Month: May 2022

Tesla’s resistance to adding CarPlay is no secret, and there’s absolutely no indication it’s something the company is working on adding. We covered an alternative that allowed CarPlay to be added to Tesla vehicles earlier this year. Now it is available to anyone, provided they are willing to go through major hurdles.

There are also some third-party options. For more information, see below.

Use CarPlay with your Tesla… type of

Developer Michal Gapinski has been working on this project for a long time. He shared a first look at the efforts earlier this year, showing how features like steering wheel controls, Apple Music support, and more were already supported. Gapinski’s latest update on the project shows how far it’s come, and it’s now available for you to try.

This hacky workaround is driven by a Raspberry Pi running a custom version of Android; the full suite of hardware includes another Raspberry Pi running Linux, which handles the video and networking capabilities. To connect two boards, you’ll need an Ethernet and micro-HDMI cable.

Gapinski notes that you have some additional hardware to improve your set-up:

• Radiators for Raspberry Pi – The boards need some cooling
• Open housing for two Raspberry Pi computers – Makes cable management easy, allows all the hardware to fit into the center console
• CarlinKit CPC200-Autokit, CPC200-CCPA – If you intend to use wireless CarPlay or Android Auto, for wireless Android Auto order the new model: CPC200-CCPA

Once you have all of the hardware, the actual software experience of using CarPlay is powered by the in-car browser that’s available on Tesla cars. You connect to the Raspberry Pi using the browser, then load up the CarPlay interface right on the Tesla’s display (via Tesla North).

Despite running in the Tesla browser, the CarPlay experience is fully functional. CarPlay apps such as Apple Music, Google Maps and Google Maps can be used. To control the playback, you can use the button on the steering wheel to adjust the volume and enjoy the entire experience as you drive.

You can get started with this hacky CarPlay and Tesla workaround by heading to Gapinski’s website right here. Although it is not an “easy download and run in minutes” option, Tesla refuses to allow native CarPlay support.

A better option might be …

However, the future could hold a simpler “plug-and-play” method of bringing CarPlay into your Tesla. Alpine is one of the most popular companies that makes aftermarket head units with wired and wireless CarPlay support – the company offers a wide selection of head units with CarPlay support, but none of them are designed for Tesla vehicles.

That being said, an Alpine spokesperson confirmed to 9to5Mac that the company is actively working on solutions for Tesla cars that could bring CarPlay support. More details are unclear, but the company currently has its Alpine F#1 Status audio system running in a 2018 Tesla Model S, and is looking for more EV integration options.

9to5Mac’s Take (and other options)

With this Raspberry Pi system and efforts from companies like Alpine, it’s clear that most users aren’t going to let Tesla’s refusal to add native CarPlay support stop them. This Intellidash Pro standalone unit with wireless CarPlay support is one of the most popular.

The Intellidash Pro (full-review) attaches to the dash of your vehicle and provides the CarPlay experience regardless of whether it has a head unit. There are even other solutions designed specifically for Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y cars with displays that go behind the steering wheel where you’d usually find a traditional instrument cluster.

It seems unlikely that Tesla itself will ever cave in and offer native CarPlay support in its vehicles. Tesla is determined to control the whole in-car experience. Many owners have requested CarPlay support. Notably, Tesla doesn’t even support Apple Music integration, despite offering integration with Spotify and TIDAL services.

Code found within Tesla’s operating system indicated that it was, at one point, working on Apple Music integration. That integration, however, has not yet actually come to fruition.

Apex Legends season 13, “Saviors” launches Tuesday on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. On Monday, Respawn Entertainment dropped its final preview trailer, showcasing what players can unlock in another 100-level battle pass that goes live with the new season.

The next pass includes Legendary skins for heroes Fuse and Bloodhound, plus the CAR submachine gun; Epic sets for Pathfinder, Mad Maggie, and new hero Newcastle, plus reactive skins for the Spitfire light machine gun. New skydiving emotes are also available.

Apex Legends‘ official website has much more on what’s inside, including a character-by-character breakdown.

For those playing free, everyone can earn, by playing and leveling up, a Crypto character skin, seven Apex Packs, 12 weapon skins, three loading screens, trackers for all Legends, two Music Packs, 300 Apex Coins, and a Season Badge.

The Battle Pass unlocking premium content is 950 Apex Coins (1,000 Apex Coins, the smallest bundle sold in the game, is $9.99). A Premium Battle Bass Bundle, which unlocks the next 25 levels (from wherever the player is in the pass, currently) is 2,800 Apex Coins. The game sells a 2,000 Apex Coin bundle for $19. 99 that, paired with the 1,000 Coin bundle, makes the effective price $29.99.

Duke Nukem Forever still will not die.

