Marvel's superheroes are about to get a bit bigger on your TV. Disney+ announced today that it's adding an expanded IMAX aspect ratio for 13 Marvel titles, including Shang-Chi and Black Panther, on November 12th (AKA "Disney+ Day"). The 1.90:1 IMAX aspect ratio will look up to 26 percent taller than the typical 2.35:1 widescreen format in Marvel films, so those annoying black bars will almost disappear while you're watching scenes shot in IMAX. (You'll still see some slight bars, though, as the IMAX format doesn't completely fill 16x9 widescreen TVs.)

Disney

Before this Disney+ partnership, IMAX and DTS brought the "IMAX Enhanced" home viewing format to a handful of TV streaming apps, like Sony's Bravia Core. IMAX-ified films will have a prominent label on their Disney+ screens, and you'll also be able to launch the standard widescreen version if you prefer. Physical Blu-ray collectors are already used to shifting IMAX aspect ratios in some films, most notably The Dark Knight, Tenet and Mission Impossible: Fallout, but streaming films have typically lost on this perk.

The expanded aspect ratio should give Marvel's action sequences more room to pop on your TV, and it's a feature Disney+ can lord over its streaming competitors. Technically, IMAX Enhanced isn't delivering the large film format's true aspect ratio, which is more square. But, as we saw with Zack Snyder's Justice League, that leads to enormous black bars on the sides of your TV. It's also worth noting that we won't see IMAX versions of The Avengers and Ant-Man, as those are the rare Marvel films that used the TV-filling 1.85:1 aspect ratio (a choice made to convey a better sense of height).

Looking ahead, IMAX Enhanced will also bring immersive DTS sound to Disney+, a competing option to the more ubiquitous Dolby Atmos format. Representatives from all of the companies involved tell us that IMAX Enhanced films will also support Dolby Vision, HDR10, 4K (naturally) and Dolby Atmos sound.

Here are all the IMAX Enhanced films arriving on Disney+ on November 12th:

• Ant-Man and the Wasp

• Avengers: Infinity War

• Avengers: Endgame

• Black Panther

• Black Widow

• Captain America: Civil War

• Captain Marvel

• Doctor Strange

• Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2

• Iron Man

• Thor Ragnarok

• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Marvel's superheroes are about to get a bit bigger on your TV. Disney+ announced today that it's adding an expanded IMAX aspect ratio for 13 Marvel titles, including Shang-Chi and Black Panther, on November 12th (AKA "Disney+ Day"). The 1.90:1 IMAX aspect ratio will look up to 26 percent taller than the typical 2.35:1 widescreen format in Marvel films, so those annoying black bars will almost disappear while you're watching scenes shot in IMAX. (You'll still see some slight bars, though, as the IMAX format doesn't completely fill 16x9 widescreen TVs.)

Disney

Before this Disney+ partnership, IMAX and DTS brought the "IMAX Enhanced" home viewing format to a handful of TV streaming apps, like Sony's Bravia Core. IMAX-ified films will have a prominent label on their Disney+ screens, and you'll also be able to launch the standard widescreen version if you prefer. Physical Blu-ray collectors are already used to shifting IMAX aspect ratios in some films, most notably The Dark Knight, Tenet and Mission Impossible: Fallout, but streaming films have typically lost on this perk.

The expanded aspect ratio should give Marvel's action sequences more room to pop on your TV, and it's a feature Disney+ can lord over its streaming competitors. Technically, IMAX Enhanced isn't delivering the large film format's true aspect ratio, which is more square. But, as we saw with Zack Snyder's Justice League, that leads to enormous black bars on the sides of your TV. It's also worth noting that we won't see IMAX versions of The Avengers and Ant-Man, as those are the rare Marvel films that used the TV-filling 1.85:1 aspect ratio (a choice made to convey a better sense of height).

Looking ahead, IMAX Enhanced will also bring immersive DTS sound to Disney+, a competing option to the more ubiquitous Dolby Atmos format. Representatives from all of the companies involved tell us that IMAX Enhanced films will also support Dolby Vision, HDR10, 4K (naturally) and Dolby Atmos sound.

