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This weeks marks NVidia’s offering into 40nm silicon with their new GeForce GT 220 and GT210. A good value card, priced at only about $35 and DirectX10.1 compliant, Guru3D has one and puts it through some hoops.

First the value-oriented G210, which will ship with 16 stream processors clocked at 1402 MHz, while the graphics core operates at 590 MHz. It’s armed with 512MB of DDR2 running at 790MHz. The board’s memory interface is just 64-bit, with peak memory bandwidth of 12.6GB/sec. The GT210 cards will supposedly sell for $30-$35 and replace today’s GeForce 9400 in NVIDIA’s lineup.

It’s not going to set any records, but for low-end systems it’s pretty good.  Hopefully Nvidia will use it to iron out kinks in 40nm processes and we’ll see more from them soon.

via GeForce GT 220 review.

Hardware nvidia

Hristo Velev has a new tutorial on Eat3D that shows how to use Autodesk’s 3ds Max to create a chain and model it realistically.

In this demonstration Hristo Velev takes you through creating an animated chain inside 3ds Max. Everything from modeling the chain, skin wrapping it to a control object, and using cloth to simulate the dynamics are covered.

It’s a 12-minute video, and you can purchase an HD version with 3dsMax project files for a mere $4.

via Animating a Chain in 3ds Max | Feed Your Brain!.

Graphics 3dsmax, howto, tutorial

Marian Dörk has placed a pair of PDF’s online from his presentation yesterday at the “Vis on the Web” discussion where he discusses the failures of Ranked Snippets (like Google Search Results) and Thumbnails.

As the Web continues to grow immensely, we think a logical next step is developing more visual and interactive ways for exploring the Web. However, most visual search interfaces that are currently appearing do not make use of information visualization as a way to aggregate or summarize information. Instead we see playful graphical interfaces or previews of visual Web resources that employ ranking algorithms to reduce the number of displayed items.

His paper (1 page PDF) and Presentation Slides (PDF) are available online.

Science paper, visweek

Researchers at the University of Utah have developed some iPhone applications to allow students, doctors, and patients analyze the human body on their mobile devices, including their own MRI and CT scans.

ImageVis3D Mobile and ViSUS “help people visualize and manipulate large amounts of image data,” particularly biomedical images, said Chris Johnson, director of the SCI Institute and a distinguished professor of computer science.

Nielsen says AnatomyLab is meant for students and teachers, but “a lot of medical professionals are buying it because they can show it to their patients on the spot and clarify injuries or problems they are discussing with them about their body.”

via New iPhone apps to study human body in 3-D (re-issue).

Hardware, Science biomed, iphone

PC Authority takes a stroll down memory lane and comes up with a list of their Top 10 technologies in graphics.

This week, in light of recent news from Adobe, AMD and Intel we take a look at some of the graphics technologies that helped take computing out of the lab and into the hands of creative professionals and multimedia-hungry consumers.

It’s an ok list, with OpenGL, Flash, and Photoshop in the list.

via Top 10 technologies in graphics – News – PC Authority.

Graphics, Hardware history, list

An interesting new piece of freely available software allows you to load point clouds from Pixar’s Renderman into Maya for visualization.  You can download the source & binaries from their website.

dneg/dnPtcViewerNode @ GitHub.

Graphics maya, pixar, renderman, software

The Java Neural Network Framework “Neuroph” has just been updated with a few new routines to aid in Image Processing work, mostly image recognition.  On their website they’ve posted some examples and howto’s demonstrating what you can do.

Neural networks are one technique which can be used for image recognition. This tutorial will show you how to use multi layer perceptron neural network for image recognition. The Neuroph has built in support for image recognition, and specialised GUI tool for training image recognition neural networks. Simple image recognition library can be found in org.neuroph.contrib.imgrec package, while image recognition GUI tool is in easyNeurons application [Main Menu > Tools > Image recognition]

via Image Recognition with Neural Networks HowTo.

Science algorithm, api, image processing, java, library, neural network

Be sure to start your week off with the sheer beauty of destruction filmed at 1 million frames per second.

Slow Motion video of bullet impacts made by Werner Mehl from Kurzzeit. These are by far the best slow motion bullet impacts available anywhere. Watch for the hollow point rounds in the ballistics gel.

The video shows nothing but impacts as several different types of bullets slam into various objects (plates, gel, edges, etc) and are simply beautiful.

See the video after the break.

Read more…

Science photography, slow motion, video

Computer software licenses are always a difficult thing to deal with, but a new US Court ruling makes things a little bit nicer for users by debunking the adage that companies, like Autodesk, sells software “licenses” and not software.

With that said, the court made a groundbreaking decision that may effect every software publisher from here on out. “The Autodesk License is a hodgepodge of terms that, standing alone, support both a transfer of ownership and a mere license,” the ruling dictated. However, the court eventually concluded that the previous Wise case “leads to the conclusion that the transfer of AutoCAD copies via the License is a transfer of ownership.”

via U.S. Court: Software is Owned, Not Licensed – Tom’s Guide.

Graphics autodesk, legal, software

VisWeek is underway in Atlantic City, New Jersey with talks, workshops, BOF’s, and more!  VizWorld is here covering the event (look for the black macbook with the VizWorld stickers).  To make things a bit easier for you, be sure to check back with VizWorld often for:

• Twitter Search for #visweek in the sidebar, for the latest info
• VisWeek forum where you can discuss topics or find friends
• Regular posts here about the event (all tagged visweek)
• A Google Wave (after the break).  Unfortunately, this option is only available for you lucky folks with Google Wave Accounts, send me your @googlewave.com address and I’ll add you to the wave. Just implemented Public Wave access.. Enjoy!
  

So check back often, we’ve got alot to report!

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Science conference, feature, visweek