Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-22-2018, 03:08 AM - Forum: Windows
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The biggest IoT stories of 2018
This blog post was authored by Peter Cooper, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft IoT.
Back in April, we announced our intention to invest $5 billion in the Internet of Things (IoT) over the next five years. The importance of this commitment has become even clearer since, as technology has already evolved, customers have innovated, and possibilities have grown. As 2018 draws to a close, here’s a look back at the topics that drove the most interest and excitement here on our blog—and a window into what’s coming for this technology in the near future.
Smart spaces
The spaces around us are coming alive with the power of data. In our post, “Smart buildings, built on Azure IoT,” we talked about how IoT and AI are helping those who own, manage, and use buildings increase efficiency to reduce cost and improve productivity. With announcements of products such as Azure Sphere and Azure Digital Twins, we empowered our partners and customers to explore new possibilities for managing and improving the built environment responsively, in real time.
Over the past year, we’ve also seen customers expand their vision of what smart spaces can do. Traditionally, these projects were heavily focused on operational aspects of building management such as infrastructure maintenance, water, and power usage. This is still the foundational use case and justification for IoT-enabled buildings, but people are increasingly excited about the transformative capabilities of smart spaces. Customers are exploring how they can use analytics to understand and optimize how people use the spaces they inhabit. Furthermore, they’re designing smart building solutions with the potential to dramatically influence day-to-day productivity and increase positive interactions.
For example, Steelcase showed how they’re creating smart and connected workplaces. As Scott Sadler, Steelcase Smart + Connected manager said, “By embedding technology into the work environment, we are enabling people to tell organizations what spaces are successful and why. We can measure and identify patterns in how and where people are working.” The ease of obtaining these insights will only increase in the coming year, and we’re thrilled to see where this field is headed. As smart space initiatives expand beyond the workplace to encompass stadiums, schools, hospitals, banks, and more—and as edge and cloud technologies connect them to the larger built environment—truly transformative possibilities are bound to emerge.
The intelligent edge
As with smart buildings, we’ve been inspired by the visionary scope our partners and customers have for edge computing and look forward to big things in 2019. IT departments are using edge computing to solve infrastructure and security challenges to make IoT a reality. Hardware vendors are expanding the intelligence of their devices to take advantage of new functionalities. A diverse and vibrant ecosystem is arising that will push what’s possible at the edge.
We highlighted five ways edge will transform business, including reduced IoT solution costs, improved security, lower latency, greater reliability, and interoperability with legacy devices. Enabling this goodness requires a strong technology foundation, which is why the Azure IoT Edge platform garnered so much attention from the industry. Since then, the solution has moved into general availability, enabling any business to deliver cloud intelligence locally on cross-platform IoT devices.
Edge computing has depth, fueling growth in both infrastructure and IoT, which allows data processing, analytics, and advanced functionality on connected devices whether they’re connected to the cloud or not.
These innovations are many and varied. With a consistent deployment model, companies can code and test edge capabilities on any platform and launch them seamlessly. For example, some are training data models using cloud-scale machine learning engines, and then deploying those models as-is to edge devices. Others are using edge as a way to aggregate and preprocess information so that only relevant data is delivered to the cloud. Edge computing also makes it possible to build IoT solutions that are offline for extended periods of time yet deliver powerful predictive capabilities based on local data. It all adds up to more efficient, effective use of data to improve everyday lives around the world.
Open standards and interoperability
Interoperability is a hot topic, especially in the manufacturing space, where businesses are looking for simple, comprehensive solutions that allow them to enable the connected factory with a mix of IoT-ready and legacy equipment. Our April post on OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) highlighted how manufacturers are using the standard to enable openness and interoperability while maintaining high standards of security.
In fact, this past year could be considered “the year of OPC UA,” with ABB, Rockwell, and Schneider Electric joining the OPC Foundation board members, alongside SIEMENS, SAP, Yokogava, Iconics, Ascolab, and, of course, Microsoft.
National industry initiatives have also continued deepening their commitment to interoperability. Germany’s Industrie 4.0 has released new testbeds and specifications based on the standard, and the China 2025 initiative has made a similar all-in commitment to OPC UA. We’ve made our own contributions to the world of OPC UA with new and updated products. Discrete manufacturing is also getting in on the interoperability act, with the German machine tool association VDW announcing the open universal machine tool interface (umati) initiative, which incorporates OPC UA into its architecture.
