Stories from July 8th, 2009

New VizWorld Features

Just a quick update pointing out some new things you’ll see on VizWorld now.

  • EMail Subscriptions – don’t know why I didn’t have this before, but I enabled Email subscriptions in Feedburner. Just click the new link over on the top-right.
  • Fixed the RSS Subscriptions – The RSS subscription popup was being hidden by the Google ads, now it’s fixed.
  • Comment notification – Now when you post a comment, you can signup for email alerts of future comments.  I tested it, it won’t spam you with emails for the Tweets, only true comments.
  • Moved the Tweetmeme button – It was bogging down page renderings on the frontpage, so I moved it to the individual story pages.
  • And some behind-the-scenes stuff. (Breadcrumbs at the top, better pagination at the bottom, etc).

Thanks for everyone who’s chimed in with Tips & Bug-reports! Working together, we can all turn VizWorld into the #1 source for Visualization & Graphics news.

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Linderdaum Engine does Volume Rendering on Radeon cards

A new demonstration of the Linderdaum Engine, an open source C++ 3D gaming engine targeted to interactive 3d applications such as game, industrial, and scientific visualization uses, showcases the new Volume Rendering support.  What makes this one unique is that the GPU accelerated volume rendering support works on all AMD Radeon cards from the 3450 and higher.

In addition to this, the engine has support for the usual features such as per-pixel shaders, bumpmaps, and various occlusion algorithms.

Linderdaum Engine.

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Augmented Reality Dinosaur Exhibit in Japan

japan-ar-museumCanon has partnered with a museum in Japan to create an augmented reality exhibit of dinosaurs as part of the “Dinosaurs-Miracle of the Desert”.

Visitors will be allowed to don a pair of virtual reality glasses that will display nearly life-sized three-dimensional images of various dinosaurs right there on the museum floor. Displaying over 260 dinosaur specimens, some of the virtual creatures in the exhibit will also move, adding to their realistic effect.

via Canon launches virtual reality dinosaur exhibit in Japan | DVICE.

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U.S. National Debt Clock in Real Time

debtclockGotta thank ChartPorn for pointing this one out, it’s a website tracking various US Debt statistics in real-time.  Including the basics like National Debt, Spending, and GDP, it also includes more exotic figures like Liabilities and trade deficits.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time via ChartPorn .

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NVIDIA Details G210/GT220 OEM Edition

We reported last week about the chipsets for NVidia’s new G210 & GT220 surfacing, and now less than a week later we’ve got news of the OEM Cards surfacing.  Specs are the same as previously mentioned:

Based on GT218, GeForce G210 is powered by 16 stream processors, and features 512MB DDR2 memory and 64-bit memory interface width, with core/shader/memory clock of 589/1402/500MHz. The card supports Microsoft DirectX 10.1, and boasts DVI/VGA/DisplayPort connectivities. The maximum graphics card power consumption is only 30.5W.

Based on GT216, GeForce GT220 is powered by 48 stream processors, and features 1GB DDR3 memory and 128-bit memory interface width. Other specs include core/shader/memory clock of 615/1335/790MHz, DVI/HDMI/VGA outputs and DirectX 10.1 ready.

Remember that these are the OEM cards, so you won’t be able to buy them really.  These will just be the cards that ship standard in upcoming system like those from Dell.

NVIDIA Details G210/GT220 OEM Edition – Expreview.com.

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Map of Tour de France Race Route 2009

tourdefranceBack to the Wall Street Journal again today with a great interactive map of the Tour de France route.  The map on the route shows each of the segments, while data on the left shows elevation maps along the route and which day that portion of the route takes place.  They have pictures along the route, and the whole thing is a great interactive piece.

Portions of the race already complete contain small news snippets about who’s in the lead.

Map of Tour de France Race Route 2009.

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Stories from July 7th, 2009

Doritos’ Late Night Augmented Reality Bags

504x_doritosA new Doritos promotion couples the recent fad of Augmented Reality with a marker printed directly on the bag for interesting results.

Just hold up the symbol on the back of the bag to your webcam—webcam not included in Doritos bag—and visit doritoslatenight.com. You’ll get the option of Choosing Blink182 or Big Boi, and they’ll magically POP out of your bag, onscreen, and do a little dance for you.

via Doritos’ Late Night Augmented Reality Bags Are Like a Party at Taco Bell.

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ALARM from MESAI

An impressive short from a Korean Independent Animation team “MESAI”.  The story is weak (more like nonexistant), but the animation quality is pretty good.  They have more information on their site, but it’s all in (Chinese|Korean|Japanese|Other) that I can’t recognize or translate.  Anyone care to translate it for us English speakers?

YouTube – Short Animation -ALARM- HD720.

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Four-dimensional visualization with optical coherence tomography

Fig3aResearchers from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, have adapted a spectral OCT instrument (optical coherence tomography) to capture super-high resolution (micrometer) images over time (5 fps).  Since these are 3D scans, they call them volumes and state the system has an speed of approximateyl “5 volumes per second”.

With this new equipment, they were able to capture “4 dimensional” visualizations of the human eyes, meaning real-time 3D video.  They were able to capture detailed video of lenticular accomodation (watching the eye lens focus at varying depths), and blinking and light response of the pupil.

Look in the references of the article for more animated GIF’s of their results.

Four-dimensional visualization with optical coherence tomography: SPIE Newsroom: SPIE.org.

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The Making Of Exploit Yourself

MO_02Big Lazy Robot has posted a “Making Of” video on Vimeo for the impressive nike commercial “Exploit Yourself“. While there’s no dialog or technical data, it does show some detail shots of the model they created for the runner, some of the storyboards and sketches they created, and wireframes of some key scenes.

See the video after the break.

Read more…

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