Backwards compatibility on the Nintendo Switch 2 was the best decision for all consumers, according to Nintendo.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed how the Apple Watch once saved his father's life after he fell in his home.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for its newsletters.Anabel Garcias eyes burned and her breathing was labored and dry as she cleared debris from burned down properties in Sonoma County.In late 2017, the Tubbs Fire had just scythed its way through towns and crops, and Garcia, a vineyard worker, was out of a job. So she joined on with a contractor providing post-fire cleanup services. But that proved painful and dangerous.We were sick with throat and skin problems, she said, of herself and the scores of other immigrant workers who took cleanup gigs in the aftermath of the fire. There were many consequences we had later, in order to keep working.Garcia was cleaning up after what was, at the time, the most destructive fire in California history, which killed 22 people and torched 5,600 structures. The Palisades and Eaton fires that started last week have already caused nearly double that damage, and as Los Angeles turns itseye toward recovery, worker advocates and state regulators are concerned about the potential hazards to cleanup workers like Garcia.The cleanup is essential: The debris must be cleared and the ash-covered houses cleaned before any reconstruction is possible. Much of that work will fall to a cadre of immigrant laborers.Some are already employed as housekeepers and may be asked by homeowners to clear ash from a damaged house, workers advocates said. Others will likely be the gardeners, handymen, and other domestic service workers reeling from lost income during the fires, available for work.As those big areas of the city that have been impacted get opened up and handed back to property owners, those workers are going to be, no question, in massive demand, said Kevin Riley, director of the Labor and Occupational Safety and Health program at UCLA. Theyre a critical backbone to reconstruction efforts.Fire recovery workers can facenumerous hazards, including structurally unsound buildings, toxic gases, exposed electrical wiring, cancer-causing chemicals, and ash, soot, and dust that can damage the lungs when inhaled, according to the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health.State environmental agencies usually remove toxic substances that have seeped into the ground, and certified contractors are required to mitigate asbestos and lead risks, Riley said. Those workers tend to be trained for the hazards.But hes concerned about anyone hired for a less formal cleanup job, whether directly by a homeowner or by one of agrowing number of loosely regulatedcleanup-and-recovery contractors thatchase climate-driven disastersacross the country.Mike Wilson, senior safety engineer at Cal/OSHA, told the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board in a public meeting on Thursday that the agency is planning to do outreach about the risks of those jobs.Were also paying attention to the need for getting in front of the next phase of this incident, which is going to be contractors moving into these areas, and what weve seen historically, hiring day laborers to do cleanup and salvage work, and often with little to no protection, Wilson said.Safety trainingOn Tuesday morning, day laborers and community volunteers mingled at the Pasadena Community Job Center. The day laborers, who typically wait for work requests from homeowners or contractors at Home Depots or street corners, were instead preparing to lead effortstoclean up the debris left by strong winds.Dozens of men and women shoveled, raked, and swept neighborhood streets where winds had topped over trees, branches and debris that could spark or carry embers. By the end of the day, they had filled a convoy of 15 dump trucks with debris.The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which runs the job center, helpedorganize the volunteers from the community and from throughout the county to clean up throughout the week. The effort highlightsthe role immigrant workers play helping their communities recover from disasters, said Manuel Vicente, director of the networks Radio Jornalera program.It was a way to respond to the rhetoric about immigrants happening now, the rain of lies about immigrants that have been stigmatizing us, he said. That were a community that if someone falls, we extend a hand to help them up.In anticipation of its members being picked up for cleanup jobs, the network has deployed an OSHA-certified trainer at the job center to teach workers how to identify hazards in burned