VizWorld.com

For you Twitter users running Windows, you can check out this fun screensaver-style application “Flyar” which visualizes your incoming twitter stream and allows you to interact with it augmented-reality style with an integrated webcam.

Flyar uses your webcam to create an augmented reality image where birds fly or hang around tree branches and fly towards you to deliver tweets. The birds represent incoming tweets, and their color represents different types of messages: blue for normal messages, green for replies and red for direct messages.

When a bird is standing on a branch it means you have a new message. With just a tap you can “call” him and he’ll fly to your side to deliver the tweet (only one bird at a time). You can also interact with the birds by disrupting their flight patterns, or affect the falling leaves. The flock of birds flying around tells you how many messages you have waiting to be read.

Requires Windows, .NET framework and DirectX.

via Flyar by YDreams.

Science augmented reality, flyar, twitter, windows

The ATI Radeon HD5770, the lower-cost version of the 5870, boasts the same DirectX11 compliance but does so with a much lower impact to your wallet.  FiringSquad took the 5770 and 5750 out for a spin and published the results in a new benchmark.

This is where the Radeon 5700 series comes in. With pricing starting as low as $109 for the Radeon 5750 512MB, it’s a very feasible option for a lot of gamers on a budget. Based on the same DX11 architecture powering the Radeon 5800 lineup, the 5700 series of cards have been designed to give you all the key features found in ATI’s flagship DX11 products, only they’ve been tweaked to be cheaper to produce.

via ATI Radeon HD 5770/5750 Performance Preview.

Hardware amd, ati, benchmark

Pixar’s latest smash hit Toy Story 3 now has a trailer available over on Yahoo Movies.  Go check it out and see what lies in store for our intrepid heroes.

I find it amazing to realize that Toy Story 1 had no human faces because Pixar couldn’t realistically reproduct them, but it seem this movie is full of them.

See new and upcoming movie trailers, videos, and clips from Yahoo! Movies.

Graphics movie, pixar, trailer, vfx

Inspired Magazine has compiled another list of 20 infographic & visualization blogs on their site.  As usual, VizWorld didn’t make the cut, but it’s still a good list.

In the tradition of Inspired Mag’s huge lists, here goes a new one – all the blogs with cool data visualization eye candy in the same place! Enjoy and leave some comments with suggestions, questions and so on.

via 20 Essential Infographics & Data Visualization Blogs | Inspired Magazine.

Graphics infographic, list

fxGuide has added several new before & after shots of the plates used in District9.  I find the ones showcasing the work of Imageengine where you see the actors in the original plates, replaced with the Aliens in the final shots.

For District 9, writer/director Neil Blomkamp turned to a host of Vancouver-based studios, along with Weta Workshop and Weta Digital in New Zealand, to provide alien creatures and other effects for the film. fxguide profiles the work of Image Engine, The Embassy Visual Effects, Zoic Studios and Goldtooth Creative in bringing Blomkamp’s vision to life.

via fxguide – vfx knowledge – District 9.

Graphics district9, image engine, makingof, movie, vfx

Researchers at the “Institut fur Mathematik und Informatik” have released a new software project called VANLO, for Visualization of Aligned Networks with Layout Optimization.

In addition to displaying the intra-network connectivities, we also provide insightinto how the individual networks relate to each other by placing aligned entities on top of each other in separatelayers. We optimize the layout of the entire alignment graph in a global fashion that takes into account inter- aswell as intra-network relationships.

The layout algorithm includes a step of merging aligned networks into onegraph, laying out the graph with respect to application-specific requirements, splitting the merged graph againinto individual networks, and displaying the network alignment in layers. In addition to representing the data ina static way, we also provide different interaction techniques to explore the data with respect toapplication-specific tasks.

You can download the software at their website.

via VANLO – Interactive visual exploration of aligned biologicalnetworks – 7thSpace Interactive.

Science algorithm, graphs, software, vanlo

If you’ve been watching Discovery Channel recently then you’ve undoubtedly seen commercials for their upcoming special program “Discovering Ardi”, discussing the discovery of the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor.  Several CG shots are in the upcoming program, showing Ardi in various states of life and existence, and were all created by the guys at “Impossible”.

Employing a team of about 30 artists, animators, modelers and motion capture experts, Impossible created Ardi from the actual skeleton as well as anatomical drawings from the scientific team. Particularly difficult was creating skin, fur, lighting and natural environments for a creature that hasn’t existed for some 4 million years. But over the course of two and a half years, the team successfully produced the critical shots for this historic television program.

via Impossible Brings Oldest Human Ancestor ‘Ardi’ to Life | Reuters.

Graphics, Science ardi, history, impossible, vfx

Curt Carlson recently gave a public demonstration of his BodyViz product to a small group at the Western Iowa Tech Community College, showing how it can load 3D medical scans and enable interactive exploration and visualization.

BodyViz has extensive visualization features which enable users to quickly and effectively view and interact with their patient’s data in a never-before-seen 3D manner which is changing the way medical professionals view their world. The user interface is operated by an Xbox 360 controller (yes, I said “Xbox”), which allows anyone from surgeons to medical or anatomy students to simply “travel” under the skin, past the bones, through the arteries, blood vessels and organs, and literally fly through patients’ bodies. In fact, Carlson alluded to the film “Fantastic Voyage” several times during his Cherokee presentation.

Of course this was mostly a PR stunt, but with systems like this getting more press recently, I wonder when patients will start asking doctors about it.

via Cherokee Chronicle Times: Story: Graphic Imaging software demonstrated at WITCC.

Science biomed, bodyviz

National Geographic has a beautiful new interactive infographic on their site cataloging 50 years of space missions (Both US & others).

The “Fifty Years of Exploration” map, created by Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco for National Geographic, outlines humanity’s journeys into space, starting from the early failed mission to Mars and Venus to the current flight of New Horizons.

You can view the entire graphic full-size here.

Update: Fixed the title… Don’t know how that one got by me.

Map of the Day – National Geographic Magazine. via io9

Graphics, Science history, map, nasa

I’m currently in a talk from a research at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) who is talking about two algorithms for mesh cache management, and you might want to check them out.  First is OpenCCL from UNC Chapel Hill:

We have designed a novel algorithm to compute cache-oblivious layouts of data elements to minimize the access time of applications on the layouts. Our algorithm only requires an input graph that represents runtime access patterns of an application on the data elements. Our algorithm probabilistically measures the expected number of cache misses of a layout and computes a cache-oblivious layout that minimizes the expected number of cache misses. Moreover, the cache-oblivious layout is not optimized for any particular cache, block sizes, or replacement policies; it is constructed to work well under any cache parameters.

The other is OpenRACM from LLNL and KAIST:

OpenRACM constructs random-accessble compressed triangle meshes, which can be used for runtime applications without decompressing the whole mesh. Moreover, OpenRACM library provides a general mesh access API. Through the API, user can tranparently access the compressed meshes without application-level data management. OpenRACM compresses an input mesh in the order that triangles appear in the mesh.

Using these he’s shown compressing a 20GB dataset down to 1GB, small enough to fit into main memory, and some fantastic real-time raytracing visualizations of the St Matthew dataset.

via OpenCCL: Cache-Coherent Layouts of Meshes and Graphs.

Science algorithm, mesh, visweek