Fresh off the PR firestorm surrounding its suspension of a Hearthstone player for supporting the Hong Kong protests, Blizzard has finally announced the long-awaited Diablo 4 at Blizzcon 2019. We don’t have many details on the game, but the 9-minute cinematic trailer should get Diablo fans sufficiently hyped.
The Diablo franchise stretches all the way back to 1996 when the original game marked a significant advance in the hack-and-slash RPG genre. Diablo pioneered many elements of the modern RPG that we take for granted, and both sequels have proved to be major successes in their own rights.
For the uninitiated, the Diablo games take place in the world of Sanctuary, a realm created by an archangel for angels and devils who were sick of the eternal conflict between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells.
In the newest installment, players will face the archdemon Lilith, who arrives in Sanctuary in grand fashion following the bloody sacrifice of three unlucky adventurers in the new trailer. The trailer, which you can see above, is over nine minutes long and features no gameplay footage. Instead, it’s a startlingly high-quality 3D animated prelude to the plot of the game.
Following the cinematic trailer, Blizzard showed a much shorter gameplay trailer (below). Yes, it looksverypretty. It features just three classes: Sorceress, Druid, and Barbarian. There were many more classes in Diablo 3 at launch, and we expect to hear about more for Diablo 4 later on.
Blizzard’s director for Diablo 4, Luis Barriga took the stage at Blizzcon to talk about the game, but he didn’t get too specific. Barriga confirmed the grim style of the trailer reflects the full game. You can expect a darker, more sinister experience in contrast to the brighter style of Diablo 3. The game will take players to never before explored corners of the Diablo universe, and there will be special PVP areas of the game at launch. Combat has also been tightened up considerably compared to previous installments of the series.
Diablo 4 will launch on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 — sorry, no Switch version of this one. Blizzard doesn’t have a specific launch date in mind, but it shouldn’t be too far off. We’re getting on toward the end of this console generation, and Barriga specifically called out the current platforms.
As Adobe continues to broaden its Creative Cloud offering it’s hard to keep track of all the new applications, let alone all the new features. This week at MAX, updates arrived for just about every piece of Adobe’s creator ecosystem. We’ll take you through some of the most significant for photo and video creators — specifically updates to Premiere Pro and Rush, Photoshop, and Lightroom.
Auto Reframe Comes to Premiere Pro
With the proliferation of different social media video formats and the requirement for specific aspect ratios for web video embeds, re-framing existing videos has become a major time sink for many creatives. So Adobe has harnessed the power of its Sensei AI platform to help them tackle the task, by adding an Auto Reframe Effect to Premiere Pro. You can simply select a clip, or an entire sequence, and Premiere Pro will generate a new version in a different aspect ratio. The auto-generated crop will move to follow what Sensei decides is the subject. You can give it a hint about how quickly it needs to react to motion in the scene. The output sequence or clip is governed by a set of automatically-generated keyframes. So if the output isn’t exactly what you want, you can further refine it. Of course all the Adobe demos of the feature look awesome, so rather than just show you one of those we put the feature through something of a torture test. We used the vertical format Osmo Mobile 3 sample video from our review of the product, and told Auto-reframe to generate a more-traditional 16:9 horizontal format. That’s about as extreme a change as you can ask for, so we weren’t sure what to expect. In some ways, the effect worked really well, but it had a hard time knowing which of the people in the frame were the best to follow, and it also seemed to jump around more than was necessary. But if I needed to do this task, it would definitely be a nice head start over doing it manually. Below are the original video clip and the one generated by Auto Reframe in Premiere Pro:
Here is the 16:9 automatically-generated version:
As one example of a nice time saver, notice that the Reframe is smart enough to move the motion graphics title caption up into the frame and hold it steady. Perhaps not rocket science, but would be an extra step if you were doing the reframing entirely manually. Other improvements to Premiere Pro aren’t quite as dramatic, but they include improved tools for working with shapes and layers. Underlining text is now supported, and there are some improvements to the workflow for Motion Graphics. One special effect that will appeal to some folks is native support for speedups up to 20,000% (200x) without needing to mess around with nesting. Under the hood Adobe has improved its support for modern formats and decoders, including better ProRes HDR performance, as well as HEVC and H.265. You can also now add HDR10 metadata to your exports. As far as hardware, support has been added for the Canon C500, Canon XF-HEVC, and Sony Venice V4. You can also export Apple ProRes in MXF on both macOS and Windows. Premiere Rush now supports TikTok as a native video sharing option. When Adobe first said they had an exciting improvement for Rush, I was really hoping for LUT support. But unfortunately, that’s still off in the future, as is a version that will run on Chromebooks.
