Visualization

This Virtalis press release reports "The Brazilian operation of leading global professional services consultancy Coffey International Limited has entered into a preliminary strategic partnership with the UK’s Virtalis, one of the world’s leading Virtual Reality (VR) companies.

Virtalis will be showcasing its GeoVisionary software, the 3D landscape visualising software that it developed jointly with the British Geological Survey, at Coffey’s booth during EXPOSIBRAM 2009 in Brazil, which is the largest international mining conference in Latin America.

From this Science Daily article: "What are the causes of illness? How can the effect of medication be improved? Molecular biologists can now gain new insights by the virtual simulations generated with a new type of software.

From this ScienceDaily article: "Photovoltaic and wind energy plants, hydroelectric power stations and biogas plants supply energy without polluting the environment. However, they are complex to design and maintain. Virtual reality (VR) makes planning and operation easier.

The design engineer’s head is spinning. She has been analyzing data on her computer for hours, with no end in sight. Designing a hydroelectric power station, she would like to know what the pressures, temperatures and fluid flows will be in the facility. She may simulate them with simulation software. However, this only delivers vast columns of numbers or a one-dimensional representation which she will have to analyze bit by bit – a laborious task.

Visualization Library is a cross-platform OpenGL-based C++ visualization toolkit dedicated to visualization professionals. This new release brings an enhanced volume visualization engine implementing realtime Blinn-Phong lighting with the OpenGL Shading Language, isosurface extraction via marching cubes, DICOM file support to read and write medical images and volumes, plus many other enhancements. A set of volume visualization screenshots can be found at: - http://visualizationlibrary.com/docs/html/pagguideslicedvolume.html - http://visualizationlibrary.com/docs/html/pagguidemarchingcubes.html - http://www.visualizationlibrary.com/jetcms/node/4

For more information on Visualization Library features visit: - http://visualizationlibrary.com/docs/html/pagkeyfeatures.html - http://visualizationlibrary.com/docs/html/pagchangelog.html

From the turbulence.org blog " “…Unseen geographies of our cities lay around us with areas yet to be discovered. Much of it seldom noticed as we pass through them in our everyday lives. The traces of our journeys through each city leave temporary presences. There was once a time where many would have believed these traces were spirits, psychic remains, registrations and impregnations onto objects and environments, from what was possibly a traumatic event in time. Are contemporary technologies a realisation of this belief? These technologies that record our movements in time, are no longer odd, or alluding to being mystical occurrences but the switching of sensors and transmission of radio waves through the ether.

This Design News article reports that with Simulink 3D Animation, engineers can visually observe the dynamic behavior of systems as part of the design process. From the article: "Responding to the growing demand among engineers to visually observe the dynamic behavior of the systems they're designing, The MathWorks has released Simulink 3D Animation.

The software, an upgraded version of a product formerly known as Virtual Reality Toolbox, provides an interface between the MATLAB environment and Simulink multidomain simulation platform and virtual reality graphics. As a result, engineers and scientists can dynamically simulate their mechanical products and control systems in a 3-D virtual reality environment, giving them a more realistic view of their offering.

From this ScienceDaily article : "For the past two years, a team of UCLA Egyptologists, digital modelers, web designers, staff and students has been building a three-dimensional virtual-reality model of the ancient Egyptian religious site known as Karnak, one of the largest temple complexes ever constructed.

The result is Digital Karnak, a high-tech model that runs in real time and allows users to navigate 2,000 years of history at the popular ancient Egyptian tourist site near modern-day Luxor, where generations of pharaohs constructed temples, chapels, obelisks, sphinxes, shrines and other sacred structures beginning in the 20th century B.C.

From the OpenSceneGraph website: "PERTHSHIRE, Scotland - 12th February 2009 - OpenSceneGraph Professional Services announces the release of OpenSceneGraph 2.8, the industry's leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. OpenSceneGraph 2.8 written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets - a real-time visualization tool which eclipses commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality, stability and performance. OpenSceneGraph 2.8 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS/X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems."

This PSFK article talks about improving the online experience of a shopping expedition. From the article: "It may be too early for online retailers to declare a combined holiday sales victory over brick and morter stores. But if Amazon’s latest results are any sign, consumers are getting as comfortable shopping with a mouse and keyboard as with a shopping cart.

This International Space Fellowship article reports technicians in Orbiter Processing Facility-3, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, are preparing space shuttle Discovery for its transport to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Jan. 7.

From the article: "The vehicle will be jacked up and its wheels secured to enable the Orbiter Transport System, or OTS, to slide underneath it for the short trip.

Meanwhile, work to remove and replace the shuttle’s side hatch tiles is progressing and will continue though the holiday.

Discovery’s payload, the S6 truss segment and solar arrays are scheduled to be loaded into the transport canister Jan. 7 and transferred to the launch pad Jan. 11.

At NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the STS-119 astronauts are in the Motion Base Simulator practicing launch procedures.