Microsoft has just released the Windows 10 preview build 21292 for Insiders in the Dev channel, which brings various fixes to the new shortcut for news and interests on the taskbar. This feature made its debut with last week’s build 21286, and it remains only available to select Insider in the US, Canada, , Australia, India, and the UK .

This new build also brings improvements to x64 emulation on ARM64 devices, fixing bugs and crashes in apps like Your Phone, Steam, or Serif Affinity Photo. You can find the full list of changes, fixes and known issues in the build 21292 below:

Improvements to news and interests on the taskbar

Thanks for all the feedback on news and interests, which we announced in last week’s blog post. The team has been reading it all! We’re continuing to improve the experience and this week are happy to announce a handful of fixes:

• We fixed multiple issues impacting performance and reliability.
• We fixed an issue where an empty flyout would be shown after opening news and interests.
• We fixed an issue where the text on the taskbar button wasn’t being read by screen readers and some tooltips were missing.
• We fixed an issue where news and interests in the taskbar was not displaying correctly when using small taskbar icons.
• We fixed an issue where the news and interests button would temporarily show no content.
• We fixed an issue where the news and interests flyout would not dismiss by tapping outside the window or again on the taskbar button.
• We fixed an issue where the content of the taskbar button would look blurry.
• We fixed an issue where news and interests would not show fresh content after toggling the background apps setting.
• We fixed an issue where the flyout would not dismiss when you hover off the right edge.
• We fixed an issue where it was not possible to navigate into the flyout using keyboard.
• We fixed an issue where the news and interests taskbar setting would be reset to show icon and text after updating to a new windows version.

Changes and Improvements

• Based on feedback, we’re updating Settings > System > Sounds to now display a message when microphone permissions have been turned off for the whole system or for all apps, with a link to the microphone privacy settings page.

Fixes

• We’re continuing to work on improving x64 emulation on ARM64 thanks to your feedback. This build fixes issues in several apps, including crashes in Zwift, Serif Affinity Photo, and Your Phone as well as blank pages in Steam.
• We fixed an issue resulting in an increase in Insiders seeing a message saying “Critical Error: Your Start menu isn’t work” in recent builds.
• We fixed an issue from the last two builds where explorer.exe / the Windows shell was hanging and or crashing, particularly after interacting with audio/video.
• We fixed an issue where NTFS was logging false positive torn write events.
• We fixed an issue resulting in Microsoft Teams and certain other apps unexpectedly displaying as just “Program” (instead of the app name) in Task Manager’s Startup tab.
• We fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to sort processes in Task Manager by Status.
• We fixed an issue that could result in not seeing notifications following WIN + Shift + S shortly after clean installing or resetting your PC.
• We fixed an issue from the previous build where when Xbox Game Bar was launched from Start or via the Windows key + G when using a text editor, the computer might appear unresponsive.
• We fixed an issue where when using Windows with scaling greater than 100% in recent builds, if you opened and closed Task View, open windows would appear unexpectedly large in the transition back to the desktop.
• We fixed an issue where typing “-“ on a number pad when using the Japanese IME wasn’t taking into consideration whether the IME was in full width or half width mode.
• We fixed an issue where Hanja word conversion with the Korean IME wasn’t working in Excel when the Korean Language pack for Office was installed.

