Western Digital Debuts New ‘My Cloud Home’ Personal Cloud Storage Solution

Western Digital today announced the launch of its latest personal cloud storage solution, the My Cloud Home. My Cloud Home is designed to make it easy for customers to set up and use a personal cloud storage solution to meet all of their storage needs.

The company is aiming to make My Cloud Home the one stop storage destination for all of a person’s devices, aggregating photos, videos, and files from smartphones, computers, USB devices, social media accounts, and more.

As a connected cloud solution, the My Cloud Home is available on any tablet, smartphone, or computer with an Internet connection using the My Cloud Home mobile app, and because it’s a local storage product, there is no subscription fee.

Consumers seek a way to effortlessly consolidate their growing mounds of photos, videos and other files with a solution flexible enough to accommodate content from all of today’s devices – from smart phones to computers and from drones to social sites,” said Jim Welsh, senior vice president, Client Solutions, Western Digital. “Enabling consumers and professionals to master their digital lives from anywhere in the world is a priority for Western Digital.”

My Cloud Home can be set up to automatically copy content from smartphones and computers to provide a hassle-free backup solution, and it connects to social networks and other cloud services like Dropbox. TV Shows, movies, and other content stored in My Cloud Home can be played in Plex through an integration with the Plex app.

Western Digital is offering the My Cloud Home in 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8TB configurations. There’s also a My Cloud Home Duo with 4, 12, and 16TB of storage space, designed with RAID 1 functionality to duplicate content onto a second drive for extra security should one drive fail.

The My Cloud Home next to the My Cloud Home Duo
The My Cloud Home and My Cloud Home Duo are available today from Best Buy and other major retailers. Pricing starts at $159.99 for the 2TB solution. 3TB is available for $179.99, 4TB for $199.99, 6TB for $259.99, and 8TB for $319.99.

The My Cloud Home Duo is priced at $309.99 for 4TB, $399.99 for 8TB, $549.99 for 12TB, and $699.99 for 16TB.

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Uber has its new CEO: Dara Khosrowshahi

Uber’s board of directors (which still includes the previous CEO Travis Kalanick) has made its pick for a new leader official, selecting Dara Khosrowshahi. The former CEO of Expedia, he was reportedly selected over former HP CEO Meg Whitman and former GE CEO Jeff Immelt, who withdrew his name from consideration a few days ago. In a statement, the Uber board said “We’re really fortunate to gain a leader with Dara’s experience, talent and vision. The Board and the Executive Leadership Team are confident that Dara is the best person to lead Uber into the future building world-class products, transforming cities, and adding value to the lives of drivers and riders around the world while continuously improving our culture and making Uber the best place to work.”

Uber has had a well-documented run of bad behavior, resulting in lawsuits and investigations coming its way from regulators, former employees, drivers and passengers. The new CEO has a lot to deal with immediately following Kalanick’s June resignation, and he may lay out some of his plans in a meeting with employees tomorrow.

Excited to welcome Dara Khosrowshahi as our new CEO—looking forward to the road ahead, @dkhos. https://t.co/VjVNqLHuhy

— Uber (@Uber) August 30, 2017

Source: Uber

There’s a VR game to go with Netflix’s new ‘Voltron’ series

If you thought Netflix’s Voltron Legendary Defender was a great new take on the old series, there’s more where it came from — not in animation, but in VR. On September 26th, fans can play the virtual reality game DreamWorks Voltron VR Chronicles on PSVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive for $15.

Players embody a Paladin of Voltron and fight alongside the series’ five man band in the struggle against series villain Zarkon. While it’s not too clear what you’ll do in Voltron VR Chronicles (aside from “solving puzzles and conquering challenges”), but the cel-shaded animation looks straight from the show.

Players who pre-order the game on the PlayStation Store get 20 percent off, though its listing notes it will be released on December 31st, 2017, contradicting the press release’s assertion that the game will be released across all platforms on September 26th. If console VR players get stuck waiting longer than Oculus or Vive owners, at least they can take comfort that the show’s fourth season will air on October 13th on Netflix.

