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A new report from Jon Peddie and TGDaily show the growth in the GPU marketplace in the recent quarter, and makes some predictions about the upcoming months of PC and GPU sales.

By the summer of 2010 we should be on a normal seasonal cycle again and everyone’s crystal ball will be a little clearer and comforting. But we’re not going into another bubble. We’re not going to see the insane run up of sales we saw in at the turn of the century or in Q3 of 2008. That’s not to say we won’t ever again have another crazy period of wild speculation and spending as if there was no tomorrow, we’re humans, we have short memories, and we’re greedy, yes, more bubbles are on their way, but not for a few years.

via TG Daily – Control your enthusiasm.

Hardware economic, gpu, jpr

If you’re a developer interested in working with the CausticRT real-time raytracing system, but haven’t gotten an actual CausticOne card to work with, you should head on over to their website and register for their developer program where you might get a chance to try out their new Emulation SDK.

Caustic Graphics has created a “software fallback” that allows developers to run a cross platform emulated version of CausticRT, without the CausticOne™ raytracing accelerator card. Within the next few months we will be offering our CausticRT Emulation SDK as a free download for developers to create new or port their existing software applications that utilize raytracing. Applications developed on the CausticRT Emulation SDK are fully compatible with CausticRT. Target markets include but are not limited to, Film, Video, Games, Transportation, Education, Consumer Products, Architecture, Engineering, and Construction.

In addition to the SDK, you’ll get free access to their developer forum to discuss CausticRT, CausticOne, CausticGL, and see some fine examples of the system in use.

via Caustic Graphics :: Realtime Raytracing :: CausticRT Emulation Registration.

Hardware caustic, sdk

ITK, the popular image processing toolkit,  is about to turn 10 years old, having begun in November 1999.  To celebrate, Kitware is holding a few events to commemorate the occasion and help push ITK to the next level.  They’ve also got a bit of history about the project online.

After the release, the NLM awarded several Algorithms, Adapters, and Data Distribution (A2D2) contracts to test ITK’s architecture and API design. The NLM also extended the contract period for several of the original contractors. Today the NLM still supports ITK through maintenance contracts, but the bulk of the work is done by the growing, international ITK community. To help us celebrate the longevity of this toolkit, Kitware is hosting several community events.

There’s even prizes, like the largest number of builds in the CDash Dashboard wins a Kitware Polo Shirt!

via ITK – Segmentation & Registration Toolkit.

Science itk, kitware, library, software

If you haven’t already nominated someone else, consider nominating VizWorld in Mashable’s 2009 Open Web Awards “Best Online Magazine” category.  We know you enjoy reading our articles as much as we enjoy writing them!

If you think we fit better in another category, then nominate us there too!

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Gizmodo is carrying news about two new Stereoscopic televisions hitting the market soon.

First off is the new offerings from AU Optronics (AUO), glasses-free 3D Televisions.

AOU (sic) is also showing a new high-def 3D panel that that can scale from 8- to 65-inches in size. It’s got a 2D/3D switch, and has a higher resolution and greater viewable angle compared to previous 3D TVs that don’t need glasses. Finally, they’ve also got a new 58-inch Ultra Wide TV panel with a resolution of 2560 x 1080. It’s 2.35:1 ratio is designed to present 2.35:1 films without black bars.

Second is the AMOLED television from Samsung:

Another of the treats on show at FPD 2009 is Samsung’s AMOLED 3D TV prototype. The 240Hz panel is just 2.5-mm thick, has a million-to-1 contrast, and Samsung claims its latest shutter-glasses technology reduces the dizziness often associated with 3D.

Looks like FPD2009 is all about the OLED 3D TV’s.

AU Optronics TV and Samsung AMOLED.

Hardware 3d, amoled, au optronics, oled, samsung, stereoscopic, tv

Maxwell has released a free trial-version of their Maxwell Renderer for you to “try before you buy”.  The demo version has a 30 day time limit, and a few other necessary restrictions:

• Watermarked render
• Maximum render size of 800 x 600 pixels
• Network rendering disabled *
• Preview Rendering in viewport in Maxwell Studio disabled
• A limit of 5 editable lights when using Multilight™

Aside from the small render-size (Personally, I’ld like to test it on 1080p for a realistic benchmark), it’s a pretty full-featured version.  Fill out the form on their website and they’ll send you a demo license.  If you haven’t heard what’s new in the latest Maxwell Render, you can read up on it here.

via Maxwell Render :: Buy – Try Demo and Plug-ins.

Graphics demo, maxwell, software

A new plugin called Timeline, from PixelNovel, combines the geek-centric revision control features of Subversion with the non-geekery of Photoshop, and presents it all as a fluid plugin that makes the entire process trivial.

Timeline goes beyond other options and uses a Subversion repository to store any revision of your progress while working on a Photoshop file. If you don’t know what Subversion is, that’s ok. Timeline simply shows you a row of previews of versions you’ve chosen to save, and you can jump back in time with a couple of clicks. Make a change, commit it, jump to a different version … all in a slick, minimal toolbar. You can add comments (a commit message for those already svn-savvy) to each revision, which is handy whether you’re working alone or collaborating.

Available for a mere $60 for the plugin, and an extra monthly/annual fee for storage if you decide to let them host your repository.

Timeline from Pixelnovel, via Timeline: no-regret version control for Photoshop.

Graphics photoshop, pixelnovel, plugin, timeline

Andy Woodruff has developed an interesting algorithm that processes images on Flickr for a specific geographical area and builds a colormap, similar to a heatmap, of the various colors found in that area.

This being a blog about maps, I of course mean Harvard not as a school but as a geographic entity. What color is the landscape, physical and cultural? When people look around at whatever interests them, what colors are they looking at?

Independently mapping the intensity and hue of the various colors, and connecting it with the geo-tagging data for the images, creates some pretty interesting maps.  Still a work-in-progress, but I look forward to seeing where it leads.

via Cartogrammar.com | Blog » Flickr as a paintbrush. via Information Aesthetics

Science color, flickr, geospatial, map

Worried about dying from the Swine Flu? Well, you probably shouldn’t be.  Michael Paukner compares it against other, more common, killers and finds the statistics rather disappointing.

This info graphic shows the immense threat of the Swine Flu compared to other manners of death. Today’s the 300th day of the year 2009, so I used the numbers of deaths of the Poodwaddle’s World Clock for a quick comparison – I know that’s no real scientific source, but it will work for what I want to show you. click, to zoom image!

Last Friday President Barack Obama has declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency. This should make you think! The number of swine flu deaths is from the official german epidemic info site.

via Swine Flu Conspiracy on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Science biomed, flu, infographic, swine flu

Layar has just received a surprisingly topical addition to their iPhone and Android augmented reality application in the form of a Recovery.gov layer that shows you where your tax dollars went in the recent federal bailouts, and how much.

As of today Android and iPhone 3GS users can see recovery.gov contract data on their phones via the Layar augmented reality application. Layar is an application that overlays your view of the real world with waypoints representing your favorite coffee place, the movie theatre you’re trying to find, or in this case, where some of that $787 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going.

They’ve integrated the data via an existing KML (Google Maps) dataset on the Recovery.gov website.

via Sunlight Labs: Blog – Recovery.gov Augmented Reality Mashup.

Hardware, Science android, augmented reality, economic, iphone, layar