Unreal Engine 4 Virtual Reality Projects. Build immersive, real-world VR applications using UE4, C++, and Unreal Blueprints

Kevin Mack, Robert Ruud

Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) is a powerful tool for developing VR games and applications. With its visual scripting language, Blueprint, and built-in support for all major VR headsets, it's a perfect tool for designers, artists, and engineers to realize their visions in VR. This book will guide you step-by-step through a series of projects that teach essential concepts and techniques for VR development in UE4. You will begin by learning how to think about (and design for) VR and then proceed to set up a development environment. A series of practical projects follows, taking you through essential VR concepts. Through these exercises, you'll learn how to set up UE4 projects that run effectively in VR, how to build player locomotion schemes, and how to use hand controllers to interact with the world. You'll then move on to create user interfaces in 3D space, use the editor's VR mode to build environments directly in VR, and profile/optimize worlds you've built. Finally, you'll explore more advanced topics, such as displaying stereo media in VR, networking in Unreal, and using plugins to extend the engine. Throughout, this book focuses on creating a deeper understanding of why the relevant tools and techniques work as they do, so you can use the techniques and concepts learned here as a springboard for further learning and exploration in VR.

Mastering .NET Machine Learning. Use machine learning in your .NET applications

Jamie Dixon

.Net is one of the widely used platforms for developing applications. With the meteoric rise of Machine learning, developers are now keen on finding out how can they make their .Net applications smarter. Also, .NET developers are interested into moving into the world of devices and how to apply machine learning techniques to, well, machines.This book is packed with real-world examples to easily use machine learning techniques in your business applications. You will begin with introduction to F# and prepare yourselves for machine learning using .NET framework. You will be writing a simple linear regression model using an example which predicts sales of a product. Forming a base with the regression model, you will start using machine learning libraries available in .NET framework such as Math.NET, Numl.NET and Accord.NET with the help of a sample application. You will then move on to writing multiple linear regressions and logistic regressions.You will learn what is open data and the awesomeness of type providers. Next, you are going to address some of the issues that we have been glossing over so far and take a deep dive into obtaining, cleaning, and organizing our data. You will compare the utility of building a KNN and Naive Bayes model to achieve best possible results.Implementation of Kmeans and PCA using Accord.NET and Numl.NET libraries is covered with the help of an example application. We will then look at many of issues confronting creating real-world machine learning models like overfitting and how to combat them using confusion matrixes, scaling, normalization, and feature selection. You will now enter into the world of Neural Networks and move your line of business application to a hybrid scientific application. After you have covered all the above machine learning models, you will see how to deal with very large datasets using MBrace and how to deploy machine learning models to Internet of Thing (IoT) devices so that the machine can learn and adapt on the fly.

Protocol Buffers Handbook. Getting deeper into Protobuf internals and its usage

Clément Jean

Explore how Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) serialize structured data and provides a language-neutral, platform-neutral, and extensible solution. With this guide to mastering Protobuf, you'll build your skills to effectively serialize, transmit, and manage data across diverse platforms and languages.This book will help you enter the world of Protocol Buffers by unraveling the intricate nuances of Protobuf syntax and showing you how to define complex data structures. As you progress, you’ll learn schema evolution, ensuring seamless compatibility as your projects evolve. The book also covers advanced topics such as custom options and plugins, allowing you to tailor validation processes to your specific requirements. You’ll understand how to automate project builds using cutting-edge tools such as Buf and Bazel, streamlining your development workflow. With hands-on projects in Go and Python programming, you’ll learn how to practically apply Protobuf concepts. Later chapters will show you how to integrate data interchange capabilities across different programming languages, enabling efficient collaboration and system interoperability.By the end of this book, you’ll have a solid understanding of Protobuf internals, enabling you to discern when and how to use and redefine your approach to data serialization.

