This video was taken at SC10 in New Orleans when the New Orleans Saints Quarterback Drew Brees was interviewed at the Intel booth. Drew talks about the number of surgeries that he has been through, all due to football, of course. He also talks about whether or not he wants his sons to take up playing football. Is there a Brees dynasty like there is a Manning dynasty in the future?
Seriously, Intel is doing research into augmenting football helmets with sensors to determine when a player is likely to have a concussion. That way the player can be taken out of the game, and injuries reduced. The question was put to Drew, after this video was shot: “Would you take yourself out of the Superbowl if sensors showed you had a concussion?” I give you one guess at his answer. No.
People have been trying for a long time now to bring 3-D to the world wide web. We have had VRML and Web3D, but nothing really seems to have taken off. The latest 3-D graphics API for web browsers in WebGL. This is being directly implemented in web browsers without the use of plugins. WebGL is managed by the non-profit Khronos Group. Currently WebGL is enabled by default in Firefox 4 beta 7, which is my browser of choice. Today The Chromium Blog has announced that WebGL is now on by default in the latest beta version of Google Chrome. They are not content just to enable it. Instead they have also included three 3-D web applications. The video at the top is a human anatomy explorer called Body Browser. They also have a 3-D earthquake map, and a music visualizer. I was able to load the body browser and earthquake map in FireFox 4 beta 7, but the music visualizer would not load.
WebGL is a 3D graphics API for JavaScript that developers can use to create fully 3D web apps. It is based on the OpenGL ES 2.0 API, which should be familiar to many 3D graphics developers. Google, Mozilla, Apple, Opera and graphics hardware vendors have been working together to standardize WebGL for over a year now, and since the spec is just about final at this point, we wanted to get our implementation out there for feedback.
While you may not find much WebGL content on the web, we expect developers to quickly create a lot of content given the power and familiarity of the API. To inspire developers and give users a taste of the kind of apps they can expect in the near future, we’ve worked with a few talented teams to build a few more 3D web apps:
Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture economic blog points us to a nice trick that you can do with Google Maps to see foreclosures across the nation, and in your neighborhood.
Goto Google Maps.
On the right hand side of the map, select “More”
This will pull up a drop-down menu from which you can select “Real Estate”
On the left hand side, select “Foreclosure”
Note: This map does not reveal any of the millions of REOs that have already been sold by the banks that hold them.
But the maps do reveal an entire nation littered with foreclosure sales. It is an ugly and graphic depiction of how much inventory is out there, and why housing is still many years away from being healthy.
At SC10 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Computer Sciences Corporation had an Alioscopy television on display. This type of television uses lenticular lenses to produce a glasses-free 3-D effect. Of course, you are not going to see a 3-D effect with this movie taken from an iPhone4. Still, it gives you an idea of how much clearer these latest autostereoscopic televisions are over the ones from just a few years ago.
The New York Times has taken Census Bureau data from from 2005 to 2009 and created a nice series of maps. You can zoom in to browse by state, county, and even Census district. You need to be aware that the dots in the above map are randomly scattered within the Census district, and do not map exactly to an address. Still, it is a pretty useful tool to see where different racial groups live.
Everyone wants to live longer, and science is doing its part. But to achieve longevity, a big part comes from some healthy habits, as we can see on Term Life Insurance‘s infographic. And, within those habits, GOOD shows how a balanced diet is one of the most important ones, while Metropolitan Sushi explains all about a Sushi Diet. To close this selection, a couple of designs about Christmas: from Travel Insurance comes a look at Santa Clauses from around the World, and the Top 20 Fun Christmas Facts are brought by Venere Travel.
Computational Engineering International (CEI) has announced the release of EnSight 9.2, or more specifically, version 9.2.1a. EnSight 9.2 can be downloaded and installed alongside previous versions of EnSight, and uses the same license key as before. There are several improvements that are incorporated in this new version of EnSight, including:
OpenFOAM direct reader
HPC Launch Capabilities
More Click-n-go functionality
Touch-n-go
Much faster rendering of annotations when using large models
Improved Clip Planes thru Polyhedral Cells
The HPC Launch Capabilities look interesting to me. The idea behind this is that EnSight users should not have to set environment variables, configure SSH port forwarding, and mess around with their own particular flavor of batch queuing systems. Instead, users should be able to launch jobs that will run at their particular site without having to jump through so many hoops. However, their press release says that you will need to contact their support desk in order to schedule time to implement this for your particular setup.
Touch-n-go is a nice feature that is being added to EnSight. Simply move your mouse on top of objects and handles will appear. You can manipulate the handles to resize (for example) the colorbar. This does not require a redraw of the screen. Instead it is just an overlay redraw that is composited back into the image. This works with objects, but does not work with parts (like an isosurface, for example).
The next version of EnSight should be released in another month or so and should have the following improvements:
Support for EnSight DR
EnSight DR support for Context files
Easier Client-Server Launch
Even better will be EnSight 10.0, which is slated for release in the 2nd quarter of 2011. It will feature a new GUI built on top of PythonQt. That gives EnSight users something to look forward to for the new year. Since I am an EnSight user, I certainly am looking forward to trying out these new features.
To anyone “in the know” this isn’t really news, but I’m glad to see the industry waking up and realizing that 3D TV isn’t some magical overnight wallet-filling transition.
Reuters reports that Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn told analysts that sales of 3D TVs has fallen behind expectations. Dunn said, “There was confusion about 3D early (on). It was a little short on content.” A little short is an understatement, and one of the films that could have helped drive 3D TV adoption – Avatar – is locked up as an exclusive for Panasonic until 2012.
That Panasonic deal still blows me away.
In addition, things coming to market that seem like great idea (GoogleTV) are currently being quashed by the greed of the industry.
Google’s Google TV offerings are also not doing as well as expected on the market. The main reason for this is the fact that most of the major video streaming services and networks blocked Google TV devices from accessing and streaming content from sites like Hulu, Fox, and others effectively killing the benefits of paying more for Google TV.
Another entry into the Extreme Panoram space comes from the ‘Sevilla 111″ project that has an impressive 111-Gigapixel image up in their interactive viewer. Combining an impressive 9,750 images, it contains some amazing details. You can zoom in to see individual people on the street, planes in the sky, and even individual leaves on trees.
This blows the earlier 70-Gigapixel Budapest out of the water, and makes the 45-Gigapixel Dubai a laughable endeavor. What city do you think is worthy of being the first Terapixel Panoram? I would have to cast my vote for the lights of New York City or Tokyo.
Everyone wants to live longer, and science is doing its part. But to achieve longevity, a big part comes from some healthy habits, as we can see on 
Computational Engineering International (CEI) has announced the release of EnSight 9.2, or more specifically, version 9.2.1a. EnSight 9.2 can be downloaded and installed alongside previous versions of EnSight, and uses the same license key as before. There are several improvements that are incorporated in this new version of EnSight, including:
To anyone “in the know” this isn’t really news, but I’m glad to see the industry waking up and realizing that 3D TV isn’t some magical overnight wallet-filling transition.
Another entry into the Extreme Panoram space comes from the ‘Sevilla 111″ project that has an impressive 111-Gigapixel image up in their interactive viewer. Combining an impressive 9,750 images, it contains some amazing details. You can zoom in to see individual people on the street, planes in the sky, and even individual leaves on trees.
VizWorld.com 
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