Virtual Reality News: 12th February 2003Virtual Reality News: 12th February 2003
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This is the first issue of VREfresh since the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia. We have many readers amongst the employees and supporters of NASA and extend sincere condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of the astronauts.
Users, Applications & Projects
01 Company Switches from 3ds Max to Softimage|XSI
02 Sony Soho Uses Motionbuilder
03 Airbus Functionality Development
04 Flythrough 3D Maps
05 Autodesk at School of Architecture
06 Stanford University Brings Design Concepts to Life
Products &
Services
07 NavisWorks 2.4
08 BOXX on AMD
09 3D Talking Animated Character Software
10 Real-Time Color Corrector
Companies &
Markets
11 SGI Leads Field in SPEC Benchmark
12 Games on the Go: Superscape/ARM/Java
13 Maya Productivity Pack Offer
14 AutoView in Synergis Adept
15 Hand-Interaction for CATIA & ENOVIA
16 Solid Financial Performance gives Optimism
17 Market Research: Graphics Shipments & Shares
Patents
18 Patents: Immersion Corp
Jobs
19 Creative & Business Development Directors
20 Doctorate in Virtual Humans
Events & Calls
for Papers
21 Laval Extends Call for Papers
22 Call for Papers: OpenSG 2003
23 Web3D 2003 Symposium
24 IEEE VR2003
25 3Dims VR workshop
26 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics
27 Casa'2003
28 Laval Virtual Reality International Conference... see #21
29 Joint IPT/EGVE '03 Workshop
30 Vision, Video and Graphics 2003
31 SIGGRAPH 2003
32 EUROGRAPHICS 2003
33 More Events
Softimage, a subsidiary of Avid Technology has announced its Softimage |XSI software has been chosen by French animation studio Action Synthese to play a starring role in the animated feature film 'The Magic Roundabout'. Action Synthese chose to switch mid-production from Discreet's 3ds Max to the Softimage |XSI software for this entirely computer generated movie. Based on the 1960's children's cult European TV series of the same name, 'The Magic Roundabout' is scheduled for release in France and the UK in 2004 and will feature the original cast, as well as two entirely new characters.
The production companies Film Action France and Pathe UK have also signed Australian pop star Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams. The voice of "Absolutely Fabulous" actor Joanna Lumley will also feature. Production involves more than 50 HP workstations running the Softimage|XSI software as well as 40 licenses of Softimage|XSI Batch, Softimage's batch processing & rendering solution to populate the studio's renderfarm. "One of the requirements at Action Synthese was switching its pipeline from 3ds max to Softimage|XSI without introducing any delays into the overall production schedule," says Olivier Ozoux, director of special projects at Softimage. "To do this, we utilized the 3ds max to XSI converter tool and re-designed Action Synthese's production pipeline."
URL: http://www.softimage.com
URL: http://www.avid.com
Using Motionbuilder (formerly known as FiLMBOX) as a hub for its production pipeline, Sony Soho's team of over 50 developers broke new ground in character animation and motion capture to produce fast-paced driving, intense fight scenes for "The Getaway" gangster game. Motionbuilder manipulated motion data fed from both optical and magnetic motion-capture systems (optical was used for in-game movement, magnetic for cut-scenes) and was able to process over 512 megabyte files in real time.
Using a full series of props and taking data from wireless gloves, the team at Sony Team Soho was able to capture motion for five actors and manipulate up to 25 characters in Motionbuilder simultaneously in real time, which allowed the producer to have a clear picture of how interaction was best played. For animating characters and creating cut-scenes, the team at Sony Team Soho was able to capture and apply the motion-capture data straight to the character models (created in Alias|Wavefront Maya) inside the in-game scenes. With Motionbuilder, the team was able to both clean up the motion-capture data and animate dynamic objects within the game (car doors, tables, chairs…). Once the audio, lighting, and camera cuts were completed, the whole package was exported to the Playstation 2. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) released 'The Getaway' in December 2002.
