by Stone Marshall | Apr 3, 2016 | Minecraft News |
A few minutes into exploring a Minecraft world in Samsung’s Gear VR head-mounted display, I started digging a hole in the ground. After getting a few meters into the earth, I faced dirt in every direction. Despite knowing in my heart that I was in a safe room with Oculus representatives and dozens of media professionals, I started to panic.
This is Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Oculus VR held a special event during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week to show off a nearly complete version of the block-building phenomenon running in Samsung’s phone-holding virtual reality device (it’s also coming to the high-end Rift). I spent around 30 minutes exploring the game, and that experience made it clear that this is an application that could instantly show people the promise of VR. Minecraft is notoriously simple looking, but that didn’t prevent it from giving me moments of exhilaration and panic, and that’s something a lot of people will respond to. Analysts are already expecting mobile VR to generate $861 million in spending this year, and it should also keep pace with console devices like Sony’s PlayStation VR as well as PC peripherals like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. By 2020, research firm SuperData suspects mobile VR will represent $15.6 billion of a $40.4 billion virtual reality business worldwide.
Unlike Rift, Vive, and PSVR, Gear VR is not a high-end device that tracks your body or the tilt of your head. The result is that it is technically “less immersive,” but that’s not something you’re thinking about when digging through caverns in Minecraft.
Instead, Minecraft: Gear VR Edition puts you into its low-fi world better than any previous version. I played with an Xbox-style controller, and I had no issues walking around and digging up dirt and fighting off enemies. Instead of aiming with the analog stick, I controlled my targeting by looking around. This is something I’ve done in other VR games, but it was nice to see how quickly it made sense in a game I’ve already played for dozens of hours outside of VR.
Above: That’s a long fall, and it feels like it when you’re in VR.
Image Credit: Microsoft
At the event, Oculus had me sit in a swivel chair. This mean I could spin around to do a quick 180-degree turn to look the other way. Having a chair that can pivot along with a controller is probably the ideal way to play, but I also tested out what it’s like if you can’t swivel (like if you were in an airplane chair, for instance). And the game uses the standard snap-turning function that you’re going to see in a lot of VR games. This has you changing where you’re looking by jumping the camera in 10-degree increments. You might think that you’d want the camera to move smoothly when you use the right stick, but most people get motion sickness when they do that.
Beyond the movement, Minecraft in VR gave me some incredible sensations I never really had playing the game on PC. When I first started walking around in the world, the scale smacked me right in the nose. I could see huge mountain peaks and deep valleys flowing with water. It made me feel like a tiny person in a sprawling world. The level Oculus had us in had some Iron Golem creatures walking around, and it was something else to approach them and have to look up to see their faces. I have a memory of one standing right in front of me that I’m recalling right now. That’s imprinted on my brain as if it was something I truly experienced.
After my run in with the Golems, I started digging my aforementioned hole in the ground. And I can’t get over the real sense of claustrophobia I was feeling. It was dark, and I could only barely make out the low-resolution textures a few digital inches in front of me. Like with the creatures I met, I have a memory of having my body crammed into a small pit. On the verge of panic, I thankfully remembered the torches I started the demo with. I popped one onto the wall, and that brought me back from the edge. I’m delighted that I did not have to rip off my headset screaming in embarrassment.
That might sound like a nightmare, but I can honestly say that enjoyed it. It introduces a level of immediacy and presence to something that has a million other things going for it. And having the option to pop on a Gear VR anywhere you want is going to make this game an excellent showpiece for early virtual reality.
Minecraft for Gear VR in 2 words: pixelated claustrophobia
by Stone Marshall | Apr 2, 2016 | Minecraft News |
It’s already on practically every other gaming system, and now Minecraft is finally coming to a Nintendo console.
Nintendo announced today that the insanely popular brick-builder is coming to Wii U on Dec. 17, priced at $30. Minecraft: Wii U Edition will be available to download from the Nintendo eShop and will feature off-TV play, so you can build and fight on your console while someone else is watching TV. It will come complete with some of the most popular current add-on packs, and additional DLC will be available to buy through Nintendo’s online store.
Microsoft paid $2.5 billion for Minecraft developer Mojang last year, and that’s because Minecraft is such a strong, popular brand with millions of fans worldwide. It’s sold over 20 million copies on Mac and PC, over 30 million on mobile devices, and 20 million on Xbox One and Xbox 360 combined. It’s also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. Finally having Minecraft available on Wii U could help give Nintendo a massive sales boost with families this Christmas.
“With so many included add-on content packs, Minecraft: Wii U Edition brings an exciting collection of Minecraft content and experiences to Nintendo fans,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s president. “Wii U players will have plenty of reasons to keep coming back to this iconic gaming experience.”
