VizWorld.com

A new device from Castrade, the CG-USC02HD, aims to bring computer monitors one step closer to Televisions by converting video to typical monitor resolutions.  Targeting towards gamers (Wii, XBox, Playstation) it can take pretty much any input signal and scale it appropriately to any of the following monitor resolutions:

• SVGA 800×600 75Hz
• XGA 1024×768 60/75Hz
• SXGA 1280×1024 60HZ
• WXGA 1440×900 60Hz
• WSXGA 1680×1050 60Hz
• Full HD 1920×1080 60Hz
• WUXGA 1920×1200 60Hz

You may wonder why this is a big deal?  Well television displays only operate at a few settings (Standard Def – 480, 720 – 1280×720, 1080 – 1920×1080), and if your console expects a Television for output, it may be confused when it finds out you support 1440×900.  What it does then varies by manufacturer, but it’s almost guaranteed to be sub-optimal.  This device can properly scale & letterbox the display to give you the best possible result, and work for multiple device and connector types (including Audio), making it a great universal adapter.

via Up-Scan Video Converter Let You Play PS3 Titles on a Monitor : Akihabara News .com.

Hardware castrade, converter

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center has long had a problem with deploying new submarine equipment: It’s expensive to train and test.  Building physical models and submarines, flying in all the necessary people, and then housing them for the days/week/months of training is an immense expense.  Now, the NUWC is looking at doing the same thing with  Virtual Worlds and finding that not only does it work well, it opens a whole new world of collaboration and experimentation they didn’t have before.

Overall the NUWC is investigating five categories of applications for virtual worlds: training and education, rapid prototyping, general collaboration and conferencing, public outreach, and data visualization.

The last, says Aguiar, may be one of the most attractive in coming years. There are many high fidelity models aimed at doing very specific things already in use by the NUWC. The virtual world gives the Navy a collaborative interface for those models, not replicating them, just visualizing them in the world. For example, a simulation exercise could track a real unmanned vehicle in the water, but the virtual world provides a way to track the real-time data generated by the vehicle.

via Virtual Worlds News: Naval Undersea Warfare Center: Training, Innovating, and Saving In Virtual Worlds.

Science military, virtual worlds

A new video camera company called “yellowBird” is demonstrating it’s new YellowBird Camera.  Using technology similar to what Google uses in Street View, it’s a camera capable of recording a full 360-degree view of an event simultaneously, and then proprietary software to stitch the videos together into a huge video-panorama.  Combined with targeted directional audio and a web-based flash viewer, they aim to bring interactive 3D video to life on the internet.

The camera uses six cleverly divided lenses in order to capture every possible viewing direction. The data stream generated by the camera is impressive. Through a double glass-fiber connection, a stream of 1200 Mbit per second is captured and saved in an uncompressed format. Next to the camera, a surround sound microphone system enables to record audio at 96 khz as well.

yellowBird | See the world like never before.

Hardware 360, camera, yellowbird

Update: See Sun’s official response.

The Sun Visualization System from Sun Microsystems has been a great COTS build for remote visualization & large scalability.  With a software foundation of TurboVNC & VirtualGL and a hardware foundation of their world-class servers and high-end NVidia & Quadroplex systems, it’s been the mainstay of several remote visualization systems.  A few weeks ago we told you that Sun was about to be purchased by Oracle, and since then it’s been finalized.

Today, however, a fellow twitterer noticed that the Sun Visualization Webpage is almost entirely gone.  I’m completely unable to find it under their products lists, and going directly to the old page (still available under search), yields just this:

The new SVS Webpage

That’s it.  A Banner, but no text.  That “Get it” button goes to a form to ask for details, but nothing more.

Has Sun silently killed the SVS?

Update: I’ve attempted to contact Sun, so far no response.

Sun Visualization System – Overview.

Hardware sun, svs

Autodesk’s popular “Fake or Foto” challenge is back with 12 new images.  Test your eye for detail and see how many you get!

Take a look at the ten images below. Some of them are photographs of real objects or scenes, others are created by computer graphics (CG) artists. Test your ability to tell which among the array of images are real, and which are CG. If you want a closer look, click the image to see a larger view of the picture. Once you’ve decided what’s what, click either CG or REAL to begin the tally of your score. Work through each of the ten images. When you’ve finished, you’ll be prompted to get your score.

I scored 9/12.  How’ld you do?

via Fake or Foto? – The Challenge.

Graphics autodesk

A new UV-Unwrapping plugin for 3dsMax is available in “XRayunwrap v1.0″.  Available for a mere $5, it allows you to build custom seam solutions, fill holes, and use various different methods to build the unwrap mesh.

For people doing heavy UV-mapping work, it looks like it could be a real time-saver.

XRayunwrap v1.0.

Graphics 3dsmax, plugin, software, xrayunwrap

Ozone 4.0 is the latest version of a fantastic atmospheric rendering suite, with plugins for 3ds Max, Cinema4D, LightWave, Maya, and Softimage|XSI.  The new features in 4.0 include optimized volumetric clouds, faster renderings, animation clouds and sunsets, and over 150 predefined atmospheres to start from.

Ozone 4.0 implements the Spectral 2 cutting-edge technologies developed by e-on software for the simulation and rendering of atmospheric effects. Ozone 4.0 atmospheres provide an accurately simulated environment that affects all elements of the scenes, and behaves according to nature’s rules.

Available immediates, it’s $295 for a full version, and $95 for an upgrade or network render license.

e-on software – Press Resources.

Graphics 3dsmax, cinema4d, e-on, lightwave, maya, ozone, softimage, software

The VizWorld Website Staff is growing.  Over the next few days you might start seeing posts of a different tone and structure.  Those will be thanks to the new editors and contributors we’ve taken on here at VizWorld!  As they come on board, I’ll introduce them so that you’ll know who you’re reading from and their point of view.

And if you are interested in becoming an author here on VizWorld, then visit the Contributors page.   We’re particularly interested in:

• Animators and Graphics Design Experts
• Artists for creating tutorials
• Conference Attendees

But those aren’t all, we’re looking for any qualified individuals who can write articles on a regular basis.  Whether it’s a single post, a weekly article, or anything in between, let us know!

Website Website

We spoke a few weeks ago about the fryrender RC5 tool that could real-time render some fantastic scenes from 3dsMax. Real-time raytracing is a tough problem, but if you’ve ever wondered just how powerful it is, then you’re in luck.  A demonstration video is now available on Vimeo showing a simple scene rendered & recorded real-time with their fryrender tool.

The frames were output by rc5player in real-time (at a rate of over 20 frames per second). All effects precomputed by fryrender RT such as DOF, vignetting, Global Illumination and physical materials were interpreted by RC5 in real-time. The frames were assembled in a video editing software, and an audio track was added for greater effect.

See the video after the break.

Read more…

Graphics example, fryrender, software

A new video is out from the Clinton Foundation that takes powerful imagery of urban waste and emissions, and combines it with infographic statistics of the details.  Created by superfad, it’s part of the Clinton Climate Initiative to propose a model for sustainable urban growth.

See the video after the break.

Read more…

Graphics, Science infographic, superfad, video