VizWorld.com

Popular CAD suite “Pro/ENGINEER” is no more, now known as “Creo Elements/Pro”, thanks to a global product rename by parent company PTC.  CoCreate and ProductView have been renamed as well.

“We believe Creo could be significant and a positive advance in PTC’s product offerings.” said Mike Galbraith, Global Engineering Systems & Services, Tyco Electronics. Creo could allow the teams involved in designing new products and bringing them to market…across different functions, different locations, etc… to productively use the same toolset throughout the product life-cycle process. We’re looking forward to working with PTC and their other partners in shaping these new capabilities.”

At at the naming event, they announced launch partner Luxion who have revamped their KeyShot rendering plugin for the new software.

“Selecting Luxion as a launch partner enables us to demonstrate that Creo in combination with Luxion’s KeyShot rendering technology allows other members of the community such as sales and marketing to be involved early in the design process and utilize the digital data directly for the creation of product imagery” said Michael M. Campbell PTC’s Divisional Vice President of Design and Visualization Products.

I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of the name.  The previous name was more than just a product name, it was a job description (Professional Engineers use “Pro/E”, etc).  The new name reminds me too much of the Pleo or the Treo.

Nonetheless, I’m glad to see a company like Luxion brought it at the ground floor.  High-end rendering has traditionally been forgotten in CAD packages, and I’m glad to see it available at-launch for a new product (even if it is just a rename of an old product).

via Press Releases: PTC Introduces Creo Design Software – PTC.com.

Graphics cad, luxion, pro/e, software

I just stumbled across a huge list of recommended books and texts for learning all about scientific visualization, design, human vision, and much much more.  The list is huge, but from a quick glance I found several books I’m going to have to check out.  For starters:

• The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era
• The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (The Virtual Laboratory)
• Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C (2nd Edition)
• Information Visualization, Second Edition: Perception for Design
• Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (Interactive Technologies)
• The Computer in the Visual Arts
• Visual Computing (Scientific American Library)
• How To Lie With Charts: Second Edition
• Envisioning Information
• Non-Designer’s Design Book, The (3rd Edition)
• The Scientific Image: From Cave to Computer
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition
• Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
• Visual Literacy: A Conceptual Approach to Graphic Problem Solving
• The Psychology of Graphic Images: Seeing, Drawing, Communicating (Volume in the University of Alberta, Department of Psychology, Distinguished Scholar Lecture)
• Handbook of Visual Analysis
• Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication

There’s a lot more in the complete list, but for some reason almost none of the books actually link to anywhere you can buy them.

Visual Thinking/Visual Computing- Resources.

Science books, list

News that James Cameron is not only planning a sequel to Avatar but a Trilogy has been taking the internet by storm this week. However, one small detail I noticed in a VentureBeat article announces something I find far more interesting.  Cameron always tries some new technology in every movie, and it looks like the Avatar sequels will be no different.

Cameron said the big change is that he wants to natively author the movie in a higher frame rate, not at the traditional 24 frames per second that current movies are filmed at. He will do it at 48, 60, or 72 frames per second.

“The projectors can do it,” he said. “That’s another bump we will do.”

The projectors can do it, but can they do 72fps in 3D? (144 FPS)  Can the cameras shoot high-enough resolution at that framerate?

Guess we’ll find out.

via Why two more Avatar movies will be good for tech innovation | VentureBeat.

Hardware, Science avatar

Anton at the 3D Vision Blog bought himself a new Panasonic 3D HDTV (TX-P50VT20E). First he tried it our with NVIDIA’s 3DTV, and then he tried it with AMD’s HD3D technology. How did it turn out? Well, he ran into a few problems as the video above shows. Click through on the link to learn more.

However when I the TriDef 3D Experience launcher (you can see that on the video) or TriDef 3D Ignition with a game the result was kind of disappointing. The depth of the 3D objects can be seen, however there is a weird flicker and a lot of annoying flashing artifacts on the screen that totally ruin the experience. I’m not sure where the problem lies yet, because for example on AMD’s supported hardware page there is no mention of the TX-P50VT20E, but there is support for TC-P50VT20 which is pretty much the same.

via Trying AMD HD3D Technology with Panasonic 3D HDTV (TX-P50VT20E) @ 3D Vision Blog

Graphics 3d, 3dtv, amd, hd3d, nvidia

A neutron star is one type of remnant of a star that has collapsed from a supernova event. As you would expect from the name, such a a star is composed almost entirely of neutrons. Neutron stars have a mass between 1.35 and about 2.1 solar masses. However, their radius is approximately 12 km. This means that they are very dense.

Astronomers have recently discovered the most massive Neutron Star yet known. This star goes by the lovely designation PSR J1614-2230 and is approximately 3,000 light years from Earth. This star is 1.97 solar masses, which is about 20% more massive than the previous record holder. To do this they used an instrument called Green Bank Ultimate Pulsar Processing Instrument (GUPPI). GUPPI is very dependent on high performance computing, and on graphics cards. The signal that they received from this instrument was processed on high end graphics cards. They use eight high-end workstations in a rack, each with a graphics card. The result is that these eight systems can do approximately 1 trillion operations per second.

