Infographics Summary for 2010-11-20
3:30 pm
The Adventures of Team ARIN
3:00 pm
At SC10 last week, I found out that the ARIN group, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, has created a series of graphic novels to explain the transition between IPv4 and IPv6. The failure of IPv4 to scale to current usage patterns is discussed widely, but often difficult to understand. The graphic novel format, they’ve found, does a good job of putting the same information in an easier to understand format.
Some liberties are taken in order to present this information in comic book style, but the aspects of the story that illustrate how ARIN and its community work are taken directly from technical documents, like ARIN’s Policy Development Process, and based on the ideals and roles described in multiple RFCs.
Team ARIN is not a typical group of superheroes — they do not battle a literal enemy directly. Instead they use their powers to educate the public and facilitate community participation in the existing open, transparent, bottom-up policy process. Team ARIN presents the true mission of the “real” team ARIN, as we facilitate the open and transparent policy process, technical discussions, and act as an informational resource for the community.
Check out the 3-issue series in PDF format on their site below.
The Biggest Brands on Facebook
2:30 pm
Asylum VFX Is Closing
2:00 pm
Asylum VFX, a rather successful VFX house that we’ve discussed with the work on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Porsche, Halo3, and much more, has just suddenly announced that they are closing their doors. Sunk by signing deals on razor-thin margins, a studio at the top of their game with recent work on Unstoppable, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Call of Duty :Black Ops has vanished from the field.
There’s a lot of frustration about the apparent willingness of VFX facilities to undercut themselves on pricing in order to secure more work. But it has to be even more agonizing to be in the position of negotiating those deals, knowing that you’re gambling on sustaining your business on razor-thin margins in order to win jobs from producers who treat VFX work as purely a commodity business. Add in the fact that more and more VFX work is being done away from Hollywood and outside the U.S. (Canada, London, India, etc.), and it just gets harder for the traditional, Los Angeles-based companies to make the numbers work like they used to.
Video game addiction Infographic
1:30 pm
Full-Scale Visualization: More Is More
1:00 pm
CAVE technology, putting 3 to 6 large displays together with some high-end graphics and head-tracked technology, has been around for over a decade but has traditionally been in the realm where only universities and government labs could afford it. Now, the technology is becoming more mainstream and the price is coming down, and it’s becoming a popular tool amongst Architectural Designers who can now virtually walk through their buildings prior to construction.
Fuller’s AEC clients are primarily in commercial construction, and they work primarily with 3D data from SketchUp, Revit, and Rhino software. However, virtually any 3D data can be converted for simulator viewing. “We haven’t been stumped yet,” Fuller said, referring to his company’s data-conversion track record. The exception is point cloud data, he said. “It must first be converted to polygons.”
Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 19/11/2010
7:00 am
America has the largest inmate population in the world, and Criminology shows us some hard facts about that reality. The infographic found on Academic Oatmeal tries to measure the rise in college tuition, Credit Loan points out some infuriating fees we can do nothing about, and to finish this week’s posts, the QR Code awareness, from Austin-Williams, and the true economics and politics of Science, brought by Live Science.
Man Who Paid $335,000 for Virtual Real Estate Explains Why
10:00 am
Project Entropia is one of the more money-centric virtual worlds in existence, regularly advertising hundreds of thousands of dollars in transactions. Recently, Yan Panasjuk bought the “Club Neverdie” for a whopping $335,000 dollars, and talks about it to an article in Forbes.
“When motion pictures were first invented there were a lot of critics saying that it is a novelty act and it would never amount to anything nor will be able to make any real money once the novelty wears off—last time i checked Avatar has grossed 2.7 billion dollars world wide. Most recent example is MTV and Internet but then you know those stories well enough. Virtual Universe is the next logical step in world entertainment and although there are a lot of critics and people shaking heads it is here to stay and take its ranks among the greats.”
While paying that much for “virtual property” seems ludicrous to many, you don’t have to look far into the past to see a similar rush on web addresses and domain names at the start of the internet. The popular sex.com address changes hands every few years for similarly large and ridiculous sums of money, and virtual worlds are rapidly replacing traditional web environments, be it from Second Life to Farmville.
What do you think? Is Yan Panasjuk a visionary, or a sucker?
via Man Who Paid $335,000 for Virtual Real Estate Explains Why.
John Carmack’s RAGE for iPhone now Available
9:48 am
John Carmack has successfully brought his gaming-engine prowess to the iPhone and iPad with the new game ‘RAGE’.
RAGE comes to your mobile device with the hit of the wastelands, Mutant Bash TV! This intense first-person rail shooter casts you in the starring role of a post-apocalyptic game show where you’ll be stalked by hungry mutants while you scour pulse-pounding levels for ammo and cash pick-ups. Make a deal with J.K Stiles, the show’s menacing host, and see if you have what it takes to survive this carnage-filled carnival of death!
It’s available for only $0.99 for the SD version, or $1.99 for the HD version. The graphics look simply amazing. I’m downloading it now, but it might take a while at the 750MB size.
VizWorld.com 
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