De feestdagen komen er aan, je begint gadgethonger te krijgen. Je begint te dagdromen over LED projectoren, LCD flatscreens en coole fototoestellen. Dat dachten ze ook bij Nikon.

Het middel dat de honger moet stillen is de Nikon S1000pj. Een 12.1 Megapixel compact camera met ingebouwde projector. Maar levert dit toestel nu echt een middel om de honger te stillen, en is het meer dan een gadget?

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj productshot

De Breedhoek Nikkor zoomlens laat een vergroting tot 5 keer toe waardoor je zowel mooie landschapsfoto’s als portretfoto’s kan maken. De 12.1 Megapixel beeldsensor laat je toe foto’s te maken tot 40cm op 50cm zonder dan ook maar iets aan kwaliteit in te boeten. Op zich niets al te speciaals, dit loop je wel meer tegen het lijf in cameraland.

Nu, die projector. Want daar gaat het hier tenslotte om. Omdat dit een unicum is, willen we Nikon voorlopig het voordeel van de twijfel geven. De ingebouwde LED projector heeft een lichtsterkte van 10 lumens, waarmee je in een sterk verlichte kamer tante nonneke mooi kan projecteren tot 30cm afstand.

Het is pas in een gezellig verlichte ruimte, waar de lichten wat gedempt zijn dat ie het echt goed doet. Gedaan met tien keer hetzelfde verhaal te vertellen en de camera door te geven aan alle nonkels en tantes. Projecteer even de foto’s op tafel of op de muur en iedereen kijkt gelijk mee. Hoe donkerder de ruimte, hoe groter je het beeld kan projecteren, tot 50cm breed. Spaart iedereen weer wat tijd en dan kan jij sneller aan de borrels beginnnen. Buiten het gadget gehalte, heeft Nikon ook de Nikon S1000pj voorzien van de EXPEED technologie om de beeldkorrel te onderdrukken waardoor je keer op keer zuivere afbeeldingen schiet en een hybride VR stabilisatie systeem om altijd zeker te zijn van een scherpe foto. Dit gebeurt door de lens in een beweegbare behuizing te steken zodat die mee golft met de beweging, de beeldsensor op zijn beurt merkt deze beweging ook op en corrigeert daarna nog een keer.

Wat ben je met een scherpe foto waarop je familie gesloten ogen heeft en kijkt alsof de wereld gaat vergaan? Juist, daar ben je niks mee. Daarom zit er op de Nikon S1000pj ook een resem trucjes die door gezichtsherkenning bepalen of iedereen op de foto lacht met z’n ogen open. Dat bespaart u de kopzorgen en uw foto’s zien er een pak leuker uit.

Samengevat, heb je dus een 12.1 Megapixel toestel met gemiddelde specificaties in een mooi afgewerkte behuizing. De Nikon S1000pj is beschikbaar in Zwart en Zilver zoals op de foto te zien is. De meegeleverde afstandsbediening draagt mooi bij aan de meerwaarde van de projector. Misschien een beetje duur als je niemand hebt om je foto’s aan te tonen, maar voor zij die hun foto’s graag delen met familie of vrienden is het misschien wel wat. Wij vinden de Nikon S1000pj alleszins een mooie toevoeging.

Nikon D3s & 70-200 f2.8 VRII Review!

Well this has to be the few reviews that i have seen with the Nikon D3s and Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VRII at the sametime. Webshooter.Tv has some nice samples between D3, D3s, 70-200 f2.8 VR, and 70-200 f2.8 VRII. You can see a straight comparison how much of a difference the new body and lens can make! If you don’t believe me see for yourself after the jump. Source:[Webshooter.tv/Nikonrumors]

The absence of vignetting around the corners of the frame is the most noticeable difference I note on the VRII. Vignette control was set to LOW on the D3S just as it was on my usual D3 + 70-200 VR combo and I saw no vignette at f/2.8 or 3.2. While I didn’t have a chance to test D3S with VR at the three weddings that I shot (carrying one 70-200 is heavy enough), a later controlled test proved that the disappearance of vignette has nothing to with D3S or its firmware but purely by the VR II’s optical brilliance. You will see that when I couple the VR with D3 or D3S, the vignette reappears.

