ARKit 2.0 Will Let Two iPhones See the Same Virtual Object

iOS 12, set to be unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, will include ARKit 2.0, an upgrade to the existing ARKit 1.5 SDK that’s available to developers to allow them to build augmented reality experiences in their apps.

ARKit 2.0, according to a new report from Reuters, will include a feature that’s designed to let two iPhone users share an augmented reality experience, with the same objects displayed on multiple screens.

This is in line with previous rumors from Bloomberg that have said Apple is working on both multiplayer augmented reality gameplay and object permanence, which would allow a virtual object to remain in place across multiple app sessions.

Apple is aiming to allow two people to share data so they can see the same virtual object in the same space via each individual device, with Apple designing the feature in a privacy-friendly way.

Apple’s multiplayer system, unlike similar offerings from Google, does not require users to share scans of their homes and personal spaces, working via a phone-to-phone system.

Apple designed its two-player system to work phone-to-phone in part because of those privacy concerns, one of the people familiar with the matter said. The approach, which has not been previously reported, differs from Google’s, which requires scans of a player’s environment to be sent to, and stored in, the cloud.

Full details on how Apple’s multiplayer augmented reality system will work are unknown, and it’s not yet clear if it works with three or more players. Apple will share more information on the feature on Monday.

Augmented reality has been a major focus for Apple over the course of the last two years, with Apple CEO Tim Cook calling AR “big and profound.” “We’re high on AR in the long run,” Cook said in 2016.

Apple unveiled its first augmented reality product, ARKit, with iOS 11 at WWDC, and has since made improvements to the feature with the launch of ARKit 1.5 in March as part of iOS 11.3. ARKit brought mapping for irregularly shaped surfaces, vertical surface placement, and object and image recognition. With the additional changes coming in iOS 12, developers should be able to do a whole lot more with augmented reality.

Related Roundup: iOS 12Tag: ARKit
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Telegram Gets First Update After Six Week App Store Lockout

Telegram today received its first update in two months after an App Store update lockout caused by a dispute with the Russian government and Apple.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov yesterday explained that Apple had been blocking updates to the Telegram app on a worldwide scale since April, when the Telegram app was banned in Russia.

As back story, Russia in April banned Telegram because Telegram refused to allow government officials in the country to have backdoor access to the content of user messages. Russia’s ban attempt was not entirely successful, leading Russia to demand that Apple remove Telegram from the Russian App Store.

Amid this dispute, Apple was apparently refusing all Telegram app updates dating back to mid-April. This situation caused certain Telegram features, like stickers, to break with the launch of iOS 11.4, and it prevented Telegram from complying with new GDPR rules in the European Union. From Durov’s statement yesterday:

While Russia makes up only 7% of Telegram’s userbase, Apple is restricting updates for all Telegram users around the world since mid-April. As a result, we’ve also been unable to fully comply with GDPR for our EU-users by the deadline of May 25, 2018. We are continuing our efforts to resolve the situation and will keep you updated.

Apple appears to have reversed its position on Telegram updates, and Telegram 4.8.2 is now available in the iOS App Store. The update includes a new registration process for the EU and UK along with some other small changes to the app.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Telegram
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Gotta catch ’em all fairly: ‘Pokémon Go’ cheaters’ precious monsters being deleted

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The best part of Pokémon Go is exploring the real world, making new friends, and discovering cool landmarks as you attempt to catch virtual monsters. Unfortunately, some players have sidestepped the exercise by using programs and third-party tools to trick the game into believing they’re walking around the world. Now, those who have cheated will now find their roster of Pokémon severely depleted.

“In order to prepare an environment where you can play Pokémon Go fun and fairly, we continue to take measures against actions that affect normal gameplay, including using [third-party] services violating the terms of service,” said a translated post on the Japanese Pokémon Go Twitter account. “A pink diagonal line is displayed in Pokémon caught using such a service, and it becomes useless in normal play.”

That’s right — if you caught a Pokémon using a program to spoof your location, it will now be completely useless. The name and level is still visible for any monsters caught this way, but there will not be an image of the Pokémon.

This is hardly the first time developer Niantic has punished players for using programs that violate the game’s terms of service. Earlier this year, Pokémon Go sent warning messages to accounts that it detected were using third-party software, and in some cases it also “shadowbanned” them. This kept them from seeing any valuable Pokémon in their area, though it appeared to be a temporary punishment.

