Ever wonder how NASA takes images from satellites in orbit and recreates the Earth from those images? NASA has posted an article highlighting Helen-Nicole Kostis, shown in the above image, who is a NASA scientific visualizer. It is her job to combine hundreds of images into a single image that can be mapped onto a globe.
The Earth floats delicately in space, sunlight illuminating the fluid mottling of white clouds suspended over its surface. The scene, the leading sequence in a recent NASA video about ship pollution and clouds, shows our planet from a perspective only a satellite or spacecraft could provide.
However, no camera captured that image of the Earth. The reason? It’s not one image. Instead, the single cloud-scattered globe is a mosaic of 298 smaller images of close-up areas of our planet meticulously stitched together by Helen-Nicole Kostis, a NASA science visualizer.
While official release of the RED EPIC has been delayed considerably, that’s not holding them back from preparing a whole suite of accessories to complement them upon release. The latest tidbit is an impressive 3D Rig capable of merging two EPIC’s operating at 5K resolution into 3D stereo.
The Element Technica rig is said to weigh just over 45lbs, which is apparently very light for such a setup. The package can be made even lighter if the dual RED Brick batteries are replaced with lighter EPIC-X batteries.
The rig is a prototype, and may be called Pulsar when it is officially released by Element Technica. It’s a modified Neutron rig with a larger mirror box to accommodate the two 3D cameras and their lenses and some other, undisclosed modifications.
CyberLink will soon be releasing its PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D software. This software will enable 3-D Bluray decoding. Anton over at the 3D Vision Blog has received a preview copy of the new software and put it through its paces. He also lets us know that the software may be available as soon as July 6.
I can say that it works just great with playing back MVC encoded 3D videos and Blu-ray 3D content. I was able to try the Blu-ray 3D playback using 3D Vision on Samsung 2233RZ 3D LCD monitor and Acer H5360 3D DLP projector and both worked flawlessly with the latest 3D Vision Drivers version 257.21. Other than 3D Vision with supported display, Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 10 software also supports playback of Blu-ray 3D content on normal monitors with the help of plain red-cyan anaglyph glasses, row-interleaved 3D displays and even 3D-capable TVs.
Looks like news is floating around about a new GeForce offering from NVidia named the GTX460. All based on leaks, but the numbers are plausible.
Heise notes that test cards have been clocked up to 830 MHz without any change in voltage while maintaining stability. If the overclocking potential is indeed true, these cards could be a good value, as Heise places prices at $250 for the 1GB model and $230 for the 768MB model.
The International Space Station orbits 354 kilometers (220 miles) above the Earth, completing one trip around the globe every 92 minutes. Cruising along at 27,700 km (17,200 miles) per hour, the astronauts experience 15 or 16 sunrises and -sets every day. Since the launch of the Zarya Control Module on November 20, 1998, the station has orbited the Earth over 66,500 times (as of June 27, 2010). The station’s orbit is inclined to the equator by 51.65°, meaning at its most northerly, it is at the latitude of London, England, and at it most southerly it is over the latitude of the Falkland Islands.
This sequence of time-lapse photographs illustrates roughly half an orbit, from sunrise over Northern Europe (top photograph) to sunset southeast of Australia, on April 28, 2010. The view is to the north of the station’s ground track. In the upper-left, is the tail of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which docked with the Space Station during the STS-131 mission. The animation begins with a view of snow-covered Norway (image top) and the Jutland Peninsula (image center). Low clouds cover Central Europe (image bottom).
The animation continues as the Station flies by Ukraine, eastern Russia, the Volga River, and then the Russian Steppes. South and east of the steppes, a dust storm comes into view over the Taklimakan Desert, followed shortly by the lake-studded Tibetan Plateau and the glaciers of the Himalayan Mountains (center photograph). Smoke-shrouded lowlands hug the southern margin of the Himalaya. Smoke also covers much of Southeast Asia, including the Irrawaddy Delta.
After the Space Station passes over the sapphire-blue South China Sea, the island of Borneo appears, followed by the open expanse of the Indian Ocean. A trio of coral reefs lies off the coast of Western Australia, which is studded with clouds. Australia’s arid interior is colored myriad shades of red (bottom photograph). As sunset nears, cloud shadows lengthen, highlighting their structure. Night falls as the Space Station crosses the terminator above the South Pacific.
Astronaut photographs STS131-E-11693 to STS131-E-12195 courtesy NASA JSC Earth Observations Lab. Animation & caption by Robert Simmon. Special thanks to William L. Stefanov, NASA-JSC.
The 3D Vision Blog finds a nice YouTube video for a cool 3-D setup. I will let them explain the details…
A video demonstrating an interesting project done by Maingear for Nvidia – a 3D Vision Surround racing simulator setup using a water cooled PC with two Fermi cards, 3x 120Hz monitors and a seat with “vibration” (they’ve probably used some parts of the system already done for a previous project with a single display). Looks quite nice, kind of Pimp My Ride MTV style, but I would’ve liked a bit more technical details too and also to see some footage of the building process, maybe some trouble they’ve had and how they overcame them etc.
The A-Team always did enjoy blowing stuff up or riddling harmless vehicles and scenery with bulletholes, and the new movie is no different. Bringing together the talents of Digital Domain, Prime Focus, MPC, Rhythm & Hues and more, an article on FXGuide discusses some of the more impressive shots from the film.
Digital Domain contributed about 100 visual effects shots featuring a digital tunnel, Baghdad backgrounds, composites and gunfire. “I thought they did a really nice job of set-dressing the street,” noted DD visual effects supervisor Kelly Port, “but we wanted to make sure that there were additional Middle Eastern elements like mosques in there off in the distance that helped make the skyline more realistic. We used Nuke for compositing and took advantage of Nuke’s 3D capabilities. We could re-project some photographic backgrounds onto some geometry and then re-photograph it with the foreground camera so that they tied together much better – the perspective is lined up perfectly and tracks perfectly.
The A-Team always did enjoy blowing stuff up or riddling harmless vehicles and scenery with bulletholes, and the new movie is no different. Bringing together the talents of Digital Domain, Prime Focus, MPC, Rhythm & Hues and more, an article on FXGuide discusses some of the more impressive shots from the film.
VizWorld.com 
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