Microsoft has announced several new features in its software tooling and solutions to aid developers in their respective endeavors. At its Ignite conference this year, it has also unveiled a bunch of new capabilities for those involved in Azure IoT and mixed reality development.
First up are two new services for mixed reality, namely Azure Remote Render and Azure Object Anchors. The former has been in preview for almost a year but is now generally available. It allows rendering of complex 3D models by streaming them in real-time to mixed reality devices such as HoloLens 2. Numerous companies including Bentley are already utilizing it in their engineering and design processes. Meanwhile, Azure Object Anchors trains on 3D models in the cloud and then uses this learning to align holograms to the physical world. This feature is currently in preview.
In other news, Microsoft has announced Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop. As the name suggests, this offers a unified and centralized view on resource utilization, errors, host pool health, and user feedback. It will be generally available in the "next few weeks".
On the Azure IoT side of things, Device Update for Azure IoT Hub is now available as preview in multiple regions. It enables customers to manage OTA updates across their IoT platform, and helps in keeping it secure. Furthermore, the microprocessor built with Azure Sphere by NXP and announced back in 2019, will be available as a preview in November 2021 and should hit general availability in early 2022.
Finally, Azure Percept is a family of lower-powered edge devices and services, and is now available in preview. It offers customers an intuitive platform to build and operate AI models for edge devices. To further enhance its usability, it works with multiple platforms including Azure AI, Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning and Azure Live Video Analytics, and Azure IoT by default.
Check out our other Ignite 2021 coverage right here.