Starting today, you can stream a free demo of Resident Evil Village from Capcom's website, with no need for a fancy gaming PC, Xbox or PlayStation. The demo is similar to one that's available on other platforms, which allows players to explore parts of the village and castle. This appetizer for one of last year's biggest-selling games is powered by Immersive Stream for Games, a version of Stadia tech that Google is licensing to others.

The demo will work on just about any computer, as well as iOS and Android phones and tablets, as long as the device can handle high-definition video and you have a sturdy enough internet connection (with a download speed of at least 10Mbps). It runs on Chrome on Windows, macOS and Android. On iOS, you can try it on Safari. The resolution tops out at 1080p and there's no HDR mode.

PlayStation DualShock 4 and Xbox One controllers are officially supported, but other peripherals might work. Alternatively, you can use touch controls on mobile or a mouse and keyboard. 

Capcom

As with Stadia's click-to-play trials, there's no need to register to play the demo. It's worth noting that you'll be disconnected after 10 minutes of inactivity. There's no save function, so you'll need to restart from the beginning if you disconnect. You can play as many times as you like and there's no time limit, unlike previous versions of the demo.

Capcom is Google's second partner for Immersive Stream for Games. AT&T started offering its wireless customers free access to Batman: Arkham Asylum last October and Control: Ultimate Edition last month. Capcom seems more of a natural bedfellow, though.

In February, Insider reported that Google was looking to secure deals with Capcom, Peloton and others to build the licensing aspect of its game-streaming business. It was suggested that Capcom might use the tech to stream demos from its website, which turned out to be the case. This could even be a precursor to Capcom running its own game streaming storefront.

In other Resident Evil Village news, Capcom is bringing the game to Mac later this year. It's also working on a version for the upcoming PlayStation VR2 headset.

Google Cloud developer advocate Emma Haruka Iwao and her colleagues once again claim to have calculated Pi to a new record number of digits. Iwao says that the team has calculated the mathematical constant to 100 trillion digital decimal places.

Iwao and her team previously set the record in 2019 when they carried out a calculation to an accuracy of 31.4 trillion digits. The benchmark has been broken a few times since then, including when researchers from a Swiss university calculated Pi to 82.8 trillion digits last year — twice as many as the Google team attained a few years back. Iwao and her team are working with Guinness World Records for official validation of their achievement as a world record.

In a blog post, Iwao wrote that finding as many digits of Pi as possible is a way to measure the progress of compute power. Her job involves showing off what Google Cloud is capable of, so it's not too surprising that Iwao tapped into the power of the platform to perform the calculation. 

In 2019, the calculation (which figured out a third as many digits as the most recent attempt) took 121 days. This time around, the calculation ran for 157 days, 23 hours, 31 minutes and 7.651 seconds, meaning the computers were running more than twice as quickly despite Iwao using "the same tools and techniques." Around 82,000 terabytes of data were processed overall. 

Iwao also notes that reading all 100 trillion digits out loud at a rate of one per second would take more than 3.1 million years. And in case you're wondering, the 100-trillionth decimal place of Pi is 0. 

If you're looking for a new DAW (or digital workstation) for making music, it's worth taking a look at Ableton's latest sale. The company has temporarily dropped the price of all of its software by 25 percent, including Ableton Live 11, which is perhaps the most popular DAW around.

Live 11 Intro (which includes the essentials), is down from $99 to $74. Live 11 Standard, which unlocks all the DAW's features and adds some extras, has dropped from $449 to $337. At the top end, there's the complete integrated studio of Live 11 Suite. That currently costs $562, down from the regular price of $749. The same 25 percent discount applies to packs.

Ableton offers students and teachers up to 40 percent off Live, but it doesn't hold sales like this all too often. If you're not an educator or in school, these are likely among the best deals you'll find on the company's software. The sale runs until June 14th.

Earlier this year, Ableton rolled out the first major update for Live 11. Among the additions was native support for Apple Silicon-powered Macs. That should mean the DAW runs more efficiently on systems with an M1 or M2 chip, in case you have a recent Mac and were on the fence about snagging it.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

The resurgence of Ghostbusters is set to continue with a new animated series that's coming to Netflix. Ghostbusters: Afterlife co-writer and director Jason Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan are heading up the show as executive producers. Sony Pictures Animation is involved as well. Other details remain a mystery for now, including the title, the basics of the plot or and when it will be released.

It seems to be early days for the new project, which will be the third animated Ghostbusters series after The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters. Netflix made the announcement as part of its Geeked Week event. 

Today is also Ghostbusters Day, an annual celebration of the franchise. According to Variety, Reitman and Kenan are expected to announce more projects. A few Ghostbusters games are in the works as well, including Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed and Ghostbusters VR, both of which are set to arrive later this year.

Although there are some major gamingshowcasestaking place this week, there are a few big names missing. One of those is E3, which was for a long time the most important gaming trade show on the calendar. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and some other factors, E3 has had a rocky few years and it isn't going ahead in 2022. However, the group behind the expo, the Entertainment Software Association, plans to bring E3 back in 2023 with both in-person and digital components.

“As much as we love these digital events, and as much as they reach people and we want that global reach, we also know that there’s a really strong desire for people to convene — to be able to connect in person and see each other and talk about what makes games great," Stan Pierre-Louis, CEO and president of the ESA, told The Washington Post.

The ESA has not announced the dates for next year's planned show. However, the event usually takes place in early June. The 2020 edition was scheduled for just a few months after the onset of the pandemic but it and this year's show werecanceled. (E3 did convene in 2021, albeit as an online-only event.)

Even before all of that, there were signs that E3 might be on the outs. For instance, Sony decided not to take part in the 2019 edition. The company instead adopted the Nintendo approach of holding digital showcases under its State of Play banner. Other publishers have shied away from E3 as well. That gives them the chance to take up a bigger share of the gaming news cycle whenever they host their own events.

Microsoft, on the other hand, seems to still be on board the E3 hype train. It was part of last year's virtual E3 and is hosting a showcase around the time this year's edition would have taken place.

Other issues have impacted E3 over the last few years. In 2019, personal details for thousands of journalists, analysts and content creators were leaked in a data breach. A media portal used for last year's all-digital affair reportedly made some folks' personal details visible to anyone who registered.

There's perhaps still a place for E3 though, if it can bring together enough of the gaming industry in 2023. It still has value as a destination for studios, publishers, press and fans to get together, show off or play brand new games and take part in conferences. For indie developers, trade shows are a great opportunity for them to secure publishing deals that can perhaps turn their promising game into a success on the level of Stardew Valley or Undertale.

Waymo and Uber have signed a long-term, strategic partnership to collaborate on long-haul autonomous trucking. They'll blend Waymo's self-driving tech with Uber Freight's network. The idea is to help customers deploy autonomous trucks more efficiently.

Those who buy trucks equipped with the Waymo Driver system will be able to tap into Uber Freight's marketplace technology, meaning they'll be able to deploy vehicles on the latter's network for deliveries. Uber Freight is essentially a version of the regular Uber app designed for shippers, which helps them find truck drivers for on-demand haulage.

Waymo Via — the company's trucking division — plans to earmark billions of miles of goods-only driverless delivery capacity for the Uber Freight network. It will only make that mileage available "when shippers need it most."

The companies will trial the integration on Waymo Via's test fleet at the outset. The timeline for a broader deployment is not clear. The companies say that by letting autonomous systems handle the long-haul aspect of trucking, they foresee a future where drivers will be able to move into short-haul jobs.

Uber and Waymo haven't always been on the same page. In 2017, Waymo owner Alphabet sued Uber over the alleged theft of trade secrets by former employees. The previous year, Uber bought a self-driving truck startup called Otto, which was founded by a number of ex-Alphabet employees, including engineer Anthony Levandowski.

Alphabet claimed Levandowski downloaded more than "14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo's various hardware systems" a few weeks before he quit the company. Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2020 and pardoned the following January by outgoing president Donald Trump.

Uber and Waymo settled the suit in 2018. After the companies resolved their differences, it was reported that Uber was open to the idea of collaborating with Waymo.

This year's Summer Game Fest showcase takes place on Thursday. It's an industry-wide event that will include reveals from a bunch of publishers and studios, but host and producer Geoff Keighley has urged fans not to set their hopes too high in terms of new game announcements.

“What I would say is that a lot of the games we’re going to show you are going to be [already] announced… games are going to show new content to you, like some of the ones I’ve mentioned,” Keighley said in a Twitter Spaces chat, according to VGC. “We’ve got a couple of new game announcements in the show and hopefully some surprises if everything holds. But it definitely is a show that’s primarily focused on stuff that is announced.” Keighley added that it might be best for fans to "definitely manage your expectations in terms of the megaton shocks that you’re expecting."

Still, there's a lot to look forward to. Keighley noted some of the games that will be featured. The stream will include the first full level playthrough of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and a gameplay demo for The Callisto Protocol (a survival horror game from Dead Space creator Glen Schofield's new studio). There will also be news on Gotham Knights and new footage from Cuphead expansion The Delicious Last Course.

Keighley said there will be looks at Xbox and Nintendo exclusives as well. However, he pointed out that Microsoft is likely hanging on to the biggest news for its own showcase, which takes place on Sunday. Nintendo, meanwhile, hasn't confirmed whether its next Direct will take place anytime soon.

The Summer Game Fest showcase will include some guests too, such as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who recently started playing a character in Fortnite. Perhaps we'll learn more about the next video game movie he's working on. The event, meanwhile, is set to run for between 90 minutes and two hours.