Even better is that we won’t have to wait long at all! Minecraft: Wii U Edition will be debuting on the Nintendo eShop on December 17th, just over a week from now. This marks the first new console port of the open sandbox game since Microsoft purchased Minecraft developer Mojang.
Nintendo was fairly quiet on all the details of Minecraft: Wii U Edition, but did confirm that the game can be played solely on the console’s GamePad controller, eliminating the need for a TV. In addition, several content packs will be included with purchase, while another 16 will be available to buy individually, with more on the way. Also interesting is that Nintendo said it was working directly with Mojang on developing its own unique theme packs, most likely skins and textures based on Nintendo’s own games and characters.
While Microsoft has direct ownership of the Minecraft franchise, in addition to its own Xbox One and Xbox 360, it continues to support development on rival platforms, including PlayStation 4, PS3, iOS, Android, and now the Wii U.
The one notable difference, however, is that Minecraft on Wii U will support off-TV play, so that you can play it on the Gamepad when your TV is otherwise occupied. The game will also be launching alongside a bevy of downloadable content, including skin packs based on everything from The Simpsons to Star Wars. Nintendo also says that it is working with developer Mojang to create “new content for Nintendo fans to be released at a future date.” Expect to hear news on that soon.
Deliciously Minecraft arrives Nintendo’s Wii U Edition – Mesquite Tekno Time
by Stone Marshall | Apr 2, 2016 | Minecraft News |
“Microsoft Monday” takes a look back at the past week of news related to Microsoft. This week, “Microsoft Monday” includes details about a potential Yahoo deal, the “Holoportation” research project, the Surface Hub progress, the Tay chatbot catastrophe, the Health app update, the Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools becoming open source and the new Minecraft Story Mode Episode 5 coming tomorrow.
Microsoft To Meet With Private Equity Companies About Potential Yahoo! Deal
Microsoft executives are reportedly in talks with Yahoo! investors about potentially providing funds to acquire the Sunnyvale-based Internet company, according to sources with Reuters. The talks are in the preliminary stages. Microsoft has an interest in Yahoo! because it has search and advertising agreements with the Internet company. Yahoo! is expected to be auctioning off its core Internet businesses, including Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! News.
Recently, investment company Starboard Value LP has been soliciting support from Yahoo! shareholders to get rid of the whole board including CEO Marissa Mayer. Back in 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer attempted to push for a $45 billion acquisition of Yahoo!
Microsoft Research Team Working On “Holoportation” Research Project
The Microsoft Research team is using the HoloLens to work on a research project called “Holoportation.” Microsoft Research described “Holoportation” as being a new type of 3D capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed and transmitted anywhere in the world in real time.
Essentially, Microsoft’s research team is able to create a live hologram of a person to be placed in another room. Using mixed reality displays like the HoloLens, the “Holoportation” technology lets users “see, hear and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they are actually present in the same physical space. Communicating and interacting with remote users becomes as natural as face-to-face communication.”
Here is a video demo of “Holoportation”:
Microsoft Has Started Shipping The Pricey Surface Hubs
Microsoft Surface Hub / Photo Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft has delayed the release of its Surface Hub touch-screens twice, but now it is finally shipping. The Surface Hubs are available in two sizes — a 55-inch version and a 4K 84-inch version. The 55-inch costs $8,999 and the 84-inch costs $21,999.
The Windows 10 powered Surface Hub supports 100 points of touch input and digital pens, according to The Verge. The Surface Hubs have Core i5/i7 processors, 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM. And the 84-inch has an NVIDIA Quadro graphics card. The Surface Hubs also support Bluetooth and NFC. And the Hubs also have a dual webcam with noise-cancelling microphones and a bezel for teleconferences.
Microsoft Shuts Down Tay, An AI-Powered Chatbot That Became Racist And Misogynist
Screenshot Credit: Amit Chowdhry
One of the biggest Microsoft stories this past week was about Tay, an artificial intelligence powered chatbot that said racist and misogynist comments on Twitter, Groupie and Kik. Microsoft quickly shut it down after the project went haywire.
Tay was originally described as “Microsoft’s A.I. fam the internet that’s got zero chill!” and it was supposed to talk like a teenage girl. Within 24 hours, “TayTweets” started making racist and misogynist comments.
“Unfortunately, in the first 24 hours of coming online, a coordinated attack by a subset of people exploited a vulnerability in Tay. Although we had prepared for many types of abuses of the system, we had made a critical oversight for this specific attack,” said Microsoft in a blog post. “As a result, Tay tweeted wildly inappropriate and reprehensible words and images. We take full responsibility for not seeing this possibility ahead of time. We will take this lesson forward as well as those from our experiences in China, Japan and the U.S. Right now, we are hard at work addressing the specific vulnerability that was exposed by the attack on Tay.”
