Businesses around the world have been harnessing the Internet of Things (IoT) to reduce operational expenses, power breakthrough customer experiences, and create new revenue streams. Now, faced with the unprecedented challenges of our times, businesses are also harnessing IoT to create safer workplaces as employees return to work, reduce expenses to weather downturns, reduce environmental impact and help with sustainability goals, and remain competitive as IoT becomes a standard way of operating a business.

Microsoft is a recognized leader in IoT. Our mission is to simplify IoT and make it available to every organization on the planet, regardless of size or technical capability. And we haven’t stopped there; we simplified IoT with no code and low code offerings like Azure IoT Central that customers and partners can use without any cloud solutions development skills.

At Microsoft, we deeply understand the value of embracing tech intensity, of using data and AI to address challenges and identify opportunities. Azure IoT plays a leading role in this transformation with an edge and cloud methodology that instills confidence in organizations’ ability to act on the insights presented to them.

Azure IoT is uniquely positioned as a fully open, flexible platform that spans industry applications and simplifies the development process. This week at Microsoft Ignite, we shared the latest from Azure IoT and how partners and customers are using these innovations in amazing ways.

RXR Realty builds on Azure IoT to increase safety

When faced with the question of what is needed to enable a safer, sustainable return to the workplace, New York-based RXR Realty looked at how they could quickly pivot the work they were doing around smart buildings to support a holistic end-to-end approach that spans an employee’s entire day—from waking up, to entering the office building and having a productive day, to going home. The result was the RxWell program, a connected environment solution built on Azure IoT, which was developed and deployed in under six months through partnership with Microsoft, McKinsey, and Infosys.

RXR Realty knew that for every one office worker that returns to the office, it drives five service jobs, such as food service and childcare providers, therefore helping stimulate the local economy. Azure technology allowed them to quickly build an edge-to-cloud solution that merges physical and digital assets, giving office workers the tools and peace of mind to navigate the workplace in safety. This technology helps manage employee rotations and enable touch-free building and elevator access.

Additionally, real-time analytics deliver insights into occupant density, air quality, humidity, and population health, enabling businesses and their workers to make informed decisions and navigate office buildings safely and confidently. Read the RXR Realty customer story and watch the Microsoft Mechanics—How We Built It video featuring RXR Realty to get a demo-rich, technical breakdown of the RxWell solution.

GE Aviation digitally models and observes aircrafts with Azure Digital Twins

As connected solutions continue to grow, companies are looking for ways to create richer models of entire connected business environments. Companies are currently able to use Azure Digital Twins to design and build sophisticated digital replicas of assets, environments, and business systems that can be used across connected environments including, smart buildings, utilities, factories, farms, railways, and entire cities.

Many of our customers and partners are already benefiting from Azure Digital Twins. Using Azure Digital Twins, GE Aviation can model digital representations of individual aircrafts and their components to track asset performance, monitor component usage, and view maintenance history. In a world where it’s not always possible to send someone on site, these insights allow GE Aviation to observe the plane inside and out and mitigate issues before they occur—helping get essential supplies and goods to our doors.

“Azure Digital Twins allows us to fuse vital data—whether it’s from our Asset Records system, our EMS system or another—into the asset-centric point of view needed for the new Asset Lifecycle product we’re creating to show an asset’s state at any point in time. Azure Digital Twins also provides an out-of-the-box ability to track changes for properties or relationships between components over time for advanced analytics. This proves valuable for supporting airlines in making critical maintenance decisions, such as whether or not to keep parts on the wing longer, while also helping reduce their maintenance burden, costs, and the amount of downtime or out-of-service-time for an aircraft.”—Nate Hicks, Sr. Product Manager at GE Aviation’s Digital Group

Azure Digital Twins, currently in preview with general availability coming soon, will bring many new capabilities plus the scale, reliability, and broader market availability necessary for customers to build production-ready solutions. Partners can use its flexible integration capabilities to bring together any service and data points from edge devices, as well as any business system—even from outside Azure. Its use of an open modeling language, Digital Twins Definition Language (DTDL), allows companies to create custom models of any connected environment while maintaining compatibility with other parts of the Azure ecosystem.

