Laying the groundwork for Microsoft's ambitious future
Windows 10, dubbed by Microsoft as the last version of Windows, has evolved meaningfully over the years since its first release in July 2015. Microsoft has released three feature updates for Windows 10 in the last 2 years and is going to start rolling out the new Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703) to millions of PCs all around the world today — taking the OS one step further.
When Microsoft introduced the Creators Update, the company mostly focused its presentation of features towards people who create things with their Windows 10 device. The Creators Update, however, brings something for almost everyone. If you are a developer, there’s something for you in the Creators Update. If you are a gamer, there’s something for you too. If you just use your Windows 10 device for web browsing and entertainment, the Creators Update has something even for you too.
The Creators Update is supposed to be a minor upgrade to Windows 10 when compared to last year’s Anniversary Update, but there’s still a considerable number of features in the update just like most of the previous Windows 10 feature upgrades. In this review, we are going to give you a closer look at some of the biggest new features in Windows 10, ranging from a new Paint app, and even the new Share icon.
Video Hands On VIDEO Paint 3D 3D is the main focus for Microsoft in the Windows 10 Creators Update. The company is adding two new apps to Windows 10 that will allow users to create 3D content, one of which is the new Paint 3D app.
The Paint 3D app lets you create 3D objects and make something truly unique. You can create 3D objects using Paint 3D, and share them wherever you like. For instance, you can literally create a 3D dog, cat, or even a fish in the Paint 3D app. You can then change the color of the object, or add different stickers to it. There’s also an option that lets you create 3D text objects, and the position of the objects in the 3D environment can be changed using a very intuitive UI from within the Paint 3D app. Oh, there is a VERY neat feature that lets you see your creation in full 3D right in the app, too.
Paint 3D is really cool – if you know how to create awesome things, that is. But if you are trying to create something with your mouse, you will have a hard time. Paint 3D is mostly for devices with new Windows technologies, such as the Surface with its pen and Samsung’s Galaxy Book with its own corresponding stylus. If you don’t have a Surface Pen or a similar stylus, you will have a tough time creating 3D content with your mouse and keyboard on Paint 3D.
Overall, Microsoft’s Paint 3D is a lovely app with a stylish design, but the lack of keyboard and mouse functionality will have most turning to the old-fashioned Windows Paint app.
But what’s so great about Paint 3D is Microsoft’s Remix3D platform. Remix3D is basically a platform where users can share their 3D creation. If you find something interesting in Remix3D, you can “remix” it and add it to your own 3D project. For instance, the image you see above isn’t my own creation – I honestly couldn’t draw something good with my mouse. Instead, it’s a 3D project made by combining other people’s work from Remix3D. Remix3D is literally the backbone of Paint 3D, and it is what makes creating 3D content with Paint 3D special.
However, the unfortunate thing for most people though is that Paint 3D just does not work well on a desktop or a classic Windows 10 PC. Creating things with Paint 3D can be really fun if you have one of the modern Windows 10 devices that include a stylus or a touch display. You see, that’s the real problem with Paint 3D: it’s not for the masses. This will likely change over the next couple of years as more people start buying the new Windows 10 devices but for now, it probably won’t grab a lot of people’s attention. Microsoft thankfully isn’t forgetting about the majority of its customers and you will continue to be able to use the good old Paint app on your Windows 10 device after installing the Creators Update.
The above 3D object was made with Microsoft’s “
Lanscape with Waterfall “, “
Seagull with headphones ” and “
Narwhal “, NinjaPigeon007’s “
ChimpBot “, and Alkem’s “
Mike ” creations from Remix3D.
Mixed Reality Mixed Reality is a big part of the Windows 10 Creators Update. This feature is perhaps one of the biggest new additions to Windows 10 that’s coming with the Creators Update, but you likely won’t be able to try it out just yet.
The new Mixed Reality experience in Windows 10, which Microsoft is simply calling the “Mixed Reality Portal” allows users to experience and use Universal Windows Platform experience in a mixed reality environment via the forthcoming head-mounted displays (aka Virtual Reality headsets). The Mixed Reality Portal essentially allows users to use and experience UWP applications and games in a holographic environment, similar to the Microsoft HoloLens.
Instead of the HoloLens, you will have to use the upcoming HMDs from Microsoft’s OEM partners to use the Mixed Reality Portal. OEMs like Dell and Lenovo are building new HMDs for Windows Mixed Reality, and you will be able to use those for the new Mixed Reality Portal in Windows 10.
We were able to try out a simulator of the Mixed Reality Portal in Windows 10 that provided us with a pretty good idea of how it works. When you enter the mixed reality environment, you will be greeted with a holographic start menu from where you can open UWP apps like the Windows Store, Microsoft Edge or Movies & TV. The simulated Mixed Reality environment even has a virtual theater where you can put apps like Movies & TV and watch a movie that you bought from the Windows Store.
