Holographic computers, 3D printing tools, gaming and streaming tools baked right in — Microsoft promised the world and then some with the latest batch of upgrades to the Windows 10 platform, known collectively as the Creators Update.
But Redmond may have oversold the scale of the so-called Creators Update. The Hololens still hasn’t found its way into consumer homes, so any holographic features are conspicuously absent from our build. That’s a big disappointment, considering murmurs of Vive compatibility before the rollout.
Without any futuristic augmented reality features, gaming takes center stage in the update. A new game mode, meant to smooth out choppy gaming performance, doesn’t actually deliver on its promise, providing basically no boost to average framerate, although it did help bring up minimums slightly. Built-in streaming accomplishes its goal of simplicity, so you can go from ordinary gamer to streaming champion in just a few clicks. With limited access to Beam, the Microsoft streaming service, it’s unlikely you’ll find a following.
Finally, Paint 3D rounds out the list of big new features, but it too fails to deliver on lofty claims of easy modeling that are thrown off by a limited perspective while editing your creations. Without any alignment or size tools, you won’t be able to take those models to the 3D printer without help from another 3D rendering program.
We’ll also cover a number of changes to the Edge browser that help bring it in line with a competitors, and updates to a number of Windows Store apps that may actually bring users out of the classic desktop and into the Universal Windows Platform, at least for a few minutes. They might not be the most exciting changes, but they may be the most successful in the whole update.
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