Press Release

This Press Release talks about a worthy initiative from AMRC – VR in a truck. "VIRTALIS, a UK leader in Virtual Reality (VR) and simulation technologies, has supplied the expertise and equipment that’s enabling the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre’s MANufacturing Technology TRAnsporter (MANTRA) to have the first ever mobile Virtalis StereoWorks ActiveWall system. MANTRA is a specially modified demonstration HGV that travels the UK demonstrating the latest manufacturing, machinery and simulation technologies.

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.

This Virtalis Press Release is in the form of a case study about the use of a pioneering use of VR for radiotherapy training at Birmingham City University. "2008 saw the national roll out by the Department of Health of a revolutionary approach to radiotherapy training. Called VERT, and drawing on Virtual Reality (VR) technology from Virtalis, it has been successfully installed in 10 universities and dozens of cancer centres all over England. Birmingham City University was a development partner on VERT and one of the first to have the system installed and is now putting the System to far more varied uses than it originally anticipated.

This Press Release reports "the virtual aquarium, using rear-projection technology, is one of the largest in the world to showcase aquatic life digitally. Manufactured by Reynolds Polymer Technology Inc., the panel featured mermaids "swimming" in the water at the grand opening to enchant guests.

This Press Release talks about the use of VR in a new research initiative at De Montfort University.

"IN RECENT years, significant resources and research activities worldwide have been invested in the creation of Virtual Reality (VR) environments to train specialised skills for surgeons. Virtalis was one of the first, creating a trainer for minimally invasive therapy. Now, a research team from De Montfort University has begun work on assessing the feasibility for a whole team VR surgical trainer with Virtalis both supplying and designing the VR research platform.

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."

From this idw press release: "What happens when the border between illusion and reality is erased; when the spectators and actors no longer have distinct roles and the audience can physically enter the artwork and take an active role in the process? This is the subject of a new dissertation in the discipline: Digital Representation from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Magali Ljungar-Chapelon, who has a background in the performing arts, is a doctorate student in Digital Representation at the School of Photography at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. In her research, she has studied the experiences that arise in the borderland between digital performance and installation.

We are pleased to announce the release of Equalizer 0.6, a major advance in parallel OpenGL rendering, supporting:

• Automatic 2D and DB load-balancing
• DPlex (time-multiplex) compounds
• Paracomp compositing backend

Please check the release notes on the Equalizer website for a comprehensive list of new features, enhancements, optimizations and bug fixes. The Programming Guide can be ordered at lulu.com.

From the BusinessWire website: "AVON, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Magellan Health Services, Inc., the nation's leading manager of behavioral health care, hosted top virtual reality (VR) therapy and anxiety disorder expert Barbara Rothbaum, Ph.D., ABPP, today at the company’s annual conference of its clinical and medical leadership team. Rothbaum, director of the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program and professor of psychiatry at Emory University’s School of Medicine, pioneered the development of a virtual-reality based program to treat anxiety disorders—a program that is now also being widely used to address posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in war veterans. Magellan is exploring ways to include virtual reality therapy as part of its treatment tools in managing PTSD for veterans.

Latest Version of Free, Online 3D Modeling Software Allows Users to Reuse or “Remix” Models from Other 3DVIA Users

Concord, Mass. – September 15, 2008 – Dassault Systèmes (DS) (NASDAQ: DASTY, Euronext Paris: #13065. DSY. PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, today announced 3DVIA Shape 2.0, the latest release of its free 3D modeling software featuring an all new and expanded 3D remix capability. This latest update will make creating and publishing online 3D content amazingly easy by allowing users to construct or “remix” complete 3D scenes using models contributed by other users on the 3DVIA.com content library.