The Airbus Loads and Aero-elastics division has selected LMS to develop functionalities within LMS Virtual.Lab that will decrease the lead-time needed for building Finite Element (FE) models of derivative aircraft. The LMS morphing solution quickly generates simulation models from an existing FE mesh of an assembly, enabling structural analyses at anytime from the very beginning of the configuration selection process. Directives to Airbus designers will be based on investigations of numerous variants of existing assemblies, widening the boundaries of the design space. Airbus engineers will use LMS Virtual.Lab to examine a variety of major design concepts and re-configurations of aircraft - at any point in the future project phase.
Engineers will no longer have to go through the mesh creation process each time that a new variant calls for a change in the structure. Using meshes made from the new models, they can analyze the performance of a variant with a longer fuselage, or a new geometry of the wing. Critical decisions about the type and location of engines, the shape of engine pylons to be used, or the shape and length of the fuselage, will be based on up-to-date and in-depth analyses. LMS Virtual.Lab is based on the Dassault Systèmes V5 application architecture, including V5's user interface and CAE data handling and modeling capabilities. Since Airbus already employs CATIA V5 from Dassault Systèmes, it will benefit from the seamless integration between CATIA V5 and LMS Virtual.Lab.
A suite of gaming and simulation techniques gives Web-based GIS and map enthusiasts the opportunity to fly through and interact with late 1800s maps of California's scenic and dynamic landscapes: Yosemite Valley, Lake Tahoe, and Los Angeles. A 3D mosaic of Lewis and Clark's legendary early 1800s expedition of the Western territory of the US is featured along with new 3D California data sets. Rumsey and Telemorphic, Inc created the browser-based i3D visualization capability with support from Knightcap Productions and ID8 Media, Inc. Using Luna Imaging's Insight software, web viewers can zoom, pan and do side-by-side comparisons of multiple maps and save groups of images to create their own collection that holds a special interest.
URL: http://www.davidrumsey.com
URL: http:// www.luna-imaging.com
URL: http://www.telemorphic.com
Tulane University School of Architecture is using Autodesk Revit and Autodesk Architectural Studio to teach fourth- and fifth-year architectural students about the real-world problems of designing and constructing buildings. "In architecture school, students tend to work with freehand drawing, and can become very skilled at imagining what could be--but their experience of the design process is limited to the conceptual level," said Professor Ronald Filson, FAIA. "Using a building information modeling tool like Revit confronts students with the materiality of a building, the practical problems of designing a constructible building." Filson is not only a professor of architecture and dean emeritus at Tulane University, but also a practicing architect using Revit in his in New Orleans practice.
Students in the Product Realization Lab at Stanford University bring their design concepts to life for everything from thumb-operated mountain bike brakes to intricate sushi dishes using SolidWorks 3D CAD software. Said David Beach, professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, "Engineers become proficient in product design when they can recreate their vision for a product in 3D CAD."
NavisWorks Ltd has released NavisWorks 2.4 which delivers support for SolidWorks 2003, CADPIPE 7 and CAD-Duct and offers improvements in their .DGN reader.
BOXX Technologies' XXtreme 3DBOXX workstations, RenderBOXX rendering systems and ServerBOXX servers are now powered by the AMD Athlon MP processor 2600+ with QuantiSpeed architecture and Smart MP technology. The workstations are available in single and dual processor configurations enhanced with NVIDIA Quadro4 XGL architecture and optimized for modeling and rendering 3D content and animation with software programs such as Maya, 3ds max, Softimage XSI, LightWave 3D, and Houdini.
Right Seat Software has introduced Vox Proxy Version 2, an enhanced version of its Vox Proxy, 3D talking animated character software. Vox Proxy is an authoring tool for Windows platforms that "bring PowerPoint presentations to life" with characters.