Trying to manage expectations is a smart move on Keighley's part. Sony has been doing a similarly good job of keeping conjecture in check ahead of its State of Play streams. While there are always going to be some people who are disappointed by events like this, it's better to have lower expectations and be surprised than get too amped up and get deflated if you don't see a game that excites you.

That's not to say there won't be major reveals. It was at last year's edition of Summer Game Fest that fans got their first look at Elden Ring in two years, along with a release date (which was, inevitably, delayed by a few weeks).

Even if you feel like this year's Summer Game Fest showcase is a bust, there are more than a dozen other gaming events over the next week or so, even without E3 taking place. You're bound to find some games that interest you if you dig a little deeper.

As is tradition, Apple will leave some of its older devices in the dust when it starts rolling out its latest operating systems. When iOS 16 arrives this fall, it will be available for iPhone 8 and later — in other words, all the phones Apple has released since 2017. That means iPhone 6S, iPhone 7 and iPhone SE (first-generation) users won't be able to upgrade to iOS 16.

When it comes to iPadOS 16, Apple will drop support for a couple devices, the iPad Mini 4 and iPad Air 2. Given that the Mini 4 debuted in 2015 and the Air 2 is from all the way back in 2014, it's safe to say those are showing their age. If anything, it's a testament to their staying power that Apple supported them all the way up to iPadOS 15.

You'll need an Apple Watch Series 4 or later to use watchOS 9. Apple Watch Series 3 users were able to install watchOS 7 and watchOS 8, but some features weren't available.

Things get a little more complicated when it comes to macOS Ventura. The following devices will be supported:

• iMac, 2017 and later

• Mac Pro, 2019 and later

• iMac Pro, 2017

• Mac mini, 2018 and later

• MacBook Air, 2018 and later

• MacBook, 2017 and later

• MacBook Pro, 2017 and later

By way of comparison, macOS Monterey is compatible with late 2015 or later iMac, 2017 or later iMac Pro, early 2015 or later MacBook Air, early 2015 or later MacBook Pro, 2013 or later Mac Pro, late 2014 or later Mac mini and early 2016 or later MacBook.

It's always sad to see Apple bid older devices adieu, even though all of the models it will no longer support were all released at least five years ago — the iPad Air 2 and 2013 Mac Pro in particular had a good innings. While folks will still be able to use older models, Apple will surely be hoping that those clinging onto them will upgrade in the near future.

Follow all of the news from WWDC right here!

Apple is getting more serious about gaming on Mac and iPad with the help of its silicon chips. At WWDC, the company showed off upscaling tech along the lines of NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution.

Metal 3 will include support for MetalFX Upscaling. Your Mac will render smaller frames that are less compute-intensive. MetalFX will upscale the visuals and apply temporal anti-aliasing. The idea is to deliver better and more efficient gaming performance with higher framerates than might be possible from pure hardware-driven rendering.

Apple

Resident Evil Village will utilize the tech when that game comes to Mac. Capcom says the game will run at 1080p "effortlessly" on MacBook Air and at 4K on Mac Studio. No Man's Sky will also use MetalFX upscaling when it arrives on Mac and iPad later this year. Grid Legends is on the way to Mac as well.

Apple also announced a fast resource loading API that's designed to minimize loading time, akin to Microsoft's DirectStorage tech. It works by routing directing game data more directly from storage to the CPU. Apple says this will enable games to "easily access high-quality textures and geometry needed to create expansive worlds for realistic and immersive gameplay."

While Apple historically hasn't done a great job with supporting games (there's no native iOS app support for Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming for one thing), the introduction of MetalFX upscaling is a positive move. Getting big-name studios and publishers such as Capcom, EA and Hello Games on board could help turn the tide for Mac as a viable option for gamers. However, broader support for Steam games would be a bigger step in the right direction.

Follow all of the news from WWDC right here!

Apple is at last promising better sleep tracking for Apple Watch as part of watchOS 9. The Sleep app will add a sleep stage function. It will be able to detect the REM, core and deep sleep stages and track those over time. Those who participate in the Apple health research program will be able to submit their sleep stage data to researchers for a new study.

One of the more notable health features for watchOS 9 is that it will show how long a wearer is in a state of atrial fibrillation (AFib) if they have been diagnosed with the condition. The new feature will show the time of day or week that AFib is most active.

You'll receive weekly notifications to help you gain a better insight of AFib frequency. The Health app will show a detailed history, along with indicators of lifestyle factors that may impact the condition, such as exercise, sleep and alcohol intake. You'll be able to download a PDF that includes your aFib history and possible lifestyle factors to share with your healthcare professionals.

Apple Watch's electrocardiogram (ECG) tool can look for signs of an irregular heartbeat or AFib. The US Food and Drug Administration just granted Apple approval last week for an ECG history feature. 

In addition, Apple is introducing a Medications app to help users keep track of when to take their meds.

Developing...

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