Software

EA’s hair-raising graphics

Hair. We all have it, some more than others. Regardless, it never behaves. We cut, color it, weave and wave it, shellac it, grease and shine it—some even iron it. And still, it just doesn’t look right. If it looks bad and unruly in real life, imagine how it looks in a simulation. It either looks like a plastic hat … Read more

Big Merc display powered by Nvidia AI

Dell just announced a slick 40-inch 5K display (see story this issue), and Acer has a new 27-in 4k 275 Hz display. Those are nice, but… if you want a big, really BIG, display then you’re going to have to buy a car. Not just any car, but an expensive car—a Mercedes-Benz, Baby. The curved screen unit stretches almost the … Read more

The dark side of game streaming

If I can take my crappy 10-year-old Pentium with its no-name AIB, put in a 5g NIC for $55, and play 2020 FPS games, why would I ever buy a new PC or game card? This is a question many hardware game suppliers are asking themselves. Cloud gaming goes back to OnLive in 2003 and has progressed as bandwidth speeds … Read more

Graebert follows through on BIM

The upcoming Ares Commander 2022 enables users to access BIM content to take off DWG files for documentation that stay current with the BIM model. (Source: Graebert)   At one time it may have been possible to consider Graebert as the maker of products to compete with AutoCAD, but that was a long time ago. Graebert’s CAD tools—from DraftSight for … Read more

KFC is a PC, not a console

Just in time for the holidays—because that’s when this bubbled up, the KFConsole has arrived via the Coolermaster site. No, you didn’t know you needed a gaming machine to warm your chicken while you play, but now that it’s here… The word on the internet is that the KFConsole “is real.” As in a real promotion cooked up by KFC and … Read more

The rays of Khronos reach everywhere

(Source: Stack overflow)   In 2018, before there were pandemics, vicious nation-splitting election campaigns, and the biggest GPU ever, a small group of ray-loving engineers got together to save the world. In early 2018, the Vulkan Working Group formed the Vulkan Ray Tracing Task Subgroup (TSG in Khronos kode). Its goal was to enable a focused design effort. Since then, the … Read more

Graphisoft releases new update for Archicad 24

Graphisoft is turning the crank and getting updates when they’re ready rather than waiting for full release packages as has been the practice across the professional software world. This summer, Graphisoft released Archicad 24 as a significant release to advance BIM capabilities and interoperability between architects and engineers. It has enabled better exchanges of data across Architecture, Structural, Civil, and … Read more

AI, mind-reading mice, and 3D displays

Intel acquired Israeli-based chip maker Habana Labs in 2019 to advance its AI strategy and strengthen its portfolio of AI accelerators for the cloud and data center. The deal was worth approximately $2 billion. Was it a good deal? It’s shaping up. This week at the AWS re: Invent 2020 conference, AWS CEO Andy Jassy Introduced elastic computing (EC2) instances … Read more

AU 2020: Autodesk’s search for the Unified Theory

If you can forget about the silence of the slot machines, Autodesk’s virtual AU perfectly captured the vibe of the real thing with all the good and all the not so good. All of the good includes a wealth of information including ideas and news about product updates as well as ideas from outside the box of Autodesk’s software applications … Read more

Fujitsu means workstations

Fujitsu has been in the workstation business for 30 years. The Fujitsu workstation group has a rich and long-standing history. It has developed powerful, reliable leading-edge systems for over 30 years. Fujitsu and Siemens began in 1923. In 1990, Siemens and Nixdorf formed Siemens Nixdorf Computers AG. Siemens Nixdorf started its workstation business in 1991. Those workstations were based on … Read more

DaVinci’s tools get major update … and then some

Blackmagic Design is not the kind of company to let a worldwide pandemic and recession go to waste. The company kept a low (for them) profile throughout the NAB time frame, and now arrives with a revamped DaVinci Resolve with new tools and companion hardware. In the demo available on the Blackmagic site, CEO Grant Petty took the controls himself … Read more

Adobe, C3.ai, and Microsoft team up to advance CRM

At Adobe Max and Adobe’s Summit earlier this year, CEO Shantanu Narayen reaffirmed the company’s close alliance with Microsoft to build its digital experience platform. After Adobe Max, the two giants announced the addition of a third power, C3.ai, to combine their tools to build C3 AI CRM. The three partners will build on Microsoft Dynamics 365, the marketing automation … Read more