Lots of murmurs are undermining what little credibility Oracle has at the moment. We’ve already covered first how the killed the Sun Visualization System, and then how they killed the free Sun GridEngine. In addition they’ve killed OpenSolaris and multiple hardware lines, and several divisions are currently suffering from uncertainty like MySQL and OpenOffice. Just take a look at the discussions in the JAVA camp:
Right now lots of people are talking about Java but there is a silent void from you. The conversation is happening and you aren’t participating, so people speculate and hypothesize; not great for building trust.
Apple has dropped their own internal Java builds, a motion that should bolster Sun’s position in the marketplace by eliminating some of the oddities of Apple’s implementation, but rather it’s being treated as a potential death knell for the product because Sun/Oracle is saying nothing, leading everyone to think Java is slowly dying on the vine.
I personally know many former Sun zealots that have slowly begun to switch to other vendors in the last year or so, customers that would have chosen Sun over anything in the marketplace that are now going to vendors like BluArc and Panasys.
What about you? What do you know of the Sun Underpinnings?
Last weekend’s Visual Effect Society Production Summit brought some interesting conversation on how what has typically lived in Post-Production is moving closer and closer to actual shooting, with the push for digital camera putting things like color timing on-set.
Also, there was a lot of discussion of the recent crumbling of several VFX houses.
Keynote speaker Bill Mechanic criticized the film biz as being “in a period of technical virtuosity and creative mediocrity. Movies are getting bigger and worse.” He noted that so far, of 2010′s top 10 grossers, only one, “Inception,” was not a remake, sequel or toon.
Nicolas Vizerie took a look at Intel’s paper on MorphoLogical Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) recently and became intrigued, but noticed that the original algorithm wasn’t well suited for use with GPU Pixel Shaders. He did some work, and now has a demonstration working on an nVidia 8700MGT.
The original technique is not very suitable to GPU with pixel shaders alone, so some adaptation was needed. The reason is that the algorithm scans edges and patches pixel based on the edge length, and the configuration at edge extremities (to sum up). Edges extremities can be far from the current pixel, so using a pixel shader (pure parallel model) requires each pixel to recompute the distance from itself to the edge extremities. For an edge of length N, the complexity becomes O(N^2), which can lead to performance problems. The obvious solution is to compute a bilateral distance texture. T
# I had a hard time finding a color set to represent “11 games in a row”. I must admit that this is a heck of NBA scheduling. Whether you count the eleventh game at Staples Center or not, it is going to be very tough stint for L.A. Clippers for sure.
# Last year, after a conversation we’ve had with a reader, the next year’s chart turned out to be colorblind friendly. So, here it is, as promised. I appreciate any feedback that the chart works fine for color blind people.
No doubt that the differences in various 3D Glasses and Display technology are frustrating, but XpanD hopes to resolve this with their new “universal 3D glasses” that they claim will work in Any 3D display, be it in the home or the theater. The Xpand Universal X103 3D Glasses have some nice, if not a bit entertaining, specs:
Universal 3D Glasses – works with all active 3D TVs
Full 1080 3D resolution to both eyes
Wide 3D viewing angle for multiple viewers/players
The fastest shuttering speed eliminating headaches, fatigue, and eyestrain
High transmission ratio for bright images
I think it’s a bit silly to see the glasses with a spec like “Full 1080 3D resolution”, since that’s entirely dependent on the Display, not the Glasses. Nonetheless, if you want a single set of glasses that will work anywhere, here’s your answer.
One more great feature of the higher-end Quadro cards is the “Dual Copy Engines”, essentially two DMA-transfer units that enable you to upload and download data simultaneously. This means you can upload data for the next step (or frame, or whatever) while work continues on the existing frame and is downloaded. If you can tweak your algorithm to work in this manner, it can offer some great performance boosts.
The following results (Figure 6) show a download-processing-readback pipeline streaming HD (8 MB per frame) and 4K (32 MB per frame) images with varying processing times (10 ms, 20 ms, and 30 ms) comparing the four methods listed.
Synchronous
CPU asynchronous with PBO’s
GPU asynchronous using the copy engine for download
Static or cached case where no streaming is involved
It is seen that the performance measured by fps is almost the same between HD and 4K video streaming for all the processing times despite the 4× data size that is downloaded for the 4K images. This shows that download and processing is happening truly asynchronously on the GPU using Quadro copy engines.
