The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Feature Focus
by Brett Howse on November 10, 2017 8:00 AM ESTGaming Updates
Microsoft knows that gaming is still a big part of the PC experience, and also that gaming is one of the strongest markets for the PC, so they always dedicate some effort to improving gaming on the PC with each update.
Game Mode
Game Mode was added a while back, which grants exclusive, or priority access, to hardware resources for games that have it enabled. The idea is to provide a more consistent experience for the user, without any work required. Game Mode can now be toggled easily for each game right in the Game Bar interface.
GPU Monitor
For those that love more information, you can now monitor the GPU usage right in task manager, and it provides a surprising amount of detail including video decode, encode, and memory usage. It’s a feature that, when you think about it, is long overdue.
Mixer Updates
For those that want to perform game streaming, Microsoft’s Mixer service has been updated to provide better load times, and when broadcasting, you can now see audio stream sources.
TruePlay Anti-Cheating
The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update also comes with a new anit-cheating API built right into Windows, called TruePlay. Cheating in online games can be a big problem, and often require the developer to put invasive code on the machine, which has its own host of security and privacy concerns. TruePlay is an API available for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games which allow limited interaction between games and the game monitoring system.
This is likely going to be controversial, but TruePlay is an opt-in system for the end user, and TruePlay is not a “block on launch” experience, which means it’s not an all or nothing. You can opt out of TruePlay, and the game can still function, if the developer allows it.
A game with TruePlay runs in a protected process, which inhibits many common cheating attacks. In addition, Windows will monitor the gaming process for behaviours and manipulations that indicate cheating, and alerts will be generated for the game to notify it of this. Privacy is going to be a big concern here, and data is only shared with developers of the game after “processing has deteremined cheating is likely to have occurred” to quote MSDN.
Being opt-in by the user is the right play here, since this can be invasive, but for UWP games it should be a better situation than the developer writing their own anti-cheating code, which could easily have far more privacy and security concerns than a system built into Windows.
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Hurr Durr - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Uninstall the calculator.Lunaria - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
The one that used to crash the explorer/windows back in the day? Fun times, couldn't believe it was even possible.mkozakewich - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
"Apple would be brining iTunes..."Mmm, musical pickles.
I've been waiting for F11 support in Edge ever since it came out! Overall, I've liked what they were doing with it, but I could never use it seriously since I always browse full-screen.
pjcamp - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
I find exactly one irritating thing about Windows 10 -- the inability to pin a live tile to the desktop. Reminders that are hidden in the Start Menu don't help as I then need a reminder to look at the reminders. This has been a major irritant ever since Microsoft killed off gadgets. There are third party add ons but they tend to have a large system impact.acochrane - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
If not for the need of Powerpoint I could do all my work in linux, where updates are still optional, vulnerabilities are easy to mitigate with iptables and source code is editable.I even get my minecrafting done in linux.
Powerpoint is Microsoft's last bastion of windows requirement.
Can I have Windows xp back?
navair2 - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
Lol...I'll take Xp back, but I've gotten used to 64 bit addressing. Let's take Xp Professional then. Meanwhile, I'm still loving good old stable Win7,and if MS jacks with me, I'll simply slide over to Linux full time.dcaxax - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
Win10 is still a horrible mess and every update brings more useless than useful features to add to the mess.Oh good, we have 3D creation tools for the 0.0001% of people who can use them, but we still have messed up settings, distributed between control panel and the new settings app, we still have 'modern' apps that are nowhere near as as flexible as their Win32 equivalents, they have a whole slew of new bugs that are very hard to resolve (you can no longer fix them with a registry hack) and the update broke of other stuff, like disappearing modern apps, which Microsoft is investigating.
Good thing they have the largest beta testing program, I shudder to think what we'd get otherwise...
And on top of this you have the ugliest user interface of any OS ever. Seriously, its worse than iOS, MacOS, Android, even linux looks better. So this update was supposed to bring 'fluent design'? Guess what I can't see it anywhere so that means it made 0% difference.
I miss my Macbook so much right now....
Beaver M. - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
Indeed. Its time for an alternative that even can make gamers happy. MS is finished, because they want to force this crap down our throats every 6 months and just mess everything up and ignore teh real problems and wishes.keta - Wednesday, November 15, 2017 - link
Has anyone tried using the new eye-tracking feature with a Tobii? I'm curious as to how the mouse function works in practice.enealDC - Friday, November 17, 2017 - link
I'm curious -- if you use the wireless display adapter, are you having trouble with it after upgrade? I cannot connect to my display adapter anymore