VizWorld.com

CNN has posted some 360° video footage of driving down a road in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The video starts with a group of Hatians looking at the car and wondering, “What the heck is that on the roof?” As they drive down the street, you can see much of the damage caused by buildings that have collapsed, with some of them in the street. It is almost like being in the car in the city. You can turn around and look at fallen buildings as they drive past them. At one point, the CNN car drives down the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic. And here you thought drivers in your home town were crazy.

via CNN : Haiti: 360°

Graphics 360, cnn, haiti, video

In my previous life at a biomedical imaging company, I was amazed to discover how many surgeons are “OR Cowboys”, and simply start cutting without much preoperative visualization.  In a new study from doctors and researchers with the American College of Cardiology, they researched several biomedical imaging technologies (MRI, fluoroscopy, MDCT, echocardiography, etc) to determine which is the most accurate, and (most importantly) how the preoperative imaging altered the surgical course to improve outcomes and save time.

To date, there is no established consensus on how to measure the aortic valve annulus and which imaging technique to use as gold standard. In the majority of the centers, the aortic valve annulus is measured with transthoracic or transesophageal echocardiography at the parasternal long-axis view or at the 120� longitudinal view, respectively. However, 3-dimensional imaging techniques such as MDCT or magnetic resonance imaging demonstrate an elliptical shape of the aortic valve annulus with two principal diameters: the minimum and the maximum.5 This finding may have important implications on the selection of the prosthesis size.

via Multi-modality Imaging in Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation.

Science biomed, imaging, research

I missed this when it was originally published earlier this week, but Guru3D has video and information on a new demo that NVidia is showing off with their Fermi based products: the SuperSonic Sled.

Personally I feel that SuperSonic Rocket Sled is the best demo NVIDIA has ever made. We've seen and done all the facial animations, dusks, dawns and what not. What you are seeing with the SuperSonic Sled demo is pretty amazing as the demo is very rich in objects, triangle count, quality textures, complex shaders, depth of field, but more so massive volumetric particles and liquid PhysX implementations and very rich geometric detail thanks to the hardware tessellation functionality embedded into the GF100 GPU. So from a technology point of view, this is the most advanced demo NVIDIA has ever designed.

Now, I’m sure there is a lot of smoke and mirrors going on here, as anyone who’s had experience with real-time graphics can attest.  Focus-directed level of detail, variable resolutions, etc, but still it’s very impressive.  The graphics are of such quality that I personally have difficulty believing that it’s actually rendered real-time, it looks like a professional MentalRay rendering (interesting side note, NVidia owns MentalRay now).

I really hope NVidia doesn’t keep this to themselves, and releases it to the public along with the GF100 cards.  See the partial video of the demo below (They were not allowed to record the full demo).

Not sure how, but the guys at PCGamesHardware have a much longer video (almost 5 minutes) showing not only the “full run” of the poor pilot, but the various interactive and wireframe features of the demo, proving that it’s entirely interactive and not a movie.

via NVIDIA GF100 (Fermi) Technology preview.

Update: Brian Burke confirms that it will be downloadable.

Hardware demo, fermi, nvidia

Wouldn’t it be neat to see a cool 3-D movie at the theater, then come home and play the video game? Wouldn’t it be neat if the same 3-D, high-resolution models used in the movie were the same ones used in the game? Cnet has an article today about a program called Remix which is from Multiverse, located in Mountain View, California.

The problem, Bridges continued, is that there has previously been no way to effectively render the kinds of lower-resolution objects directly from the super high-res original assets. Those models, such as, say, an incredibly detailed avatar of a nine-foot-tall Na’vi warrior, could require tens of thousands of polygons while a Flash version of that same Na’vi for a game might be just hundreds of polygons.

But Remix solved that problem,…

Head on over to Cnet and read the article about how it was used to create the Flash-based game called PandoraRovr.

via Cnet: Making movie games more faithful than ever

Graphics avatar, games, movie

For his third year information graphics class, Matt Kursmark created a fantastic pair of infographics about the causes of Jetlag.

