixel-shading on D3D11/ GL3+/ GLES2 by default (via RTSS)
• The GL3+ RenderSystem is now used for rendering the reference Test images
• More precise timings for built-in profiler and support for external profiling via Remotery
• unified API for fixed-function pipeline and shaders
• NEON intrinsics for OptimizedMath on ARM (Android)
• Stable Material library (Media/) that you can reference in your projects
• the MSVC SDK now also includes the Python and Java components
• support for loading 1.7 style terrains (aka “terrain.cfg”)

You can learn more about the release in the New and Noteworthy document available here.  Additionally the source code for OGRE is available here on GitHub.  The book mentioned in the video below that covers OGRE for game engine development is Game Engine Architecture.

GameDev News 3D CPP

Ubisoft and Genba Digital have partnered on silent key activation, a method of selling games through third-party stores that aims to prevent game keys from popping up on key reselling sites.

According to VentureBeat, the move builds on an existing partnership between the two companies, and 10 digital game stores including Chrono.gg and Fanatical have already signed on to use the tech for the sale of Ubisoft games.

Rather than directly purchasing a key for a game from one of those third-party sites and then redeeming it on Ubisoft’s Uplay platform, a store would prompt a user for their Uplay account info. Following that Genba verifies the account and activate the game automatically on that player’s Uplay account.

The system means that neither retailers or players ever directly handle game codes and, as Genba Digital CEO Matt Murphy tells VentureBeat, that cuts down on opportunities for those codes to be redirected toward unauthorized sites.

“The only thing that the e-tailer would get — which doesn’t go near the user — is a token from us, which we use to link to a particular keycode,” he explains. “That token is valueless because it doesn’t mean anything [outside of] the Genba database.”

Newsbrief: Microsoft has announced a version of its upcoming mixed reality HoloLens 2 headset geared toward developers but, as TechCrunch points out, the actual hardware in the HoloLens 2 Development Edition isn’t different than what was announced earlier this year.

Instead, Microsoft has included some extras in the package it hopes will appeal to developers while also offering devs the option to pay for the $3,500 headset in monthly payments.

The HoloLens 2 Development Edition comes with $500 in Azure credits and three-month long trials for both Unity Pro and the Unity PiXYZ program. While the HoloLens 2 Development Edition is the same price as the version that Microsoft announced earlier this year, the dev-focused kit comes with the option to pay in monthly payments of $99 rather than all at once. Pre-orders for this version of the HoloLens 2 are limited to devs enrolled in the Microsoft Mixed Reality Developer Program as well.

XRDC 2019 is looking for speakers! Submit your talk here. (XRDC and Gamasutra are UBM Americas brands.)

Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Alpha Ring will begin receiving the latest 1905 Xbox One system update (19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1905\18362.3035.190421-1940) Read on for more about the new features, fixes and known issues in the latest 1905 system update.

DETAILS:

• OS version released: 19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1905\18362.3035.190421-1940
• Available: 2:00PM PDT 4/24/19
• Mandatory Date/Time: 3:00 AM PDT 4/25/19

New Features:

Better Sorting in My Games & apps

Our team has made it even easier to find what you’re looking for in any Games & apps. From now on,  articles such as “a,” “an” and “the” will no longer be used to sort titles when using the “Sort A-Z” and “Group by letter” views; for example, “The Witcher” will now be found under “W” instead of “T.” Thanks so much to our Xbox community for helping prioritize this change by voting in our recent “My Games & apps” Idea Drive, and don’t forget to check the Xbox Idea Hub for other topics to which you can contribute!

Fixes:

Audio

• Fixes to address no console audio after system update for some users.

Messaging

• We have fixed the “More” button in messaging.

My Games and Apps

• Fixes to the stability of various Games.

System

• Localization fixes.