Niantic has plenty of Pokémon Go content planned for the summer, including a Community Day on June 16. The game recently added Alolan Pokémon, which are alternate forms of previously available monsters, and you’ll now find Alolan Exeggutor if you explore.

If you’re in Chicago, you can also attend the second Pokémon Go Fest this July in Lincoln Park. Trainers will follow a 1.8-mile walking course as they catch new Pokémon and complete challenges. There will even be special lounges.

Pokémon Go will feature connectivity with the Nintendo Switch games Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! when they arrive November 16. In addition to transferring Kanto Pokémon between the Switch and mobile games, you’ll be able to send gifts and discover an all-new secret Pokémon.

Editors’ Recommendations

• ‘Pokémon Go’ adds legendary monsters Latias and Latios
• ‘Rampage’ review
• ‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ review
• ‘Monster Hunter: World’ review
• Nintendo applies for patent on digital card format, but is it for Pokémon?

Nvidia could reboot its game bundle with ‘The Crew 2’ and GTX 1080s

Nvidia may start giving away free games with its graphics cards again, suggesting that the average buyer may now be a more typical gamer than some of the alternative audiences that became all too common over the past year. The first bundle to break the free-game drought of the past few months is reported to be The Crew 2, which will be given out free when gamers buy a qualifying 10-series graphics card or pre-built system with one of those respective GPUs inside.

Blame cryptocurrency miners if you want, but for whatever reason, Nvidia hasn’t been very keen to give out free games with its graphics cards for quite a while now. It even began a new effort in early 2017 to block the resale of free bundled games which had clearly become a problem.

The leaked promotional giveaway links Ubisoft-published racer, The Crew 2, with Nvidia’s GTX 1080, 1080 Ti, and laptops and desktops fitted with those particular chips. That does put this promotion at the high-end of the 10-series generation, so you may wonder how impactful one free game would be to those spending $600-plus on a new graphics card. However, considering the mid-range has traditionally been the most popular for cryptocurrency miners, it may be that Nvidia wants to limit free games to those who are more likely to be buying cards for gaming.

It’s not clear yet whether this promotion is one that will stretch across the globe either, as VideoCardz’s discovered advertisement is in Dutch. Nvidia has not made the official announcement yet, but if this leaked ad proves to be real, we’ll likely see the GPU giant make some sort of announcement in the near future.

If it does, The Crew 2 is likely to be a good showcase title for anyone buying a new qualifying system or graphics card. The expansive, open-world racer is set to debut on June 29 and on top of introducing new vehicles like planes and boats to the already deep and broad roster of cars and bikes, has a story mode, too.

Alongside the wide variety of races and activities to take part in, we found The Crew 2 to be fantastic to look at it in our hands-on preview, which could make it a great first-game for anyone looking to push the limits of their new, high-end graphics card.

Editors’ Recommendations

• ‘State of Decay 2’ spreads its infection to Xbox One and PC this May
• Amazon is selling Star Wars and Marvel DVDs — but only to Prime members
• Recent data suggests that GPU supply might be stabilizing and prices falling
• Grab the new Pikachu 2DS XL and score a free game and Poké Ball power bank
• How to make a watermark: A quick and easy way to protect your photos

Freakishly accurate A.I. security system identifies you based on your footsteps

From our voice to our faces to more unorthodox methods like our “heartprint,” there are a growing number of ways for computers to recognize their users. One we have yet to come across, however, is based on our footsteps. Researchers from the U.K.’s University of Manchester and Spain’s Universidad Autonoma de Madrid are working to change that. A new A.I. biometric verification method can successfully identify individuals by the way they walk across a pressure pad on the floor. The technology could one day be used as an alternative, or augmentation, to existing biometric identification system in places like airports.

“We have realized that sensing human gait has biometric potential from the early days when we demonstrated the Manchester ‘Magic Carpet’ to user groups back in 2010,” Krikor Ozanyan, Professor of Photonic Sensors & Systems at Manchester, told Digital Trends. “However, decisive progress has been made recently by using artificial intelligence to process the floor senor data in a new way. As the latest development, we teamed up with Universidad Autonoma de Madrid to apply our existing models, and to develop new ones, for experimenting on an existing unique footstep database SFootDB — containing a single stride from a large number of individuals.”

In test conditions, the footstep-recognizing A.I. was able to correctly identify individuals with close to perfect accuracy, with an error rate of just 0.7 percent.