Photoshop 2020 Focuses on Performance
Adobe’s big push for Photoshop in 2020 is performance. They even funded a study of benchmarks that concludes that on average it is twice as fast as the 2019 version. Part of that is improvements to the interface and workflow, and part is optimization of the software itself. In particular the Properties panel has been over-hauled with the goal of making more operations easy to access. One exciting piece of news for those who create on the road is the shipment of the first version of the promised Photoshop for iPad. It isn’t at feature parity with the desktop version — no surprise — but looks like it will be a solid option for those who don’t need full functionality and don’t want to haul a full laptop around. Adobe is also showcasing an extension to its AI-powered Subject Selection tool that allows you to select an arbitrary object. You simply drag out a rectangle that surrounds the object you’re interested in, and it will do its best to select the object. From experimenting with a pre-release version, I’m fairly impressed. It is certainly a big head start over using any of the current manual and semi-automated tools. However, as you can see from this example, it isn’t perfect. So if you have a complex subject, you’ll likely need to apply some finishing touches to your selection.
Lightroom gets new features across all platforms, although as has been true for a while the cloud-centric version of Lightroom for desktops gets more updates than the Classic version. It sees new guided tutorials and interactive edits — which have been very popular in the mobile version of the app. Export also offers additional options for resolution, compression, metadata, file naming, output sharpening, and color space. IMAGE AI comes into play here too, with the addition of an option to have both versions of Lightroom and Camera Raw fill in the blank edges caused in some types of panorama merges. There is also an interesting new tool that allows users to migrate catalogs from Photoshop Elements. That makes sense for photographers who started out with the lighter weight Elements tools and are moving up to Creative Cloud. The updated version of Lightroom also takes more advantage of GPUs for improved performance, especially on high-resolution monitors.
Lightroom can now automatically fill in blank areas created when merging panoramas
Plenty of Features for Everyone Else
For users of Character Animator, After Effects, Audition, and most of the other Creative Cloud applications, there are plenty of other goodies. One feature that can benefit all Creative Cloud users is access to Library assets from Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. An interesting app that Adobe didn’t discuss during its press briefings is a new Photoshop Camera app. It uses AI to analyze the scene as you shoot and make recommendations. It also provides some lens presets for creative effects. It is available as a preview version for Android and iOS now, with general availability expected in 2020.
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iOS 13 has been problematic since launch. Apple pushed iOS 13.1 out in record time, but the problems haven’t been resolved, even with the release of iOS 13.2. As fast as Apple has quashed old bugs, new ones have been introduced. According to multiple sources, iOS 13.2 has introduced what’s believed to be a massive memory management bug.
The issue pops up in a host of ways. Navigating away from videos on YouTube may result in them being reloaded from scratch, even on an iPad Pro with 6GB of RAM. Games have been dropped after a minute or less, even when the application someone tabs into is as simple as iMessage. Even something as simple as switching between messaging and a single Safari tab can cause problems. Using the camera app has apparently always been an issue with this sort of thing in iOS 13 (based on comments from multiple users), but the problem is much worse now.
According to developer Marco Arment, Apple has introduced major new bugs in iOS 13.2.
Major new bugs introduced in iOS 13.2:
– background downloads often hang forever and never run
– apps get killed in the background so aggressively that iOS effectively doesn’t offer multitasking anymore
…continuing the iOS 13 pattern of breaking long-held basic functionality.
There may be problems with Apple’s software development approach that exacerbate these issues. David Shayer, an Apple software engineer for 18 years, has listed several in a recent article, published before these latest issues were known. Among the problems he discusses are the fact that Apple crash reports don’t identify non-crashing bugs (meaning these problems don’t get fixed), and bugs often don’t get fixed if it can be determined they’re just a new version of an earlier bug. Breaking a working feature is prioritized for repair. An old bug that never got fixed is just an old bug, unlikely to be fixed. But old bugs pile up. Not only can they break new code in unexpected ways, they continue annoying a user base that simply has to work around them. Pile up enough work-arounds, and people start to have a negative opinion of your product.
Apple also relies heavily on manual testing rather than automatic testing and overall OS and application complexity has, of course, ballooned. iOS itself is a heck of a lot more operating system than it used to be, speaking in terms of both its capabilities and its size. It’s not clear if these specific reasons are the problem at Apple, but it’s hard to get away from the idea that the company is struggling with genuine complexity issues these days. It wasn’t particularly unusual for a company to ship a defective keyboard, but Apple has shipped multiple keyboards that have gone through multiple revisions, without ever really solving the problem. Its iPhone 6 Plus design was too easy to bend. It bought a sapphire glass manufacturer to use the technology, then dumped it. It announced a wireless charging mat with unique capabilities, then dumped it. It built a unique Mac Pro system with a challenging form factor, then realized that entire effort had been a mistake and dumped it. Its software has become generally buggier. Features have been delayed more often.
The company hasn’t paid a tremendous price for any of this, but there’s been a collective impact on how I perceive its products as an end user. I tend to delay my OS upgrades until I’m certain the kinks have been worked out, but based on the reported experiences of iOS 13 users, I’m not sure I’ll upgrade to it at all.