Known Issues:

Audio

• Headsets are not being assigned to the users profiles.
• Some users are experiencing no audio with headsets and we are investigating
• Some users are encountering no audio on their Xbox console after boot (no shell audio, no game audio, no app audio), then have CSS ask them to perform the following steps:

1. Cold reboot the console

OR

2. Go to Audio settings on console
3. Change their HDMI audio settings to the highest supported uncompressed channel count for their equipment
4. Switch back to the desired format
5. Audio should be restored

My Games and Apps

• We are tracking the video corruption issue with Youtube and Netflix 4k playback.

Profile Color

• Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.

Settings – Hard Drive Transfer

• Moving/copying content from one drive to another fails to move past the assign drive and no content is moved. We are working on a fix. Workaround – You can use a GA console 1904 build to move content.

In April last year, a listing for Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch Enhanced Edition on Nintendo Switch was discovered. At the time, Funbox had already released the turn-based strategy title on multiple other platforms.

If you happen to be a fan of 40K and were looking forward to playing this one on the go, unfortunately, it has been axed. JP’s Switchmania broke the news after receiving an email the game had been cancelled.

Not long after this, the UK publisher Funbox Media confirmed it:

“Yes, we’re afraid so. It’s out of our control I’m afraid. We really wanted to release the game, but higher powers made the decision.”

We’ve contacted Funbox ourselves, so keep an eye out for a more official statement soon.

Right now in Japan, it’s Golden Week. If you’re wondering what this is, it’s a period between the end of April and beginning of May where multiple national holidays take place. This year it runs for 10-days as the new emperor is crowned.

As with any public holiday, the business world typically shuts down. This has created a problem for the developer onebitbeyond as its “critical patch” for The Swords of Ditto: Mormo’s Curse has not yet been approved by Nintendo. Here’s the full explanation from the game’s publisher Devolver Digital via Twitter:

Technical note on Mormo’s Curse on Switch – we expected a critical patch to be applied to Switch at launch. Due to Golden Week in Japan, the patch is delayed a week so the game has some issues with player death.

The delay is expected to be “around” a week. In the meantime, you’ll just have to deal with “some issues” relating to in-game character deaths. To view the pending changes, click here. And if you haven’t already, be sure to check out our review.

Did you download this one on release? Have you encountered any issues yourself? Tell us below.

Nothing lasts forever. When it comes to the hardware in your PC, most of it can easily be replaced. There is, however, one special-case hardware component in your PC that is not as easy to replace as the rest — your hard disk drive.

Drive Mirroring

Your hard drive stores your personal data. Some of your data can be backed up automatically by scheduled backup jobs. But those jobs scan the files to be backed up for changes and trying to scan an entire drive would be very resource intensive. Also, anything that you’ve changed since your last backup will be lost if your drive fails. Drive mirroring is a better way to maintain a secondary copy of your entire hard drive. With drive mirroring, a secondary copy of all the data on your hard drive is maintained in real time.

An added benefit of live mirroring your hard drive to a secondary hard drive is that it can increase your computer’s performance. Because disk I/O is one of your computer’s main performance bottlenecks, the performance improvement can be quite significant.

Note that a mirror is not a backup. It only protects your data from being lost if one of your physical drives fail. Types of failures that drive mirroring, by itself, does not protect against include:

• File System Corruption
• Bit Rot
• Accidental File Deletion
• Simultaneous Failure of all Mirrored Drives (highly unlikely)

Some of the above can be addressed by other file system features that can be used in conjunction with drive mirroring. File system features that address the above types of failures include:

• Using a Journaling or Log-Structured file system
• Using Checksums (ZFS , for example, does this automatically and transparently)
• Using Snapshots
• Using BCVs

This guide will demonstrate one method of mirroring your system drive using the Multiple Disk and Device Administration (mdadm) toolset. Just for fun, this guide will show how to do the conversion without using any extra boot media (CDs, USB drives, etc). For more about the concepts and terminology related to the multiple device driver, you can skim the md man page:

$ man md

The Procedure

1. Use sgdisk to (re)partition the extra drive that you have added to your computer:
   

   $ sudo -i
   
   # MY_DISK_1=/dev/sdb
   
   # sgdisk --zap-all $MY_DISK_1
   
   # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars || sgdisk -n 0:0:+1MiB -t 0:ef02 -c 0:grub_1 $MY_DISK_1
   
