Cities XL - Closed Beta

In July 2008 we looked at Cities Xl when Monte Cristo Games raised $7M from Arts Alliance, 360 degrees Capital Partners and Innoven Partenaires. Monte Cristo was founded in Paris in 1995 and has focused on simulation games such as Trader 97, Wall Street Trader, Economic War. We decided to go back and see what was up after almost a year and the financial meltdown..

The trailer

Game Description

CITIES XL™ is the next-generation in city-building games, allowing gamers to develop cities on realistic 3D maps using an incredible collection of unique structures. Would-be Mayors are challenged to create the right combinations of social services, leisure activities, special events and job opportunities within their cities in order to feed, employ and entertain their citizens.Realism will be pushed to the limit with cities that are bigger, more realistic and more sophisticated than ever before.

The game’s optional online features and services will let gamers create interconnected cities on virtual and persistent planets. By combining a fantastic single-player game with the social and multiplayer aspects of an MMO, CITIES XL™ will shape the future of the genre by offering more variety, bigger cities and multiple gameplay layers.

Key features of CITIES XL™ include:

• Hundreds of buildings and monuments based on American and European-influenced architectural styles
  
• Extra large and incredibly detailed 3D maps feature a variety of terrains: mountains, hills, canyons, beaches and islands, all set in different climates from tropical to desert, Mediterranean to temperate. Topography and terrain affect resource availability and city design
  
• Sophisticated transport system: players can define the number and uses of traffic lanes; while using bridges and tunnels to expand the size of their cities
  
• Realistic representation of the population. Citizens have a profile consisting of age, education and wealth. These profiles will affect what types of services and entertainment the player must make available to the city's inhabitants.
  
• Self-sufficient global economy, balanced by price fluctuations and citizen demands throughout the game world
• On going content production allowing player to regularly upgrade their game.
  
• GEMs (Gameplay Extension Modules) allow players to switch their mayor position for CEO seats, from car dealerships to ski resorts, players will find a wide variety of businesses available to them.
• Fantastic high-end graphics engine provides near photo-realistic quality visuals
• Developed by the team that created the popular City Life serie

Planet offer allow users to :

• Create interconnected cities on persistents planet, populate a world
  
• Trade with each others in a global economy and specialize their cities
  
• Visit each other creation, customize their avatar, chat, create their blog and social network
• Participate in events and competitions

http://www.citiesxl.com/

Great lil video of how they build buildings with Max

Below is a great clip from the Cities XL Forum from Internet Director Monte Cristo (considering that a Second Life region/island is 254 meters x 254 meters):

Guys, 10*10km (or 100km²) will be the maximum size for one city map. There is just no way with nowadays graphic hardware to get a higher landscape mainly for memory issues.

If we notice in the future that graphic cards may support wider maps, we'll be the first to provide you with bigger ones.

Not being rude but you can say whatever you want, there are some physical limitations we can not bypass... unfortunatelly..

Kodak Ups the Price - Will the New Management at Linden Lab & Yahoo-Flickr Follow Suit?

Image from epromos.com - Everyone Loves Free stuff

Times are tough and going to get tougher.
Business models are about to change.
Will the Free Model need to end?

Below Quote clipped from The Wall Street Journal April 27, 2009

Previously, Kodak just asked customers to buy something, without a minimum price requirement. “Some customers have ended up spending as little as 15 cents,” it said in a warning message. “The result: Our loyal customers who regularly shop the Gallery have essentially been subsidizing those who don’t.”

There’s been enough of a reaction, however, to prompt a letter from Victor Cho, Kodak Gallery’s general manager. “I recently received some strong responses from Gallery customers after we asked them to make a small purchase in order to continue enjoying photo storage benefits,” he wrote. “The fact is, we store billions of photos for our 75 million members. The quality storage service the Gallery provides is significant in terms of our business costs.”

David Lazarus, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, cited the change as potentially the first of many online. “The culture of freeloading that has long defined the Web can’t last forever,” he wrote. Consumerist criticized Kodak as “overpriced,” then changed its mind because of Kodak’s additional features, including free downloads of photos in their original sizes.

What about the many photo-sharing sites, like Google’s Picasa and Yahoo’s Flickr, that are free? “Isn’t the point of uploading photos to the service to ’share’ them easily, not simply buy photos on a semi-regular basis? Doesn’t Kodak earn goodwill and branding impressions by constantly driving people back to their website to view photos? Isn’t disk space cheaper now than it has ever been,” Ian Schafer, chief executive of New York ad firm Deep Focus, asked in a blog post. “There’s an uproar brewing — and will be even louder once photos start getting deleted from the site, and people lose their memories forever.”

