Join Mixed Reality Dev Days on June 8-9 where we’ll introduce the public preview of MRTK3

by Contributed | May 20, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

If you’re not already familiar with Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK), it’s an open-source project led by Microsoft that provides UX building blocks for MR and VR applications. The experiences you build with MRTK can run on any device that supports the OpenXR runtime such as HoloLens and Meta Quest. We’ve heard from the community that they love the richness of the MRTK UI controls and that it reduces development time, especially for apps that need to run on multiple platforms. Components for hand and eye tracking, inputs, solvers, diagnostic tools, scene management, and more can help you to build experiences that look great with less effort.

We’re excited to share the next release of this powerful toolkit, MRTK3 Public Preview, at Mixed Reality Dev Days on June 8-9.  With MRTK3, you’ll have the option of a lighter-weight solution which allows you to select only the components of the toolkit you need. The release also includes a new interaction system, new theming and databinding features, Unity canvas support, and an updated design language that can help you refresh your app’s look and add polish. Additionally, native OpenXR support makes it even easier to target multiple devices such as HoloLens, Meta Quest, Windows Mixed Reality, and future OpenXR-supported devices.

Be the first to learn about MRTK3 at a free event, online or in-person 

Join us June 8th and 9th via livestream or at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, WA. Either way, you’ll learn about MRTK3 directly from the engineers who are building the latest features.  Catch deep technical sessions, provide feedback to the team, and ask your questions live. 

By attending in-person, you’ll have access to even more goodness.  

• Network with the Microsoft team and other developers.  


• Catch a fireside chat or panel discussion 


• Get expanded session content covering: 

• How to build applications with C# and OpenXR using StereoKit, a code-first, open-source library for cross-platform development. 


• Introduction to Babylon.js and how easy it is to bring mixed reality to the web. 


• Recently released HoloLens features like Moving Platform Mode 

Participate in the online hackathon 

Mixed Reality Dev Days also marks the kickoff of a month-long online hackathon where you can compete for prizes while getting hands on with MRTK3 public preview or StereoKit. Join a team or build a solo project with access to expert support. 

Learn more about Mixed Reality Dev Days and sign up now.

We look forward to connecting with you soon!

Mixed Reality Dev Days Team 

Getting started with R on Data Science Virtual Machines

by Contributed | May 20, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

The Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM) is a powerful data science development environment where you can perform data exploration and modeling tasks. The environment comes already built and bundled with several popular data analytics and data science tools that make it easy to get started without spending 20 min to 1 hour deploying a suitable infrastructure.

A new learning experience for R developers

Also, we are delighted to announce some exciting new updates which makes R a 1st Class developer experience for learners on DSVMs and on Learn Sandboxes on MS Learn. Starting from April 2022, the DSVM offering has been enriched by DSVM for Windows 2019 v. 22.04.21, DSVM for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 v. 22.04.27, which provide an updated R environment including the following R libraries: Cluster, Devtools Factoextra, GlueHere, Ottr, Paletteer, Patchwork, Plotly, Rmd2jupyter, Scales, Statip, Summarytools, Tidyverse, Tidymodels and Testthat.

Getting started with R on DSVMs : a guided tutorial

But how you can start using R on DSVMs in your course or lab to perform data science tasks? Let’s go through all the steps you’ll need to create a DSVM on Azure and run a R Jupyter notebook. 

1. First of all, you’ll need an Azure subscription. You have not one yet, have a look on how to sign up for a free trial or to the offers dedicated to your students.

2. Sign in to the Azure Portal and search for “data science virtual machine”. Choose one of the resulting offerings by clicking on it. For this tutorial we will use Data Science Virtual Machine – Ubuntu 20.04.

3. Choose a resource group and the name of the VM you want to create as well as the Azure subscription on which the machine will be billed. Select the datacenter region closest to your physical location and, for quicker set up, select “Password” as authentication type. Then specify the username and password you’ll use to login into your virtual machine.

Click on Review + create and wait until the deploy is succesfully completed.

4. There are different ways to access your DSVM. One of these is Jupyter Hub, a multiuser Jupyter server. To connect, open a web browser from your local machine and navigate to https://your-vm-ip:8000, replacing “your-vm-ip” with the IP address you can find in the overview section of your resource.

5. At this point, you can sign in using the credentials you specified at the creation of the resource.

6. You’re now ready to start coding in R. You may browse the many sample notebooks that are available or you can create a new notebook by clicking on the R kernel button.

If you want to get more R code examples on data analysis and machine learning you can have a look to the exercise units of this MS Learn path: Create machine learning models with R and tidymodels .

7. Remember to shut down your machine when you are not using it.

Note that if you are an educator and you want to use DSVMs for you R course, you have the chance to choose if providing all your students with a single DSVM, by sharing the credentials within the class or to provide every student with a single DSVM, finding the right trade-off for you among costs and flexibility.

Keep on learning

The example above covers only one of the possible functionalities enabled by DSVMs. You can also open a session in an interactive R console or coding within RStudio, which is pre-installed in the VM. In addition, you can leverage on other Azure services for data storage and modeling and you can share code with your team by using GitHub and the pre-installed Git clients: Git Bash and Git GUI. Find out more guidance on the DSVM documentation. 

Meet Riny van Eekelen, Excel Forum Contributor

by Contributed | May 18, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

The Excel Tech Community forum is where anyone can ask questions and get answers about Excel. The incredible forum contributors are the superheroes always ready to help others tackle their toughest Excel challenges. Today, we’d like you to meet Riny van Eekelen.

Riny van Eekelen

Riny grew up in The Netherlands and always knew that he would become an accountant, even from a young age. He would follow through with this dream and eventually work his way up to become the CFO for several companies in The Netherlands.

In 2011, he started his own consulting business after moving to Sweden with his family. Riny was able to use his skills in many facets, often acting as the “man in the middle, translating the needs of the accountants to the IT people who didn’t understand accounting very well, and vice versa.”

Riny’s first encounter with Excel was in 1989 while working for an audit firm. His first experience with Excel was while using a PC, but he later switched over to a MacBook Pro and became well versed in both. The two features he has learned the most from the Excel Tech Community are Power Query and Power Pivot. These are instrumental to his work today and he was able to refine his skills and learn greatly from those within the Community.

In Riny’s own words, “I ended up at the Microsoft Tech Community because I was looking for an answer to an Excel problem of my own, and then I found myself answering the questions of others. That proved addictive. Others commented on/improved my answers, and I learned a lot from that. It’s both fun and rewarding to work on issues and find solutions to problems that I could never imagine existed. It feels very rewarding to be helping others and at the same time getting better at Excel myself.”

Thank you, Riny, for your continued contribution to our Excel community!