Xbox PC games, distributed through the Xbox app, fail to run on Linux because of Microsoft's proprietary GDK runtime environment. This also breaks Game Pass even though the company supports cloud streaming Game Pass titles. A new open-source project from the developers of Heroic Launcher, called "Xodus," is aiming to fix this by reverse engineering and emulating the necessary components required for Xbox PC games on Linux.

Xodus primarily targets modern, GDK-based Xbox PC titles and their MSIXVC packages; not older, UWP-based releases like Gears of War 4 and early Forza Horizon games. The problem with those isn't the DirectX API or x86 instructions; Proton and DXVK/VKD3D can already translate those. That's also the reason why you can still run Xbox PC games on Linux if you somehow get your hands on the DRM-free executables.

The real issue is the trifecta of Microsoft's proprietary GDK (Game Development Kit), Xbox identify services, and encrypted MSIXVC packages. This framework is responsible for verifying licenses for the games you own through the Xbox app. Without it running in the background, the games will simply crash right as you try to open them, or not launch at all. This is where Xodus comes into play.

The Xodus team says the project can already log into Xbox services, download game packages and obtain game licenses. It includes its own open-source implementation of the xgameruntime.dll and custom forks of both Wine and Proton, along with xal-rs, which is an Xbox authentication library for Rust. Xodus uses proxy libraries to interface with GDK games and intercepts API calls to transmit valid Xbox Live tokens.

For now, efforts are focused on emulating the Xbox Gaming Runtime from the Xbox GDK through Wine, then the project will move on to actually launching and playing Xbox PC titles locally. Considering they've already solved the Xbox/Microsoft authentication, license check, and package decryption hurdles, it shouldn't be long before we see PC Game Pass running natively on Linux.

BedrockonLinux 2.0, another open-source project that brings Minecraft Bedrock to the platform, already relies on similar reverse-engineering tech to handle these components since Microsoft migrated the game to GDK. This allows the game to talk to Xbox Live in real-time through a secure doorway to authenticate tokens despite the game running in a sandboxed environment like SteamOS (Linux).

Microsoft itself brought four original Xbox titles to PC last month and it says more are coming, along with leaked documents suggesting Xbox 360 titles also releasing on PC next year. These games come with a baked-in Xbox 360 emulator. It's not clear if these games use the same GDK stack as native Xbox PC titles, however.

Nvidia's GeForce NOW cloud gaming service has been a popular way to access your games on the go without worrying about hardware. It has a free tier with titles like Fortnite, not even requiring a purchase, but the paid subscription enjoys much better specs and rate limits. As such, using the "Ultimate" tier, modder Zortos was able to gain full access to the Windows desktop inside GeForce NOW, allowing him to use it as a normal computer that can (ironically) run local AI models on it.

For context, GeForce NOW is only meant for gaming; Nvidia does not advertise it as a general, all-purpose cloud streamer like Shadow PC, for instance. Hence, doing all this is certainly against the terms of service, and you run the risk of your account getting banned. With that being said, ethically, you are paying for renting hardware, so trying to gain desktop access is predicated on how far your own moral scruples allow you to go.

Anyhow, the exploit begins with an I2P (Install-to-Play) game that you download from Steam — Zortos uses Trove. You click on the publisher's name to open the built-in browser, from where you go to your C: drive through the address bar and essentially hijack the index. You open the steamapps folder that was just created for Trove and copy the path of the main executable from the contents.

This file is replaced with a decoy that deceives Steam into thinking you're actually starting Trove when you click on the "Play" button. In reality, it's a modified executable developed by another modder, dpadGuy, that just opens the desktop instead. Once inside, it really is the full Windows environment with no apparent restrictions. The video below even shows Zortos installing Wallpaper Engine and customizing the taskbar.

However, users have reported some discrepancies between their experiences, such as GeForce NOW simply closing the session when it sees the File Explorer open, or the service blocking file downloads, which is a necessary step to replace the executable. Zortos insists that the exploit is still working on his X account, and he even says that if you have persistent storage, the exploit will remain active between different sessions.

Keep in mind that you need a paid tier of GeForce NOW to be able to pull this off, and even if you do, it's against Nvidia's ToS as you're not allowed to venture beyond games. Running local AI models on a setup like this doesn't make sense because of the session rate limits, but the Ultimate tier Zortos used does give you access to 48GB of VRAM (thanks to an RTX Pro 6000D) so it might be worthwhile for some.

HoverAir, makers of self-flying selfie drones, have just unveiled the HoverAir Versa, combining their existing aerial expertise with the convenience of a pocket camera. At its core, the Versa is a high-end stabilized pocket gimbal camera, like the DJI Osmo, but it can magnetically snap onto a drone body and transform into a cinematic selfie drone. It's designed to tackle two different product categories simultaneously, but with the same goal of making it as easy as possible to film yourself (or others).