As you can see from the image above that the new Nikon D3s and Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VRII seems to be a clear winner!

Click HERE to the complete review!

Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson

Oh, man, how do I review this book? I think the first thing I have to say about it is it would make a fantastic game. It has lots of action, lots of detective work, lots of history which has our hero has to know in order to figure everything out, it also has lots of discussions on religion.

So, there are two worlds in this book, the real world and the metaverse or virtual reality. Our hero is called Hiro Protaganist and is part Black and part Japanese, his nemesis, Raven, was Aleut. The father’s of both of these men were caught up in the backlash of the atomic bombs in World War Two which changed their DNA so that they were both stronger, faster, with better reflexes and smarter than the rest of the world. Raven was a homicidal maniac, Hiro was the only one who could face him everyone else just ran. Hiro was a wiz with the computer and got into the metaverse on the ground floor, he wrote a lot of the programming.

The real baddie is L. Bob Rife who’s discovered a virus and is planning on taking over the world with it. I can’t say too much about it as it’ll give the whole book away but I can say there’s a lot of religion involved and if you know anything about today’s religions you should be very, very scared.

Warnings:
Sex scenes
Lots of swearing
Lot of violence and some of reasonably graphic

A 10ª edição do Griffe Show teve início na sexta-feira (06-11)
e já conta com um público intenso e ávido por marcas de qualidade
com desconto de até 75%. As novidades são roupas e acessórios femininos
e masculinos, roupas infantis e uma variada praça de alimentação.

LEIA MAIS NO SITES
:: SORTIMENTOS.COM >> http://www.sortimentos.net/?p=4252
:: GEBBEG >> http://gebbeg.com.br/?p=7270
:: MODA EVENTOS >> http://modaeventos.com.br/?p=2343

.

O 10º Griffe Show apresenta desconto de até 75% em marcas consagradas.
Este é uma bela oportunidade de adquirir uma bermuda xadrez (R$ 70,00)
da Joss ou uma sapatilha azul (R$ 89,90) da Le Solier, conforme
a foto acima. O evento, que acontece iniciou no dia 06 de novembro
e se estende até o dia 22 no Minascentro (Rua Guajajaras, 1022, Centro)
em Belo Horizonte (MG).

LEIA MAIS NOS SITES
:: SORTIMENTOS.COM >> http://www.sortimentos.net/?p=4249
:: GEBBEG >> http://gebbeg.com.br/?p=7273

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Mundos e a Mente Humana:
Um olhar nas teorias de construção da realidade e espaços virtuais

Karl Popper era, sem dúvida, um visionário. Alguém que pensa a realidade em tais canais, não pode ser uma pessoa comum. Na sua palestra, intitulada Three words – The Tanner Lecture on Human Values apresentada em 1978, ele divide a realidade em três Mundos.

O Mundo Um, o mundo dos vivos ou objectos físicos, dos eventos palpáveis onde nos encontramos. O Mundo Dois, o mundo mental dos objectos, dos sentimentos, dos pensamentos e decisões, percepções e observações, e dos eventos mentais. E, por fim, o Mundo Três, o mundo dos produtos da mente humana. Para Popper, o Mundo Três é onde residem os objectos abstractos, as teorias científicas, as histórias, os mitos, as ferramentas da mente, a intuição social, bem como as obras de arte. Defende também que este mundo é palco do conhecimento objectivo que possibilita a crítica ou a aprovação de teorias.

Mas qual a relação entre este Mundo Três e a realidade virtual?

Para começarmos a falar desta temática, temos de nos integrar do termo de ciber-espaço de William Gibson, pela primeira vez definido no seu livro Neuromancer como “uma alucinação consensual vivida diariamente por milhões de operadores legítimos…”. Talvez uma definição demasiado rebuscada. Apesar do termo ser alvo de polémica por ser considerado (agora) desactualizado em relação a conceitos mais recentes como ‘novos media’ ou ‘era digital’, o termo ciber-espaço continua a ser defendido ao longo dos anos, e, para Michael Benedikt, em 1991, no seu livro Cyberspace: First steps, ele redefine o ciber-espaço como “um lugar onde nada é esquecido e, no entanto, tudo muda”. A realidade virtual entra nesta definição de Benedikt.