ENGIE helps decarbonize energy production with Azure Time Series Insights

The emergence of connected environments also means the continued generation of large volumes of data as assets are connected and brought together. To truly see the benefits, companies require comprehensive analytics across large-scale IoT data sets. ENGIE Digital, a European provider of renewable energy, integrated Azure Time Series insights with Azure IoT Edge to deliver a robust data and AI-driven analytics platform across hundreds of renewable energy sites. This enabled them to support historical data analysis and keep pace with large volumes of data while generating contextualized insights, Azure Time Series Insights ensures they always have the latest data at hand.

Azure Time Series Insights Gen2 is a powerful, fully managed IoT analytics platform created to help contextualize and turn IoT data into actionable insights. Features made generally available in July included multi-layered, scalable storage options for both highly interactive analytics over a short time span and advanced analysis of decades worth of historical data. Rich semantic modeling also enables the analysis of billions of events across millions of IoT sensors to identify trends and anomalies, conduct root-cause analysis, and deliver insights for operational excellence.

AT&T builds cellular-enabled guardian module with Azure Sphere

Security continues to be a key investment area for Microsoft as it is imperative that every IoT device is secured by design.  Accordingly, we are very pleased to share the news from Microsoft Ignite that AT&T and Microsoft are teaming up to enable enterprises to seamlessly connect machines and equipment to the cloud with highly secure global network connectivity. The new, cellular-enabled guardian module shows how Microsoft is empowering customers to achieve more, and in turn, to deliver innovation and opportunity to their customers. Check out the full announcement blog post to see opportunities created.

In addition to all the great customer and partner announcements, we announced the following product innovations:

Azure IoT Hub on-premises in Azure Stack Hub

While customers and partners love the power and productivity Azure IoT Hub brings in the cloud, they also asked for support on-premises. We are bringing Azure IoT Hub on-premises in Azure Stack Hub. This is another industry first from Azure IoT and enables customers to take advantage of Azure IoT Hub in occasionally connected or fully disconnected environments, such as manufacturing shop floors, remote industrial sites, and more. We are putting the finishing touches on preview, which will be available in October.

Azure Defender for IoT with CyberX capabilities

IoT security is fundamental and needs to be addressed throughout the ecosystem as organizations’ assets, data, brand, and overall reputation are on the line. Building on this security momentum and research that shows 97 percent of companies highlight security as a concern when adopting IoT, we are expanding upon our existing industry-leading IoT security offerings.

First, we rebranded Azure Security Center for IoT to Azure Defender for IoT. Already generally available, this offering integrates seamlessly with Azure IoT Hub to proactively monitor IoT and IoT Edge devices and cloud solutions and provide security recommendations and alerts.

Next, we are bringing the availability of Azure Defender for IoT CyberX capabilities, which incorporates agentless technology from our recent acquisition of CyberX and offers new capabilities for securing unmanaged brownfield devices used in operational technology environments. The combination of on-device, agent-based monitoring with the new agentless CyberX capabilities makes Azure Defender for IoT one of the most fully featured and sophisticated security offerings in the industry.

And finally, we continue to partner with industry to refine the IoT Security Maturity Model (SMM) in the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC). This establishes a consistent approach for matching security investments with need, addressing areas including governance, processes, technologies, and operations—for which Microsoft co-authored and edited the Practitioner’s Guide.

New Azure IoT Central capabilities

Azure IoT Central is our IoT application platform that builds on top of the Azure IoT platform. It’s an easy, cost-effective way to build, manage, and operate IoT solutions. Go from idea, to proof of concept (PoC), to enterprise scale in weeks with one of the most advanced IoT application platform in the industry.

At Microsoft Ignite, we announced a set of important new Azure IoT Central capabilities including:

• New Azure IoT Central application template for video analytics—Use this new application template to quickly and easily develop and scale AI-powered video analytics solutions through Intel AI Modules. Leverage existing IP cameras with Azure Media Services and Azure Storage to store and stream relevant portions of the live video feed and live video analytics.
• Continuous data export—Send filtered and enriched data from your devices in near real-time to cloud destinations unlocking business insights with IoT data. The new data export capability allows you to re-use destinations, send only specific streams of data, and enrich your data with data from your Azure IoT Central application.
• Use Jobs to interact with devices—The Jobs experience in Azure IoT Central has been redesigned with a new wizard that allows you to create, run, and save jobs. The UI includes rich charts and interactions for monitoring the progress and completion of jobs across a fleet of devices. Next month, we’ll be releasing additional capabilities that include job schedules and batches.
• Command-line interface (CLI) improvements—The Azure IoT Central CLI extension has a new set of commands including az iot central user, az iot central api-token, and az iot central device compute-device-key for generating device SAS keys used during provisioning.
• Raw data views—Use the new raw data view to inspect telemetry in real-time as it flows from your devices.
• File upload—Azure IoT Central now supports uploading media and other files directly from connected devices.