03G - Behind the Scenes - Jason, Collada & Sketchup

Clipped from the O3D API Blog

Here is the Plugin
Install & restart the browser
then look at this Demo

Why JSON Rulez!

One of the issues that came up as we developed O3D was what format to load for 3D content. There are a few standards out there, the most notable probably being Collada, and so originally we planned on loading Collada files directly in O3D. We quickly ran into limitations.

There's nothing wrong with Collada per se, it's just that it's designed to do one thing: exchange 3D data. If your application doesn't fit its model you either have to work around it by trying to squeeze your extra data in to the nooks and crannies of the Collada spec or you have to redesign your application to fit what Collada supports.

After a few months of working with the limitations of Collada, we thought about it more and realized that similar to how other 3D APIs like OpenGL or DirectX do not define a file format, we shouldn't either. Instead, we should provide the pieces needed to make it possible to load data into our API, and then leave file formats up to the individual application developer. This allows the developer to tailor the data they send over the net to match their application. A mapping application might only need to send line segments, street widths and names. A 3D viewer might need triangles, materials and a transform hierarchy. A game might need all that plus collision data, character data, A.I. data, etc.

In switching to JSON we made all of that possible. Instead of some "black box" in which you give a URL and it magically loads the file with no control from the developer, we instead made the process completely transparent. Not only can you see exactly what is happening but you can also change almost every part of it to suit your situation.

Some parts of the data seemed like they were probably too large for JSON. Textures of course fit into this category, but also other elements such as vertices, animation and skinning data can get quite large. Even though, those assets can still be 100% in JSON if you like (depending on the size of your assets), we made it possible to load those types of assets from binary data and provided an API to load the data from gzipped tar files so you can package all of this up into manageable, easy-to-download pieces.

Having this process be open might sound like more work for each developer, but we provide a solution for this problem as well. We have a sample offline converter that takes a Collada file and converts it to a sample JSON format. We then have a sample library that reads that JSON format and recreates the Collada scene in O3D. With one command to convert your data and a couple of lines to load your scene, you'll find that it's very easy to use.

However, the offline converter and loading library are just that, samples. If you want different data you are free to modify the converter or write your own. For example, if you want something different to happen at load time, the loader is written entirely in JavaScript (most of it is in serialization.js) which you can use as a starting point and modify to fit your needs. If we had chosen a fixed format, all of that flexibility would have been lost.

Given this flexibility, we're excited to see the myriad of applications that will come out of O3D. Make something cool and share it with us via the discussion groups and come meet us at Google I/O.

Posted by Gregg Tavares, software engineer, O3D Team.

Here is a link to the converters
and from The sketchip team blog

There are a lot of folks who believe it is time to create a standardized, open, and general purpose way to put 3D graphics on the web. O3D is Google's contribution to that ongoing discussion. Our goal is to make the next generation of browsers support 3D "out of the box," and Google SketchUp's long term vision of "3D for Everyone" will be one step closer!

The SketchUp team is very excited about this launch. The possibilities for posting, sharing, and collaborating on the web in 3D are endless. If you're a developer, get the plugin implementation of the API and help us start exploring. You can read more about using SketchUp with O3D and utilize the Scene Viewer demo to post SketchUp models on your website. Even if you're not a developer, we invite you to join the discussion about what you think 3D on the web should be.

Using Google SketchUp Models

Upload Your file here:
http://o3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/simpleviewer/simpleviewer.html

3D Declarative Modeling

One of the topics I follow is Microsoft and what it will do with 3D & why it has been so late to the VW table. I titled a number of early posts on the subject "Were is Ray Ozzie?" , noting his early involvement with Mitch Kapor and Second life. Now take a little trip with me into the Land of Oz . First is a quote from Avi Bar-Zeev, now with Microsoft

http://www.realityprime.com/articles/oh-3d

My own take is that no Web 3D system will truly work until 3D web content is made as flexible as text and imagery. Right now, my fonts will scale to my wishes and text will flow to fit my screen width. With 3D graphics, the equivalent is generating objects via declarative modeling, not polygons. None of the approaches I’ve mentioned really make use of this fact. And because of it, no matter how fast they get Javascript to run, you’ll still see that "loading…" 30 second delay in starting up any real 3D scenes. And that, right there, is the kiss of death.

