Christie's uses AR to place artwork in your surroundings using iOS app

Fine art auction house Christie's is using the power of Augmented Reality to showcase upcoming artworks and digitally project them into your homes or offices. Imagine having Leonardo Da Vinci's $450,000.000 'Salvator Mundi' hanging over your mantle, you get the idea. Christie's is enabling certain lots to be AR enabled via their iOS app and is focusing on its Asian Contemporary and Chinese Contemporary Ink collections which are included in an upcoming collections. This is a superb use of AR technology using tools like iPhones and iPads which most people already have. 

Source: Christie's

Take advantage of Instagram filters without posting a photo

Pexels

Sometimes you don’t want to tinker around with a photo and just put a filter on it to add that bit of drama. And sure there are many photo editing apps out there but sometimes you just want to slap on the Gingham filter on your photo for that nostalgic, retro feel. How do you get the effect without having to post on Instagram? How to Geek suggests turning your phone into airplane mode just when you’re about to post.

Go through the process of editing your photo and once you’re ready to hit share, make sure your phone is in airplane mode. This will prompt Instagram to try and upload photo but it won’t be able to. At the same time, the image will be saved to your camera roll. And then you can just cancel the upload before you turn your phone’s cellular capabilities back on.

Source: Lifehacker

Tesla sets a competitive price for its electric Semi

After unveiling its Semi electric truck last week, Tesla just announced the estimated price for the trucks. The 300-mile version gets a US$150,000 (around CA$190,000) price tag, while the 500-mile model comes in at $180,000 (close to $230,000). Both are said to be lower than what pundits predicted it would be. As Engadget points out, the 500-mile model will be around $60,000 more than a regular diesel-powered semi-truck but in the long run it’ll cost 20 percent less to run, putting savings over a million miles at around $250,000. Critics are wondering how Tesla is able to bring the price down. But perhaps they worked out some new technology to make this work.

The Tesla Semi introduces features like Enhanced Autopilot (automatic emergency braking, automatic lane keeping and lane departure warning) to improve safety and jackknife protection, sensors, and cameras to help reduce blind spots. It’ll have faster acceleration to make climbing hills and the like an easier thing. But some truckers aren’t completely sold on the Semi. One trucker named Jonathon Ramsey wondered about visibility with the Semi given the lack of mirrors and center pilot position. Ramsey also points out that brakes should’ve been more of the focus than acceleration. It isn’t keeping away interested buyers, though. Canadian grocery chain Loblaws is one of the companies who have already placed a big order for them.

EA starts addressing ‘Need for Speed: Payback’ issues, begins with loot box complaints

Electronic Arts has been dealing with loot box-related issues lately. One is with Star Wars: Battlefront II and another is the topic of this story Need for Speed: Payback. The whole pay-to-win progression has been one of the big complaints about the game—that and some technical issues that have left gameplay a bit of a mess. Thankfully developer Ghost Games is working on both problems.

Ghost has started working on the loot box issue first to make it feel less like you need to pay real money to buy these boxes and advance in the game. The developer cut down things like how long it takes to upgrade parts in tune-up shops, which now takes 10 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Money and reputation get larger amounts, even for those who finish outside of first place. What Ghost is still working on are the game stability and performance issues. The game developer isn’t specifying a date but says the patch will arrive “soon.” It’ll bring with it changes to the parts the tune-up shop offers as well as better offerings from winning events.