According to a report by TechCrunch, Apple’s beta testing service Testflight recently received a huge update. The software refresh gives developers more control over who can join the beta and how new features are shared. It also allows beta testers to get more information about the app before they join it.
Developers will be able to set all sorts of criteria for who can or cannot access the beta. This will help developers limit test groups to specific audiences, such as people using a particular device or OS version. Testflight offers a maximum of 10,000 invites by default, so this will help reserve space for the desired audience. Developers can now also reduce this maximum number as they wish.
The update also allows for more control over beta invites, as they can highlight new features and content. Apple says that beta builds of apps that have already been approved for publishing can now include screenshots and the app category with the invite.
App creators will also be able to see metrics about the success of the beta invite, including information on how many people saw the invite, who opted in, and why people declined.
For users, the beta invite can include a feedback field. This is for people to tell the developer why they chose not to download the app.
While the use of generative AI in games seems almost inevitable, as this medium has always toyed with new ways to make enemies and NPCs smarter and more realistic, watching several NVIDIA ACE demos one after another really made me feel sick to my stomach.
It wasn’t just slightly smarter enemy AI — ACE can create entire conversations out of thin air, simulate voices, and try to give NPCs a sense of personality. It’s also doing this locally on your PC, powered by NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs. But while all of this might sound great on paper, I didn’t love seeing AI NPCs in action almost every second.
TiGames’ ZooPunk is a great example of this: it relies on NVIDIA ACE to generate dialogue, a virtual voice, and lip syncing for an NPC named Buck. But as you can see in the video above, Buck sounds like a robot with a slightly rustic accent. If he’s supposed to have some kind of relationship with the main character, you can’t tell from his performance.
I think my deep dislike of NVIDIA’s ACE-powered AI comes down to this: there’s simply nothing charming about it. No joy, no warmth, no humanity. Every ACE AI character sounds like a developer cutting corners in the worst way possible, as if you can sense their contempt for the audience as a boring NPC. I’d much rather scroll through some on-screen text, at least I wouldn’t have to interact with weird robot voices.