Can you blame a bad game on a shoddy engine? Developers say, no way!

The next time you think to blame a game’s engine for its woes, hold up. There’s more to the story.

Imagine a jigsaw puzzle. Now, imagine that same puzzle with each piece made by a different person, from a different substance, with different tools. Some pieces are whittled from wood, others gnawed from human bone, and some socket together like Lego. It’s a weird puzzle, but somehow — it works.

That’s game development in a nutshell.

Even the simplest games on the market likely harnessed the creative output of a few thousand individuals, each one with their own weird piece of the puzzle. Fitting it all together requires a lot of specialized tools, and none is quite so contentious as the humble and oft-maligned game engine. Steam communities and comment boards are filled with complaints about Unity and other game engines like Unreal, Frostbite, and id Tech. Such critics often claim certain engines have a “look” which spoils the gameplay experience, or that certain engines are incapable of making good games.

That, however, simplifies the truth about game engines. To dispel the myths surrounding game engines — what they are, what they aren’t, and how developers really use them to make the games you play — we sat down with developers from Motiga (Gigantic) and Guerrilla Games (Horizon: Zero Dawn) to discuss the dark alchemy of game development.

What engines are, and aren’t

It seems the more we love video games, the more apt we are to slag them on Twitter for failing to live up to our lofty expectations. When we play games we don’t like, we blame developers, publishers, even technology.

A game engine is a tool, like a Swiss Army Knife, to create the game you want.

Game engines are frequently invoked as a slur against games we, or the collective internet, have decided not to like. Gameplay isn’t your cup of tea? Well, that’s probably because Unity is a garbage game engine for garbage people! — or so Twitter would have you believe.

In truth, a game engine is only a part of the effort made towards creating a finalized, playable experience. “A game engine is a set of technologies that allow you to make a game. It not only takes care of drawing the screen, animating the graphics, and playing sound, but also streaming the data off the disc or storage drive,” said Guerrilla Games’ tech director, Michiel van der Leeuw, told Digital Trends. “What people often also consider to be ‘the game engine’, but is really quite separate, is the toolset that comes with the engine to make the game content.”

Many game engines have a pre-made toolset, as is true of Unreal or Unity. These broadly available engines are sold to developers who want to build a game using commonly known software. However, some games have a custom-built game engine, like the one Guerrilla Games used to create Horizon: Zero Dawn.

“A retail game engine that is developed by an external company usually has a generic set of features that can be utilized in many different ways […] It’s a tool, like a Swiss Army Knife, to create the game you want,” said Brad Pendleton, lead engineer on Motiga’s engine team.

It is true that each game engine has its own set of features, and in some cases, those features may be better suited for some tasks than others. Yet the creative potential offered by even the most basic game engine is immense. Unity has been used to create tightly focused games like Poly Bridge, yet is also behind large open-world games like Yonder: The Cloud Catcher. The result is a reflection of the people using the engine, not the engine itself.

All Unity games look the same!

Many players accuse specific game engines off a specific, canned visual style. Just look at Battlefield 1 and Star Wars: Battlefront. They tackle wildly different subject matter, but there’s a certain similarity in the way light plays off of the environment, and in the way the game feels — right? There is, but it’s not because they both use the Frostbite engine.

How a game looks and plays is largely a part of a developer’s unique style, their individual fingerprints, not which tools they used to create their games. Battlefield 1 and Star Wars: Battlefront have some strong stylistic similarities, but that’s because they’re made by the same developer, not because they share an engine.

Even the simplest game on your phone likely harnessed the creative output of a few thousand individuals.

Bioware’s use of Frostbite delivers the perfect counter example. The famous RPG developer used Frostbite to build Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda, which have little in common with DICE’s Battlefield series. Yet Bioware’s games have unmistakable similarities to each other, both in how they play, and how they’re presented.

“Sometimes you can see, or guess, if a certain engine was used as they sometimes have a very specific look, or feel to them. More often than not it’s hard to see, as the signature look of a developer is often stronger than the signature look of the engine they’re using,” van der Leeuw said.

Identifying a game’s engine with the naked eye is like trying to pick out which brand of camera was used to shoot a movie. There might be some giveaways here and there, but it takes an expert eye to pick them out.

“Usually the scale of the game is a good indicator. With [Unreal Engine 3], it was often easy to spot the screen door effect used to fade out distant objects in game,” Pendleton explained. To a developer, such a tell may be noticeable, but players are unlikely to pick up on such subtleties if the developer has utilized their chosen engine properly.

Bioware’s games once again offer a great example of how a developer’s style is often more important than a game engine’s look. Consider, for example, the difference between Mass Effect III and Mass Effect: Andromeda. They’re nearly identical in visual style. Even light behaves the same — those signature lens flares are just as present as ever, and transparent glass has the same feel to it.

Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect: Andromeda (top), Supershot and Hearthstone (bottom)

These two games exemplify what stylistic similarity looks like. They look the same on purpose, though they were built using completely different tools. Mass Effect III was made with the Unreal Engine, and Mass Effect: Andromeda was made with EA’s proprietary Frostbite engine.

As a counter-point, consider the look of Superhot and Hearthstone. One is a stylized first-person shooter, the other a highly addictive and polished collectible card game. Both were made using Unity. They were built using the same toolkit, yet they could hardly have less in common.

Practical differences

This isn’t to say game engines have nothing to do with the games they’re used to build. The engine can have an impact in subtle ways, or even significant, ways.

“Some engines are better in 2D games, some better in 3D. Some of them support many platforms, and some of them only support one. Some engines come with good toolsets, and some are very arcane,” van der Leeuw said. “There are engines that are free and made by enthusiasts, and there are engines made by commercial companies. There really are all sorts.”

The signature look of a developer is often stronger than the signature look of the engine they’re using.

Platform support is a big part of the equation. An engine like Unity sees a lot of use not only because it’s more financially accessible than other engines, but because it supports basically every platform. It works with Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, the list goes on. While the use of Unity doesn’t dictate the look of the game, it does make multi-platform development easier.

Choosing the right tool for the job means taking a hard look at what the development team will need for any game. Platform support is one example, but there are a lot of factors to consider when choosing which engine to use. Game engines can impact things like file size, available rendering features, and how well the game utilizes multiple processor cores.

“If I were to make a shopping list of must-haves they would start with: stability, documentation, source code, excellent tools, platform support, performance, great tools, flexibility to change features, easy to use tools, and quick iteration times,” Pendleton said, describing what he looks for in a game engine. “My shopping list is focused around quality of life in development; the easier it is to use the game engine, the more productive you will be.”

Building from the ground up

A third-party engine like Unity or Unreal is usually the right tool for the job. Sometimes, though, a developer needs to make a custom coffee machine, something tailor-built for the kind of weird brew they want. House-made engines give developers full control over the tools they use to make their games.

“The biggest advantage of an in-house engine is that the engine that you have is very specifically tailored towards the game that you’re making,” van der Leeuw explained. “This means you can be more creative and it can be easier to make use of all of the hardware features. Of course, it also means you need to have a big engine team, which is a downside.”

Designing an engine internally might require a larger team, but it’s a bit easier than making a retail engine like Unreal – which is why not every game engine becomes a platform for other developers. Building a custom game engine means making an engine only for a studio’s games, and it can have tools designed for very specific use. An engine like Unreal has to be big enough and versatile enough to handle all kinds of games, and it must include a package of tools and documentation that makes it accessible to others.

“A great deal of effort is required to package up a game engine that is versatile enough to be used in many different games,” Pendleton said, describing retail game engines. Internal engines let developers build the tools they need, and only the tools they need. “Why add a scissor tool to your Swiss Army Knife if no one ever needs to cut string with it?” Pendleton added.

Played a bad game? Blame the developer, not the tech

Even if you’ve played a few terrible games made with Unity, Unreal, or any other engine, crawling up into a game developer’s mentions and calling them out for using it is never a good idea. It’s a lazy, uninformed critique with the stability of wet sand.

