NEWS

Unity Interop and App Extensibility (App Dev on Xbox series) Continuing what we started during the “App Dev on Xbox” event, today we are making available yet another app experience – Atmosphere. In this blog post, you will learn how to get started building great 2D and 3D experiences with Unity and XAML, how to open up your app so other app developers can extend your app functionality, and how you can make your app functionality available to other apps. Even though this blog post is part of the App Dev on Xbox series, the majority of the content applies to the entire Universal Windows Platform. If you missed the previous blog post, we looked at how you can deliver the best possible experience for your app in a responsive and scalable way so it can target all device form [ more… ]

“Throwing your voice” with Spatial Audio The age-old act of ventroquilism sees a puppet move its mouth while the controlling ventriloquist speaks without moving their lips – pretty impressive! The underlying technique has the ventriloquist “throwing” their voice in a joint audial and visual illusion. Enter Spatial Audio, a set of ground breaking technologies originally created by Microsoft for HoloLens and now being exposed to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Unity apps. The underlying “technique” of Spatial Audio is mapping how audio reaches each ear and how headshape, ear contours, the inner ear and the brain make sense of this audio to determine the 3D source of a sound. Audio is then “positioned” for each ear, unique to its physical orientation. This is known as “binaural audio.” In many ways, binaural audio mirrors the various illusions used in the HoloLens [ more… ]

Microsoft HoloLens enables thyssenkrupp to transform the global elevator industry Hi everyone, I wanted to take a moment to share some exciting news about the work thyssenkrupp Elevator is doing with Microsoft HoloLens. Today, in New York City at One World Trade Center, we demonstrated how thyssenkrupp (and innovation that only HoloLens makes possible) has the potential to transform their industry and help over 1 billion daily elevator passengers get to where they need to go with ease, safety and reliability. In a world where more than 12 million elevators transport over 1 billion people each day (a number that is constantly growing), it is imperative elevator service innovation grows ahead of the pace. Enter thyssenkrupp. Video produced and provided by thyssenkrupp. Utilizing HoloLens, they found that they could dramatically improve response time, increase efficiency, raise elevator uptimes and speed [ more… ]

Microsoft Edge now gets even more out of your battery Back in June, we shared a look at Microsoft Edge’s industry-leading efficiency, which allows Microsoft Edge users to rely on more battery life than the other browsers we tested. With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we made a number of additional improvements to make Microsoft Edge last even longer, and today we’re rerunning our tests with the latest version of each tested browser to see how things match up. At the risk of giving away the ending, the results may look familiar! With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft Edge is more efficient than ever, and still the best choice for extending your battery life on Windows 10 – up to 24%-43% more efficient than the competition for general purpose browsing, and lasting up to 23%-69% longer when streaming video. [ more… ]