Software

Siemens builds on its digital platform

Last year, Siemens's design and manufacture sub-company that was known as Siemens PLM signaled a major turning point in its ongoing transformation within the larger Siemens megacompany. It changed its name to Siemens Digital Industries Software, which at least freed the company from the albatross of the unpopular term PLM and also integrated the group tighter into Siemens as a … Read more

Blackbird video: online editing for a new age

One of the breakout stars of the NAB-that-never-was is Blackbird plc. The company offers a cloud video editing platform enabling live or file-based video editing and sells itself on its speed, scalability, quality of editing tools, and output. The company’s demos make Blackbird’s tools look very straightforward and easy to use. There’s a refreshing cleanliness to the interface, and more … Read more

PTC’s new normal will embrace remote workflows

The face of the new normal is coming in more clearly. PTC has wrapped up its first all-virtual LiveWorx conference, and we’ve gotten a look into quite a few East Coast homes. We also got updates on PTC’s plans for the future. You won’t be surprised to hear that the cloud is a big part of those plans, but so … Read more

Cesium update: Mapping the world and playing with it

The latest update to the Cesium SaaS platform is a global layer of the world’s 3D buildings. In addition, Cesium collaborates with Epic to make geospatial data available within Unreal Engine.   Cesium, as we have written, provides a platform for 3D GIS data which are organized as Global Base Layers and include worldwide data for terrain, aerial imagery, and … Read more

Khronos gets vectorized, introduces OpenVG Lite

Before there were raster-scan TV-like screens on computers, we had vectorscopes, also known as stroke writers and calligraphic screens. They drew straight lines, one at a time, and were used for early warning systems, FAA monitoring, and CAD back in the 1960s and up till about 1990. A near cousin was the first oscilloscopes, and one of the most popular … Read more

Vectorworks looks ahead

(Source: Vectorworks)   One of the side benefits of the Coronavirus lockdown is that we now get an inside look at people’s offices. Biplab Sarkar, the CEO of Vectorworks, presented his keynote for the Vectorworks Design Summit, from his home office and we were able to chat with him later about the company. The conference was originally planned for April … Read more

Smell-O-Mersion 2020

Smell-O-Vision was a system that released odor during the projection of a film so that the viewer could “smell” what was happening in the movie. The technique was created by Hans Laube and made its only appearance in the 1960 film Scent of Mystery, produced by Mike Todd Jr, The process injected 30 odors into a movie theater's seats when … Read more

Under performing VR market gets new vendor

Taipei-based XRSpace says its single goal is to take XR to the masses by redefining how people connect, socialize, and collaborate in the virtual world. The company claims it enables consumers to socialize, work and play together in both private and public spaces that are contextual, familiar, and expandable. Toward that lofty goal, the company has announced its Mova headset … Read more

Omniverse—work anywhere, in any program, with your colleagues

Don’t lose your marbles   It hasn’t been too many years since the siloed effects of specialists in the graphics production pipeline drove up a studio or company’s costs, and delayed projects because they used incompatible programs. At GDC 2020 Nvidia introduced Omniverse, its open collaboration platform to simplify workflows for real-time graphics. Nvidia has built its Omniverse platform on … Read more

Construction transformed in 2020

Big projects need big solutions: AECOM stays with the plan for its infrastructure projects with the help of established BIM practices at the company. (Source: AECOM)   There probably is no good time for a pandemic, but this particular Coronavirus shutdown hits the construction industry at a particularly bad time. Spring means construction, but for most of the U.S. construction … Read more

Will AI obsolete game engines?

Forty years ago, PAC-MAN appeared in arcades in Japan and munched a path to global stardom.  Now the retro classic has been reborn and delivered courtesy of AI. Trained on 50,000 episodes of the game, a new AI model created by Nvidia Research called GameGAN, can generate a fully functional version of PAC-MAN—without an underlying game engine. That means that … Read more