Trump blasts Democrats repeatedly on taxes, inflation and healthcare in speech claiming border and economic wins
Erika Kirk, the widow of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, will attend tonight’s State of the Union address as a special guest of the president.
After her husband was assassinated at a college event for his non-profit Turning Point USA, Erika Kirk took over the organization.
If he’s coming to our house, you got to be there. Otherwise, you let him own the house.
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© Photograph: Kenny Holston/EPA
© Photograph: Kenny Holston/EPA
© Photograph: Kenny Holston/EPA
© Pablo Porciuncula/AFP
© Kevin Wolf/AP
A spokesperson for Falun Dafa – a group associated with Shen Yun - said it had received threats against Albanese if upcoming performances went ahead
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Anthony Albanese was evacuated from his official Canberra residence on Tuesday night as police responded to a bomb threat made against him in relation to upcoming performances of the Chinese group Shen Yun.
A spokesperson for Falun Dafa – a group associated with Shen Yun - told Guardian Australia that one of their colleagues had received two threats in recent weeks, written in Chinese, threatening harm against Albanese if the performances went ahead. The threats, the second of which was received this week, were reported to the Australian Federal Police and are thought to have been the reason for the prime minister to be evacuated from the Lodge and the house to be searched by officers.
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© Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
© Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
© Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
© LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
Retrocade on Apple Vision Pro is the nostalgic virtual 1980s arcade experience VR gamers have been waiting for, and arguably the best visionOS title yet, though multiplayer is sorely missing.
One of the first ideas anyone with any interest in retro gaming has when they first try VR is a faithful recreation of a 1980s video game arcade. Earlier this month, Resolution Games released the best version of this idea we've seen yet, exclusively on Apple Vision Pro's $7/month aptly-named Apple Arcade game subscription service.
Retrocade was developed by Resolution Games, the veteran XR game studio behind dozens of top titles across all major headsets. Chances are, if you're a VR gamer, you've seen their logo pop up before a game you love. Apple contracted Resolution to build Game Room for Vision Pro's launch and the Gears & Goo tower defense game that released last year, both also on Apple Arcade. Resolution also ported its flagship cross-platform title Demeo to visionOS.
Retrocade is also available as a flatscreen game on iPhone and iPad, and if you're a mobile gamer I'm sure you'd have fun with it. But where it really shines is in its native visionOS version, with realistic true-scale cabinets placed in either your physical space or a nostalgic depiction of a typical 1989 American arcade.
UploadVR-captured footage in VR mode. Would you believe me if I told you I intentionally sucked at Pac-Man to keep the footage short enough for all our social platforms?
In this virtual arcade you'll find the following 10 licensed games cabinets:
While the virtual cabinets are impressively realistic, and the control elements like joysticks and buttons are animated, I should note that you don't actually directly interact with them using your hands. Instead, the game requires a Bluetooth gamepad, such as a PlayStation DualShock controller, the controls of which map to those of the cabinets.
Pressing the Select button on your controller inserts a virtual coin into the cabinet, and Start remotely presses its 1 Player mode button. From here, the action buttons (eg, AB/XY) map to the cabinet's action buttons and you can use either of the sticks, or the D-Pad, to move the joystick.
The virtual coins inserted into the cabinets are unlimited, by the way. There are no microtransactions in Retrocade, though that might be an interesting monetization option for people unwilling to pay the subscription fee for Apple Arcade.
When playing any of the games, you can switch between being inside the virtual arcade, with all the other cabinets visible around you, or to have only the cabinet you're playing in your physical space. Retrocade can be a VR or mixed reality game, whichever you prefer.
UploadVRIan HamiltonThere have been other official attempts in the past to bring a retro arcade to VR, such as the discontinued Oculus Arcade for the Samsung Gear VR phone-holder headset and Oculus Go. But both headsets were 3DoF, rotation tracking only, meaning you couldn't lean around and appreciate the cabinet as an object in space.
A decade later, Retrocade on Apple Vision Pro is the same idea but done right – mostly. The combination of the powerful M-series chipset, high-resolution micro-OLED displays, rock-solid positional tracking and hard work of Resolution Games delivers a feeling that the cabinet is truly there in front of you, and the virtual arcade environment induces a deep feeling of immersive nostalgia.
The smallest details of each cabinet are faithfully recreated in real-time, and the on-by-default CRT filter, to my eyes at least, looks identical to what you'd get from a real display of the era. Retrocade would be a delight to look at if it were just a non-interactive passive environment. And yet what you get here is 10 fully-playable, true-to-original games too – some of the most iconic of all time.
All this is not to say that Retrocade is perfect.
I understand why Resolution chose to require a controller, as it's far more precise and reliable than hand tracking input would have been. Though I do wish hand tracking input was an experimental option, or at least supported for pressing buttons. There's something a little jarring about having such a realistic cabinet not respond to poking at the buttons.
Another issue is that the mixed reality mode operates as a Full Space, so it doesn't support visionOS Shared Space multitasking. You can't put on a movie or YouTube video in the background, if that's your thing, and nor could you have an instant messaging or security camera app open. If you absolutely need multitasking, you can play Retrocade in a 2D window, where it essentially acts like the iPad app. But this entirely removes the magic of having a virtual cabinet.
The more pressing problem with Retrocade, though, is that you might feel lonely. The magic of the real arcade was not just the cabinets, but the people there beside you. The real Bubble Bobble and Track & Field supported simultaneous multiplayer, while the other games supported alternating turns. What I really want here is SharePlay – to see friends as Personas standing beside me, able to interact with the cabinet too. The only social layer in Retrocade is that the game sends your stats to Apple Game Center, so you can asynchronously compete with friends, but this just isn't the same thing as feeling together.
UploadVR-captured footage in mixed reality mode, showing how the cabinet truly feels as if in your physical environment.
If you accept it as a singleplayer experience, Retrocade is a beautifully polished rendition of the virtual 1980s arcade VR gamers have dreamed of. It's a shame that it's exclusive to a $3500 headset, but it seems Apple paid for the development of the game. Hopefully other VR platforms get something similar, perhaps from another arcade game company like Sega, in the near future.
You can find Retrocade on the visionOS App Store via the Apple Arcade subscription.
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.
Giant glass box on the side of a lake the setting for Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s secret getaway
For Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov it became the safe house at the edge of the world.
Now Heated Rivalry fans can relive some of the hit television show’s steamiest momentsin Barlochan Cottage, tucked away on the granite-edged shores of Ontario’s Lake Muskoka, which has just been listed on Airbnb.
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© Photograph: Airbnb
© Photograph: Airbnb
© Photograph: Airbnb
Australian journalist Ryan Heath, who will lead expansion, says focus will be on journalism that ‘connects the dots globally’
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The US political news site Politico will establish an Australian outlet later this year, bringing its brand of insider politics and policy news to the Canberra press gallery.
Ryan Heath, an Australian journalist who launched Politico’s Brussels Playbook a decade ago, is the edition’s launch editor. A newsletter covering federal parliamentary politics and policy, Canberra Playbook, will launch when parliament returns from a winter break.
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© Photograph: Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
© Photograph: Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
© Photograph: Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
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