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  • Jaunt – Meet the Crazy Camera That Can Make Movies for the Oculus Rift (Jordan Kushins-Gizmodo)

    Oculus Rift
    Oculus Rift (Photo credit: Digitas Photos)

    If Facebook buying Oculus for a cool $2 billion is a step towards democratizing the currently-niche platform, Jaunt seems like an equally monumental step towards making awesome virtual reality content that appeals to folks beyond the gaming community. The VR movies in addition to VR games.

    via Meet the Crazy Camera That Can Make Movies for the Oculus Rift.

    Amazing story about a stealthy little company with a 3D video recording rig. This isn’t James Cameron like motion capture for 3D rendering. This is just 2D video in real time stitched together. No modeling, or texture-mapping, or animating required. Just run the video camera, capture the footage, bring it back to the studio and stitch it all together. Watch the production on your Oculus Rift head set. If you can produce 3D movies with this without having to invest in the James Cameron high end, ultra-expensive virtual sets, you just lowered the barriers to entry.

    I’m also kind of disappointed that in the article the author keeps insisting that you “had to be there”. Telling us words cannot express the experience is like telling me in writing the “dog ate my homework”. I guess I “had to be there” for that too. Anyway you put it, telling me more about the company and the premises and about the prototypes means you’re writing for a Venture Capital audience, not someone who might make work using the camera or those who might consume the work made by the artists working with the camera. I say just cave into the temptation and TRY expressing the experience in words. Don’t worry if you fail, as you’ve just increased the comment rate on your story, engaging people longer after the initial date the story was published. In spite off the lack of daring, to describe the experience, I picked up enough detail, extrapolated it enough and read between the lines in a way that indicates this camera rig might well be the killer app, or authoring app for the Oculus Rift platform. Let’s hope it sees the light of day and makes it market quicker than the Google Glass prototypes floating around these days.

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  • What’s Inside a USB Isolator?

    Decapping a computer chip is a toxic, non-trivial task. However what’s revealed underneath the plastic capping material will amaze you. Especially the sizes of the chips. We’re talking millimeters, sometimes fractions of a millimeter on a side for very simple functions. In this example, a USB isolator chip from Analog Devices is decapped and examined under a microscope to trace out the circuitry. Very interesting stuff and reminds me a lot of the iPhone tear-downs that include an analysis of the A series processor chip Apple installs in each one. Always a lot of information to be gleaned from the exposed circuits, that’s for sure.

  • Work

    image

    Yup! Just spending some time on the blog.  Now it is lunch time. C’ya!

    Posted from WordPress for Android

  • Xilinx Introduces SDNet & ‘Softly’ Defined Networks | EE Times

    Image representing Xilinx as depicted in Crunc...
    Image via CrunchBase

    It’s not often that you see something that makes you think “this is a game changer.” The introduction of logic synthesis circa 1990 was one such event; today’s introduction of SDNet from Xilinx may well be another.

    via Xilinx Introduces SDNet & ‘Softly’ Defined Networks | EE Times.

    Cisco has used different RISC chips over the years as its network processors. Both in it’s network closet switches and the core router chassis. First generation was based on the venerable MIPS processor, then subsequently they migrated to PowerPC, both for power reduced processing but also network optimized cpus. Cisco’s engineers would accommodate changes in function by releasing new version of the IOS. Or they would release new line cards for the big multi-slot router chassis. Between software and hardware releases they would cover the whole spectrum of wired, wireless, optical networking. It was a rich mix of what could be done.

    Enter now the possibility of not just Software Defined Networking (kind of like using Virtual Machines instead of physical switches), but software defined firmware/hardware. FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) are the computing world’s reconfigurable processor. So instead of provisioning a fixed network processor, and virtualizing on top of that to gain the software defined network, what if you could work the problem from both ends? Reconfigure the software AND the network processor. That’s what Xilinx is proposing with this announcement of SDNet. The prime example given in this announcement is the line card that would slot into a a large router chassis (some Cisco gear comes with 13 slots). If you had just a bunch of ports, let’s say RJ-45 facing outward, what then happens on the inside via the software/hardware reconfigurability would astound you. You want Fibre Channel over Ethernet? You want 10Gbit? You want SIP traffic only? You don’t buy a line card per application because it’s set in stone what the function is. You tell the SDNet compiler these are the inputs, these are the outputs, please optimize the functions and reconfigure the firmware as needed.