Then Microsoft shut down Tay and apologized for the incident:
“We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay. Tay is now offline and we’ll look to bring Tay back only when we are confident we can better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values.”
Before Tay was shut down, the chatbot tweeted over 96,000 times. Tay is not the first artificial intelligence application that Microsoft released. Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbot Xiaoice became popular in China and is used by over 40 million people.
Tay may sound like it could be a setback for artificial intelligence as a whole, but Google has been having better luck with its AlphaGo AI-powered application. AlphaGo became the first Computer Go program to defeat a professional human Go player without handicaps on a 19×19 board.
Tay was supposed to tell jokes to users and comment on pictures it received. Even though Microsoft deleted most of the tweets, a website called Socialhax.com posted many screenshots of Tay’s tweets.
It has been pointed out that the failure of the Tay project supported the Godwin’s law Internet adage. Godwin’s law says that the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler becomes more likely as an online discussion grows longer.
What’s the lesson here? Tay serves as a lesson that it is important for engineers to design a system with filters in place.
Microsoft Updates Health App With New Social Features
Microsoft Health App / Photo Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft has updated its Health app so that you can compete with your Facebook friends in terms of exercise goals. When you connect your Microsoft Health and Facebook accounts, you can see your friends who also have connected accounts. Then you can set up Social Challenges and monitor Leaderboards. The Social Challenges supports challenges for steps, cardio minutes, longest runs, bike rides, etc. Those challenges are expected to be accomplished in one, three, five or seven days. Even if you do not have a Microsoft Band wearable, you can still compete with each other using the Microsoft Health app on iOS, Android or Windows Phone.
Microsoft Is Publishing Numbers About “Revenge Porn” Removal
Microsoft has recently started publishing its figures related to the removal of “revenge porn,” according to Forbes contributor Emma Woollacott. Revenge porn is when sexually explicit content of someone who has not given their consent for the images or videos to be shared is uploaded publicly.
Last week, Microsoft published its Transparency Report and revealed that it received 537 requests to remove links to revenge porn photos or videos from the Bing search results, OneDrive or Xbox Live. And Microsoft complied with 338 (63%) of those requests.
“In cases where we have not yet accepted a request, it is usually either because we have asked for more information to be able to make a determination on the request, or because the content in question does not contain nudity, identify the victim in the image, or otherwise meet generally accepted definitions of ‘revenge porn,’” stated Steve Lippman, Microsoft’s director of corporate responsibility.
The removal rate of “revenge porn” is rather paltry when you compare it to copyright infringement removal requests. Microsoft received requests to remove about 60 million URLs and Microsoft complied with 98% of those requests.
Microsoft Is Preparing To Release A Universal Windows Skype App
Skype / Photo Credit: Skype
Last year, Microsoft replaced the Skype Windows client with three separate apps, which was a surprising move. However, Microsoft is preparing to launch a new Universal Windows Platform app for Skype that would consolidate the calling, messaging and video features into one place, according to ZDNet. The Skype Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app will be released in preview mode for Windows Insiders soon. And eventually, Microsoft will offer the UWP app in the Windows Store.
Microsoft will continue developing the three separate Skype Messaging, Calling and Video apps for certain devices. And the Skype team will continue gathering feedback to determine the best course of action between the three separate apps and the Universal Windows Platform Skype app.
Microsoft Reportedly Invests Millions Into A Startup That Turned Down An Acquisition
Microsoft reportedly offered to buy Mesosphere for $150 million last year, but the deal was turned down. Mesosphere is known for developing a data center operating system that makes it easier to organize cloud machines.
Mesosphere has recently announced it has raised $73.5 million in funding led by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft was listed as a “significant participant,” according to Business Insider. Mesosphere has now raised $122 million in funding with a valuation of over $1 billion. Mesosphere’s Data Center Operating System (DCOS) is used by many large customers including Verizon and Apple.
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 And Dark Souls Now Available On Xbox One Through Backwards Compatibility Program
This past week, the Xbox One has received some new games as part of the backwards compatibility rollout. Now the original Dark Souls and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has is available through backwards compatibility service. And the backwards compatible version of Dark Souls will be available for free for consumers that pre-order a copy of Dark Souls 3.
