Adding the Cadenas library means Sunglass can now supply its users with instant access to brand-name parts from over 400 leading component manufacturers including ABB, Buhler, Eaton, FlexLink, HBM, IDEC, Mädler, Bosch Rexroth, Schneider Electric, Schunk, SMC, Toshiba, Würth, Yamaha, and Yokogawa. Parts span categories such as automotive, hydraulics, automation, plant design, electrical engineering and more.

via GraphicSpeak » Sunglass adds Cadenas PartSolutions 1 million item 3D parts library to its cloud CAD worksite.

Pixar releases OpenSubdiv Library to the Public

Kitware releases open-source Tubular Segmentation library TubeTK

Sony Acquires Cloud Gaming Company Gaikai for $380M

Another article on the coming VR and AR surge comes from TheGuardian that has an article interviewing the folks at Inition, a company that’s been working on VR development for over a decade.

Virtual reality might still require a lot of kit, but Inition have also been making leaps in the world of augmented reality, which allows interactive graphics to be overlaid on real-time views, on the screens of smartphones and tablets.

“So far it’s only really been used as a marketing gimmick,” says Millns, “to make things pop out of a tin of beans, or hover in front of cereal boxes.”

via The future of virtual reality: want to conquer vertigo or have a go at surgery? | Art and design | guardian.co.uk.

Another Reason Why Virtual Reality Doesn’t Work Yet

meta: The Only Fully Augmented Reality Glasses by meta

3 Ways to Create a more Sustainable Future on the Road

There’s been a lot of talk about WebGL and HTML, but I haven’t seen much happen with it except the occasional neat demo.  One group aims to change that through an entire game engine built for the platform called “Goo Engine”. Already with a few demo games online, their website shows some other work like a Facebook-integrated MineCraft clone and a “Left for Dead” copy that show lots of promise for competing with regular gaming.

Hit their website to try some demos.

Goo Engine.

Sony Acquires Cloud Gaming Company Gaikai for $380M

Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 06/06/2012

Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 08/06/2012

SIGGRAPH 2013 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer – YouTube.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Advance Program

Infographics Summary for 2013-05-14

Top 7 Business Degrees of 2013

First the Oculus Rift, then Google Glasses and Cast, and now Mr. Wearable Computer himself is out with his own device “The Meta”, listed now on kickstarter.  For $750, you get the Epson see-through display glasses and a SoftKinetic camera on your forehead, all connected through software magic to create an augmented reality see-through display.

We are integrating customized hardware components and building a robust SDK (software development kit). meta 1 is the most advanced and affordable interface for augmented reality, we want every developer to have the opportunity to create the apps of the future.

Our partnerships, investment and timing have allowed us to deliver this hardware/software kit to developers for $750 and comes ready for you to get hacking right away.

It looks a bit bulky and goofy, but it is the beginning of a totally new computer interaction paradigm.  The ability to merge Virtual and Physical content into the real-world will be a huge change to computing, and I for one am ecstatic to finally see it happening.

via meta: The Only Fully Augmented Reality Glasses by meta — Kickstarter.

Zero Creative’s new 46″ Glasses-Free 3D Display

Come to the NEO3DO glasses-free 3D Tablet Launch Party

The future of virtual reality: conquer vertigo or surgery?

Those who watched the videos came to see how much VR does deliver to their favorite titles, like the aforementioned Portal series, the award-winning roleplaying game Skyrim, or the parkour action-game Mirror’s Edge. Wooden found user interfaces an issue. “You can’t have your information on the outskirts of the screen. You have to have it near the middle, where the person can actually see it. Or you have to have it someplace where the person can look on the player’s character model,” said Wooden.

The experienced developers (Michael Abrash, John Carmack,etc) know enough to dig into the IEEE and ACM literature for background, but newer developers are diving in fresh.  Who will come up with the best ideas?  Only time will tell.

via What’s The Big Problem With Developing Oculus Rift VR? ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community.

Minecraft Oculus Rift Mod

Stereoscopic Player 2.0.6 with Oculus Rift Support

Oculus takes a VR HMD to Kickstarter

MaxUnderground has a great review of GPU-accelerated Octane Render system, focusing on lots of the gritty details in the system.  Many GPU renderers have come under fire for restrictions in textures and scene sizes (due to limitations of GPU memory), and they’ve broken down the hard limits in their review.

There’s also a limit on the number of texures that can be used, imposed by the CUDA API. This is dependent upon the card architecture you’re using. For pre-Kepler cards the limits are 64 RGBA textures, 32 greyscale textures, 4 HDR RGBA textures and 4 HDR greyscale textures. For Kepler architecture the allowances are more generous with 144 RGBA textures, 68 greyscale textures, 10 HDR RGBA textures, and 10 HDR greyscale textures permitted. Kepler GPUs also introduced the concept of bindless textures which theoretically removes these limits, though this has yet to be integrated into Octane because it would remove support for pre-Kepler cards.

via Octane Render review – Max Underground.

Benchmarks of Nvidia’s new Kepler-generation Quadro K5000 and K4000 GPUs

“Tornado Alley” generally refers to the region centered in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and points north, where tornadoes are most frequent — but multiple studies indicate that the deadliest twisters occur to the east, in a region that’s come to be known as “Dixie Alley.” The reasons for that have to do with geography and demographics as well as meteorology in the southeastern United States: Storms tend to move faster, and they’re more likely to strike at night. There are more trees and other obstructions to raise havoc. Population densities are generally higher, and the region has many manufactured homes that lack basements in which to take shelter.

via Curse or coincidence? Scientists study Tornado Alley’s past and future – Science.

Yes, 4K television is on its way, and it promises to be even better than HDTV — four times better, to be exact.

How on earth can things get better than HDTV, you might ask? Well, the quality of the 4K picture starts with the video camera. A 4K camera is able to capture far more details than an HD camera. The 4K image sensor is quite a bit larger than previous video cameras, so more digital data is captured. The end result is a more accurate, superior picture. It has been said that 4K enables the largest TV screens to look better than ever. Viewers can sit closer to the screen and have an engaged, immersed experience, like having a movie theater right in their home.

To put it in pixels, at this time HDTV has a resolution of 1080p, or 2 million pixels per frame. By comparison, 4K technology will deliver about 8.8 million pixels per frame, with resultant heightened accuracy, detail and picture quality. Its creators believe this will translate into even sharper, clearer pictures with better color and contrast than what HD currently offers.

Concerns with Content

As for concerns with this technology, the main one so far has been the fact that there’s just not yet that much content available for these TVs. At this time, about 100 movies are available in 4K, according to CNN. Only 4K content can do justice to a 4K display. It’s going to take some time for the technology to become widespread, and then content providers will step up their output.

Sony has plans to offer a 4K media player — the FMP-X1 — that will be released in 2013. It will come pre-loaded with 10 movies in 4K resolution and has a price tag of $699. The device will be internet-ready and also ready to connect with a 4K movie download service Sony will be offering, set to launch in late 2013. This content will be available for users with unlimited fiber broadband and a paid subscription. 4K Blu-ray won’t be available in 2013, which may create a higher demand for 4K streaming services.

Third parties, especially cable tv providers, will eventually start offering 4K technology as well. DirecTV recently trademarked a 4K/Ultra HD network, according to DigitalTrends.com. Streaming cost details have not yet been released, but these will likely be your best bet for 4K content if you snap up a 4K TV early in the technology’s life cycle.

The Cost of Cutting-Edge

As of this writing, the Sony company is leading the charge in 4K technology. They offer a huge 84-inch model for $25,000 as well as smaller sizes. A standard size TV these days has come to mean 50 inches or larger, as “average” for a TV size seems to continually increase. CNET got a chance to demo Sony’s offerings; here’s what they found:

Sony will offer the Bravia model in a 55-inch 4K UltraHD-TV with a price tag of $5,000. There will also be a 65-inch version for $7,000, according to Forbes. Lesser-known companies like Sharp, OEM Seiki, LG, Panasonic and Samsung will also offer their own versions of 4K TV. These offerings will likely be more affordable, but come with fewer features.

The question remains: Do you need 4K TV? The answer to that question is up to you. Visual people who love home theater entertainment will probably want the latest and greatest. However, if you’re only a moderate TV watcher, the difference may not be appreciable enough for you. Regardless, go and see the technology yourself, view it side by side with HDTV, and decide for yourself if the difference is worth the cost.

Article by  Peter Henry

Pete is a freelance writer and single dad who lives in Maryland.

I am happy to announce that we have just signed a deal where Autodesk will purchase the Tinkercad site and core technologies. This is a great day for all Tinkercad users, Autodesk is a very enthusiastic and capable steward. There are two main impacts of this deal: the site is fully operational and Autodesk has some very exciting plans for Tinkercad.

via SolidSmack.com – Tinkercad is Back. Autodesk Acquires Site, Tech and Plans 123D Integration.

VSG Acquires amira 3-D Visualization and Analysis Software

Sony Acquires Cloud Gaming Company Gaikai for $380M

Twitter Acquires Big Data Visualization Startup Lucky Sort

MagicPlan lets you take a photo of your environment and generate a floor plan in minutes. The application can automatically measure, draw, and publish a floor plan by taking a photo with your iOS device. MagicPlan was released earlier this year and uses augmented reality and reality capturing technology to create a floor plan.

It’s a good use of classic SLAM-type technology, although I believe the real opportunity for monetization is in what they do with the resulting map.  Just mapping the environment for it’s own sake isn’t terribly useful.  That is the main thrust of this investment, so hopefully we’ll see more “Powered by MagicPlan” apps on the horizon.

via Sensopia closes $1.2M funding round for ‘embeddable reality’ software | VentureBeat.

The federal government recently released data about what hospitals charge for procedures, and how much Medicare reimburses them. We have visualized some of this data, along with publicly available data about mortality rates under these same procedures. How does your hospital stack up against national averages?

Hospital Costs.

If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at scientific data visualization, but don’t have a data science or computer programming background, try out NodeBox.  It’s a tool suite from Experimental Media Research Group in Antwerp, Belgium and offers 2D and 3D visualizations (with animations and interactivity) via a nice and simple drag-and-drop interface.

Using our open-source tools we enable designers to automate boring production challenges, visualize large sets of data and access the raw power of the computer without thinking in ones and zeroes. Our tools integrate with traditional design applications and run on many platforms.

via NodeBox | NodeBox.

We interacted with a variety of environments, from a flying tour over a digital landscape to shooting up zombies with hooked up Xbox controllers, and was amazed at how intuitive and natural the controls felt. We also waved a LED-equipped wand around to throw a wrecking ball into a Jenga-style tower, which delighted us to no end. Not once did we feel nauseous or disoriented even as we bobbed and weaved.

Different from many other AR systems I’ve seen, the Cast works by mounting the projectors on your head thanks to new picoprojector technology.  This offers many benefits like the ability to tightly couple a projector’s display to shutter glasses in hardware, allowing the projectors to display the left and right eye-frames in sync with active shutter glasses.  This limits the augmented reality experience to a small projection area, but you could imagine a modified AR/VR scenario similar to working in a CAVE where you only render the portion of the screen you are looking at.

via Cast AR hands-on with Jeri Ellsworth at Maker Faire 2013 (update: video interview).

Top 7 Business Degrees of 2013

Infographics Summary for 2013-05-14

Infographics Summary for 2013-05-15

The desktop streaming feature, which allows you to use the Shield as a “remote” for Steam games on your PC, will be available as a “Beta” feature at launch.  I’m not sure exactly what that means, except that it will be unsupported.

Pre-order NVIDIA Shield | Portable Handheld PC Gaming.

NVidia gets ready early for Windows 8

Samsung and Gaikai partnering for Streaming Games without Hardware

Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 07/06/2012

Designed for technical computing users in a broad range of markets (Oil&Gas, Automotive, Aerospace, Medical, Finance, Research, and more), EnginFrame simplifies engineers’ and scientists’ workflows through its intuitive, self-documenting interfaces, increasing productivity and streamlining data and resource management.

Leveraging all the major HPC job schedulers and remote visualization technologies, EnginFrame translates user clicks into the appropriate actions to submit HPC jobs, create remote visualization sessions, monitor workloads on distributed resources, manage data and many more.

via NICE EnginFrame 2013 Redefines Management of 3D and 2D Remote Visualization Sessions in the Technical Cloud – News & Events – NICE.

How GE Uses Data Visualization to Tell Complex Stories

Where are the data visualization success stories?

Twitter Acquires Big Data Visualization Startup Lucky Sort

If you’ve ever wondered how these giant world-wide high-resolution maps come together, Wired has a great new article with the creators of “MapBox”.  MapBox is taking continuous streams of satellite data from the likes of NASA to construct giant near-realtime images of the entire globe at staggering resolutions.

“For the new release we’re processing two years of imagery, captured from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2012,” says Loyd, “this amounts to over 339,000 16-megapixel+ satellite images, totaling more than 5,687,476,224,000 pixels. We boil these down to a mere 5 billion or so.”

The first problem is even getting the data. It’s all available in the public domain, but just transferring it over to MapBox’s servers was a major task because of the volume. To do this render, they needed to download two thirds of a terabyte of compressed data. “We’ve got 30 to 40 servers pulling down data from NASA,” says Herwig. “We called them up and said, ‘hey we’re going to hit you hard, what’s the best way we can do it for you?’”

via A Cloudless Atlas — How MapBox Aims to Make the World’s ‘Most Beautiful Map’ | Wired Design | Wired.com.

Between smart phones, social media, and the everpresent “cloud”, Humans are creating data at scales previously thought impossible.  While great strides have been made in basic processing of this data for advertising and a few other areas, deep value remains buried in these mountains of information.  GigaOm takes a look at 6 new startups looking to find newfound gold in these mountains of data.

They are to big data what server and network configurations are to mobile-app development on platforms like Parse. If you’re going to find out new things from massive and highly complex data sets, or going to give new types of people the ability to analyze even simple data, the presentation of that data and the ability to create consumable presentations are critical.

via Visualization is the future: 6 startups re-imagining how we consume data — Tech News and Analysis.

Where are the data visualization success stories?

Twitter Acquires Big Data Visualization Startup Lucky Sort

How GE Uses Data Visualization to Tell Complex Stories

FXhome’s HitFilm has made good strides into film-editing suites on Windows, but has always been a windows-only application.  Lots of reasons (I don’t want to get into “PC Rules, Mac Drools” arguments) exist for this, but with modern equipment and Microsoft’s new “features” like Windows8, they acknowledge that it’s time for a Mac version.  They’ve been working on it internally and mostly completed the project, but have opened it to kickstarter for a quick community-infusion of excitement (and cash) to finish it off, to the tune of £25,000.

The vast majority of the Mac version will be funded by FXhome. We’ve already invested heavily in the initial R&D. The challenge is in the immediate cost to equip our developers with the essential hardware, development tools, software licenses and test machines needed to create the Mac version.

That’s where we need your help.

This Kickstarter gives us the boost we need right now to accelerate development. It allows us to keep the software affordable and speed up development so that HitFilm Mac comes out this year.

via HitFilm for Mac by FXhome — Kickstarter.

Oculus takes a VR HMD to Kickstarter

meta: The Only Fully Augmented Reality Glasses by meta

Kitware to Accelerate Community-Driven Medical Innovation