Known issues

• We’re working on a fix for an issue Insiders have reported where certain games like State of Decay 2, or Assassin’s Creed, may hang or crash when launching.
• We’re investigating an issue where Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War may not launch starting with this build. If you play these games, you may wish to pause updates until the issue is resolved.
• You may experience some rendering / graphic issues after resizing certain app windows. If you minimize all your app windows and open them again it should resolve the issue (Press the Windows key plus D twice).
• We’re investigating an issue where some 32-bit systems may lose network connection after taking this build. If you are running a 32-bit version of Windows, you may wish to pause updates until the issue is resolved.
• Miracast users may experience very low frame rates in this build.
• We’re looking into reports of the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.
• Aero Shake is disabled in this build. To enable it, you will need to go here in Registry Editor and create a new DWORD entry named DisallowShaking with a value of 0:
  • HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced
• Live previews for pinned sites aren’t enabled for all Insiders yet, so you may see a grey window when hovering over the thumbnail in the taskbar. We’re continuing to work on polishing this experience.
• We’re working on enabling the new taskbar experience for existing pinned sites. In the meantime, you can unpin the site from the taskbar, remove it from the edge://apps page, and then re-pin the site.
• [News and interests] Upgrading to this build will cause your news and interests taskbar setting to be reset to “Show icon and text”. This is fixed going forward.
• [News and interests] Sometimes the news and interests flyout cannot be dismissed with pen.
• [News and interests] News and interests uses more taskbar space on the left than expected.
• [News and interests] The taskbar button can show stale information each time the user signs into their Windows session.
• [News and interests] The news and interests flyout shows content in a single column before quickly switching to double column.
• [News and interests] Text in taskbar button can look pixelated in high resolution screens.
• [News and interests] The taskbar context menu and news and interests overlap.
• [News and interests] In certain circumstances, news and interests uses 100% of CPU when first launched.
• [News and interests] Attempting to share content dismisses the flyout.
• [ARM64] Insiders who installed the preview version of the Qualcomm Adreno graphics driver on the Surface Pro X may experience reduced brightness of the display. This will be addressed in a future update.

In today’s blog post, the Windows Insider team shared more details about how to get started with news and interests in the taskbar, explaining how to get quick access to the latest headlines and weather, real-time traffic conditions, and more. “We’re continuing to improve the experience,” the team said today, and we’re hoping to see the experience coming to more markets in the next couple of weeks.

Microsoft Teams is now testing a new feature that will make virtual communication more engaging and impactful than ever before. This week, Linus Cansby, a Microsoft MVP, spotted that the company has rolled out the PowerPoint Presenter View for Teams meetings in preview.

For those unfamiliar, Microsoft Teams already supports a built-in presentation mode but with certain limitations. Currently, presenters can’t enable the PowerPoint View to change the way slides are presented to other participants in a meeting. It makes it impossible for them to see their notes and move between slides out of order, but this should change soon.

With the new addition, presenters will be able to view the current slide, the slide notes, and a thumbnail strip of all the slides during ongoing meetings. For starters, this should enable them to discuss the meeting notes as needed and move back and forth between slides to provide a quick recap. This change will help presenters to keep their meetings on track.

To get started, you need to opt into the public preview program for Microsoft Teams. To use this feature, users need to click the Share icon available besides the Leave button in the meeting window. Then select a recent PowerPoint file from the Teams Share Tray or browse for a local/OneDrive file to automatically open the Presenter View.

It is important to note that only the presenter needs to enable the new meeting experience in the Teams desktop app Settings to use Presenter View, and it only works in multi-window meetings. While the new functionality is currently available in public preview, it will start rolling out to the general public later this month.

Towards the end of last year, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 was updated to make it compatible with the most popular VR headsets. Oculus, Valve, HTC, and even Windows Mixed Reality headsets all now allow you to experience the simulator from an entirely new perspective.

I recently got my hands on a Samsung Odyssey HMD+ Windows Mixed Reality headset so I could try out the experience, and it was truly breathtaking. I took the skies over my hometown of New York City and playing Flight Simulator 2020 in Virtual Reality really felt like piloting an actual airplane.

But just my words won’t do justice as to how real it felt. Watch the video above to see for a hands-on look at the experience, and why it’s so real that you might need a pilot’s license.

Editor’s Note: You might notice a “black bar” effect and some slight lag as I turn my head in certain parts of this video. This black bar isn’t noticeable to me when I had the headset on, it’s just the hardware limit, and the effect of recording the preview of the Windows Mixed Reality feed in the background for this video so you can get the same view that I have through the headset.

The Specs

Before getting into anything, I’ll mention the minimum specs for VR in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. You’ll need to have a PC with at least an Nvidia GTX 1080 or equivalent, 16GB of RAM, 150 GB of free space on an SSD or HDD, as well as Direct X11 installed.

I played on my HP Envy 15, which I previously reviewed. I’m able to get *decent* framerates at 30-40 frames per second on high settings, and beyond that on medium, but your experience might depend on your hardware.

