VizWorld.com

EVGA, apparently realizing that more and more bloggers (and gamers) want to test Video Hardware for benchmarking & “evaluation”, has begun a Loaner Program where you get a card for 2 weeks, and then ship it on to the next person on the list.

If you’re a resident in Continental United States or Canada, you may sign up to be a member of EVGA’s website. EVGA will randomly select participants, and ship a product to selected ones to test for two weeks. Of course you’ll need to send the product to the next lucky person and pay for the shipping charge.

They currently have 2 loaner programs:

• Program 1: NVidia Geforce 3D Vision Glasses & a 22″ Samsumg 120Hz monitor (valued at $599)
• Program 2: EVGA x58  Classified Limited Edition motherboard. (valed at $449)

And of course, if you break it you buy it.

via EVGA Announces EVGA Loaner Program – Expreview.com.

Hardware

Mitsubishi is demonstrating a new piece of touchscreen technology that works with multiple sensors to detect not only when you touch the screen, but when you get near it and the speed of which you touch it.

Of course, it is still just in prototype form (currently a 5.7-inch capacitive VGA display), but Mitsubishi says it’s based on panels that are already on the market, which should help ease development and reduce costs. Not surprisingly, Mitsubishi also says that “it will first be used for our products,” although it naturally didn’t say exactly what those product might be.

via Mitsubishi shows off “3D touch panel” display.

Hardware

Fabricio Moraes just won the Individual Image Master Award in CGSociety’s ‘Steampunk: Myths and Legends’ CGChallenge, and has taken the time to write up the process he used along with several pictures of the process.

From the beginning to the very end I worried about the clarity of the main idea. I want people to see it and know immediately what is going on. That’s the reason I blurred the background and put a light right on to Pinocchio, so as to drag the attention to him. With the feedback I got I believe that I have achieved my objective. I did this twisted version of Pinocchio with all respect to the original creator of such amazing story: Carlo Collodi.

via CGSociety

Science

On May 7th and 8th, the 10th Annual RTT Visualization Conference will be held in Munich, Germany.

World-class speakers from global companies such as Tokyo Design International, ICON Aircraft, Toyota, Ferrari, Porsche and BMW will talk about the design of modern product lifecycles using practical examples to focus on current trends and technologies in high-end visualization.

Speakers include artist, futurist and concept designer Syd Mead, a pioneer in CGI who achieved worldwide acclaim for his designs in numerous films including Blade Runner, Aliens and Mission: Impossible III.

via the RTT Conference Website.

Science

ReadWriteWeb has a writeup of a new service called “Media Cloud” from the Berkman Center at Harvard.

Media Cloud is a project that developed from discussions around where story trends came from. This tool attempts to serve as a foundation to help move these conversations forward, and the Berkman Center is keeping the door open for new ideas and ways of using this data. To that end, they also have a discussion forum where people can contribute suggestions, thoughts and ideas to the project. Media Cloud also provides an RSS feed and an email list you can subscribe to if you want to stay in the loop for any new developments.

via Media Cloud Leverages Calais to Track News Trends – ReadWriteWeb.

Science

CEI just issued a press release announcing the release of EnSight Lite v9.

“We are excited to announce these new price and feature points that customers have been asking for. Now that 64-bit laptops and desktops are common, EnSight Lite makes perfect sense for the mainstream engineer, scientist, and researcher. Adding these new features to EnSight Lite gives our customers much more value for their money,” says Darin McKinnis, vice president of sales and marketing at CEI.

It’s currently available at $1600 ($400 for Academic institutions),

via Mar 11 – CEI Ships EnSight Lite v9 for Visualization.

Science cei

Tecplot today issued a Press Release announcing new versions of the popular Scientific Visualization package TecPlot360.  New features include:

– More useful, powerful 3D images. Create images that are more visually stunning than ever. Carve out components to reveal other important features with the new surface clipping feature.

– Whiz-bang animations. In less than a minute, create animations that smoothly pan, zoom, and rotate your 3D plots.

– Expanded data and file sharing. Export data in formats compatible with Tecplot 360 2008, Tecplot Focus 2008, and Tecplot 360 2006.

it’s available right now for Windows XP & Vista, OSX, and Linux.

via Tecplot(R) 360 2009 and Tecplot Focus 2009 Released.

Science tecplot

A bit late on picking this one up, as the webcast is this afternoon!

Architecture & Design Visualization Webcast Series: Rendering Techniques using Autodesk 3ds Max Design

Date & Time: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT

Description:

Learn how to artfully convey your designs with rendering features tailored specifically for architects and designers in Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design.

Visit the page to fill out the Registration form.

via Autodesk – Architecture & Design Visualization Webcast Series: Rendering Techniques using Autodesk 3ds Max Design.

Science

Over at the “Edge of Vision”, Neil Halelamien has an interesting commentary on a recent article by Johan Bollen where they take “click data” of various research papers and analyze it as a single-order Markov chain to show trends in the way visitors traverse the long lists of citations between papers.  The results are processing through some nice graph visualization techniques for interesting results.

Edge of Vision » Click-based visualization of the relationships between scientific fields.

Science

MechDyne, makers of CAVE’s & Virtual Environment systems worldwide, have begun deploying Sony’s SXRD 4k x 2k projectors.

Mechdyne Corporation today announced that it has deployed more than one hundred of Sony Corporation’s ground-breaking SXRD® 4096 x 2160 resolution projection systems into advanced visual environments around the world. Combined, these projectors represent more than eight hundred million pixels of digital imagery installed for applications that enable new insight and expand knowledge in engineering, research, government and military programs.

Anybody tried one of these?  Last I used a CAVE it was 1024×768, so I imagine this adds alot to the realism of the environment.

via Mechdyne Drives Sony Technology Into Advanced Visualization Applications, Reaches 800 Million Pixel Milestone – MSNBC Wire Services – msnbc.com.

Hardware