huge Archives - Shapiro Consultants

Huge visual enhancements could be coming to your favorite Oculus Quest 2 software

July 14, 2023
No Comments

Your favorite VR games and apps’ visuals could soon be sharper than ever as Meta is unlocking a new resolution-boosting tool for developers.

Developed in collaboration with Qualcomm – the manufacturer of the Snapdragon chips used by Meta’s headsets – Quest Super Resolution upscaling tool promises to boost image quality and deliver a smoother experience. So expect the best VR games and apps to have sharper images, and be running at higher framerates on your Oculus Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro than they did before the upgrade.

The Quest Super Resolution upgrade follows a major boost to the CPU and GPU performance of Meta’s headsets that came last month in June 2023. Both the Quest 2 and Quest Pro’s CPUs saw a 26% speed boost last month, while the Quest 2 and Quest Pro’s GPUs got a performance boost of 19% and 11% respectively.

Meta was able to achieve these upgrades via a software patch rather than releasing new hardware because it has allowed the existing components to run at higher clock speeds. To avoid the systems getting too hot while you’re wearing them, the Quest headsets’ components were underclocked – read: their maximum performance is held back compared to what it should be able to do running normally. June’s update removed some of these limitations, with Meta likely deciding it was being a bit too conservative with its underclocked approach.

Thanks to Quest Super Resolution, developers have a new way to utilize the Quest system’s improved GPU capabilities. But we’ll have to wait for them to implement Super Resolution into their software before we see any improvements in the VR software we love.

How does Meta Quest Super Resolution work?

Meta’s blog post gets a little jargon-heavy in its “What is Meta Quest Super Resolution?” section – calling it a “single-pass spatial upscaling and sharpening technique.” What you need to know is that upscaling is a way to get better visual quality out of your hardware without sacrificing performance.

Three images of a person's VR work station, one is blurry, one is crisp but full of artifacts and another is crisp without artifactslution — Quest Super Resolution in action (Image credit: Meta)

In general, upscaling works by having a GPU render an image at a lower resolution (say, 1080p or full-HD) and then using tricks to scale it up to a higher one (like 4K, or even 8K). While an upscaled image typically won’t look as crisp as one rendered at the target resolution, it’s a lot less taxing for a GPU to create an upscaled image – as such it can usually run upscaled software at a higher framerate.

Higher smoother framerates are a must-have for VR apps. If the visuals are choppy, or run below a minimum of 90fps, that’s when wearing a headset can make you feel motion sick.

Meta Quest Super Resolution's upscaling algorithm has a few special tricks up its sleeves, too. The highest setting can apparently greatly reduce artifacts caused by upscaled objects blurring into one another at their edges. You can see this in the image above, the Super Resolution image looks the most crisp, with well-defined edges to the objects in the complex scene.

Want to learn more about upscaling? Check out our Nvidia DLSS vs AMD FSR piece to learn about how these two technologies stack up against one another.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

June 15, 2023
No Comments

Valve has announced a major update to its Steam application that brings a “fresh” new look, better notifications, a new in-game overlay and new Notes feature.

Announced on Twitter (see below), and with a blog post, this is one of the biggest updates to Steam we’ve seen for a long time – and due to the popularity of Valve’s Steam platform, these changes will likely impact almost all PC gamers.

Hello! We’ve just shipped a big update to the Steam Desktop client. New features include a completely redesigned in-game overlay, new notes functionality, pinnable in-game windows, improvements to notifications and more.Learn more about the update here: https://t.co/6OWnUQOBqs pic.twitter.com/A9OI8WMaqbJune 14, 2023

The most noticeable change is the major redesign of the Steam interface, which Valve describes as “targeted visual and usability improvements across Steam.” While the app remains recognizable, the new look feels more modern, with Settings and Screenshot Manager getting particular attention.

Screenshots of the new Steam user interface — (Image credit: Valve)

Better notifications

If you use Steam – and if you play many of the best PC games it’s likely that you do, then you’ll probably have noticed notifications popping up in the corner of your screen while playing. While these can sometimes be useful, more often than not they're useless alerts about someone adding you to their ‘Friends list’, potentially distracting you at a key moment in the game.