homes. It also plans to send staff to local Home Depots to hand out pamphlets and educational materials to day laborers.The network has done similar training in hurricane-battered regions on the East Coast and in Texas and Louisiana.Officials at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health have been distributing N95 masks to workers centers.Alice Berliner, director of the departments office of worker health and safety, pointed to surveys of gardeners, housekeepers, and other domestic service workers conducted by advocacy groups after the 2018 Woolsey Fire in Malibu.Based on the fact that they were exposed to toxic debris, handling unsafe materials without proper equipment, Berliner said, were very likely to see a similar dynamic with this upcoming cleanup.Cleaning upIn Sonoma County after the Tubbs Fire, Christy Lubin remembers two kinds of disaster responses.In one, the state sent specialized contractors to remove toxic substances from charred homes. Most of the workers who came to the Graton Day Labor Center in the countys wine country were shut out from those jobs, lackingthe state-required hazardous material certifications, said Lubin, the centers director.In the other, the town flooded with other reconstruction contractors from around the country.[The contractors] were bringing in a lot of immigrant workers, especially a lot of women, who got hired to go in and do especially interior building cleanup, smoke damage cleanup, Lubin said. Those contractors were picking up groups of workers, meeting them on a corner, driving them in a van to these workplaces where they were sent into these buildings without the proper training, without the proper personal protective equipment.It can be tough, said Riley of UCLA, to enforce safety regulations in those disaster zones.Its a bit of a Wild West situation at times, he said. Just because of how massive the work is and how varied the worksites and how spread out they are.Garcia, the former vineyard employee, said she found her cleanup job through a Facebook ad for a restoration contractor that said it was working for an insurance company. Hundreds of workers who needed income after the fires responded, she said, and the contractors didnt seem to care about their immigration status.The workers boarded 15-passenger vans to burned homes, businesses, and even public buildings, she said. Sometimes she worked 10-hour days. She recalled being paid somewhere between $13 and $15 an hour.For a few weeks, Garcia cleaned a hospital clinic strewn with blood and syringes before cleaning homes, clearing and bagging up ashes and debris.Everything was covered in ashes, she said. Everything you saw was black.She said workers were given gloves and a helmet, but nothing to protect their bodies or cover their shoes. They only received masks the first two days, then had to reuse them, she said.What we need is to workExperienceslike thosedrove Garcianow a house cleaner and a board member at the day labor centerand other worker advocates to push California lawmakers to better protect workers.The state has passed new regulations requiring employers to protect workers from wildfire smoke or prohibiting them from forcing workers to be in evacuation zones.And in July, some domestic workers will be newly covered under state workplace safety laws. Theres an exception for those hired privately by homeowners, but Cal/OSHA spokesperson Daniel Lopez told CalMatters in an email that anyone who is hired for cleanupno matter the employeris already covered by aslew of wildfire-specific safety regulations.A state advisory committee on domestic labor in 2022 recommended againsthiring people commonly employed for household or yard work to clean up soot or ash after a wildfire, as this may require specialized equipment and training.It doesnt erase their willingness to do the jobs.On Tuesday morning in Pasadena, a handful of day laborers waited for gigs at the corner of Villa and Fair Oaks, 3 miles south of homes the Eaton Fire had burned one week earlier.They perked up as cars slowed past the street. Work has been slow all season, they said, even before the fires destroyed many household jobs.Marcelo Esteban said he knew that there might be work coming to clean up or rebuild burnt down communities, though he expected homeowners to turn to day laborers only after theyve gotten help from insurance companies or the government.He doesnt think much about the risks that work might carry.If someone needs help, we can use masks, he said. Someone is going to do the work anyway. What we need is to work. It doesnt matter what.ByAlejandra Reyes-VelardeandJeanne Kuang, CalMattersCalMatters reporter Wendy Fry contributed to this story.