Game engines are versatile tools, yet they hardly shape the final game. Games aren’t defined by the instruments used to build them — they’re defined by the people who wielded those instruments, the people who placed every rock and tree, the designers who tuned, re-tuned, and re-re-tuned gameplay mechanics until they hit just the right note.

Not every gamer needs to be an expert on the fine art of game design, but understanding a little bit of the behind-the-scenes work can deepen the appreciation of game developers, and game development as a whole. Understanding more about game engines makes gamers less likely to go flying off to Twitter every time they see a Unity splash screen.

Deal: Students can now save 10% on the OnePlus 5!

OnePlus is offering a great discount on its latest flagship — if you’re a student.

A few weeks back, OnePlus teamed up with DJI to offer some nice bundles to students. While there were some savings to be had, it was still more expensive for those that only needed a phone. Good news: OnePlus is back with more deals.

Right now, OnePlus is offering a 10% discount on the OnePlus 5. This involves joining OnePlus’s student program to verify active attendance. Ten percent may not sound like a lot, but it comes to $47.90 off the price of the OnePlus 5, a decent discount.

For those that need a snazzy new backpack for school, OnePlus is offering 10% off any order, with the limit of one OnePlus 5 per order. If you already have a phone but need to save some money during the back to school season, check out our back to school guide!

Are you interested in picking up the discounted OnePlus 5? Let us know down below!

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Verizon brings Android Oreo to the Pixel before Google rolls it out widely

Verizon has started rolling out Oreo to Pixel owners.

Android 8.0 Oreo became officially official last week, with a stable version of the software rolling out to users of the developer preview build. It seems the time has now come for users that were on Nougat to begin receiving the update aws well.

Verizon has begun rolling out Oreo to Pixel owners. As usual, Big Red recommends having the device connected to WiFi and making sure the battery is charged before downloading the update. The update pages highlight Oreo features such as Picture-in-Picture, notification improvements, better password manager integration and always-on display support. This is in addition to background changes such as improved security and (maybe, someday) better Bluetooth support.

There was a good bit of concern last year when Verizon was announced as a launch partner that they would delay updates for no good reason, like back in the Galaxy Nexus days. After a year of delivering security updates and a major OS update without delay, I think it’s safe to put those fears to rest.

Have you received the Oreo update yet? Let us know down below!

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Zeiss VR One Connect puts PC games on mobile VR headsets

PC-powered VR gaming requires a minimum $500 investment just for the headset, but Zeiss and Steam have introduced a cheaper way to do it. The Zeiss VR One Connect runs SteamVR games powered by a PC, but sends a pre-rendered display signal to a smartphone installed in a mobile VR headset. You can then game using a pair of Zeiss wireless controllers, connected by Bluetooth to your iOS or Android smartphone with a screen between 4.7 and 5.5 inches.

Zeiss says you need a “current” smartphone (a minimum resolution isn’t specified) but can use other headsets besides its own $99 VR One. It supplies a USB cable (hopefully a long one) to connect to your SteamVR-compliant computer, and a pair of controllers . The game relies on your phone’s built-in motion sensors and Bluetooth chip, but all the game processing is done on the PC. (It’s hard to see it working on a Gear VR, unfortunately, as that headset hogs the USB port for itself.)

The controllers track three-degrees-of-freedom (3DoF) motion using inertial senor tech licensed from a company called PXL Vision. That data is married with your smartphone’s sensor data to calculate where your hands are in relation to the image on the mobile screen. That all has to work pretty well, or the controller and/or image lag could be pretty bad. Positional “room-scale” tracking isn’t available, so you’ll be confined to a single spot, standing or seated.

There are other solutions that let you watch movies and stream games on Samsung’s Gear VR and other headsets, but none approach the Zeiss VR One Connect sophistication. If you’re looking for a cheap PC VR gaming option, though, you’d be wise to wait. Oculus is reportedly coming out with a wireless, smartphone-free VR headset powered by mobile hardware, for one.