For those that do not know of Avi:

He is a co-founder of Keyhole, maker of Earthviewer (which later became Google Earth ), an early employee of Intrinsic Graphics and a number of other startups. He developed technologies for Second Life, including the procedural 3D object rendering code. He now works for Microsoft So of we go.

The term "declarative modeling" leads to; guess who?:

Gates talks up declarative modeling language effort

Next a check of the Press and a definition:

• http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1610
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1631

What, exactly is a “declarative” programming language? According to that old standby, Wikipedia, a program is “declarative,” if it describes what something is like, as opposed to how to build it. To some, a declarative program needs to be written in a purely functional programming language. HTML Web pages are examples of declarative programs.

More google.... mmmmmm... this is starting to get interesting.

A Declarative Design Method for 3D Scene Sketch Modeling

Keywords:

Declarative Method • Intelligent CAD • Object Oriented Graphics • Knowledge Representation

Abstract:

In this paper, we present a dynamic model associated with an intelligent CAD system aiming at the modeling of an architectural scene sketch. Our design methodology has been developed to simulate the process of a user who tries to give a description of a scene from a set of mental images. The scene creation is based on a script which describes the environment from the point of view of an observer who moves across the scene. The system is based on a declarative method viewed as a stepwise refinement process. For the scene representation, a qualitative model is used to describe the objects in terms of attributes, functions, methods and components. The links between objects and their components are expressed by a hierarchical structure, and a description of spatial configurations is given by using locative relations. The set of solutions consistent with the description is usually infinite. So, either one scene consistent with this description is calculated and visualized, or reasons of inconsistency are notified to the user. The resolution process consists of two steps: firstly a logical inference checks the consistency of the topological description, and secondly an optimization algorithm deals with the global description and provides a solution. Two examples illustrate our design methodology and the calculation of a scene model.

Ok back to Oz -Oslo:

“MUrl”: A DSL for RESTful Clients

This is the first of three posts about our MIX talk/announcements.

Today we showed off “MUrl”, which is a DSL and runtime for interacting with HTTP services.

We think “MUrl” has a lot of potential and we are still working on it, but we didn’t want that to stop you from getting your hands on it.

As such, you can download the “MUrl” source code today from the “Oslo” Developer Center.

We are doing this for three reasons: we want you to have something that will make your life a little easier, we want to provide concrete proof of how “M” can be used to make your life easier, and we want to show how you can write your own “M”-based DSLs and runtimes.

I will be clear that “MUrl” is a work in progress and you are going to find things that don’t work the way you want/expect. You do have the source code however. Enjoy.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/oslo/default.aspx

I will end here, enough to digest for one morning, but can you imagine what Avi hinted at:

A new very high level domain specific language (DSL) & runtime for 3D and virtual worlds with code like above.

I may be dead before that happens. Microsoft will work with ESRI before it works with Linden Research, but who knows what is behind the curtain in the The Land of OZ. One thing I do believe is that this approach is the future.

It's Time to Go Virtual - www.pandemicflu.gov - Events may twist the meaning of the term Killer App.

I will not reblog the news, I am not a reporter, but get ready everyone a Swine Flu pandemic may have started in Mexico and if so Going Virtual in the next few months may be the only safe place to go.

The Next Flu Pandemic: What to Expect

It’s not a matter of IF, but WHEN

Flu pandemics have happened throughout history. They occur from time to time, and some are worse than others.Three flu pandemics happened in the 1900s. Near the end of World War I, the 1918 Flu Pandemic was the most severe flu pandemic of the century. It killed about 675,000 people in the United States and between 20 to 50 million people around the world.

If you check your family’s history, you may find how your family was affected at that time. Almost everyone was touched in some way by the 1918 Flu Pandemic. Other flu pandemics in the 1900s were less severe.

Public health experts say it’s not a matter of IF a flu pandemic will happen, but WHEN. We cannot predict when the next flu pandemic will happen.

• US GOV Sample E-mail on Pandemic Flu Preparedness

You may have heard about the threat of a flu pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other leading health experts say it is not a question of IF a pandemic will occur, but WHEN it will occur.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a flu pandemic can start anywhere, will spread quickly, will be widespread, and will affect multiple areas of the United States and other countries at the same time.