It’s neat to be able to use UWP apps in a mixed reality environment, but it isn’t really that useful currently. It’s a “fun” experience, though. However, the simulated environment also had its own issues – for instance, the trees and the house itself in the simulated environment were astonishingly low in quality. The sea water was completely still, and trees weren’t moving at all. I know I am nitpicking here but for a Mixed “Reality” environment, these are the basic things you would hope Microsoft to incorporate, but that, unfortunately, is not the case here. UWP apps were also pretty slow in the Mixed Reality environment, and interaction with keyboard/mouse and the Xbox One controller simply isn’t intuitive. For instance, when you open an app like Movies & TV app, you can no longer control your point-of-view and move around the mixed reality as the controller is focused on the app itself which is a bit irritating. It is possible these issues only occur in the simulated environment, and we are really hoping things are better on the Mixed Reality HMDs that are coming out later this year.
Mixed Reality clearly isn’t ready for prime time in the Windows 10 Creators Update, but we will likely get to see major improvements to the feature with the upcoming Windows 10 “Redstone 3” upgrade that’s coming later this year. We’ll have a closer look at the Mixed Reality environment when we get our hands on the new HMDs, and we’re hoping these issues won’t appear in the “real” thing. So, keep an eye on MSPU for more on Windows Mixed Reality.
Mixed Reality is going to be a huge player in the future for Microsoft and Windows. Mixed reality is expected to be the future of computing, and Microsoft’s early work is going to significantly help the company in the future. It is quite incomplete at the moment, but Microsoft has shown us in the past that it is capable of making things radically improved with future updates. The software giant is betting big on Mixed Reality, but whether Mixed Reality will actually take off remains to be seen. I personally don’t think we will be using Mixed Reality devices in real-life anytime soon, and it will likely end up being a product that serves a niche market for Microsoft. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see where mixed reality goes.
Gaming Gaming is also a huge part of the Windows 10 Creators Update which isn’t surprising to see as Microsoft has been focusing heavily on gaming in Windows 10 since the start. The company is still hard at work pushing the Xbox Play Anywhere program, and it’s introducing two new features to Windows 10 which play major roles in closing the gap between Windows 10 PCs and the Xbox One.
Firstly, let’s talk about the new Game Broadcasting feature. Microsoft is adding a built-in game streaming feature into Windows 10 with the Creators Update that lets you stream any game you want without needing to install any extra software. The new Game Broadcasting feature is powered by Beam, an interactive broadcasting platform which Microsoft acquired last year.
Streaming a game is simple – all you have to do is open up the Game Bar (Win G) when you are in a game, hit the broadcast button and it will let you start broadcasting the game right from there. You can also stream your webcam along with the game itself, and disable things like microphone recording and webcam preview on the stream if you want. Once you start streaming, you can enable/disable any of these settings and read the chat right from a tiny preview that shows up over the game you are playing. The streaming quality is fairly good in Windows 10, and there’s barely any delay in the stream which is literally the best thing about Beam.
What is worrying, however, is that Game Broadcasting is like a bumpy ride on the countryside. In our case, we had to restart our PC twice (!) to get Game Broadcasting working and from time to time you may get bizarre issues like “The game you are trying to broadcast does not support game recording”. Furthermore, the Game Broadcasting dialog closes by itself when you click outside of the dialog to work on something else during the initial stream setup which is going to be annoying if you have a multi-monitor setup. Additionally, you can’t reply directly to comments from the Game Broadcasting preview now but that’s something we hope Microsoft will add in the future.
The second feature that’s coming to Windows 10 is a new Game Mode for gamers with PCs that aren’t super powerful. As the name indicates, Game Mode allows you to get a faster gaming experience as Windows 10 will allocate your PC’s memory and GPU resources to the game itself when Game Mode is enabled – rather than prioritizing other apps that are opened in the background. To be exact, when Game Mode is enabled, games will be able to use 80% of the cores on your PC while the other 20% will be utilized by other parts of the system. According to Microsoft, Game Mode can offer up to 5% improvement in the framerate on games.
As a result, your games get the main “focus” of your PC’s resources and that results in a slightly improved performance. The improvements aren’t anything significant, yet they are still quite noteworthy. In our testing, we didn’t see a huge improvement for games like Forza Horizon 3 and Halo Wars 2. But if you have a PC that just about supports a game and it doesn’t have powerful hardware, you may see noticeable improvements for intensive games like Battlefield 1 or Gears of War 4 which require more resources.
And that is what’s so good about the new Game Mode – it isn’t restricted to Windows Store games only. If you download a game from Steam or even EA’s Origin, the Game Mode will still support those games which is laudable, as a lot of game publishers aren’t really jumping on the Windows Store just yet.