New Azure IoT Edge capabilities

Azure IoT Edge is a leading edge compute offering in the industry, offering unparalleled production readiness and security. At Microsoft Ignite, we announced a set of breakthrough new capabilities including:

• Nested Azure IoT Edge preview support enables customers to deploy Azure IoT Edge nodes across networks organized in hierarchical layers, such as ISA-95 network topologies, adhering to strict networking requirements to ensure a secure environment from real-time production all the way to the cloud.
• Azure IoT Edge security with enclaves are now generally available, enabling deployment and execution of Trusted Applications in devices suitably equipped with trusted execution environments.
• Edge Compute Node protection profile for IoT device security certification combines industry standard definitions and practices to enable how IoT stakeholders create and consume device security claims.
• Industry-leading monitoring with the latest release of Azure IoT Edge enables rich monitoring of Azure IoT Edge fleets and applications at scale by emitting a rich set of metrics from IoT Edge system modules. Our new monitoring support easily integrates with existing monitoring solutions and even enables local monitoring for offline use cases.

Unified Azure Certified Device program and final certification for IoT Plug and Play

A unified Azure Certified Device program expands on previous Microsoft certification offerings that validate IoT devices meet specific capability needs and work great on Azure. This program helps device builders increase visibility of their products while making it easy for solution builders and customers to find the right device for their IoT solutions via the Azure Certified Device Catalog.

Certifications currently available include: Azure Certified Device, IoT Plug and Play, and Edge Managed. The Final IoT Plug and Play certification, announced in August, helps reduce time to market for device builders. Additionally, Azure IoT platform services and SDKs for IoT Plug and Play will be generally available by the end of this month.

View our developer documentation for more information, and join the companies already beginning to prepare and certify their devices for IoT Plug and Play.  Also, read the full technical blog to learn more about these certifications and others in development.

Accelerate technical skills with Azure IoT Developer Specialty certification and new learning content

Part of empowering tech intensity in our customers and partners is providing the tools and resources for individuals to successfully use advanced digital technologies, such as machine learning and IoT, so they can see projects through to realization. The Azure IoT Developer Specialty certification is a great first step to support developers in gaining technical knowledge, advancing their career, and becoming recognized as experts on their journey to building innovative new solutions.

Developers looking to start their IoT learning and certification journey can find free online courses at Microsoft Learn. They can also prepare for certification with the new Internet of Things Event Learning Path on GitHub. This series of five video-based modules explores topics including IoT device connectivity, IoT data communication strategies, use of AI at the edge, data processing considerations for IoT data, and IoT solutioning based on the Azure IoT reference architecture.

We encourage you to explore these new releases and innovations in depth, and learn more about how Azure IoT can help with  business resilience and staying agile for the future of connected ecosystems. We also recommend checking out these

Microsoft Ignite sessions:

Additional IoT learning resources:

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Azure. Invent with purpose.

Summary: Use one of the following methods to format strings that contain curly braces:

• Use double curly braces {{}}
• Use the old string formatting, i.e. the % operator
• Use the JSON Library
• Use Template Strings

Problem: Given a string literal with curly braces; how to format the string and ensure that the curly braces are available in the output?

To understand the problem statement, let us have a look at the following example:

Example:

x = "{Serial No.}{0} ".format(1)

print(x)

Output:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "main.py", line 1, in <module> x = "{Serial No.}{0} ".format(1)

KeyError: 'Serial No'

From the above example it is clear that when we execute a print statement with a literal text that contains the curly braces, the program raises a KeyError unless we provide the proper syntax for string formatting. In this article, we shall be discussing the methods to overcome this problem and print our text with the curly braces along with string formatting. Therefore:

Desired Output:

{Serial No:}1

Before we dive into the solutions, let us have a look at the reason behind the KeyError exception.

KeyError Exception

A KeyError is raised when you try to access or look for a value in a dictionary that does not exist. For example, consider the following dictionary:

profile={ 'Name':'Shubham', 'id':12345
}
print(profile['age'])

The above code will raise a KeyError exception. This is because we are trying to access the key ‘age‘ which does not exist within the dictionary profile. Since the key does not exist, we cannot access any value using this key.

Here’s what we get when we execute the above program:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "main.py", line 8, in <module> print(profile['age'])
KeyError: 'age'

No, the question that needs to be addressed is – “Why are we getting the KeyEror while formatting a string that contains a text along with curly braces?”

Reason: The .format() generally expects things inside { } to be keys but in this case, it is unable to do so since ‘Serial No.' is not a key. Therefore .format() unable to parse the data. This results in a KeyError as we are trying to access a key-value that does not exist.

Now that we know why we are getting the KeyError let us dive into the solutions to avoid this error.

Method 1: Using Double Curly Braces

We already discussed that {} inside a format string are special characters, therefore if we want to include braces as a part of our literal text, we need to tell the .format string parser that the given curly braces must be escaped and considered as a part of the given text literal. This can be easily done by doubling the curly braces encompassing the string, that is using the following syntax: {{Serial No.}}

The following program denotes how we can use double curly braces to reach our solution:

x = "{{Serial No.}}{0} ".format(1)

print(x)

Output:

{Serial No.}1 

Method 2: Using The Old String Formatting Style (%)

If you do not want to use the double curly braces then you might fancy the old style of string formatting that uses the modulo (%) operator. Let us have a look at the following program to understand how we can use the modulo operator to print our string along with curly braces in it.

x = " {Serial No.}%s"

print (x%(1)) 

Output

{Serial No.}1

Method 3: Using The JSON Library

In situations where you need to deal with complex JSON strings, the most efficient method of dealing with such scenarios is to use the JSON library in your program.

★ The json.dumps() method is used to covert a Python object, like a dictionary, to a JSON string.

Consider the following example which explains how we can use the JSON library to print JSON strings:

import json group = "Admin"

id = 1111

x = {"ID" : id, "Group" : group}

print(json.dumps(x))

Output:

{"ID": 1111, "Group": "Admin"}

Have a look at the following snippet given below to compare and contrast how complex and messy the syntax becomes when we try to print the same string using {{}} in our program.

group = "Admin"

id = 1111

print('{{"ID": {}, "Group": {}}}'.format(id,group))

Output:

{"ID": 1111, "Group": Admin}

Method 4: Using Template Strings

Template strings are used to provide string substitutions. If you want to avoid extra curly braces and % based substitutions then you can use the Template class of the string module.

★ The substitute() method performs template substitution a returns a new string.

Disclaimer: This might be a little confusing and prone to several exceptions if not properly used which is why I personally do not recommend you to use this procedure unless absolutely necessary.

Let us have a look at the following program to understand the usage of Template strings:

from string import Template

x = Template("$open Serial No: $close")

x = x.substitute(open='{',close='}')

print('{} {}'.format(x,1))

Output:

{ Serial No: } 1

EXERCISE

Now let’s get our hands dirty and practice some coding. Can you guess the output of the following snippet?

Note: Make sure you follow the comments in the given snippet which will unlock an important concept for you!

greet = "HELLO FINXTER"

name = input("Enter Your Name: ")

age = input("Enter Your Age:")

print("\n")

# to resolve an expression in the brackets instead of using literal text use three sets of curly braces

print(f"{{{greet.lower()}}} {name}")

print('{{You are {} years old!}}'.format(age))

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed various methods to format a string that contains curly braces in Python. Frankly speaking, the double curly braces is the simplest solution while using the JSON Library is the most efficient method while dealing with complex JSON data. However, you are always free to use any method that suits your requirements and the best way of getting hold of all these techniques is to practice them. So without further delay, please try them in your system, and please feel free to drop queries.

Please subscribe and stay tuned for more interesting articles!

Where to Go From Here?

Enough theory, let’s get some practice!

To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?

Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!

Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?

Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.

Join my free webinar “How to Build Your High-Income Skill Python” and watch how I grew my coding business online and how you can, too—from the comfort of your own home.

Join the free webinar now!

The post How To Format A String That Contains Curly Braces In Python? first appeared on Finxter.

Epic Games have just released the first Preview version of Unreal Engine 4.26. UE4 preview 1 releases are extremely important as they highlight the new features that you can expect in the final 4.26 release, as well as adding several new experimental features. Unreal 4.26 is no exception, with the biggest new feature being the fact the Chaos Physics and Destruction engine is now enabled out of the box replacing the existing PhysX physics, although the new experimental water system taken from Fortnite is a close second.

Details of the release from the Unreal Engine blog:

Experience the latest features coming to Unreal Engine with Unreal Engine 4.26 Preview 1—available now.

Test drive the production-ready Chaos Physics and Destruction System—the now default physics system—and take the new experimental Chaos Vehicle system for a spin. Virtual production pipelines also receive a boost with added movie render queue controls, Sequencer updates, and DMX improvements. If that’s not enough, check out the brand-new water system, the Chaos Ragdoll system (beta), production-ready hair and fur, and more!

You can learn more details about the release on the Unreal Engine forums. While Chaos is now enabled out of the box, it isn’t immediately obvious how to get started using Chaos Physics and Destruction. Therefore in the video below, in addition to covering what is new in the 4.26 release, we also have a getting started with Chaos tutorial to get you up and going quickly.

Apple still doesn’t allow developers to create entirely new Apple Watch faces, but with watchOS 7, it has freed them up to make and share very many different options.

How to buy a Watch face on your Apple Watch

How to choose which Faces to buy

How to download a Watch face

What’s available to buy or download

We’re excited to share a big announcement for Trove, a Microsoft Garage project! Now, people can get paid for contributing accepted photos to AI projects in the Trove marketplace with new PayPal integration. Anyone can try Trove via the new web app and a now open app for Android, expanding participation in the experiment beyond the select set of users at the time of the initial May 2020 launch. At this time, please note that photo contributions are only available in the United States. Trove is accepting AI projects from anywhere.

Start an AI project or get paid for your photos via Trove today. Learn more about Trove in the Microsoft Ignite 2020 session.

Payments now enabled in Trove

Trove is a marketplace app that allows people to contribute photos to AI projects that developers can then use to train machine learning models. They’ve tested early versions of the experience with thousands of users, inspired by the desire to create a place where people can get rewarded for their photos, the Trove team has enabled payments for accepted photo contributions.

Now, users can set up or connect a PayPal account, scroll through available projects and their associated photo offer prices, and submit new or existing photos using the newly released Camera Roll feature. When photos are accepted, users will be notified of payment and can find the reward in their PayPal balance.

Today, users might find AI projects looking for photos on books, magazines, and newspapers, hand-written notes, or numerical digital displays (such as a digital watch or clock). The reward per photo varies by the project, but users might expect to be paid roughly 50 or 60 cents per approved photos.

Feedback loops and quality inputs for research projects are also driving objectives of the marketplace, so the new feature also gives AI researchers and developers the opportunity to provide payment upon approval of photos, and optionally, to set per user photo contribution cap to ensure a variety of submissions.

Responsible AI starts with responsible data collection

Trove was created and imagined by an incubation team who was inspired to bridge their passion for AI advancement with their vision for people-first gig work that promotes transparency and choice. In Trove, they’ve built a marketplace that enables researchers to build machine learning models using responsible data collection. Read the full origin story and inspiration behind Trove in our May 2020 launch blog.

Photo contributors have reported being drawn to the opportunity to contribute to AI and the ideals of a transparent, empowering marketplace. Sebastian, a photo contributor in the earliest versions of Trove, shared, “These little projects are fun to do and it feels like I am doing something bigger than I could ever do on my own.”

“Again and again, we heard from our earliest users that they were excited to be contributing to the march of progress and science, to be part of something bigger than themselves,” shared Christian Lisenberger, one of the Trove project leads. “It is so rewarding to see that we’re able to provide an alternative, responsible way to both advance AI and give people more agency over data and gig work.”

To learn more about Microsoft’s approach to Responsible AI and learn more about Trove, watch Mitra Azizirad’s Microsoft Ignite 2020 talk, available live at 9:55 – 10:40 AM Pacific Time and later, on demand.

New features inspired by community feedback

In addition to being more broadly available, the team has added new key features to the user experience. When the team set out to create Trove, they were inspired to make a people-first solution. They’ve spent the past few months working with customers to understand how to improve their photo contribution or AI project experiences.

Notably, many users expressed excitement for uploading photos from their camera roll, in addition to taking new photos directly from the app. The team is hopeful this will make it easier to bulk upload existing photos and expand the photo variety and volume researchers can include in their computer vision projects.