When my niece Fiona was four, she began to resist getting dressed and rejected any outfit her mother selected. My sister-in-law then started to offer her daughter a choice for each type of clothingi.e., a choice between these two shirts and then a choice between these two pants, etc. It worked beautifully: Fiona began to dress quickly and without resistance.Offering options helps parents move their kids through daily life because choice offers a sense of autonomy instead of force and pressure. Choice offers what childhood experts call high autonomy support.Offering a choice is not only effective as a parent, but it is also a key to being an inspiring leader.To understand the power of choice, lets consider the everyday yet stressful situation of buying a car. Lets say you are looking to purchase a new Toyota RAV4 and the salesperson offers you one in your favorite color for $34,875 with a three-year warranty. How would you feel about the price, the salesperson, and the experience?Now imagine the salesperson had offered you the same car but for $35,875 with a five-year warranty. Does that change your reaction?Okay, lets consider a third scenario. The salesperson offers you a choice of both options: I can offer you RAV4 Premium in your favorite color for either $34,875 with a three-year warranty or $35,875 with a five-year warranty. Now how do you feel?At one level you should feel the same as the choice offers the same options as the individual ones. But receiving a choice changes everything. Why is offering a choice so inspiring? Because the dealer is asking for your preferences.From the dealers perspective, the two offers are equal in value, where each additional year of warranty is worth about $500. But the dealer is letting you decide how much each year of warranty is worth to you. Offering a choice gives others a sense of autonomy. When we offer a choice, we are treating others as people and not as objects.My research with Geoffrey Leonardelli of the University of Toronto shows just how powerful offering a choice is. In our studies, receiving a choice made our participants feel that the choice was a genuine and sincere attempt to truly understand and accommodate their interests. It turned potentially contentious situations into cooperative ones by making the receiver feel seen and understood.What is particularly interesting is that offering a choice also changed how the receiver viewed the person making the offer. Without choice, our participants viewed the offer with suspicion and were wary of any offer they received. But when they received a choice, they saw the offerer as not only more flexible but also more trustworthy.In contrast to the feelings of freedom that come from receiving choice, being micromanaged is infuriating. I frequently hear this refrain: My leader drove me crazy because they micromanaged everything I did.We hate it when our bosses are constantly looking over our shoulders. When we micromanage, we are signaling we dont trust or believe in the other person. It feels demeaning and disrespectful.Rather than interjecting ourselves in our employees activities, we can do the reverse. We can delegate important assignments or invite others into influential meetings. Delegating advanced tasks feels so inspiring because it says, I trust you and I believe in you. Because it feels like a developmental leap in responsibility, it activates our inner conscientiousness.Inviting someone to join a high-level meeting activates the wonder of a child entering new spaces. When we offer responsibility and invite involvement, we inspire people to live up to our faith in them. We inspire people to meet the moment.Involvement fundamentally changes how we approach a task. It moves us from the sidelines onto the field. We go from disengaged observers to active participants.Thats how Renee LaRoche-Morris felt when she was given a seat at the table during a critical meeting. Long before she became the chief financial officer of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Renee was working at a consulting firm. Going into an important meeting, she was told to sit against the wall and only observe the discussion among 30 senior leaders of a bank and their important clients. One of the clients motioned Renee to come join the table, but she resisted; she wasnt supposed to be part of the discussion.But the man wouldnt give up, and eventually Renee relented. As she sat down, her boss looked horrified, his eyes infuriatingly saying, What are you doing, why are you at the table? That disapproving boss wouldnt stay her boss for long.Soon after that meeting, the client reached out to ask Renee to help him on a deal. And a short time after that, that client asked her to come work for him. A simple invitation to sit at the table created one of Renees longest and most important professional relationships.Sherry Wu of the University of California at Los Angeles has conducted numerous field studies showing that involvement is truly inspiring. In her experiments, she goes into organizations and randomly assigns work groups, from factory workers to administrative staff, to either a baseline group or a high-involvement group. In the baseline condition, the leader runs their twenty-minute weekly meeting as they always have. But in her high-involvement condition, the supervisor steps aside and the workers lead the discussion of goals, challenges, and new ideas.This little bit of participationjust twenty minutes a weekis transformative. Not only does high involvement boost productivity, but it also increases satisfaction and reduces quitting. And Sherry finds that these effects occur because active participation fulfills the fundamental need for control.Samantha Shapses, the dean of students at Columbia Business School, follows this model: a different member of her staff leads her teams weekly meeting on a rotational basis. And this is how I run my doctoral seminars: every week a different student leads the classdiscussion.Consistent with Sherrys research, Samantha finds it creates a more engaged team, and I find it produces more active learners. Involving others and offering them choices provides people with a sense of autonomy and control. At the same time, giving people too much autonomy can make them feel unmoored and adrift. Thats why involving others and offering them choices are so powerful: They give people a sense of autonomy within a sense of structure.This is an adapted excerptfromInspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Othersby Adam Galinsky (Harper Business, 2025).