URL: http://www.naturalvoices.com
URL: http://www.voxproxy.com
Blackmagic Design has announced the availability of DeckLink v2.4 featuring real time color correction, and full compatibility with uncompressed 8 and 10 bit Digital Voodoo format QuickTime files. This update is available today at no charge to registered Blackmagic DeckLink users. Blackmagic DeckLink costs US$995. The Blackmagic Real-Time Color Corrector operates as a professional primary color corrector commonly found in high end telecine suites. Real time color correction allows color treatments to be added to video clips in an edit and then played back in real time without rendering.
SGI's high-density Origin 3000 server recently led the field in special versions of SPEC benchmark tests for high-performance technical computing. In tests running the SPEComp Benchmark Suite (OMPL2001), SGI outperformed competing systems from HP, Sun and Fujitsu. In the tests, a 128-processor SGI Origin 3000 system (using only a quarter of its total 512-processor scalability) scored 197,838, performing 30% faster than its closest competitor. The first SPEC benchmark suite designed to evaluate performance based on OpenMP applications, SPEComp1 benchmarks are adapted from SPEC CPU2000 tests, and are tuned to measure systems performance comparable to real-world scientific and engineering applications.
Designed to simulate workloads of the most demanding applications for medium and large systems, the benchmarks place heavy demands on systems and memory. SGI Origin 3000 systems range from the base configuration of four processors and 4GB of memory to 512 processors and 1TB of memory in a single system image. The US list price for a 128-processor supercomputer with 64GB of memory is $2,937,696.
URL: http://www.sgi.com
URL: http://www.spec.org
URL: http://www.openmp.org
Superscape and Cybiko are jointly developing a 3D multi-player Java-based maze game for mobile phones. The game, Stop Thief, will be available in the second quarter 2003 and will be designed to run on all ARM 9 and Java-enabled mobile phones. Superscape is also developing a wireless 3D version of the classic chess board game for THQ Wireless. Chesscapade will be available early this year and it too is being designed to run on ARM 9 and Java-enabled mobile phones. Cybiko Wireless has its headquarters in Illinois, USA with development labs in Moscow, Russia.
Alias|Wavefront has introduced a Maya Productivity Pack offer which provides everything needed to begin using the integrated 3D software package. For $2,179 the Pack comes with: Maya Complete 4.5 for either the Mac OS X or the Windows operating systems; Learning Maya software book and DVD series: Learning Maya / Beginner's Guide; Learning Maya / Foundation; Learning Maya / Character Rigging; Learning Maya / Rendering; Learning Maya / Modeling in Animation and The Art of Maya; Maya Single Incident Support (24 hour phone access to qualified Alias|Wavefront support staff for resolution of one incident); along with a coupon booklet for additional Alias product offerings. This offer includes over $350 in bonus technical support and Maya Learning Tools.
URL: http://www.store.aliaswavefront.com
URL: http://www.aliaswavefront.com
Cimmetry's 2D/3D CAD and EDA viewing and markup technology is now integrated into Synergis Adept 5.1. Adept users now have the capabilities of Cimmetry's AutoVue as part of the Adept data management solution. With Adept 5.1, users can view, redline, and print 2D/3D Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Mechanical Desktop, SolidWorks, AutoCAD and 200 other 2D CAD, raster, vector and office formats from inside Adept.
URL: http://www.synergis-adept.com
URL: http://www.cimmetry.com
Dassault Systemes and Immersion Corporation have signed an agreement under which Immersion will develop a new hand-interaction software suite based on the CAA V5 (Component Application Architecture) development platform. The suite, VirtualHand for V5, will enable CATIA and ENOVIA DMU V5 users to manipulate and feel a 3D digital mockup using their hands. The VirtualHand for V5 suite will initially comprise two products: VirtualHand for Design enables designers to manipulate 3D models wearing an Immersion CyberGlove instrumented glove (users wearing a CyberTouch glove additionally feel tactile feedback); VirtualHand for DMU, together with Immersion's CyberForce system, enhances the V5 immersive environment by providing capabilities such as whole-hand and arm force feedback for project reviews.