My specs include the following — Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU with 6GB GDDR6 VRAM. 16GB DDR4-2933 SDRAM. and the 6-core Intel Core i7-10750H processor. If you’re hoping to run Flight Sim in Virtual Reality, I suggest you open and run the Windows Mixed Reality Portal to see if your PC is compatible. It will give you a checklist of things, and suggestions on how to improve your PC for maximum VR compatibility. You also can check out the Flight Simulator forums, where people are posting about their setups and what’s working and what’s not.

The initial setup

Launching Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 in virtual reality is a multi-step process. First, I needed to set up my headset through the Windows Mixed Reality portal. From there, once everything is set up, I took my headset off and booted up Microsoft Flight Simulator on my desktop. With the game fully loaded at the menu, I needed to press CTRL+TAB to toggle the simulator into VR mode. This caused my headset to “reboot” and open Flight Sim as an application.

When this happens, I put the headset on, and see the menus in a virtual space. It’s suggested to press the spacebar key on the keyboard to center the headset and the images for the best possible experience. Once in VR, I also suggest pausing the simulator, heading into the graphics settings menu, and going to VR graphics options, and tweaking the settings for your graphics card and your PC. Don’t overload the settings if you know your PC can’t handle VR that well.

Note that Windows Mixed Reality controllers currently aren’t supported by Simulator 2020. I needed to connect my Xbox controller to my PC via Bluetooth and use it for navigation, as well as controlling the airplane. You can also use a flight stick, too, if you have one.

The pre-flight-checks and initial experience

The first time I booted into Flight Simulator in Virtual Reality, my mind was instantly blown away. I felt like I was standing on the runway next to an actual airplane. The Robin Cap10 I was sitting in front of me before my eyes on one of the shorter runways at JFK International Airport. I moved my head left and right, and it was like I was standing on the tarmac next to the airplane getting ready to board it.

But that was just the start. Right away, I switched views to the cockpit mode. I moved my head forward, and back, the simulator moved with me in the game. It knew I was looking closer at the dashboard and it zoomed in for me. I was able to perform pre-flight checks, move forward to check all my gauges, look outside the window at the wings, and even turn my head back and check out the tail of the airplane. The tracking in Windows Mixed Reality headsets is spot-on, despite only using sensors built-in on the headset itself.

As a side note, I want to mention that you can use a keyboard and mouse to touch these gauges and tweak certain settings if need be, too. It would have been great to see support for the WMR controllers, but I can see the technical issues of making that happen.

Anyway, it’s not like the gauges were blurry. The closer I moved my head to the dashboard of the airplane, the more real the gauges looked. I was able to spot the carbon emissions sticker, check the mileage on the airplane, check the buttons, look at the frequency on the radio, and explore the cockpit in all its glory.

The takeoff and flying experience

I thought that seeing the gauges and looking at the airplane on the ground was amazing, but as soon as I started my takeoff roll down the runway at JFK, it got even better. Thanks to spatial audio and the built-in speakers in the Samsung HMD Odyssey + my ears were blessed with the greatness of aviation that is usually only reserved for real pilots.

I heard the tires screeching as they lifted off the runway. I heard the gears in the engine start to turn up as I pumped up the throttle, and I even heard and saw tiny dirt particles hit the windshield as I started climbing. It’s truly a breathtaking experience.

What was even more breathtaking was turning my head and looking out the window. As I slowly pulled back on the analog stick to gain altitude, I felt the sense of speed as the airport was getting smaller under me. I even could see a departing airplane taxi on the runway, too. Even the radio on the dashboard reflected my change in altitudes, and the switch in radio frequencies as my flight got handed off from Kennedy Ground to Kennedy Departure. It doesn’t get more real than this!

The exterior views, and the flight

Just like the main game, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 in VR isn’t just limited to the cockpit view. Once in flight, I switched to the exterior view as I approached some of the tourist sites in New York City after I departed JFK Airport. This experience itself is also something that’s quite unique, too.