Devido ao seus conhecimentos em arquitectura, ele propõem, pela primeira vez, sete princípios de construção do ciber-espaço. Esses conceitos são a base dos mundos virtuais que agora conhecemos. Uma plataforma de como o mundo, para além do real, deve seguir de maneira a todos os que entrarem nele não se sentirem completamente desorientados, como algo de fora do nosso mundo – O Mundo Um.

E chegamos, finalmente, à relação entre os dois mundos (que afinal são três). O mundo da realidade virtual é (ou deve) ser para nós, o mundo de criação, experimentação, análise e teoria, aprovação e crítica, mas sempre com um reflexo nos outros dois mundos. Como a arte, os objectos, apesar de terem reflexo no mundo um, o “nosso” mundo, têm e incorporam um significado sem barreira no mundo três.

Pretendemos atingir aquilo que Popper refere no seu trabalho, que “as nossas mentes são as criadoras do Mundo 3; mas o Mundo 3, em retorno não só informa as nossas mente, mas também as cria.”

(“,)

Nikon D300s + Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR at 195mm f/5.6 ISO900 1/125 Second

Suki likes to walk, but there’s nothing she loves more than going to a dog park and running free, especially when she gets to socialize with other dogs (and people too!). It’s been a long time since I’ve used my Nikkor 70-300mm lens, so today I decided to bring it as my only lens for our little outing with Suki.

Nikon D300s + Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR at 270mm f/5.6 ISO1400 1/500 Second

This was also the first time I got a chance to test out the high frame rate and 51-point, 3D tracking auto-focus in my new D300s. I must say, the auto-focus in this camera is outstanding for moving targets (and Suki reeeally moves). The frames advance so rapidly that the camera sounds like a machine gun…very cool!

Nikon D300s + Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR at 300mm f/8 ISO320 1/500 Second

Ok now for some random stuff. This little girl entered the park and kept her hands close to herself around all the dogs (I guess to avoid any contact). Not long after she got there with her family, she told her parents she wanted to go to the “people park”.

Nikon D300s + Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR at 195mm f/5.6 ISO360 1/30 Second

Nikon D300s + Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR at 135mm f/5.6 ISO 560 1/60 Second

After Suki ran around for a while, we sat down at a cafe outside and enjoyed some afternoon coffee. I sat back and took a few snaps of things that surrounded me. The D300s puts out some amazing color.

Nikon D300s + Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR at 180mm f/5.6 ISO800 1/125 Second

Here’s Suki at the cafe. She doesn’t really like sitting still while we sit around doing nothing, especially if there’s a lot going on, but she tolerated it.

Nikon D300s + Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR at 200mm f/5.6 ISO900 1/60 Second

….and when we got home, I noticed these lovely flowers growing in our back yard. There wasn’t too much light left to work with, so I had to hand hold this shot to get it quick. Didn’t get the depth of field I wanted, and it’s a little on the saturated side, but hey, I like it!

With the exception of the first and sixth photos (from the top) on which I did some minor color correction, all the images from today’s post are straight out of the camera. Hey, sometimes it’s just easier that way!

Ismét két tesztet passzírozunk egy posztba. Igazából ketten tesznek ki egy tesztet, de legalább dupla adag mintaképet láthattok.

• Ganref teszt – japánul | angolul
• Impress teszt - japánul | angolul
  

…now that it has been colder than normally in October/November.

These Helsinki icons at the Central Railway Station were created by Emil Wickström and there are two others just outside of the photo on the left. The statues are called lyhdynkannattajat (carriers of the lanterns).

During the past years VR railway company has used them as animation figures in their advertising. The green hats are also part of their advertising campaign.