Looking ahead
The big lesson from all this energetic activity? IoT is a catalyst for digital transformation across traditional boundaries. We’re seeing new ecosystems and solutions emerge that unify data and insights from multiple places to enable new possibilities. As smart cities, vehicles, buildings, spaces, energy, and more converge, the opportunities grow—and so do needs for end-to-end manageability and security. We are committed to solving these challenges with built-in connectivity, real-time performance, and security innovation at the intelligent edge. Learn more about how Microsoft is helping build the connected future.
Bethesda has closed out the year by laying out a roadmap of what we can expect the beginning of 2019 to bring to Fallout 76. The studio outlined a few details of patches coming in January, and promised more info to come early next year.
In the blog post, the studio noted that a mid-January patch will fix the lever-action rifle reload animation, some perk cards, and the crowds at Whitespring. The studio promised that going forward in 2019, patch notes will be accompanied by a brief explanation from developers detailing the rationale behind balance changes and adjustments. It's also working on a new mode without PVP restrictions, allowing you a little more flexibility in how you play. That will be coming in the first quarter of 2019.
It's fair to say that Fallout 76 has had a rocky launch. The game itself released in a buggy state, leading to a poor reception including in GameSpot's own review, which scored it a 4/10. It's been a series of mishaps since then, from an investigation into a PC refund policy to a bait-and-switch with canvas bags in the Collector's Edition, and finally a personal data leak. For its part Bethesda has continued to support the game with patches and has promised to listen to community feedback going forward.
"Bethesda has stated it intends to continue supporting the game for a long time, but at launch, Fallout 76 is a poor experience," wrote critic Edmond Tran. "There are echoes of the series' admirable qualities, but look past that facade, past the cute Vault Boy animations, past the familiar radio tracks, and you'll find no heart--just an inconsequential wasteland doomed to be nuked over and over again."
Despite its issues, it seems to have had a solid launch, selling decently well in physical copies according to data tracking firm NPD.
Review: Mana Spark – Not Quite Heaven-Sent, But Still Worth A Look
Mana Spark is a lovely little dungeon-crawling roguelike. The adventure takes place in a world where humanity is enslaved, its strength inferior to that of its captors due to the lack of Mana in human bodies. Mana is power itself, and whoever wields it grows stronger. But what if a band of rebels formed a hidden encampment in the woods, and cooperated to gather Mana over time so that one of their fighters might one day grow powerful enough to win the day and enable their freedom?
This is where you come in as the player-character, taking risky walks into the woods with your trusty bow and arrows. Your overarching goal is to defeat the mysterious final boss, but until you are mighty enough to get there, your mission is to collect Mana runes, which have a chance of dropping each time you kill an enemy. Every time you plunge into the woods, you are hoping to collect as many runes as you can before you have to die and try again.
Ah, but there is one catch: In order for collected runes to ‘count,’ you must deposit them in a Peculiar Room before you die. The gameplay loop of Mana Spark relies on this tension, the desperate survival-struggle of making it to the next deposit box before your foes, whose varieties are growing more difficult with each level you advance, are able to take you down.
You will need to conquer two forest stages of procedurally-generated rooms to reach the first Peculiar checkpoint. Then onto the more dungeon-like areas proper for one floor, then the first boss, then one more dungeon floor, then the next Peculiar Room. Then one more dungeon floor, a second boss, discovering the third area-type for a floor, and – well, if you can make it a little farther, you get a crack at the endgame. There are only three boss characters and three kinds of environment in the whole game.
You may encounter terms like “massive” or “sprawling” to describe some games, but this is not one of them. Do not fear, however – unless you are a supernaturally gifted gamer, you will likely get several hours out of Mana Spark. You will die often, and because you are not guaranteed to keep the runes you find, some trips into the hostile territory will be much more fruitful than others. Even for a shorter game, this is where Mana Spark can feel grindy at times.
The ‘get good’ journey is a pretty one, though. This game asserts itself as another title with pleasant pixel art, crafted in a style that is somehow both minimalist (your character has a blank, featureless blocky face) yet detailed (torches on walls can be shot out, affecting room lighting). The fantasy world is cast alongside a melancholy soundtrack, its forlorn keystrokes offering a gloomy presentation that keeps the mood of humanity’s desperation at the heart of the narrative, never letting the player feel a real triumph until the very end.
Hope for victory lies in the encampment, where every new life begins and where the player’s allies offer their assistance. When the game begins, your sole companion is Li Wei, a character who can recruit another friend in exchange for two runes. Then you will unlock someone who offers ‘recipes’ that give permanent bonuses, such as to attack power and/or speed, in exchange for runes. Someone else can weaken one enemy type at a time, provided you have killed that enemy once before. Once you have beaten the first boss to unlock a second character, the encampment is where you can switch between Ellis the hunter (who has three hearts of health and a trusty bow) and Jasika the crossbow guard (who only has two health but needs less time between each – albeit weaker – shot). A third character may be found in the dungeon, too, a four-health tanky swordsman.
There is also a blacksmith, who offers a choice of secondary attacks with a cooldown. You begin with a bear trap you can lay down, which hurts any enemy that steps on it. Eventually it is possible to have several options, ranging from a simple rapid-fire for two seconds, to a net that slows any creatures that enter its area, to a weapon that can paralyze, and others. However, you can also upgrade each secondary attack individually, and you might just find yourself playing through the whole game with the strengthened bear trap.
There are no other weapons, or really any sort of fuss with items of any kind. The one random element that helps keep things interesting is that temporary upgrades to the character may be found in a room, or bought for coins (which, like runes, are sometimes dropped from felled foes) in the Peculiar Room checkpoints. You may get an upgrade that increases your health by one, for example, or increases your attack strength. You can also purchase a different secondary attack, if you would like, for the duration of your run; and, by doing so, unlock it with the blacksmith back at the encampment if you want to stick with it on a future run. Your success will, by some measure, depend on your ability to stack these upgrades during your run in order to be a truly formidable hero by the time you reach the final boss.
Notably, the bosses are not as difficult as some of the basic enemy types that may be encountered. In fact, Mana Spark seems to acknowledge this in how the stage progression is laid out; despite bosses dropping lots more runes than other characters, you do not get to deposit the runes into a Peculiar Room immediately afterwards but have to fight through one more dungeon level instead.
And this, at its heart, is the appeal of Mana Spark: The combat is tightly designed to be twitchy, risky and challenging. The interplay between possible room layouts and enemy designs provides a beautiful dance of combat. Different enemy-types may ride each other, and you can trick others into taking friendly fire. You will definitely need to learn their patterns, their behaviour. Mana Spark is at its best in that breath-of-relief moment after needing to make a dozen snap tactical decisions in a row just to survive conflict, when your education in violence pays off.
On the other side of the coin, this game does have one notable flaw: the camera. Whereas other games would centre the point of view on the player-character, Mana Spark centres the camera on the aiming cursor. This means that, as you whip your aim back and forth, the entire scenery is yanked around with it. This can literally be nauseating and feels like a design oversight. Even once you sorta get used to it, one might wonder how much smoother the game would feel if you didn’t need to train your mind to account for the entire screen jostling around as you manoeuvre and fire.
Conclusion
Would it be fair to call this game Titan Souls Lite? How much does the phrase “twin-stick shooter dungeon roguelike” intrigue you? Honestly, the price is probably a fair bet for providing several hours of solid, challenging combat mechanics. Just beware that the drip-feed progression can feel grindy, even for a shorter game – and that choice of camera takes something away from the whole experience, in this reviewer’s opinion. Mana Spark is a game that shines brightly in certain areas, enough to perhaps hide the shortcomings it has as well.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-21-2018, 09:07 PM - Forum: Windows
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Countdown Sale: Save on Xbox games, consoles, Xbox Game Pass and more
The Countdown sale officially starts today and now is the perfect opportunity to give thrills with great deals on all things Xbox. Microsoft Store online and Xbox have hundreds of deals for Xbox fans, including savings of up to 65% on select Xbox One and Xbox 360 digital games, discounts on select Xbox consoles and accessories, Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold each for $1 the first month, as well as deals on select Movies and TV shows, apps for Xbox, and PC games.
Now is the time to take advantage of great discounts and save up to 65% on more than 800 deals between Xbox One and Xbox 360 including new releases like Forza Horizon 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, Battlefield V, smash hit Tom Clancy’s The Division and the award winning Forza Motorsport 7. There also are first-time discounts on Just Cause 4, Hitman 2 and Spyro Reignited Trilogy as well as even deeper discounts on best-selling titles like Rainbow Six Siege. Additionally, there’s a wide selection of discounted family content games, game bundles, and add-on content, plus over 200 Xbox One deals priced at $10 or less.
