Month: March 2021

Enlarge / All of these Bethesda games are now available on Xbox Game Pass. The tiny green icons are, from left to right in games that have them all: PC, console, xCloud. (credit: Xbox / Bethesda)

The Microsoft and Bethesda marriage pushed forward on Thursday with a roundtable discussion between major players from both teams, and it included an unsurprising announcement: starting tomorrow, March 12, a treasure trove of Bethesda games will land on the paid Xbox Game Pass service.

While the official announcement mentions a full roster of 20 Bethesda-published games on Game Pass, Bethesda already had some games in the service ahead of today's video presentation. The "new" content for paying subscribers includes 12 games in all:

• Dishonored Definitive Edition
• Doom (1993)
• Doom II
• Doom 3
• Doom 64
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• The Evil Within
• Fallout 4
• Prey
• Wolfenstein: The New Order
• Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

The rest are visible in the list at the top of the article, and icons indicate whether a game is available on Windows 10 and/or xCloud streaming. The list is missing a few biggies that have previously been published on Xbox consoles, including Fallout 3, The Evil Within 2, the 2016 Doom reboot, and the original Rage from 2011. It also doesn't expand xCloud access to existing Game Pass games that previously didn't work on the cloud—and so far, it doesn't bring PC classics outside the Xbox ecosystem into the Game Pass family, not even for its Windows 10 tier. Still, seeing the list rewind back to Xbox's earliest Elder Scrolls games is a treat for anybody hungry to explore the series' glory days (horse armor notwithstanding) before we hear about the previously announced Elder Scrolls VI.

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  The Oppo Find X3 Pro. [credit: Oppo ]

Modern smartphones have a ton of extra cameras. We've seen wide-angle cameras, telephoto cameras, depth cameras, macro cameras, and now... a microscope camera? The new Oppo Find X3 Pro has a "microlens sensor with up to 60x zoom" that can take some interesting super-close-up shots.

We've loved the macro cameras that have popped up on some phones, mainly from Oppo's sister company OnePlus. Oppo's micro camera sounds like a next-gen version of the same idea. We're not going to trust a manufacturer's professionally shot sample pictures, but a few third parties like Android Police have gotten their hands on the phone and turned in some truly impressive pictures that haven't been possible from a smartphone before.

Like you'd expect, the sample pictures out there all have a very shallow depth-of-field, and it looks like focusing is a challenge. That's true of regular macro photography, too, though. Most people are doing hand-held shots, and a full tripod-style setup would probably help a lot. The "Micro" camera sensor is only 3 MP, but unlike some of the useless "decorative" 2 MP cameras we see on cheaper phones, this seems to be plenty for a close-up.

Enlarge / This is the BSOD victim of this week's Windows Update Woes seen after any attempt to print, from any application. (credit: Teri Sheehan)

A Microsoft Windows Update is wreaking havoc with printers worldwide this week—KB50000802(for newer Windows 10 builds; older Windows 10 and Server builds may have a KB ending in 808 or 822 instead) was intended to provide updates to security "when Windows performs basic operations," but the update crashes some print drivers due to overflowing a GDI Object limit of 10,000.

The bug afflicts a wide range of printers and print drivers—we can confirm having seen the issue on a Windows 10 2004 PC, which crashes with APC_INDEX_MISMATCH (photo above) after printing to any of several models of Kyocera printer (some local, some network).

If you're afflicted with this bug yourself, you can get some relief by uninstalling KB50000802 until Microsoft comes out with a fixed update, presumably by April's Patch Tuesday.

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  No, it's not a Bedford Rascal—it's a new electric pickup truck from Canoo. [credit: Canoo ]

If you follow the electric vehicle world closely, you may have heard of Canoo. Started by some former Faraday Future people, the company broke cover in 2019 with a subscription-only electric van that was built on a low-profile skateboard chassis. In December of 2020, after some management changes, Canoo showed off a delivery van using that same platform and then went public via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company. Later today, the company was going to reveal a third EV—the adorable pickup you see in the gallery above—but someone leaked the images on Reddit a day early.

The pickup certainly looks striking. If it bears resemblance to anything else on the road, it's probably one of those Japanese microvans, although the Canoo pickup is a regular-sized vehicle at 184-inches (4,677 mm) long and 78-inches (1,980 mm) wide.

Like Rivian's forthcoming R1T and Bollinger's B2, the Canoo pickup demonstrates the advantage of electric powertrains when it comes to packaging. Canoo's skateboard platform is particularly low-slung, which allows for a very cab-forward design. There is cargo storage built into the nose of the truck, as well as storage bins on the side that also function as steps, similar to those we've seen from Rivian.