VizWorld.com

Virtual Reality as an idea has been around for a long time.  With ideas ranging from hallucinogenic drugs to the “HoloDeck”, it’s a standard staple of fantasy and science fiction that technology has tried to bring to fruition for decades (maybe centuries).  io9 takes a humorous look at 7 failed VR technologies.

There was a time when people were calling home virtual reality the wave of the future. Now most people just call it goofy and expensive. Here are 7 virtual reality technologies that didn’t work, and never will.

I don’t particularly agree with everything they say, as some of these (HMD’s, Virtusphere, etc) are actually used in a few areas of industry.

io9 – 7 Failed Virtual Reality Technologies – Virtual reality.

Hardware virtual reality

As a follow-on to their previous Immersive Internet Business Value Study Q2 2009, ThinkBalm has created a proof-of-concept experience in Second Life called  the Data Garden.  They’ve already led a few private tours through the area, which demonstrates ways enterprises can use Second Life for data visualization and exploration, but next week will begin public tours.

“We are pleased to announce a public tour of the ThinkBalm Data Garden on ThinkBalm Island in Second Life on Monday June 8th from 11 00AM-noon EDT 8:00-9:00AM PDT and Second Life time .” the company blog states. “Think of Monday’s tour as a next-generation webinar.”

via Virtual Worlds News: ThinkBalm Leads Visualization Tours.

Science secondlife, thinkbalm, virtual worlds

If you’re an Adobe Photoshop user, then you’ll definately want to head on over to the John Nack blog where they’re asking for user feedback on some of the little things that annoy you.  Next week they’ll be working exclusively on fixing as many of these things as possible, and putting some of the huge projects on the backburner.

We’ve pulled together a list of 30 or so candidate ideas for you to rate. There are of course hundreds, if not thousands, of feature requests on record, and rather than trying to list everything, we’ve tried to whittle down to a reasonable set. You’re of course welcome to write in your own suggestions (and don’t feel like you have to rate everything).

So if you’ve got a little complaint, drop em a line.. Worst that can happen is they ignore it.

via John Nack on Adobe: Feedback, please: Photoshop JDI — “Just Do It”.

Graphics adobe, photoshop, software

TweakTown stopped by the ASUS booth at Computex for a chance to see the special “Mars” GTX295 in action.  Capable of running a whopping 3840×2160 at 60fps, it even set a record for 3DSMark Vantage at X25057 . (Although the site now shows 25949)

See the video of the short presentation after the break.

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Hardware asus, computex, interview, mars, nvidia

No doubt that the new Star Trek movie has some fantastic special effects, not only the explosions in space but on the Bridge of the new Enterprise.  The company behind the work, ooo-ii, has revealed some of how they built the computer interfaces you see in the movie.

On a technical level, the live visual effects office OOOii created a complete Flash / ActionScript 3 framework for compositing and sequencing various effects that was used live on the set during filming. An AIR application was used for authoring the various sequences and also to control them as the actors manipulated them. The resulting architecture thatutilized many computers, dynamic content rendering, and broadcasted meta data, to create what appears to be a contiguous world into which all of the screens act as windows.

I’ld love to get my hands on the “virtual interface” they created in AIR.  If you go to ooo-ii’s site they also have an interactive 360 of the Enterprise Bridge.

via Information Aesthetics.

Graphics movie, ooo-ii, user interface, vfx

If you’re going to SIGGRAPH2009 in New Orleans, then you’ll definately want to take in MPC Vancouver’s presentation Wednesday night about their work in the Watchmen movie.

Ben Cole, Landon Bootsma, Tim Mulvihill and Harry Mukhopadhyay will explore how the MPC Vancouver team helped to recreate one of the most acclaimed comic books in history, revealing the challenges they faced in assembling some of the more complex scenes and answering questions surrounding the diverse techniques used at the studio.

The announcement is actually about a presentation happening soon  (June 17th), but they say a repeat will be at SIGGRAPH. Full announcement after the break.

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Graphics movie, mpc, siggraph, vfx

Autodesk is presenting a pair of session in Sydney on June 11th talking about their new 2010 releases of Flame, Inferno, Smoke and Flare, and a meet-and-greet from Olivier Fontenay and Sebastian Gohs, colorists.

Session 1: Presentation of 2010 releases of Autodesk Flame, Inferno, Smoke and Flare, the new Flame and Inferno creative companion, all of which were launched at the NAB Show in Las Vegas last month!

Session 2: Meet Olivier Fontenay, Senior Colorist from EFILM Australia, and Sebastian Göhs, Lustre Colorist from CinePostproduction for the Lustre Super User Tour. Olivier is the man behind the awe-inspiring beauty of blockbuster Oscar-nominated Australia. He is also one of the earliest users of Lustre. Sebastian is the colorist behind Waltz with Bashir, the first animated film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Sessions start at 2pm, and run through 7 (break from 4-5).  Registration required.

Autodesk Experience the Power.

Graphics autodesk, flame, flare, inferno, lustre, smoke, vfx, workshop

The Institute of Animation has released its Facial Animation Toolset v1.2 for Maya for free.  The toolset includes:

The Adaptable Facial Setup is capable of driving any humanoid geometry, drawing from an extensive, FACS-based library of facial movement components.

The process of fitting the head skeleton to the individual geometry is simplified by offering a standard set of skin weights that accomodates the typical deformation regions of the face. Any skin weights may be cloned topology-independent from one head to another utilizing the Geometry Matching Tool.

The Corrective Blendshape Manager offers a useful way to add subtledeformations to a skinned mesh. Blendshape targets can be created andedited, and are computed with respect to the bind pose of the skinned mesh.

Hit their website for the necessary links.

via Research and Development at the Institute of Animation: Animation Tools.

Graphics free, modeling, software, vfx

NextIO and NVidia have announced a partnership that will mix the NextIO Adaptive PCIe chassis and management software with Nvidia’s Tesla and Quadro GPU’s to provide pre-packaged GPU computing solutions.  The NextIO management software allows servers to be mapped across PCIe up to 10 GPU’s simultaneously.

“Our customers in the oil and gas, medical imaging, and simulation markets have been demanding low- cost, high-performance GPU solutions from NextIO as a means to scale their compute applications to 50 percent or greater workloads,” said K.C. Murphy, CEO, NextIO. “Our partnership with NVIDIA will provide turnkey supported NVIDIA solutions to those customers looking for scale-out solutions.”

via HPCwire: NextIO, NVIDIA Partner to Advance CUDA Development.

Hardware cuda, gpgpu, nextio, nvidia

VTK, the premiere data visualization library, has just released verion 5.4.2 with improved readers for Fluent and other changes.  Various memory leaks and UI glitches have been fixed, and the code is all online and ready for download.

You can read the complete changelog after the break.

Kitware – News.

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Science api, kitware, library, vtk