So the fact that Valve has improved notifications to be “more useful to you” is certainly welcome – as is Valve’s acknowledgement that Steam notifications haven’t been great. With the new update, the 'bell' icon at the top of the screen will only light up green when there’s “truly something new for you,” and the notification pop-out window will be limited to new notifications (older ones can be viewed by clicking the 'View all' option).

Steam now also provides new notification settings that let you fine-tune which notifications pop up, and where they'll appear. Hopefully this will put a stop to immersion-breaking pop-ups showing up while you're playing games.

New and improved in-game overlay

The in-game overlay, which appears when you press Shift+Tab while playing a game, has got a new look as well, with a new toolbar along the bottom that contains buttons for things such as chat, achievements, guides and a web browser, so they can all be quickly accessed. It’s similar to the Game Bar in Windows 11 (which you can open by pressing the Windows key +G on your keyboard.

You can also customize which elements appear in the in-game overlay, and these settings will carry over regardless of which game you play.

You can now pin windows from the overlay to appear on-screen while you’re playing. This could be really handy for putting up guides to help you through a tricky part of a game, or – as Valve suggests – you could use it to multitask, such as playing a video or podcast while you game.

The in-game overlay also comes with two brand-new features. The first is the Game Overview panel, which gives you a load of easily-glanceable information about the game you're playing, including achievements, progress, news and more.

Valve has also added a new Notes feature, which allows you to type out quick notes and thoughts, or paste images, while playing. This could prove really helpful for keeping track of puzzles within a game, or for creating a ‘to-do’ list to ensure you get the most out of the game.

These notes are synced, so you can see them on any PC you use Steam on – and that includes the Steam Deck, which is a nice touch.

Steam Deck improvements

While the main focus of this update is on improving the PC experience of Steam, Valve has also done some background work on improving the user experience on its handheld console, the Steam Deck.

Code is now more commonly shared between the Steam desktop client, Big Picture mode and the Steam Deck, and Valve promises that this will mean that any changes and updates made to the desktop client will now appear on the Steam Deck more quickly.

It should work the other way around as well, and Valve has noted that the controller configurator feature of the Steam Deck, which is one of the best tools included with the handheld, can now also be used by the desktop version of Steam (via the in-game overlay), making it easier to configure gamepads connected to your PC.

Background work introducing hardware acceleration to Mac and Linux versions of Steam has also been included, so gamers on those platforms should get an experience that’s more in-line with the Windows version, which again is welcome.

So far the changes appear to have been warmly received by Steam users, and the update should be rolling out right now. For more info, check out Valve’s video highlighting the changes below:

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

June 15, 2023
No Comments

Windows 11 has implemented a major change for those who use a stylus, allowing for writing directly in the operating system’s interface and menus – though this is still in testing right now.

The move comes in preview build 23481 in the Dev Channel, where Windows Ink has been bolstered to allow for writing with a pen directly into, say, the search box in Windows 11.

The eventual goal, Microsoft notes in its blog post introducing the preview build, is to make it so you can write anywhere in Windows 11 with your pen. A further change has been applied to increase the accuracy of handwriting recognition, and also to bring in a ‘scratch out’ gesture to allow you to quickly edit (delete) text.

The catch is that so far this feature only supports English (US), but Microsoft assures us more languages are in the pipeline.

On top of this, build 23481 tweaks File Explorer to remove a bunch of outdated folder options. This is part of cleaning up this section of the interface ahead of a major revamp which is inbound for File Explorer, as you may have seen.

Finally, Microsoft has introduced a new Focus Session widget which allows users to quickly trigger (or halt) a session from the widget panel. And naturally, there’s the usual raft of minor tweaks, fixes, and known issues with this preview build as detailed in the full blog post.

Analysis: Playing catchup with Apple

The ability to write directly in the interface throughout Windows 11 is obviously going to be a major boon, but it’s a feature that is very much playing catchup with Apple. You may recall that Apple brought in its similar Scribble functionality with the Apple Pencil in iPadOS 14, which was released three years ago – so Microsoft has been slow to come to parity in this respect.

Not every Windows 11 tester will see the new Windows Ink capability either, as it’s a limited rollout to begin with, as Microsoft gauges early feedback. There are a number of known issues with the feature right now. (If you want to turn it on, you’ll find it in Settings > Bluetooth and devices > Pen and Windows Ink, where there’s a ‘Shell Handwriting’ option – though not for everyone yet, as noted).