The Versa is actually HoverAir's first-ever pocket camera. It features a three-axis gimbal, which means it can adjust for tilt, yawn, and pitch to make sure your footage turns out stable. Compared to other options on the market, no pocket camera offers more than two-axis stabilization. It has a rotating screen and the accompanying controls for the camera, along with RGB accent lighting that also works as a status indicator. Overall, it looks like a pretty run-of-the-mill, well-made pocket camera.

But the magic happens when you bring out the wings. A small, foldable drone body can magnetically attach to the camera unit via pogo pins located at the back of the device. Once connected, you just unfold the wings, gently tap the top, and it takes off right from your palm. There is no external controller needed because the device uses AI to track and follow you automatically. It has 10+ intelligent modes that can film you from any direction with AI-assisted framing, along with a neat 360° feature as well.

In this mode, called 3D Worlds, the drone flies around to snap pictures of the scene from different angles and composites them into a single 360° scene that can be explored and shared later. Technically, this would be the third audience the Versa is trying to cater to — the Insta360 crowd, though that's real-time 360° video recording that you can also generously manipulate in post, so not exactly comparable. Still, it's a neat trick, and we'll have to see how well HoverAir implements it.

We don't have a price or release date; just a bunch of teasers so far that say it's coming soon. As such, specs are also up in the air, but the company is touting class-leading performance with the best dynamic range in the category. From the promotional material, we can infer that it has a large lens, and the drone body looks very compact. If HoverAir's previous selfie drones are anything to go by, the Versa could have support for up to 8K video in 10-bit Log or HLG, along with rapid flying speeds of up to 45 km/h.

The test footage on HoverAir's website and the video we attached above look really impressive. The ingenuity of the concept warrants both excitement and skepticism, but it's undeniable that the Versa kind of feels magical. Nothing like it exists in the market today, and if the company can already ship excellent selfie drones like the X1 series, and pocket cameras aren't exactly rocket science, it stands to reason that harmonizing the two together is the only challenge for the Versa.

Windows is in a tough spot right now, with years of neglect and stagnation reaching a boiling point with customers. Lack of optimization, bloat, ads, forced AI slop, and persistent tracking have forced Microsoft to admit its missteps and commit to fixing the OS at large. Windows Latest's new testing shows that the built-in weather app is a perfect representation of the state of Windows. The "app" consumes up to 1.2GB of RAM while idling, and it serves up a bunch of ads while you check the temperature.

MSN Weather is the default weather app that ships with Windows, which explains why it's filled with promotions throughout, despite being part of a paid OS. To be clear, the app looks very modern and has all the data you could ask for, such as live radar overlays, hourly wind and precipitation breakdowns, air quality index, and moon phases. It's also accurate because the data is sourced from a bunch of different providers across the world, but mostly Foreca.

The author explains that getting accurate forecasts is not a cheap endeavor, so it's not like Microsoft is running a charity. But the comparison falls apart when you look at what the competition is offering. Apple's native weather app on macOS is just as beautiful, detailed, and accurate, yet it's free of ads. It also only consumes about 250MB of memory to show all that data, so 5x less than Windows. This is because MSN Weather is technically not even an app to begin with; it's a web wrapper that's pinging a bunch of browser tabs in real-time.

When the author clicked on the Task Manager entry for MSN Weather, they saw 8 Chromium-based subprocesses, confirming that they're just looking at a website being rendered via WebView 2. For context, native Windows apps are supposed to adhere to the WinUI framework, which the company is slowly adopting over Win32 and UWP. Microsoft is committed to updating all the native apps Windows ships with to Win32, which should significantly improve their optimization, but we don't know if the ads will suddenly disappear as well.

The author saw Adobe Acrobat ads while checking the forecast, and we saw two ads — one for LendingTree and another for Spotify. Apart from that, scrolling around the app and clicking on the different menus and boxes was fast enough. We have to emphasize that the app really is granular and well-built from an aesthetic point of view; Microsoft gets full points for that, or is it MSN? That distinction is another issue that makes the weather app conundrum a bit more confusing.

When Microsoft promised to rebuild all native Windows 11 apps, it didn't explicitly say those would include MSN-branded services too, like MSN Weather and MSN News. Seeing as though they're simply called by their utilitarian names in the OS, there's a strong chance that these memory hoggers will also be eventually upgraded. For now, just stick to your phone, especially if you were among those who immediately Googled how to remove the weather widget from your taskbar that fateful day.