Microsoft has announced Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18329, and it includes a new feature that lets running traditional desktop apps in Windows Mixed Reality.
It's now available to just about every user in the fast ring, but the thing is, it hasn't arrived to everyone because it didn't roll out in all the languages it usually does yet.
Desktop Apps Inside Mixed Reality
Thanks to this update, users can now use, say, Photoshop or something along those lines in a 3D environment with a virtual reality headset or a HoloLens augmented reality headset.
As Ars Technica points out, apps based on UWP API were the only ones that can run under these conditions before, but that's all changing now. In other words, Win32 apps or regular 2D desktop apps are now supported in Windows Mixed Reality.
"[W]e added the ability to launch Desktop (Win32) applications (such as Spotify, Paint.NET, and Visual Studio Code) in Windows Mixed Reality, just like how you launch Store apps," Microsoft says in a blog post.
To use this, all users have to do to is pull up the Pins Panel and head on over to all apps. A "Classic Apps (Beta)" folder should be there, where the Win32 apps are all in.
Other Notable Features
In Search, which was separated from Cortana in Build 18317, there's now a new Top apps section that offers quick access to the most frequently used apps.
Osage and ADLaM keyboard support have also been added in. The former is the language used by the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, while the latter is the script used to write Pular, the language of the Fulani people of West Africa.
Mail and Calendar also getting improvements. Most noticeably, there's a dark mode now. A default font can now also be set to apply across messages and emails, which is described as a top customer-requested feature.
Of course, the blog post also details a list of general changes and all sorts of fixes and improvements.
Now there's no word on when this feature and other niceties will come to the stable version of Windows 10. At any rate, it's something to look forward to for those who own a compatible headset.