   # sgdisk -n 0:0:+1GiB -t 0:ea00 -c 0:boot_1 $MY_DISK_1
   
   # sgdisk -n 0:0:+4GiB -t 0:fd00 -c 0:swap_1 $MY_DISK_1
   
   # sgdisk -n 0:0:0 -t 0:fd00 -c 0:root_1 $MY_DISK_1

   – If the drive that you will be using for the second half of the mirror in step 12 is smaller than this drive, then you will need to adjust down the size of the last partition so that the total size of all the partitions is not greater than the size of your second drive.
   – A few of the commands in this guide are prefixed with a test for the existence of an efivars directory. This is necessary because those commands are slightly different depending on whether your computer is BIOS-based or UEFI-based.

2. Use mdadm to create RAID devices that use the new partitions to store their data:
   

   # mdadm --create /dev/md/boot --homehost=any --metadata=1.0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot_1 missing
   
   # mdadm --create /dev/md/swap --homehost=any --metadata=1.0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/disk/by-partlabel/swap_1 missing
   
   # mdadm --create /dev/md/root --homehost=any --metadata=1.0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/disk/by-partlabel/root_1 missing

   # cat << END > /etc/mdadm.conf
   
   MAILADDR root
   
   AUTO +all
   
   DEVICE partitions
   
   END

   # mdadm --detail --scan >> /etc/mdadm.conf

   – The missing parameter tells mdadm to create an array with a missing member. You will add the other half of the mirror in step 14.
   – You should configure sendmail so you will be notified if a drive fails.
   – You can configure Evolution to monitor a local mail spool.

3. Use dracut to update the initramfs:
   

   # dracut -f --add mdraid --add-drivers xfs

   – Dracut will include the /etc/mdadm.conf file you created in the previous section in your initramfs unless you build your initramfs with the hostonly option set to no. If you build your initramfs with the hostonly option set to no, then you should either manually include the /etc/mdadm.conf file, manually specify the UUID’s of the RAID arrays to assemble at boot time with the rd.md.uuid kernel parameter, or specify the rd.auto kernel parameter to have all RAID arrays automatically assembled and started at boot time. This guide will demonstrate the rd.auto option since it is the most generic.

4. Format the RAID devices:
   

   # mkfs -t vfat /dev/md/boot
   
   # mkswap /dev/md/swap
   
   # mkfs -t xfs /dev/md/root

   – The new Boot Loader Specification states “if the OS is installed on a disk with GPT disk label, and no ESP partition exists yet, a new suitably sized (let’s say 500MB) ESP should be created and should be used as $BOOT” and “$BOOT must be a VFAT (16 or 32) file system”.

5. Reboot and set the rd.auto, rd.break and single kernel parameters:
   

   # reboot

   – You may need to set your root password before rebooting so that you can get into single-user mode in step 7.
   – See “Making Temporary Changes to a GRUB 2 Menu” for directions on how to set kernel parameters on compters that use the GRUB 2 boot loader.

6. Use the dracut shell to copy the root file system:
   

   # mkdir /newroot
   
   # mount /dev/md/root /newroot
   
   # shopt -s dotglob
   
   # cp -ax /sysroot/* /newroot
   
   # rm -rf /newroot/boot/*
   
   # umount /newroot
   
   # exit

   – The dotglob flag is set for this bash session so that the wildcard character will match hidden files.
   – Files are removed from the boot directory because they will be copied to a separate partition in the next step.
   – This copy operation is being done from the dracut shell to insure that no processes are accessing the files while they are being copied.