More pertinently, a crop of $300-400 mixed reality, PC-powered headsets from Acer, Dell HP and Lenovo are arriving soon. Those use built-in cameras to do “inside-out” motion tracking, allowing for room-scale mixed reality, and they look promising based on the limited demos we’ve seen. Hopefully we’ll see more at IFA 2017 in Berlin.

If the Zeiss app is implemented well, lag could be minimal, so we’re looking forward to trying it for ourselves. It’s coming to Best Buy and Game Stop in Q4 2017 for $129, or $199 with the Zeiss One VR headset.

Follow all the latest news from IFA 2017 here!

Source: Zeiss (1), (2)

Apple Now Selling Refurbished 2017 21.5-Inch iMac Models

Apple today updated its online store for refurbished products to add the new 21.5-inch iMac models that were initially released in June of 2017.

Today marks the first time the new 2017 iMacs in the 21.5-inch configuration have been available through the refurbished store since their launch at the Worldwide Developers Conference. The new iMacs feature Kaby Lake processors, upgraded displays, faster solid state storage, and discrete graphics.

Apple’s refurbished store features only 4K models with Retina display at this time and does not have any refurbished non-Retina 21.5-inch iMac models available for purchase.

At the time of this post, there were eight different refurbished 4K 21.5-inch iMacs available in various configurations, with prices discounted by approximately 15 percent. An entry-level 4K model with 8GB RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and a Radeon Pro 555 is available for $1,099, for example, a $200 discount off of the regular $1,299 starting price.

Apple has a several different configurations available, from low-end to top-of-the-line. As with all refurbished products, stock will fluctuate regularly based on the machines Apple is getting in for repair. The addition of the new 2017 21.5-inch models follows the introduction of refurbished 2017 27-inch iMacs earlier this month.

All of Apple’s refurbished products go through a rigorous refurbishment process before being offered for sale, which includes inspection, repairs, cleaning, and repackaging. Refurbished Macs come with a one-year warranty that can be extended with an AppleCare+ purchase. For more info on purchasing a refurbished product from Apple, make sure to check out our guide.

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PC players can try the next ‘Overwatch’ map early

Hot on the heels of the deathmatch modes added to the main game today, Overwatch is allowing players to try out the game’s next map, Junkertown, on the PTR servers. While only PC owners get to play on the test servers, they’ll get some time to explore the hero shooter’s payload map before it hits the game proper.

Blizzard announced the new map last week during Gamescom, and it looks like another vibrant playing field riddled with lore easter eggs. Junkertown is a lawless commune in the Australian wastes overseen by a mysterious unseen queen that makes her presence known in the map’s trailer. Nuclear weapons deployed against the robotic Omnic menace turned the country into a post-apocalyptic wasteland — the only place where lawless rapscallions Junkrat and Roadhog could’ve come from.

Lucky Gamescom attendees got first crack at the map, which will be a payload mission. Players must escort Roadhog and Junkrat’s booty accumulated during their worldwide robbing spree. Naturally, there will probably be a number of other story hints tucked into the map’s corners. By the by, if you notice your favorite heroes acting a little different, it’s not the new map: The Overwatch team tweaked Roadhog, Orisa, Widowmaker and Junkrat, so check the notes for today’s patch.

Instagram Posts With Multiple Photos Now Support Landscape and Portrait Mode

Instagram has allowed users to share multiple photos in a single post since February, but those photos have been limited to the traditional square aspect ratio, preventing users from sharing landscape or portrait mode images in a multi-photo post.

Starting today, that limitation is changing. Instagram is now allowing users to share multi-photo posts in any aspect ratio, including taller portrait mode photos and wider landscape mode photos.

After we first rolled out in February, these posts could only be made up of squares. Now, when uploading your photos and videos, you’ll have more creative flexibility with the ability to share in landscape and portrait formats. To keep the experience smooth and consistent, however, all photos and videos in your post must be shared in the same format.

While there will no longer be a need to crop portrait and landscape photos when sharing them in multiple photo posts, all images in the post need to share the same aspect ratio, so there’s no mixing portrait and landscape photos in one post.

Instagram says the new photo uploading capabilities are available starting today, but it appears the feature may still be rolling out to some users as it is not yet available to everyone.

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