If you work with the Unity Engine for game development, then you might want to check out the new “Unity Prefabs” project. Aiming to create a catalog of ready-made assets for game development, the site is still in its infancy.
Game developers have already created countless man-hours worth of content, code and art. We bring them together in the shape of building blocks. Simply get what you need, connect them together and build solid games…fast!
Currently they have a few camera setups, but hopefully they’ll add more soon.
The U.S. Senate approved the Financial Reform Bill 59 to 39, but it still needs to be approved by the house before becoming official legistration. Financial Services Technology takes a look at the bill, and provides the shown infographic of how the voting process went down.
“Our goal is not to punish the banks but to protect the larger economy and the American people from the kind of upheavals that we ve seen in the past few years ” the President said in his speech. “And today s action was a major step forward in achieving that goal.”
Right now, there is one and only one 3-D Bluray movie, and that is Monsters vs Aliens 3D. Right now, there is one and only one way to view the only 3-D Bluray movie in 1080p, and that is Nvidia’s 3D Vision solution.
However, Nvidia will soon be releasing its R256 graphics drivers. On certain graphics cards, these drivers will support 3-D Bluray decoding. Meanwhile, CyberLink will soon be releasing its PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D software. This software will enable 3-D Bluray decoding. While Hollywood currently only has one 3-D Bluray movie available, soon they will be releasing more 3-D Bluray movies.
Tom’s Hardware covers what it takes to view 3-D Bluray movies on the PC.
Tom’s Hardware has an exclusive first-look at Blu-ray 3D technology running on a notebook and HTPC leveraging Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology, CyberLink’s PowerDVD 10 Ultra Mark II software, and an Acer display. Might this setup be in your future, too?
Carrara8 is out with new features for posing and lighting, along with new multithreading and 64-bit support. The result is an impressive toolset for character modeling and rendering, with more for environments than ever before. New plants and vegetation models and textures are included, along with mesh editing tools, animation tools, and lighting tools.
“Carrara 8 Pro’s FBX export capabilities are beyond compare ” said Carrara user and Unity developer William Bell. “For months I had worked with several high-end 3D suites trying to transport my animated models into the Unity game engine with no success. It wasn’t until I installed Carrara 8 Pro that I experienced a completely seamless export directly into the engine on the very first try.” “
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing eleven men. The oil rig then sank on April 22, 2010. Since then, oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. Attempts to stop the oil spill have been met with only limited success.
NASA has taken another picture of the oil from its Terra satellite using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument. In the image to the right, the warmth of the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico stands out. Cooler temperatures are denoted by blue and purple while warmer temperatures are denoted by pink and yellow. The light gray areas are clouds.
Despite the name of the web page below, the oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon disaster has reached the Loop Current. However, the oil that has reached the Loop Current is a light sheen. Therefore, for now at least, the volume of oil is expected to be greatly reduced by evaporation by the time it reaches the Florida Straits.
Click on the link below to see the full image.
The bottom image shows the location of the leaking well and the approximate location of the southern arm of the oil slick on May 17 (based on natural-color MODIS imagery). Oil was very close to the Loop Current, whose warm waters appear in yellow near the bottom of the image. However, there is also an eddy of cooler water (purple) circulating counterclockwise at the top of the Loop Current. According to NOAA, “Some amount of any oil drawn into the Loop Current would likely remain in the eddy, heading to the northeast, and some would enter the main Loop Current, where it might eventually head to the Florida Strait.”
Anandtech has posted a review of three overclocked Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards: Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5870 Toxic 2GB, MSI’s Radeon HD 5870 Lightning, and Gigabyte’s Radeon HD 5870 Super Overclock. These three cards are clearly in the high-end gaming category and all three boast such a price since they retail for around $500. How well do they perform? While they are all faster than the Radeon HD 5870 (of course), they all come slower than the Radeon HD 5970, which is to be expected. Also, don’t look to overclock them much as they are already right at the edge of what the graphics chip can handle.
Looking at the larger issues, we haven’t mentioned price too much up until now since the focus of this article is the roundup, but at $480-$500 for these cards it’s time to discuss the issue. Even when overclocked these cards are only at most 10% faster than a reference Radeon 5870 for a 20%-25% higher price. These are luxury cards that are not cost-effective, and at $500 are running right in to NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 480.
Another election is just around the corner, and the New York Times is covering it with their usual thoroughness. They have recently released an interactive election map infographic for all the House races that are up for grabs. Their site will also show you which Senate races are occurring this year, as well as which states will be electing new governors.
On December 14, 2009, NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. This space-born telescope has a 16 inch diameter and surveys light in the infrared wavelengths. The WISE team recently released an image of the Seagull Nebula, which is approximately 3,800 light-years from Earth. The cloud is located in the Milky Way and is a location for star formation.
All four infrared detectors aboard WISE were used to make this image. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust.
Analysis by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center revealed that April’s global average temperature was the warmest on record. Combined land and ocean temperatures were 58.1°F (14.5°C), which is 1.37°F (0.76°C) above the 20th Century climatic average. Additionally, the period of January through April, 2010 was also the warmest global average temperature on record. These record highs manifested quited visibly in North America by the rapid melting of record breaking snow depths and extents that fell during December and January of this past year.
This animation shows the global temperature anomalies for both the January through April period, daily imagery of snowfall extent from December through April as observed by the GOES, POES, and DMSP satellites, along with the April global temperature anomaly.
If you work with the Unity Engine for game development, then you might want to check out the new “Unity Prefabs” project. Aiming to create a catalog of ready-made assets for game development, the site is still in its infancy.
Carrara8 is out with new features for posing and lighting, along with new multithreading and 64-bit support. The result is an impressive toolset for character modeling and rendering, with more for environments than ever before. New plants and vegetation models and textures are included, along with mesh editing tools, animation tools, and lighting tools.
The new version of FumeFX is out and available, boasting several new features and improvements. A few of the things you can do now include:
VizWorld.com 
Comments