After more than two years of tinkering and finessing, today Google finally officially launched its Tango smartphone augmented reality system to the masses.
Right now, it’s only available on Lenovo’s $499 Phab2 Pro, which arrives in stores in the US today, but you can expect to see this in a bunch of Android phones in the next year or so.
About 35 applications are launching with Tango support at launch. I had a chance to demo about a dozen of them and results were mixed. Developers are really still figuring out what these cameras are good for and some might be trying a bit too hard to capitalize on the depth-sensing feature. There are certainly some ground-breaking apps in early infancy.
For gamers, Tango certainly offers a chance to have a more intense gaming session. Titles like Crayola Color Blaster show the ability of games to capitalize on larger playing spaces while utilizing the technology’s tracking abilities.
What were ultimately most intriguing were the non-gaming apps. iStaging allows you to position furniture in your home and see what a new lamp would look like on your desk. This app was one of the most effective in highlighting how much better Tango’s mapping has gotten over the past several months. Matterport’s Scenes app allows users to capture their spaces in volumetric 3D, what that’s actually useful for is a bit limited in scope, but visually it’s really freaking cool and highlights just how sophisticated even Tango’s first effort is.
Tango has tellingly undergone some organizational changes within Google since it was first introduced. The program is now operated directly alongside Google Daydream, the company’s central smartphone virtual reality effort. It’s clear that there’s very little intention to keep these programs separate for too long. The opportunities offered by Tango in terms of inside-out positional tracking would offer VR a major boon if a smartphone is launched that is Tango and Daydream compatible.
For all its notoriety and specialty, Tango is a feature bound for mass consumption. Depth sensing cameras are a feature that will inevitably land on smartphones with the clear use cases becoming most apparent after we all readily have access to them. Tango is starting with a rather tepid launch on a single Lenovo phablet, but the quality experience is certainly there.
The Touchbar is serious business. Apple’s interface guidelines warn against all kinds of fun things that developers probably started thinking about when the new MacBook Pros leaked earlier this week. No doubt some apps will find a way to be creative even under the stern eye of Apple’s party police, but it’s clearly discouraged.
Here are a few choice items from Apple’s guidelines telling developers how to create Touch Bar interfaces:
Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a display.
The Touch Bar shouldn’t display alerts, messages, scrolling content, static content, or anything else that commands the user’s attention or distracts from their work on the main screen.
Avoid animation. The Touch Bar is considered an extension of the keyboard, and people don’t expect animation in their keyboard.
Use color tastefully and minimally. In general, the Touch Bar should be similar in appearance to the physical keyboard.
In general, the Touch Bar shouldn’t include controls for tasks such as find, select all, deselect, copy, cut, paste, undo, redo, new, save, close, print, and quit.
Now, admittedly, some of these things could be annoying or pulled off poorly. And it’s clear that Apple wants developers and users both to think of the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard, not of the screen. But prescribing usage in that way often isn’t a good idea. The fact is it’s both, and ought to be used for both.
Who wouldn’t want a stock ticker there, or a Twitter feed, or a progress bar for downloads and file operations? There are plenty of possibilities to explore here, and it seems a disservice to insist that things remain monochrome, key-shaped and static.
I for one was thinking of what the first Touch Bar games would look like, or how it could act as a Rainmeter or MenuMeters-like at-a-glance view of my machine.
Even if we’re going to keep things boring, why not have copy, paste, save and all those on there? Sure, they duplicate shortcut keys, but so do a bunch of the things they showed onstage today.
Standardizing stuff so users know more or less what to expect is a good idea, especially with a new feature like this, but this is more stifling than standardizing. Experimentation with novel user interfaces has created all kinds of fun apps with intuitive and interesting controls. Apple is pretending it already knows everything about how this interface should be used, when it’s actually a wide open field.
Whether any of this matters depends a lot on how rigorously Apple enforces these design guidelines. Will it be satisfied with simply encouraging its own limited vision of what should appear on the Touch Bar, or will it actively discourage apps that step outside it? We’ll know soon. But it would be a shame to see this cool new feature fall short of its potential.
Following months of testing and free trials for early adopters, Microsoft announced this morning that its learning-focused version of the popular Minecraft game, Minecraft: Education Edition, is now available for purchase. The game is available in 50 countries and in 11 different languages, the company said, and will include the Classroom Mode companion app that lets teachers manage settings and interact with students in the game.
Microsoft had first announced its plans to develop a version of the game for educators at the beginning of the year, after acquiring the learning game MinecraftEdu for an undisclosed sum. The company then built upon that library of lessons and activities to develop programs for teachers across a variety of subjects, including STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), history, language, and art, for example.
At the time of the deal, Microsoft had said it made sense to move in this direction given that Minecraft was already being using in over 7,000 classrooms in over 40 countries worldwide, even without Minecraft’s official involvement.
With that market in mind, Minecraft: Education Edition got off the ground, and now offers lessons for kids as young as five up to teens and even college students.
Teachers were given free trials during the testing period, ahead of today’s official launch, in order to offer feedback and try Minecraft in their classrooms. The company in September said that, during these trials, over 35,000 students and teachers have used the software.
The companion app Classroom Mode was previously announced, along with the November launch date. This new app lets teachers change the variables for the world, offer up items to students, communicate with students, and transport students virtually from a central interface.
Now live, Minecraft: Education Edition is no longer free, but will instead cost $5 per user. Volume pricing will be available for larger institutions.
The software will also continue to be updated over time, notes the company, to include new game features from other editions of Minecraft. At launch, the official version includes all the latest updates previously available in the Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition beta, says Microsoft.
In addition to the software, Microsoft offers a dedicated website for educators at education.minecraft.net, where they’ll find lesson plans, tutorials, starter worlds, and collaborate with others. There’s also a more structured program called Minecraft Mentors available, which will team a teacher new to Minecraft with others with experience to learn how to use it in the classroom.
Five years ago, danrharvey wanted to “get stuck into a creative mode build” in Minecraft. Looking back on it today, he’s built something that’s not only original, but beautiful.
“It was fairly aimless at first”, he says, “I just started building a castle, with tunnels beneath, then about three or four months in, during an electrical storm my computer crashed and the save game corrupted. Disheartened, I stepped away from the game for a while, but it began to stew in my mind to start a new build, but it had to be big, and cool. Then one morning I awoke from a dream with an idea fully formed in my head. I’d build a castle with four different sides, because Minecraft is on a square grid. Each side would be similar, especially around the central tower, but as you moved out, the four sides would take on their own personality and function.”
The “Fortress” side.
Those four are a “Fortress” side (with defensive ramparts), a “Residence” side (with housing and gardens), a “Town” side (with stores and churches) and a “Factory” side (with farms and the buildings that power the rest of the build).
The level of detail borders on the obsessive throughout the castle, but then, that’s what makes it so amazing. The more little nooks, crannies and quirks, the more it comes across as a real place.
He even made his own custom resource pack for the build, whipping up his own mossy stone, glass and castle decorations.
Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed today that Microsoft is planning to bring Minecraft to the Apple TV. While it was a brief mention on stage at Apple’s event, Cook did reveal you’ll be able to build worlds straight from the Apple TV. It’s likely that the app will be similar to the existing Pocket Edition for iOS, allowing you to play with other Minecraft players across multiple platforms.