A flu pandemic can affect as much as 40 percent of the population during periods of peak illness. It is important to be aware that our Nation and our community will be affected in many ways, including widespread illness, disruptions to child care and transportation, and a possible shortage of supplies.

It is important for everyone to take action at home to prepare for a flu pandemic.
Here’s what health experts recommend doing:

1. Be informed. Knowing the facts is the best preparation.
2. Stock up on food, medicines, and other essential supplies to make it easier to stay at home for an extended period of time. See the attached checklist for suggested items.
3. Take steps to limit the spread of germs. Wash your hands regularly, and cough or sneeze into a tissue or your sleeve.
4. Plan for what you might do if schools are dismissed, if you can’t go to work, or if a family member needs care.

More information about protecting yourself and your family can be found at www.pandemicflu.gov.

Your health and safety is our number one priority, and we encourage you to prepare now before a pandemic occurs.

Matte Painting

Andreas Rocha Digital Matte Painter

Immersive Education adds realXtend - Collada into Ogre

Immersive Education, a Media Grid initiative, has started to work with realXtend

Below sourced from: Maxping

Two other platforms are Sun's Wonderland and OpenCroquet/Cobalt. IEd brings COLLADA file format support to realXtend enabling fully interchangeable content between the platforms.

The Immersive Education Initiative, a collaboration project of over 400 universities and educational institutes, has officially selected realXtend as one of the supported platforms. IEd has already started to work on realXtend and reports a progress on the COLLADA file format support.

The IEd continues to support SUN Microsystem's Wonderland and OpenCroquet, the addition of realXtend is a significant step in the right direction for the service interoperability.

"We are working now to add support for COLLADA to realXtend. We have COLLADA mesh import into the OGRE engine working; textures and lighting are coming next." says Aaron E. Walsh, the managing director of Immersive Education.

The COLLADA support for realXtend is a project of the Open File Formats Technical Working Group at Immersive Education (OFF.TWG). The charter of OFF.TWG is online for at: http://mediagrid.org/groups/technology/OFF.TWG/

Once the COLLADA support in realXtend is implemented, both Wonderland and realXtend will support the OFF.TWG's standard. Immersive Education is also working with the Croquet/Cobalt team and it is expected that all 3 Immersive Education virtual world platforms support the same file format for content portability and interoperability.

First realXtend sever nodes have been already set up at Immersive Education. They were recently demonstrated at Immersive Education: ASIA events in Japan, University of Aizu.

The Immersive Education Initiative is an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems.

In an earlier post on Maxping wrote about the COLLADA contest announced by IE.

Immersive Education and Khronos group announce the $10,000 contest for 3D content creators.

Registration to the contest is open beginning at 9:00am Pacific Time ("PST") on Friday, April 17, 2009 until 5:00pm PST on July 15, 2009.

All contest entries must contain original content made for any 3D web based application that can import models stored in either COLLADA .dae documents or .zae archive formats. The content to participate must consist of a 3D model, avatar, world or simulation specifically geared toward virtual worlds and deployable in Immersive Education platforms.

Here's the announcement from Immersive Education:

The Khronos Group and the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative are thrilled to announce the first-ever COLLADA $10,000 content development contest. See Collada Contest or details.

The gap between the current generation of video game art and virtual worlds' graphical fidelity is closing with every new entry into the 3D web space. COLLADA plays a growing role in these fantastic real-time, online experiences. In concert with the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative, Khronos invites you to champion the application of 3D technology from video games and digital media services towards virtual worlds and Immersive Education.

Winners will be announced at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans.

Google O3D, BimServer, & Autodesk's Dragonfly & Seek

"..nobody who was an ice harvester became an ice factory, and nobody who was an ice factory became a refrigerator company, and nobody who is a refrigerator company is investing in biotechnology. Because most people stay on the same curve. Better saw... more horses.... bigger ice factory... more colours of refrigerator.

Very few people have the courage or vision to get to the next curve."

Guy Kawasaki
The Art of Innovation (17:25-17:55)
MySQL Users Conference 2007

Above via: A very interesting blog StressFree by David Harrison that I recommend. Herer are a few links

• BIMserver and the potential of server-side BIM

• Google O3D may finally bring 3D to the Web

• Autodesk Seek gets a new look and more content
  

Cory Morigi - Second Life

Time goes by#2, by cozy morigi.


Set up in a Sandbox

Talent abounds in Second Life

Down and Dirty Proof of Concept

We now have a demo of an building created with Autocad & Sketchup. It contains approximately 170,000 polygons running interactively in the browser. There are fly-through and move and look as you would in a game modes.



Here's the link for small 8 meg browser runtime plugin for IE, Foxfire or Safari: PLUGIN that you will need to install first.
The URL to the demo page is Tech Demo-architecture

Be warned this is early in a Beta test cycle.
The developers have stressed broad, powerful browser support so don't hesitate to let us know any issues you find.

Blue Mars 2150

Take a peek at the intro for what looks like a Blue Mars VW startup, Select Explore - Media

VSE

A Unique Business Model - Free Software & 20% Commission.

Animeeple

Opensim Texture Patch

Via the Author:

As part of my work for Remedy (http://www.remedylimited.com) i've been looking for ways to improve the performance and reliability of the Opensim software (http://www.opensimulator.org/). This is an example of one of the ways in which we've been able to achieve that.

http://opensimulator.org/mantis/view....

I reworked the texture processing module of opensim, and I've been very successful, achieving the following results:

- Increased texture load speed by 200-300%
- Increased packet efficiency greatly
- Shaken the texture clog issue where textures stopped being delivered
- Implemented texture priorities properly
- Reduced memory usage by a LOT

Blog: http://www.thomasgrimshaw.com/

Reinvent your Desktop - Make Windows 3D

While others work with 3D Viewers and others with getting it working in browsers, This application transfors your desktop itself. BumpTop is a free intuitive 3D desktop that keeps you organized and makes you more productive. Like a real desk, but better.



Features: Immersive 3D & Physics

BumpTop makes your pixels come to life. Grab, toss, pile and sort your icons and watch them respond with stunning lifelike motion simulated with nVidia PhysX, a gaming grade physics engine. Your flat desktop will pop with BumpTop's saucy 3D visuals and new organization possibilities.

Virtual Worlds - Gartner

Steve Prentice, Gartner Research Fellow, talks about how enterprises can use utilize virtual worlds for real benefits in a tough economy.

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com

www.gartner.com

Country: United States
Website: http://www.gartner.com

Second Life - Best of The Best

Click for a Slideshow

Autocad -> Sketchup ->OpenSim/realXtend - Developing a Complete Workflow

Not unlike game design & website design, the A&E industry has it's accepted 2D tools, its 3D tools & rendering applications. For those that work only in Second Life and Photoshop and have not worked with Google Sketchup, CADD software or 3D modeling & rendering applications just imagine the seamless import & export of meshes other the sculpties, like the one above.

Soon we will be leaving stealth mode and showing our work & demonstrating the best of the best; practices, platforms and talent to Architects, Engineers, Urban Planners, and Designers. We are developing a complete bi-directional work flow from 2D CADD to fully immersive , real time rendered Virtual Worlds in a browser windows, not unlike embedded flash except you can just walk in.

Shame the brand Windows is already taken.

Here are a few links for today:

• Best practices for using SketchUp and AutoCAD together.
• Soap Skin and Bubble Ruby scrit plugin for sketchup (see above image)
• Bunkspeed HyperShot

• http://www.bunkspeed.com/news/news_sw_plugin.html (image above)
  

But before we take you that last step into the Virtual World or get into the database extensions and subjects like BIM we will be leaving Blogger, retiring this blog & its format. Stay tuned, as they say:

"Time waits for no man".

Autodesk® ImageModeler™ - 3D Models from Photos

Below clipped from the from Autodesk Web Site. ImageModeler and its sister application, Stitcher Unlimited, were developed by REALVIZ, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2008.

Autodesk® ImageModeler™ image-based modeling software enables architects, designers, and entertainment content creators to quickly and easily create 3D models from 2D digital images or panoramas.

Use ImageModeler to capture the reality as-built:

• Reconstruct photorealistic objects, scenes, and cities
• Integrate CAD projects with existing environments
• Take measurements of buildings

The software’s easy-to-learn, three-step workflow—calibration, modeling, and texturing—lets you achieve, stunning, photorealistic modeling with real-world accuracy. Additionally, ImageModeler 2009 offers support for Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® Maya®, and AutoCAD® software.

Calibration
Calibrate the software for one to many pictures by matching a few points between the images. There is no need to input information about the camera.

Modeling
The modeling tools in ImageModeler are simple. A 3D model is generated using polygonal primitives. This model can then be refined by the user and detail added.