    Once programmed, that line card does what you tell it to do. It can inspect packets, it could act as a firewall, it could prioritize traffic, shape bandwidth or just simple route things as fast as it could possibly go. Doesn’t matter what signals are running over what pins, as long as it knows it’s RJ-45 connectors, it will do the rest. Amazing when you think about it that way.

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  • The P in P2P is People

    Thali sounds like an amazing non-cloud centric enabling technology. And would be well worth the price of admission to use it. I cannot tell you how many times I remind friends when they complain about Facebook, that they are the product not Facebook. Thali makes each person their data center cloud with full rights to grant access to which ever fragment/shard of that existing “mesh” that you wish to any other individual person. Big Brother is only going to watch the data go through the series of tubes. He will not get notices or National Securities Letters from the FBI asking for all the data in your account as all the data is where it originated on YOUR devices, in YOUR possession. I think I’m getting the hang of this now and I find it very appealing. Can’t wait to learn more about Thali.

    Jon Udell's avatarJon Udell

    When Groove launched somebody asked me to explain why it was an important example of peer-to-peer technology. I said that was the wrong question. What mattered was that Groove empowered people to communicate directly and securely, form ad-hoc networks with trusted family, friends, and associates, and exchange data freely within those networks. P2P, although then much in vogue — there were P2P books, P2P conferences — wasn’t Groove’s calling card, it was a means to an end.

    The same holds true for Thali. Yes it’s a P2P system. But no that isn’t the point. Thali puts you in control of communication that happens within networks of trust. That’s what matters. Peer networking is just one of several enablers.

    Imagine a different kind of Facebook, one where you are a customer rather than a product. You buy social networking applications, they’re not free. But when you use those apps…

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  • Nvidia Pulls off ‘Industrial Light and Magic’-Like Tools | EE Times

    Image representing NVidia as depicted in Crunc...
    Image via CrunchBase

    The president of VMware said after seeing it (and not knowing what he was seeing), “Wow, what movie is that?” And that’s what it’s all about — dispersion of disbelief. You’ve heard me talk about this before, and we’re almost there. I famously predicted at a prestigious event three years ago that by 2015 there would be no more human actors, it would be all CG. Well I may end up being 52% or better right (phew).    – Jon Peddie

    via Nvidia Pulls off ‘Industrial Light and Magic’-Like Tools | EE Times. Jon Peddie has covered the 3D animation, modeling and simulation market for YEARS. And when you can get a rise out of him like the quote above from EETimes, you have accomplished something. Between NVidia’s hardware and now its GameWorks suite of software modeling tools, you have in a word created Digital Cinema. Jon goes on to talk about how the digital simulation demo convinced a VMWare exec it was real live actors on a set. That’s how good things are getting.

    And the metaphor/simile of comparing ILM to NVidia’s toolkits off the shelf is also telling. No longer does one need to have on staff computer scientists, physicists and mathematicians to help model, and simulate things like particle systems and hair. It’s all there along with ocean waves, and smoke altogether in the toolkit ready to use. Putting these tools into the hands of the users will only herald a new era of less esoteric, less high end, exclusive access to the best algorithms and tools.

    nVidia GameWorks by itself will be useful to some people but re-packaging it in a way that embeds it in an existing workflow will widen the level of adoption.Whether that’s for a casual user or a student in a 3D modeling and animation course at a University. The follow-on to this is getting the APIs publishedto tap into this through current off the shelf tools like AutoCAD, 3D StudioMax, Blender, Maya, etc. Once the favorite tools can bring up a dialog box and start adding a particle system, full ray tracing to a scene at this level of quality, things will really start to take off. The other possibility is to flesh out GameWorks in a way that makes it more of a standalone, easily adopted  brand new package creatives could adopt and eventually migrate to over time. That would be another path to using GameWorks as an end-to-end digital cinema creation package.