Instant Creating Data Models with PowerPivot How-to. Build better business intelligence with this practical guide to creating Excel data models with PowerPivot

Leo Taehyung Lee, Taehyung Lee

Microsoft PowerPivot is a free software designed to enhance Microsoft Excel. It allows the user to make extensive use of his/her computer's powers to draw data from various sources, do analysis across millions of rows of data, and present results in a very unique format.Instant Creating Data Models with PowerPivot How-to is a concise and to-the-point guide that helps you get a jump start on using this strong business intelligence tool, while still working in an environment similar to Excel. You will begin with data generation and manipulation, learning a new feature at each step by building onto the old file, and ultimately creating a comprehensive file.Instant Creating Data Models with PowerPivot How-to will guide the user through database installation, importing data from various sources, creating pivot charts and tables, utilizing a unique feature of PowerPivot called slicers,adding custom columns, and setting custom relationships between data to generate the ultimate customized dataset for analysis. By the end of the book and all the sections of Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel, the reader will be fully experienced and ready to utilize this powerful software.

The Essential Guide to Creating Multiplayer Games with Godot 4.0. Harness the power of Godot Engine's GDScript network API to connect players in multiplayer games

Henrique Campos, Nathan Lovato

The Essential Guide to Creating Multiplayer Games with Godot 4.0 guides you in exploring the built-in network API for online multiplayer games, offering practical knowledge through concrete use cases.Throughout the book, you'll assume the role of a network engineer in a fictional indie game studio, tackling real-world requests from your peers and gaining expertise in adding new network features to the studio's games. Following step-by-step instructions, you’ll go from making your first network handshake to optimizing online gameplay. You’ll learn how to sync players and pass data over the internet as you add online multiplayer features to a top-down shooter adventure game.This book puts you in a fictional game project team where you set up your first online server before advancing to creating an online chat system and transitioning local gameplay to go online. With a focus on implementing multiplayer features, you’ll create shared world adventures and learn optimization techniques to allow more players to join your virtual world.By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to set up a client-server network, implement remote procedure calls (RPCs), sync node properties remotely, and optimize your games to create smooth online multiplayer experiences.

Arduino Robotic Projects. Build awesome and complex robots with the power of Arduino

Richard Grimmett

Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition. Developing Android applications using Android Studio 4.2, Kotlin, and Android Jetpack

Neil Smyth

Android Studio is an Integrated Development Environment that is based on the JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA. It provides developers with a unique platform to design and develop Android apps using various developer tools. The new Android Studio 4.2 has an upgraded IntelliJ platform and a variety of new features designed to improve the productivity of Android app developers. Fully updated for Android Studio 4.2, the objective of this book is to help you master the skills necessary to develop Android applications using Kotlin as the programming language.This book begins by outlining the steps necessary to set up an Android development and testing environment and introduces programming in Kotlin, addressing data types, flow control, functions, lambdas, and object-oriented programming. It includes an overview of Android Studio, covering areas such as tool windows, the code editor, and the Layout Editor tool. An introduction to Android architecture is followed by an in-depth explanation of the design of Android applications and user interfaces using the Android Studio environment.Early chapters detail Android Architecture components like view models, lifecycle management, Room database access, the Database Inspector, app navigation, live data, and data binding. Advanced topics such as intents are also covered, as are touch screen handling, gesture recognition, and the recording and playback of audio. You will also explore printing, transitions, cloud-based file storage, and foldable device support.Detailed descriptions of material design concepts are provided, including the use of floating action buttons, Snackbars, tabbed interfaces, card views, navigation drawers, and collapsing toolbars. Some key features of Android Studio 4.2 and Android discussed in-depth include the Layout Editor, the ConstraintLayout and ConstraintSet classes, MotionLayout Editor, view binding, constraint chains, barriers, and direct reply notifications. Later chapters cover advanced features of Android Studio such as App links, Dynamic Delivery, the Android Studio Profiler, Gradle build configuration, and submitting apps to the Google Play Developer Console.