According to Ozanyan, the methodology could be particularly useful for identifying individuals in crowded locations, such as on an airport concourse. Despite a recent story from China claiming that a known criminal was identified using facial recognition in a crowd of thousands, such approaches may not necessarily prove effective. On the other hand, the ability to single out known individuals from a large group of unknowns by getting them to cross a pressure-sensing threshold could be extremely helpful. It could also potentially be used in smart home environments to recognize individual members of the family or household.

“The use of artificial intelligence on footstep data is efficient from the point of view of cost of deployment, resources, upgrades, connectivity and privacy concerns,” Ozanyan continued. “Beyond biometrics, the home scenario is the entry point for the huge area of healthcare, where the occupants’ gait can be monitored over a very long period of time so that subtle changes in their gait patterns can be attributed to normal ageing or to cognitive decline — possibly linked to the early onset of mental illness.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

Become an Excel whiz with this bundle of training courses!

Microsoft’s Excel, the spreadsheet tool in its Office suite, has an incredible amount of depth that most people never touch. Figures and graphs are what Excel is usually used for, but there’s so much more potential if you have the correct knowledge.

Master Microsoft Excel for just $49! Learn more

Whether it’s PivotTables, Pivot Charts, macros, or powerful formulas, in-depth Excel training to automate spreadsheets and solve complex problems can be quite expensive. There’s a lot of content to cover, and there are many questions to answer.

If you’re interested in extensive spreadsheet training, Android Central right now has a Microsoft Excel course that includes over 70 hours of content spread over four courses. Instead of paying the regular price of $1,380, you’ll instead pay just $49. That’s 96 percent off the regular price!

Get in-depth Excel training that lets you learn at your own pace! Learn more

Access to this course remains open forever, so even if you don’t have the time at this moment, you can jump in whenever you’d like. At just $49 for extensive Excel training, how can you go wrong?

LG G7: Review, Specs, Availability, Problems and more!

Interested in the LG G7 ThinQ? We’ve got the basics covered here!

LG re-invented itself a bit in 2017 with the G6: a back-to-basics design that focused on being a great phone rather than relying on mods and other superfluous hardware features. That trend continues in 2018 with the LG G7 ThinQ: a great smartphone with interesting branding — and some tricks up its sleeve.

This is everything you need to know about the LG G7 ThinQ!

Check out the coverage so far

We’ve had some time with the LG G7, and we have some early impressions ready for you to read. Additionally, Mr. Mobile has a full review. So far, we like the G7, and we’ll have a full review up shortly.

More: LG G7 ThinQ hands-on preview: All about that bass

The specs

The G7 doesn’t have too many surprises when it comes to internal hardware, featuring Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, plenty of internal storage (with the option to use a microSD card for expansion), and Android 8.0 Oreo for software. LG not only keeps the headphone jack, but continues offering a high-end DAC for excellent audio. Check out the full specs below!

Yes, it has a notch

The topic of notches on Android phones is… divisive. You can go either way on your opinion of a display notch, and with the LG G7, you can go either way on having a notch. It’s enabled by default, but if you disable it in the settings, you just have a plain black status bar.

Dual cameras are back

LG has had dual cameras for a few years, with one standard lens and one wide-angle lens. That continues on the G7, and it’s just as great as it has ever been. LG seems to be the one manufacturer interested in great wide-angle photography, and it’s become a legitimate reason to choose LG phones over the competition.

The main lense is optically stabilized for better low-light photos and videos, but unfortunately the wide-angle lens is not. There’s also a Super Bright Mode to lighten up dark scenes, and it works well enough without the photo getting grainy.

Where to buy it

Interested in the G7? Fortunately, you can pick one up starting now. Every major U.S. carrier (minus AT&T) has started stocking the G7, between $750 and $792. Canadian carriers will also have the G7 available to purchase.

More: Where to buy the LG G7 ThinQ

Grab some accessories

If you’re going to get the G7, make sure to get some accessories for it as well. Screen protectors and cases are already available, and it’s never a bad idea to get a microSD card for more storage.

More: Best LG G7 Cases

More: Best Screens Protectors for LG G7

More: Best microSD cards for LG G7

More: Best accessories for the LG G7

Check out our forums!

Want to chat about G7, or ask the community a question. Be sure to stop into to the Android Central forums!

More: LG G7 ThinQ forums

LG G7

• LG G7 hands-on preview: All about that bass
• LG G7 Specifications: Everything you need to know
• Join the LG G7 forums

Amazon has slashed prices on a variety of Timbuk2 bags

Amazon is offering discounts on a selection of Timbuk2 bags. Prices start at $34. From laptop bags to full-on luggage, there’s something in this sale for everyone.

