Cardboard VR Projects for Android. Develop mobile virtual reality apps using the native Google Cardboard SDK for Android

Jonathan Linowes, Matt Schoen

Google Cardboard is a low-cost, entry-level media platform through which you can experience virtual reality and virtual 3D environments. Its applications are as broad and varied as mobile smartphone applications themselves. This book will educate you on the best practices and methodology needed to build effective, stable, and performant mobile VR applications.In this book, we begin by defining virtual reality (VR) and how Google Cardboard fits into the larger VR and Android ecosystem. We introduce the underlying scientific and technical principles behind VR, including geometry, optics, rendering, and mobile software architecture. We start with a simple example app that ensures your environment is properly set up to write, build, and run the app. Then we develop a reusable VR graphics engine that you can build upon. And from then on, each chapter is a self-contained project where you will build an example from a different genre of application, including a 360 degree photo viewer, an educational simulation of our solar system, a 3D model viewer, and a music visualizer.Given the recent updates that were rolled out at Google I/O 2016, the authors of Cardboard VR Projects for Android have collated some technical notes to help you execute the projects in this book with Google VR Cardboard Java SDK 0.8, released in May 2016. Refer to the article at https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/GoogleVRUpdateGuideforCardbook.pdf which explains the updates to the source code of the projects.

Mastering Azure Virtual Desktop. The ultimate guide to the implementation and management of Azure Virtual Desktop

Ryan Mangan, Jim Moyle

Azure Virtual Desktop is a cloud desktop virtualization platform that securely delivers virtual desktops and remote apps. Mastering Azure Virtual Desktop will guide you through designing, implementing, configuring, and maintaining an Azure Virtual Desktop environment effectively. This book can also be used as an exam preparation guide to help you sit the Microsoft AZ-140 exam.You’ll start with an introduction to the essentials of Azure Virtual Desktop. Next, you’ll get to grips with planning an Azure Virtual Desktop architecture before learning how to implement an Azure Virtual Desktop environment. Moving ahead, you’ll learn how to manage and control access as well as configure security controls on your Azure Virtual Desktop environment. As you progress, you’ll understand how to manage user environments and configure MSIX app attach and other Azure Virtual Desktop features to enhance the user experience. You’ll also learn about the Azure Active Directory (AD) join and getting started feature. Finally, you’ll discover how to monitor and maintain an Azure Virtual Desktop environment to help you support your users and diagnose issues when they occur.By the end of this Microsoft Azure book, you’ll have covered all the essential topics you need to know to design and manage Azure Virtual Desktop and prepare for the AZ-140 exam.

50 Kubernetes Concepts Every DevOps Engineer Should Know. Your go-to guide for making production-level decisions on how and why to implement Kubernetes

Michael Levan

Kubernetes is a trending topic among engineers, CTOs, CIOs, and other technically sound professionals. Due to its proliferation and importance for all cloud technologies, DevOps engineers nowadays need a solid grasp of key Kubernetes concepts to help their organization thrive.This book equips you with all the requisite information about how Kubernetes works and how to use it for the best results. You’ll learn everything from why cloud native is important to implementing Kubernetes clusters to deploying applications in production. This book takes you on a learning journey, starting from what cloud native is and how to get started with Kubernetes in the cloud, on-premises, and PaaS environments such as OpenShift. Next, you’ll learn about deploying applications in many ways, including Deployment specs, Ingress Specs, and StatefulSet specs. Finally, you’ll be comfortable working with Kubernetes monitoring, observability, and security. Each chapter of 50 Kubernetes Concepts Every DevOps Engineer Should Know is built upon the previous chapter, ensuring that you develop practical skills as you work through the code examples in GitHub, allowing you to follow along while giving you practical knowledge.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to implement Kubernetes in any environment, whether it’s an existing environment, a greenfield environment, or your very own lab running in the cloud or your home.

