Forza Horizon 3 preview: Putting you in the driving seat
These are exciting times for Microsoft and Xbox. Not only does it have new consoles coming this and next year, but it has announced a couple of key new elements to its gaming strategy; Play Anywhere and 4K HDR gaming.
The latter part comes in the form of Windows 10 versions of its home-grown games, but the beauty of Play Anywhere is that you get those for free when you buy the Xbox One equivalents from the Xbox Store, and vice versa.
So while we have to wait until Christmas 2017 for true 4K gaming on a Microsoft console, a couple of games will offer the option this year, if you have a supporting PC and monitor or TV.
Forza Horizon 3 is one of those games. It will be available for PC and Xbox One simultaneously, from 27 September, with the former 4K HDR ready. It will also support HDR tech to make the game look a little better if you are the owner of a brand, new Xbox One S.
That’s how we experienced the first playable demo at this year’s E3; on an Xbox One S and with the new, slightly redesigned controller.
We also caught up with developer Playground, which told us more about the game world and changes to the series behind closed doors. Both sessions left us impressed and full of hope for the arcade racer.
READ: Xbox E3 2016 highlights: What was launched, Project Scorpio, Xbox One S and much more
In play, it handles much like former Forza Horizons. Turn10 and Playground have together refined the driving engine to perfection over the years, so controlling whatever vehicle you are in feels as intuitive and comfortable as ever.
The addition of new vehicle types, such as buggies and extreme off-roaders, changes that up somewhat, and adds different styles to the mix. In fact, there are more than 350 cars in Forza Horizon 2, more than double the previous game, so the potential for variety is huge.
The map too is much larger, more than twice the size of the last instalment. The game is set in Australia this time around, which gives more options for different environments to race in. Indeed, during the hands-on demo we raced on the beach, off-road and through a forest, in three different cars – including the Lamborghini Centenario that was announced earlier this year.
Microsoft
The buggies are great fun to drive, even capable of stunts and flips. What’s great though is that you and your online friends can race each other in different car types, with each offering alternative benefits. And it doesn’t matter whether they are on PC, Xbox One or Xbox One S, the game is cross-platform and everyone can compete in the same sessions, regardless of the format.
Co-operative play has been added this time too, with up to four friends able to take on challenges. And if your friends aren’t around, Drivatars come into play in a far greater way than ever before.
One of the main enhancements this year centres on the Horizon Festival itself. Instead of you taken on the mantle of a newbie driver, aiming to win a tournament, you are the owner and organiser of the festival. That means you get to call the shots. Playground is literally and figuratively putting you in the driving seat.
One mode, Blueprint, even lets you create events for you and your friends to complete, with a vast array of customisable conditions, from the car class to the weather. You can also create and customise Bucket List challenges. You choose the car and type of challenge, then race it yourself. Your performance is then used as the benchmark for others to beat. They can pass it onto their friends afterwards, and we can see better challenges going viral across the whole Forza community.
Microsoft
Back to Drivatars though, as you can set up to four of your friends’ Drivatars as elite racers in your star line-up. Then, when they race for real, you all earn bonuses and achievements. Ultimately, it could make your festival the best on the planet.
Another addition Playground has made is the ability to stream your own tracks as part of the in-game radio system. There is a wider selection of radio channels to choose from, with a wider range of genres, but setting your own music to play in-game is something we, and many other gamers, have wanted for a while.
The last major aspect we’ll talk about is the in-game sky. Remarkably, the developer had photographers camped out in Australia for an entire summer, taking HDR snapshots of the real sky using a custom 12K camera rig. They were digitised and so the sky in the game reflects the exact weather conditions and lighting of the real thing. It looks simply stunning, we have to say.
First Impressions
We’ll find out plenty more about Forza Horizon 3 on the build up to release day at the end of September, but for now you can colour us impressed.
It plays as well as ever before, but all the new social and graphical enhancements not only make sense, they expand the game to something that could be magical.
We’ll find out for sure when we play it in a couple of months time for the full review. For now though, we thoroughly enjoyed the demo and find Playground’s dedication to improve and adapt the game for a new, more social generation encouraging.
Whirlpool is putting Innit’s smart recipes on its WiFi ovens (updated)
Getting recipes and other cooking tips directly on a connected appliance is increasingly becoming the norm, and Whirlpool is one of the next in line. The company announced that it’s Jenn-Air line of WiFi-equipped ovens will soon feature Innit recipes. While Innit aims to tackle the entire kitchen, including food storage and more, personalized recipes work with the connected oven and your tablet or phone. The appliance adjusts cooking to the weight and type of food to help ensure the results are what they should be.
