If you’ve been hear lots about Manuel Lima’s “Visual Complexity” text but don’t think you’re visualization-savvy enough to really get anything form it, then be sure to check out frequent VizWorld contributor Tiago Veloso’s review of the text.
Because, let’s face it, to write about a book from someone considered to be the next Edward Tufte, it’s no easy task, especially when you’re kind of an outsider in the field. Yes, I post a lot of examples of infographics and data visualizations, but I’m far from being an information designer, despite the fact I actually use network mapping in my “real” work.
However, after I began reading it, I realized that it really doesn’t matter if you’re a designer or not. Because this book goes far beyond the traditional approach of showcasing examples of beautiful works.
He has lots of example images and references to the Visual Complexity website, as well as lots of insight from a non-expert.
I always look at these systems and think there’s no possible way they’ll ever go mainstream, but looking at this amazing conglomeration of kit bringing the new Battlefield 3 game to life is truly jawdropping.
Centred on the worlds first, portable omni-directional treadmill designed by Swedish company MSE Weibull the simulator lets you control the movements of a Battlefield 3 character with your own body. Other key technology employed includes: 12 paintball markers that allow the player, in real time, to feel the enemy gunfire experienced in the game; a wireless gun system; ambient LED lighting; and an Xbox Kinect camera hack.
No idea how much something like this cost, but something tells me there’s a lot of bubblegum and duct tape holding this one together. Nonetheless, it is awesome.
After all, why is email marketing still big? Shouldn’t be over now, with all the new ways of online interaction available out there, like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? Flowtown and Smarter Tools show us why, and, from e-Dialog, Pure 360 and Get Response comes a set of valuable tips and numbers for those who are directly involved in email marketing – something we’ll continue to talk about tomorrow.
NVidia has just announced the newest version of their 3D Vision products, attempting to squash the common complaints of darkness and faint imagery from active displays. The new tech boasts “LightBoost” technology, doubling the typical brightness of the displays through special monitors and a new generation of classes.
“NVIDIA 3D LightBoost technology makes 3D games, movies and photos more stunning and life-like than ever before,” said David Wung, senior director of product management of Open Platform Business (OPBG) Group for ASUS Computer International. ”With 3D LightBoost and our new full-HD monitors, colors are richer, textures and subtle image details virtually jump off the screen, and the overall quality of the experience is something to behold. We are thrilled to be the first desktop display manufacturer to bring this new level of 3D visual quality to our customers with the ASUS VG278H.”
The glasses are still IR based, and available from retailers for $149. Hopefully this means new Vision Pro glasses are on the way!
Professional animation tools like Mental Ray and various Autodesk products have been slowly making inroads into classic scientific visualization areas for the last several years, mostly due to their ability to add subtle realism details like refraction and diffuse light effects to renderings in ways not typically supported by scientific packages. Autodesk took a trip to the IGEM event, the International Genetically Engineered Machine event, and saw how Maya is being used in their work.
You may be asking yourselves why a scientific competition merits mention in a blog dedicated towards Maya, or even whether my coworkers stumbled into the wrong event. Our Research team has been driving a number of initiatives to study how Maya can benefit the synthetic biology and nanotechnology industries through collaboration with academic institutions and researchers. Maya is being used within the life and material sciences to create stunning visual simulations of molecular structures and behaviors.
Our choice for this week’s Daily Viz from Visual Loop roundup goes to Email Marketing. A lot has been said about the suppose “death” of the email, after the rise of Social Media, but, truth be said, most of us still use email as a kind of more personal online contact. Until Friday, we’ll be showing trends, facts and curiosities, starting with the history and evolution of Email, with multiple interpretations from Reachmail, Emailium, iTok, Microsoft and Focus.
For our last selection of visual resources about Steve Jobs passing away, we’ll take a look at his legacy. First, from Brazilian magazine Veja and The New York Times, the amazing products and patents he left behind, followed by USA Today‘s take at some of his notorious “apprentices”, many of whom became true tech moguls. Also from Brazil, newspaper Folha de São Paulo compiled examples of newspaper and magazine covers published after the confirmation of Jobs death, and finally, Ria Novosti shows some of the reactions from people like President Obama, Bill Gates and a few others .