Dezeen Showroom:Italian brand Miniforms and design studio E-ggs have added a spacious sofa called Nebulone to their Nebula family of upholstered seating.Nebulone is the longest member of the Nebula range, with a generous 240-centimetre span designed for solo lounging as well as hosting.The Nebulone sofa has the hallmark teardrop-shaped arms shared by the rest of the Nebula seriesThe sofa carries the design language established earlier in the Nebula seating collection, with its upholstered form and teardrop-shaped arms.This makes for a design that is minimalistic yet cosy, with a versatility that is enhanced by Miniforms' various customisation options.It is available in a wide range of upholstery optionsUsers can choose to upholster their seats in a range of solid-coloured and patterned fabrics from sought-after textile brands including Kvadrat, Maharam and Dedar.There is also the ability to specify weather-resistant fabrics and padding to make the sofa suitable for the outdoors, alongsideoptions that can withstand use in commercial environments as well as the home.Product details:Product: NebuloneDesigner: E-ggsBrand: MiniformsContact: carolina@miniforms.comMaterial: polyurethane padded foamDimensions: 2400 x 980 x 778 millimetresDezeen ShowroomDezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen's huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.The post Nebulone sofa by E-ggs for Miniforms appeared first on Dezeen.

MacworldThinking about forging a multi-million or even billion-dollar deal with Apple? Hey, weve all been there. Youre sitting around on a Tuesday afternoon, watching old episodes of Columbo in your underwear while eating string cheese thats past its best-by date and you think, I should do a big-time deal with Apple!Well, hold on, Fabio (can the Macalope call you Fabio?). Before you ink that deal, you might want to take a look at how some of the other partners Apples taken on over the years have faired. Because its not always great for the other guy.HPIn 2004, HP started selling special branded iPods. No, really, this happened. You can look it up. HP agreed not to make a rival digital music player through August of 2006 and Apple agreed to not laugh so hard that milk came of its nose. Apple was so into this deal that these iPods had to be repaired by HP, even though they were just standard iPods with an HP logo on them. HPs CEO was soon forced out and the deal was terminated before anyone could figure out what the heck it was all about.Grade: Incomplete, no creditThis photo was not created using AI. Its real.Wikipedia/keeganMotorolaIn 2005, Apple partnered with Motorola on the Rokr, a device that literally everyone agreed was garbage. Limited to 100 songs that could only be transferred to the phone by low-speed USB, the Rokr was eclipsed by the iPod Nano, which was unveiled on the same day.The following year, Motorola unveiled an update that worked with RealPlayer (remember RealPlayer?) instead of iTunes. You can imagine what a hit that was. Apple, meanwhile, was working on the smartphone that would essentially drive Motorola and dozens of other cell phone manufacturers out of business. Only Goldman Sachs could make this deal look slightly better in comparison by losing a metric butt-ton of cash.Grade: DCingular/AT&TApple eased its way into the cellular business without a lot of pain and Cingular got exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in the U.S. for four years. Cingular clearly gave up a lot of control, but it also got something extraordinarily valuable in return. Somewhere Stan Sigman is still monotonously reading from cue cards about this deal, even though he died four years ago.Grade: BIntelUsually, if Apple is buying something from you, its a relatively good relationship (as long as you dont mess anything up). Foxconn has done alright. So has Samsung. Intel did fine for years, but it really missed the memo on processors for mobile devices.Most of this is the fault of Intel itself, but Apple was also quietly improving its iPhone processors so they could be used in Macs to run fast with very low power consumption. Intel was sailing along as if nothing had changed since 1997.Grade: C-GoogleGoogle has largely done fine in its relationship with Apple, you know, other than getting into an argument about Maps and having to deal with lawsuits about Android. Its lucrative search deal has drawn the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice, but its likely that some well-time donations to the incoming administrations inauguration will snuff that out. Definitely a passing grade, if not terribly high.Grade: B-Goldman SachsGoldman Sachs partnered with Apple on the Apple Card and, boy, does it wish it had not done that. How do you lose $859 million in a year? Who does that? Probably a company thats used to having the taxpayers bail it out, thats who.Goldmans mistake here seems to have been rushing so fast to get into the consumer business that it didnt A) ask itself it was capable of getting into the consumer business and B) read the fine print on its deal with Apple. Something something ground war in Asia, something something going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.Grade: FNikeApple has been selling Nike-themed Watches and bands for years now and this relationship largely works because Apple and Nike are in completely different lines of business (same with Herms). You might think, hey, so are Apple and Goldman Sachs! But, no, not according to the U.S. government.Grade: A-The Macalope isnt saying you cant win by partnering with Apple. Clearly you can do fine and there are, of course, many non-monetary benefits to partnering with an 800-lb gorilla. But, you should expect that the gorilla is going to get more of the bananas than you are. If you go into the relationship thinking, hey, lotta bananas to be had by partnering with this gorilla because people keep throwing it bananas, think again. There are a lot of bananas that will be thrown, yes, but youll mostly get left with the peels and maybe those little stringy bits no one likes.By the way, there are no flaws in this gorilla analogy. None.