Here are all the IMAX Enhanced films arriving on Disney+ on November 12th:

• Ant-Man and the Wasp

• Avengers: Infinity War

• Avengers: Endgame

• Black Panther

• Black Widow

• Captain America: Civil War

• Captain Marvel

• Doctor Strange

• Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2

• Iron Man

• Thor Ragnarok

• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Dune is a film filled with gorgeous vistas from alien planets; skyscraper-sized spaceships; and some of the most beautiful actors working today. It's a joy to watch, especially on the big screen. But there's also an undersung element that ties everything together: sound design. It practically breathes life to the film — so much so that it makes Dune's wing-flapping ornithopter ships seem surprisingly real. The key to that magic, according to sound designers Theo Green and Mark Mangini, was a focus on capturing and using organic sounds, rather than fantastical digital creations.

Working together with Dune's director, Denis Villeneuve, the pair aimed to make "a real-sounding science-fiction film with things we've clearly never seen and heard before," Mangini said in an interview with Engadget."[It was] almost as if you put out a microphone and captured sounds as if those things actually existed. Everything we did ... is an outgrowth of that overarching philosophy to design a soundtrack for two hours and forty minutes that felt organic, as if we were [making] a documentary film."

That philosophy was essential to crafting the Bene Gesserit voice, a seemingly supernatural ability that allows members of Dune's religious order to control others. Think of it like the Jedi mind trick (Star Wars owes an absolute ton to Dune, don't forget). But instead of a hypnotic wave of the hand, the sound of Dune's voice is like a simultaneous kick to the gut and punch to the face. If you were somehow dozing off while the film's hero, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), tests his budding Bene Gesserit powers, you'd be easily jolted awake.

To make that otherworldly voice a reality, Green credits three elements. There's the voice actor Jean Gilpin, who he says is “brilliant” at crafting witchy and ancestral voices. The sound designers also recorded Dune's actors saying their lines several different ways, which they played back through a subwoofer and recorded the final output. That's an age-old technique known as "worldizing," or the act of recording audio that's being played back through speakers in a physical space.

Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures

The final component of the voice is the simplest: whenever a character starts to use that technique, the other sounds in the world fade away. In that early scene with Paul Atreides, we go from hearing the sounds of birds in the morning and a far-off thunderstorm to silence. That's an innately eerie effect that draws us into the interior world of the Bene Gesserit's powers: As Frank Herbert described it, they're calling on their ancestors and using advanced psychological techniques to manipulate others.

Green and Mangini went similarly old-school when designing the sound of Dune's ornithopter ships. They're the equivalent of helicopters in the film's universe, but they sound more like gigantic insects. To achieve that, Mangini says they combined the sounds of a large purring cat, a tent-strap flapping in high-velocity wind, and the fluttering wings of a large beetle. They weren't working from pre-existing sound libraries, either. Green had to bring a beetle into a quiet room and somehow get a decent recording.

Warner Bros.

All of that was just for the sounds of the ornithopters’ wings. To craft their propulsion system, the duo took recordings of beehives and modulated them to sound like RPMs revving up in a car's engine. The shifting of the ship's wings also came from an unlikely source: Mangini's Chevy Volt.

Once their work on Dune was over, the sound designers counted 3,200 new sounds that they developed for the film. Only three or four of them started out as electronic or synthetic sounds, Mangini says. That hearkens back to the way Villeneuve has approached visual effects in Dune and his earlier genre films: Go real whenever possible. For the sound designers, that push for authenticity also led to some inventive techniques. The gaping maw of Dune's enormous sandworms, for example, started out as the sound of Mangini half-swallowing a microphone.

Warner Bros.

Green likens the use of organic sounds as a way to avoid the "uncanny valley" that plagues some visual effects. Our eyes know when certain things look fake, and that takes us out of the reality of the film. "I think [the uncanny valley] is in sound," he said. "It's those tiny complexities and tiny nuances that you only get from an organically sourced thing that sells something as being real."

This week, Devindra and Engadget’s Jessica Conditt dive into Facebook’s big metaverse moves. Is it more than a name change? Is Meta a smart bet on where the future of computing is going? Also, Devindra and producer Ben chat about the Google Wave-like additions to Microsoft Office, and Samsung’s jeans for the Z Flip 3.

Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

Subscribe!

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Topics

• Facebook / Meta’s big metaverse moment – 1:19

• Microsoft announces Loop collaboration tool at Ignite – 33:29

• In-browser video editing and audio recording for Office – 42:17

• Ford electrified its classic F-100 as a concept car – 46:02

• Samsung releases jeans with a pocket specifically for the Galaxy Z Flip 3 – 51:26

• Working on – 56:28

• Picks – 58:06

Video livestream

Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Jessica Conditt
Producer: Ben Ellman
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos,Luke Brooks
Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Kyle Maack
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

Tesla is preparing for a world where your driver profile can follow you across different cars, be it your personal EV or a rental. The car maker has added a Cloud Profiles section in its latest software release, which points to an "Enable Vehicle Sync" option for backing up driver profiles, Tesla Software Updates reports. The news isn't a huge surprise, as Elon Musk previously said cloud-synced profiles were on the way. 

For a tech-focused car company like Tesla, giving its customers a simple way to bring their settings to multiple vehicles simply makes sense. That's particularly true after Hertz announced it would be buying 100,000 Teslas for its rental fleet. Though Musk was quick to point out that order hasn't been placed yet, it's not hard to imagine a world where anyone can easily rent a Tesla. They'd be easier to maintain than gas-powered cars, and the Model 3 is already cheaper than many luxury vehicles. 

And sure, for the truly privileged, cloud profiles could also make it easier to synchronize settings across multiple vehicles. According to Tesla Software Updates, synced settings include your display brightness, Autopilot and navigation options. It'd also be helpful to have your Stopping Mode synchronized, as that seriously changes how Tesla's braking functions.

Meta may be grabbing most of the metaverse headlines for now, but it's far from the only company exploring how we can experience virtual events across a variety of devices. Microsoft gave us a glimpse of its vision earlier this year with Mesh, a platform for virtual meetings that can take place across HoloLens 2, mixed reality headsets, computers and smartphones. It'll be a while before we're stepping into meetings as holographic projections, though, so Microsoft is announcing something a bit more grounded: Mesh for Teams.

The pitch, as you'd expect, combines the virtual environments and personas that Mesh delivers with Teams' established workplace collaboration. Instead of hopping on a Teams meeting with your webcam, for example, you could pop up as a customized avatar that talks and animates along with your voice. Eventually, Microsoft plans to animate your avatar by following your face and movements with your webcam, something that should get even better as you step up to devices with more microphones, cameras and sensors like the HoloLens 2.

Microsoft

It's all about delivering that elusive sense of "presence," the feeling that you're right beside your colleagues virtually. And while it may seem silly at first, Mesh for Teams could be a huge step forward for people who don't always feel comfortable on webcams. After all, there are plenty of times, like when you're working early in pajamas, or covered in your kids' lunch mess, where you may be working but not exactly camera ready.

In addition to avatars, Mesh for Teams will also include pre-built immersive spaces to hang out virtually. That could let groups create a customized meeting space, much like an actual office. There's also the potential for those spaces to replicate hanging out in an office kitchen or water cooler. That seems a bit more fanciful, but it makes sense to experiment with virtual spaces. Having a virtual coffee chat with your avatar could end up being less stressful than flipping on your camera. Microsoft says companies will eventually be able to design spaces themselves, allowing them to reflect their actual offices.

Microsoft

Mesh for Teams will start rolling out in 2022. Microsoft isn't giving up on its more expansive Mesh vision though: companies can still use that platform to create complex 3D environments, which workers can access through a variety of devices.

Alex Kipman, the Microsoft technical fellow who spearheaded the Kinect and HoloLens, originally pitched Mesh as a way for first-line workers to remotely collaborate on complex 3D models. Mesh for Teams boils that idea down for the typical knowledge worker, the sort of person who spends most of their day at a desk hopping between meetings, emails and office apps. It may not seem as exciting as Meta's pitch for a metaverse filled with multiplayer games and virtual events, but for many people, it's a far more useful way of thinking of a more connected internet.