7. Use single-user mode to copy the non-root file systems:
   

   # mkdir /newroot
   
   # mount /dev/md/root /newroot
   
   # mount /dev/md/boot /newroot/boot
   
   # shopt -s dotglob
   
   # cp -Lr /boot/* /newroot/boot
   
   # test -d /newroot/boot/efi/EFI && mv /newroot/boot/efi/EFI/* /newroot/boot/efi && rmdir /newroot/boot/efi/EFI
   
   # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars && ln -sfr /newroot/boot/efi/fedora/grub.cfg /newroot/etc/grub2-efi.cfg
   
   # cp -ax /home/* /newroot/home
   
   # exit

   – It is OK to run these commands in the dracut shell shown in the previous section instead of doing it from single-user mode. I’ve demonstrated using single-user mode to avoid having to explain how to mount the non-root partitions from the dracut shell.
   – The parameters being past to the cp command for the boot directory are a little different because the VFAT file system doesn’t support symbolic links or Unix-style file permissions.
   – In rare cases, the rd.auto parameter is known to cause LVM to fail to assemble due to a race condition. If you see errors about your swap or home partition failing to mount when entering single-user mode, simply try again by repeating step 5 but omiting the rd.break paramenter so that you will go directly to single-user mode.

8. Update fstab on the new drive:
   

   # cat << END > /newroot/etc/fstab
   
   /dev/md/root / xfs defaults 0 0
   
   /dev/md/boot /boot vfat defaults 0 0
   
   /dev/md/swap swap swap defaults 0 0
   
   END

9. Configure the boot loader on the new drive:
   

   # NEW_GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=$(cat /etc/default/grub | sed -n 's/^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="\(.*\)"/\1/ p')
   
   # NEW_GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=${NEW_GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX//rd.lvm.*([^ ])}
   
   # NEW_GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=${NEW_GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX//resume=*([^ ])}
   
   # NEW_GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX+=" selinux=0 rd.auto"
   
   # sed -i "/^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=/s/=.*/=\"$NEW_GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX\"/" /newroot/etc/default/grub

   – You can re-enable selinux after this procedure is complete. But you will have to relabel your file system first.

10. Install the boot loader on the new drive:
    

    # sed -i '/^GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=.*/d' /newroot/etc/default/grub
    
    # echo "GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true" >> /newroot/etc/default/grub
    
    # MY_DISK_1=$(mdadm --detail /dev/md/boot | grep active | grep -m 1 -o "/dev/sd.")
    
    # for i in dev dev/pts proc sys run; do mount -o bind /$i /newroot/$i; done
    
    # chroot /newroot env MY_DISK_1=$MY_DISK_1 bash --login
    
    # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars || MY_GRUB_DIR=/boot/grub2
    
    # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars && MY_GRUB_DIR=$(find /boot/efi -type d -name 'fedora' -print -quit)
    
    # test -e /usr/sbin/grub2-switch-to-blscfg && grub2-switch-to-blscfg --grub-directory=$MY_GRUB_DIR
    
    # grub2-mkconfig -o $MY_GRUB_DIR/grub.cfg \;
    
    # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars && test /boot/grub2/grubenv -nt $MY_GRUB_DIR/grubenv && cp /boot/grub2/grubenv $MY_GRUB_DIR/grubenv
    
    # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars || grub2-install "$MY_DISK_1"
    
    # logout
    
    # for i in run sys proc dev/pts dev; do umount /newroot/$i; done
    
    # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars && efibootmgr -c -d "$MY_DISK_1" -p 1 -l "$(find /newroot/boot -name shimx64.efi -printf '/%P\n' -quit | sed 's!/!\\!g')" -L "Fedora RAID Disk 1"

    – The grub2-switch-to-blscfg command is optional. It is only supported on Fedora 29+.
    – The cp command above should not be necessary, but there appears to be a bug in the current version of grub which causes it to write to $BOOT/grub2/grubenv instead of $BOOT/efi/fedora/grubenv on UEFI systems.
    – You can use the following command to verify the contents of the grub.cfg file right after running the grub2-mkconfig command above:

    # sed -n '/BEGIN .*10_linux/,/END .*10_linux/ p' $MY_GRUB_DIR/grub.cfg

    – You should see references to mdraid and mduuid in the output from the above command if the RAID array was detected properly.