Texturing
Photorealistic texture maps are automatically extracted from the pixel information of the source images.

Price $995 US

Online Demonstion Videos

News - New Form Factor for PCs and Gaming - Book Sized and less then $200?

Acer launches first Nvidia Ion PC - April 8th 2009

Acer has revealed its AspireRevo, which is based on Nvidia’s new Atom-based Ion platform.

The pictures of the AspireRevo show that this is the official release of Acer’s Wii-esque Hornet concept, which was revealed in a leaked presentation in February. Nvidia describes the AspireRevo as being “no larger than a typical hardcover book,” but adds that it’s also “a fully capable desktop with advanced graphics and impressive multimedia features.”

Unlike your typical Atom-based nettop, Nvidia says that the Ion-based AspreRevo “can handle a wide variety of computing needs,” which include HD video playback and gaming. The company says that you can play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Spore on the tiny system, and that it can also playback 1080p video with 7.1 audio.

A variety of connections are provided on the box, including six USB 2 ports, HDMI and VGA display connectors, an eSATA port and a memory card reader. The machine will come with Windows Vista Home Premium installed as standard, and will feature an Atom 230 CPU and up to 4GB of DDR2 memory. There will also be a choice of either an SSD or a hard drive for storage.

Torque 3D Web Demo

Torque 3D Extremely Cool Feature - In Game Browser Web Surface/Canvas Capable of Web Render w/ HTML, Flash, Video etc.

From http://drawlogic.com/April 5th, 2009

Torque3D seems to have full featured browser surfaces that you can use in the 3d engine seamlessly, see the video below (at :38). This is amazing stuff.

Making games that integrate content from the web is especially required these days. It is a difficult thing to do within the 3d render because of all the plugins, styling etc that needs to be rendered on a 3d surface. Well Torque3D has a killer feature in that it supports entirely full features browser render on a 3d surface. So now you can integrate html content, flash video etc in your game easily.

You can play content in flash player content easily and have stripped down html but it is limited, you can play videos and have content in Unity3d but it is limited, even larger engines like Unreal 3 have difficulty handling flash and html content. If this is a good implementation Torque3D has a killer feature on their hands! Flash is commonly used as user interface elements and content within games but it can be challenging. This is pretty exciting if it works as advertised. Think of how cool all the little consoles, mini-games and controls in 3d games could be in flash easily.

Free CADD Software for the Unemployed

image above from Autodesk

Both Autodesk (AutoCAD®, Revit® Architecture, Autodesk® Inventor® Professional, and/or AutoCAD® Civil 3D®) & Dassault Systèmes (SolidWorks®) are offering free student versions of their products to anyone laid off.

• Autodesk Assistance Program
  
• SolidWorks Engineering Stimulus Package

Immediately after Autodesk's press release 4-6-2009, SolidWorks re-issue their's. Dassault Systèmes offer to the unemployed engineer is a bit different:

• Free student version of SolidWorks (includes COSMOS) for 3 months; Autodesk's is 13 months.
• Free certification testing; Autodesk charges.
• Online portal with links for training; as has Autodesk

More we missed - Apple holding back on web-based 3D graphics

WebKit 3D CSS Examples from Ars Technica on Vimeo.

Above and below clipped from arstechnica.com - March 16, 2009

Apple holding back on web-based 3D graphics for the desktop

Apple has added 3D position and transform capabilities to WebKit, along with the 2D CSS-based transform abilities added some time ago. However, Apple allows access to these advanced 3D abilities only via Mobile Safari. If Apple enables the features on the desktop, they could kickstart the development of a whole new class of visually rich web applications... without Flash.

If you missed April Fools - Were Tomorrow Starts Today

Were Tomorrow Starts Today

Who is the IDC Consortium & What have they done in the past 2 years?

With names like Eon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and HP What is up? Anything? This video has been on YouTube for 2 years with only 692 views... See the next post on Eon for more.

This is an open question to readers here.

Outside the Box - EON Coliseum

While Linden Lab prepares its behind the firewall offering and redesigns its "interface", while Remedy and Rivers partner for Immersive Workspaces, while IBM & Intel fiddle with OpenSim, Others unknown to the general audience of SL blog readers are already in the space with corporate clients. Obviously Linden Lab knows this company (see the last image) Take a look:


Image & below text source: Press Relaese

EON Reality Releases EON Coliseum™ – a New Collaborative Corporate Communication Platform
Communicate effectively in one single consistent virtual multi-user environment

IRVINE, Calif., March 16, 2009 – EON Reality, Inc., the world's leading interactive 3D software provider, today announced the it’s technical preview of EON Coliseum™, a new technology platform where people can present their ideas, communicate complex concepts and collaborate using rich media objects such as web pages, presentation slides, video and interactive 3D content.