A leaker claiming to have a build of Duke Nukem Forever similar to one shown at E3 2001 posted screenshots and a video of the game early Monday, and the creator of the one-time cornerstone of first-person shooter gaming, producer George Broussard, says it looks authentic.

The leaker — “x0r,” who posted their findings to 4chan (as first spied by fansite Duke4.net) — says they’ll release that build in June. Broussard cautions that this build is only a “smattering” of test levels. DNF fans need to temper their expectations.

In the clip, Duke blasts his way through a burning, yet dimly lit strip club, encountering minimal resistance as he goes. The SWAT police return fire and Duke bursts through their bodies with alien tendrils after he blows them out. It is modern and sleekest, with a “ego” meter that functions as a shield against damage.

The leaker — again posting on 4chan — claims that “almost every chapter is present in some form” of this build. “A huge chunk is playable, a huge chunk is block-outs with no enemies.” They say they will release the game’s source code with instructions for compiling it. This build of Duke Nukem Forever was made in Unreal Engine. As in, the first Unreal Engine.

Duke Nukem Forever, the sequel to 1996’s landmark Duke Nukem 3D, was first announced in development in 1997, originally using Quake 2‘s engine. But developers switched to Unreal soon after E3 1998, one of several changes and feature creeps that would prolong Duke Nukem Forever‘s development for another 13 years.

3D Realms, the game’s original studio, showed footage of the game at E3 2001, partly to placate fans who were worried about its lengthy development. But it would continue to drag on, and 3D Realms and publisher Take-Two Interactive came into increasing conflict over a game that Broussard and co-creator Scott Miller were financing themselves, which meant their publisher had no deadline to enforce or launch window to market.

Take-Two sued 3D Realms in 2009 over the studio’s failure to complete Duke Nukem Forever. Gearbox Software then acquired the Duke Nukem IP in 2010, in what it would later call a favor to 3D Realms to help it out of its legal problems. Gearbox finished and launched Duke Nukem Forever in 2011, for PlayStation 3, Windows PC, and Xbox 360. Although it was not a success, Take-Two stated that the game eventually turned a profit.

Even if it added no new tracks, no new modes of play, F1 22 was always going to be a bear for the developers at Codemasters. The new regulations that govern the engines and fuel mixtures of the cars and aerodynamics packages has completely changed the order in which Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull are ranked after the four actual races. Lee Mather is responsible for giving Formula One enthusiasts a realistic game, that matches viewer expectations and responds to commentators.

” We have less time understanding the performance order and nuances of each team,” Mather, Polygon’s creative director for the game, stated in an interview. “It’s something we’ve always really focused on — which [cars] were good under braking, which had good traction, which cars were particularly good in the wet, and which engines were strong at a certain type of track. All of these things were well understood. Now it’s all new, and it’s all learning.”

They’re not flying completely in the dark, Mather noted. Codemasters still gets data from all 10 racing teams with each session they run, and the developers will infuse their game’s handling model with it through the Canadian Grand Prix, the last race before F1 22‘s July 1 launch (June 28 for those who pre-order its Champions Edition). In a preview build made available over the past week, I felt out a car that, with the difficulty settings that I used in F1 2021, drove consistently and predictably on standard racing setups — but the game made it clear that finding the sweet spot on the rear wing will be the key to unlocking lap times in the leaderboards’ top 20%.

This stands to reason; in the new rules, the F1 car rides lower and wider, but the rear wing that supplies downforce and traction to the drive axle is also lower, relative to the rest of the chassis, than in last year’s car. F1’s new cars are more dedicated to dispersing airflow and making it easier on trailing cars to overtake opponents, as that creates more competitive racing. It takes a good while to see this manifest in the preview build of F1 22.

The four tracks — Imola and Silverstone as well as Austria’s Red Bull Ring and Miami International Autodrome round Hard Rock Stadium — do not require drivers to tiptoe around corners and only use the brakes when there is straight-line traction. Still, even with the “higher downforce” stock setup, I felt so much more confident coming out of Imola’s infamous Acqua Minerale turn — until I saw that I’d qualified in last place by more than two seconds against the difficulty I usually ran in F1 2021 (95 to 97, out of 110). The bottom line is that serious racers need to expect to spend lots of time in Time Trial mode testing out their setups before they move into career mode.

Getting the new cars’ handling right — while making it approachable, for varying levels of interest and skill — is only part of the picture, Mather said. Though F1 22 only has one new track, Miami, several others have changed, most notably Australia’s Albert Park Circuit, which raced three weeks ago and had a Drag Reduction System zone — where cars can open their rear wings for even greater straight-line speed — removed the day before qualifying. Mather stated that it doesn’t matter if the DRS zone is being changed or a chicane needs to be smoothed out. Codemasters AI must go back to retrain all CPU drivers.