Motorola has been teasing the idea of reviving its iconic Razr as part of a new folding phone lineup for several months. Images showing the device have leaked from several sources and the new design is interesting — though there are a lot of questions about how Motorola will pull it off. The design definitely recalls the iconic Razr handheld, but with a different screen and overall design than we’ve seen from any other foldable phone manufacturer.
Leaker Evan Blass is responsible for the images below, though he’s not the only person to leak photos. The phone is being officially announced on November 13.
Image by Evan Blass
Here we see the Razr in-hand, but there’s precious little else visible. How about we punch things up a bit?
Image by Evan Blass / adjusted by ExtremeTech
The same image as previous, but with the brightness and contrast adjusted. This gets us a USB-C port at the bottom of the phone and a clearer view of the fingerprint reader.
Image by Evan Blass
The front of the device, showing a selfie camera. The screen on the front is quite small-looking and seems as though it would mostly be used for notifications and pop-up messages.
Image by Evan Blass
The front screen appears to also be a touch screen.
Image by Evan Blass
The front screen, unfolded, is shown above. The Motorola Razr still has a notch, but the device appears to unfold differently than the Samsung Galaxy Fold, and with a very different aspect ratio. Estimates from various sources online and based on the patents Motorola has filed have put the aspect ratio on this phone at 22:9 or 23:9. That’s markedly different from the 18:9 or 19:9 we tend to see on flagships today. Longer, thinner devices have proven easier to manage, so manufacturers have shifted towards them, but Motorola would definitely be pushing the envelope a bit in this regard.
Between the fold and the ratio, Motorola is obviously trying to blend a mix of old and new. It’s not clear how well this play will work. Originally, devices like the Razr were popular with young people because they were light, thin, and colorful, with a keypad that made them easy to use for texting. The form factor shown in these photos is an obvious throwback to the original Razr design, but modern phones don’t use a T9-compatible keyboard. I’m curious how texting works on this, with such a wide form factor.
The Motorola Razr has been rumored to start at around $1,500, putting it below the Galaxy Fold but well above even modern stratospheric smartphone pricing. Whether it’ll be a hit or not? Too soon to say. It’s hard to believe a midrange smartphone company like Motorola would beat other companies to the punch on such a distinctive product, and the Galaxy Fold hasn’t exactly set the mobile world on fire. We’ll see what happens in two weeks.
Halloween has come and gone, and that means the biggest shopping holiday of the year is right around the corner. Thanksgiving and Black Friday come later than usual this year and you will still need to wait a few weeks, but if you are looking for deals there are already some great ones that just went live for this weekend.
Taking a 23andMe DNA test can help you learn about your ancestry and also teach you about how your genetics affects your health. Right now you can get a test kit from Walmart marked down from $199.00 to $99.00.
Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Intel Core i5-8265U Quad-core 15.6″ 1080p 2-in-1 Touch Laptop for $579.99 at Dell (use code: DBLTINSP1572 – list price $829.99).
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Scientists say the geology of Pluto is second only to Earth in its complexity.
NASA’s New Horizons probe reached Pluto in 2015, but it zoomed past the dwarf planet in a matter of minutes because of its tremendous velocity. Now, the agency is considering the possibility of sending another mission to Pluto, but this one would stay in orbit to study the surface. A NASA-commissioned study from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) lays out what it would take to establish a long-term presence in the space around Pluto.
New Horizons launched in 2006 when Pluto was still officially considered a planet. It set a record for the fastest spacecraft launch ever because it had a long, long trip ahead of it. After nine years, it flew past Pluto, sending back the first close-up images and data from the former ninth planet. To remain in orbit of Pluto, New Horizons would have needed substantial fuel reserves to bleed off its speed. Instead, NASA redirected New Horizons to study other Kuiper Belt objects. The probe reached an object called Ultima Thule (2014 MU69) earlier this year.
SwRI is the right outfit to come up with a followup to New Horizons — it led the New Horizons mission for NASA. The new NASA funding will allow SwRI to come up with a full mission plan and cost estimate for a future mission. NASA will use the study to inform its next Planetary Science Decadal Survey in 2020. That’s when NASA will decide where it will focus its planetary science efforts in the following 10 years.
The New Horizons probe scanned Pluto in 2015, but it wasn’t designed to remain in Orbiter of the dwarf planet.
We can make some guesses about what sort of mission SwRI will recommend thanks to a previous Pluto orbiter concept it has been developing for the last few years. The orbiter SwRI proposed a few years back would use ion engines like the Dawn spacecraft and a nuclear power source that could keep it operational in the outer solar system. It would rely on Pluto’s moon Charon for gravity assists to alter its orbit, similar to the way Cassini navigated around Saturn and its moons. A past concept called for a lander to set up shop on Charon, which could then observe Pluto from one angle for an extended period of time. It’s unknown if SwRI will recommend any surface instruments in its new study.
The brief New Horizons flyby of Pluto revealed an unexpectedly complex little world with clouds, vast plains of frozen nitrogen, and more. It’s no surprise NASA is thinking about going back.
