Hardware

This Hardwaresecrets article talks about ideas nVidia is seeing as the future of computing: more GPGPU usage and the co-existence of competing technologies like ray tracing and rasterization. From the article: "Last week nVidia held their Spring 2008 Editor’s day, where they presented their forthcoming series of graphics processing units, which will be released next month. While we can’t talk about this new chip series yet due to the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), we can talk about some ideas that nVidia is seeing as “the future of computing” – basically more GPGPU usage (i.e. the use of the graphics chip to process regular programs) and the co-existence of “competing” technologies like ray tracing and rasterization.

This Technology Review article reports researchers at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign have developed a simple process to grow upright copper nanowires on different surfaces which could be used in ultra-thin field-emission displays that are brighter and sharper than flat-panel displays. From the article: "The nanowire arrays could find use in field-emission displays, a new type of display technology that promises to provide brighter, more vivid pictures than existing flat-panel displays. In such an application, the nanowires would be used to fire electrons at phosphor particles on a screen, lighting them up.

This Daily Game article is a review of the Vuzix iWear VR920. From the article: "In the late 1980s (as I recall) came the hype of Virtual Reality (VR). For $5-$10 at just about any major arcade or shopping mall, you could experience five minutes of virtual bliss. Just step onto a circular platform, put on some weird gloves and clunky goggles, and voila!, you were in a half-finished world with no realism whatsoever. I never had the $5, so I just stood and watched the television screen as other suckers squandered their money.

This NewScientistTech article takes a look at an ultrasound scanner that provides more detailed 3D images of the deformed blood vessels within a tumour which could help doctors determine the boundary between cancerous and healthy tissue during surgery. From the article: "The scanner uses a novel form of non-invasive imaging called photoacoustic tomography. This uses laser light to "twang" cells so they emit an ultrasound wave, which is then detected and used to form a 3D image.

Existing ultrasound scanners capture images by aiming high-frequency sound waves at the body. These waves reflect whenever the density of tissue changes, for example at the boundary between muscle and bone. The resulting "echoes" are then used to create a picture.

This news.bigg.net press release reports PassmoreLab has succeeded in creating a prototype 10-camera array specifically designed for the production of live-action content for auto-stereoscopic displays. From the press release: "This groundbreaking multi-camera array presents exciting possibilities for the creation of 3D content, with applications ranging from entertainment to research, education, industrial, and other fields.

This BBC News article takes a general look at the use of GPGPU by research scientists. From the article: " Every serious PC gamer knows what a difference a good graphics card can make to the fun they have.

But it is not just hardcore gamers who have recognised the worth of a PC graphics card.

Increasing numbers of research scientists have woken up to their potential too.

But the scientists in question are not using the cards to appreciate the detail in PC games such as The Witcher. Instead they are using them as cheap sources of supercomputer-class processing power.

"They give a phenomenal bang for the buck," said Mike Giles, professor of scientific computing at the University of Oxford.

This Digital ImageMaker article reports Iowa State University’s “C6,” the country’s first six-sided virtual reality room, has been redesigned with NVIDIA Quadro GPUs to take cyber battles to new extremes with advanced visual computing. From the article: "The C6, a 100-million pixel virtual experience engineered by Mechdynes’ Fakespace display division, incorporates NVIDIA Quadro® professional graphics processing units (GPUs) in the improved visualization center, which operates at more than 16 times the resolution of a typical immersive room and more than double the resolution of the five-sided, 43-million pixel room also created by Mechdyne.

This A VR Geek Blog article, from Sébastien Kuntz, is about the Immersive Projection Technologies/Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments (IPT/EGVE) 2007 he attended. From the article: "I just returned from Weimar, Germany, attending the Immersive Projection Technologies/Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments.

This has been a really interesting event. I’ve met some very nice people and learned a lot of things!

I’ll try to speak about the conferences later. In the meantime here are some photos. Here are three pieces of hardware that were presented here that I particularly enjoyed :

Intersense IS-1200 VisTracker

Which I already presented here.

This Tom's Hardware article says that in the latest generation of graphics cards, PixelShader has become mainstream. Version 3 features 3D effects like HDR rendering for bright light sources, and parallax mapping for even more vivid features in walls and stones. The brand-new ATI Radeon X1000 series and the NVIDIA GeForce 6 and 7 master these improved graphics features. It looks at today's newest computer games (e.g., F.E.A.R.) and compare the 3D effects.