Microsoft unveiled on Tuesday its new Surface Studio computer, specially designed for artists and designers so they can digitize creations and enjoy more tools and ease of use. The Surface Studio costs around $3,000. It is a desktop PC with a large touchscreen that is compatible with Microsoft’s Surface Pen. 

Artists have enjoyed the precision permitted by the new gadget, while also praising the relative lack of latency between the pen strokes and what’s displayed on the screen. Although traditional techniques such as pen and paper, paint of different sorts, and charcoal will be hard to replicate, digital screens can always offer a high amount of detail and quality when representing an artist’s strokes on pixels.

Surface Studio
Microsoft’s Surface Studio. Image credit: Microsoft.

A different type of canvas

One of the most interesting features that Microsoft added is a small cylinder controller that allows the user to tune settings and composition elements, such as the brush size, color tone, magnification, and much more.

The Surface Studio will feature 32GB RAM and 2.1 surround sound system, making them ideal for gamers. The event in New York showcased the new Surface computers with high-definition graphics such as Gears of War and the latest Forza.

Surface Studio
Microsoft’s HoloLens will have a high degree of interactivity with the new Surface Studio, allowing users to enter a digital scenario where anything they create can be viewed in a first-person perspective. Image credit: Microsoft.

Microsoft’s most recognizable app will get a reboot in the form of Paint 3D. This new version will let users create 3D objects, take photos and transform them into 3D objects. The Surface Studio is expected to work with Minecraft, allowing players to import to Paint 3D objects to the game and vice versa

Microsoft: Virtual reality is only a part of it

This array of new and exciting announcements may come from the new direction that Microsoft’s Chief Executive Satya Nadella is causing on the Windows giant. He believes that early success is one of the worst things that can happen to a company or person that wants to achieve its full potential.

We want to push to be more of a learn-it-all culture than a know-it-all culture,” he stated during The Wall Street Journal’s latest global technology conference.

Nadella also confessed that the Windows Phone platform was not a success, highlighting the need to create new categories of technology rather than trying to compete with what already exists. He also commented his idea of a perfect computer being the possibility of a mixed reality world:

“Your field of view becomes an infinite display. You see the world and in the world you see virtual objects and holograms.”

Then, Nadella revealed that Microsoft is another company that’s investing much of its resources in artificial intelligence. He intends for the HoloLens, or for any of the products they launch, to allow for a new type of computing interaction to be created.

The implementation of virtual reality on any app results in a completely different experience, letting users immerse themselves on the task they are performing, whether it is games, accounting tools, a virtual movie theater, and so on.

Source: The Guardian