In the exterior view, you’ll be placed behind your plane in the flight, and are free to look around by turning your head. You can get a “birds-eye view” of anywhere you’re flying, and look down on the world as if you were in a glass helicopter. I did this when I was playing over New York City’s Central Park, the trees and the water looked so realistic. Even looking down at the West Side and East Side of Manhattan looked real, especially when approaching the MetLife building. It’s like I was a bird flying over my own city. I could make made out the smallest of details.

A great simulator, that shows Windows Mixed Reality at its best

After spending more than a week doing virtual flights in Microsoft Flight Simulator, I must say that this should be the new hallmark game for virtual reality. The way Flight Sim pulls from Bing Maps and the high level of details in the airplanes and environments and the head tracking make for a truly realistic experience. I’ve tried other titles such as Project Cars 2, and Starwars Squadrons, but flight Simulator has the perfect combination of everything to equate for realism.

If your laptop or desktop is capable, I highly suggest you download the game, invest in a Windows Mixed Reality headset or other VR headset, and give the game a go. You won’t regret it, and you won’t need a pilot’s license.

The Windows Insider team came back from the holidays last week with the first Windows 10 Insider build of 2021, which brought an interesting addition to the OS. Select Insiders in the Dev Channel can now see a new shortcut for news and interests the Windows 10 Taskbar, right next to the system tray. It had been a while since we last saw a significant new feature make its way to the Dev channel, but the Windows Insider team could have a lot more to share with Insiders.

Indeed, it has been previously reported that a big Windows 10 redesign codenamed “Sun Valley” could be planned for the Windows 10 21H2 update coming in the second half of 2021. Microsoft’s Panos Panay himself announced last year that the company was “going to accelerate innovation in Windows 10”, and a recent Microsoft job listing teased “a sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows experiences.”

While Microsoft has yet to discuss these design updates in more detail, Zac Bowden from Windows Central shared today a couple of mockups showing new features and UI changes that could be part of this “Sun Valley” redesign effort. The first mockup below represents a rounded Start Menu that would appear as a floating windows above the taskbar.

The second mockup shared by Windows Central represents improvements to the Snap assist view, with Microsoft Edge tabs being separated from app windows. “I’m also told that snap assist will be getting an update to make it more reliable when docking to and from a larger display, now remembering which apps are snapped where instead of forgetting once you connect or disconnect,” Bowden explained.

Bowden also mentioned several other new features and improvements that Microsoft could be planning to deliver as part of the “Sun Valley” update, including a simplified Taskbar inspired by the one on Windows 10X, as well as a new battery usage chart in the Settings app. The Task view area could also welcome a new “dashboard” feature highlighting key information on personal or work/school Microsoft accounts, including recent Office documents and upcoming calendar events.

It remains to be seen if any of the new features described in the report will soon be available for Insider testing. Again, Microsoft has yet to officially discuss this Sun Valley update, and the Windows Insider team keeps saying that new Insider builds and their new features are not tied to a specific release.

Still, the upcoming release of Windows 10X on Chromebook-like devices should be the start of a new era of Windows 10 design. It’s going to be interesting to see if Chief Design Officer Panos Panay will be able to leave his mark on Microsoft’s operating systems, and we hope that the company will implement consistent design guidelines across Windows 10X and the regular Windows 10.

Seems no better way to sell you cloud services and products than to use them yourself. Mary Jo Foley over a ZDNet is reporting Microsoft’s chief technology of Azure Mark Russinovich recently spoke about how the company has followed through on its decade long journey to host its own cloud services on its Azure cloud platform.

“Most of Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, SharePoint Online and Office online, as well as Xbox Live services run primarily on Azure infrastructure today. Mailbox storage for Exchange Online and Outlook.com is also in the process of moving to standard Azure infrastructure.”

Russinovich’s statement comes after some digging on Foley’s part to clarify what of Microsoft’s services were precisely running on Azure after a handful of Microsoft ran blogs claimed “all” of its services were running on the cloud platform back in the summer of 2020.

Aside from invoking confidence in its own product, Microsoft’s move to standardize its Office 365, Xbox Live, and Bing Services onto Azure also serves as both a cost-cutting measure and a way to closely monitor outages, inconsistencies, standards compliance, and bugs.