What’s new

• Payments for accepted photos Receive monetary compensation for every approved photo that you submit.
• Camera roll upload Upload photos from camera roll or take a new picture via the app
• Community forum Submit feedback via answers.microsoft.com

For the full list of key features and trial details, see the Trove Garage Workbench page.

Try it out

Trove is now available as a web app experience, or for download via the Google Play Store for users in the United States. The team continues to be excited for feedback and encourages users to share their thoughts and ideas.

We’ve been teasing this for a while, but today it’s finally true—Fedora Workstation is now available preinstalled on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8, ThinkPad P53, and ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 laptops. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is available today for direct consumer purchase from Lenovo’s online store. The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 and ThinkPad P53 will be available next week via the “Contact Us” icon on Lenovo.com. What’s more, the successor models are in the works for pre-load and online ordering as well!

Lenovo has been a great partner in bringing this to market. Like the Fedora community, they are operating on an “upstream first” model. That’s part of why the only thing you’ll see on the laptop that doesn’t come from an official Fedora repository is a set of PDFs providing documentation and legal notices. Lenovo engineers have been contributing to the Linux kernel, including a patch to enable the “lap mode” sensor, which is already accepted. They have also worked with their vendors to improve Linux support in devices like the fingerprint scanner.

Of course, you already know that open source is about more than just the technology; the community is what makes it great. Lenovo is a member of Fedora and other communities. In addition to participating in the usual Fedora places (like the devel mailing list), they also were a gold-level sponsor of our Nest With Fedora conference. And they have a dedicated Fedora section on their community forum. Mark Pearson, Senior Linux Developer said “doing open source the right way is important to us” at his Nest With Fedora Q&A session.

This will be a global program, but it will take some time to roll out country-by-country. If it doesn’t appear on the website in your country, call the local sales number for your country to place a phone order. I’m excited to have Lenovo offer Fedora Workstation as a supported choice on their laptops. This is a great opportunity to grow our community.

Sega has revealed that Football Manager 2021 Touch will be launching on Nintendo Switch in December following a slightly earlier November release on other platforms.

The full-fat experience, simply called Football Manager 2021, now has a locked-in release date of 24th November on the Epic Games Store and Steam. It’ll also be available on Xbox devices “before the end of the year”.

The Switch ‘Touch’ version, which plays in a simplified format most closely in line with smartphone versions of the game, launches this December with no specific date confirmed as of yet. Last year’s Football Manager 2020 Touch arrived on 10th December 2019, so we can expect a similar date here.

Despite its obvious shortcomings, we felt that 2020’s Touch edition was still an enjoyable experience on Switch, so we’re hopeful for more of the same this time around. Make sure to let us know if you’re interested in picking this up with a comment below.

Update 2 (Fri 25th Sep, 2020 11:45 BST): Ubisoft Montpellier has now uploaded a second post, apologising for the first.

“You may have recently seen a post on our page that includes visuals from Rayman and may be confusing,” it reads. “We have no information to share at this time regarding the Rayman license. We would like to apologize for this misunderstanding.”

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Update (Fri 25th Sep, 2020 11:15 BST): And just like that, Ubisoft has decided to remove the Facebook post. Fans commenting on the post were getting excited over the potential for what the concept art could be relating to, with Ubisoft feeling the need to reply to each user to clarify that it isn’t a new game.

Perhaps Ubisoft felt it safer to remove the post altogether, rather than cause too much excitement?

We’ve managed to salvage both pieces of art from the post:

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Original Article: It would appear that developer and publisher Ubisoft has begun teasing a new project relating to Rayman.

Ubisoft Montpellier, the studio most associated with Rayman’s development, has shared a couple of photographs to Facebook this morning. They appear to show a sketch of Rayman’s head alongside various pieces of concept art.

The post reads, “Something is coming in Montpellier’s studio …What could happen in your opinion? Clue: No this is not a new game.”

Naturally, it’s too early to tell just what this new project will involve, but Ubisoft has warned that it is not relating to a new game. Interestingly, the post arrives just a week after Rayman’s original creator, Michel Ancel, announced his retirement from the industry.

Amazingly, it’s been seven years since the last major Rayman release, when the excellent Rayman Legends first appeared on Wii U and other platforms. Of course, that game has since been re-released on Switch as a Definitive Edition, but fans of Rayman’s fantastical world have had quite a wait between brand new entries.

So if it’s not a new game, what else could it be? Feel free to share your guesses in the comments below.