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.Peering into the body to find and diagnose cancer is all about spotting patterns. Radiologists use x-rays and magnetic resonance imaging to illuminate tumors, and pathologists examine tissue from kidneys, livers, and other areas under microscopes and look for patterns that show how severe a cancer is, whether particular treatments could work, and where the malignancy may spread.In theory,artificial intelligence should be great at helping out. Our job is pattern recognition, says Andrew Norgan, a pathologist and medical director of the Mayo Clinics digital pathology platform. We look at the slide and we gather pieces of information that have been proven to be important.Visual analysis is something that AI has gotten quite good at since the first image recognition models began taking off nearly 15 years ago. Even though no model will be perfect, you can imagine a powerful algorithm someday catching something that a human pathologist missed, or at least speeding up the process of getting a diagnosis. Were starting to see lots of new efforts to build such a modelat least seven attempts in the last year alonebut they all remain experimental. What will it take to make them good enough to be used in the real world?Details about the latest effort to build such a model, led by the AI health company Aignostics with the Mayo Clinic, were published on arXiv earlier this month. The paper has not been peer-reviewed, but it reveals much about the challenges of bringing such a tool to real clinical settings.The model, called Atlas, was trained on 1.2 million tissue samples from 490,000 cases. Its accuracy was tested against six other leading AI pathology models. These models compete on shared tests like classifying breast cancer images or grading tumors, where the models predictions are compared with the correct answers given by human pathologists. Atlas beat rival models on six out of nine tests. It earned its highest score for categorizing cancerous colorectal tissue, reaching the same conclusion as human pathologists 97.1% of the time. For another task, thoughclassifying tumors from prostate cancer biopsiesAtlas beat the other models high scores with a score of just 70.5%. Its average across nine benchmarks showed that it got the same answers as human experts 84.6% of the time.Lets think about what this means. The best way to know whats happening to cancerous cells in tissues is to have a sample examined by a pathologist, so thats the performance that AI models are measured against. The best models are approaching humans in particular detection tasks but lagging behind in many others. So how good does a model have to be to be clinically useful?Ninety percent is probably not good enough. You need to be even better, says Carlo Bifulco, chief medical officer at Providence Genomics and co-creator of GigaPath, one of the other AI pathology models examined in the Mayo Clinic study. But, Bifulco says, AI models that dont score perfectly can still be useful in the short term, and could potentially help pathologists speed up their work and make diagnoses more quickly.What obstacles are getting in the way of better performance? Problem number one is training data.Fewer than 10% of pathology practices in the US are digitized, Norgan says. That means tissue samples are placed on slides and analyzed under microscopes, and then stored in massive registries without ever being documented digitally. Though European practices tend to be more digitized, and there are efforts underway to create shared data sets of tissue samples for AI models to train on, theres still not a ton to work with.Without diverse data sets, AI models struggle to identify the wide range of abnormalities that human pathologists have learned to interpret. That includes for rare diseases, says Maximilian Alber, cofounder and CTO of Aignostics. Scouring the publicly available databases for tissue samples of particularly rare diseases, youll find 20 samples over 10 years, he says.Around 2022, the Mayo Clinic foresaw that this lack of training data would be a problem. It decided to digitize all of its own pathology practices moving forward, along with 12 million slides from its archives dating back decades (patients had consented to their being used for research). It hired a company to build a robot that began taking high-resolution photos of the tissues, working through up to a million samples per month. From these efforts, the team was able to collect the 1.2 million high-quality samples used to train the Mayo model.This brings us to problem number two for using AI to spot cancer. Tissue samples from biopsies are tinyoften just a couple of millimeters in diameterbut are magnified to such a degree that digital images of them contain more than 14 billion pixels. That makes them about 287,000 times larger than images used to train the best AI image recognition models to date.That obviously means lots of storage costs and so forth, says Hoifung Poon, an AI researcher at Microsoft who worked with Bifulco to create GigaPath, which was featured in Nature