BibliOdyssey has compiled a huge list of classic Victorian-era infographics including insect collections, astronomical charts, time differences, and (shown right) this impressive chart of Human History.
This is a fold-out print depicting all of human history from the time of creation (4693 BC = Adam & Eve; the great flood = 3300 BC) up to the date of publication (1858 by Eug. Pick, Paris). Vignettes of historically significant people, places and buildings etc are arranged along the borders.
This audacious document mirrors the style of a similar graphical print by Colton from 1842 [I don't think it's online] and is in the same ballpark as an 1836 chart by Emma Willard (see here).
The designer has employed something of a metaphorical display choice: civilisations are presented as a series of rivers — the widths likely imply the comparative population level of each group versus the world’s population — which ‘flow’ down through history.
See them all in much higher resolution on his site and Flickr.
AnandTech has an article showing the Unreal Engine 3 running on an iPod Touch and an iPhone 3GS. They also report that it will be seen on another mobile platform at CES. The demo has little point to it right now. There is no score, and only one enemy that spawns again when you kill him. However it is very cool that you can take a game like this and port it to a mobile platform. Since it will be appearing on other mobile platforms, this gives Epic the chance to sell more licenses to the engine, and for us to waste more time have more fun on the ride into work. From the article:
A virtual thumbstick on the left side of the screen controls your movement, while tracking your thumb in the lower right corner of the screen controls the camera. Just tap the screen to shoot. Mark said this is a tech test bed and they’re experimenting with several different control schemes including ones with tilt.
Read more of the article over at AnandTech or take a look at the YouTube clip below.
ATI has released the newest version of their Streak GPGPU library, this time containing their first production release with OpenCL support. They’ve also added an integrated Visual Studio tool and several multi-library interoperability features. The full list of new whiz-bang features looks like this:
First production release of ATI Stream SDK with OpenCL™ 1.0 support.
New: Support for OpenCL™ ICD (Installable Client Driver). Please see this knowledge base article for important information concerning changes that must be made to code developed with previous beta releases of the ATI Stream SDK v2.0.
New: Support for atomic functions for 32-bit integers.
Preview: Support for OpenCL™ / OpenGL® interoperability. Please see this knowledge base article for more information about this preview feature.
Preview: Support for OpenCL™ / Microsoft® DirectX® 10 interoperability. Please see this knowledge base article for more information about this preview feature.
Preview: Support for double-precision floating point basic arithmetic in OpenCL™ C kernels. Please see this knowledge base article for more information about this preview feature.
Updated OpenCL™ runtime to conditionally load ATI CAL runtime libraries to allow execution on compatible CPUs without ATI Catalyst™ installed.
Updated OpenCL™ runtime to allow simultaneous use of OpenCL™ and ATI CAL APIs in a single user application.
Updated cl.hpp from the Khronos OpenCL working group release.
Various OpenCL™ compiler and runtime fixes and enhancements (see developer release notes for more details).
NewTek has announced a new portable HD production suite called the TCXD300 that takes what used to fill an entire truck and packs it into a 20-pound box small enough to fit into a backpack. The feature list is pretty impressive:
End-to-end HD 1080i video pipeline, including effects and virtual sets
Video processing employs 32-bit floating-point precision, 4:4:4:4 video processing and component (YCbCrA) color (well beyond industry standard 10-bit)
Four-channel audio processed at 48 kHz, 32-bit floating point
Extensive audio input/output flexibility including Embedded SDI on all video channels, four channels of AES/EBU, and professional level balanced XLR/phone connectors
All video inputs can be Proc-Amped, keyed and frozen, including titles and DDRs
Integrated full field rate Waveform Monitor and Vectorscope with full color beam tracing
Individual processing controls for both Main and VGA outputs
Pristine capture of video or stills with support for full 4:2:2 up to 1920 x 1080 resolution at very high bit-rates
Next-generation optimized user-interface design with key live production tools readily available, supported by the ability to quickly access controls to configure each source
Available now for $17,995 as the highest-end TriCaster solution, and the full specifications are available on their website.