Innit’s recipes are personalized by dietary and taste preferences, so you won’t have to worry about making adjustments to suit your needs every time. Step-by-step directions will be available right on the oven, allow you to follow along during the process. If you’re worried that it might get a bit awkward having to glance back at the oven from your cutting board, don’t fret: Innit’s guidance is available on a mobile device so you can keep the recipe near your workspace. Whirlpool is planning consumer trials later this year with the goal of bringing Innit’s food science to all Jenn-Air connected wall ovens next year.
Update: This post has been updated to clarify that the Innit recipes can viewed on a tablet or phone as well as the oven’s built-in display.
FreedomPop’s apps put free minutes and texts on any device
FreedomPop’s basic SIM-only service offers 200 minutes, 200 texts and 200MB of data each month absolutely free. While that’s technically true, FreedomPop effectively relies on data alone, with calling and messaging handled through a standalone app, not your smartphone’s native dialer. And now, where you get that data from is by the by, as FreedomPop has opened up its iOS and Android apps to everyone, regardless of what’s scrawled on their SIM. A couple hundred minutes and texts might seem redundant in the FaceTime/Hangouts/WhatsApp era, but having a virtual number means you’ll have no trouble calling your nan’s landline, because she doesn’t have Viber, does she?
WiFi-only devices can support the service too, of course, and anyone that signs up to FreedomPop also gets 300 free minutes of international calls in the first month — handy if your Skype credit is running low. Make sure to stay within those free allowances, though. Overage charges are how FreedomPop makes money, after all, as well as selling added-value packages like unlimited calls and texts for £4 per month, or a second, foreign virtual number for cheap international calls.
Source: FreedomPop
Zombie thriller ‘Days Gone’ will need to find its humanity to survive
Lots of people are burnt out on the post-apocalyptic zombie trope, but I’m not one of them. I was fairly insulated from the genre until I played The Last of Us, which quickly became my favorite game of the last five years or so. So the trailer for Days Gone, a new title set in a post-pandemic corner of the northwestern US that was unveiled at Sony’s E3 event, piqued my interest. The attention to detail in the ruined world was excellent, the narration intriguing enough to make me wonder what went down, and the idea of a former motorcycle gang biking around an open-world felt like a concept worth exploring.
But the in-game demo that concluded the Sony event ended up being a bit of a surprising letdown, and I’ve been thinking about why ever since. What was missing from the demo was a human connection — a motivation for bounty hunter and protagonist Deacon St John’s actions beyond simple survival. Without that, the massive horde of “freakers” featured in the gameplay demo might as well kill St John and be done with it.
Obviously, this is just a first look at the game; developer Bend Studios focused on gameplay mechanics and the undeniably impressive and overwhelming nature of the freaker horde over fleshing out more of the story. But I was left with plenty of questions at the end of the demo that’ll need satisfying answers for the game to carve out a space in the crowded zombie apocalypse landscape.
Chief among those is what Days Gone will do that The Last of Us didn’t already do to near-perfection. Representatives from Bend focused on that horde of freakers, noting that they were not “undead” — they’re alive and need food and water just like you do. They’re just more “animalistic” than normal humans, competing for survival in the ruined world. Additionally, the world itself will shape your encounters, with constantly changing weather as well as transitions from day to night affecting how you approach any given scenario. The open-world nature of the game means there are a host of different ways to survive any given scenario, and part of the fun will likely come from the various play styles you can bring to the same encounter.
While we didn’t get to see how the weather and environment affected the experience, the demo did show some interesting concepts as Deacon tried to escape from hundreds of freakers. Funneling the zombies into a “choke point” where they’re all trying to fit through a small space lets you gun them down en masse, and at one point Deacon cuts the rope on a huge stack of logs at a sawmill, temporarily blocking pursuit. You can also grab items from the environment to augment your weapons or build something out of nothing — another conceit that reminded me of the crafting system in The Last of Us, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to good effect here.
As impressive as the freaker horde is, though, the big question is how Deacon can possibly survive facing down this many enemies. Bend assured us that not all encounters will play out like this one, but there has to be a way to “win” against such a vast and speedy enemy. It might be more about escape than actually taking down all the freakers. The motorcycle will play a big part in the game, so maybe the goal of the encounter in the demo is to get in, capture or kill your bounty, and get out before being overrun.
The question of motivation still remains. What’s the point of being a bounty hunter in such a world? Who is trading valuable resources to get revenge on someone who might have wronged them? And is the benefit large enough to put yourself in the path of hundreds of freakers? Again, it’s very early for Days Gone and we’ll surely learn more about the circumstances of this particular pandemic as time passes. But fleshing out the universe of Days Gone in a compelling way is going to be crucial to making the game stand out. The reason The Last of Us was so successful wasn’t because of the zombies or the combat — it was because of the beautifully-built world and, most crucially, Joel’s relationship with Ellie.