Part II of the movie is after the break. It explains the technology behind GUPPI, including its use of GPUs.
Read more…

Science astronomy, gpgpu

On October 25, 2010, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 occurred off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. This produced a localized tsunami up to 9 ft tall that struck the Mentawai Islands. It has been reported that approximately 300 people have been killed, and hundreds more are missing. This animation from NOAA shows the propagation of the tsunami.

The Indonesia tsunami event was generated by a Mw 7.7 earthquake (3.484°S, 100.114°E ), at 14:42:22 UTC, 240 km (150 miles) W of Bengkulu, Sumatra, Indonesia (according to the USGS). In a little under 2 hours, the tsunami was first recorded at DART® buoy 56001 and in a little under 3 hours, the tsunami was recorded at DART® buoy 56003. Forecast results shown below were created with the NOAA forecast method using MOST model with the tsunami source inferred from DART® data. The tsunami waves first arrived at Padang (approximately 270 Km from the earthquake epicenter ), at 15:47 UTC, about 65 minutes after the earthquake. The DART data and model inversion indicate that the tsunami may be larger than the earthquake magnitude of 7.7 suggests.

credit: NOAA

via : Tsunami Event – October 25, 2010 Mentawai, Indonesia

Another video is after the break.

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Science scientific visualization

If you’re interested in the inner working of some of the biggest in Hollywood’s CG studios, then you should check out the inside story of the creation and faltering of Dreamworks, Nicole Laporte’s “The Men Who Would Be Kings”.

The rise and then the crash and burn of DreamWorks, created by three of the biggest egos in Hollywood—Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen—is a gripping saga of changing economic times. Wary of corporate inroads and catalyzed by Katzenberg’s troubled departure from Disney, the three had independently come to a point where they wanted to run their own show. In 1994, without even a name for their venture, they announced the formation of a company that would break the mold on corporate ownership of entertainment-making, respecting creativity above all else. Spielberg was coddled and cosseted as the ultimate artiste. Katzenberg, who headed the animation division at Disney, was motivated as much by vengeance against CEO Michael Eisner when he set about luring away Disney’s animators. Billionaire Geffen was looked on as the businessman who would bring together disparate parts of the company. What followed was a clash of multiple cultures and visions, within and outside of DreamWorks. LaPorte, a former film industry reporter for Variety, offers a deliciously detailed look at the trials, triumphs, and fumbles of DreamWorks—from the complicated story behind Shrek, a CGI pioneer, to the courting of stars Nicole Kidman and George Clooney and soothing of Russell Crowe. This unauthorized chronicle of DreamWorks will no doubt seal LaPorte’s status as persona non grata in Hollywood, but readers will love it. –Vanessa Bush

This book and many others is available in the VizWorld Store.

Graphics dreamworks, feature, resource of the week

A Visual Survey of Tree Visualization.

infographics poster, visweek

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is a satellite launched by NASA on July 23, 1999. Chandra is a space based telescope since the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs the vast majority of X-rays. Chandra is 100 times more sensitive to X-ray sources than previous X-ray telescopes.

A quasar is a shorter name for a quasi-stellar radio source. Originally astronmers did not know what quasars were. Now they are known to be the center of a massive galaxy surrounding a supermassive black hole. As matter falls into the supermassive black hole, energy is emitted back out. The energy output from a quasar can be up to a thousand times the energy output of the Milky Way. Chandra recently imaged one such quasar by the name of 3C186, and found that its interior is cooler than its exterior.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has observed an unusual galaxy cluster that contains a bright core of relatively cool gas surrounding a quasar called 3C 186. This is the most distant such object yet observed, and could provide insight into the triggering of quasars and the growth of galaxy clusters.

This composite image of the cluster surrounding 3C 186 includes a new, deep image from Chandra (blue) showing emission from gas surrounding the point-like quasar near the center of the cluster. Chandra X-ray spectra show that the temperature of the gas drops from 80 million degrees on the outskirts of the cluster down to 30 million in the core. This drop in temperature occurs because intense X-ray emission from the gas cools it. Optical data from the Gemini telescope in yellow show the stars and galaxies in the field of view.

What makes this particular galaxy cluster and its strong cooling core interesting is its age. 3C 186 is about 8 billion light years away from Earth, making it the most distant known galaxy cluster to contain a prominent cooling core. Because of its large distance the cluster is being seen when the Universe is relatively young, at less than half its current age.

via Chandra :: Photo Album :: 3C186 :: 26 October 10.

Science astronomy, chandra, nasa

There’s no way you haven’t thought about it: Is Google a Monopoly, after all? Scores brings an historical perspective on this subject. We then continue our daily selection with Flowtown‘s infographic on the importance of Email marketing, while Klout shows us the Top 10 most Retweeted Twitter users – with some surprises! Milo shows us the love Americans have for gadgets, and to close, FastCo Design brings Doogie Horner’s funny piece on how would we explain the Internet to a 19th-Century street urchin.

Read more…

Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations