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In a move that signals the recent Sandy Bridge announcements are more than just fluff, Intel and NVidia have signed a new licensing agreement for the next 6 years to the tune of $1.5Billion USD and the end of all current legal disputes.
Under the new agreement, Intel will have continued access to NVIDIA’s full range of patents. In return, NVIDIA will receive an aggregate of $1.5 billion in licensing fees, to be paid in annual installments, and retain use of Intel’s patents, consistent with its existing six-year agreement with Intel. This excludes Intel’s proprietary processors, flash memory and certain chipsets for the Intel platform.
This is the first step towards an Intel+NVidia solution to rival the AMD Fusion, although it will be interesting to see what this does for NVidia’s ARM plans.
via NVIDIA Newsroom.
Hardware intel, nvidia
In 2007, Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel participated in the Galaxy Zoo project. She discover this strange green blob on an image, and it was named Hanny’s Voorwerp. Hanny’s Voorwerp is Dutch for Hanny’s object. It lies approximately 700 million light-years away from Earth near the spiral galaxy IC 2497 in the constellation Leo Minor.
The strange green blob floating near the spiral galaxy begs the question: “What is it?” It turns out that IC 2497 is what astronomers call an active galactic nucleus or quasar. The quasar is powered by a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Right now, the quasar is no longer active. In other words, it is now turned off, which makes it a transient phenomena. The radiation from the AGN has illuminated a gas cloud trailing behind the galaxy, and is triggering the formation of new stars. This illuminated section of the gas cloud is Hanny’s Voorwerp. What we are seeing in Hanny’s Voorwerp is a light echo. It is an echo of the radiation that came from the now inactive quasar.
via : Hubble Zooms in on a Space Oddity
You can see a graphic explaining this after the break.
Read more…
Science astronomy, hubble, nasa
Artbeats, creators of lots of stock footage libraries covering just about anything you can think of, has now added Stereoscopic 3D footage to their library. Initially it includes a variety of nature shots and arial stock footage, with new footage to be added monthly.
“For over 20 years, Artbeats has specialized in footage that has high production value and is often difficult to shoot,” explains Artbeats President and Lead Cinematographer, Phil Bates. “In this case, we couldn’t ignore industry demand, so we’ve set our sights on providing the 3D content that our customers require but may not be able to shoot themselves.”
Each clip is delivered in separate Left & Right eye streams, along with metadata on convergence and alignment. This way you can put them into any format you want (side-by-side, anaglyphic, interlaced, shutter, etc).
Full release after the break.
Read more…
Graphics 3d, artbeats, stereoscopic
I just got an email from the Wall Street Journal asking me to link to this article in their Technology section on the “Unsung Videogame Heroes of 2010″. At first I was surprised and excited, then I saw the list. The list is a very obvious “Our game didn’t sell enough so please plug it one more time for us” PR post. Just look at their selection:
Come on.. Some true “Unsung Heroes” of 2010?
How about anything that didn’t come from a major studio?
The Unsung Videogame Heroes of 2010: Fallout: New Vegas, Dance Central, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 and More – WSJ.com.
Graphics list, video game, wsj
Optical illusions that rely on the human eye’s tendency to favor motion over detail (an important feature in hunter species), are quite common. However, these “silencing” illusions are something I’ve never seen before.
“SILENCING demonstrates the tight coupling of motion and object appearance. Simply by changing the retinotopic coordinates—moving the object or the eyes—it is possible to silence awareness of visual change, causing objects that had once been obviously dynamic to suddenly appear static.”
If my understanding of Human Vision is accurate, this works because the parts of the eye that focus on motion tend to work on “deltas”, that is they only see the changed areas. The human eye’s ability to see color is lower resolution, so when you have motion and color, the eye chooses motion.
Follow the link after the video to see more “silencing” tricks that include brightness shifts, size shifts, and symbol changes.
Motion silences awareness of color changes from Jordan Suchow on Vimeo.
via Demonstrations of silencing, a visual illusion.
