VizWorld.com

Ted Kennedy’s senate seat is up for grabs, and it is likely that the fate of President Obama’s health care bill may rise or fall with it. If Martha Coakley (Democratic) wins, then the Democrats will maintain a 60-40 lead in the Senate. If Scott Brown (Republican) wins, then the Republicans can use a filibuster to prevent the bill from coming to a vote.

The Boston Globe has an infographic that is tracking the race. The Bostonist has a website that is tracking problems with the infographic. One such problem was 50% of Massachusetts voting before noon. The Boston Globe has since corrected the error, and explained that “it was a test on a tool and it meant nothing. I don’t know how these things happen.” Conspiracy theories may abound, but this is the race worth watching tonight. Polls close at 8pm Eastern time.

Via Boston.com : Senate Race 2010

Via Bostonist : Martha Coakley Wins with 100% of Precincts Reporting Before 1pm: What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Graphics infographic

This summer will be the first global event dedicated to advancing Augmented Reality, and they’ve announced their keynote speaker: Bruce Sterling, “augmented reality prophet”.

“We are entering a new era where proximity based social networks and augmented reality will be one of our most important forms of communication,” said Sean Lowery, event director of ARE. “Having experienced and passionate leaders, who are at the epicenter of the augmented reality movement, ensures ARE will be a don’t miss event with valuable content focused on the latest innovations, business models and how to successfully bringing augmented reality to the market.”

The event will be June 2-3rd in the Santa Clara Convenction Center in California, and they are accepting submissions for speakers and exhibitors right now.

Augmented Reality Event – Home.

Science augmented reality, conference

The Wall Street Journal has an infographic online showing the effects of Marijuana and how it compares to other substances.  The information is a bit bland, but covers some stuff like the altered consciousness, memory impairment, pain reduction, and others.

WSJ.COM.

Science biomed, infographic, wsj

Using Blender or Luxrender and need some serious horsepower for a render, but don’t own a renderfarm?  Well good news! vSwarm is attempting to bring the power of tools like Seti@Home and Folding@Home to render farms, allowing users worldwide to install a simple client on their machine and harnessing their unused compute time.

Currently in alpha, just install the client and let it run to start earning credits that you can then cash in to use for your own render jobs!  It’s still a bit quirky and in early alpha, but it does work (most of the time). Hit up their site for registration details, downloads, and instructions.

vSwarm: Free Render Farm – Cloud Computing for Rendering.

Graphics blender, cloud, luxrender, software, vswarm

If you, or your business, have been considering implementing some type of immersive software solution like a Virtual World, then ThinkBalm has published a new 29-page document surveying several of the current options and providing a guide on how to choose one that best suits your needs.

The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide is a use case-based guide designed to aid business decision makers in the enterprise immersive software selection process. In this report, we present “if/then” scenarios and highlight good-fit vendors for common situations, with a focus on the most prevalent use cases: meetings, conferences, and learning and training. The report offers guidance on how to: 1) ask core business questions to frame the discussion, 2) choose a research-and-demo, do-it-yourself, or combination approach, 3) identify requirements based on your use case, and 4) filter your options based on important limiters.

Download (956K PDF) the document or view it online.

via ThinkBalm publishes immersive software decision-making guide | ThinkBalm.

Science virtual worlds

Only a few more weeks until ACM SIGGRAPH Vancouver’s big SPARK FX 10 event starts, and it looks like they’ve got a fantastic lineup this year.

We’ve got 8 films, more than 30 speakers taking part in 17 presentations, a party, a mixer, hundreds of industry attendees and, of course, T-Shirts! SPARK FX 2010 is helping to start the year off with a bang (along with that other winter party).

We have an unbelievable line-up of industry speakers led by ILM veteran John Knoll. We’ve got film makers talking about their work on virtually every big effects film of the past year including Avatar, District 9, Transformers 2, GI Joe and half a dozen more.

Passes are on sale now for $250 for the full 3-day event, 2 party tickets, and a T-shirt commemorating the event.  They also have deals setup with a nearby hotel, the Sheraton Wall Center, for all you out-of-towners.

via Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH – SPARK FX 10.

Graphics acm, conference, siggraph

Organizers of the 2010 World Cup have worked with Total Immersion and CrossPlatform.TV to deploy a series of kiosks around the world in preparation for the big game.  The kiosk will show video of passers-by and overlay randomly selected country’s flags over their face, giving the illusion that they have painted a country’s flag on their face, and then play the selected country’s national anthem.