Fortunately, the Days Gone trailer hinted at some depth to Deacon St John and the trauma he endured trying to survive as the world fell apart. The clip of him in the past, with his blond love interest on the motorcycle with him was right on-the-nose, but nonetheless it helped paint a picture of a man who lost something and is trying to find the will to continue on. Hopefully, Bend can pull of a combo of chaotic, unpredictable open-world adventuring with a story and characters worth caring about.
FBI’s facial recognition system can access 411 million photos
When we first wrote about the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) facial recognition system, we said the agency has access to 70 million photos. Turns out the feds can sift through tons more images than that. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has discovered that the FBI actually has access to 411.9 million pictures of Americans and foreigners alike, most of whom have no prior criminal records. FACE can look through NGI’s collection, as well through biometric databases ran by the DOJ and 16 different states. It can also search the State Department’s passport and visa application records for possible matches.
The EFF pointed out that the “unprecedented number of photographs” isn’t the only problem. GAO’s report also said that the FBI didn’t test its system thoroughly for accuracy. It “has done little to make sure that its search results… do not include photos of innocent people,” the nonprofit org wrote in its post. Since facial recognition technologies aren’t perfect and still has issues recognizing people of color, FACE could return results with law-abiding people in the mix when law-enforcement agencies use the system to search for suspects.
It could cause even more issues if the government grants the feds’ request for its databases to be exempted from several key provisions of the Privacy Act. For instance, the FBI doesn’t want to tell people who ask if they’re in the database and wants to be legally allowed to withhold that information. Thankfully, FACE isn’t available to the public, so you at least don’t have to worry that some random civilian is using it to look you up right now.
GAO’s lengthy report has more details about the facial recognition system, lists the FBI’s and the DOJ’s shortcomings and discusses what it could have done better. As for the bureau’s side, a spokesperson told the The Guardian when the publication asked for a comment: “The FBI believes GAO staff does not fully appreciate the nature of its face recognition service as being utilized for investigative leads only and not positive identifications.”
Source: EFF, US Government Accountability Office
Magic Leap teams with Lucasfilm for ‘Star Wars’ AR experiences
Magic Leap, the mysterious augmented reality company, is teaming up with Lucasfilm and its ILMxLAB to create immersive Star Wars experiences, the companies announced today at Wired’s Business Conference. As part of the news, they also revealed our closest look yet at Magic Leap’s technology in action with a demo video featuring everyone’s favorite droids, C-3PO and R2-D2, projected in a typical office environment. It was shot on actual Magic Leap hardware, according to ILMxLAB’s John Gaeta (best known for his work on the Matrix films), using a standard digital camera. One look, and you’ll see why Magic Leap has amassed an astounding $1.39 billion in funding without shipping an actual product.
Unlike the simplistic graphics on Microsoft’s HoloLens, Magic Leap’s renderings of the famous Star Wars droids are surprisingly realistic. Both C-3PO and RD-D2 are life-sized and incredibly detailed, with a surprising amount of depth. We also catch a glimpse of the monochromatic holograms seen all over the series, and they look practically indistinguishable from the Star Wars films. Most intriguingly? Gaeta says there wasn’t any post-processing involved in the video, ILMxLAB simply captured what Magic Leap’s gear spit out.
Magic Leap and Lucasfilm aren’t talking about what sort of specific experiences we’d see yet from their partnership, but one possibility thrown out involved turning C-3PO into your augmented reality assistant. What if you could have your very own intelligent C-3PO that follows you around all day, with all of the personality quirks you love (and hate) from the movies? That wouldn’t just appeal to geeks, it’s the sort of thing anyone would lap up.
As part of the partnership, ILM will house a secretive lab in its San Francisco headquarters, which will include Magic Leap employees. Lucasfilm’s story group, the folks who are building the Star Wars mythology for films and other mediums going forward, will also take part, along with Skywalker Sound. Get ready for far more immersive Star Wars experiences than ILMxLAB’s Trials on Tatooine VR experiment.
While Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz still won’t say when we’ll see a consumer product from the company, he revealed that it’s kicking off its production line to test its manufacturing capabilities. “We may have a system that looks like it’s shipping, but we’re debugging and it looks like it’s coming soon,” he said.
Source: Wired
Engadget giveaway: Win a Samurai Kiwami smartphone courtesy of Freetel!