last year. But it also forces important decisions about which bits of the image you use to train the AI model, and which cells you might miss in the process. To make Atlas, the Mayo Clinic used whats referred to as a tile method, essentially creating lots of snapshots from the same sample to feed into the AI model. Figuring out how to select these tiles is both art and science, and its not yet clear which ways of doing it lead to the best results.Thirdly, theres the question of which benchmarks are most important for a cancer-spotting AI model to perform well on. The Atlas researchers tested their model in the challenging domain of molecular-related benchmarks, which involves trying to find clues from sample tissue images to guess whats happening on a molecular level. Heres an example: Your bodys mismatch repair genes are of particular concern for cancer, because they catch errors made when your DNA gets replicated. If these errors arent caught, they can drive the development and progression of cancer.Some pathologists might tell you they kind of get a feeling when they think somethings mismatch-repair deficient based on how it looks, Norgan says. But pathologists dont act on that gut feeling alone. They can do molecular testing for a more definitive answer. What if instead, Norgan says, we can use AI to predict whats happening on the molecular level? Its an experiment: Could the AI model spot underlying molecular changes that humans cant see?Generally no, it turns out. Or at least not yet. Atlass average for the molecular testing was 44.9%. Thats the best performance for AI so far, but it shows this type of testing has a long way to go.Bifulco says Atlas represents incremental but real progress. My feeling, unfortunately, is that everybodys stuck at a similar level, he says. We need something different in terms of models to really make dramatic progress, and we need larger data sets.Now read the rest of The AlgorithmDeeper LearningOpenAI has created an AI model for longevity scienceAI has long had its fingerprints on the science of protein folding. But OpenAI now says its created a model that can engineer proteins, turning regular cells into stem cells. That goal has been pursued by companies in longevity science, because stem cells can produce any other tissue in the body and, in theory, could be a starting point for rejuvenating animals, building human organs, or providing supplies of replacement cells.Why it matters: The work was a product of OpenAIs collaboration with the longevity company Retro Labs, in which Sam Altman invested $180 million. It represents OpenAIs first model focused on biological data and its first public claim that its models can deliver scientific results. The AI model reportedly engineered more effective proteins, and more quickly, than the companys scientists could. But outside scientists cant evaluate the claims until the studies have been published. Read more from Antonio Regalado.Bits and BytesWhat we know about the TikTok banThe popular video app went dark in the United States late Saturday and then came back around noon on Sunday, even as a law banning it took effect. (The New York Times)Why Meta might not end up like XX lost lots of advertising dollars as Elon Musk changed the platforms policies. But Facebook and Instagrams massive scale make them hard platforms for advertisers to avoid. (Wall Street Journal)What to expect from Neuralink in 2025More volunteers will get Elon Musks brain implant, but dont expect a product soon. (MIT Technology Review)A former fact-checking outlet for Meta signed a new deal to help train AI modelsMeta paid media outlets like Agence France-Presse for years to do fact checking on its platforms. Since Meta announced it would shutter those programs, Europes leading AI company, Mistral, has signed a deal with AFP to use some of its content in its AI models. (Financial Times)OpenAIs AI reasoning model thinks in Chinese sometimes, and no one really knows whyWhile it comes to its response, the model often switches to Chinese, perhaps a reflection of the fact that many data labelers are based in China. (Tech Crunch)

Gusts Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land is two months off, but theres still more to reveal. Thankfully, a new broadcast for the title will go live on January 22nd at this years Taipei Game Show at 3 AM PT. Producer Junzo Hosoi will be present with actors Wakana Kuramochi (Yumia) and Kaori Maeda (Isla). Live gameplay with Chinese localization will be presented, so stay tuned for new information and details.Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories and the Envisioned Land launches on March 21st for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Players control Yumia Liessfeldt as she investigates the Aladissian Empires collapse due to alchemy. Youll still craft items from raw materials, though players can create them on the go, and combat occurs on the field in real time. Check out the latest trailer, featuring the antagonists opposing Yumia and her friends. You can also learn more about how Halo inspired the open-world design.