Microsoft Loop, a new Office collaboration app announced today, takes the company's Fluid Framework vision one step further. You might remember that technology from Microsoft's recent developer events: It's a way to collaborate on specific chunks of content, say a table or chart, synchronized across multiple Office apps. A table you create in Outlook, for example, would instantly update if someone plugs it into a Word document and adds new information. Up until now, we've only seen that implemented in Office online as a sort of test. Microsoft Loop is a far bigger bet on the future of document collaboration.

Microsoft

Like Fluid Framework, one of the core parts of the new app are Loop Components, which Microsoft calls "atomic units of productivity." They can include anything from as a list to a complex Dynamics 365 project, all of which will stay in sync when they're deployed in Office apps. You can organize your Components in Loop Pages, a new type of document that can also include files and links. Think of them like unstructured Word documents (or perhaps more like how people typically use Google Docs).

Finally, there are Loop Workspaces, a way to view components and pages related to specific projects. According to Microsoft, "Workspaces make it easy for you to catch up on what everyone is working on, react to others’ ideas, or track progress toward shared goals."

If you're getting serious Google Wave vibes from all of this, you're not alone. But Microsoft Loop sounds a bit more focused than that failed attempt at team collaboration. For one, the core idea of Fluid Framework makes sense. Now that we're all working across multiple documents online, it makes sense to have a way to synchronize elements within those files. Wave felt like a solution in search of a problem, whereas Microsoft Loop, despite its seeming complexity, addresses a growing problem many office workers face today.

Microsoft says it'll share more about Loop in the upcoming months. Until then, though, you can expect to see Loop components coming to Teams, Outlook, OneNote and other Microsoft 365 apps later this month.

It’s been a busy week! For our special 100th episode, Cherlynn and Devindra dive into their MacBook Pro and Pixel 6 reviews, answer audience questions, and they chat with Engadget’s Karissa Bell about what we’ve learned from the Facebook Papers. (Unfortunately, this episode was recorded before Facebook renamed itself to Meta, but we’ll be chatting about all of that next week!)

Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

Subscribe!

• iTunes

• Spotify

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Topics

• 100 Episodes! Livestream Q&A – 1:30

• MacBook Pro 14” and 16” review – 16:20

• AirPods Gen 3 review – 25:20

• Pixel 6 review – 26:31

• The Facebook Papers continue the fiasco – 43:14

• iOS 15.1 with SharePlay is out – 58:22

• Android releases version 12L for tablets – 1:02:29

• Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake hybrid chips are a big strike against AMD – 1:07:46

• Sony's Xperia Pro-I – 1:14:36

• Dune Part II was confirmed – 1:19:40

• Working on – 1:22:04

• Pop culture picks – 1:24:15

Video livestream

Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Karissa Bell
Producer: Ben Ellman
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos,Luke Brooks
Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Kyle Maack
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

Oculus Quest 2 users will see a new living space: Horizon Home, a more social version of the virtual living room that pops up when you slip on your headset. Instead of just being a pretty and sterile virtual environment, you'll be able to invite friends to hang out in your Horizon Home space. The idea is that you'll be able to do things together, like dive into VR videos or play multiplayer games. Eventually, you'll be able to build and customize your Horizon Home space too. It's all part of the company's drive to focus on the metaverse, something Mark Zuckerberg talked about at length during today's Facebook Connect conference.

For the first time, Facebook is also opening the Oculus Store to 2D apps like Slack and Dropbox. You'll be able to access them from within Horizon Home, so you won't have to take off your headset to keep tabs on your work chat. And of course, there will be apps for Facebook and Instagram as well.

As part of its broad vision of becoming a metaverse-focused company, Facebook announced Polar, a free iOS app that makes it easy for just about anyone to create AR filters, effects and 3D objects. Think of it like an easy-to-use implementation of the company's Spark AR platform for developers. The goal is to give creators a simple tool to design custom AR effects — perhaps glowing demonic eyes, or 3D text of your personal hashtag or slogan — that they can deploy across the web, or share with their followers.   

The company plans to launch a closed beta program later this year, so it'll likely be a while before it's open to everyone. But if Facebook wants the metaverse to thrive, it'll need to loop in creators to help make some meme-worthy content. Let's just hope there's also a way to pay people for this free labor.