Gaming having a dedicated page on the Settings app in Windows 10 should give you a good idea of how big the update is for gamers. As I stated earlier in the review, the Windows 10 Creators Update isn’t only for creators – there’s a lot for gamers, too.
Gaming on Windows 10 is getting better and better with every update, but Microsoft will have to polish out the Game Broadcasting feature as soon as possible because at the moment the initial setup isn’t a pleasant experience.
Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is where Microsoft added a whole lot of things with the Creators Update. From the browser’s rendering engine to the browser itself it has picked up many new features that will make using Edge a much more pleasant experience for users.
Firstly, Edge now supports a full-featured book reading experience. Microsoft is adding support for EPUB files to Edge with the Creators Update, and that ties in nicely with the new Bookstore on the Windows Store. Microsoft Edge and Windows Store works together to offer this native book reading experience – you can buy a book from the Windows Store, and read it on Microsoft Edge without needing to install any other extra tools.
The book reading experience in Edge includes the basics – for example, you can see the Table of contents on a book with a single click of a button. There’s also a neat search function that lets you search for specific terms and even a virtual bookmark feature that will let you bookmark certain parts of a book.
The book reading experience is however actually pretty powerful – there’s a Read Aloud feature that will automatically read a book aloud, and you can also customize the look of the book reading experience. Microsoft lets you change the theme of the experience, and you can also play around with the font settings. Neat, right?
Moving on from the new book reading experience, let’s talk about the improved Tabs in Edge. Microsoft is introducing two new tab management features to Edge with the Creators Update that the company claims will help you deal with all the tabs you have opened. Firstly, there’s a new Set Tabs Aside feature that lets you set the currently opened tabs aside – so that you can get back to at a later point. With this feature, you can quickly save a group of tabs to browse later and it’s a pretty nice addition that will be useful when you are researching something using Edge. And lastly, there’s a new Tab Preview feature which basically gives you a live preview of all the opened tabs when you hit the expand button. Both of these new features are nice additions to the browser, but I wish there was a shortcut which would let you quickly show tab previews.
There are a lot of new additions to Edge with the Creators Update – for example, the Import feature has been improved, you can now run a downloaded file without requiring to save it, the Web Notes feature now utilizes the Windows Ink APIs, there’s support for WebVR, Web Payments and you can also now open an incognito window right from the jumplist in the taskbar.
All of these are some really nice new features for Edge, but the new book reading experience is really the biggest new addition. Whether users will actually read books on their PC or tablet remains to be seen, but at this point you can’t really get a Windows 10 tablet that would offer a good book reading experience like Amazon’s Kindle.
Support for WebVR and Web Payments are also two noteworthy new additions to Edge, along with all the other minor new additions and enhancements for the rendering engine of the browser. But again, Web Payments and WebVR are quite far from being mainstream – and don’t hope to be able to use Web Payments on your next Amazon purchase anytime soon.
With the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft Edge continues to evolve – but users still need to install a whole OS upgrade to get simple new features on the browser which is really disappointing to see. I mean, you need to install a new OS upgrade to get features like Set Tabs Aside which could have been added with a simple app update for Edge. But that’s not the case at this point, and that’s causing Edge to lag behind some of the big boys in the industry like Google Chrome.
Google releases updates for Chrome almost every month, adding new features and improvements to the browser – Microsoft, in contrast, only released two major upgrades to Microsoft Edge last year. And for a new browser like Microsoft Edge, this is something it simply can’t afford to do anymore as it’s still missing a lot of features when compared to Google Chrome — nearly 3 years after it was initially introduced. As I have recently written, Microsoft needs to bring Microsoft Edge to the Windows Store for the browser to succeed.
Cortana Cortana is getting a lot more powerful with the Creators Update. OK, it’s not a massive upgrade – but the new additions are quite important. The major new feature in the Creators Update for Cortana is the new Pick Up Where You Left Off feature.
This feature is mainly for users with multiple Windows 10 devices – what it essentially does is sync apps between your Windows 10 devices. So, for example, if you are reading an article on your Windows 10 laptop, Microsoft Edge but you want to continue reading it on your PC – you can simply turn on your PC, and open the exact same article by opening Cortana.
Even if you don’t own multiple devices, you can still take advantage of this feature as Cortana will keep track of all the apps you frequently opened recently. For instance, if you use Photoshop a lot, Cortana will have a quick shortcut to the app on its Pick Up Where You Left Off section which is what I call “seamless”. And if you use apps like Microsoft Word or any of the other Office 365 apps, you’ll see quick shortcuts to your recent files and documents. The feature isn’t completely flawless, though – sometimes when you click on a document, it opens up Office Online even if you have the Office apps installed on your PC which is a pretty annoying issue at the moment but something which Microsoft should be able to fix with a server-side update. But one of my biggest gripes with Pick Up Where You Left Off is the fact that it’s only locked to users in the United States.
source:mspoweruser 