In today’s selection, still about the passing of Steve Jobs and his legacy, we bring you recently released works from Promotional Codes, Infographic World, Web Design Shock, Brazilian magazine Info , and PC Mag. Tomorrow we close this humble collection of tributes to one of the most important names in tech history, knowing that there’s a lot of good works out there about this topic that we didn’t manage to feature here. If you know of such works, just drop us a comment.
If you’ve been keeping up with OpenGL 4.x, then you’ve no doubt heard of the new Tessellation features they’ve added. Available in DirectX for a few versions now, it’s finally come to OpenGL and offers up some great new features for automatic tessellation and geometry processing. A new tutorial online shows some example code and techniques behind the new systems, and offers up lots of details along the way.
Let’s take a look at how Tessellation has been implemented in the graphics pipeline. The core components that are responsible for Tessellation are two new shader stages and in between them a fixed function stage that can be configured to some degree but does not run a shader. The first shader stage is called Tessellation Control Shader (TCS), the fixed function stage is called the Primitive Generator (PG), and the second shader stage is called Tessellation Evaluation Shader (TES).
They show lots of code but also get into the details of barycentric coordinates, displacement maps, textured surfaces, and much more. Get it all at the link below.
Over at UC Irvine they’ve created a new generation of panoramic display technology that uses multiple projectors in a blending setup combined with high-resolution cameras watching the screen for a fully automatic calibration and alignment. Typically alignment and blending issues take lengthy calibration cycles, or expensive maintenance contracts, and now they’ve done it all automatically.
While amusement parks, flight training operations and others have long created virtual reality environments, the UCI group’s software will be compatible with new digital equipment and allows the use of everyday cameras and far cheaper projectors. Perhaps most important, the calibration process between the camera and the projectors – key to image quality – is completely automated.
“You can do this with the single press of a button,” Majumder says. “An elementary school could have its own little planetarium. It would be easy to build and not cost very much.”
Many people believe that such large and interactive displays are a fading tech, but the next generation may see things differently.
Majumder knew her team was on the right track when she brought her daughter to the lab one Friday night. The 4-year-old ran up to the map on the wall, waved her hand and laughed gleefully as it zoomed out.
If you’ve been hear lots about Manuel Lima’s “Visual Complexity” text but don’t think you’re visualization-savvy enough to really get anything form it, then be sure to check out frequent VizWorld contributor Tiago Veloso’s review of the text.
I always look at these systems and think there’s no possible way they’ll ever go mainstream, but looking at this amazing conglomeration of kit bringing the new Battlefield 3 game to life is truly jawdropping.
After all, why is email marketing still big? Shouldn’t be over now, with all the new ways of online interaction available out there, like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? 
NVidia has just announced the newest version of their 3D Vision products, attempting to squash the common complaints of darkness and faint imagery from active displays. The new tech boasts “LightBoost” technology, doubling the typical brightness of the displays through special monitors and a new generation of classes.
Professional animation tools like Mental Ray and various Autodesk products have been slowly making inroads into classic scientific visualization areas for the last several years, mostly due to their ability to add subtle realism details like refraction and diffuse light effects to renderings in ways not typically supported by scientific packages. Autodesk took a trip to the IGEM event, the International Genetically Engineered Machine event, and saw how Maya is being used in their work.
Our choice for this week’s Daily Viz from Visual Loop roundup goes to Email Marketing. A lot has been said about the suppose “death” of the email, after the rise of Social Media, but, truth be said, most of us still use email as a kind of more personal online contact. Until Friday, we’ll be showing trends, facts and curiosities, starting with the history and evolution of Email, with multiple interpretations from 
For our last selection of visual resources about Steve Jobs passing away, we’ll take a look at his legacy. First, from Brazilian magazine 
In today’s selection, still about the passing of Steve Jobs and his legacy, we bring you recently released works from 
If you’ve been keeping up with OpenGL 4.x, then you’ve no doubt heard of the new Tessellation features they’ve added. Available in DirectX for a few versions now, it’s finally come to OpenGL and offers up some great new features for automatic tessellation and geometry processing. A new tutorial online shows some example code and techniques behind the new systems, and offers up lots of details along the way.
Over at UC Irvine they’ve created a new generation of panoramic display technology that uses multiple projectors in a blending setup combined with high-resolution cameras watching the screen for a fully automatic calibration and alignment. Typically alignment and blending issues take lengthy calibration cycles, or expensive maintenance contracts, and now they’ve done it all automatically.
VizWorld.com 
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