Dear Reader, nothing has changed the world quite like the Internet with its vast capacity for instantaneous, rich-media communications. Indeed, some web innovations are less than 5 years old, yet have literally exploded into public awareness, reaching critical mass faster than anything seen before the birth of the Internet. The oft-quoted expression "global village" is just a vague mantra that barely describles all the changes that have crept into our daily lives, making the world a smaller by bridging cultures. Ebay, Facebook, Xing, Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, MySpace, Skype and Joost (the new way of watching TV on the Internet) - these are the testaments to our era of rapid, ubiquitous communications. But despite the progress there are still many needs to be met and ideas yet to come, e.g. to represent the whole Earth in interactive 3D from real-time data and with full mulitmedia integration. We've already accomplished a great deal - the step from 2D to 3D, interactivity with convincing real-time renderings and much more. Future innovations, driven by the web consumer demand, will include interactive TV and autostereoscopic displays, thereby enhancing our global village. In a few years such dreams will become reality. With our 3D software Bitmanagement is working on that future - a future you yourself can experience as we will be exhibiting at SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego, USA, from August 5 - 9. Please come visit us at booth 029. I welcome your opinions and comments. Please write to me. Yours |
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News |
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SIGGRAPH 2007.
The SIGGRAPH conference and exhibition, often termed "the Mecca" of the computer graphics industry, this year takes place in San Diego, California, USA. Providers of both hardware and software will demonstrate the latest trends from 3D monitors to virtual worlds to Earth viewers. The three day long conference will be followed by an exhibition, lasting a further 3 days. Bitmanagement will be exhibiting at the Web3D booth (number 029). Besides state of the art examples of interactive Web3D applications, we will be showcasing the authoring tool BS Editor and the first release of BS Contact supporting the COLLADA game interchange format. Furthermore Bitmanagement will announce upcoming support for the Linux and Mac OSX operating systems. |
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Siemens in the US to Develop a Kind of “X-ray Vision”.
Siemens scientists based at a research center in Princeton will make available to surgeons an enhanced view into the human body during surgical operations. For that purpose Siemens have developed a head-mounted-display, which could provide this “X-ray vision” via augmented reality (AR) technology, which surgeons are long awaited and patients will benefit greatly from. article (German only) |
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Planar to Roll Out StereoMirror.
The US based producer of displays, Planar in Oregon, which specializes in stereoscopic hardware and software, has now launched their StereoMirror which can display images and moving pictures in flicker-free, high-resolution stereo. According to Planar, the StereoMirror thus assures a headache-free stereoscopic viewing experience. |
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Virtual 3D Town Models Booming.
Increasingly research labs like the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany, are involved in the development of 3D city models. The institute has initiated two projects, the first of which investigates how to generate synthetic 3D city models for mobile terminals with smaller displays, and the second is to discover how to implement VR models for sustainable utilization of agricultural land. Both projects aim to develop better tools for planning cities and urban spaces. |
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3Dims Becomes a Certified 3D Hardware Partner.
3Dims in Frankfurt, Germany, is an innovator in "portable reality" and one of the most prominent developers of 3D virtual reality solutions. The firm offers consulting, components and integrated hardware/software solutions to industries such as computer aided engineering (CAE), manufacturing, chem-pharm, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), architecture and others. 3dims website (German only) |
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Announcements |
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BS Editor from Bitmanagement.
Bitmanagement will soon bring to market its newly developed authoring tool BS Editor. This tool is designed to help developers to add interactivity and behaviors to 3D objects and scenes in order to enhance applications. It allows the import of 3D models from the leading authoring tools like 3ds max and blender that can then be integrated into applications by using the BS Editor, without requiring extensive knowledge of the 3D standards VRML and X3D. |
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Bitmanagement to Develop Earth Viewer.
The company is currently developing an Earth viewer, which allows users to zoom from orbit down to the Earth's surface and explore with freedom. A demo video, incorporating geographic data of Germany from GeoContent GmbH (Magdeburg, Germany), demonstrates the potential of the Earth viewer. Bitmanagement, in cooperation with international partners, will offer the viewer software with geographic data to customers, for integration into their 3D business solution. Moreover, geo-referenced 3D models, custom user interfaces, database connections and data encryption can be added. |
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Bitmanagement is Porting BS Contact to Linux and Mac.
