International Virtual Reality Association Inc.
VRA Online Gathering Invitation
Date: Tuesday, August 26th , 2003
Hi folks,
The VRA welcomes you to attend a fun and informative gathering in a virtual world.
We will discuss anything and everything, but the special topic will be "Immersive Hardware" or "Hardware to lose yourself in"
We will meet at:
Oddyssey.org
http://www.oddessey.org
You will need to get a free account in order to visit.
The entry world is created by a woman who goes by the name Gammonbrat. It is a Contact world which has been authored entirely in Spazz3d possibly the easiest-to-use, low-cost web3d authoring solution in existence. The interactivity of this world is a real testament to how useful Spazz3d is.
There is plenty to play with and do there while we chat.
You will need blaxxun's
Contact installed in order to visit (it is free) http://www.blaxxun.com/services/support/download/install.shtml
and it should work with almost any web browser.
Also thanks to the support of VREfresh we are now including a more detailed newsletter on VR. It is below, enjoy!
If you have any news-worthy announcements or see anything that you would like to share with the VR community, please contribute by emailing vra@vr.org.au
We look forward to seeing you at the gathering on Tuesday August 26th!
Cheers,
- Danny Stefanic
Pres. VRA Inc.
VREfresh #233: August, 2003
01 SmartTouch
02 Virtual
Keyboard
03 Walk-through
Screen
04 Emissive
Display
05 Gentle
Giant Studios Using 3D Full Body System
06 CAVELib
Supports Orad DVG system
07 Animated
Chess
08 Maya
Learning Tools
09 FireGL
X2-256
10 CineBOXX
[review]
11 Eglass II
Monocular Head Wearable Display
12 VirtualHand
for MOCAP
13 Lower
Priced Motion Captor
14 Next
Generation of Deep Exploration
15 Brazil
Rendering System
16 TGS
17 3D
in China
18 ManyOne
Acquires Media Machines
19 Siemens to
Take Swerve
20 3ds max on BOXX
21 Wearable
Display with Wireless Access
22 Recruiting
23 PRESENCE
24 IEEE
VR2004 - Call for Participation
25 Is
the Party Over for Siggraph?
26 Web
Site Problems with BT WebWorld Continue
27 Redistribution
For many the most refreshing
thing at recent Siggraphs has been the Emerging Technologies pavilion:
evolution rather than revolution is fundamental if technologies have a chance
of commercial adoption. Here are a few that caught the eye - and the imagination.
233.01 SmartTouch
SmartTouch: a
haptic augmented reality system based on electrical stimulation to convert
sensed information into skin sensation. It is composed of a thin electro-tactile
display and sensors mounted on the skin so the wearer can not only make
physical contact with objects, but also touch surface information of any
modality - even those that are ordinarily untouchable.
233.02 Virtual Keyboard
Canesta Keyboard, an input solution for
mobile devices to meet the portability and productivity needs of a road
warrior. Put yur PDA or cell phone on a table and a keyboard is projected in
front of the device for technology to translate finger movements into
keystrokes.
233.03 Walk-through Screen
FogScreen: a flat, thin projection screen
you can walk through. The fog is created from ordinary tap water and is so fine
it makes nothing wet. The projection has a magical quality.
233.04 Emissive Display
High Dynamic Range: an emissive
display that uses active backlight technology to offer “100 times the
brightness and contrast range of any existing CRT, plasma or LCD based
monitor.”
233.05 Gentle Giant Studios Using 3D Full
Body System
Gentle Giant Studios has used InSpeck's 3D Full Body system to digitize
actors for seven upcoming movies and more are slated for this year. The system was used to digitize actors for
Spy Kids 3 (Dimension Films), The Cat in the Hat (Universal), Pirates of the
Caribbean (Disney), Van Helsing (Universal), Polar Express (Warner Bros.), Haunted
Mansion (Disney) and Peter Pan (Universal). The seven movies are being released
in 2003 and 2004.
233.06 CAVELib Supports Orad DVG system
VRCO's
latest release of CAVELib supports the Orad DVG system. CAVELib, an API
originally developed for the support of multi-wall CAVE systems, supports
Orad’s DVG system without modifications to the library and without
recompilation of cluster based CAVELib applications. VRCO currently offers a
visualization cluster solution where each PC is responsible for rendering to a
single projector for a multi-projector display system. CAVELib supports this
solution by synchronizing the data between each PC, assuring that the images on
each display are properly matched.
Orad’s DVG solution, which is a departure from the single PC per
projector paradigm, allows an application to be split between multiple PC's
that will eventually have their video combined for a single projector. The DVG
provides visualization scalability by chaining two or more PCs with
off-the-shelf video cards, and combining their video outputs for a single
display projector. The DVG provides several means of chaining the PCs together:
time division, sample division, screen division, and image division. Each provides a different
mechanism for scalability depending on the application.
