Philips has a new interactive campaign online to advertise their new CINEMA 21:9 TV. The ad shows a “frozen moment” between cops and robbers with interactive hotspots that show behind-the-scenes of how it was built. The shot was done by Stink Digital and director Adam Berg, and can be seen on Philip’s site.
NVidia’s newest Quadro card, the FX4800, is out and running on the GT200 GPU. It’s not cheap, selling for approx $1500, but with 1.5GB of GDDR3 onboard memory, it’s a powerhouse for CAD and graphics designers. Tom’sHardware got one and put it through it’s paces.
When it comes to the Quadro FX 4800, in fact, there really is no completely comparable mainstream equivalent model. We picked the GeForce GTX 260 and the GTX 280 as our points of comparison, simply because the Quadro FX 4800 falls somewhere in between these two models.
The GPU Nvidia chose for this product is the GT200 D10U-20, built using 65 nanometer technology. With 1.4 billion transistors, this is one of the biggest and densest chips around. It also includes 192 parallel, CUDA-capable stream processors, just like the GTX 260 offers.
Nvidia Quadro FX 4800: Workstation Graphics At Its Finest? : Introduction – Review Tom’s Hardware.
It’s no surprise that people are losing jobs all over the US. Every day we hear reports of factories closing and people being laid off, but just how many? Chris Wilson at Slate magazine tackles this with an animated visualization of job gains and losses between January 2007 to February 2009, that shows in stark detail the downturn in jobs.
Using the Labor Department’s local area unemployment statistics, Slate presents the recession as told by unemployment numbers for each county in America. Because the data are not seasonally adjusted for natural employment cycles throughout the year, the numbers you see show the change in the number of people employed compared with the same month in the previous year.
via An interactive map of vanishing employment across the country. – By Chris Wilson – Slate Magazine.
3D Connexion has a new input device out called the “SpacePilot Pro”, which keeps all the usual 3D mouse bits, but adds alot of additional input buttons and a color LCD display called the “LCD Workflow Assistant”. They’ve also released an SDK to allow application developers to write custom applications that manipulate the display.
“Handing out a software development kit will allow third-party developers to produce professional applications to give you access to even more information, on your workstation, on your network or on the Internet,” he says. “For example, it’s conceivable that SolidWorks could create an applet that connects the model you are working on with PDMWorks to gives you supply chain information, inventory information or whatever at the push of a button.”
You can read a full review over at Design Engineering News.
While Philip’s is shutting down the 3D Display division, JVC has just announced a new 46Inch 3D monitor that they’ll be demonstrating at NAB.
Specifically, the GD-463D10 uses Arisawa’s Xpol Stereoscopic 3D technology, an optical device based on regularly arranged micro-polarizers. With the technology bonded to the LCD display, users can view the flicker-free 3D stereoscopic content by wearing polarized glasses.
via New JVC 46-inch 3D Monitor Costs $7,000 – Tom’s Hardware.
Autodesk just released a revision to Maya 2009 Service Pack 1, called SP1a. It addresses a few issues in the current service pack, but will require you to uninstall your existing SP1 and install this update.
Important: Maya 2009 Service Pack 1 has recently been updated
If you installed it before April 16th, 2009 , you must uninstall the existing version, then download and install this new version. The new service pack includes the following important fixes for you:
* mia_material_x_passes shader and shadows
Previously, the mia_material_x_passes shader caused shadows to behave incorrectly. This has been fixed.
* mental ray for Maya and processor limits
Previously, the mental ray for Maya renderer was not using all available processors when hyperthreading was turned on. This has been corrected so that all available processors are used for rendering.
* Color per vertex shading
Due to an optimization in CG 2.0, color per vertex shading was incorrectly rendered in the Render View and in batch rendering. This has been fixed.
* Stereo cameras and ATI graphics cards
Due to an update in CG 2.1, stereo cameras in Maya caused display errors when using an ATI graphics card. This has been fixed.
I’m not real sure why they didn’t just release this as a SP2 that will apply on-top of SP1.
via Autodesk – Autodesk Maya Services & Support – Autodesk Maya 2009 Service Pack 1.
Jos Swillens, 3D Solutions CEO at Philips, has sent out a letter to their resellers announcing that Philips is shutting down the 3D Solutions division, and will no longer be shipping the 42-inch 3D LCD Television (42-3D6W02).
“Unfortunately, the current market developments no longer justify such a pro-active approach,” says Swillens, “The point in time where mass adoption of no-glasses based 3D TV will occur has shifted significantly. As a consequence of this, Philips has decided to scale down its investments in this area.”
via Philips Shuts Down 3D Solutions Division – Expreview.com.
New York Citiy’s Administrative Code Book is a rather convoluted collection of rules and regulations that frequently confuses the many street vendors that it governs. Designer Candy Chang worked with The Center for Urban Pedagogy to redesign the entire book as a simple infographic.
According to a story in the New York Times, for many (foreign) street vendors, understanding the regulations that govern their trade is a really difficult prospect. Instead, the group attempted to design a brochure that uses as little language as possible to spell out the most critical pieces of the city’s administrative code book. This graphical poster is the 3rd in a series of similar handbooks published by Street Vendor. The others are a guide to Social Security and a map of cargo shipping networks in North America.
Samples of the book can be found here.
via New York City’s Administrative Code Book as Infographics – information aesthetics.
The Bitfilm2009 Festival is now accepting submissions of short digital films. Submissions must be received by July 1st, with the Award to be announced on October 1st in Tel Aviv.
These are the award categories with an accumulated prize money of 10,000 euros:
- 3D SPACE AWARD – CG 3D animations.
- FX MIX AWARD – digitally composed hybrid films which mix various techniques.
- MACHINIMA AWARD – films shot live inside computer games.
- REALTIME AWARD – animations generated in realtime. (a.k.a. ‘Demos’)
A TED talk has emerged, including a live demo of “The AlloSphere”, an ambitious 3D Virtual Environment space at the California NanoSystems Institute, UC Santa Barbara.
The AlloSphere space consists of a 3-story cube that is treated with extensive sound absorption material making it one of the largest anechoic chambers in the world. Standing inside this chamber are two 5-meter-radius hemispheres constructed of perforated aluminum that are designed to be optically opaque and acoustically transparent.
Video after the break.
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