David Chung won the recent CGTantra “Starcraft Fanart” contest a few weeks back, and has a great Making Of up showing how he creating the amazing Zerg Hydralisk model. Judge Rafael Grassetti had this to say:
From all the choices this model is the best one made that represents the Starcraft race. Beside the colors, the pose and model made it a complete piece. Great choice on the concept and great work on modeling, i would just give more attention to the base and final composition (maybe not giving so much attention to the base at the final shot and composition) it sometimes can ruin the entire project. Congrats!
UCSD and Kaust have partnered up to build an impressive new visualization system called ‘NexCAVE’. The ‘NexCAVE’ isn’t actually a new name (First I heard of it was a year ago), but this is the first I’ve heard of a 21-panel version. Built entirely out of JVC’s 3D LCD HDTV’s with Passive Displays (far simpler than trying to synchronize 21 active displays), it builds a hemispherical display around the user (if you can withstand the bezels).
Projectors are inherently hard to align and keep aligned in these kinds of CAVE environments, but the NexCAVE panels’ left- and right-eye images are automatically aligned, which significantly reduces eye fatigue. The NexCAVE system is well suited for faculty and students to review and manipulate 3D data of all kinds.
An impressive construction to be sure, but the bezels are always an annoyance. When will consumer bezel-less televisions hit the market?
cebas Visual Technology7 Inc has just begun shipping finalRender R2 for Maya, with includes full support for Maya’s Hypershade Editor and many of the native shader nodes. It also includes a new ‘ShaderGrind’ concept to enable writing shaders directly within the MayaUI. But if offers much more:
finalRender R2 for Maya incorporates the latest multi-core technologies and enhancements which leverage existing and future Hardware investments to the maximum possible extent. Scene translation times and rendering preparation times are easily reduced by half, or even more, depending on the hardware used and the amount of available cores in a system.
(Wow, you could win BuzzWord Bingo with a sentence like that). The list of new features is extensive, covering everything from License models to GI to subdivision surfaces. If you own finalRender Stage-2 For Maya then you can instantly upgrade from the website, otherwise you’ll need to create a cebas Account where a full version will cost $995.
Cleverly co-scheduled with the premiere event in Information & Scientific Visualization (IEEE VisWeek), Kitware has just announced the opening of a new EUropean Office in Lyon, France. Named Kitware SAS, it will be very similar to their US division, focusing on open-source software and their many libraries, but will now be able to focus more on opportunities in the European market.
“[Kitware] recognizes the need to reach out to the international community and work with the most talented scientific computing professional and software engineers wherever they are located,” said Dr. Will Schroeder, president of Kitware’s U.S. office. Kitware’s open source systems have global impact, and the Lyon office provides a unique opportunity to expand into European markets and broaden the Company’s international reach.”
Kitware currently has many job openings (although I’m unsure of where they are), and several of which are advertised here on VizWorld in the Sidebar.
Lots of murmurs are undermining what little credibility Oracle has at the moment. We’ve already covered first how the killed the Sun Visualization System, and then how they killed the free Sun GridEngine. In addition they’ve killed OpenSolaris and multiple hardware lines, and several divisions are currently suffering from uncertainty like MySQL and OpenOffice. Just take a look at the discussions in the JAVA camp:
Nicolas Vizerie took a look at 
No doubt that the differences in various 3D Glasses and Display technology are frustrating, but XpanD hopes to resolve this with their new “universal 3D glasses” that they claim will work in Any 3D display, be it in the home or the theater. The 
One more great feature of the higher-end Quadro cards is the “Dual Copy Engines”, essentially two DMA-transfer units that enable you to upload and download data simultaneously. This means you can upload data for the next step (or frame, or whatever) while work continues on the existing frame and is downloaded. If you can tweak your algorithm to work in this manner, it can offer some great performance boosts.
David Chung won the recent CGTantra “Starcraft Fanart” contest a few weeks back, and has a great Making Of up showing how he creating the amazing Zerg Hydralisk model. Judge Rafael Grassetti had this to say:
UCSD and Kaust have partnered up to build an impressive new visualization system called ‘NexCAVE’. The ‘NexCAVE’ isn’t actually a new name (
cebas Visual Technology7 Inc has just begun shipping finalRender R2 for Maya, with includes full support for Maya’s Hypershade Editor and many of the native shader nodes. It also includes a new ‘ShaderGrind’ concept to enable writing shaders directly within the MayaUI. But if offers much more:
Cleverly co-scheduled with the premiere event in Information & Scientific Visualization (IEEE VisWeek), Kitware has just announced the opening of a new EUropean Office in Lyon, France. Named Kitware SAS, it will be very similar to their US division, focusing on open-source software and their many libraries, but will now be able to focus more on opportunities in the European market.
VizWorld.com 
Comments