With a biannual release cadence now firmly established for Windows 10, Microsoft have announced 17th October as the public release date for the Fall Creators Update, after months of testing through their Insider Program.
Naturally, a lot of features and changes in this update will focus around the OS experience, productivity and accessibility, but there are some interesting features for gamers as well. The Game Mode that was introduced earlier this year is being integrated into the Game Bar, so you can more easily toggle it on and off (though its benefits are still relatively minor), and Mixer streaming is being improved with more options for the audio that you broadcast.
More importantly, however, Microsoft are working to improve HDR and wife colour gamut support, which is a major driving point for both Microsoft and Sony with their games consoles. HDR support is notably missing from the PC releases of last year’s major exclusives, Forza Horizon 3 and Gears of War 4, and took a few months to be added to Halo Wars 2 this year. With Forza Motorsport 7 Microsoft’s biggest release in the last few months of the year, it’s important that they put their best foot forward on all platforms.
17th October also sees the launch of Microsoft’s Mixed Reality platform, which uses cameras built into the headset for positional tracking, as opposed to having a camera pointing at the user or the Lighthouse base stations from HTC Vive. Headsets are coming from Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Acer and HP, starting from $299 for some of these headsets on their own, or with bundles including Microsoft’s VR controllers.
The internal resolution will be 1440×1440 per eye, easily beating the resolution of PSVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but the system requirements will also be noticeably lower, with Microsoft supporting Intel HD Graphics 620 that can be found in the latest ‘Kaby Lake’ processors.
One important announcement from the last week is that Valve and Microsoft have been working together to bring WMR headsets into the fold with SteamVR, letting you turn these headsets to gaming and not just business and productivity uses. The system will support room scale gaming as well, with WMR letting you simply map out an area for you to play in.
Source: Anandtech, Ars Technica
Andrewww
Good to know there’s some progress with the technology, even if I think this won’t have that much of an impact and it still takes decades to get anywhere serious. My vision are mixed reality glasses which you cannot distinguish from ‘normal’ ones, or even lenses, and not some clunky, geeky headset.
TSBonyman
With such low target specs it seems a missed opportunity not including XB1 X, cheaper headsets too it’d be bound to sell well and it would also add momentum to the collective slow burn towards VR/MR ubiquity.