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One industry fans of 3D Video in the home should watch, in a purely business-like way of course, would be the Adult Film Industry. Working with significantly smaller budgets than Hollywood or video game studios, and suffering a complete lack of large-theaters for showing, they rely entirely on 3D in the home. One director in the industry had this to say (and I’m sure he intended that pun in his quote):
“We’re very excited to do 3D production, but we don’t feel market penetration [of 3D TVs] has hit the level we need it to be in the home,” said Rob Smith, director of operations at Hustler Video Group, in an interview in Las Vegas. “I’m hoping by the fourth quarter of this year it will be at the point where we can justify doing a 3D product,” he said.
What do they think is the biggest hurdle to overcome?
3D glasses are also an issue, he said, because people don’t want to be encumbered by eyewear when viewing a film. “I think the glasses are the barrier,” he said.
When viewing a film, or engaged in… other activities.
via Porn industry tiptoes into 3D video | ITworld.
Graphics 3d, stereoscopic
AMD has launched a new member of its graphics card family today. The new card is the Radeon HD 5670. It has 400 stream processors running at 775 MHz, 20 texture units, 8 ROPs, and uses up eith 512 MB or 1 GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1 GHz. The 5670 is a DirectX 11 capable card, though few games make use of it. Eyefinity support is there, allowing the use three monitors. The best thing about this graphics card is that it is launching at a price point of $99 for the 512 MB version, or $119 for the 1 GB version. The sub-$100 market is an important one since it accounts for 2/3rds of all video card sales last quarter.
The main competition for the Radeon HD 5670 is NVidia’s GT 240, which is selling at a $90 price point, or $80 with the hated mail-in rebate. The Radeon HD 5670 performs much better in tests than the GT 240. Against NVidia’s 9800 GT, which also sells for $75 – $90 depending on the mail-in rebate, the race is much closer. Then there is AMD’s own Radeon HD 4850. This is a last generation card without the support for DirectX 11 or Eyefinity. It too sells at the $99 price point. From the Anandtech article:
The fact of the matter is that neither game is playable at those settings, the 5670 is simply too slow. This is a test that would be better served with more DX11 benchmarks, but based on our limited sample we have to question whether the 5670 is fast enough for DX11 games. If it’s not (and these results agree with that perspective) then being future-proof can’t justify the lower performance. Until AMD retires the 4850 it’s going to be the better gaming card …
It also might not make sense to run it in Crossfire. If you pick up two of the Radeon HD 5670 graphics cards for $200, and run them in Crossfire, you get about the same performance as a single $150 Radeon 5770.
via Anandtech: AMD’s Radeon HD 5670: Sub-$100 DirectX 11 Starts Today
via Guru3d: Radeon HD 5670 review (Crossfire tested)
Graphics, Hardware 5670, amd, ati, crossfire, radeon
If you’ve ever wondered what happens to all the odd crackpot half-finished ideas in life, Lego has a short film online to answer just that.
Ever wonder where big ideas come from? If you’re a fan of LEGO bricks, eureka moments, or guys with odd mustaches, you really should see this. Great ideas just CL!CK.
Including some impressive stop-motion, lighting, color correction, and more, it’s a surprisingly high-quality short film. I’ve embedded it after the break, but don’t miss out on their fun blog either.
Read more…
Graphics lego, short, vfx
Nathan Yau has a new poster in his FlowingPrints series, the “World Progress Report”. The details:
- 24 inches x 30 inches
- Printed on 80lb cover with a matte finish
- Signed and numbered
UNdata catalogs twenty-seven United Nations databases and sixty million records about what is going on in the world. This graphical report shows what that data is about.
This poster sale is running a bit differently that previous ones. Pre-orders will run through January 21st, then it runs to the printer, so if you want one you need to move fast!
Also, a special deal (that VizWorld Visitors get first dibs on!) for the first 50 people who pre-order: a free copy of Atley’s “How America Learns” poster.
via World Progress Report | FlowingPrints.
Graphics poster
Geoeye has published high-resolution imagery of Haiti, after the recent earthquake disaster, on their website available for download.
This half-meter resolution satellite image shows Port-au-Prince, Haiti after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the area on Jan. 12, 2010. The image clearly shows extensive damage, roads covered with debris from collapsed structures, and people crowded in the streets and public places such as sports fields and stadiums. The white-colored National Palace shows damage along the roof line. The image was taken by the GeoEye-1 satellite from 423 miles in space at 10:27 a.m. EST on Jan. 13, 2010 as it moved from north to south over the Caribbean at a speed of four miles per second. (click to download)
The resulting image is full-color, 3000×3000. There’s enough resolution to see the devastation, but not to see individual people.
via GeoEye › Gallery.
Science geospatial, haiti
Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg collaborated to analyze a huge collection of music and create an infographic showing the various mentions of human body parts.
What do we sing about, when we sing about the body? The chart below, based on a sample of thousands songs, tells the story. The size of a circle corresponds to how often that part is mentioned in each genre. Click on a genre name to see a close-up that shows exactly what words were used.
Warning: Some of the images are NSFW.
via Fleshmap: Listen: Music.
Graphics infographic, music
Here’s the pixels for today:
Hardware, Science hubble, imax, pixels
Gigaom has published a tall infographic showing various statistics of the Apple iPhone App Store Economy. Some numbers of note:
- 133,979 Apps, from over 28,000 developers
- Average wait time for approva: 4.78 days
- Average cost of paid apps: $2.59
- 200 Million apps downloaded monthly.
See the full graphic on their site.
The Apple App Store Economy – GigaOM.
Graphics app, gigaom, infographic, iphone
Near the end of Summer 2009, James May took it upon himself to construct an entire 2-story house out of every child’s favorite construction toy, Lego Bricks. Part of his BBC show ‘Toy Stories’, he enlisted the help of Barnaby Gunning Architects to help him build and design it, all within a two week timespan. To get it done in time, they used Luxology’s Modo to design it first.
“modo 401 gave us a feel for the material quality of LEGOs as a large-scale building material long before we were actually able to put any of the components together,” said Gunning. “It made it easy for us to lay out exactly what we needed to build this structure and helped keep tabs on the number of bricks being used for each piece.”
A textured virtual model of the entire LEGO house was also made and used to explore the layout and overall design of the final product. Gunning explained how using modo helped speed up his design process, saying, “Creating the instructions for building each component could have been very time consuming. Instead, we were able to write a simple script that created the various pyramids quickly from our virtual LEGO set, which was a major added benefit.”
Read the full press release after the break, and check out a few fun videos of the home construction and James May’s experiences living inside it for 2 days.
Read more…
Graphics bbc, lego, modo, television
UK Rugby fans will be in for a treat next month as the England vs Wales games, on February 27th, will be shown in 40 cinemas across the country in 3D thanks to team sponsor O2.
Paul Vaughan, Operations Director for the Rugby Football Union, said: “I hope rugby fans will pack cinemas across the country to support the team and mark this milestone.”
Tickets will be £12.50, and available by texting ’3D’ to 2020 starting January 25, and for regular sale starting January 29th.
via Rugby Football Union scores 3D first • Register Hardware.
Science 3d, sports, stereoscopic
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