Kalakshar US

It’s only been seven years since the “Fred” started to rise up in the VR zombie shooter Arizona Sunshine, but a remake is already lumbering your way and will land on VR headsets on October 17. Vertigo Games announced the upcoming release of Arizona Sunshine Remake at the first VR Games Showcase. It’s slated to come to the Meta Quest 2 and 3, PS VR2 and Steam.

The Arizona Sunshine Remake will feature the same central story and multiplayer modes but with a noticeable graphics update. The zombies look more defined and real in the trailer, with an advanced mutilation system that looks bloody great (pun intended). The remake also comes with all five of the game’s DLC storylines and gameplay modes.

The game puts you in the shoes of an unnamed survivor who treats the presence of zombies the way you’d treat a noisy upstairs neighbor who can’t take a hint. The protagonist calls the shambling ghouls “Fred” as a way to mentally normalize the madness and mayhem unfolding around him as he treks across the titular state, following a radio signal in the hopes of finding other human survivors.

Arizona Sunshine was one of the first big breakout titles in VR that didn’t have a connection to another pop culture property like Marvel Comics or the Batman Arkham games. It came out the same year as other big VR hits like Superhot VR, the first I Expect You to Die puzzle game and Job Simulator. It’s part of a boom time of sorts for VR gaming when the medium was able to find its footing.

Arizona Sunshine is not just a mindless zombie killing machine even if it has multiplayer and endless swarming modes if that’s all you want to do. It’s got a great mix of VR gaming elements with puzzles to solve, strategies to plan as you prepare for a big wave of “Fred” and some genuine tense, immersive moments. It’s everything I always wanted from a zombie apocalypse and the remake sounds like a fun way to play with “Fred” all over again.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/arizona-sunshine-remake-brings-the-undead-back-to-vr-with-enhanced-graphics-194535362.html?src=rss 

California is the latest state to make its driver’s licenses mobile. Today, Governor Gavin Newsom’s office announced that both Apple Wallet and Google Wallet will be adding support for California driver’s licenses and state IDs. The release clarified that residents still need to carry a physical copy of their identification, but that the mobile option would make age verification faster during air travel and at participating businesses.

“We’re partnering with two iconic California companies – Apple and Google – to provide convenient, private and secure driver’s licenses and ID cards directly on people’s phones,” Newsom said. “This is a big step in our efforts to better serve all Californians, meeting people where they’re at and with technology people use every day.”

The addition of licenses to these tech companies’ wallet apps is part of a bigger program by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. The mobile Drivers License (mDL) pilot introduced a proprietary wallet app from the state agency that gave California residents the same capabilities to upload their driver’s licenses to their smartphones. More than 500,000 residents have done so to date in the mDL program.

Arizona was the first state to bring driver’s licenses to Apple Wallet in 2022, although both iOS and Android were exploring the technology years before. Maryland, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Ohio have also adopted support for mobile identification. And any news about identification is a good reminder that Real ID laws, which require more documentation to board a plane or enter some government facilities, are slated to take effect in 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/california-state-ids-can-now-be-stored-in-apple-wallet-and-google-wallet-200021839.html?src=rss 

Nineteen members of Congress are pushing Mark Zuckerberg to explain why Meta has allowed ads for cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs to be shown on Facebook and Instagram. The letter comes after the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) uncovered hundreds of such ads on the company’s platform.

The letter points to the TTP’s report last month, which used Meta’s ad library to find 450 Instagram and Facebook ads “selling an array of pharmaceutical and other drugs.” Many of those ads included “photos of prescription drug bottles, piles of pills and powders, or bricks of cocaine,” and directed viewers to outside apps like Telegram. Since then, the TTP has been posting additional examples of such ads on X, including one it found yesterday.

“Meta appears to have continued to shirk its social responsibility and defy its own community guidelines,” the lawmakers write in the letter, which is addressed directly to Zuckerberg. “What is particularly egregious about this instance is that this was not user generated content on the dark web or on private social media pages, but rather they were advertisements approved and monetized by Meta. Many of these ads contained blatant references to illegal drugs in their titles, descriptions, photos, and advertiser account names, which were easily found by the researchers and journalists at the Wall Street Journal and Tech Transparency Project using Meta’s Ad Library. However, they appear to have passed undetected or been ignored by Meta’s own internal processes.”