The Japanese smartphone brand Freetel has finally arrived in the US and leading its stable of handsets is the Samurai Kiwami flagship. This Android phone features a six-inch, 2,560 x 1,440-pixel display, a rear placement fingerprint sensor and a whopping 21-megapixel rear camera. Other perks include 32GB of onboard memory, up to 128GB of expandable storage, a 2.0GHz Octa-core Cortex A53 CPU to keep it thrumming and an approachable price at just $389. It’s enough to keep us placated until Freetel unleashes its sleek Musashi flip phone on these shores. This week, the company has provided us with one of the Samurai Kiwami handsets to help get one lucky reader up to speed on what these devices can offer. All you need to do is head to the Rafflecopter widget below for up to three chances at winning!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
- Entries are handled through the Rafflecopter widget above. Comments are no longer accepted as valid methods of entry. You may enter without any obligation to social media accounts, though we may offer them as opportunities for extra entries. Your email address is required so we can get in touch with you if you win, but it will not be given to third parties.
- Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so direct your anger at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
- Winners will be chosen randomly. One (1) winner will receive one (1) Freetel Samurai Kiwami smartphone.
- If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Make sure that the account you use to enter the contest includes your real name and a contact email. We do not track any of this information for marketing or third-party purposes.
- This unit is purely for promotional giveaway. Engadget and AOL are not held liable to honor warranties, exchanges or customer service.
- The full list of rules, in all its legalese glory, can be found here.
- Entries can be submitted until June 17th at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
Facebook makes it easier to start a conversation in Messenger
After adding SMS messages to the Android version of the app earlier this week, Facebook tweaked its Messenger UI to get you sending messages faster. Underneath the list of recent messages, you’ll now see a collection of your favorite contacts so you can get chatting quickly. The app will also show you birthdays like the social network’s site and core app does, making light work of sending someone a note. That useful list of who’s online is there as well, tucked down below the aforementioned messages and groups of contacts. With these changes, it should be even easier to send one of Facebook’s new emoji when the time comes.
Source: Facebook
The ‘Skylanders’ TV show will debut on Netflix this fall
Netflix has snatched up another TV show that children will be begging their parents to stream. A new deal with Activision Blizzard will ensure Skylanders Academy, the first TV show based on the toys-to-life video game franchise, will premiere on Netflix this fall. It’s not yet clear if the series will be shown elsewhere at a later date. Regardless, it’s a major coup for Netflix as it seeks to build a broader, more attractive slate of shows for kids. Previous deals include a long-running partnership with DreamWorks, which has produced series based on Madagascar, Turbo and Voltron.
Skylanders has been around since 2011 and arguably pioneered the toys-to-life genre. Others have followed — the most notable being Disney Infinity, which is now being wound down, and Lego Dimensions, which is gearing up for a second wave of pop culture-related characters and level packs. Skylanders has endured by adding new ideas every year — the next instalment, Imaginators, will allow players to build their own Skylanders heroes from scratch. During its E3 press conference, Sony even announced that Crash Bandicoot will be joining the game’s cast of colorful characters.
The Skylanders TV show will focus on the game’s most recognizable characters. Justin Long is voicing Spyro, while Ashley Tisdale takes on Stealth Elf and Jonathan Banks breathes life into Eruptor. Eric Rogers, who worked on Futurama, is taking the helm as showrunner. Thirteen episodes are scheduled for the fall, followed by a second season in late 2017.
Bluetooth 5: Quadruple the range, double the speed
Bluetooth is so ubiquitous, it’s easy to forget it’s still an evolving technology. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) defines the standard, and late last year teased what’s coming in the next major version change since 2009. Today, the body shared a bit more about what we can expect from the release of Bluetooth 5, expected in late 2016 or early 2017. For starters, the next version will quadruple the range of connections and double their speeds, too, with no increase in power consumption over the current, low-energy standard.
The immediate benefits of these particular improvements are quite easy to grasp. Your next Bluetooth speaker shouldn’t stutter when you accidentally take your phone with you into the kitchen, for example, and your next smartwatch should receive those push notifications that bit quicker, thanks to more bandwidth for data transfer. This becomes a lot more important when internet of things devices and Bluetooth beacons enter the conversation, though.
Bluetooth devices that broadcast information, as opposed to the kind you pair with, are becoming much more common, independent and easier to communicate with. Bluetooth 5 increases broadcasting capacity eight-fold, meaning much more data can be sent (and received) in a single interaction. Instead of a Bluetooth beacon pinging your phone with an URL that then gives you more info on a museum exhibit, for instance, it could do that and pinpoint your indoor location… and send you a discount voucher for the gift shop, all in the one blast.
The Bluetooth SIG isn’t in the business of dreaming up specific applications for the technology, though. Instead, it’s interested in improving things like range and data capacity, and letting everyone else dream up the new applications and connected devices.
Source: Bluetooth SIG
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