233.07 Animated Chess
Superscape's 3D animated version of
chess designed for the PocketPC, Chesscapade, is now available from the Handango. Over six million users visit the
Handango network each month. All the pieces have dynamic characteristics: the
eyes of the Castle go red, it grows arms and then crosses the board to squash
the Pawn in its path. Once checkmate is achieved, the defeated King waves a
white flag in surrender, before being swallowed up by a swooping dragon. Sound
effects are included to "heighten the tension and realism of the
games." A version of Chesscapade for mobile phones is planned to be
available later this year.
More from Siggraph, San
Diego
233.08 Maya Learning Tools
Alias
(previously Alias|Wavefront, but still a subsidiary of SGI) launched ten new
Maya Learning Tools bringing the total number of learning tools to 75. Learning
Tools are available for purchase immediately at prices ranging from $19.99 to
$129.99.
233.09 FireGL X2-256
ATI
Technologies Inc has extended its line of workstation graphics accelerators
today with the introduction of the high-end FireGL X2-256 and the entry-level
FireGL T2-128.
233.10 CineBOXX [review]
BOXX Technologies announced CineBOXX [review],
the first component in the CineBOXX series of digital intermediate systems for
real-time playback of 2K DPX and Cineon files at 24fps.
233.11 Eglass II Monocular Head Wearable
Display
eMagin's eGlass II monocular head wearable
display was featured at a showing of wearable computing gear, hosted by
Psymbiote. eMagin's displays are designed for professionals who seek a private
viewing and a lightweight solution to mobile computing with a large screen virtual
image. The eGlass II incorporates Virtual Vision's proprietary optics
technology with a vivid, high resolution OLED microdisplay to achieve a clear
color virtual image equivalent to a 19-inch CRT at 24-inches, translating to a
wide field-of-view. Power consumption is typically less than 0.6 Watts to
maximize battery life. The headset weighs less than 5 ounces and folds to vest
pocket size.
233.12 VirtualHand for MOCAP
Immersion Corporation invited attendees to
be among the first to try the beta version of VirtualHand for MOCAP, a plug-in
for Immersion's CyberGlove hand-sensing hardware. With this plug-in, filmmakers
and game developers using the CyberGlove system can capture, edit, and blend
motion animation with Kaydara's MOCAP real-time capture software while creating
animated films or games. Immersion also showed third-party software that uses
the recently announced Mac SDK for the MicroScribe G2 digitizer. The new SDK
allows 3D Mac software developers to integrate MicroScribe desktop digitizing
systems into their applications that run on Apple computers. Immersion's
MicroScribe G2 digitizer is an articulated arm that design-engineers, game
developers, animators and industrial designers use to convert physical objects
into digital 3D models for virtual manipulation and editing. In addition,
Immersion showed its Haptic Workstation with VirtualHand for V5 CAD software.
Attendees trying the product were immersed in a CATIA V5 3D-model of an
automobile interior and be able to physically use their hands to interact with
and feel components on the graphical dashboard in real-time.
233.13 Lower Priced Motion Captor
Meta Motion announced a lower
priced addition to its Motion Captor optical motion capture systems: STT's new
Jade Motion Captor system provides real-time results even with a minimal
configuration of 4 cameras in a 10'x10' area. The output being displayed
through Kaydara Mocap is claimed to be comparable to other optical systems
involving 12 or more cameras. The performance is said to be due to Motion
Captor's use of a biomechanical skeletal model to track marker movement,
reducing occlusion and marker swapping. The result is optical data that can
often be used as-is, without further clean up. Motion Captor runs on Windows
NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, and integrates with a variety of 3D animation
programs. Promotional pricing for Motion Captor starts at $39,995.
233.14 Next Generation of Deep Exploration
Right Hemisphere
announced the availability of the next generation of Deep Exploration. The
latest features include new object manipulation and grouping tools allowing
users to visualize complex models utilizing many different viewing modules. The
addition of animation tools allows the creation of multi-level 3D animation
sequences and the editing of imported animation. Dynamic clipping planes and
object cross-sections give a better understanding of 3D models. New support for
high definition image formats including both .HDR (High Dynamic Range) and .EXR
(Industrial Light and Magic). Existing translation support has been enhanced
for Softimage/XSI, Shockwave, Maya, DirectX, 3ds max, and Rhino.
233.15 Brazil Rendering System
SplutterFish LLC, a 3D rendering
software solutions provider, announced Brazil Rendering System Version 1.2.
With new advancements including distributed rendering, advanced shadow plug-ins,
an advanced skin shader, improvements to the Brazil Toon shader and support for
IES photometric file formats, Brazil r/s v. 1.2 provides a more stable and
robust rendering toolset.
