USA TODAY has posted an interactive map that shows information related to the magnitude-7.0 earthquake in Haiti last week. You can change the different layers of information that overlay a map of Haiti. Some of the information that you can view is the population density, fault lines, shake intensity, and key aftershocks.
via USA TODAY : Damage summary from Haiti earthquake
Ford has teamed up with the United Space Alliance to share virtual reality technology. Ford uses virtual reality technology to look at a vehicle, be it car, truck, or crossover, before it is ever built. The United Space Alliance uses virtual reality technology to design spacecraft. Ford is sharing its expertise in combining ergonomic analysis with visualization technology, while the United Space Alliance’s expertise is in the modeling and projection hardware. From the article:
The United Space Alliance, a joint-venture between Boeing and Lockheed which runs the day-to-day operations of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, was particularly interested in Ford’s immersive Virtual Evaluation lab (iVE), formerly known as Cave. The lab uses virtual projections and motion-tracking cameras to create virtual models of the interiors and exteriors of future vehicles, which allows Ford to evaluate the look and ergonomics of new designs without building multiple prototypes.
via Motor Trend : Ford, United Space Alliance Team Up to Enhance Virtual Reality Modeling
Yahoo is playing host to a great behind-the-scenes featurette for Avatar, showing blue screens, Simulcam, hybrid displays, and more.
The video takes a close look at the designs, landscapes, creatures, military hardware, sets and costumes in the film; casting decisions; and the secrets behind the 3-D motion and performance capture, which required a surprising amount of physical performance from the movie’s stars (not to mention learning the fictional Na’vi language).
We also learn a lot about the tech Cameron used, including his innovative “virtual camera” system and his 3-D digital camera rigs.
The video includes ample interviews with Cameron, producer Jon Landau, members of Cameron’s creative crew and cast members Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver.
Watch it after the break.
via Cool! EVERYTHING you want to know about Avatar in new video | SCI FI Wire.
What would happen if you printed the 7 billion tweets to date? This infographic from Creative Cloud answers the question by comparing it to the number of King James bibles, Congress, school buses, and more. My favorite is that to print all of Twitter on an average HP Inkjet printer, it would cost you $24,500,000 to print in black ink or $55,606,250 to include the Twitter blue. They do not answer this question, but I would like to know how many trees would have to be killed to print out all of Twitter.
via Creative Cloud : If you printed Twitter
Google has taken the initiative to reposition their imaging equipment for another higher-resolution pass of the damaged Haiti areas, resulting in a new near-15cm resolution scan now available online.
These images were gathered on Sunday (January 17). You can currently view the imagery in Google Maps in Satellite mode. It will also be available via the Google Maps API and in Google Map Maker. As of this morning, this high-resolution imagery is now available as the base imagery in Google Earth (all previous imagery of Haiti will be included in the Historical Imagery feature) and has been published in the Haiti Earthquake KML layer. We're also making this imagery directly available to relief organizations.
Just hit Google Maps Satellite mode to see the devastation.
It is the time of year again to start thinking about taxes. Some people will do their taxes as early as possible, while others wait until the last minute, and while still others have to file extensions. TurboTax has an infographic showing that two out of every three Americans pay their taxes online. Approximately 78% of Americans gave Uncle Sam a free loan by overpaying their taxes in 2008, and then received a refund. Two-thirds of those refunds were electronically deposited in their accounts.
What is a bit confusing to me is the Top E-Filing states. California is listed as number one with 11.1 million citizens filing online. Texas is listed as second with 6.8 million citizens filing online. However, the graphic to the right does not show in the same color as Texas. New York, which is third, also does not show up in the same color. My guess is that the map has nothing to do with being the top E-filing states. The map is just there to look pretty. I think it would have been better to have the number of electronic filers per state divided by the state’s population. That way we could have the states ranked by percentage of participation. Otherwise, the most populous states will always be listed on top. Of course, we also need the map to correlate with the numbers.
Darin McKinnis has updated the Viz Worth Watching blog with some under-the-hood details on the upcoming EnSight 9.1 Volume Rendering feature, and what you’ll need to make it work. No surprises, you’ll need alot of memory and a new video card:
Regardless, you are going to need a graphics card produced in the last 2 years. Volume rendering requires a DirectX 10 compatible nVidia or ATI graphics card, not that EnSight uses DirectX but this is an indicator for the correct generation of graphics cards.
Volume rendering will use significantly more memory on the client, both for storing the volume cell data as well as rendering objects to be passed to the graphics card. These rendering objects also consume memory on the graphics card. An estimate for graphics memory required for running EnSight 9.1 includes:
- 40MB EnSight with opaque surfaces
- 64MB EnSight with semi-transparent surfaces (depth peeling)
- 110MB EnSight with volume rendering
Due to OpenGL limitations on Mac OS X, these numbers are 67MB, 91MB, and 137MB when running the EnSight client on a Mac.
This includes the screen itself, our rendering buffers, depth peeling buffers, and volume peeling buffers. This is assuming a graphics window size of 1024×720 and the default of 6 peels. Memory requirements will increase for larger displays or more peels. This is just an entry level point before any geometry is rendered.
Interesting to hear that it’s working via Depth Peeling, presumably for Solid-Geometry/Volume interaction (like shown in the image above). I also find the statement of a “DirectX10″ compatible card a bit unsettling, and many people run EnSight on *Nix platforms. Something more defined like the number of shaders or particular GL extensions would have been more useful.
I personally *love* volume rendering, but it takes quite a long time to process typically. Can’t wait to get my hands on it in EnSight and see if they’ve implemented any GPU acceleration strategies that put it beyond ParaView and VisIt.
via Viz Worth Watching: EnSight 9.1 Volume Rendering – how to prepare.
If you’re looking for royalty-free 2D or 3D resources, then you definitely need to check out The3DStudio.com. They’ve just reached 750,000 assets including models, textures, plugins, stock photos, and much more. All royalty-free, they offer a wide range of paid and free resources.
If you’re interested in publishing some resources, they offer a 60-70% royalty rate, with no cost to start.
Read the full release after the break.
If you still don’t fully understand the devastation that has occurred down in Haiti, then check out this infographic showing the scale of the quakes, and the multitude of lives lost.
It has been over a week since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince (the capital of Haiti) and its surrounding areas. What was the overall destruction? How many people were affected? How much help is on the way?
Click the image for full-size.
via Understanding the Haiti Earthquake (Infographic) | Top Cultured.
The Astronomy Picture of the Day is one of my favorite websites to visit daily (besides Dilbert and VizWorld, of course). Today they have a video showing what it would be like to travel across the known universe. The video starts at the Himalaya mountains, ascends through our atmosphere showing our planet Earth. The journey continues by taking us out of the solar system, out to the furthest reaches of the universe that we have mapped, and then takes us back home again. It is truly There and Back Again and is spectacular. The film was developed by the American Museum of Natural History.
The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
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