Just before NAB last year, the Avid community was shocked by the sudden firing of CEO Louis Hernandez. They were shocked, but it has not been reported that they were saddened. Avid has struggled to negotiate digital transformation and Hernandez was actually one in a line of CEOs who failed to get the Avid machine back on track. He did … Read more
NewTek and Vizrt came to NAB with some stories to tell. Vizrt announced on April 1, 2019 that they will buy NewTek in a deal expected to close in the second quarter of 2019. The deal is a killer. NewTek is a pioneer in enabling IP workflows and technology, so this deal couldn’t come at a better time as the … Read more
HP came to NAB with good friends Intel to show off their new workstations, which just happened to be perfect for video content creation, VFX, and other memory intensive jobs. The broadcast and content creation industry is now squarely in the middle of working with demanding 4K workflows and negotiating the challenges of creating HDR content and 8K is clearly … Read more
It’s been a while, but the cover for our New Year’s issue was created using Dimension, Adobe’s tool which enables users to combine 3D models with 2D backgrounds to create a new artwork. We didn’t do anything really special, put paper bag on the foreground, created a texture for with Adobe’s Capture app, added the JPR logo as a decal … Read more
Unity came to GDC fighting the perception it’s riding back seat to Epic’s position in the shotgun seat. The company made some progress during this year’s over 2-hour long keynote—not that Unity ever admits for a moment it’s chasing Unreal and, in fact, there’s much to argue that Unity has built a good position on its own turf, which has … Read more
We came across the B.S.B.B. MKII while wandering aimlessly around GDC. Cordoned off, alone in the exhibit area, a man sat in the control center barking orders, or receiving them, we’re not complexly sure in an industrial cockpit complete with blinking lights, colored switches, fire alarms, and a landline phone for emergencies. The B.S.B.B. MK II traveled from its permanent … Read more
The stars come out for Apple and for themselves. Apple’s new services promise new outlets for artists. Oprah’s presence was enough to bring a tear to Tim’s eye. (Source: Apple keynote). Apple’s keynote unveiling new subscription services started off with the usual pep-rally atmosphere. It should be embarrassing, but that just doesn’t seem to happen to these people. There … Read more
The AEC market is busting out in 2018 for many reasons, but probably the driving force is the digitalization of the industry. Trimble has been quietly building on its strengths in GPS, civil engineering, automation, and transportation to enable automation in the field. Unlike many companies in the AEC space, which started in CAD and started adding on data management, … Read more
Every year, Unreal CEO Tim Sweeney and his executive team, set the stage for the GDC conference with their annual State of the Industry presentation. According to Tim Sweeney and company, the state of the industry is pretty darned good and to prove it, Epic is making investments in the game developer community, teaming with major players to enable streaming … Read more
Niantic is preparing the ground for their new game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, which is coming later this year to Android and iOS devices. The game combines the real world with digital elements a la Pokémon Go. The developers are hoping they’ll have the same kind of crazy hit this time around. The game is available for pre-register on … Read more
Chaos Group has announced their new cloud-rendering service, which, they say, differs from competitive services with straightforward pricing that charges only for the rendering time and does not have surprise fees such as additional charges for uploading files. The company describes Chaos Cloud rendering as a single button click. As with most rendering services, customers buy packages of credit. Their … Read more
Driving to stay at least in step, if not ahead of the virtual, mixed, augmented, and yet to be named and marketed realities, the Khronos OpenXR working group has released their working API which covers various OS, and presumably all devices. OpenXR—solving the VR–AR fragmentation if not confusion. (Source: Khronos) OpenXR is a unifying, royalty-free, open standard that provides … Read more