The letter requests details about Meta’s policies for enforcing rules against drug-related ads, as well as information about how many times the reported ads were viewed and interacted with. It gives Meta a deadline of September 6 to reply. A spokesperson for Meta said the company plans to respond to the letter and directed Engadget to a prior statement, published by The Wall Street Journal, in which the company said it rejects “hundreds of thousands of ads for violating our drug policies.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/congress-asks-mark-zuckerberg-to-explain-why-drug-dealers-are-advertising-on-facebook-and-instagram-200541467.html?src=rss 

Mobile phone security firm iVerify has discovered a vulnerability in Google Pixel smartphones. According to iVerify’s investigation, a piece of third-party software with deep system access is to blame, and troublingly it shipped with “a very large percentage of Pixel devices […] since September 2017.”

The issue relates to “Showcase.apk,” a bit of software made for Verizon and used to put Pixel devices in demo mode while displayed in retail stores. The software downloads a configuration file over an unencrypted web connection, which — because of Showcase’s deep access — might allow bad actors to perform remote code execution or remote package installation on the device.

The especially troubling part of this discovery is that Showcase can’t be uninstalled at the user level. And while it is not enabled by default, iVerify said there could be multiple ways to activate the software. iVerify alerted Google to the vulnerability in May; thus far there’s no confirmed evidence it’s been exploited in the wild.

A Google spokesperson told Wired that Showcase “is no longer being used” by Verizon and that Google would have a software update to remove the software from all Pixel devices “in the coming weeks.” Additionally, the rep said Showcase is not present in the line of Google Pixel 9 devices announced during the Made by Google event this week.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/researchers-claim-most-google-pixel-phones-shipped-with-exploitable-bloatware-since-2017-185926564.html?src=rss 

Activision is finally taking some steps to stop Call of Duty games from hogging up hard drive space. The games are notoriously giant but the company is going to lessen the load a bit ahead of the October 25 release of Black Ops 6.

How will this work? One big change is that Warzone is being decoupled from the rest of the games with regard to the default download for annual titles. This change happens on August 21, accompanying the launch of Season 5 Reloaded, and should actually help a lot. Warzone is huge (around 130GB) and this can be frustrating for those who don’t even participate in the battle royale-style mode.

As a matter of fact, when folks purchase an annual title in the near future, they’ll only download files for that particular game. Hard drives everywhere suddenly have a bit of spring in their step. Of course, the masochistic among us will still be able to opt-in and add Warzone game files with any purchase.

That’s not the only action Activision is taking, though it’s likely the most important one. The company is also expanding its usage of texture streaming, starting with the forthcoming Warzone update. This means that users won’t have to download everything directly to their hard drives, as the devs will “cycle content that is less frequently used by players to a streaming cache.”

The devs do warn, however, that this could result in some of this content appearing at a lower quality until the streaming cache has fully loaded. To that end, there are multiple settings for this feature. Finally, forthcoming PS5 downloads will be split into multiple parts, many of which can be scooped up ahead of time. These downloads will also include file optimizations to further reduce the size.

As previously stated, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 hits consoles and PCs on October 26. It’s also going to be available on Game Pass from release day.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/activision-is-finally-addressing-those-massive-call-of-duty-download-sizes-191616063.html?src=rss 

Trombone Champ, a ridiculous rhythm game that gets funnier the worse you are at it, is coming to virtual reality headsets. You won’t have to wait an incredibly long time to try Trombone Champ: Unflattened either: it’s coming to Meta Quest, Steam VR and PlayStation VR2 this fall.

Flat2VR Studios worked on the “reimiagining” of Holy Wow Studios’ original game. You can perform on a virtual stage as notes careen toward you in a Guitar Hero-esque fashion. Your trombone is customizable as you can spray on the colors of your choosing and have absurd variants of the instrument.

There are more than 50 songs to play through. However, as with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, it’s possible to mod the game and add your own tracks and characters. So if you really wanted to toot your way through “Baby One More Time” on a trombone with a fish attached, you could probably do just that.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/trombone-champ-is-coming-to-vr-headsets-this-fall-193041345.html?src=rss