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  • SK Hynix develops 128GB DDR4 module

    Where you’re going to see the biggest benefits to DDR4 is in the mobile/portable device category. On the desktop there might be a slight increase in speed, but not like the big bumps of previous generations of DDR architectural moves. So figure on 10% maybe depending on the chipset and CPU and the 3rd level cache on the cpu die. That combo is more likely to affect your overall system speed than just moving to DDR4 DIMMs on the motherboard.

    vrzonesg's avatarTech News for Geeks

    SK Hynix?s high-capacity DDR4 modules are based on Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology.

    DDR4 capable motherboards and CPUs aren’t yet on the market, but that hasn’t stopped SK Hynix from putting some serious work into making high capacity DDR4 modules. On Tuesday the South Korean sem…

    Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/sk-hynix-develops-128gb-ddr4-module/75482.html

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  • Qualcomm unveils 64-bit Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 808

    64bits now from Qualcomm using the ARM based architecture. The game is afoot the Apple A6 cpu is now going to compete with another 64bit cpu.

    vrzonesg's avatarTech News for Geeks

    Qualcomm finally unveils its high-end 64-bit enabled SoCs, but they won?t be available until the first half of 2015.

    Qualcomm has launched its first batch of ARM v8-based SoCs last month, but this time around it is detailing its plans for the high-end segment. The Snapdragon 810 and …

    Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/qualcomm-unveils-64-bit-snapdragon-810-snapdragon-808/75434.html

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  • Video – Does VDI Need Dedicated Storage?

    Charlie Hodges's avatarStorageSwiss.com – The Home of Storage Switzerland

    It’s an accepted fact that a VDI environment can create some challenges for the IT infrastructure. Mashing hundreds of desktop workloads onto a disk array that was designed for more general-purpose applications can lead to poor or inconsistent performance. This can lead to another challenge, meeting user expectations.

    To attend the webinar, please click below:

    Slide1

    Performance and Expectations

    When a VDI project is undertaken, it’s assumed that the user ‘experience’, how responsive their desktop applications are, will be the same or better than with the legacy infrastructure. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, based in the storage challenges that often accompany a VDI project. Making things worse, many users are getting spoiled by the performance of flash in tablets and flash boot drives in laptops.

    This combination of demanding storage requirements and heightened user expectations has driven many companies to conclude that their VDI project must be supported by a…

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  • RotoMAAK: Rotocasting Done Right | EE Times

    brokencopier
    brokencopier (Photo credit: Johnnie Utah)

    RotoMAAK: Rotocasting Done Right | EE Times.   After the printing press was invented, there was a long lag in between when Photocopying was invented. It’s time to do the same for 3D printing. Don’t print all originals, duplicate them instead with a Rotocaster like the RotoMAAK. Make sense doesn’t it? Especially considering the cost of materials. Why just today the Guiness Book of World records is attempting to measure a feat of 3D printing using 50 printers running parallel. Wouldn’t it be just as efficient to create one single model and cast the 50 copies in a shorter period of time? But consider this, Lulzbot a contract manufacturer has that many and more that CAN print the same object simultaneously:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_jUObUGLTA   109 Lulzbots all working printing the same exact item, printing all originals from the same 3D design file. Still this seems wasteful to me given the amount of material used in each one. Knowing there’s a potentially faster, cheaper alternative like photocopying when Xerox hit the big time in the early 1960s, now THAT to me is the killer app. 3D Printing or CNC milling operations are stupendous at making the one off, the original the bespoke item you need. But for multiples? Just seems like a unproductive time sync that other existing industrial processes could be used to help speed up and make less expensive. So if given the choice between casting versus printing multiple originals, just try costing out short runs of cast items. You might surprise yourself and get it faster, cheaper  and higher quality in the end.

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