Speaking of phased feature rollouts, preview build 23481 witnesses the completion of a few of these. That includes ‘never combined’ mode for the taskbar, and the ability to tear out (or merge) File Explorer tabs, both of which are now available to all Windows Insiders in the Dev channel.

For us it’s great to see ‘never combined’ making good progress in testing, so surely that’ll be in the mix for the release version of Windows 11 later this year (and there’s every chance the same will be true for the new Windows Ink feature).

Via XDA Developers

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

June 13, 2023
No Comments

The web version of Google Photos just got a major upgrade that brings a slew of editing features like Color Pop, Portrait Blur and Sky suggestions. But it’s not perfect.

Google Photos has been a great cloud photo storage platform for some time, making it easy to share your snaps between devices, and on mobile it’s also a solid photo editor. It’s not on par with services like Photoshop, but you can pull off some great looking adjustments – we particularly like Color Pop which makes the image black and white except for objects you select, and Background Blur which artificially blurs the background of pictures.

While this update finally gives the web client these tools and others found on the version on your Google Pixel 7, there are unfortunately two catches to the new and improved Google Photos web version.

Firstly, you’ll need to be subscribed to Google One – Google’s paid subscription service – to be able to take advantage of these new features. The cheapest Google One tier is Basic; it costs $ 1.99 / £1.59 / AU$ 2.49 per month and gives you access to these Photos tools as well as 100GB of storage, the use of the Google One VPN and a handful of extra benefits.

The other catch is the new Google Photos web tools lack the best feature found on the Google Pixel version of the app: Magic Eraser. This AI-powered tool allows you to clean up your photos; the app removes the objects you’ve highlighted and then cleverly fills in the blank space with a background using context from the image. It’s not perfect, but nine times out of 10 you wouldn’t know the image was altered unless someone told you.

Opinion: Magic Eraser is like a photo cheat code

A phone screen showing a photo of a child on a beach being edited by Google's Magic Eraser feature — (Image credit: Google)

Magic Eraser isn’t a Google Photos editing tool you should always rely on. Our Cameras Editor Timothy Coleman recently argued that cleaning your messy photos with Magic Eraser is a bad thing. It removes authenticity from your snaps, and often options like Background Blur can create a much tidier looking image.

But there are plenty of times when a minor fix from Magic Eraser can help remove a distraction that blemishes a shot you love. When I took a holiday with my parents in December 2021, I snapped a picture of them next to a huge Christmas tree, but they’d left their brightly colored bags in the shot. Thanks to Magic Eraser I could clean up the offending items, and get a result we were much happier with.

Given my success with the tool, I’m disappointed to see it’s not coming to Google’s Photos web app yet. This is hardly a surprise though; Magic Eraser is one of the best features on Pixel phones and by making it available to any Google One subscriber, Pixel handsets would lose one of their unique appeals.

Hopefully this Pixel exclusivity won’t last forever. But even if it does, with a bevvy of AI image tools on the rise alongside the best AI art generators, you might find a Google Photos rival can offer a good alternative to Magic Eraser.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

May 19, 2023
No Comments

ChatGPT Plus subscribers will soon be getting early access to experimental new features for the popular chatbot. Web integration and plugins are rolling out in beta next week, which could prove to be two interesting updates to the chatbot.

If you're subscribed to ChatGPT Plus, a new beta panel will appear in your settings next week. Once the panel has popped up, you’ll be able to try the two new features – though of course, most users are likely to gravitate to the AI’s more important and likely more interesting web browsing capabilities.

ChatGPT Screenshot — (Image credit: ChatGPT)

According to OpenAI’s official blog post on the beta features, the new internet-connected version of ChatGPT will know when and how to browse the internet to answer questions about recent events or topics. This means you could ask ChatGPT about something going on in the news, about whether or not you should take a scarf on your afternoon dog walk, or dig up trivia for more recent films and TV shows.

Why does this matter?

This new beta puts ChatGPT in a similar sphere to Microsoft’s Bing Chat, without explicitly turning it into a search engine. The big takeaway is that ChatGPT will basically be able to identify when it lacks information to answer a query and needs to search the internet for a relevant source.