Bitmanagement is preparing BS Contact for compatibility on multiple platforms. Due to customer demand, Bitmanagement is porting its high-performance rendering engine, BS Contact, to the Linux and Mac OSX operating systems. It is intending to show a first preview of the Linux version at this year's SIGGRAPH. |
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Developments and Technology |
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Bitmanagement Broadens Strategic Orientation With COLLADA 3D Standard.
BS Contact now supports the exchange format COLLADA. The stable and high-performance viewer, BS Contact, now enables the visualization of 3D objects and virtual worlds based on the industry standard COLLADA. Such files cansimply be integrated as inlines within VRML/X3D scenes. Together with the workflow tools and protos of Bitmanagement, content developers can create applications using COLLADA 3D objects. Although COLLADA is designed as a pure exchange format for the games industry, BS Contact can display COLLADA files with realism and speed. Game development is possible as interactivity and behaviour can be created with VRML/X3D, whilst physics and shaders provide the necessary simulation capability and visual quality required by cutting-edge games. |
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Applications |
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Planet 9 Studios Launches GIS Multi-user System.
Planet 9 has developed a GPS and avatar-based social networking application for use in games, navigation and emergency response. RayGun is the first 3D cell phone and GPS device tracking system and it includes 70+ high-resolution, 3D models of real-world locations. The RayGun client runs on laptops, hand-helds, cell phones and embedded systems. RayGun is backed by the GeoFeeder server which supports Web3D and Open Geospatial Consortium ISO standards as well as Google Earth. Ray Gun is built atop a geographic server using X3D and exports to both X3D and .dae (for import into Google Earth). RayGun is currently in private beta for interested developers and customers. RayGun uses BS Contact VRML/X3D. |
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Configurators Assist Sales.
Companies are increasingly developing 3D product configurators to aid in sales and marketing. Interactive configurators enable customers to be more personally involved in the customization and production of the item they are intending to buy. Selling often requires a visual presentation of options and accessories, especially for instance in the field of fashion where customers may mix and match colors, garment cut and ensemble outfits. |
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Web3D Consortium and Bitmanagement Present Case Studies.
Together the websites of the Web3D Consortium and Bitmanagement Software detail over 50 project case studies and demos of interactive applications that utilize the ISO standard X3D format. The applications demonstrate the wide range and complexity of tasks that can be addressed with VRML and X3D. In almost every market segment, visualization using interactive 3D can generate commercially beneficial outcomes. |
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Configurator For Online Visualization of Technical Products.
The "Airbus Configurator" graphically represents and enables full customization of the range of Airbus commercial passenger jets. Users are able to examine and interactively adjust airplane options (such as seating layouts) in real-time and assign different airline corporate identities. Using auto stereoscopic displays enriches the visualization with first-class depth perception. |
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Trade Shows and Events |
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Web3D Symposium 2007 in Perugia.
This year's Web3D Symposium was held in beautiful Perugia, Italy, and was well attended by leading companies. Nokia opened the conference with a keynote address that presented 3D technology for games and location-based services on mobile devices. The Sony Playstation team delivered a great paper outlining the adoption of the 3D exchange format COLLADA, which due to its XML basis is increasingly interoperable with X3D. IBM also joined the symposium and engaged in discussions with the Web3D software providers. |
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Fraunhofer Science Days IFF in Magdeburg, Germany.
The 9th annual IFF Science Days took place in the new Virtual Development and Training Center (VDTC). With 400 participants from industry and the research and academic communities, attendance was stronger than ever before. The large proportion of participants from commercial enterprises demonstrated that the IFF Science Days is meeting the needs of corporate players. The content of this year’s conference emphasized virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). VR denotes a three-dimensional and interactive environment created by a computer in which users can fully immerse themselves. Augmented reality refers to the insertion of information into (augmentation of) a user’s field of vision (reality). |
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