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Jon Peddie Research, not the usual source of GPU Benchmarks, does a pretty thorough review of the new ATI Radeon HD5970 across several benchmarks, including PMark, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Unigine, and Resident Evil 5.  The results are impressive.

The board comes with 2GB of DDR5, one each for each GPU. The GPUs get to the PCIe lanes via a gen2 PLX PCIe bridge chip.

We ran a series of tests on the board in Windows 7 and the results were very impressive—without over-clocking. ATI has a lot of headroom in the RV870 Evergreen GPU, and the two of them on the Hemlock board have been slightly detuned to stay within power supply and temperature bounds. To do that ATI decided to go with a smaller power supply solution by selecting a 6-pin + 8-pin power connector while still using the components from the 400W board design.

via ATI’s Radeon HD5970 Hemlock – DirectX 11, lots-o-cores, multiple displays, over-clockable – Mount Tiburon Testing Labs Reviews.

Hardware ati, benchmark, jpr

That’s right, the 4th issue of the VizWorld Newsletter just went out.  Did you miss it?  That’s a shame, but don’t worry as you can read it here.

But go ahead and sign up now for the next one. It’s free, and will keep you informed on all the latest feature articles and most popular stories we cover here!  Join now!

Website mailinglist, Website

Roland Emmerich looked to the future for his last big hit “2012″, and has decided to turn his interests to the past for his next movie “Anonymous”.  Based on the theory that several plays attributed to William Shakespeare may actually be the work of the 17th Earl of Oxford, it’s a literary-political thriller with 1-twentieth the budget of 2012.  How does he plan to reach his usual pinnacles of VFX with such a limited budget?

“It’s called photogrammetry,” Weigert told 30 Ninjas. “What you do is, you can build models in the computer based on photos only, so I could photograph your house, for instance, from several different angles, put that in the computer, and based on those photos I can build a 3-D model of that house, map those photographs on it like a wallpaper, and then it looks like a real building.” The pair used the technique in 2012, and plan to make it faster and more expansive for Anonymous.

via 30ninjas » Video » VFX Wizards Reveal How Emmerich Will Put the World Back Together Again in Anonymous.

Graphics anonymous, movie, photogrammetry, vfx

A new press release from muvee and NVidia announces that the latest version of their consumer home movie making software “muvee Reveal 8″ adds support for GPU Acceleration on NVidia cards with CUDA.

“GPU computing is revolutionizing the consumer PC experience for photo and video applications,” said Michael Steele, general manager of visual consumer solutions at NVIDIA.  “muvee Reveal is shockingly easy to use and can turn a disorganized pile of digital photos and videos in to a slick home video in only a few minutes by tapping into the computing power of the GPU with NVIDIA CUDA technology.”

muvee Reveal 8 is available for $80. Read the full release after the break.

Read more…

Science cuda, muvee, nvidia, software

For those of you working with OpenGL Shaders via GLSL, the freely available glslDevil tool offers a great way to interactively debug and manipulate these shaders kn real-time on both Windows and Linux.

glslDevil is a tool for debugging the OpenGL shader pipeline, supporting GLSL vertex and fragment programs plus the recent geometry shader extension. By transparently instrumenting the host application it allows for debugging GLSL shaders in arbitrary OpenGL programs without the need to recompile or even having the source code of the host program available. The debug data is directly retrieved from the hardware pipeline and can be used for visual debugging and program analysis.

Binaries are available at their site.  I’m not sure, how prevalent is GLSL in the wake of new technologies?

via glslDevil – OpenGL GLSL Debugger.

Science debug, glsl, opengl, software

If you’re planning to graduate or change jobs in the next few years, you might want to consider moving to Port St. Lucie in Florida as Digital Domain (parent company Wyndcrest) have almost completed a deal to construct a new large visual effect studio down there.

The deal includes the city, also with the help of St. Lucie County, providing Wyndcrest with:

• $28 million in bond money for equipment and to build a studio.
• $3.8 million in bond money for training, workforce development and operational costs.
• $10 million in cash from developer money the city received originally earmarked for an Interstate 95 interchange on Open View Drive between Becker Road and Gatlin Boulevard.
• 15 acres valued at $10 million contributed to the city by Tradition developer Core Communities.

In return, Wyndcrest must create up to 500 full-time jobs with an average annual salary of $64,233 by 2014. Full-time in the agreement is considered 35 hours per week. However, John Textor, chairman of Wyndcrest, said a healthy animation studio could have up to 1,100 employees.

via PSL approves $51.8 million deal for visual effects studio» TCPalm.com.

Graphics digitaldomain

James Cameron’s “Avatar” opens in theaters December 18th, and media outlets worldwide are abuzz with interviews, stories, and the technology behind the film.  Over at Wired they have a great background piece about what happened to James Cameron from the debut of the original Star Wars to the present, including the maddening attention to detail we will get to witness in Avatar.

Cameron is trying to show me something with a laser pointer. He queues up a scene toward the end ofAvatar and freezes the frame on an image of a large crowd of Na’vi. He uses the pointer to draw attention to an ornate headdress composed of hundreds of tiny beads. The onscreen image is amazingly crisp, and the headdress appears utterly real. Each bead was designed by a digital artist, Cameron says, so it would look handmade. “Every leaf, every blade of grass in this world was created,” he says, and his laser pointer streaks across the screen, alighting on so many things I can’t follow its path.

James Cameron’s New 3-D Epic Could Change Film Forever | Magazine.

Graphics avatar, interview

Information Aesthetics has decided to, at least temporarily, embrace the dark side of visualization and learn to love the ugly and useless of the visualization world.

While we keep discussing the necessity of theoretical frameworks, start dozens of vizblogs with endless “best-of” lists, and criticize the best practice of data visualizations, we seem to have lost the attention to a parallel universe, which no-one really recognizes the need to write a manifesto for. A field that is potentially more prevalent than all visualization “tools” and “artwork” put together. I mean those data visualizations that are neither “eye candy” nor “useful”, neither “beautiful” nor “functional”, neither “art” nor a “tool”, neither “user-satisfactory” nor “effective”, and neither stimulating the “heart” nor the “brain”. The challenge of this competition is thus for you to find the most “ugly”, “useless” and “disfunctional” data visualization online. It sounds easy, but can be more difficult than you might think.

If you think you have a contender, drop a line to [email protected] and you could win one of 2 copies of the FusionCharts Developer Bundle, worth $499.

via Competition: What is the most Ugly and Useless Visualization Online? – information aesthetics.

Science bad, contest, infographics

Various websites are reporting that the unusual Ostendo quad-DLP Curved & widescreen display is now on sale, and has been since august.

The monster 2880 x 900 quad-DLP display has been quietly on sale directly from the mothership since late August. Ostendo tell us most of the units sold have been for defense simulation and training, but there are apparently some gamers out there hardcore enough to stomach the $6,499 price tag — including the crown prince of Dubai, who's purchased “multiple units.” We’re also told that multi-monitor CRVD applications are forthcoming, which sounds insane — and is even wilder on video

Check out some impressive gaming video of 3 of these displays in use as once, after the break.

via Ostendo now selling CRVD display directly; multiple CRVD display rig blows minds on video — Engadget.

Read more…

Hardware crvd, display, ostendo

Today is the 150th anniversary of the publishing of the original “Origin of Species” text from Charles Darwin.  In remembrance of this history occasion, be sure to check out an earlier post here on VizWorld covering a visualization of the many versions of the text created by Ben Fry.

Tracking “The Origin of Species” | VizWorld.com.

preservation of favoured traces by Ben Fry

Science darwin, history, text