233.16 TGS
If you weren't in the
entertainment business, but looking for commercial applications, one of the
more informative booths at Siggraph was TGS.
amira 3.0 from TGS is established as a tool for 3D microscopy visualization.
New features and modules have been incorporated to enhance the feature set for
the microscopy and biology fields including SliceAligner with a new edge-based
alignment algorithm, direct volume rendering now exploits pixel shading
graphics hardware, a module for multi-modal affline and elastic image registration,
reader for the SEG-Y data format and DemoMaker, a module for creating animated
demonstrations.
In the TGS booth, ModViz
showed its software enabled cluster solution on a Windows cluster using 4 HP
xw6000 machines with dual Xeon processors, 1GB memory and NVIDIA Quadro4 980
XGL video cards. Data was displayed on a Panoram PV290 DSK 3-panel
display. TGS and ModViz have integrated
Open Inventor from TGS and Renderizer from ModViz to offer a complete 3D
graphics application development environment for PC cluster systems. Version
4.0 of Open Inventor has become something of a de facto standard for
development of cross-platform (Windows, UNIX and Linux) 3D graphics applications
in C++ and Java. It is an object-oriented toolkit with over 1,000 classes and
an intuitive and easy-to-use programming interface that allows for rapid
prototyping and development of graphics applications. Open Inventor 4.0 has
added features and enhancements including Native SoQt
Component Library, Large Model Visualization, C++ and Java Bindings, Real-Time
Interaction, MultiPipe Extension, VolumeViz Extension and FxViz Extension.
TGS also showed its ability to
run in a PC cluster environment by partnering with VRCO and demonstrating
VRCO’s cluster-enabled CAVELib API built with Open Inventor. They also
demonstrated their software on both the Silicon Graphics Onyx4 UltimateVision
and the Silicon Graphics Tezro workstation as well as Open Inventor 4.0 and amira
optimized for the HP Workstation zx6000 and zx2000 running Linux Redhat 64.
233.17 3D in China
If
you have considered having 3D animation produced in China, Multi 3D Factory in Guangdong would like to
hear from you.
233.18 ManyOne Acquires Media Machines
The ManyOne Network has acquired Media
Machines, a provider of technologies for creating real-time, interactive 3D
content based on open standards. ManyOne will integrate Media Machines' Flux suite into its
Web browser and portal service. Media Machines was founded in 1999 by Tony
Parisi, one of the original authors of VRML. Parisi is currently co-editor of
the X3D specification, the successor to VRML as the ISO open standard for 3D
graphics on the Web. Parisi will join ManyOne as Senior Vice President and
Fellow, Media Technologies and Developer Programs, and continue to lead the
development of Flux and open standards for 3D. The Flux technology suite is
comprised of components for developing and deploying interactive real-time 3D
graphics via the Web. These components include the Flux Engine, an extensible
system for managing the low-level details of 3D graphics rendering and
animation; Flux Web, a set of utilities for supporting Web applications,
including X3D and VRML97 file readers and application programming interfaces
(APIs); and the Flux Media Player, a Web browser-hosted ActiveX control that
loads Flux scenes, provides user-level navigation features and connects to
other Web page elements via XML/DOM scripting. Flux Version 1.0 for Windows is
in its final beta release and will ship in August.
233.19 Siemens to Take Swerve
Siemens Information and Communications
Mobile Group is licensing the ARM Swerve i3D Graphics Client, jointly developed
by ARM and Superscape. Swerve i3D
Graphics Client will be integrated into future Siemens' mobile phones for the
delivery of 3D applications. The Swerve i3D Graphics Client will also include
support for JSR 184, a standard for 3D Java applications on mobile handsets,
which is due to be ratified later this year.
233.20 3ds max on BOXX
BOXX Technologies has entered into a
strategic relationship with Discreet to
offer 3ds max with its XXtreme series of 3DBOXX workstations. As an extension
of the agreement, current authorized Discreet 3ds max resellers will also be
able to offer BOXX workstations bundled with 3ds max. 3DBOXX is available in
single and dual AMD or Intel processor configurations-designed for Microsoft
Windows or Linux operating systems. Enhanced with NVIDIA Quadro FX architecture,
3DBOXX workstations are optimized for modeling and rendering 3D content and
animation with Discreet 3ds max software.