11. Boot off of the new drive:
    

    # reboot

    – How to select the new drive is system-dependent. It usually requires pressing one of the F12, F10, Esc or Del keys when you hear the System OK BIOS beep code.
    – On UEFI systems the boot loader on the new drive should be labeled “Fedora RAID Disk 1”.

12. Remove all the volume groups and partitions from your old drive:
    

    # MY_DISK_2=/dev/sda
    
    # MY_VOLUMES=$(pvs | grep $MY_DISK_2 | awk '{print $2}' | tr "\n" " ")
    
    # test -n "$MY_VOLUMES" && vgremove $MY_VOLUMES
    
    # sgdisk --zap-all $MY_DISK_2

    – WARNING: You want to make certain that everything is working properly on your new drive before you do this. A good way to verify that your old drive is no longer being used is to try booting your computer once without the old drive connected.
    – You can add another new drive to your computer instead of erasing your old one if you prefer.

13. Create new partitions on your old drive to match the ones on your new drive:
    

    # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars || sgdisk -n 0:0:+1MiB -t 0:ef02 -c 0:grub_2 $MY_DISK_2
    
    # sgdisk -n 0:0:+1GiB -t 0:ea00 -c 0:boot_2 $MY_DISK_2
    
    # sgdisk -n 0:0:+4GiB -t 0:fd00 -c 0:swap_2 $MY_DISK_2
    
    # sgdisk -n 0:0:0 -t 0:fd00 -c 0:root_2 $MY_DISK_2

    – It is important that the partitions match in size and type. I prefer to use the parted command to display the partition table because it supports setting the display unit:

    # parted /dev/sda unit MiB print
    
    # parted /dev/sdb unit MiB print

14. Use mdadm to add the new partitions to the RAID devices:
    

    # mdadm --manage /dev/md/boot --add /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot_2
    
    # mdadm --manage /dev/md/swap --add /dev/disk/by-partlabel/swap_2
    
    # mdadm --manage /dev/md/root --add /dev/disk/by-partlabel/root_2

15. Install the boot loader on your old drive:
    

    # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars || grub2-install "$MY_DISK_2"
    
    # test -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars && efibootmgr -c -d "$MY_DISK_2" -p 1 -l "$(find /boot -name shimx64.efi -printf "/%P\n" -quit | sed 's!/!\\!g')" -L "Fedora RAID Disk 2"

16. Use mdadm to test that email notifications are working:
    

    # mdadm --monitor --scan --oneshot --test

As soon as your drives have finished synchronizing, you should be able to select either drive when restarting your computer and you will receive the same live-mirrored operating system. If either drive fails, mdmonitor will send an email notification. Recovering from a drive failure is now simply a matter of swapping out the bad drive with a new one and running a few sgdisk and mdadm commands to re-create the mirrors (steps 13 through 15). You will no longer have to worry about losing any data if a drive fails!

Video Demonstrations

• TIP: Set the the quality to 720p on the above videos for best viewing.

Just a few years ago, artificial intelligence was largely relegated to universities and research labs, a charming computer science concept with little use in mainstream business. Today, AI is being integrated into everything from your refrigerator to your favorite workout app.

“It’s really exciting, because there’s a new breakthrough every month, or every week,” said Lance Olson, director of program management for applied AI at Microsoft. “Increasingly, the conversations are switching from discussing the art of the possible to getting to the next level of implementation on a specific project.”

Still, many companies are struggling to achieve their AI goals, as the supply of data scientists and AI experts has failed to keep up with surging demand. Creating AI models is difficult work. And then comes a struggle to get them into production – and keep them running. Data ages, much more quickly than code, making models less accurate as the world changes around us.

At its 2019 Microsoft Build conference, the company says it’s focused on helping all developers – even those without an AI or data science background – use its tools and services to deliver the big benefits that more and more customers expect.

“AI and machine learning can turn developers into heroes, for their ability to deliver really personalized, super-immersive experiences to customers,” said Wisam Hirzalla, director of operational databases and Blockchain product marketing at Microsoft. “We want to make it easy for any company to use the technology.”