URL: http://www.caav5.com
URL: http://www.immersion.com
URL: http://www.3ds.com
Dassault Systemes, software developer of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions, has reported financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2002. Total revenue in the 2002 fourth quarter was Euro 224.4 million, essentially level with 2001 fourth quarter total revenue of Euro 225.3 million. Seats licensed in the quarter totaled 16,216 with 10,196 CATIA and 6,020 SolidWorks seats. Services and other revenue, representing 13% of total revenue, decreased 11% to Euro 30.0 million in the 2002 fourth quarter. The Company had a strong balance sheet with cash and short-term investments totaling Euro 388.4 million and no bank debt at December 31, 2002.
In 2002 total revenue increased 4% to Euro 774.1 million. Software revenue increased 4% to Euro 669.9 million and services increased 1% to Euro 104.2 million in 2002. Recurring software revenue represented 48% of total software revenue in 2002. For the full year, 57,934 seats were licensed, comprising 34,308 CATIA and 23,626 SolidWorks seats.
Product highlights included ENOVIA V5R10 contributing to the V5R10 "Connected by Knowledge" core concept by helping to strengthen product definition exchanges throughout the supply chain. ENOVIA V5R10 highlights include performance and scalability improvements, new VPDM best practices enabling full top-down product design, new 3D web-viewer for use in standard corporate web sites, and better supply chain support for the ENOVIAVPM and ENOVIA LCA products through the new CATIA - ENOVIA Work Package Exchange. SMARTEAM V5R10 contributes to the V5R10 "Connected by Knowledge" core concept through enhanced CATIA and new ENOVIA DMU (digital mock-up) interoperability. Other SMARTEAM V5R10 highlights include accelerated 3D PLM deployment with simplified packaging, pricing and licensing, and targeted industry solutions for E&E and medical device manufacturers. In addition, the release of SMARTEAM has been synchronized with DS' other V5 PLM solutions. Spatial, DS' provider of world-class 3D software development technologies, announced the release of R10 release of its full line of 3D modeling products. This selection includes the 3D ACIS Modeler, 3D ACIS PHY V5, and 3D ACIS Deformable Modeling. The R10 release increases performance, augments surfacing functionality, and enhances compatibility.
During the year, Pratt & Whitney Canada selected CATIA V5, ENOVIAVPM, and ENOVIA 3d com to develop new engines using digital technology. The agreement calls for DS to deliver 200 CATIA V5 seats by the end of 2002, and up to 300 more in 2003. Through its Digital Engine initiative, Pratt & Whitney Canada's goal is to become the first company in the aerospace industry to develop engines using digital technology throughout the entire design and manufacturing process. SolidWorks, DS' 3D software for the design-centric market, announced that Michelin, one of the global leaders in tire manufacturing, has agreed to purchase up to 1,000 licenses of SolidWorks software for new tire manufacturing machine designs. CATIA, DS' authoring tool for the process-centric market, is widely used by Michelin for the design of new tires since 2001. Five members of one of the world's largest food industry companies are using 70 licenses of SolidWorks 3D software to design their industrial baking machines. These subsidiaries of the Horstmann Lebensmittelgruppe are using SolidWorks to transition from 2D to 3D design and accelerate product design cycles to bring bread-making equipment to market more quickly than with 2D design software. The Horstmann companies are using SolidWorks to design the commercial equipment used to knead dough and bake bread in small bakery kitchens and large plants in more than 100 countries. Belgium's largest industrial design university, Kaho Sint-Lieven, is equipping its engineering students with 3D CAD skills they will need in their professional careers by incorporating SolidWorks software into its curriculum. The university purchased 60 seats of SolidWorks, which it will use to teach students how to create solid models quickly and easily.