China feiert sich auf dem Tian’anmen-Platz. Vor zwanzig Jahren kurz vor den Montagsdemonstrationen in Leipzig fand an diesem Platz das Tian’anmen-Massaker statt. Studenten hielten den Platz besetzt um für die Öffnung der Gesellschaft zu protestieren. Stattdessen schriet das Militär gewaltsam auf dem Platz des himmlischen Friedens ein. Zwar worden dort selbst keine Menschen getötet, aber in den anderen Stadtteilen starben mehrere Tausend Menschen.

This past week has been crazy. No time for blogging, flickr, or photography. On Saturday, though, I photographed a wedding for the first time. A long time friend of the family was getting married, and I agreed to shoot the event from start to finish as a gift to the bride and groom. Yep, for free. Ouch!

Nikon D300s + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC at 22mm f/5.6, ISO400 1/30 Second

I suppose it’s inevitable that if people know you have a pretty nice camera, and they see that you love photography, that eventually a friend with a limited budget will ask you to take photos of their wedding. I’ve had a keen interest in land/city scape photography as of late, so the thought of portrait/event photography had me a little nervous. After all, these are two completely different crafts. A landscape stays put while I fire away. It doesn’t have anywhere to go or any one to see. If I mess up during one session, it’s ok, I can come back tomorrow. Not so at a wedding. You get one chance to capture key moments, and that’s it!

That’s why the fact that I was doing this pro bono did not mean I didn’t feel any pressure. For example, the photographer who covered my wedding missed the kiss. Yes, our very first kiss as a married couple only exists in our memories, because apparently our photographer was doing something more important at the time (sleeping?). We were pretty upset! So I really wanted to stay on top of the ceremony, because these memories needed to be recorded.

I tried to arrange get to the event super early to scout the location out and take some test shots, but it didn’t work out that way, unfortunately. The place wasn’t open until within an hour before the start of the wedding, and I soon as I arrived, I needed to get shots of the groom and best man. This is pretty much how the entire day went: very hectic, fast paced, and seat-of-the-pants photography. I loved it and hated it all at the same time!

I didn’t get a lot of help from the actual location of the wedding either. The interior was lit solely by low hanging, fluorescent bulbs. The walls were pinkish-purple and the carpet was green. Yikes! Instead of trying to overpower the available lighting, I tried to work with it. During the ceremony I used a single, camera mounted SB-800 flash with a fluorescent (green) color correction gel taped on. I oriented the head straight up and attached a Lumiquest 80/20 light modifier to the speedlight. It really helped to stop the action while sending enough light forward to fill in the shadows cast by the overhead lighting.

Nikon D300s + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC

After the ceremony ended, I spent about 5 minutes following the bride and groom around and snapping photos of guests greeting the new couple. Then came the worse part of all: Photos of the family. Multiple competing “photographers” surrounded me, often bumping right into me. I had to work fast and get it right quick. I survived to say the least. I’m just glad they came out ok! I’m thinking that I’ll be able to direct things more smoothly after I get a few more weddings under my belt.

Nikon D300s + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC

The reception was nearly 50 miles from the wedding ceremony location, in some remote spot that was very difficult to find. My GPS took me to the wrong spot, so we consulted the directions that came with the invitations, which were wrong as well! We ended up on location after the bride and groom, who wanted to take more photos before eating dinner. This meant I had to jump right out of the car and get to work without having a chance to really think things through. Oh well!

Nikon D300s + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC

The longer I do this, the more I’m going to work with posing. This time around, I sort of let the couple do their thing. While I intend to study traditional posing technique more, I did like the natural and comfortable look to the photos that came from just letting the two pose themselves, so I definitely feel there should be a balance in how much the photographer intervenes in this respect. Though I had a ton of different ideas in my head for portraits of the bride and groom, they seemed a little more interested in relaxing at the reception, so I literally had less than 5 minutes to produce a few formal portraits at the reception hall. Fortunately, at this point of the day, I was used to fast pace!