Simplified and automated machine learning

Toward that end, Microsoft is announcing new capabilities for its cloud-based Azure Machine Learning service, with a goal of enabling developers and data professionals of any skill level to build advanced machine learning models.

We can think of AI practitioners in three categories, according to Bharat Sandhu, director of artificial intelligence at Microsoft. First, we have developers and data scientists who like to write code. They want to build machine learning models using tools and processes they already know. For them, Azure Machine Learning offers a “code first model,” where they can use the development tools they like.

A second group, including business domain experts, may know a lot about data, but they don’t know much about machine learning or code. For those customers, Azure Machine Learning’s automated machine learning experience is a “no code” option, accessible without having to write any code.

“A third category of people, who are learning machine learning concepts, they want to make their own models, but they are not coders. This could be IT professionals, or folks with background in statistics or mathematics,” Sandhu said. “For those customers, we’re offering a drag-and-drop experience to make models visually.”

Sandhu noted that no matter which way the machine learning models are created, they all use the same back end, meaning all the models can easily be integrated together.

Interoperability

Of course, developers and data scientists have a number of platforms to choose from when they build AI models. To make sure companies can adopt AI advances as quickly as possible, Microsoft says it’s important to overcome platform mismatches, which can delay the rollout of those models into production.

One way Microsoft promotes interoperability among the various AI frameworks is a standard called ONNX Runtime, or Open Neural Network Exchange. This joint effort with other tech companies creates deployment models that work across multiple platforms.

That frees up developers and data scientists to use whatever framework and hardware target is best for them. And it frees up the operational team to focus on deploying and getting results, instead of having to translate as they move from one to the other.

At Build, Microsoft is announcing support for ONNX integration with leading hardware accelerators.

The company also is announcing that it is now an active contributor to the MLflow project, an open source platform for managing the machine learning lifecycle.

Azure Cognitive Services updates

More than 1.3 million developers, many without specific AI or data science skills, currently use Azure Cognitive Services to build intelligent apps that can see, hear, speak, understand and even begin to reason.

At Build, Microsoft is announcing a new category of Azure Cognitive Services called Decision, which gives specific recommendations to help people make decisions. This new category includes Personalizer, which uses a branch of AI called reinforcement learning to help technology glean knowledge from its own experiences and then offer informed recommendations.

“We are able to take reinforcement learning and ship it in a way that’s accessible to developers and doesn’t require a data scientist,” Olson said. “That will be very impactful for customers.”

At Build, the company is announcing many other updates to Azure Cognitive Services, including Ink Recognizer, which can learn to read handwriting, Form Recognizer, which identifies forms, and other new conversation transcription capabilities and other speech, vision and language advances.

Just getting started

To date, Microsoft’s customers have created almost 400,000 digital agents through its Azure bot service, and more than 3,000 come on line each week. Companies of all sizes are looking to AI to give them a competitive edge.

That includes Cheetah Mobile, a leading mobile app maker building AI-enhanced hardware, including the hand-held CM Translator. Rather than developing the entire speech system from scratch, the company used Azure Cognitive Services, leveraging its text-to-speech API to provide rapid, high quality translations.

The development cost savings helped keep the device affordable, with no compromise in the natural speech flow.

Other companies say one of the chief benefits of using Azure data and AI tools is that they can take advantage of other attributes built into the tools. For example, the digital asset management company MediaValet relies on the security and privacy safeguards Azure provides to reassure customers that the images it processes will be handled properly.

“We’re not a big company, but we can actually play ball with big enterprise players, because we can leverage the information security and privacy attributes, the trust-ability of Azure,” said MediaValet chief technology officer Jean Lozano.

In the coming months and years, Microsoft expects more and more customers to start using AI, both because they see the business benefits and because the tools are more accessible.

“AI opens up so many possibilities. And the limits are very few, generally limited only by your imagination,” Olson said. “It doesn’t need to be overwhelming for people. We are getting to the point where we can now make AI accessible to a much broader set of customers.”

Related to AI news at Microsoft Build 2019: