TechNews

Magic Leap has raised $500 million in funding and is preparing to release a new AR headset, the Magic Leap 2, next year, the company announced Monday. The headset will be generally available next year, the company said, and “select customers” are using it as part of an early access program.

CEO Peggy Johnson said in a statement that with the new funding “Magic Leap will have greater financial flexibility and the resources needed to continue our growth trajectory as we expand on our industry-leading AR technology.” She revealed the new device in an Monday appearance on CNBC.

Magic Leap, of course, is the company that began its existence as a mysterious AR startup, received almost $3 billion to fund its consumer-friendly AR headset, before changing its headset’s name from Magic Leap 1 to The Magic Leap One Creator Edition in an attempt to attract professional customers. The company laid off 1,000 employees — roughly half its workforce — in 2020, and was reportedly abandoning its consumer business. Cofounder and CEO Rony Abovitz left the company in July 2020, and was replaced by Johnson.

In April, Johnson said limited quantities of Magic Leap’s second-gen headset, 20 percent lighter and with a doubled field of view, would ship later this year. According to its statement Monday, the Magic Leap 2 will be the industry’s smallest and lightest device built for enterprise, “designed to increase business adoption of AR.”

In a separate post Monday, Johnson reflected on her first year as Magic Leap’s CEO. She cited a “growing demand for AR” across industries, and cited research from International Data Corp. (IDC) that showed the AR/VR market is expected to grow to $140 billion by the end of 2024.

She listed the company’s enterprise customers, including Ericsson, and Farmers Insurance, the latter of which used the company’s tech to train new employees remotely during the pandemic. Johnson said Magic Leap has added strategic partnerships with Google Cloud, PTC, NVDIA, and VMWare

Johnson said Magic Leap’s core business is focused on enterprise solutions, but added “there continues to be intense interest in the application of Magic Leap’s technology in the consumer space. In fact, we have received several requests to license our technology and will actively pursue these opportunities if they enhance our position and ability to innovate in the enterprise market.”

Last month, the reveal of Nintendo 64 games headed to Nintendo Switch Online was mostly met with adoration from fans, although one problem did prevent the announcement from being truly special. As you may recall, footage shown off during the Nintendo Direct suggested that European fans might have to put up with games running at a slower 50Hz – an issue we explored and explained in full detail just weeks ago.

In a slightly surprising move, however, the company has today addressed those concerns with a statement, confirming that Europe’s N64 games will all be available in 60Hz.

“All Nintendo 64 games included with Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack can be played in 60Hz English language versions,” Nintendo says. “Select games will also have the option to play the original European PAL version with language options.”

So there we are. All games will run at 60Hz, with some also being available in their original 50Hz PAL states. Perfect.

Of course, if you’re reading this from North America and wondering what all the fuss is about, don’t worry. It’s safe to assume that all N64 games headed to Switch Online will also run at the preferred 60Hz in your region, just as the originals did back in the day.

Are you happy with the news? As ever, feel free to share your thoughts with us below.

Publisher Aniplex and developer CyberConnect2 have released the first screenshots of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles playable characters Akaza and Rui, who will be added to the game via its first free post-launch update.

Akaza and Rui are two of six planned free post-launch characters. The second update will add another two characters, and the third update will add the final two.

Details regarding the release timing for the first free post-launch update will be announced at a later date.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles is due out for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam on October 14 in Japan, and October 15 worldwide. Read more about the game here.

View the screenshots at the gallery.

• ❮
• ❯

If you’re trying to play Diablo 2 Resurrected but can’t connect, don’t fret, it’s not you, but rather, the game is experiencing issues once again. Diablo 2 Resurrected down reports are surfacing once again, which makes this the third day in a row that the action-RPG has experienced server issues!

Diablo 2 Resurrected Down Reports – October 11:

Multiple reports on the game’s subreddit have surfaced with players from all platforms confirming the server outage:

i just want to play. from Diablo

Is this an out of season april fools joke? from Diablo

Servers Offline Again v2 from Diablo

For now, Blizzard’s official customer service account has not acknowledged the downtime, which isn’t surprising given the time. That said, the studio acknowledged yesterday’s downtime an hour or two after the servers were out.

Same as always, we’ll be updating the post with Blizzard’s updates up top, so make sure to refresh the post from time to time. Chime in down in the comments on whether the game’s servers are working for you! Share which platform you’re on, as well as region, so other players will know whether there are countries where the game’s online component can be played.

Google applications on iOS have long been criticized for not feeling native to the platform. Earlier this year, the company’s designers reviewed their approach for developing iOS apps and opted for a change. 

Google apps on iOS have long looked and functioned near identically to their Android counterparts. That in itself is fine and the company’s prerogative, but Apple enthusiasts have complained about Google applications not respecting common iOS conventions and “feel,” thus resulting in an inconsistent user experience between first and third-party clients. 