With that being said, there are still significant outliers that Microsoft needs to migrate over to Azure that include Exchange Online and SharePoint which currently run-on Autopilot.  Much of the day-to-day management of these holdouts can be done via virtual machines or other custom instances of Azure, but the underlying databases and mailboxes servers still need to be ported over.

In the grander picture, however, Microsoft is closer than it’s been in almost ten years to actualizing one of its broader sweeping goals, and the feat is impressive, to say the least. Now we’ll just have to check in on CEO Satya Nadella’s goal of having people “love Windows” is going.

Microsoft corporate vice president of Commercial Management Experiences, Brad Anderson, is leaving the company after 18 years. As noted in a post on ZDNet, Anderson will join Qualtrics as President of Products & Services. Anderson posted about his decision to leave Microsoft in a post on LinkedIn.

“My new role, as President of Products & Services at Qualtrics brings an opportunity to dig in, learn more & contribute to the category of Experience Management (XM) that Qualtrics is defining and building. It also presents an opportunity to return to my hometown in Utah & help accelerate the growth of the tech sector of Silicon Slopes in addition to Seattle.”

Qualtrics shares two co-headquarters, one in Seattle, Washington and another in Provo, Utah, where Anderson will be moving to join Qualtrics. Harv Bhela, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance is rumored to take Anderson’s place. Bhela is another Microsoft veteran, with over 24 years at the company. Anderson will join another former Microsoft employee already working at Qualtrics; Julie Larson-Green left Microsoft in 2017 and now serves as the chief experience officer at Qualtrics. Qualtrics chief executive officer Zig Serafin is another former Microsoft employee.

Microsoft Planner users can now try out a new Smart Backgrounds feature that brings the ability to personalize Planner boards. The company has announced that the feature is currently rolling out to all users in the Planner web experience, allowing users to add custom background images to their plans.

“Smart backgrounds is powered by the same Designer feature that suggests creatively designed templates in PowerPoint. Designer works in the background, trying to match the title of your plan with relevant and unique high-quality background images, like a coffee scene for your Coffee Store plan, a business backdrop for your Online Marketing plan, or a city skyline for your Town Hall Meeting plan,” the company explained.

To try smart backgrounds, you’ll need to click the ellipsis (…) menu and head to “Plan settings.” In Planner settings, select the General tab and choose one of the backgrounds available in the recommendation list. Currently, users can not upload their own images, but we hope that the company will add this capability soon.

Furthermore, the company has also introduced a new Settings UI for Microsoft Planner. The revamped Settings menu is now divided into three different groups, including General, Group, and Notifications. The change makes it easier for users will now be able to find relevant settings. Have you spotted this feature on your PCs? Sound off in the comments down below.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is the latest EA and Respawn Entertainment game title optimized for Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X|S consoles. This optimization update improves Xbox’s Backward Compatibility, increased framerate, and improved dynamic resolution range. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order launched back in November 15, 2019 on Xbox One and other console platforms. Both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S get a better framerate of 60 FPS (up from 45 FPS). However, the Xbox Series S only gets the framerate boost. The Xbox Series X benefits the most from the Jedi Fallen order game optimization update as seen below.

Xbox Series X Performance mode

Framerate has been increased to 60 FPS
Dynamic resolution added in the range of 1080p to 1440p

Xbox Series X Normal mode (non-performance mode)

Postprocessing has been increased to 4K
Dynamic resolution in the range of 1512p to 2160p

The EA Play library is currently available free as part of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, and provides access to over 80 EA games including FIFA 20, Titanfall 2, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, as well as some of EA’s most popular franchises including Battlefield, Mass Effect, and more. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is a great value for just $14.99/month, and new subscribers can still get their first month of subscription for just $1.

Download
QR-Code

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Developer:
Microsoft Corporation

Price:
$1.00

Microsoft is adding a new “Meeting recap” feature to its Teams collaboration platform later this month, according to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Indeed, the feature is currently set to begin rolling out by the end of January and will be available to all Microsoft Teams users in mid-February.

Originally announced in September 2020, this new meeting experience will allow participants or people unable to attend the meeting to access meeting content after it has ended. Microsoft Teams will automatically share the meeting recording, transcript, chat, shared files, and more in the meeting’s details tab.