Science human vision, optical illusion
Today’s modern PC games require a pretty beefy machine, and adding 3D to the mix can push the requirements even higher. Try doing triple-monitor 3D and you wind up with requirements only the most decadent of computers can require. ArsTechnica got their hands on one of these monster machines, the Digital Storm Black|Ops Assassin, and once they got over the initial “whoa” they put it through the paces.
When the system arrived, I had trouble walking the box to the living room to get everything set up. The packaging for the system itself—this is before the three ASUS VG247 3D monitors, mind you—weighed 80 lbs. Some of that was packing material, but not much of it. If you’re interested in a LAN party box, this is not your system. Let’s take a look at what happens when you put God’s own system to work in the harshest conditions gaming can currently offer.
It shows the kind of hit even the biggest of PCs can take when enabling 3D, but also shows that it is technically possible. Of course, the machine he’s using costs around $5k (with the 3 monitors included).
via Killing the beast: taking a monster through multi-monitor 3D.
Hardware 3d, benchmark
The National Engineering School of Saint Etienne (ENISE) needed a specialized Virtual Reality system for mechanical validation of products, a new area they call “sensory engineering”.
To accomplish the main missions of ENISE, which are training, research and valorisation of local technological and engineering projects, the sensory engineering has a very important role, especially for the valorisation mission of the school. It consists in supporting local industrial actors in the validation and valorisation of their technological projects, whether they concern project reviews, ergonomic validations or industrial flow simulations. For example, a machine manufacturing mechanical parts of an engine would need a prototype validation for each part and also for their assembly. The virtual reality through virtual prototypes makes it possible with a high level of simulation and anticipation of efficiency.
They wound up with an impressive solution from a variety of vendors. Two Steward Filmscreens (2 meters by 1 meter) are mounted in an L, and projected on by 4 projectiondesign passive Infitec projectors. Then using TechViz software, they have a stereoscopic 3D display table that allows them to visualize models from such software as SolidWorks and CATIA interactively at a high framerate.
via ENISE implements a VR system proposed by Immersion using TechViz visualization solutions.
Hardware projectiondesign, virtual reality
The Editing and Deletion procedures at Wikipedia get a lot of attention these days, and a new visualization called ‘Notabilia’ shines a light specifically on the latter. Mapping the choices between ‘keep’ and ‘delete’ amongst the editors, it creates an interesting tree-style visualization.
The online visualization visualizes 100 Article for Deletion (AfD) discussions that took the longest amount of time. A discussion is represented by a thread starting at the bottom center. Each time a user joins an AfD discussion and recommends to ‘keep’, ‘merge’, or ‘redirect’ the article a green segment leaning towards the left is added. Each time a user recommends to ‘delete’ the article a red segment leaning towards the right is added. As the discussion progresses, the length of the segments as well as the angle slowly decay.
Notabilia via information aesthetics.
Science interactive, treemap, wikipedia
We begin this week still with some retrospective infographics: first, eCampus list of the things that have shaped our last 10 years, followed by the breakdown of which brands got the most Social Media Buzz last year, based on the third annual Vitrue 100 report. We them move on forward, to a couple of predictions for this year: Education Connection tells us what will be the top jobs for 2011, while the Grasshopper Group provides us with an outlook for the future of entrepreneurs. And a great way to close today’s selection is the magnificent poster of the Top 100 YouTube clips of all time, made by Ibraheem Youssef and Paul Parolin.
Read more…
Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations
Peter Jackson’s Weta Studios is busy working on the new “Rise of the Apes” film, but having difficulty dealing with the ape’s hair. They’ve just reached out Eitan Grinspun, who we mentioned last week, to lend a hand after seeing his work in Tangled and hearing about his expertise. In addition to the Apes, they also need his expertise in the upcoming Steven Spielberg movie ‘Tintin’.
The software uses discrete differential geometry which is so new that the first textbook on the subject was published only two years ago. The same tools are also being used for computer simulations to predict how needles move through human flesh, so that doctors can train to surgery on “virtual” bodies instead of the real thing. Or stick swords into bodies in Fantasy flicks.
Math nerds are striking it big in the movies these days.
via Peter “Ring Lord” Jackson recruits hair expert – Tries to avoid bad hair days | TechEye.
Graphics, Science movie, vfx, weta
VizWorld.com 
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