Arc System Works has announced the release date for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Risings next DLC character, Sandalphon. Hes available on February 26th for $7.99 standalone or as part of Character Pass 2. Check out the latest trailer showcasing his abilities below.Opposing Lucilius, Sandalphon is more than 2000 years old. As the Primarch of Promises, he possesses incredible powers despite mostly fighting with a one-handed sword. These include elemental projectile attacks, from direct flaming shots to earthen spikes from below. His multiple wings also come into play, though its unknown whether this is a powered-up state or for his Super Skybound Art.Stay tuned for more details on Sandalphon and his move set in the coming weeks. Cygames also confirmed release windows for the remaining fighters in Character Pass 2. The next debuts in Spring 2025, followed by the next in Summer 2025, then Fall 2025, and the final DLC fighter in early 2026.Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is available for PS4, PS5, and PC. Check out our review for the base game here.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Epic Games has posted a recording of the session on upcoming features in Unreal Engine, its game engine and real-time renderer, from last years Unreal Fest Seattle conference.It runs through features in development for Unreal Engine 5.6, the next version of the software, along with those in development for Unreal Engine 5.7 and beyond.The video covers changes to gameplay systems, audio, build tools and platform support, but below, weve summarised the key changes affecting CG artists, as opposed to programmers.They span UE5s world-building, rendering, animation and simulation toolsets, and range from concepts like Megaworlds biomes to big initiatives like the Anim Next unified animation pipeline.New features scheduled for Unreal Engine 5.6 and beyondIn the recording, Epic Games Technical Director Arjan Brussee runs through upcoming features in Unreal Engine.The session took place a month before the release of Unreal Engine 5.5, so many of the features shown have already been released, but a number are still in development.Some are scheduled for Unreal Engine 5.6, which is likely to be released in spring or early summer this year, while others arent yet scheduled for specific releases.However, theres a big disclaimer at the start of the video that all of the plans announced are tentative, so when or if individual features ship could change at any time.Nanite: Updates to Nanite FoliageNanite Foliage that is, support for assets like trees inside Nanite, Unreal Engine 5s geometry-streaming system, is due for some really big updates in Unreal Engine 5.6.The slide above namechecks Nanite decals & translucent support: presumably support for Mesh Decals using a Translucent Blend Mode within Nanite.The work is intended to resolve issues with rendering dynamically moving trees, and to make Nanite Foliage work better with Lumen, Unreal Engines dynamic global illumination system.Lumen: 120Hz mode and support for low-end hardwareWork on Lumen itself focuses on improving performance, with Epic working on a 120Hz mode up from 60Hz on current consoles and a prototype capable of running on low-end hardware.The MegaLights system the Nanite of lights introduced in Unreal Engine 5.5 will also see continued R&D work.Rendering: Better rendering of first-person gamesRendering changes include better rendering of the player mesh in first-person games.The work is intended to reduce the need for nasty hacks to render the mesh, and includes better support for self-shadowing and reflections, and a separate FOV for first-person mode.Rendering: More intuitive new material editorMany of the other changes announced to rendering are iterative improvements, including further reducing shader permutations by reducing the need for Static Switch conversions.However, Brussee also namechecked an experimental new Material Editor intended to make it easier for non-experts to make performant materials simply out of the box.World Creation: World Partition Bookmarks and better streaming performanceChanges due to the world creation toolset in Unreal Engine 5.6 include World Partition Bookmarks, intended to help artists navigate large open worlds.The update should also improve performance when streaming data in and out of memory, particularly on complex environments with tens of thousands of objects in a cell.Longer-term changes include more automated tools for packing objects into grid cells, and