These bags are designed to be durable and stylish. They’ll protect your gear and help make everything from commuting to long-haul travel much easier.

Some standout deals include:

• Command Laptop Backpack – $53.40 (usually $77)
• Parkside Laptop Backpack – $36.05 (usually $57)
• Classic Medium Messenger Bag – $38.99 (usually $56)
• Commute Messenger Bag – From $49 (usually from $84)
• Copilot 20″ Luggage Roller – $118.66 (usually $200)

Check out the full sale here.

See at Amazon

How to customize the Shelf on the OnePlus 6

How do I use and customize the shelf in the OnePlus Launcher?

OnePlus has a knack for leaving Android mostly untouched in OxygenOS, but one unique aspect of its custom software is the Shelf to the left of the home screens in the OnePlus Launcher.

• How to customize the Shelf
• How to disable the Shelf

Why would you want to use the Shelf?

As a longtime user of the popular third-party home screen replacement Action Launcher, I’ve grown accustomed to the convenience of having a screen dedicated to my favorite widgets, without having to worry about app shortcuts or non-matching wallpapers getting in the way.

OnePlus 6 review: The matter is settled

The Shelf in the OnePlus Launcher gives a similar experience, allowing you to sort your widgets into a vertically scrolling list to the left of your home screens (where Google Now would be on the Pixel Launcher). You can add custom widgets from any of your apps, and OnePlus throws in some widgets of its own; one for setting quick reminders, one displaying your ten most recent apps, one displaying recent contacts, and a dashboard breaking down system usage.

How to customize the Shelf

Swipe right from your home screen to access the Shelf.
Press and hold on any widget, then drag it up or down to reposition it in the list.

Drag the white circle at the bottom of the widget to resize it.

Tap the red X button in the top-right corner of a widget to remove it from the list.
Tap the blue + button in the bottom-right corner of the screen to add a new widget.

Select Widget to add a new widget to the Shelf.

That’s it! You can arrange the widgets any way you like, or if you just don’t like the Shelf you can remove it altogether.

How to disable the Shelf

It may be simple, but the Shelf is one of my favorite parts of OxygenOS. Still, it isn’t for everybody, and if you just can’t stand accidentally swiping to it from your home screen, luckily it’s easy to disable.

Use the Pinch to zoom out gesture anywhere on the home screen.
Tap Home Settings.

Swipe the toggle next to Shelf to the off position.

Just like that, the Shelf will no longer appear when you swipe right from the leftmost home screen — just remember that if the OnePlus Launcher isn’t to your liking, you can always download a third-party launcher in its place. That’s the beauty of customization.

Questions? Comments?

If you have any questions about the Shelf, or want to share your love (or disdain) for OxygenOS, we want to hear about it. Sound off in the comments below!

Updated May 2018: This article was rewritten to reflect changes to OxygenOS on the OnePlus 6.

OnePlus 6

• OnePlus 6 review
• OnePlus 6 vs. OnePlus 5T: How much changes in six months?
• OnePlus 6 vs. OnePlus 5: Should you upgrade?
• These are the official OnePlus 6 cases
• The OnePlus 6 doesn’t work on Verizon or Sprint
• Join the discussion in the forums

Discover things you never knew with these discounted 23andMe DNA tests

Amazon has 23andMe kits on sale! You can get the 23andMe Ancestry DNA Test for $69, when it normally sells for $88, or the 23andMe Health + Ancestry DNA Test for $139 instead of the usual $172 price tag.

The $69 23andMe Ancestry DNA test will tell you all about where you come from. You provide a saliva sample and send it in to the company. Six to eight weeks after, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of your ancestry from 150+ populations worldwide. You can also upgrade to add health reports for an extra fee upon sending in your sample.

If you’d like to learn about your hereditary health, then the $139 23andMe Health + Ancestry Test is what you’re looking for. Aside from telling you about where you come from, this uses a saliva sample to let you know about your health and wellness risks, as well as your carrier status for several diseases. It can let you know if you’re at risk for Alzheimer’s, hair loss, and more.

If you’ve always wondered whether or not Dad was part caveman, these test for Neanderthal DNA as well. Give him this for Father’s Day and satisfy your curiosity (and cement a lifetime of jokes) once and for all.

See at Amazon