It seems some PC suppliers are (just now?) discovering that people buy PCs and use them for different applications in addition to what the PC supplier promotes them for or how they are branded. Imagine! Some PC suppliers are betting the CAD market may become a new growth driver for the PC market. As a result, several tier-one suppliers have prepared … Read more
OnLive is often credited with being the first commercial service, in 2010 to offer streaming gaming, or what is called Cloud-gaming by some. But in 2000, Finnish cloud gaming provider G-cluster demonstrated cloud gaming technology at E3. In 2004, SoftBank bought the company. A year later, Crytek began the research on a cloud gaming system or Crysis, but halted … Read more
Unity has been promising the arrival of its Reflect platform for AEC visualization for several months. The game engine company and Autodesk had announced plans to collaborate in a marriage of game engine technology and BIM in 2017. The deal was made manifest in June at the AIA conference in Las Vegas with demonstrations of Unity’s Reflect Plugin. The plugin … Read more
Regular readers will recall that we have been following Adshir’s developments for a few years now. Each time we see them, they have made significant advances. Our last encounter was at Siggraph in LA, and we wrote all about that here. At a private showing, they demonstrated realtime, 4K ray tracing on a powerful laptop, realtime, 60 fps ray tracing … Read more
Microsoft is all-in on ray tracing, and well they should be as the dominating PC gaming platform and a significant console supplier. When Nvidia announced its RTX series Turing-based GPUs at Siggraph in July 2018, Microsoft was right behind with its Windows 10 OS and SDK to support for DirectX raytracing (aka DXR tier 1.0) in October 2018. Within one … Read more
The memory company ups its game and its stack With the acquisition of Fwdnxt, an AI software and hardware startup, Micron Technology announced it was developing a new set of hardware and software tools for deep learning applications combined with advanced Micron memory. Fwdnxt’s(pronounced “forward next”)AI hardware and software technology will enable Micron to explore deep learning solutions required … Read more
Citilab’s CUBE simulation software provides predictive transportation technology, helping engineers and planners to design and optimize safe, efficient, effective, and environmentally sustainable mobility systems. Bentley's Year in Infrastructure (YII) is primarily a celebration and demonstration of the work the company’s customers are doing. Refreshingly, the company is able to demonstrate its tools at work in real-world applications and the … Read more
Graphisoft has achieved several significant milestones with its release of Archicad 23. The company claims to be the fastest BIM product in the industry. The company has had multi-processor support since 2017. That work has continued and in the ArchiCAD 23 release, the developers have worked in performance to speed startup, access large projects, and navigating through all the information … Read more
The Painter family of products has its origins in MetaCreations, a digital arts development powerhouse in Santa Barbara. They were early pioneers in computer graphics software for artists and the work they did lives on at Daz3D, Poser, and most vibrantly at Corel in Painter. The implosion of MetaCreations as a company at the turn of the century is a … Read more
Ray tracing has been used in games for some time, but as baked in images. Ray tracing, even at 30 fps, is a computational challenge that has befuddled and frustrated hardware and software engineers for decades. With clever algorithms, Moore’s Law, and dogged perseverance, computer graphics companies have pushed the envelope further every year, with 2018 marking the breakout year … Read more
At its annual DevCon event held this year in Milan, the Open Design Alliance brought its membership up to date on the significant development the organization has been doing at its members' behest. Established in the 90s by a group of companies competing with Autodesk in the CAD field, the ODA’s charter was to create an open option of DWG, … Read more
If you’ve ever played with or installed wi-fi operated lights like GE smart bulb or Philips’ Hue, then you’ve had the pleasure and fun of making them change color and brightness on command or by a timer. What if you could have those effects while you were playing a game? What if when you went into a dark tunnel or … Read more