Paul Allen Launches The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group Fund
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has announced this past week that he will be committing $100 million to launch the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group. The initiative focuses on exploring biosciences and advancing science. The first funded projects are known as the new Allen Distinguished Investigators (ADI) and the Allen Discovery Centers which are located at Stanford University and Tufts University. The Allen Distinguished Investigators focuses on “exceptional creativity and catalytic impact” and the Allen Discovery Centers will be based on “compass-guided research.”
“To make the kind of transformational advances we seek and thus shape a better future, we must invest in scientists willing to pursue what some might consider out-of-the-box approaches at the very edges of knowledge,” said Allen in a statement. “This of course entails a risk of setbacks and failures. But without risk, there is rarely significant reward, and unless we try truly novel approaches, we may never find the answers we seek.”
Microsoft Power BI Hits 5 Million Subscribers
Microsoft Power BI / Photo Credit: Microsoft
Last week, Microsoft announced that its cloud-based business intelligence service has hit 5 million subscribers. Microsoft is also adding several new features to the Power BI service, including an option to import data from an Excel spreadsheet to be converted into live-updating visualizations including graphs and charts. The ability to use an Excel connector to pin live-updating data from the Excel desktop app to a Power BI dashboard will be added tomorrow. Power BI will also gain role-level security for cloud models and tenant-level usage reports will show how people are using different features.
Microsoft Makes Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools Open Source
Microsoft recently said it would be releasing SQL Server for Linux soon. This past week, Microsoft also announced it would be making Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools open source on GitHub said ZDNet. This news follows Microsoft announcement several weeks ago about the integration of Visual Studio with Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
The Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools were released in 2010 and it helps improve productivity for developers. The Power Tools were downloaded over half a million times across several versions. And some of the features built into the Power Tools were actually merged into Visual Studio.
“Minecraft Story Mode” Episode 5 Arrives Tomorrow
Minecraft Story Mode – Episode 5: Order Up / Photo Credit: Telltale Games
Mojang will be releasing “Minecraft Story Mode” Episode 5: Order Up tomorrow. Forbes contributor Andy Robertson said that Episode 5 sets up the context for the upcoming three chapters, which are add-ons to the season. This means that players will only need to have the first episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode to purchase and play episodes 6, 7 and 8.
Episode 5: Order Up will be available on PCs, Macs, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, iOS and Android starting tomorrow. In the game, Jesse and friends go to an abandoned temple that has mysterious treasures. But Jesse and friends are ambushed by Ocelot Aiden and they find themselves in a new world called Sky City.
Microsoft Monday: ‘Holoportation,’ Racist Tay Chatbot Gets Shut Down, Minecraft Story Mode Episode 5
by Stone Marshall | Apr 1, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Minecraft Story Mode series will get a huge update this week. Owen Hill, the guy behind the wildly popular sandbox video game Minecraft, has made a huge announcement on March 22 that episode 5 of Minecraft Story Mode will be available to download on March 29.
“I’m happy to announce that Episode 5 of Minecraft: Story Mode, ‘Order Up,’ will be available to download on PC/Mac, Windows 10, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and iOS and Android-based devices from March 29th!,” Hill post on Mojang’s website.
Hill also announced that three more “post-season” episodes will follow and that all these three episodes are expected to be out this year.
On the company’s official website, Hill said that the episode 5 of Minecraft Story Mode will feature a new world called Sky City. Gamers will see Jesse and company explore the new world, which Owen Hill described in his blog as an “awe-inspiring and an intriguing” place. In the story, Jesse and his buddies will find themselves in abandoned temple, where they meet the ruler that is said to be up to no good.
“Episode 5 will not be the last you see of Jessie and the gang. We can now confirm that three extra episodes will arrive sometime in 2016,” Hill wrote on his blog, via the Australian News Network.
Episode 5, which also called “Order Up!”, will bridge the gap from Episode 4’s concluded Wither Storm story arc to the new content.
The voice cast will be joined by Sean Astin, which known as Sam Gamgee in the “Lord of the Ring” movie. Other voices featured are those of Catherine Taber and Patton Oswalt as Jesse and Paul Reubens of Pee-Wee Herman.
While the three extra episodes will not be a part of the existing season pass, gamers can still buy the upcoming episodes 6, 7 and 8, provided that they have already downloaded at least one of the older episodes.
Launched in October 2015, Minecraft: Story Mode is an all-new narrative-driven game series developed by Telltale Games in collaboration with Mojang. Three more episodes are planned this year, but no official announcement has been issued by Telltale Games and its partner Mojang
“We’re not going into detail about the content of those yet, but we can confirm that they’ll be great, and maybe come with a slightly different flavor to the previous season,” adds Hill, via the Mojang’s website.
Minecraft: Story Mode Episode 5 unveiled, three more coming this year