“The AI will come around that track and they’ll hit a DRS zone that they weren’t expecting,” Mather said as an example. “They’ll arrive at the next corner 15 to 20 kilometers [per hour] faster than they were expecting. If I arrived at that corner 15 to 20 kph too fast, I’d go straight off. Every little change, the knock-on effects can have weeks and months of work.”

And that brings up a strange question, of fans asking if a new and unhelpful performance characteristic is in the game, reflecting what they see on TV and read in the blogs. This is called “porpoising” and it’s caused by high speeds. The suspension can rise due to the cars’ ground effects, which are then pushed down by aerodynamics at the front and back. The result is that the car looks like a dolphin propelling itself through the water. Although porpoising has affected Mercedes’ cornering speed, for example, where Ferrari might only encounter it on the straights, it is not present at all in F1 22, Mather said. Not least because Codemasters, like the racing teams caught off guard, could not predict this movement in the new car design.

“It’s not even a concept that we really have,” Mather said. “The detachment and the reattachment of aero is something we obviously have, but for it to cause the side effect of the porpoising […] that’s not something our physics does at the moment.”

This is not to say that F1 22‘s differences are only technical. But they are not on the scale of introducing or remaking big new modes, as F1 2021 did with its “Braking Point” narrative, or as F1 2020 did by bringing in the My Team career that has become an obsession for millions. Sprint qualifying is now available for all three grand prix. It will only be available in career modes for events that have sprint qualifying — Imola and the Austrian Grand Prix.

Presentationally, F1 22 is working toward a broadcast that meets the expectations of newfound fans in the United States. Formation laps and pit stops both have “immersive” or “presentational” settings, meaning players can choose to drive out the noncompetitive parts of a race, or sit back and listen to commentary as the AI brings the field behind a safety car or forms up the starting grid. A new interactive feature is available at pit stops. The driver can press a button and turn in the pit when it’s convenient. This may result in a longer or shorter pit stop. Although the timing of the stop can depend on the efficiency of your pit crew (which can change in career modes), the effect is minimal and resembles hitting the pit limiter at the end.

The locked pairing of Anthony Davidson and David Croft (whose “It’s lights out, and away we go!” has become a trademark akin to Michael Buffer’s “Let’s get ready to rumble!”) can be swapped for new voices such as Alex Jacques, a commentator heard on F1TV Pro; Natalie Pinkham, the pit lane reporter for the U.K.’s Sky Sports; or Jacques Villeneuve, F1 royalty who analyzes races for France’s Canal Plus network. This commentary will be matched to new introductions and fade-outs to give F1 22 a better broadcast feel, Mather said.

And it also means that “Jeff,” the generic racing engineer whom players could order to shut up (literally) for the past decade, has been let go. Marc Priestly, formerly a racing mechanic and pit stop teammate for McLaren, is the new liaison between driver and pit, with audio recorded over an actual Formula One headset, Mather said.

Though the options weren’t available in the preview shown to media, F1 22 promises more customization tools for its rapturous My Team mode, where players create a new racing team and drive it themselves. Codemasters offers a variety of car liveries, including different colors and other changes to improve the look. Additionally, players may begin My Team from one of three starting points: a top-line contender; a midfield competitor, or an all-new striver working their way up. The bottom was where teams began the last two years. Mather said the new options were implemented, again, in the name of accessibility and fun for newer fans.

F1 22 launches July 1 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

Instagram is working to support NFTs. Instagram is a photo-sharing social network with limited resources. The Facebook-turned-Meta-owned service admits that supporting decentralized technology on a centralized platform is a huge effort, but Instagram has the resources to spare!

Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri delivered today’s non-fungible news in calm, collected video. It almost seems like this is a logical explanation.

“This week we’re beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of US creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram. There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on IG,” says Mosseri.

And maybe it does make sense. Facebook is diving head first into the metaverse pool, and NFTs might make for the perfect pool toys. It’s all an abstraction that I can’t see beyond the level where my mind is limited to seeing my Instagram feed on my tablet.

If NFT support via Instagram really tickles your fancy, here are some :

details

• available for select creators and collectors;
• blockchain support includes Ethereum and Polygon;
• wallet support includes Rainbow, MetaMask, and Trust

And that’s about as much NFT talk as I can pretend to understand for now. Follow this helpful Twitter thread from Meta’s Alexandru Voica while I prepare to tell my great grandkids that “back in my day, Instagram was a place for posting pictures.”

As ever, the company position on a proper Instagram for iPad app is that “it would be nice to do, but there’s a lot to do and only so many people, so it hasn’t made the cut,” according to Mosseri. But yay NFTs, right?

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

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Stories discussed in this episode:

• Apple return to work policy leads to ML lead departure
• Apple Instacart service unlikely, but has been considered
• AirPods Max refresh: New colors coming this year

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Twitter: @ChanceHMiller

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