VW ramps up R&D on autonomous driving vehicles

In case you haven't noticed VW is aggressively positioning itself as a premier electrified vehicle proponent with the recent release of its I.D.4 EV. The company is also doubling-down on autonomous driving technology, which goes hand in hand with smart and zero-emissions platforms. The Autonomous Driving Component will be first seen in commercial vehicles, however, rather than consumer cars and SUVs.

“With the confirmation of the group’s supervisory board for our Autonomous Driving R&D program, we are setting the course for the future of mobility. Autonomous, electric driving will make an important contribution to urban mobility and road safety. Our vehicles are the logical first choice to apply such systems to", explains Carsten Intra, CEO of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, after today's Supervisory Board meeting of the Volkswagen Group.

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Microsoft boosting Teams features for work-from-home users

Microsoft Teams has become a vital tool for many remote workers. The collaboration and video calling suite of tools has continously evolved and now gets even more useful for those who spenf the majority of their working lives tethered to their PCs.

Teams can be used to create interactive webinars for up to 1,000 attendees, and it will support view-only webinars with up to 20,000 attendees later this month.  Microsoft also announced that a new feature, PowerPoint Live, is also generally available in Teams, combining slides, notes, and meeting chat in a single view. This makes it easier to manage presentations and other collaboration windows from a single interface.

Lastly, a Dynamic view for Teams meetings feature is touted as enabling video conferences even more engaging for attendees by dynamically focusing on various components of a meeting,. A new Presenter mode is also coming soon and will allow meeting organizers to use three different modes to display their content next to their video feed.

OnePlus event announcement for Mar. 8 teases 'moonshot' photo

Source: OnePlus

OnePlus is all set to announce its new flagship next week on March 8. Expected to be called the OnePlus 9 series, the teaser site features a photo of the moon and the words "Something new is on the horizon." 

The Verge mentioned the picture looks quite similar to the famous Earthrise photograph of the Apollo 8 mission, which was shot with a Hasselblad camera. The significance of that is that OnePlus is reportedly working with the 180-year-old Swedish camera maker for its upcoming phones.

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Google Pixel 4, 4 XL to get better AR capabilities with dual camera support

If you like playing around with Google's augmented reality animals in Search, these virtual creatures might look more realistic on Pixel 4 and 4 XL devices soon. The Google Play Services for AR app has been updated with "Dual camera stereo depth on supported devices." This app is instrumental for unlocking the AR experiences built with Google's ARCore SDK. The two Pixel devices are listed to get the dual camera support upgrade coming out in the next few weeks.

This update means that ARCore will get better depth perception with two cameras, meaning more realistic placements for the AR objects. Google hasn't mentioned when it will be coming to other devices.

Source: Engadget