Rancher Deep Dive. Manage enterprise Kubernetes seamlessly with Rancher

Matthew Mattox

Knowing how to use Rancher enables you to manage multiple clusters and applications without being locked into a vendor’s platform. This book will guide you through Rancher’s capabilities while deepening your understanding of Kubernetes and helping you to take your applications to a new level.The book begins by introducing you to Rancher and Kubernetes, helping you to learn and implement best practices. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll understand the strengths and limitations of Rancher and Kubernetes and discover all the different ways to deploy Rancher. You’ll also find out how to design and deploy Kubernetes clusters to match your requirements. The concluding chapters will show you how to set up a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline for deploying applications into a Rancher cluster, along with covering supporting services such as image registries and Helm charts.By the end of this Kubernetes book, you’ll be able to confidently deploy your mission-critical production workloads on Rancher-managed Kubernetes clusters.

Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices. Improve your Backbone.js skills with this step-by-step guide to patterns and best practice. It will help you reduce boilerplate in your code and provide plenty of open source plugin solutions to common problems along the way

Swarnendu De

Getting Started with Elastic Stack 8.0. Run powerful and scalable data platforms to search, observe, and secure your organization

Asjad Athick, Shay Banon

The Elastic Stack helps you work with massive volumes of data to power use cases in the search, observability, and security solution areas.This three-part book starts with an introduction to the Elastic Stack with high-level commentary on the solutions the stack can be leveraged for. The second section focuses on each core component, giving you a detailed understanding of the component and the role it plays. You’ll start by working with Elasticsearch to ingest, search, analyze, and store data for your use cases. Next, you’ll look at Logstash, Beats, and Elastic Agent as components that can collect, transform, and load data. Later chapters help you use Kibana as an interface to consume Elastic solutions and interact with data on Elasticsearch. The last section explores the three main use cases offered on top of the Elastic Stack. You’ll start with a full-text search and look at real-world outcomes powered by search capabilities. Furthermore, you’ll learn how the stack can be used to monitor and observe large and complex IT environments. Finally, you’ll understand how to detect, prevent, and respond to security threats across your environment. The book ends by highlighting architecture best practices for successful Elastic Stack deployments.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to implement the Elastic Stack and derive value from it.

The Art of Micro Frontends. Build websites using compositional UIs that grow naturally as your application scales

Florian Rappl, Lothar Schöttner

Micro frontend is a web architecture for frontend development borrowed from the idea of microservices in software development, where each module of the frontend is developed and shipped in isolation to avoid complexity and a single point of failure for your frontend.Complete with hands-on tutorials, projects, and self-assessment questions, this easy-to-follow guide will take you through the patterns available for implementing a micro frontend solution. You’ll learn about micro frontends in general, the different architecture styles and their areas of use, how to prepare teams for the change to micro frontends, as well as how to adjust the UI design for scalability. Starting with the simplest variants of micro frontend architectures, the book progresses from static approaches to fully dynamic solutions that allow maximum scalability with faster release cycles. In the concluding chapters, you'll reinforce the knowledge you’ve gained by working on different case studies relating to micro frontends.By the end of this book, you'll be able to decide if and how micro frontends should be implemented to achieve scalability for your user interface (UI).

Practical Machine Learning on Databricks. Seamlessly transition ML models and MLOps on Databricks

Debu Sinha

Unleash the potential of databricks for end-to-end machine learning with this comprehensive guide, tailored for experienced data scientists and developers transitioning from DIY or other cloud platforms. Building on a strong foundation in Python, Practical Machine Learning on Databricks serves as your roadmap from development to production, covering all intermediary steps using the databricks platform. You’ll start with an overview of machine learning applications, databricks platform features, and MLflow. Next, you’ll dive into data preparation, model selection, and training essentials and discover the power of databricks feature store for precomputing feature tables. You’ll also learn to kickstart your projects using databricks AutoML and automate retraining and deployment through databricks workflows. By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered MLflow for experiment tracking, collaboration, and advanced use cases like model interpretability and governance. The book is enriched with hands-on example code at every step. While primarily focused on generally available features, the book equips you to easily adapt to future innovations in machine learning, databricks, and MLflow.