Behind the scenes, this was due to the company’s belief in “shar[ing] UI components across Google.” In building their own libraries, another focus was “filling gaps in UIKit,” Apple’s framework for building apps.

This is according to the staff engineering lead for Google Design on Apple platforms Jeff Verkoeyen in a Twitter thread earlier this week. All that work was eventually open-sourced as Material Components for iOS (MDC) to allow any third-party developer to adopt the same UI elements used by Google’s iPhone and iPads apps, like floating action buttons (FABs), chips, and snackbars. 

But as we continued on the pursuit of cross-platform pixel parity, our iOS components were slowly drifting further and further from Apple platform fundamentals because those fundaments were also evolving year over year.

In response, Google at the start of 2021 “began a deep evaluation of what it means to build a hallmark Google experience on Apple platforms,” and asked:

Does a switch really need to be built custom in alignment with a generic design system? Or might it be sufficient to simply use the system solution and move on?

Google concluded that it was time for the latter route, and that Apple’s UIKit had matured enough for internal needs. The company no longer had to maintain most of the custom components that it built out over the years, including app (top) bars, lists, and menus. 

Instead, it will adopt standard controls and apply “light branded touches” to maintain the Google look on iOS. Some custom components are still needed, and they will now benefit from “more attention and focus.” It remains to be seen how much (or even if) Google’s iPhone apps will diverge from the Android versions.

As part of this shift, Google in July put Material’s iOS libraries in “maintenance mode.” New releases and bug fixes will be limited, with documentation no longer updated. The company’s official guidance to past developer users is to “follow Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and consider using modern UIKit components or SwiftUI instead.” That said, it also plugged Flutter as the way to “get a Material look and feel across all platforms.”

Besides the feel of apps, Google has been quick to adopt recent iOS capabilities. This includes widgets for most major services and support for becoming the default browser or mail client. In fact, the Google Photos widget first debuted on iOS last year before coming to Android this August.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how Material You will impact Google apps on iOS. On Android, Gmail, Calendar, Docs/Sheets/Slides, Drive, Keep, and Meet have all been updated to Google’s personalized design language. Navigation is unchanged, but there are tweaks to various navigation elements, like the circular FAB turning into a rounded square. However, the bigger change is Dynamic Color where the entire app adopts a color palette based on your wallpaper. It’s unlikely that DC will come to iOS, and updated apps will just end up using a blue tint, like on older versions of Android.

Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news:

The Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine, which we all know better as ScummVM, turns 20 this week, and anyone who has ever enjoyed a classic adventure game on a modern PC (or mobile device!) over the last two decades probably owes its creators a drink or two.

Originally released in October 2001 by Ludvig Strigeus (with help from Vincent Hamm), the original plan was just to get Monkey Island 2 running in an emulator. That one game soon became two (Fate of Atlantis), and as word of ScummVM’s success grew, so too did the team size and the number of games (and engines) it supported.

Over the last 20 years ScummVM has grown from something mostly associated with playing old Lucasarts adventures into a program that can now run games from 64 different engines, from Myst to Might & Magic.

To further back that up, to celebrate the program’s birthday the team have announced ScummVM 2.5.0, with a list of additions and improvements they call “tremendous”.

First up, these games now work:

• Little Big Adventure
• Red Comrades 1: Save the Galaxy
• Red Comrades 2: For the Great Justice
• Transylvania
• Crimson Crown
• OO-Topos
• Glulx interactive fiction games
• Private Eye
• AGS Games versions 2.5+
• Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy
• The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time
• Crusader: No Remorse
• L-ZONE
• Spaceship Warlock
• Grim Fandango
• The Longest Journey
• Myst 3: Exile

Grim Fandango! Little Big Adventure! Crusader: No Remorse! This rules. But that’s not all, there are also tweaks under the good for everything from the desktop interface to the DS version of ScummVM:

Besides the new games and game versions, ScummVM 2.5.0 brings many notable improvements and new features. We have completed a major rework of the GUI: We now support Unicode characters everywhere. The GUI also adapts to high resolutions used in HiDPI screens. The Nintendo DS port has been significantly rewritten. We added GOG and Steam achievements to a large number of Wintermute games and enabled KeyMapper in more games. Thanks to the work of one of our GSoC students, we have now added an option for text-to-speech to the games Sfinx, Soltys and The Griffon Legend.

You can download the latest ScummVM release at the project’s site.

The most recent season of Apex Legends, “Emergence,” added Ranked Arenas to the mix after the previous season first added Arenas maps to the popular video game. Arenas maps are smaller than the traditional, huge battle royale maps that the base mode for Apex Legends includes, and it also changes up the loot and number of players, limiting it significantly and pitting three players versus another three. And, it would seem, big changes are on the horizon for Ranked Arenas specifically.