The reception hall interior was an interesting place to shoot. The tungsten lighting inside was so warm that I had trouble making a full color correction, even with an orange gel over my flash. But I ended up liking the warmth of the room. Even my own two eyes perceived the warmth of the ambient light, so no sense cooling it down! Below is the best man with his wife. Aren’t they photogenic!? They look like a pair of movie stars:

The craziness died down as dinner began. I just relaxed, shooting small details in the reception hall and playing with the exposure I’d need for the rest of the indoor events. While the family insisted that I eat, my mind was too busy and anxious, so I chomped down on a clif bar and kept moving. Soon after, the dancing got started:

Nikon D300s + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC

Nikon D300s + Tokina 11-16 f/2.8, SB-900 Camera left, SB-800 Camera right triggered via CLS

I have several images of the bride and groom dancing that I’m pretty happy with, but of course, I can’t post all of my favorites here.

The image of the entire interior from above was fun to capture. The scene is much darker than is shown in the photo, so to brighten things up a bit at cast some cool shadows, I bounced light off the wall on each side of the room using my two strobes.

One of the things requested of me was a shot of the bride and groom at each table. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to these shots. Group photos are tough enough, but throw in some really low interior lighting and now you’re sweating bullets. I think I was able to manage OK with these, though, using one flash as a main light and the other dialed down for fill:

Nikon D300s + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC

In the end, the groom primarily requested and expected coverage of the ceremony and maybe a couple of snaps of the reception. But for some reason, I kept shooting till the end of the event. I was exhausted afterward, but I think it was worth my time. The experience was a great way to break into the crazy business of wedding photography, and give my current skill set a real run for its money. I learned a thing or two by throwing myself into it I think, and can definitely see how I can make refinements. Who knows, maybe I’ll say yes to the next gig too. =)

Nikon D300s + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC

A few more notes:

My workhorse glass for this wedding was my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC, paired with my Nikon D300s, though I brought most of the lenses I own to the event. The VC kept the background steady at slow sync speeds down to around 1/15th second, especially during the reception, were I relied on rear curtain to burn in ambient light into the exposure. The Tamron had no problems focusing quickly and accurately, and especially at f/5.6, the images were tack sharp. I found the focal range to be extremely flexible for wedding coverage as well.

In all, I fired off about 800 frames during the relatively short event, and it probably would have been a lot more if I was with the bride before the wedding (I didn’t even get introduced to her until AFTER the ceremony).

Ok, this post is way too long….I’ll talk about other aspects of the wedding in later entries. Special thanks to Bridget for being my brave and tireless assistant throughout the 7-8 hours we worked!

Congratulations to the new couple!

Nikon D300 + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC

Some of the strange notions that pop into my head can be disregarded as meanderings, but when I happened to mention a super-internet idea to a friend (the concept of which is really hard to explain here, but I’ll try) there were some aspects I had to concede were good. Maybe not to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but to me they seemed a sensible way forward once the kinks could be worked out. It is, of course, gonna play into my NaNo novel, but the idea of creating a customizable and completely interchangeable internet experience needs expounding…

How many social networking platforms are out there? Too many. In the future of my NaNo there will be an identity card style homepage for everyone, where they can use whatever they want to share with the world. Compatibility issues will be a thing of the past, and the entire internet will be one large social networking scene that has multiple sub-categories for individual likes and dislikes. Into comics? There will be a check button to join that category. Into films? Yeah, check button. Into mind-altering substances? You guessed it, another check-button…

Forums, which I kinda have an addiction to joining – and spend all night surfing for great threads to haunt – should be one area which future software can really improve on. I like a lot of forums the way they are, with maybe the exception of really slow ones like the NaNo set-up. A meta-forum, where millions of different forums (yeah, I’m not using fora here, just ’cause) will merge into a single entity would be great for hot discussions. Threads splitting and merging and splitting again as the number of commenters adding their voices increases…

A person would never have to join another forum again. Join one, and you join them all. A geek’s dream come true.

E-mail, which has been getting tweaks and nudges ever since its’ creation, would – I am certain – be replaced by an IM / SMS-type communication between individuals. When processing power has achieved the ability to create real-time VR, which is quite a few years off even yet, we will have avatars speaking for us in voice communication so real that it would appear animals could talk. This is something I really want, even though I know I’ll probably never live to see the concept realized… Damn limited human longevity we currently have to accept.