Metasploit Revealed: Secrets of the Expert Pentester. Build your defense against complex attacks

Sagar Rahalkar, Nipun Jaswal

Metasploit is a popular penetration testing framework that has one of the largest exploit databases around. This book will show you exactly how to prepare yourself against the attacks you will face every day by simulating real-world possibilities.This learning path will begin by introducing you to Metasploit and its functionalities. You will learn how to set up and configure Metasploit on various platforms to create a virtual test environment. You will also get your hands on various tools and components and get hands-on experience with carrying out client-side attacks. In the next part of this learning path, you’ll develop the ability to perform testing on various services such as SCADA, databases, IoT, mobile, tablets, and many more services. After this training, we jump into real-world sophisticated scenarios where performing penetration tests are a challenge. With real-life case studies, we take you on a journey through client-side attacks using Metasploit and various scripts built on the Metasploit framework. The final instalment of your learning journey will be covered through a bootcamp approach. You will be able to bring together the learning together and speed up and integrate Metasploit with leading industry tools for penetration testing. You’ll finish by working on challenges based on user’s preparation and work towards solving the challenge. The course provides you with highly practical content explaining Metasploit from the following Packt books:1. Metasploit for Beginners 2. Mastering Metasploit, Second Edition3. Metasploit Bootcamp

Lift Application Development Cookbook. If you want the ultimate in security for your web applications you need to know the Lift framework. This book lets you dive straight into a whole range of features and techniques thanks to its 50+ practical recipes

Gilberto T. Garcia Jr., Gilberto Tadeu Garcia Jun

Developing secure web applications is one of the most important tasks developers have to deal with. With Lift, it is easy to create solid and formidable web applications as it is the most secure web framework available today. The View-First approach and being able to handle things as purely data transformation, makes working with Lift an exciting task.Lift Application Development Cookbook teaches you how to build web applications using this amazing framework. The book moves gradually, starting with the basics (starting a new project, submitting a form, and so on) before covering more advanced topics such as building a REST API and integrating your application with other technologies and applications.Lift Application Development Cookbook takes you on a journey of creating secure web applications. Step-by-step instructions help you understand how things work and how various elements relate to each other.You'll learn different ways to process a form, build dynamic HTML pages, and create an API using REST. You'll also learn how to work with relational and NoSQL databases and how to integrate your application with other technologies as well as with third-part applications such as Gmail and Facebook.By the end of the book, you will be able to understand how Lift works and be able to build web applications using this amazing and exciting framework.

Learning ArcGIS Pro. Create, analyze, maintain, and share 2D and 3D maps with the powerful tools of ArcGIS Pro

Stefano Iacovella, Tripp Corbin

Learn AWS Serverless Computing. A beginner's guide to using AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and services from Amazon Web Services

Scott Patterson

Serverless computing is a way to run your code without having to provision or manage servers. Amazon Web Services provides serverless services that you can use to build and deploy cloud-native applications. Starting with the basics of AWS Lambda, this book takes you through combining Lambda with other services from AWS, such as Amazon API Gateway, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Step Functions. You’ll learn how to write, run, and test Lambda functions using examples in Node.js, Java, Python, and C# before you move on to developing and deploying serverless APIs efficiently using the Serverless Framework. In the concluding chapters, you’ll discover tips and best practices for leveraging Serverless Framework to increase your development productivity. By the end of this book, you’ll have become well-versed in building, securing, and running serverless applications using Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda without having to manage any servers.

Domain-Driven Design with Java - A Practitioner's Guide. Create simple, elegant, and valuable software solutions for complex business problems

Premanand Chandrasekaran, Karthik Krishnan, Neal Ford, Brandon Byars, ...