Don’t forget that Xbox Live Gold members save up to 10 percent more on most deals during the Countdown sale.
Get Your First Month of Xbox Game Pass or Xbox Live Gold for $1
Get your first month of Xbox Game Pass for $1 and enjoy unlimited access to over 100+ games including new first party releases. Sign in to save. Promotional $1 offer not valid for existing members.*
Not Gold? Get your first month of Xbox Live Gold for $1 and take advantage of exclusive savings and join the best community of gamers on the most advanced multiplayer network. Sign in to save. Promotional $1 offer not valid for existing members.*
Save on Xbox Consoles and accessories
For a limited time, save $100 on select Xbox One consoles including popular bundles like Battlefield V, Forza Horizon 4, Fallout 76, Fortnite, Minecraft, and more, all starting at $199 (now through 12/25/2018).
Receive a digital code redeemable for Gears of War 4 for free ($39.99 MSRP value) with the purchase of any Xbox One S, Xbox One X or Xbox Wireless controller at participating retailers worldwide (digital code emailed 10 days post-purchase; available now through 1/31/2019).
Save on popular Movies & TV Shows, Apps, and PC Games
Save up to 50% on select hit movies and TV Shows including Avengers: Infinity War and Mission: Impossible Fallout, plus even bigger discounts on a different daily deal Dec. 21 – Dec. 31.
Save big top apps for Xbox including Dolby Access, Nitrado, Amazon Music, and more.
Save up to 50% on popular PC games including Forza Horizon 4, Sea of Thieves, Age of Empires Definitive Edition, Minecraft Starter Pack, ARK: Survival Evolved, and more.
All of these deals are available on console and online at Microsoft Store and Xbox.com starting today, so take advantage of the great deals before they end on January 3, 2019 (or as otherwise noted above). Availability and pricing varies by location. May not be combinable with other offers. Other limitations may apply. Not valid on prior orders or purchases. See webpage for each offer’s specific details.
* After promotional period, Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold subscriptions continue to be charged at the then-current regular monthly price (subject to change) plus applicable taxes, unless cancelled. Credit card required. Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold offers not valid for existing subscribers; Game catalog varies over time. Limit: 1 Gold offer and 1 Game Pass offer per account. Valid at Microsoft Store online or in-console in all Xbox Live markets excluding Quebec. Some Xbox Game Pass games also require Xbox Live Gold to play on Xbox (subscription sold separately).
Red Matter is a story-driven VR puzzle adventure game set during a dystopian sci-fi Cold War. Take on the role of an astronaut dispatched to an abandoned moon base on a frozen, faraway planet, to investigate a shady top secret research project.
Razer debuts keyboard and mouse duo designed for the Xbox One
Razer and Microsoft are collaborating to release a wireless keyboard and mouse combo designed specifically for the Xbox One.
This news comes after Microsoft finally brought mouse and keyboard support to the console last month, although the new feature seems to only be available to Xbox Insiders.
It will eventually be opened up to all players, but at an unspecified date.
Dubbed the Razer Turret, it features a full-size mechanical keyboard with a dedicated Xbox key that pulls up the Xbox One dashboard.
The mouse is modeled after the Razer Mamba wireless mouse, and can sit on a retractable base that slides out from the keyboard.
Predictably, the Turret is also compatible with PC so players can switch back and forth between platforms as they wish.
Realm Royale Enters Closed Beta on Xbox One with Founder’s Pack Launch
Heroic Leap Games is proud to announce the next phase of our fantasy battle royale game — Realm Royale is now in closed beta on Xbox One. We’ve been hard at work bringing the game to Xbox One, and we’re excited for players to dive into our closed beta for a firsthand look at the fresh spin on the battle royale experience that we’ve crafted.
We think that Realm looks and plays great on Xbox One, so we feel that fans anticipating our launch since it was announced this past Summer will agree that it was worth the wait. If you’re just hearing about Realm Royale for the first time, we hope that you’ll join us as we continue to work hard to create the best battle royale experience possible on Xbox One.
Featuring versatile class-based gameplay and craftable gear and abilities, Realm Royale plunges players into fast-paced battle royale gameplay in a unique fantasy setting. This realm wasn’t just meant to be explored on foot – summon a trusty steed and mount up to explore the world, as well as riding into (or away from!) combat in style.
Compete with up to 99 other players in solo mode, or team up with friends to engage in duo or squad combat. Triumph over your adversaries in the realm to win a coveted Crown Royale victory!
