Home » Archives for April 2010
VisualEconomics has posted a new infographic talking about the recent housing bubble in the United States. It is fairly short and sweet as such graphics go. The top portion of the graphic is a circular bar chart showing the boom in housing that peaked in 2005, which lead to the Great Recession that started in December 2007. The bottom portion of the graphic shows the sales of new houses in the United States by Region: NorthEast, West, South, and Midwest.
The market of single-family homes has had its ups and downs in the past 46 years, and more recently has been through the most dramatic changes in its history.
The Housing Bubble: Single Family Home Sales 1963-2009 @ VisualEconomics
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Graphics infographic
The Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge has wrapped up, and among the finalists the winners have been chosen: UK-based Daden Limited and their PIVOTE and Datascape systems took home the gold in Skills Building and Collaboration categories.
Tami Griffith, creator of the challenge, adds “Daden’s submissions exemplify what we were hoping to see in the challenge. Datascape’s demonstration of streaming real-time data will be very useful for the analysis community while PIVOTE goes a long way in demonstrating interactive capabilities that could be used by first-responders. We are delighted that they were in our winners circle and we expect to see a great relationship form between the U.S. Government and Daden.“
Both of Daden’s entries are based on Second Life and run within the world, are available for public view in Second Life® at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Daden%20Cays/126/217/22 and http://slurl.com/secondlife/Daden%20Prime/223/224/21
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Science daden, federal, fvwc, second life, virtual worlds
Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 470 has a default core clock speed of 600 MHz. The shader clock speed is 1215 MHz, while the memory clock speed is 3348 MHz. However, it was rumored that the clock speeds that Nvidia were trying to hit were much higher. What if you could attain those clock speeds? What would its performance have been? Guru3D takes a look at adding more GPU voltage to the GeForce GTX 470 and overclocking the GPU core. The problem with this is that it adds a considerable amount of heat. Therefore, they recommend either setting the fan at 100%, or to watercool the card. What did they achieve? They were able to achieve a core clock of 775MHz, a corresponding shader clock of 1548MHz and a memory clock of 3400MHz. Hit the link below to see how that translates into high framerates in games.
A couple of days ago we had a peek at the GeForce GTX 480 and how well it overclocked in combo with a little extra GPU voltage. The results have shown fabulous potential.
Of course there’s another card, the GeForce GTX 470. Last Friday we finished up an internal build of MSI’s AfterBurner 1.6.0 beta 5 and here we where able to successfully implement voltage adjustment for the GTX 470 cards as well, this build will be released on Monday. So today we’ll again touch the holy grail over overclocking, voltage tweaking.
via Overclocking GeForce GTX 470 with extra GPU voltage.
Hardware gtx470, nvidia
It’s been nearly a year since the last DirectX SDK, back in August 2009, but Microsoft has finally published the specs and details for the next SDK, coming in June. This version adds in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
support, but drops Visual Studio 2005 support. It also adds PIX object naming, the XNAMath C++ SIMD library, and a few new D3D functions.
You can read the full details on the MSDN blog.
Games for Windows and the DirectX SDK : What’s Coming in the June 2010 DirectX SDK.
Science directx, sdk
I’ve long loved VLC for video playback, mostly for its fantastic ability to play just about anything I throw at it (their codec support is fantastic). In the next version, they’re adding one long-sought feature to boost the performance to levels comparable with other players: GPU acceleration.
Using DxVA2 on Windows Vista and 7 and VAAPI on Linux, the decoding stage of VLC framework can now be done by the GPU.
If you have a compatible GPU, especially an nVidia, it should go way faster. VLC should consume less than 10% of your CPU and your CPU shouldn’t be at full speed anymore.
via On the road to VLC 1.1.0 part 1: faster – Yet another blog for JBKempf.
Science cuda, gpgpu, vlc
vReveal. the windows-based video enhancement package that can fix camera shake, blurriness, and various other problems using CPU & CUDA-accelerated GPU algorithms, now offers a basic free version.
With vReveal software for Windows, it’s easy to quickly fix the videos from your cell phone, HD camcorder, digital camera, or other device. Stabilize, brighten, sharpen, add fun effects and more with just one click. It’s completely free.
Of course, the hope is that the free version wets your appetite for the paid “Premium” version, available for only $40. The free version is limited to 480p outputs.
vReveal Video Enhancement Software – Fix Dark, Shaky, Noisy, Blurry, Low-Resolution Videos | www.vreveal.com.
Graphics software, video, vreveal
At NAB this week, Dreamworks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg spoke about the recent advances and problems with 3D, highlighting the success of “Avatar” & “How to Train your Dragon” and the failures of “Clash of the Titans”. He believes, as many do, that the key to 3D is not to simply use it as a gimmick but to embrace all of the new psychological effects and utilize the new composition and camera tools this enables. In his words, “This will be as transformative as color”.
And that transformation extends, he believes, not just to epic dramas, spectacles that lend themselves to a large scope. He pointed to a scene in the 3D film “How to Train Your Dragon”, in which a father enters a room with a too-low ceiling and must bend over to get in. “Stand in back of the theater and you can actually see the audience bend their heads down. They feel that sense of claustrophobia. That amplification of emotion is why 3D is not a gimmick.”
via Katzenberg Talks Up 3-D at Broadcasters Convention – Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com.
Science 3d, movies, stereoscopic, vfx
I’m a fan of PhD Comics, and recently the comic strip has been tackling the issue that many PhD students are paid via federal research grants, essentially being paid by the US Taxpayer. Today’s strip breaks down the Research portion of the US Federal Budget.
The text is a bit small, but overall it’s a good breakdown a’la “Death & Taxes” but focused entirely on the R&D portions.
See fullsize after the break.
Read more…
Science economic, federal, infographic
Here’s today’s links:
Here’s today’s deals:
Graphics, Hardware, Science pixels
OnlineSchools.org has a new infographic that catalogs the history of “Fast Food”, from the first White Castle to the current domination of McDonalds:
- 75% of Mcdonalds sales come from customers who eat there over 10times a week
- Operates in 126 countries, employs over 400,000 people
- McDonalds has 31,000 locations and a revenue of around $23 Billion
See full-size after the break.
Online Schools.
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Graphics food, infographic
VizWorld.com 
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