It’s not terribly interactive, but it is a fascinating experiment in trying to build international camaraderie by making fans imagine themselves as if they were fans of another country’s team. How would they feel if they had that other country’;s flag painted on their faces and heard its national anthem? Were they from that country, they would probably feel proud. How does the AR make them feel? Perhaps like a more worldly, sympathetic person. That sounds like a positive World Cup experience.

Now, I’m not a big fan of Soccer (or Football, for that matter), but from what I know of it, it’s a big deal.  I can imagine these kiosk’s will not last long before some disgruntled British Soccer fan obliterates it for showing Spain’s flag and anthem on their face.

via World Cup 2010 Promotions to Use Augmented Reality.

Science augmented reality, sports, total immersion

Given yesterday’s preview of the GF100 technology, there should be no surprise that five YouTube videos have shown up that purportedly show the new Fermi card in action. The first video shows the new Fermi card playing FarCry 2. Take a look for yourself and enjoy the action.

The other videos show raytracing demos, a hair demo, and a water tesselation demo. The remaining four videos are shown after the break.

Read more…

Hardware fermi, gf100, nvidia

IBM, a long-time proponent of virtual worlds like Second Life and ScienceSim, has published a 36-page document detailing a research study they conducted, along with Seriosity, on how leadership skills learned in Virtual Worlds can translate into the business study.  Update: Actually, the report is from 2007. The opening paragraph is great:

What’s next? It’s the simple question that businesses spend millions trying to answer every year, all with the goal of learning what the business world of the future will look like. But there are some elements of this future that are already falling into place. For example, we know that business is becoming increasingly global. We know that enterprises are increasingly distributed, faster paced, and fiercely competitive. And we know that more work will be conducted virtually, using technology to bridge previously impassable communications gaps.

While not focusing on any virtual world specifically (examples are given of Second Life, World of Warcraft, and EVE online), they make a great case for using virtual worlds as a breeding ground for new talent that understands leadership is not permanent.

“MMORPGs mirror the business context more than you would assume,” says Byron Reeves, Ph.D., the Paul C. Edwards Professor of Communication at Stanford University and Faculty Director of the Stanford Media X Partners Program. “They presage one possible future for business — one that is open, virtual, knowledge-driven, and comprised of a largely volunteer or at least transient workforce.”

Of course, online games do not provide a perfect analog for the business world of the future. The stakes in the real world are obviously much higher. But it’s easy to see how some of the qualities of gifted gaming leaders could translate into a corporate setting. The collaborative influence that online leaders exhibit is extraordinary in some cases. Gaming leaders are more comfortable with risk, accepting failure, and the resulting iterative improvement, as part of their reality. Many of these leaders are able to make sense of disparate and constantly changing data, translating it all into a compelling vision. And the relationship skills of the best gaming leaders would put many Fortune 500 managers to shame.

“You can never stop earning the right to be their leader,” says Tom Cadwell, an MBA student at Kellogg School of Management and former employee at Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of World of Warcraft™. “You always have to be sensitive to the concerns of members, and you always have to sell decisions you make. Goodwill from past successes doesn’t last forever.”

The entire document is available here. (Download 1.3M PDF)

Science ibm, research, virtual worlds

Glare Technologies has just released a new version of their Indigo Renderer, veresion 2.2 .  In this version they’ve doubled the speed on virtually all scene renderings, and increased the speed by 10x when using environment maps.  Also, tone-mapping, aperture diffraction, and subsurface scattering all got some attention leading to improved performance and better results.  They’ve also introduced a new Material editor:

The all-new Indigo Material Editor, introduced with Indigo 2.2, allows fully featured creation and editing of materials in a graphical environment. All material functions are available in the Indigo Material Editor, with Indigo Shader Language able to control any attribute. The Indigo material editor also allows direct uploads to and downloads from the online Indigo Material Database.

However, in a somewhat odd announcement, they’ve decided to raise the price to ‘compete’ with other renderers.

In addition to the 2.2 release announcement, Glare Technologies is also announcing that from the 1st of February, the cost price of Indigo licenses will rise to compete with other unbiased renderers on the market. A single full license will cost 595€ and node license will be 195€, with options for bulk discounts.

I’ve heard of lowering prices to compete, but never raising prices.  See the full press release after the break.

Read more…

Graphics glare, indigo, renderer, software