Quick Facts:

* EON Reality, Inc. is a privately held US corporation founded in 1999
* Headquarter Irvine, CA, with a development office in Gothenburg, Sweden, R&D in Singapore and sales and support Offices in Singapore and Melbourne, Australia
* EON Reality, Inc. is a privately held US corporation, founded in 1999
* 36 resellers in 23 countries
* Over 36 million EON-based 3D downloads on the largest e-tailing site in the world
* Currently have 200,000 personal edition licenses distributed
* Over 5,000 seats of EON software installed worldwide
* Over 95 Academic Institutions and universities are using EON’s software licenses and systems installations in 25 countries
* Fortune 500 companies that are utilizing EON software and solutions include American Suzuki, Bechtel Corp., Eastman Kodak, Maytag, and Office Depot.
* Others include: Siemens, John Deere, Atlas Copco, Toyota, Tetra Pak, Boeing, Bombardier, Intel, Peterbilt, Lexus, Whirlpool, Honeywell, GE Healthcare and Stryker, use EON

Partners: (Note The Second Life Logo)

Geektalk: Shaders and DirectX

NVIDIA DirectX Compute ocean demo:

The demo shows a real-time simulated ocean under twilight lighting condition. To obtain good looking wave crests, a rather large height field has to be employed. With Microsoft's newly introduced DirectX Compute Shader we can efficiently perform FFT on GPU, thus greatly improving the performance and image quality. The water surface is mainly modeled after Jerry Tessendorf's statistic method described in the paper "Simulating Ocean Water", which is one of the most popular techniques used for water effect in todays games. Although the algorithm itself is capable of producing visually impressive result from a presumed statistic model (Phillips spectrum), previous implementations are often limited to a relatively small height field, e.g. 64x64 or 128x128, due to the slow FFT code path on CPU. For example, the demo shown here executes three 512x512 Fourier transforms on a per frame basis. On a GTX280, the transforms can be finished within 2 milliseconds.

via: http://www.geeks3d.com/?p=3672

New Listing of 1202 Second Life Blogs Published

Active Second Life Blogs, 2009

cick on the above link to see the full list of links as of Thursday, April 2, 2009

An amazing compilation and work done by Amber Decuir, Thickbrick Sleaford, Peter Stindberg, Haley Salomon, Moggs Oceanlane, Quaintly Tuquiri, Radar Masukami, Andrew M and ArminasX Saiman owner of Electric Pixels

I would not want to ask that they do this work again but wonder how it compares with Mal Burns' OPML. ~grins~

Unreal 3 Game Engine Improved

New Features Demonstrated at GDC 2009

Outside the Box - Other Types of Sims

EASYnat 2.5 - Bring life to your projects!

We often do not look outside the Virtual Worlds box and miss that there are applications being developed for industries using full real time 3D and game engines. Medical and Military applications are obviously the biggest markets and support numerous companies supplying software, services and content. In the government and defense markets alone, there are thousands of companies beyond the one we hear about, Forterra. Here is a recent clip from a press release of CAE. CAE to invest $714 million in research and development

Montreal, March 31, 2009 – (NYSE: CGT; TSX: CAE) CAE announced today that it will invest up to C$714 million in Project Falcon, a research and development (R&D) program that will span five years. The goal of Project Falcon is to expand CAE’s current modelling and simulation technologies, develop new ones and increase its capabilities beyond training into other areas of the aerospace and defence market, such as analysis and operations.

The Government of Canada will participate in Project Falcon through a repayable investment of up to $250 million. This investment is being made through the Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative (SADI), which supports strategic industrial research and pre-competitive development projects in the aerospace, defence, space and security industries.

Here are just a few interesting examples outside the aviation simulator market:

• Above - Virtual plants that grow...
• Below - A 39.99 euro Trucking Simulation game
• Last - Heavy equipment simulators with physics for the Construction, Mining and Forestry.

eurotrucksimulator


Vortex Turnkey Simulators

Back to Second Life:

Virtual Quarry sequence from a Second Life island

• Overview Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUAaautF0Zk
• Introduction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erxVC9VY9DY