233.21 Wearable Display with Wireless
Access
"Time is money for
technicians. The more they get done, the more they can earn, states Allan Snow,
manager of service information for American Honda. Following a trial of the
Nomad System at American Honda's training facility in Torrance, CA, The
American Honda Motor Company, Inc. has signed a non-binding letter of intent to
purchase 3,800 Nomad Systems with shipments to begin in January 2004, following
Microvision's planned release of a
next generation Nomad System later this year. Honda intends to distribute the
Nomad Expert Technician Systems to its Honda and Acura dealers and to
independent repair shops in North America. The Nomad Expert Technician System
will be an information tool consisting of a wearable display and integrated
wireless computer package that provides wireless access to test data and repair
information for automotive and other service technicians. The information is
superimposed directly on their vision at the point of task, head-up and
hands-free. Microvision has been working with Canon, BMW, the Electronics Research
Lab of Volkswagen of America, Johnson & Johnson's Ethicon Endo Surgery
subsidiary, Honda and others to develop a number of display and image capture
product applications based on its proprietary scanned beam technology.
Microvision has not released final pricing for the next generation Nomad
System, but indicated that a complete system, depending on the variety of
available options and accessories is expected to cost between $3,500 and
$4,000.
233.22 Recruiting
One thing Siggraph can’t
be criticized for (see Overtime) is not being the year’s outstanding
opportunity for creative staff and the companies that hire them. Sony,
Dreamworks, The Moving Picture Company, VRex, EA… were all openly recruiting
talent.
There is no charge to post job
opportunities in VREfresh.
233.23 PRESENCE
The 6th Annual International Workshop on Presence:
Aalborg University, Denmark - October 6 to 8.
233.24 IEEE VR2004 - Call for
Participation
IEEE VR 2004 - Call For Participation:
Chicago, USA – March 27 to 31, 2004. Submissions are due September 1,
2003. In conjunction with IEEE VR will be the 12th Symposium
on Haptic Interfaces For Virtual Environment And Teleoperator Systems.
233.25 Is the Party Over for Siggraph?
For years Siggraph was
schizoid. It didn’t know if it was a business event with applications for
taxpaying managers or a technical event for developers of content for couch
potatoes. In 2003 it seemed to make up its mind and the party may be over - not
least for the owners and organizers who have taken tens of missions of dollars
from delegates and exhibitors. For anyone interested in content presentation
for movies or games, Siggraph 2003 was cool, but if you were looking to use
visualization to increase productivity or decrease costs in a business outside
of the entertainment arena, Siggraph was not so hot. Leading the move away from
taking booth space at Siggraph 2003 were SGI, Fakespace and Sun. Our guess is
Siggraph has one last chance (Los Angeles, 2004) to deliver a business audience
or be condemned (if that’s the word) to being an academic festival and
that’s an audience that these days “can’t pay, won’t
pay.”
In some ways Siggraph is
symptomatic of the VR/i3D community. Too many companies are trying to sell
technology because they have been able to develop it, rather than because they
have identified something users want and can afford. Research doesn't apply
only to technology; it is an essential investment in marketing as well.
There are also too many
"me too" companies offering subtle flavors of similar products.
Earlier this year we saw Fakespace Systems merge with Mechdyne; true there were
some job losses but the majority of employees and shareholders have an
increased chance of a brighter future. Too many would be vendors are
boot-strapping on shoe strings: it doesn't take a procurement manager long to
calculate the risk of buying from a young company burning $1m a month if
they've $5m in the bank.
Not-for-Profit Report
Exhibitions bring
not-for-profit organizations out of their shells. Here is an “end of
term” (or rather “end of Siggraph") report card on a few of
them: Khronos - good work with OpenGL and
OpenML , but must try harder; Web3D Consortium:
seen by some non-members as self-serving the interests of the founders and must
accelerate or fall behind de facto standards established by the impatient; 3D Consortium - must address the North
American perception that it is an Asian/European group established to
“take on” US vendors.
233.26 Web Site Problems Continue
BT WebWorld (host of VREfresh
Online) problems continue. They write: “As part of the migration, we
moved from a SUN based platform to a new Linux and Windows based environment.
This environment also consists of an Apache server configuration. The project
team has worked consistently to over-come many issues affecting both the Apache
Servers ability to provide Front page Extensions when working with a Linux and
windows based environment. Although we have implemented FrontPage extensions on
the Linux web server’s isolated problems still exist unfortunately. We
are therefore currently working on a new .NET server system to assist in
promoting a totally dedicated FrontPage service provision. This new server is
currently being configured, and will be commencing operational testing on the
29th July 2003 with a view of bringing it online as soon as possible after
that.” We're still waiting.
233.27 Redistribution
Redistribution
of VREfresh is allowed in its entirety thereby giving attribution to source.
Reasonable care is taken in the preparation of VREfresh, but the publisher,
Cyber-Wizard Ltd, accepts no liability for consequences of any inaccuracy,
error or omission resulting from the use of its electronic newsletter or online
services. All trademarks and servicemarks are acknowledged.
(Ends)