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How Much is the Government Making Off of Tobacco?

Coke vs BP Oil

Food Additives

Powers of Eight – G8 vs G20

X-Wing Fighter Cross Section

Whaling Industry: Past & Present

Graphics, Science digest, infographics, list

How Much is the Government Making Off of Tobacco? | The TurboTax Blog.

infographics

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is located approximately 160,000 light years away from Earth, and is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way. The LMC is an irregular galaxy, and is also a satellite galaxy of the Milly Way. Contained within the LMC are several gas clouds, the most spectacular one of which is named LHA 120-N 11, or N11 for short. The N11 gas cloud is over 1,000 light years across. Recently the Hubble telescope imaged this cloud.

A spectacular new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image — one of the largest ever released of a star-forming region — highlights N11, part of a complex network of gas clouds and star clusters within our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. This region of energetic star formation is one of the most active in the nearby Universe.

via Hubble captures bubbles and baby stars | Press Releases | spacetelescope.org.

Science astronomy, hubble, nasa

MovieWeb got a behind-the-scenes look at ILM’s contributions to The Last Airbender, the M. Night Shyamalan VFX feast based on the popular Nickelodeon cartoon.  They discuss the creative process and the new experiences that came along with it, and get in-depth on the fact that the movie combines 2 of the most difficult CG effects in a constant way: Fire and Water.

You talked about bending the fire before, so was that the most difficult of the four elements to bend or were the rest difficult? Also, is Momo completely CG or is he a puppet of some sort?

Pablo Helman: I think fire and water were the most difficult ones, because of how familiar we are with fire and how Night wanted this element to look completely realistic. Sometimes we'd do 60 or 70 takes. That's kind of a lot. It was something where Night was directing, just how he would direct actors. Earth was difficult also because it was all particle work and air, we all kind of had to discover it. Nobody really knew what that was going to look like. Was it going to be smoky? Were we going to distort the background? Momo was pure CG, although we did have a maquette of the actual creature and we also had some blue-screen bags that the actor would carry around, just to have an idea of the weight and position.

via SET VISIT: Go Behind the Magic of The Last Airbender at ILM – MovieWeb.

Graphics ilm, movie, vfx

Visual Loop.

infographics humor, oil

X-Bit Labs has an interview with ATI’s Neal Robison about some of their recent news like their Open Stereo 3D initiative, their OpenGL support, and the Eyefinity system.  I particularly like this comment on the differences between DirectX and OpenGL.

X-bit labs: Congratulations about the industry’s first OpenGL 3.2/4.0 WHQL-certified driver. But does OpenGL make sense for video games nowadays in general?

Neal Robison: Although DirectX is probably the best known collection of APIs for games, OpenGL still remains an important part of gaming technology. AMD has worked extensively on shaping the OpenGL standard as well as providing ongoing support for it. As you alluded to in your question, in March of 2010 we were able to announce our support for OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0, an incredible feat on the part of our OpenGL software team, and an act that speaks volumes to the commitment and continued support that we have for the many developers utilizing OpenGL. We believe in and encourage open and industry standards so maintaining OpenGL as a strong and viable graphics API is important to AMD.

Personally, I’ve never found ATI/AMD’s OpenGL support all that stellar, but it has been several years since I payed much attention to it.  I’m personally glad to know that they’re dedicating engineers to improving it.

Definity: AMD Talks About DirectX 11, Eyefinity and More – X-bit labs.

Hardware, Science 3d, amd, directx11, stereoscopic

Creative Fan has a great list of 25 amazing animal renderings that you have to see to believe.

As with all potential subjects, the incredible growth of computer graphics has allowed lifelike and creative animals to be created using 3D techniques. Whether it’s rendering and animation for a film, TV commercial, advertisement, or just for practice, CG artists have managed to create incredibly detailed, lifelike, and in some cases, amusing CG animals.

Here at CreativeFan, we’ve rounded up 25 awesome CG animals in this showcase, so you can see some of the cool and incredible animals that artists have managed to create.

via 25 Incredible and Lifelike CG Animals | CreativeFan.

Graphics list, vfx

NVidia’s Tegra ‘system on a chip’ solution has been around for a while, but why haven’t we seen it in more devices?  So far, the only ‘major’ distribution of the chip has been the Microsoft Zune and Windows Mobile smartphone.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) used its own chip to run the iPad. Dell Inc. (DELL) opted for a Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) chip for its Streak tablet, and Acer Inc. (2353.TW) plans to use Qualcomm chips for its upcoming hybrid PC-tablet and a smartphone. Asustek Computer Inc. (2357.TW) will use a chip from Intel Corp. (INTC) for its upcoming tablet. Meanwhile, Nintendo Co.’s (NTDOY) latest mobile-gaming device, the Nintendo 3DS, also opted for a Tegra rival, despite early speculation that Nvidia had nabbed the latest generation of the most popular mobile videogame system.

NVidia predicted that they would rake in $150Million per quarter, but they’re going to need to break into a major market to make this happen.  They claim they’re still on track, having over 50 ‘design wins’ (agreements with manufacturers to use the device in in-development/future products), but nothing available yet.

via Nvidia’s Tegra, So Far, Has Little To Show – WSJ.com.

Hardware nvidia, tegra

Guru3D takes the new EVGA GeForce GTX465 (based on the Fermi Chipset) out for a spin and write up their results for us.  In short, they love the performance and noise levels, but find it difficult to justify at the current price point.  In particular, the overclocking potential is interesting:

So guys, there you have it. The GTX 465 is a nice enough card to play your games with. The overclock potential is really good, I mean we didn’t even voltage tweak this card. Then some of you (though we do not recommend it) even flashed a GTX 470 BIOS in these cards which in some cases seems to work fine. Heat levels are fine, noise levels are fine. Setup in SLI the scaling is really good, please check out an article on GTX 465 SLI performance right here.

They’re also careful to note that the base clock frequencies in the 465 are identical to the Radeon HD5830, which is available for a good 60 € less.   So if CUDA & PhysX are critical to you, this card is a winner.  Otherwise, you may want to shop around a bit more.

eVGA GeForce GTX 465 SC review.

Hardware evga, fermi, nvidia

Food Additives.

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