Earth day 2021. (Source: Nasa Earth) How do you know if an airplane will fly, a nuclear boom will explode, or what Jupiter is made of? You take a bazillion tons of data (that’s how we measure data in today’s zettascale of data creation) and create a simulation that generates a visualization of it. Weather and climate change forecasting, … Read more
Over the years of computer graphics, stretching back to Ed Catmull’s pioneering 1974 paper that introduced the concept of subdivision, wrapping, and unwrapping, the CG industry has been trying to find ways to make texture mapping faster and more efficient because it is such a powerful tool. It led to Jim Blinn’s famous 1978 paper on bump-mapping and other developments. … Read more
(Source: DxOmark) DxOmark can trace its roots back to the early 2000s when DxO Labs founded it as the image quality evaluation division. It worked primarily with phone manufacturers to profile displays and publish its evaluations to help rank phone displays. In September 2017, DxO Labs spun out DxOmark as an independent privately-owned company. Founded by photographers and scientists in the early 2000s, … Read more
Doing what they did for mobile phones, Khronos has stabilized XR
Doing what they did for mobile phones, Khronos has stabilized XR
The headline is: Khronos announced multiple conformant implementations of OpenXR are shipping from Oculus and Microsoft. That happened because of the newly opened OpenXR 1.0 Adopters Program and open-source conformance tests, which Khronos announced was coming after launching the OpenXR 1.0 specification last year at Siggraph. Getting something this significant through all the bureaucratic and territorial fiefdoms of two major … Read more
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
The Khronos Organization is a consortium creating open interoperability standards to foster cross-platform development. Their roots are in OpenGL, so graphics will always hold a special place in the organization’s growing list of interests. Khronos has recently announced a collaboration with the Smithsonian on the Open Access Initiative, which will open the floodgates to new content and easier content creation. … Read more
A curfew and time restrictions for gamers under 18 in China
Uh, oh there’s no one here! Walking into Siggraph that first day, full of excitement and expectation, we were horrified to find the halls quiet, the tiny exhibition area dark, and the nearby area for R&D exhibits relatively quiet. What the hell, is Siggraph dying? School bell’s ringing and the crowds stream into the halls of Siggraph. These aren’t faces … Read more