This should make asking for citations a lot easier and – hopefully – a lot more accurate. Alternatively, the chatbot will simply be able to direct you to a webpage that might help. This means that ChatGPT (or at least, the beta version available to Plus subscribers) will no longer be reliant on the limited dataset it was trained on.

However, the issue that comes with chatbots having the ability to scour the web at will is that they often don’t have an appropriate frame of reference or the physical real-world mobility to reliably pick out misinformation. ChatGPT could cross-reference what it finds and try to ‘verify’ the authority of the source, but it can’t truly confirm the information is true in the real world.

Say you want to know about something that is currently ongoing in the real world, like the real-time weather in your area. An AI can't properly go outside to verify these things are true. With ChatGPT now able to search the web of its own accord, I hope that it will effectively prioritize reputable sites and sources – and avoid digging into incorrect information.

The good news is that OpenAI is taking a relatively conservative approach here. It’s a smart idea to have this feature tested on a smaller scale, with only plus subscribers having initial access and the beta feature being opt-in only.

It’s a safer way to start rolling out features like this without forcing it on the entire user base – a lesson that Microsoft could possibly learn from OpenAI, rather than shoving Bing AI into everything on Windows. With this change, we could see a smarter ChatGPT with more real-life applications, rather than just a text-content-vomiting machine.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

April 3, 2023
No Comments

If you want an upgraded Apple Watch experience you might not have to buy a new Apple Watch to get it, as it sounds like the next major operating system update – likely to be dubbed watchOS 10 – will include substantial changes for existing models like the Apple Watch 8.

That’s according to Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg (via 9to5Mac). Specifically, Gurman says “I believe the new watchOS should be a fairly extensive upgrade – with notable changes to the user interface – unlike iOS 17.”

Gurman doesn’t get more specific than that, but we might not have to wait long to find out more about this “extensive upgrade”, as watchOS 10 will almost certainly be announced at Apple’s WWDC 2023 conference on June 5.

We’ll probably also see the first developer beta launch there, followed not too long after by public betas, though the finished software probably won’t be available until around September, when it's expected to be released alongside the Apple Watch 9.

Big software updates and small hardware ones

However, the Apple Watch 9 itself might not prove that tempting, with Gurman adding that “it’s important for watchOS to have a big year given that the Apple Watch hardware updates will be anything but major.”

This claim echoes the few Apple Watch 9 rumors we’ve heard so far, which suggest it will be a lot like the Apple Watch 8. Other leaks suggest we might not see an Apple Watch Ultra 2 or the Apple Watch SE 3 until 2024, so that could be a huge year for Apple Watch hardware, with the Apple Watch 10 (or Apple Watch X as it might be called) also rumored to be getting big upgrades.

But this year? It seems Apple’s focus will very much be on software updates rather than hardware ones. So if you already have an Apple Watch 8 or an older model, you might find that you get most of this year's upgrades by downloading them to your current Watch, rather than having to splash out on a new device.

Of course, we’d take Gurman’s claims with a pinch of salt, but he has a pretty good track record, so there’s a strong chance he’s right. In which case, our guide to the best Apple Watches might not see much change this year, but the wearable you already have might soon feel new and exciting again.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

April 6, 2022
No Comments

Apple is testing out a new subscription payment system for iOS devices that would let developers automatically charge a higher subscription-renewal price rather than ask for explicit acceptance, so long as the user is notified ahead of the renewal price increase and given the chance to cancel their subscription.

While this is a fairly common practice with subscription services, this isn't the way this is supposed to work on iOS. From Apple's developer documentation:

“When you increase the price of a subscription, Apple informs affected subscribers via email and push notification and asks them to agree to the new price. On iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4 and later, affected subscribers are also notified through a price consent sheet that automatically displays in your app… If they don’t agree, their subscription expires at the end of their current billing cycle.“

The new payment system was first flagged by developer Max Seelemann on Twitter and later confirmed by TechCrunch.

iOS biz people… Subscription price increase as mere NOTICE instead of having to confirm, else subs expires.Is this new behavior for everyone or exclusive to Disney+? pic.twitter.com/zt7c15QcTAMarch 24, 2022

The issue appears to be limited to the Disney+ app for now and only seems to affect a limited number of users as part of a pilot test of a new iOS payment system.

