At the Cannes Film Festival, May 13-24, Pixar’s “Up” has the honor of the being the opening film on opening night, and being the first cartoon and the first 3D film to open Cannes.
Ed Asner isn’t exactly the first celebrity you’d think of to demand the spotlight on the Cannes Film Festival’s typically star-studded red carpet. But organizers are changing things up this year, choosing Disney and Pixar’s “Up” as the event’s opening-night pic.
HotHardware got one of the brand new NVidia QuadroCX cards, commonly known as the “Adobe CS Accelerator”, and puts it through its paces not only as an Adobe Accelerator but as a high-end workstation and gaming card.
Nvidia’s first generation QuadroCX product is, at its core, a GT200-based graphics card, the same architecture which powers the GeForce GTX 280 and the QuadroFX 4800. Under the cooling system lies the same massive 1.4 billion transistor, 65nm graphics processor which has been part of Nvidia’s high-end lineup since mid last year. The GT200, while not the most fresh and exciting part on the market, is still one of the most powerful graphics processors period, and its raw number crunching power should not be underestimated. T
The New York Times has an article on the upcoming “Monsters vs. Aliens” movie from Dreamworks Animation, which is entirely 3D. It covers alot of the features and pitfalls of the technology.
She said the lingering camera shots in that film taught her that a 3-D movie could not cut as quickly from image to image for reasons of eye strain. “It’s so visually rich that you need to account for people wanting to stare at the screen and move their eyes around the frame,” she said.
In particular, his discusses how 3D films are more difficult to Pirate, as camcorders can’t capture the 3D effect. He also discusses how the technology can very easily be misused to “make the audience hurl”, and from the article:
“I’m pretty sure that no business can succeed in which it makes the customer hurl,”
Both sites use Mootools to build the entire visualization using only JavaScript (no Flash), and show the path of a story as it rises in popularity and receives lots of votes and comments before falling behind new rising stars..
iZ3D will be at the Game Developers Conference next week in San Francisco, demonstrating their S-3D (Stereoscopic 3D) display alongside a classic red & cyan anaglyph display.
The iZ3D solution is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Vista operating systems. Games written for DirectX 8, 9, (soon 10) require a graphics card with dual video outputs (VGA and DVI or HDMI). Most games written in the last six years are designed for 3D, but lacked a way of displaying them properly. Hundreds of games have been tested by iZ3D, MTBS-3D and iZ3D customer testers.
Their monitors run for $400, and work with almost any Direct-X based game in Windows.
No, not the band. Staff at the University of Limerick, Ireland have combined a Haptics system (force feedback) with a Visualization System to create a virtual-reality training tool for intra-spinal anesthesia.
The “haptic simulator” recreates the skin tension felt by the practitioner at the point the needle is inserted.
If the injection is not carried out correctly, the trainee receives immediate audio and visual feedback.
The developers questioned doctors extensively about the precise tactile responses involved in inserting a needle between two vertebrae of the human back.
The result is an advance that incorporates visual feedback – allowing the operator to view a 3-D map of the area while simultaneously positioning the needle.
If you happen to be at the Game Developers conference in San Francisco next week, you might wanna stop by the InterSense booth for a live demonstration of the VCam. It’s a virtual camera technology that allows directors to manipulate a camera in a Virtual Environment identically to how one would work in real life, shaky-cam effects and all.
The Third Floor team first used the InterSense VCam technology on two animated feature films, “Beowulf” (2007) and “A Christmas Carol” (2009). Since then, the studio has leveraged the VCam on other cinematics, including Blizzard Entertainment’s Starcraft II and Diablo III.
Developers can see a product video and testimonial from The Third Floor, as well as view the use of the VCam technology in the making of “Resistance 2″. Attendees are also invited to stop by InterSense’s booth (5127 NH) during GDC, taking place March 23 – 27 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
A great example of some video compositing, motion tracking, and CG work, this is a video that seems to be related to the Half-Life story (based on the sound effects and visuals). It’s not completed, but still pretty interesting to watch. It’s from the group behind “What’s in the box?”
Just a note, this is a demo of their final product. Many effects are still missing, as is the main character Dialog. Because of this, the owner says he will take it down shortly.. So watch it while you can!
How are the recent advances in online Data Visualization impacting Publishers & Advertisers? Well, Garrick Schmitt at AdAge comes up with some theories, referencing some of the biggest hits of the past year (FiveThirtyEight, NYT’s Visualization Lab, and the many Flickr products).
All of this data visualization is, of course, really just a new way to tell stories (or create experiences) out of the very base matter of the web itself. Data visualization is probably not a foreign concept for anyone familiar with the work of information-design pioneer Professor Edward Tufte, but it’s the advances in technology at the presentation layer and the new found ability to tap into once hidden data sources that is enabling these new visual scientists to chart a new narrative course.
They even went so far as to put in a Tufte reference, which means it must be credible right?
Tecplot today announced a new version of “Tecplot RS 2009″, Release 2. Tecplot RS is their Reservoir simulation Visualization & Analysis tool, used mostly by oil and gas companies.
“We re basically combining quantitative results and visual data analysis into a single easy-to-view snapshot ” said Roberts. “That s a powerful tool for identifying the valid models.” CIO CTO & Developer Resources Other new capabilities in the R2 version of Tecplot RS 2009 include the ability to load and display inactive cells in grid plots. In addition axis controls allow users to specify the spacing of major and minor markers for the axes of XY plots on a per-variable basis. Tecplot RS stores these settings automatically for each variable making them persistent and available whenever a variable is assigned to a plot axis.
Pricing starts at $6,000 and it’s available for Windows and Linux, 32 & 64 bit.
VizWorld.com 
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