VizWorld.com

First OnLive, and now Gaikai have entered limited betas.  While OnLive is targeting the US first, Gaikai is heading for Europe.

“Gaikai is all about reaching a massive audience, so we are embracing Europe right away.”

Europe first, America next.

“After we choose the hardware configuration in Europe, our next phase will be our USA Nationwide Network Test, that will be using 8 Tier-1 Data Centers, getting hammered by Closed Beta testers,” Perry added.

The signup form is already online, but already 30,000 people have signed up.

via VG247 » Blog Archive » Gaikai closed beta to launch in Europe “later this month”.

Hardware gaikai, video game

AMD has long suffered the wrath of laptop users for cluttering up valuable wrist-rest space with little poorly-made stickers touting “AMD Turion” or “Athlon”, similar to the classic “Intel Inside” stickers of yesterday.  They’ve now realized the error of their ways and have decided to remove that style of branding, and replaced it with a new branding based on the hardware’s capabilities rather than the actual version.. And they made new stickers for it.

Vision breaks systems into three tiers—Vision, Vision Premium and Vision Ultimate. The basic Vision is for simple tasks (that of your netbook, ultrathin notebook or basic mainstream system). The Premium is one step up the computing ladder and has Direct X 10.1 and HD support amongst other things. On the top is Ultimate which can work video encoding and HD video editing. Now my first question was how the hell is Joe Schmo supposed to know the difference between these levels on a system any better than they know a processor name?

via AMD Vision Takes Complicated Processor Stickers off Laptops…Kinda – AMD Vision – Gizmodo.

Hardware amd

If you’re in Heidelberg, Germany during early March you might want to check out the VizBi conference on biological data visualization.

The goal of the workshop is to bring together, for the first time, researchers developing and using systems to visualize a broad range of biological data, including sequences, genomes, phylogenies, macromolecular structures, systems biology, microscopy, and magnetic resonance imaging. In selecting topics for this workshop, we have focused on the visualization of processed and annotated data in their biological context, rather than the processing of raw data.

They’ve got a long list of speakers, including a keynote by Ben Fry.  They’re currently accepting abstracts and applications.

An EMBO Workshop on Visualizing Biological Data (VizBi).

Science biological, biomed, conference, vizbi, workshop

NVidia has just released their new OpenCL Visual Profiler for Windows and Linux, offering key insights into OpenCL kernels for developers worldwide.

Key features include:

• Profiling of actual hardware signals, kernel efficiency, and instruction issue rate
• Timing of memory copies between system memory and GPU dedicated memory
• Customizable graphs to help developers focus in on problem areas
• Basic auto-analysis to reveal warp serialization problems
• Easy import/export to CSV for custom analysis

Also, they’ve released a good PDF on “OpenCL Best Practices”  that you can download from their website.  Get the links and the full press release after the break.

Read more…

Hardware, Science debug, nvidia, opencl

The annual SuperComputing conference isn’t a place you typically expect to find alot in the way of visualization.  This year, however, SC09 in Portland, OR has a “thrust area” in its technical program on the 3D Internet.

The rapidly converging area of 3D technologies and the use of 3D visualization on the web show great promise for education, training, and scientific exploration. This thrust area will look at the use of HPC and its impact on delivering high quality 3D visualization solutions to advance the state of education, improve the quality of complex training, and advance general scientific understanding.

No details yet on what exactly they’ll be covering, but it looks promising.

via SC09 – Thrust Areas.

Science 3d, conference, hpc, internet

In San Antonio, Texas from October 21 to 23, SGI will be holding its 7th Annual SGI User Group (SGIUG) Conference.

Join us at the 7th Annual SGI User Group (SGIUG) Conference in
San Antonio, Texas, October 21-23, 2009 (immediately following the GEOINT Symposium). This year’s event features tutorials, technical presentations, and workshops as well as keynotes from top SGI executives and technical sessions from the engineers.

Featured Keynotes:

• SGI Directions
  Mark Barrenechea, President & CEO, SGI
• Needle Amongst the HayStacks: Analytics and Mining Sharded Datasets
  S. Ryan Quick, Principal Architect, EBAY/PAYPAL
• Technology Trends
  Dr. Eng Lim Goh, Senior Vice President & CTO, SGI

For more information on the conference, accommodations, pricing, or to register, visit the conference website or email [email protected].