These panels are the result of my third year information graphics class. The assignment was to choose any sequence, cycle, or evolution and represent it graphically. The information was to be presented in two separate panels that were related but could also function independently of one another.

The two infographics (visible on his site in more detail) show circadian rhythm cycles, the effects of the pineal gland and melatonin, and the effects of a 48-hour travel cycle.

Matt Kursmark ♥ Design. via Cool Infographics

Graphics infographic, travel

With several gaming and design companies downsizing in the wake of economic changes, it seems every company is looking for ways to save money.  One way many companies are achieving this is by not reinventing the wheel, and investing in pre-built 3rd party tools.  This has led to some huge gains for creators of gaming engines like Unity and others, and CGSociety has a look at how the market is growing.

These shifts are not the only trends middleware companies have their eyes on. Heightened realism and more immersive game experiences are certainly trends that most middleware companies have never lost sight of, even with all of the market turmoil.

“Believable character motion is an area that Autodesk pursues with both our software products — MotionBuilder, Maya, 3ds Max and Softimage — and our middleware products — HumanIK and Kynapse,” said Autodesk’s Haggerty. “As our customers push new boundaries in entertainment, Autodesk is serving the industry with the tools and middleware to create believable characters.”

via CGSociety – Middlware report.

Graphics middleware, video games

Mint has published an infographic on how some companies prey on the poor. Mint takes a look at payday loans, credit cards, and rent-to-own. While the businesses are not illegal, there are plenty of under-the-table schemes that are. One such scheme is to sell alcohol and cigarettes at twice the price to those using debit food stamp cards (a.k.a. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – SNAP).

via Mint : The Shaft: How Some Companies Prey on the Poor

Graphics infographic

If you ever thought about starting up your own small business, there are some sobering facts that you need to deal with. While small businesses employ approximately 57% of the workforce in the U.S., 50% percent of all small businesses fail within five years. Focus has an infographic showing various statistics on America’s small business.

via Focus: Small Businesses and Hard Facts

Graphics infographic

Here’s the pixels for today:

• 30 Web-Design Related Photoshop Tips & Screencasts
• 158+ Beautiful coffee stains brushes for free
• 99 Brilliant Examples of Infrared Photography
• Quick Tips for Cinema4D
• 35 Free Online Photo Editing Tools
• 27 Sets of Useful Free Illustrator Brushes

Graphics pixels

BillShrink has posted an infographic on the growing problem of national debt. If you are concerned about the U.S. debt, then take a look at other countries. Japan has a public debt that is 172% of GDP. By comparison, the U.S. has a public debt that is about 89% of GDP. Japan’s debt is mainly financed by the citizens of Japan. Unfortunately, the Japanese population is getting older and retiring. They might not be able to internally fund their debt much longer, and may have to go to international markets.

Now, let us look at little closer at the U.S. debt level. The U.S. has a total debt of approximately $12.3 Trillion dollars, and a GDP of $13.84 Trillion, for a ratio of about 89%. That figure comes from the The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It website, which is run by the U.S. Treasury department. Of that amount, $4.5 Trillion is held by the U.S. government, leaving just $7.8 Trillion held outside the government. Of that, $3.6 Trillion is held by foreign governments. That puts our external debt to GDP ratio at a manageable 26%.

How did BillShrink come up with the $13.773 Trillion dollar external debt figure? Probably from this U.S. Treasury site. Is BillShrink wrong? How can the U.S. Treasury have two different answers to the same question? I suspect that the difference is in how you define external debt. In the case of the data that BillShrink is using, I presume that the definition means not only the debt for today, but also the interest on that debt due in the future.

If all these numbers leave your head spinning, and wondering what to think, remember these two things. First, noble prize winning economist Paul Krugman argues in Till Debt Does Its Part that we need more debt. Secondly, let’s take a flash back to 1990 when Jack Gargan complained about a $3 Trillion dollar debt in a series of newspaper ads.

via BillShrink : The Growing Problem of National Debt

via U.S. Debt Clock: U.S. Debt Clock

Graphics BillShrink, infographic