The recap feature could prove extremely useful for Teams users in learning scenarios, making it easier to find everything they need to catch up instead of contacting the organizer of the meeting. The recaps will be accessible for users in Microsoft Teams and from the meeting event in their Outlook calendar.

In addition to this, Microsoft has also confirmed another important update that is in development for Teams. The company is introducing a new Teams meeting lobby setting to enable meeting organizers to ensure that only Calendar meeting invited users will be allowed to bypass the lobby after a new meeting is scheduled.

The Microsoft 365 roadmap listing for the feature indicates that it’s currently in development and is scheduled to release in February. At launch, the feature will be available for both Production and GCC environments. This is a minor update, but it should help Teams meeting organizers to have greater control over their meetings.

Microsoft may have redesigned its Microsoft Store on Xbox consoles last fall, bringing some speed improvements along the way, but there’s still some room for improvements. Gamers in non-anglocentric markets have been complaining for quite some time that the store listing don’t mention the supported languages for games, but Microsoft seems to have finally listened.

Indeed, some Xbox gamers have noticed that the store listings for some games now include information about supported languages (via Windows Central). Microsoft’s internal studio The Coalition seems to be leading the way, as Gears 5 and Gears Tactics are two Xbox Game Studios titles games that currently provide this information on the Microsoft Store.

To check if other store listings mention supported languages, you’ll need to scroll down to the details section, press the RB button to go to highlights, and then a “Supported Languages” item may or may not appear below. When the information is available, a pop up will reveal supported languages for the game’s interface, audio, and subtitles.

It remains to be seen if more games will add this information going forward, but it’s good to see some improvements on the localization front. With Microsoft aiming to reach 2 billion gamers with Xbox Cloud Gaming, it’s going to be very important for the Microsoft Store to be as exhaustive as possible.

Microsoft Edge Insiders on the Canary channel can now test a new flyout menu that will allow users to access their downloads directly from the toolbar. The improved toolbar experience was first spotted by a Reddit user Leopeva, and it’s apparently available for all Insiders on the Edge Canary channel.

Currently, when Microsoft Edge users click the download option available in the three-dots menu, the browser opens the downloads on a dedicated downloads page. Thanks to the new toolbar experience, Edge Insiders can now add the downloads button to the toolbar that makes it possible to pause and resume a download without having to go to the full page.

In addition, the flyout menu includes a submenu that provides quick access to some download management tools. Users can manage downloads, access download settings, clear all downloads history, and hide the downloads button from the toolbar in that menu.

To enable the feature, head over to the three-dots menu, right-click on the “Downloads,” and select the “Show in toolbar option” from the list. Just like with the favorites menu, history, and Collections bar, users can pin the downloads flyout in a pane alongside the browser.

Microsoft continues to update the Edge Canary channel with new features and capabilities, and the company has recently added a search icon for PDFs. Microsoft Edge will also soon be updated with a new Smart Copy option, PDF improvements, and more.

Microsoft has started rolling out a new Channel calendar app for its Teams desktop client that should make it easier to synchronize with colleagues. The improved calendar experience is rolling out gradually, and it should hit general availability by the end of this month.

New!???? Channel calendar is available now in #MicrosoftTeams!
Access all events in the channel from one place ????️???? pic.twitter.com/bBygsAP3Vu

— Dominic Williamson (@DominicWillit) January 11, 2021

With this feature, users will be able to add a shared calendar as a tab to each Teams channel to make it available for all Team members. They will be able to see scheduled channel meetings and events in a calendar grid view. Microsoft Teams will automatically send a notification to the channel as soon as any user schedules a new meeting. It will appear in the activity feed, and users will be notified if they haven’t turned off the notifications.

To add the calendar app, you will need to click the new tab+ icon at the top of the channel. In the “Add a tab” window, find and add Channel calendar from the list of available apps. Finally, assign a name and click the “Add” button to add it to the Teams channel.

Indeed, the new calendar experience has been one of the popular requests by Teams users, which received around 20,000 votes on the UserVoice forum. It should help to prevent miscommunications among colleagues. While the feature is currently rolling out to commercial tenants, it’s also coming to GCC customers next month.