URL: http://www.3ds.com
Jon Peddie Research (JPR), a research and consulting firm has estimated graphics shipments and supplier market share for the fourth calendar quarter of 2002. Detailed fourth quarter results, as well as results for all of 2002, will be published in the upcoming Q4'02 edition of Jon Peddie's Market Watch, the firm's quarterly graphics survey. JPR estimates that approximately 53 million PC graphics devices shipped from nine suppliers in Q4'02, a 13% increase over to the previous quarter. Growth across industry segments was well distributed in Q4'02 as compared to Q3'02 in which segment growth was limited to chipsets with integrated graphics for desktop PC platforms. The mobile segment led growth in Q4'02, with shipments increasing 25% as compared to Q3'02.
The desktop segment grew by a more moderate 11%. Integrated graphics shipments increased by 17% and discrete graphics shipments increased by 9% during the quarter. However, only five of nine suppliers drove growth in Q4'02: ATI, Intel, Nvidia, SiS, and VIA. Small players were increasingly marginalized with either flat or reduced shipments. JPR's Market Watch for Q4'02 will be available in both electronic and hard copy editions. The annual subscription price for Jon Peddie's Market Watch is $2,750 and includes four quarterly issues.
Immersion Corp has added five patents to its intellectual property portfolio, bringing the number to 186 worldwide. Included in the new patents is US Patent No. 6,448,977 titled, "Textures and other spatial sensations for a relative haptic interface device." This patent describes, among other things, technology that allows a low-cost computer peripheral, like a computer mouse, to deliver tactile feedback sensations, such as textures, in correlation with objects displayed on a computer screen. A possible application of this technology is the ability of online retailers to add textures to items being sold over the Internet, such as sweaters and corduroy pants. Textures can also be added to countless other computer-related applications.
DigitalCity is an ambitious partnership project intended to move Tees Valley, UK to the forefront of the digital media technology field. It builds on the facilities and expertise that have made the University of Teesside a Centre of Excellence for VR, digital technologies and digital media. The University of Teesside is looking for a Creative Director (job reference 149) and a Business Development Director (job reference 271). Application forms are available from e-mail: mailto:jobs@tees.ac.uk or further information from mailto:j.Webster@vr-centre.com.
Applications are invited for an Engineering Doctorate researching into the human-computer-interaction issues of scanned photo-realistic virtual humans. The researcher will be required to assess the believability, fidelity, roles and responsibilities of different types of current state - out of the art photo - realistic virtual humans. The applicant must be home students and have at least a 2i degree in Computer Science or a related science discipline. This post will be for three or fours years and will be based at UCL@Adastral Park. Applications, by CV with the names of two referees, should be sent to mailto:m.slater@cs.ucl.ac.uk by March 14th, 2003.
220.21 Laval Extends Call for Papers
Laval Virtual 2003 (Laval, France 14-16 May) has extended its deadline for papers to February 17th. Laval Virtual is a Conference and Exhibition Event gathering international scientific, professional and users communities. Topics include architecture; building simulation; virtual heritage; augmented reality; interfaces; experiments; force feedback; haptic interfaces; immersion / display; tracking / sensors; human factors; physical interfaces; workbenches; training; virtual storytelling; virtual theatre; VR & cinema; interactive art; avatars; authoring multimedia and templates; healthcare; cooperative work; CVE (Collaborative Virtual Environment); experimentation; web based Virtual Environments…
URL: http://www.istia.univ-angers.fr/~vric/cyberchair/docs/submit/
URL: http://www.laval-virtual.org
URL: http://www.laval-virtual.org/newus/vric2003.lasso220.22 Call for Papers: OpenSG 2003
Concepts and Components of Software Frameworks for Interactive 3D Graphics in cooperation with Eurographics. April 1st-2nd 2003. The workshop will be held at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (Fraunhofer IGD) in Darmstadt, Germany. The deadline for paper submissions is Friday, February 28th 2003.
