VizWorld.com

A powerful free tool currently still in development aims to let you interactively debug and experiment with your CUDA kernels.  Named CudaPad, it’s a great addition to CUDA Development suites.

What is cudapad? Cudapad is a software that helps developments develop and test small kernals for NVidia’s© Cuda© language. Sometimes in your IDE you’ll want a quick way build or test a piece of Cuda code and CudaPad lets you do it. It shows the ptx code, cubin code, register count, error and more on the fly. There is no need to manually compile your code.

via Cudapad.

Hardware, Science cuda, cudapad, software

A new free CUDA-accelerated bumpmap generator is on the scene called “SSBump”.  Runs on Windows XP & Vista, and generates some pretty impressive results.

SSbump generator is a free GUI based program. The purpose of this program is to generate Self-Shadowed Bump Maps for VALVe’s Source game engine. The program can generate normal maps, non-shadowed ssbump maps, or embed directional ambient occlusion into the image.

via SSbump Generator 5.1 w/ CUDA.

Graphics bumpmap, cuda, software, texture

Remember the MSI Big Bang Motherboards we mentioned last week, specifically the Fuzion with the Lucid Hydra chipset allowing multiple-vendor SLI?  Seems that the Fuzion board has been delayed, possibly terminated, due to some strongarming by NVidia.

Considering the product would impact NVIDIA’s profit coming from SLI fee, the green giant decides that it’s time to do something. Firstly, they will break support for Lucid’s chip at the driver part, and by unknown means force MSI to postpone their “Big Bang” motherboard. Though MSI claims the Big Bang Fusion powered by Hydra engine will be released by the end of 2009, we don’t think so, exactly. The site Overclock3D believes the board will be delayed to early next year, or even be killed finally.

Update: Real Nvidia & MSI’s official response to this, freeing NVidia of any responsibility.

via Report: NVIDIA Plans to Block Lucid’s Hydra Chip – Expreview.com.

Hardware hydra, lucid, msi, nvidia

High speed cameras with heavy flashes are just the beginning, as evidenced in this great list of 45 fantastic “liquid sculptures” captured in film.

Liquid Sculpture or Splash Art is a truly beautiful art form requiring precise timming a specialized photography equipment. Masters of the genre often have complex studios set up with lasers, multiple flashes and controlers to acheive the exact timming needed to capture these wonderfull images. With the abstract nature of splash photography you can often make out figures in the liquid forms. The artists featured below have taken this niche to new hieghts – perfecting their techniques and inspiring us all.

Photo from Cafrine.

via The Beauty Of Liquid Sculptures – Noupe.

Graphics, Hardware art, photography

Just like SGI, NVidia just reported their quarterly earnings for Q3 and the results are pretty good:

“We continued to make progress in the third quarter with healthy market demand across the board,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer, NVIDIA. “Revenue was up from a year ago, with improvement in each of our PC, professional solutions and consumer businesses. It’s great to see us shipping orders with our Tegra mobile-computing solution, and growing enthusiasm for our Tesla platform for parallel computing in the server and cloud-computing markets.”

Read the full release for milestones and predictions.

via NVIDIA Reports Financial Results for Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2010.

Hardware financial, nvidia

A new interactive visualization on MSNBC.com shows the history storm track of 283 hurricanes curring since 1851 and 2008.  Using the various controls you can filter the dataset by storm intensity (Tropical Depression through Cat5), Year (slider on the bottom), landfall location (slider on the right), and individual hurricane name or location.

Historical Hurricane Tracker – - MSNBC.com.

Science hurricane, interactive, msnbc, web

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has just released the most recent unemployment figures, and Nathan of FlowingData compiled the last 6 years into a great collection of graphs that are rather poetically described by his younger sister.

I showed my younger sister the maps. Her response: “It looks like the country is bleeding.”

While the recession is “over” the unemployment rate rose to 9.8% in September from 9.7% in August. That’s 214,000 more people who are jobless in the United States. The last time unemployment was this high was back in June 1983 when it was 10.1%.

See the full resolution maps at his site.

via Unemployment, 2004 to Present – The Country is Bleeding | FlowingData.

Science economic, financial, infographic, unemployment, us

I’m sure most people don’t think of Alabama being the pinnacle of geospatial research and imaging, but Google Enterprise is developing a GIS system for a “Virtual Alabama” and ESRI is building the “Virginia Interoperability Picture for Emergency Response”.  GCN’s Wyatt Kash sits down with Jack Dangermond of ESRI to discuss advances in GIS.

Virtual Alabama copies data from different state and local agencies into a central server for visualization in the Google environment. In contrast, the VIPER system uses a distributed Web service architecture that dynamically integrates a network of real-time authoritative source services. Distributed servers integrate various maps as mashup applications, not just visualization. While some of these services are simply mapping and visualization, many others integrate analytic services and support sophisticated applications.

via The next step for agency GIS: shared services — Government Computer News.

Science esri, geospatial, gis, google

E-on Software has just announced a new version of their Vue modeling and rendering suites, version 8.  The two new releases are Vue8 xStream and Vue8 Infinite.

Vue 8 xStream, e-on’s flagship solution, offers CG professionals a solution for creating rich and realistic digital nature environments, fully immersed within Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, and Softimage XSI, Maxon Cinema 4D, or Newtek LightWave. All Vue tools are integrated in the host application as menus and toolbars and accessible from within the host interface, providing immediate access to advanced 3D environment creation technologies.

Vue 8 Infinite offers CG professionals the ability to create rich and realistic environments in a stand-alone package. Vue 8 Infinite is well suited to multimedia and entertainment professionals, architects, and graphics designers.

via Computer Graphics World – E-on Software Ships Vue 8 Infinite, Vue 8 xStream.

Graphics e-on, software, vue

Xach has published an interactive chart of the 2008 US Box Office returns.  Each stripe is a movie, with the width of the stripe representing the money coming in each week.  Stripes are ordered each week (The columns) by top-grossing, and you can see them all make huge returns on opening weekend and slowly trickling off.

2008 US Movie Box Office.

Graphics infographic, interactive, movie