Domain-Driven Design (DDD) makes available a set of techniques and patterns that enable domain experts, architects, and developers to work together to decompose complex business problems into a set of well-factored, collaborating, and loosely coupled subsystems.This practical guide will help you as a developer and architect to put your knowledge to work in order to create elegant software designs that are enjoyable to work with and easy to reason about. You'll begin with an introduction to the concepts of domain-driven design and discover various ways to apply them in real-world scenarios. You'll also appreciate how DDD is extremely relevant when creating cloud native solutions that employ modern techniques such as event-driven microservices and fine-grained architectures. As you advance through the chapters, you'll get acquainted with core DDD’s strategic design concepts such as the ubiquitous language, context maps, bounded contexts, and tactical design elements like aggregates and domain models and events. You'll understand how to apply modern, lightweight modeling techniques such as business value canvas, Wardley mapping, domain storytelling, and event storming, while also learning how to test-drive the system to create solutions that exhibit high degrees of internal quality.By the end of this software design book, you'll be able to architect, design, and implement robust, resilient, and performant distributed software solutions.

Hands-On Low-Code Application Development with Salesforce. Build customized CRM applications that solve business challenges in just a few clicks

Enrico Murru

Low-code platforms allow users to focus on business logic to create solutions without getting trapped in programming complexities. Thanks to its powerful features for designing, developing, and deploying apps without having to hand-code, Salesforce is at the forefront of the low-code development revolution. This book will guide you in building creative applications for solving your business problems using the declarative framework provided by Salesforce.You’ll start by learning how to design your business data model with custom objects, fields, formulas, and validation rules, all secured by the Salesforce security model. You’ll then explore tools such as Workflow, Process Builder, Lightning Flow, and Actions that will help you to automate your business processes with ease. This book also shows you how to use Lightning App Builder to build personalized UIs for your Salesforce applications, explains the value of creating community pages for your organization, and teaches you how to customize them with Experience Builder. Finally, you'll work with the sandbox model, deploy your solutions, and deliver an effective release management strategy.By the end of this Salesforce book, you’ll be ready to customize Salesforce CRM to meet your business requirements by creating unique solutions without writing a single line of code.

Vagrant Virtual Development Environment Cookbook. 35 solutions to help you utilize virtualization with Vagrant more effectively – learn how to develop and manage Vagrant in the cloud to improve collaboration

Chad Thompson, Chad O Thompson

Applying Math with Python. Practical recipes for solving computational math problems using Python programming and its libraries

Sam Morley

Python, one of the world's most popular programming languages, has a number of powerful packages to help you tackle complex mathematical problems in a simple and efficient way. These core capabilities help programmers pave the way for building exciting applications in various domains, such as machine learning and data science, using knowledge in the computational mathematics domain.The book teaches you how to solve problems faced in a wide variety of mathematical fields, including calculus, probability, statistics and data science, graph theory, optimization, and geometry. You'll start by developing core skills and learning about packages covered in Python’s scientific stack, including NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib. As you advance, you'll get to grips with more advanced topics of calculus, probability, and networks (graph theory). After you gain a solid understanding of these topics, you'll discover Python's applications in data science and statistics, forecasting, geometry, and optimization. The final chapters will take you through a collection of miscellaneous problems, including working with specific data formats and accelerating code.By the end of this book, you'll have an arsenal of practical coding solutions that can be used and modified to solve a wide range of practical problems in computational mathematics and data science.

Visual Basic Quickstart Guide. Improve your programming skills and design applications that range from basic utilities to complex software

Aspen Olmsted

Whether you’re an absolute beginner or an experienced developer looking to learn the Visual Basic language, this book takes a hands-on approach to guide you through the process. From the very first chapters, you'll delve into writing programs, exploring core concepts such as data types, decision branching, and iteration. Additionally, you’ll get to grips with working with data structures, file I/O, and essential object-oriented principles like inheritance and polymorphism.This book goes beyond the basics to equip you with the skills to read and write code across the entire VB family, spanning VB Script, VBA, VB Classic, and VB.NET, enabling you to handle legacy code maintenance with ease.With clear explanations, practical examples, and hands-on exercises, this book empowers you to tackle real-world software development tasks, whether you're enhancing existing projects or embarking on new ones. It addresses common challenges like distinguishing between the variations of the VB programming language to help you choose the right one for your projects.Don't let VB's extensive legacy daunt you; embrace it with this comprehensive guide that equips you with practical, up-to-date coding skills to overcome the challenges presented by Visual Basic's rich history of over two decades.

