On December 12, 2019, Microsoft announced the Xbox Series X, its next-generation game console. One of the major features of this new console is full backward-compatibility with the previous generation. Your titles will transfer. Xbox One controllers will work with the Xbox Series X, and Series X controllers will work with the Xbox One. All of this will arrive on Day 1, out of the box. With that announcement, Microsoft bridged the last fundamental gap between PC and console gaming. On the PC, we don’t talk about “generations” the same way that the console market does. The closest thing to a generation in the PC space is a Direct3D version, but the two have never been equivalent — modern PC games use a variety of APIs, including DirectX 11, DirectX 12, and Vulkan. Instead, we use touchstones like when a game came out relative to when a person bought their PC or graphics card. The reason we don’t talk about “generations” is that PCs have remained more-or-less backward-compatible with decades of software. The majority of PC titles from the past 15 years will still run on modern systems, but that same time period refers to at least three different console generations. The new Xbox has stirred up a lot of controversy, people are saying "at this point why not just call it a pc?" And that is a good question, what is the difference?
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Amazon Lex
We used the Amazon Web Service, Amazon Lex, to make chat bots. We made a chat bot that takes your food order. It starts by looking for commands like "food", "I'm hungry", and "I want food". Once it sees one of these commands it asks what you want to eat. It then confirms your order with you. It is a very simple bot, but with this service you can make something that is much more involved and complex. Companies use this service to make chat bots for their websites for their customers. It can be used for customer support, troubleshooting, and much more. Click here to go to the AWS Educate page.
Spheros The first week we started off playing with the Spheros. They are cool little robots that you can control through an app on your iPad or iPhone. We used multiple models including the Ollie and Spark + from their main line, and the BB-8 and R2D2 from their Star wars line. They also have many other models. Click here to go their website. Drones Week 2 we started using drones. The first drones that we used were the Parrot drones. We used the Parrot Mambo Mission drone. It is a small drone that you can control from the Parrot Mini app on your iPhone or iPad. The app is very user friendly and easy to use. The controls are simple and it can take off and land by the press of a button. You can even make the drone do a flip by pressing one of the flip buttons. Click here to go to the Parrot website. We also used the DJI Mavic Pro and Air. The Mavic Pro we controlled from the controller which used a phone as a display. With the Mavic Pro you can fly all the way up to 400 feet. It is against the law to fly higher because they can interfere with airplanes. The Mavic pro takes good quality video and photos. You can adjust the camera angle of the drone from the controller. The Mavic Air is very cool because it has a feature called smart capture. This allows you to use hand gestures to control the drone. It is super useful if you want to take selfies from the sky. You can also make it follow you to get some really cool shots. Click here to go to the DJI website. |