Dead to Rights: Retribution is the latest chapter in the Dead to Rights saga from Volatile games, and the environment is like nothing ever seen in the game before. CGSociety talks to the developers and graphics artists that brought the world to life.
Shadow’s pipeline was the same as for the human characters; body movement in Motionbuilder and facial animation in Maya. He was great fun to work on and the response so far has shown that the more brutal we make his takedowns the more people like them! He certainly has his own personality now and players will see how much of an important factor he is in the game, not least through his relationship with Jack and Frank (Jack’s dad).”
Note: The article is still undergoing editing it seems, as the opening paragraph is in the front page at least 3 times.
Just a heads up, I’ve integrated the new “Meebo Bar” into the website. What that means is that you look down at the bottom of your browser window and you’ll see a little bar with quicklinks to areas of the website, twitter, Facebook, and several new options to share stories.
If it gives you any problems, don’t hesitate to drop us a line and we’ll work on it.
Update 12/22 8:30am: Just tweaked the code a bit, got automatic sharing working. Just click and drag any image or video and watch the magic :)
The new digital formats and stereoscopic tools used in Avatar generated unprecedented quantities of data that had to be stored and transferred not only between computers but between entire studios. Isilon provided a clustered IQ filer setup and describes it in an article with The Register.
An Isilon release says: “The Avatar production generated terabytes of data in various formats, including massive digital files used in creating Avatar’s all-digital, virtual filming environment, small metadata and instructional files, still frames for review, and large media files from Avid systems.” The terabytes of data were created on a weekly basis and, sometimes, a daily one.
But Isilon wasn’t the only provider of storage equipment, as NetApp was involved as well.
Weta used NetApp kit to store the incoming data, then used a huge number of workstations and bladed servers – with 30,000 cores in total – to work on it. The NetApp filers were fitted with up to five 160GB DRAM cache accelerator cards in their controllers, the PAM (Performance Acceleration Modules) caches, to speed file access by the Weta creative people and the servers.
Do you remember the story we posted, ORNL Looks to NVidia GT300 for next Super, back on September 30th? Well, according to SemiAccurate.com, the project was killed since Fermi consumes too much power. However, Legit Reviews contacted several people at NVidia and ORNL who all say that the rumor is false.
BibliOdyssey has compiled a huge list of classic Victorian-era infographics including insect collections, astronomical charts, time differences, and (shown right) this impressive chart of Human History.
AnandTech has an article showing the Unreal Engine 3 running on an iPod Touch and an iPhone 3GS. They also report that it will be seen on another mobile platform at CES. The demo has little point to it right now. There is no score, and only one enemy that spawns again when you kill him. However it is very cool that you can take a game like this and port it to a mobile platform. Since it will be appearing on other mobile platforms, this gives Epic the chance to sell more licenses to the engine, and for us to 
ATI has released the newest version of their Streak GPGPU library, this time containing their first production release with OpenCL support. They’ve also added an integrated Visual Studio tool and several multi-library interoperability features. The full list of new whiz-bang features looks like this:
NewTek has announced a new portable HD production suite called the TCXD300 that takes what used to fill an entire truck and packs it into a 20-pound box small enough to fit into a backpack. The feature list is pretty impressive:
Dead to Rights: Retribution is the latest chapter in the Dead to Rights saga from Volatile games, and the environment is like nothing ever seen in the game before. CGSociety talks to the developers and graphics artists that brought the world to life.
Here’s the links for today:
Just a heads up, I’ve integrated the new “Meebo Bar” into the website. What that means is that you look down at the bottom of your browser window and you’ll see a little bar with quicklinks to areas of the website, twitter, Facebook, and several new options to share stories.
There’s been plenty of news about Avatar, so I thought I might gather up some of our stories on it in a single easy-to-find place.
The new digital formats and stereoscopic tools used in Avatar generated unprecedented quantities of data that had to be stored and transferred not only between computers but between entire studios. Isilon provided a clustered IQ filer setup and describes it in an article with The Register.
VizWorld.com 
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