Learning Qlik Sense: The Official Guide. Get the most out of your Qlik Sense investment with the latest insight and guidance direct from the Qlik Sense team - Second Edition

Christopher Ilacqua, QlikTech International AB, Henric Cronström, James Richardson

The intuitive and powerful Qlik Sense visual analytics software allows anyone to engage in data discovery, to explore your data, and find meaningful insights to empower your business. Qlik Sense lets you easily create personalized reports and visualizations and reveal essential connections to show new opportunities from every angle.Written by members of the Qlik Sense team, this book is the official guide from Qlik to understanding and using their powerful new product with fully updated coverage to the latest features of the most modern edition of Qlik Sense. Benefit from the vision behind the development of Qlik Sense and get to grips with how Qlik Sense can empower you as a data discovery consumer. Learn how to create your own applications for Qlik Sense to customize it to meet your personal needs for business intelligence, and how to oversee and administer the Qlik Sense data architecture. Finally, explore utilizing Qlik Sense to uncover essential data, with practical examples on finding and visualizing intelligence for sales figures, human resources information, travel expense tracking, and demographic data discovery.

Python Image Processing Cookbook. Over 60 recipes to help you perform complex image processing and computer vision tasks with ease

Sandipan Dey

With the advancements in wireless devices and mobile technology, there's increasing demand for people with digital image processing skills in order to extract useful information from the ever-growing volume of images. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the relevant tools and algorithms, and guides you through analysis and visualization for image processing.With the help of over 60 cutting-edge recipes, you'll address common challenges in image processing and learn how to perform complex tasks such as object detection, image segmentation, and image reconstruction using large hybrid datasets. Dedicated sections will also take you through implementing various image enhancement and image restoration techniques, such as cartooning, gradient blending, and sparse dictionary learning. As you advance, you'll get to grips with face morphing and image segmentation techniques. With an emphasis on practical solutions, this book will help you apply deep learning techniques such as transfer learning and fine-tuning to solve real-world problems.By the end of this book, you'll be proficient in utilizing the capabilities of the Python ecosystem to implement various image processing techniques effectively.

Mastering Ubuntu Server. Upgrade your Ubuntu skills

Jay LaCroix

Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system, and has various versions targeted at servers, desktops, phones, tablets and televisions. The Ubuntu Server Edition, also called Ubuntu Server, offers support for several common configurations, and also simplifies common Linux server deployment processes.With this book as their guide, readers will be able to configure and deploy Ubuntu Servers using Ubuntu Server 16.04, with all the skills necessary to manage real servers. The book begins with the concept of user management, group management, as well as file-system permissions. To manage your storage on Ubuntu Server systems, you will learn how to add and format storage and view disk usage. Later, you will also learn how to configure network interfaces, manage IP addresses, deploy Network Manager in order to connect to networks, and manage network interfaces. Furthermore, you will understand how to start and stop services so that you can manage running processes on Linux servers. The book will then demonstrate how to access and share files to or from Ubuntu Servers. You will learn how to create and manage databases using MariaDB and share web content with Apache. To virtualize hosts and applications, you will be shown how to set up KVM/Qemu and Docker and manage virtual machines with virt-manager. Lastly, you will explore best practices and troubleshooting techniques when working with Ubuntu Servers.By the end of the book, you will be an expert Ubuntu Server user well-versed in its advanced concepts.

Blender 3D By Example. Design a complete workflow with Blender to create stunning 3D scenes and films step-by-step!

Gordon Fisher, Romain Caudron, Pierre-Armand Nicq

Azure for Architects. Create secure, scalable, high-availability applications on the cloud - Third Edition

Ritesh Modi, Jack Lee, Rithin Skaria

Thanks to its support for high availability, scalability, security, performance, and disaster recovery, Azure has been widely adopted to create and deploy different types of application with ease. Updated for the latest developments, this third edition of Azure for Architects helps you get to grips with the core concepts of designing serverless architecture, including containers, Kubernetes deployments, and big data solutions.You'll learn how to architect solutions such as serverless functions, you'll discover deployment patterns for containers and Kubernetes, and you'll explore large-scale big data processing using Spark and Databricks. As you advance, you'll implement DevOps using Azure DevOps, work with intelligent solutions using Azure Cognitive Services, and integrate security, high availability, and scalability into each solution. Finally, you'll delve into Azure security concepts such as OAuth, OpenConnect, and managed identities.By the end of this book, you'll have gained the confidence to design intelligent Azure solutions based on containers and serverless functions.