If bleeding-edge technology lives up to the promises of various experts, we will see a rise in e-commerce that will make even the largest internet companies of the modern world seem like fly-by-night operators. Hundreds of billions of transactions made every minute, with exponential growth thanks to a subservient robot workforce that can load in new software to accomplish even the most complex of tasks. This will, naturally, see the end of shopping centres as a place to buy product, but it might just reestablish the locations as a place to congregate with friends. I’ve never been one to believe that a completely digital existence will ever come to pass.

I’m still undecided on cybernetics as a point I should bring up in my novel, because the issues which arise from medical procedures to augment human bodies is one which has been covered to thoroughly – and so well – elsewhere. William Gibson is the standard SF text for that kind of thing and, along with Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, is in no need of a reheated and half-hearted answer from myself. There may be minor allusions to the procedures available, but the more I think on the things which would need to be addressed the more I worry. It’s not enough to parrot accepted ideas… My story has to go somewhere new.

The one area I will be completely avoiding, due to the terribly complex and ever-shifting debate on, is the file-sharing one. Never have so many intelligent people been involved in an argument with so many half-assed assumptions in the history of the internet. I can’t even begin to explain why some of the utterances made my music chiefs are so stupid, because every time I begin to make a balanced argument for file sharing they decide to change their objections… “We’re losing money,” (no, you really aren’t) “It’s immoral,” (and the music industry is?) “File-sharing is evil,” (and music producers are all saints?)…

Added to the confusion which exists about copyright, and you have an impossible task wrapping a fiction around the subject which is less stupid and unbelievable than the truth.

You will, of course, be able to see whether I have managed to think this concept of a super-internet through thoroughly enough when November rolls around. Ye gads, two and a bit days to go… I’m gonna have to sit down and really think about the opening scenes if I have any hope of sounding at least semi-coherent. Time has flown by so quickly that I haven’t even managed to begin working out where some of the jokes and references I want to use can be dropped in…

I may just pop over to Microsoft to talk with someone about setting the internet to rights after November… I kinda like the idea of putting Facebook out of business.

Went for a walk today and took some nice shots. I’m still looking for some Fall inspiration. Thinking about some abstract photo’s of differently colored leaves or a leaf in the water.. still have to work out the details though :p. Hope to add some new ones in the coming days. Think I’m done with the mushrooms by now though .

I took the green bokeh/insect photo a while back and just saw it in my Lightroom database and liked the bokeh.

Until next time!

Ogre3D is an open source scene graph which prides itself as being in the forefront when it comes to new trends and features.

Ogre seems to grow more and more on me the more I look into it.

Parallel rendering

Parallel rendering in Ogre3D has been known to work in a cluster of PC:s. There is even an extensive guide on the wiki on how to set up a cluster using Ogre3D, Chromium and DMX.

Head tracking

Ogre3D has a howto on how to set up head tracking with a wWii remote, just as Johnny Lee did.

Interoperability

This could be a potential problem. The virtual reality software that we run right now, E-ON Studio, runs om Windows XP. It would therefore be practical if the open source solution that is to be implemented would co-exist on that particular operating system. However, most documentation seem to be aimed at the Linux environment. This applies to the Parallel rendering example in particular, as it uses DMX X servers, which are not available in a Windows environment.

Granted, there are builds for Windows XP. However, doubt remain as to whether I in Windows can do e.g. parallel rendering.

Downside

Ogre3D is not a game engine. It is only a scene graph so if you want audio, physics etc (like we do) you would have to include those libraries yourself. This could lead to that you put way too much effort in just getting all the different pieces of the “game engine” to work with each other. Time that you could have spent developing.

CaveUT is a project aimed at bringing Unreal Tournament 2004 into a CAVE-like environment.

How it was done

The CaveUT project solved the problem of rendering different screens by utilizing UT2004’s spectator mode. The game allows a maximum of 32 players, and as such your maximum number of view nodes are limited to 32.

More information can be found here.