Apple told TechRadar that the company is “piloting a new commerce feature we plan to launch very soon. The pilot includes developers across various app categories, organization sizes, and regions to help test an upcoming enhancement that we believe will be great for both developers and users, and we’ll have more details to share in the coming weeks.”

It's not clear whether this system, if implemented, would be open to all developers on the iOS platform, or whether only a selection of developers would be granted the ability to auto-charge for a price increase.

Analysis: while it could be worse, this is still a terrible idea

One of the worst things about subscription-based models is that they require a lot of management and juggling on the part of the user. Who among us hasn't completely forgotten that some subscription charge was due on a certain date and only realized it once we suddenly had a lot less money in the bank than we thought we had?

This is especially problematic when you're dealing with an annual subscription, which is a large chunk of money and is much more likely to be forgotten by the user (making it more unlikely that it will be cancelled ahead of the renewal charge). Subscription services are a very appealing model for businesses for that reason, and a major headache for users.

Apple's current system is about as good as you can expect, all things considered. It can't save you from forgetting about a looming renewal and over-drafting your bank account as a result, but at least it requires you to explicitly accept a higher price after an 'introductory' rate expires and automatically cancels the subscription if you don't do anything.

We would much rather see Apple stick with that system than let a company automatically bill users a higher rate if they don't take action on it. On the plus side, it appears that the renewal-price increase notification is very obvious and there is at least a link for users to review the subscription and cancel it if they so choose.

There's no getting around the fact, though, that this could open the door for ne'er-do-well developers to take advantage of users by starting off at a very low price and then jacking it up considerably for the renewal. While most users would immediately move to cancel if they saw that kind of scammy behavior, even with the new notification system, there's going to be some small subset of users who misread, misunderstand, or just miss the notification and find themselves getting hit with a higher-than-expected charge out of the blue.

Given that potential nightmare scenario, it's likely that only certain large developers would be allowed to automatically charge you an increased price in this way, which raises a different problem. This would give bigger players in the industry special treatment that puts smaller, legitimate developers at a disadvantage, with no obvious benefit to the user.

Given Apple's generally good track record on user protections, this feels like a big step back and is disappointing to see. If the big fish in the App Store pond do get special privileges, we should stop pretending that Apple's platform is as fair as the company claims it is.

Since this appears to be a small pilot test, we hope Apple comes to see how valuable its current subscription payment model is for its users and doesn't break what is already working well.

Apple App Store is apparently still littered with malicious apps

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

March 15, 2022
No Comments

Microsoft has backed a proposal to bring optional and erasable type syntax to JavaScript in an effort to make its TypeScript language both faster and easier to use.

In a new blog post, the software giant provided further insight on the proposal and what it aims to do. Essentially, the proposal is calling for type annotations to be added to JavaScript code that can be checked by external type checkers and treated as comments by a JavaScript engine at runtime.

A set of syntax for types that engines would ignore but TypeScript, Flow and other tools could use would also need to be created as part of the proposal.

If the proposal is approved, developers would be able to run programs in TypeScript, Flow and other static typing supersets of JavaScript without the need for transpilation according to InfoWorld.

Type syntax in JavaScript

The new Stage 0 proposal was written and put forth by Gil Tayar, Microsoft's Daniel Rosenwasser, Igalia's Romulo Cintra and Bloomberg's Rob Palmer and is available to read in its entirety on GitHub.

The reason behind the proposal is that over the past decade, static type checking has proven to be fairly successful. In addition to Microsoft's TypeScript, Google created its Closure Compiler while Facebook built Flow to provide syntax for declaring and using types in JavaScript.

> Python could soon rival JavaScript for web applications

> This ancient programming language is way more common than we all thought

> It's official, these are the most hated programming languages around

At the same time, 69 percent of respondents in the 2021 State of JavaScript survey said that they use TypeScript to compile JavaScript and static typing was voted as the number one feature missing from the programming language.

It's worth noting that Microsoft isn't calling for TypeScript's type checking to be added to every browser and JavaScript runtime. Instead, the company has proposed a JavaScript syntax compatible with TypeScript that could be used by any type checker while being ignored by JavaScript engines.