Apex Legends Senior Designer Robert West recently responded to criticism of Ranked Arenas over on Twitter with a thread of upcoming changes for the mode. “We have some matchmaking and AP improvements in the pipe and will of course keep updating as we go,” shared West. “I know of 1 bug at least that we’re investigating and will hopefully have a fix for soon.” You can check out the thread for yourself below:

We’re working on making the Ranked Arenas experience better! We have some matchmaking and AP improvements in the pipe and will of course keep updating as we go. I know of 1 bug at least that we’re investigating and will hopefully have a fix for soon. More in 🧵

— Robert West (@RoboB0b_) October 8, 2021

Second is if you lose to a lower rated team. Thankfully, we have some updates coming that I think will make this much better.
Lower ranked teammates usually just means their MMR is close to yours but they haven’t grinded as much AP. This should also be better after the update

— Robert West (@RoboB0b_) October 8, 2021

According to West, there are some updates in the works that should overall make Ranked Arenas a much smoother experience for folks. That includes, but is not limited to, the ways in which AP and matchmaking ratings play together to determine teams. “Lower ranked teammates usually just means their MMR is close to yours but they haven’t grinded as much AP. This should also be better after the update,” West states in the thread.

Apex Legends‘ latest season, “Emergence,” is currently available in the game. The season brought with it the new Legend Seer among many other changes. Apex Legends itself is currently available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. As of Season 9, the popular free-to-play video game appears to have dropped the number in favor of a name only with “Emergence” technically being Season 10. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the popular video game right here.

What do you think about Ranked Arenas as they currently exist in Apex Legends? What do you hope to see changed next in Apex Legends beyond that? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!

[H/T Dexerto]

Crystal Dynamics has been forced to release a statement that effectively appeals for calm in the wake of news that paid XP boosts would be introduced to the game. The company, which originally stated all items for sale in Marvel’s Avengers that cost real money would be strictly, recently reneged on that promise with the news that paid XP boosts were on the way.

This has not gone down well with players, which is to be expected. Unfortunately, some people felt the need to take things too far and have resorted to targeting, threatening, and publicly attacking the community team, according to a statement issued by the developer on the game’s subreddit.

As covered by the statement, pricing decisions like this would all take place well above the community team level, who are simply the bearers of such news when it does happen. Even then, it is not appropriate to threaten anyone in the way that appears to have led to this statement being released.

Things have been rocky for Marvel’s Avengers since the game launched. While the campaign was seen as fun, many were left cold by the lack of an endgame. The issues among the community have been brewing for a while, as an eroded player base that still considered the game fun, and more important, salvageable, has been getting more and more estranged by some developer decisions.

XP gains were already reduced, and the recent announcement of paid boosters is perceived as a way for the companies involved to milk the remaining playerbase as much as possible. Even the responses to the statement issued by the developers resulted in sympathy, but a continued assault by players on what they see as the game’s faults.

We suspect there is further drama in the future for Marvel’s Avengers, and unfortunately for the developers and the players, no superhero is going to step in to save them.

A tip from a source with a very good track record when it comes to Samsung’s future plans, TechManiacs, has filled in all the gaps we didn’t already bridge when it comes to the Galaxy S22 Ultra, S22+, and the S22.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra display specs

Record screen brightness

According to the report, the Galaxy S22 Ultra will have the most luminous mobile display ever, capable of hitting a peak of 1800 nits brightness. 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra battery charging speeds

30-minute charging, anyone?

It will also finally be able to support fast 45W charging speeds, just as we heard before, putting it on an equal footing with the Chinese competition. Why equal given that they are already at 65W or even 120W? 

The charging speeds were the only weak point of Samsung’s flagship phones in the battle with their main competitors for Android market share, so finally resolving this issue will look very good, and not only on paper.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra camera specs

New sensor, lens, and stabilization

It will apparently also introduce a huge improvement in image stabilization, to the tune of a whopping 48% shake reduction and movement compensation compared to its predecessor. 

Galaxy S22/Plus camera, charging specs, and design

The S22+ will also get those 45W goods

Here the source is more laconic, but we do learn that the Galaxy S22+ is to gain the 45W fast charging support that the S22 Ultra will have, and for which Samsung already has a power brick on the market.

Expected S22 Ultra price

Same old is a good thing

There is no indication what type of charging or what camera changes there will be in the smaller member of the pack – the Galaxy S22 – just yet, but the source tips one very welcome pricing news for the series. 

Apparently, Samsung won’t be changing the Galaxy S22 Ultra price from its predecessor’s, so we can reasonably expect a $1200 starting tag for the base storage model. What do you think about these new S22 series revelations, anything caught your attention?