It’s finally the end of 2010, and what a turbulent 2010 it has been for the visualization industry.  I made some predictions for what I thought would happen in 2010, and it’s only fair that I look back and see how poorly I performed.  Let’s take a look.

Prediction #1: NVidia Slips, but remains #1

On this one, I fared pretty well.  NVidia began 2010 losing ground rapidly to ATI (now AMD).  While NVidia kept putting the finishing touches on their Fermi offerings, ATI released card after card, each one beating NVidia hardware even more than before.

Finally, Fermi was officially announced at PAX East, to huge fanfare.  Since then, their entire product line has been revised to include Fermi’s, including the incredibly powerful Quadro line.  NVidia quickly found themselves back on top with the #1 performing card on the market, and they’ve managed to keep it that way.

However, late in the year NVidia began losing ground again to AMD as the ‘Fusion’ systems came out.  Combining the CPU and GPU into a single silicon offered unheard of performance gains, primarily through a shared hypertransport offering 51GB/s bandwidth, compared to the fastest PCI-Express of only 16GB/s.  While still early in development, they’re currently the only company that can offer such a design.

Just recently, tho, things have begun to settle down in the patent disputes between NVidia and Intel, with discussions of an NVidia & Sandy-Bridge design coming to several laptops next year.  2010 looks to be interesting in this space.

Prediction #2: NVidia ships Fermi “On-Time”

Looks like I was right, but just barely.  Announced at PAX-East, that was March 29th, just at the end of Q1.

Prediction #3: Stereoscopic: Wins in Theaters, Flops at Home

This is a tricky one to decide.  2010 boasted a huge number of stereoscopic films, but I don’t think it’s a reach to say that most of these flopped.  Hollywood learned the hard way that a film in 3D isn’t a sure hit, and lost millions on a few major flops.  This one is neither a Win or a Loss, more of a draw scenario.

Stereoscopic Flopping at home I would have to say is a reality.  3D BluRay hasn’t really caught on yet, with most of the major titles that would help to make it so being locked up in some ridiculously long-lasting exclusives.   Much to my surprise, Active Shutter technology still seems to be the standard for stereoscopic viewing in the home, but hopefully some of the new sets from LG and others will bring passive stereoscopic viewing to the forefront in 2011.

Prediction #4: Real-Time Ray-Tracing gets big

I’ll have to say I missed on this one.  It definitely became popular in 2010, but not to the degree I had hoped.  Companies like Mental Images brought their iray renderer to market, and managed to get it included in the newest versions of 3dsMax, Cinema4D, and several other packages.  V-Ray, KeyShot, Bunkspeed, and Lightworks all brought some form of real-time raytracing to market.

However, one company I thought would really make it big in the realtime 3D space was Caustic, which recently got acquired by Imagination Technologies.  Their CausticRT system was a great product, but the promised CausticTwo card never materialized.

While real-time rendering did get big, it still seems to be somewhat of a niche area.  Hopefully as more users upgrade to newer versions of the software and companies improve the experience, it’ll become more of the norm.

Prediction #5: Next Generation Console News

Another miss.  Not a peep from Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo on what the new consoles will bring.  Instead, this year was overwhelmed by “Motion Controls”, with Microsoft Kinect being the big winner of 2010.  Sony’s Move hasn’t seen much publicity or interest, and Nintendo seems to have been busy with their upcoming 3D-DS system.

Final Tally:

2 hits, 2 Misses, 1 Draw.

And, I completely missed what happened in the VFX industry this year.  Major studios closed (Asylum, imagi, and others), VFX employees found themselves struggling to get by, and a formal lawsuit against Lucasfilm for their treatment of VFX artists.  It’s been big news, but I feel bad for the VFX artists caught in the crossfire.

2010 is over, Let’s hope 2011 is better!