URL: http://www.opensg.org/OpenSG2003
220.23 Web3D 2003 Symposium
The Web3D 2003 Symposium, the annual winter meeting of the Web3D Consortium, is scheduled for March 9-12, 2003, in Saint Malo, France. Keynote speakers are Joern Ostermann of AT&T Labs, Victor Ostromoukhov, University of Montreal, and Olivier Avaro of France Telecom.
URL: http://www.web3d.org
220.24 IEEE VR2003
IEEE VR2003: Los Angeles, USA - March 22 to 26, 2003.
220.25 3Dims VR workshop
The second 3Dims VR workshop will be held in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 3rd and 4th. It is designed for technical decision makers who plan to install or upgrade a VR centre, or plan to take advantage of the VR technology in the daily business. The workshop will focus on the use of VR in simulation techniques such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Finite Element Method (FEM) and Multi Body Systems (MBS). Software and data-link issues as well as display systems will be discussed.URL: http://www.3Dims.de
220.26 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics
2003 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics: California, USA - April 27 to 30, 2003.URL: http://movesinstitute.org/I3D.html
URL: http://siggraph.org/i3d220.27 Casa'2003
The 16th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (Casa'2003). Rutgers University - May 7-9, 2003URL: http://www.cbim.rutgers.edu/conferences/casa2003
220.28 Laval Virtual Reality International Conference
Laval, France, May 13-18, 2003URL: http://www.laval-virtual.org
220.29 Joint IPT/EGVE '03 Workshop
Seventh Immersive Projection Technology Workshop together with the
Ninth Eurographics Workshop on Virtual Environments in Cooperation with ACM Siggraph: May 22-23, 2003 - Zurich, SwitzerlandURL: http://www.ipt-egve.ethz.ch
URL: http://www.eg.org/EG/Publications/WSPubl220.30 Vision, Video and Graphics 2003
Vision, Video and Graphics 2003: July 10-11, 2003 - Bath, UK. The intersection of computer graphics and computer vision promises many new application areas and raises new fundamental questions. This conference is a response to this developing area, and its purpose is to promote cooperation between the graphic and vision communities. Original papers related to the following themes are invited Image based rendering (view synthesis from other images), Models from images and video, for graphics and visualization, applications, Augmented reality, Video augmented environments, Graphics models for vision applications and more. Submission deadline is March 7, 2003.URL: http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/vvg/
220.31 SIGGRAPH 2003
SIGGRAPH 2003, the 30th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, which will be held 27 - 31 July, in San Diego, California, USA, has issued its Call for Participation looking for both first-time and veteran contributors in three areas: presentations, experiences, and services. The presentations are Courses, Educators Program, Papers, Sketches and Applications, and Web Graphics. The experiences are Art Gallery CG03: Computer Graphics 2003, Computer Animation Festival, and Emerging Technologies: Electronic Speedway. The call is also seeking volunteers and support for services, which are GraphicsNet, International Resources, Pathfinders, and Student Opportunities.URL: http://www.siggraph.org/s2003/cfp
220.32 EUROGRAPHICS 2003
EUROGRAPHICS 2003 - "Modelling the real world." September 1-6, 2003 in Granada, Spain. Eurographics is the annual conference of the European Association for Computer Graphics. It is dedicated to research and development in computer graphics and related disciplines. Eurographics 2003 is hosted and organized by the University of Granada, in Granada, Spain. The organizers expect between 400 and 500 participants from all over the world, working in education, research, and industry.URL: http://www.ugr.es/
URL: http://www.eg.org/eg2003
For extensive information about events relevant to the European VR/i3D community, see the events pages on El.pub: for Europe: base05.htm, for the rest of the world: connone.htm
| About VREfresh news Each edition of virtual reality news is now published on a separate page, ensuring that links (particularly from VREfresh) continue to remain current. To view news from previous issues, please use the navigation buttons below. |
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