MySQL 5.1 Plugin Development. Extend MySQL to suit your needs with this unique guide into the world of MySQL plugins

Sergei Golubchik, Andrew Hutchings, Andrew Hutchings, Sergii Golubchyk

MySQL has introduced a Plugin API with its latest version – a robust, powerful, and easy way of extending the server functionality with loadable modules on the fly. But until now anyone wishing to develop a plugin would almost certainly need to dig into the MySQL source code and search the Web for missing bits of the information.This is the first book on the MySQL Plugin API. Written together with one of the Plugin API primary architects, it contains all the details you need to build a plugin. It shows what a plugin should contain and how to compile, install, and package it. Every chapter illustrates the material with thoroughly explained source code examples.Starting from the basic features, common to all plugin types, and the structure of the plugin framework, this book will guide you through the different plugin types, from simple examples to advanced ones. Server monitoring, full-text search in JPEG comments, typo-tolerant searches, getting the list of all user variables, system usage statistics, or a complete storage engine with indexes – these and other plugins are developed in different chapters of this book, demonstrating the power and versatility of the MySQL Plugin API and explaining the intricate details of MySQL Plugin programming.

The Kubernetes Operator Framework Book. Overcome complex Kubernetes cluster management challenges with automation toolkits

Michael Dame

From incomplete collections of knowledge and varying design approaches to technical knowledge barriers, Kubernetes users face various challenges when developing their own operators. Knowing how to write, deploy, and pack operators makes cluster management automation much easier – and that's what this book is here to teach you.Beginning with operators and Operator Framework fundamentals, the book delves into how the different components of Operator Framework (such as the Operator SDK, Operator Lifecycle Manager, and OperatorHub.io) are used to build operators. You’ll learn how to write a basic operator, interact with a Kubernetes cluster in code, and distribute that operator to users. As you advance, you’ll be able to develop a sample operator in the Go programming language using Operator SDK tools before running it locally with Operator Lifecycle Manager, and also learn how to package an operator bundle for distribution. The book covers best practices as well as sample applications and case studies based on real-world operators to help you implement the concepts you’ve learned.By the end of this Kubernetes book, you’ll be able to build and add application-specific operational logic to a Kubernetes cluster, making it easier to automate complex applications and augment the platform.

Microsoft Power BI Performance Best Practices. Learn practical techniques for building high-speed Power BI solutions - Second Edition

Thomas LeBlanc, Bhavik Merchant, Kenneth Neal

In a world dominated by data, organizations heavily rely on business intelligence tools like Power BI for deriving insights and informed decision-making. Yet, as data volumes grow and user demands increase, achieving optimal performance becomes challenging. Author Thomas LeBlanc, a seasoned Business Intelligence Architect with over 30 years of IT experience, draws on his extensive expertise to guide you in overcoming challenges related to slow performance, data modeling, query optimization, visualization design, deployment, administration, integration, compliance, and security.This book covers topics ranging from architecture and data modeling to Power BI premium features, DAX formulas, and collaboration, helping you to gain a deep understanding of the Power BI architecture, design efficient data models, create efficient queries, and improve visualization performance. You’ll also learn best practices to deploy and manage Power BI solutions, integrate with other tools and systems, ensure compliance and security, and collaborate with team members.By the end of the book, you’ll have developed your knowledge and skills to design, build, and maintain high-performing, scalable, and efficient Power BI solutions to drive unparalleled business success.