Licensing

UT2004’s game engine, Unreal Engine, is not licensed under open source. However, there seems to be a free, educational license called Unreal Engine 2 Runtime: Demo Version. If that is enough for our needs is unclear. Further research is needed.

ioquake3 is built upon id Software’s tech 3 game engine. It is an open source project that aims to clean up the code, fix bugs and to add new features.

Usage

ioquake3 is released under the GPLv2 license, and a number of games have been released using this engine. A more detailed list which also includes products using the proprietary license is located here.

Additional comments

id’s next iteration of their game engine, tech 4, is expected to be released under the GPL license in 2010.

Skeletal animation

ioquake3 doesn’t have skeletal animation in its true sense. Instead, it relies on MD3 meshes. The animations contained in an MD3-file are vertex based.

This can be seen as a draw-back compared to skeletal animation, and is worth pointing out.

Benefits

ioquake3 along with id’s tech 3 have proven to be a reliable, high-performance game engine.

Bottom line

ioquake3 lacks support for Skeletal Animation. Therefore, it is not suitable for our work, although it has some very nice benefits.

Delta3D has been known to work with CAVE-systems. Also, it is known to work in a cluster environment.

Overview

Delta3D is an open source game engine which has been widely used by many different projects and is well-supported by a vast community. Delta3D bundles together many well-known open source projects and offers an easy to use API to access them.

Skeletal Animation

It supports Skeletal Animation, but the process from 3D Studio Max to Delta3D is a bit complicated and involves Cal3D. In short, you have to export the character in four different parts:

• Skeleton
• Material
• Mesh
• Animation

Delta3D’s Pros & cons

Interoperability

Delta3D can run on a variety of different operating systems:

• Windows (XP)
• Linux
• Mac OS X

As E-ON Studio runs on Microsoft Windows, it is important that the open source solution that we select also can run on this platform and co-exist peacefully.

3D Studio Max terrain

Delta3D can import Static Mesh Terrain via the Delta3D World Builder. It takes a .3ds file as an input and converts it to a Delta3D-useable format.

Community

Delta3D seems to have a large and active community which will help the open source project in many ways. Furthermore, it can be beneficial to our goal in bringing Skeletal Animation to LTH:s VR-lab.

An active community can provide help and feed-back along the way of implementing the system.

Speed

Delta3D uses Open SceneGraph as to draw its scene, and is considered to be “high performance”

Open SceneGraph (OSG) is the scene graph used in Delta3D. It is a widely used open source scene graph that provides an object oriented framework on top of OpenGL.

Project activity and community

This project is active with a large community and periodic releases.

Parallel rendering

OSG is  multi-threaded and has customizable support for multiple CPU/multiple GPU machines.

Character animation

As of the 2.8 release Open SceneGraph introduced osgAnimation for character and solid body animation.

There is also a nodekit that allows Cal3D to be used with OSG, called osgCal2.

Interoperability

OSG has the same level of interoperability as Delta3D; it works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows.

Drawbacks

In order to implement a system which uses OSG, I would be forced to use a multitude of different packages to handle character animation, I/O calls, head tracking etc.

OpenSG is a open source scene graph that differs from the others due to its extensibility, multi-thread safety and clustering capabilities.

Clustering

Source: http://opensg.vrsource.org/trac/wiki/FeaturesClustering

What first caught my eye was the clustering capabilities of OpenSG. As OpenSG is built with multi threading in mind, it stores all changes to the system. That information can then be sent to a node for further processing.

This should make it dramatically easier to get a cluster-like system up and running.

Project Activity

I am a little unsure about this project’s activity or lack thereof. The last stable release, 1.8, came 2007. On the other hand, patches are still regularly added to the svn tree. and the mailing list is active aswell.

If it is no longer in development, is this a problem?

Things to keep in mind

• How does OpenSG play with different peripherals?
• Skeletal animation?

Panodigg is a cool place to find great new VR tours. I just found Tom Mills (vrwebdesign.co.uk) last creation, an extensive aerial panoramic coverage of London.

Tom says he was inspired by the fantastic photography of Oleg Gaponyuk and design by Pixelcase, from the New York virtual tour.

london-aerial-virtual-tour