The Immersive Metaverse Playbook for Business Leaders. A guide to strategic decision-making and implementation in the metaverse for improved products and services

Irena Cronin, Robert Scoble, Hugo Swart

“The metaverse” has become a widely known term within a very short time span. The Immersive Metaverse Playbook for Business Leaders explicitly explains what it really refers to and shows you how to plot your business road map using the metaverse.This book helps you understand the concept of the metaverse, along with the implementation of generative AI in it. You'll not only get to grips with the underlying concepts, but also take a closer look at key technologies that power the metaverse, enabling you to plan your business road map. The chapters include use cases on social interaction, work, entertainment, art, and shopping to help you make better decisions when it comes to metaverse product and service development. You’ll also explore the overall societal benefits and dangers related to issues such as privacy encroachment, technology addiction, and sluggishness. The concluding chapters discuss the future of AR and VR roles in the metaverse and the metaverse as a whole to enable you to make long-term business plans.By the end of this book, you'll be able to successfully invest, build, and market metaverse products and services that set you apart as a progressive technology leader.

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine. Build professional 3D games with Unreal Engine 4's Visual Scripting system

Brenden Sewell

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine is a step-by-step approach to building a fully functional game, one system at a time. Starting with a basic First Person Shooter template, each chapter will extend the prototype to create an increasingly complex and robust game experience. You will progress from creating basic shooting mechanics to gradually more complex systems that will generate user interface elements and intelligent enemy behavior. Focusing on universally applicable skills, the expertise you will develop in utilizing Blueprints can translate to other types of genres.By the time you finish the book, you will have a fully functional First Person Shooter game and the skills necessary to expand on the game to develop an entertaining, memorable experience for your players.From making customizations to player movement to creating new AI and game mechanics from scratch, you will discover everything you need to know to get started with game development using Blueprints and Unreal Engine 4.

Getting Started with Hazelcast. Learn how to write rich, interactive web applications using HTML5 and CSS3 through real-world examples. In a world of proliferating platforms and devices, being able to create your own “go-anywhere” applications gives you a significant advantage

Mat Johns, Matthew Johns

Python Unlocked. Become more fluent in Python—learn strategies and techniques for smart and high-performance Python programming

Arun Tigeraniya

Python is a versatile programming language that can be used for a wide range of technical tasks—computation, statistics, data analysis, game development, and more. Though Python is easy to learn, it’s range of features means there are many aspects of it that even experienced Python developers don’t know about. Even if you’re confident with the basics, its logic and syntax, by digging deeper you can work much more effectively with Python – and get more from the language.Python Unlocked walks you through the most effective techniques and best practices for high performance Python programming - showing you how to make the most of the Python language. You’ll get to know objects and functions inside and out, and will learn how to use them to your advantage in your programming projects. You will also find out how to work with a range of design patterns including abstract factory, singleton, strategy pattern, all of which will help make programming with Python much more efficient. Finally, as the process of writing a program is never complete without testing it, you will learn to test threaded applications and run parallel tests. If you want the edge when it comes to Python, use this book to unlock the secrets of smarter Python programming.

PrestaShop Module Development. Develop and customize powerful modules for PrestaShop 1.5 and 1.6

Fabien Serny

Machine Learning for Time-Series with Python. Use Python to forecast, predict, and detect anomalies with state-of-the-art machine learning methods - Second Edition

Ben Auffarth

The Python time-series ecosystem is a huge and challenging topic to tackle, especially for time series since there are so many new libraries and models. Machine Learning for Time Series, Second Edition, aims to deepen your understanding of time series by providing a comprehensive overview of popular Python time-series packages and helping you build better predictive systems.This fully updated second edition starts by re-introducing the basics of time series and then helps you get to grips with traditional autoregressive models as well as modern non-parametric models. By observing practical examples and the theory behind them, you will gain a deeper understanding of loading time-series datasets from any source and a variety of models, such as deep learning recurrent neural networks, causal convolutional network models, and gradient boosting with feature engineering. This book will also help you choose the right model for the right problem by explaining the theory behind several useful models. New updates include a chapter on forecasting and extracting signals on financial markets and case studies with relevant examples from operations management, digital marketing, and healthcare.By the end of this book, you should feel at home with effectively analyzing and applying machine learning methods to time series.

Enhanced Test Automation with WebdriverIO. Unlock the superpowers of hybrid testing frameworks

Paul M. Grossman, Larry C. Goddard, Angie Jones

This book helps you embark on a comprehensive journey to master the art of WebdriverIO automation, from installation through to advanced framework development.You’ll start by following step-by-step instructions on installing WebdriverIO, configuring Node packages, and creating a simple test. Here you’ll gain an understanding of the mechanics while also learning to add reporting and screen captures to your test results to enhance your test case documentation. In the next set of chapters, you’ll delve into the intricacies of configuring and developing robust method wrappers, a crucial skill for supporting multiple test suites. The book goes beyond the basics, exploring testing techniques tailored for Jenkins as well as LambdaTest cloud environments. As you progress, you’ll gain a deep understanding of both TypeScript and JavaScript languages and acquire versatile coding skills.By the end of this book, you’ll have developed the expertise to construct a sophisticated test automation framework capable of executing an entire suite of tests using WebdriverIO in either TypeScript or JavaScript, as well as excel in your test automation endeavors and deliver reliable, efficient testing solutions.

Python Data Visualization Cookbook. As a developer with knowledge of Python you are already in a great position to start using data visualization. This superb cookbook shows you how in plain language and practical recipes, culminating with 3D animations

Igor Milovanovic

Today, data visualization is a hot topic as a direct result of the vast amount of data created every second. Transforming that data into information is a complex task for data visualization professionals, who, at the same time, try to understand the data and objectively transfer that understanding to others. This book is a set of practical recipes that strive to help the reader get a firm grasp of the area of data visualization using Python and its popular visualization and data libraries.Python Data Visualization Cookbook will progress the reader from the point of installing and setting up a Python environment for data manipulation and visualization all the way to 3D animations using Python libraries. Readers will benefit from over 60 precise and reproducible recipes that guide the reader towards a better understanding of data concepts and the building blocks for subsequent and sometimes more advanced concepts.Python Data Visualization Cookbook starts by showing you how to set up matplotlib and the related libraries that are required for most parts of the book, before moving on to discuss some of the lesser-used diagrams and charts such as Gantt Charts or Sankey diagrams. During the book, we go from simple plots and charts to more advanced ones, thoroughly explaining why we used them and how not to use them. As we go through the book, we will also discuss 3D diagrams. We will peep into animations just to show you what it takes to go into that area. Maps are irreplaceable for displaying geo-spatial data, so we also show you how to build them. In the last chapter, we show you how to incorporate matplotlib into different environments, such as a writing system, LaTeX, or how to create Gantt charts using Python.This book will help those who already know how to program in Python to explore a new field – one of data visualization. As this book is all about recipes that explain how to do something, code samples are abundant, and they are followed by visual diagrams and charts to help you understand the logic and compare your own results with what is explained in the book.