implementation of the Scene Graph from Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN).PCG: Megaworlds biomes simplify environment creationUnreal Engines Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG) will get workflow improvements, including better attribute support, dependency tracking and versioning.However, Brussee also announced a new system of Megaworlds biomes: assets with built-in PCG rules that could be released on online marketplaces like Fab to speed up world building.The slide above also lists PCG for landscape grass, described in Epics online roadmap as a GPU compute-based solution for landscape and micro-scattering for high-frequency details.Terrain: next-gen terrain system will bring Nanite-level detail to landscape geometryEpic Games is also working on a next-generation terrain solution, potentially bringing Unreal Engines currently heightfield-only landscape system into full 3D.Brussee noted that people internally sometimes say that our landscape is the worst geometry we have on screen, and that the new system was intended to get terrain to Nanite level detail.Character Rigging: Physics Rigs and a new Skeletal Hair Editor Changes to Control Rig, Unreal Engines character rigging and animation system, include updates to the Deformer Graph, and new nodes for creating Physics Rigs of which, more later.The slide above also mentions a new Skeletal Hair Editor, although it wasnt mentioned in the presentation, and isnt yet listed on the online roadmap.Animation: New branching dialogue systemSequencer, Unreal Engines cinematic editor, is scheduled to get quite a few new features, including support for animation mixing with bone masking.However, perhaps the biggest is a full branching dialogue system, out of the box.According to the online roadmap, the Narrative Branching with Cinematic Dialogues system will help artists create branching cinematics, including procedural content-generation capabilities.Animation: in-engine animation with character physicsChanges to Unreal Engines in-engine animation tools will include a simplified timeline, and new versions of the Tween Tools and Motion Trails systems.The one discussed in detail was animating with physics, with a physics sim run in parallel with skeletal animation, which Brussee described as providing free overlap and secondary motion.Animation: support for multi-actor Motion MatchingOther animation changes include multi-character Motion Matching, making it possible to have character controlled by the Motion Matching motion synthesis system interact.The experimental Gameplay Camera System will also move into beta, while the Mutable plugin for generating character variations will become production-ready.Anim Next: new high-performance unified animation pipelineHowever, perhaps the biggest upcoming change to animation in Unreal Engine is Anim Next: a long-term initiative to integrate all of the animation logic systems.The new unified animation pipeline will be faster and easier to use than Animation Blueprints, which it is ultimately intended to replace, removing the need to nativize Blueprints into C++.Chaos Physics: new machine learning capabilitiesOver in Unreal Engines Chaos Physics toolset, which includes soft body system Chaos Flesh, Epic plans to fully automate musculoskeletal simulation inside the [Unreal] Editor itself.The slide above also namechecks new machine learning features, following the ML Deformer introduced in Unreal Engine 5.2, including machine-learned SDFs and contact generation.Niagara: integrate Niagara effects with the PCGThe planned changes to Niagara, Unreal Engines particle-based VFX system, look to be mainly workflow improvements, with Brussee noting that the toolset had become too expert-level.However, Epic also plans to make Niagara and the PCG interoperable, making it possible to have simulations of different types inform and affect one another.Price, system requirements and release dateUnreal Engine 5.6 due later in 2025. Epic Games hasnt announced an exact date. The current release, Unreal Engine 5.5, is available for 64-bit Windows, macOS and Linux.For non-interactive content, the software is free to users with revenue under $1 million/year. For larger studios, subscriptions cost $1,850/seat/year, including Twinmotion and RealityCapture.For games developed with the engine, Epic takes 5% of the gross royalties after the first $1 million generated.See features currently in development for Unreal Engine on Epic Games public roadmapHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.