Early Registration is available until September 21 at $450 USD. A $50 savings.

So there’s your chance to go grill the man himself (Barrenechea) about what happened to the Graphics division .

Graphics, Hardware, Science conference, sgi

If you’re a big user of Autodesk design and engineering software and find yourself with some spare time, you might want to look into Avatech’s new ‘Render Us Speechless’ competition for a chance to win a cash prize.

This year Avatech is accepting submissions in four categories: Manufacturing/Mechanical, Civil/Mapping/GIS, Architecture/Building Design, and “Wild Card.” Each category will be awarded a first place of $750, second place of $500, and third place of $250. One Wild Card (submissions that don’t fit into any of the other three categories) winning entry will receive $500.

Entries will be judged on photorealism, difficulty, aesthetics, and technical skill.  Deadline for submissions is October 16th.

via Sep 9 – Avatech Launches ‘Render Us Speechless’ Contest.

Graphics autodesk, avatech, contest

Hardware-infos has gotten news from insiders about the new AMD HD 5850 and 5870 chipsets, and find that they may blow away all previous guesses and include a massive 1600 stream processors.

Based on equal clock frequencies the new models have theoretically twice as much shader and texture performance as the present HD 4850 and HD 4870 series. Though increasing the power more than a 100 per cent will just be possible in a few cases, as the memory interface is still restricted up to 256 bits. Nevertheless AMD improved the performance quite a lot and developed a remarkable graphic card series, which outclasses his older brothers easily.

via AMD HD 5850/HD 5870: 1600 SPs and 80 TMUs – News – Hardware-Infos.

Hardware amd, ati

Red Giant Software has just released its newest product “Magic Bullet Mojo” to bring the magic of color-adjustment to every VFX editor.

Now you can have one of Hollywood’s best tricks up your own sleeve. Modern blockbusters often use a subtle coloring effect to warm up actors’ skin tones while backgrounds and shadows get a cool blue treatment –– but the trick is to do it while keeping your talent in focus. Magic Bullet Mojo gives you this modern Hollywood look in seconds, with easy customizable controls to suit any footage.

It’s available for a mere $99, with a trial version for you to experiment with.

via Red Giant Software: Magic Bullet Mojo 1.0.

Graphics color correction, magic bullet mojo, redgiant, software, vfx

The “Resource of the Week” this week goes out to all you VFX types, Bill Byrne’s “Visual Effects Arsenal: VFX Solutions for the Independent Filmmaker“.  From the description:

Build your VFX arsenal with quick-access, step-by-step instruction on how to create today’s hottest digital VFX shots. This essential toolkit provides techniques for creating effects seen in movies such as 300, Spiderman 3, Predator and others, with lessons on how-to:

• splatter blood or digitally lop someone’s arm off
• create a scene with actors running from an explosion
• create the “twin effect” (same actor, same location, 2 performances)
• produce space-ship dog fights

Organized in a ‘cookbook’ style, this allows you to reference a certain effect in the index and immediately access concise instructions to create that effect.

Techniques are demonstrated in each of the most popular software tools- After Effects, Final Cut Studio, Photoshop, and Combustion are all covered. Brilliant, 4-color presentation provides inspiration and stimulating visual guidance to the lessons presented, while the companion DVD contains project media files enabling you to put concepts learned into immediate practice.

• 4-color, step-by-step instruction for producing today’s hottest digital VFX shots
• VFX techniques are presented in each of the most popular software tools
• Companion DVD features project media files allowing you to immediately implement techniques learned

It’s available from Amazon in Paperback for a mere $36.46, making it a great & affordable resource for anyone wanting to know how to recreate some of the best Visual effects shots in the industry.

If you’ve read the book and want to add your opinion to the global collective, then feel free to post a comment.  If you don’t like the thought of a comment, or you have your own favorite resource that you would like to recommend, then feel free to contact us for consideration next week!

Graphics, Hardware, Science feature, resource of the week