Nvision08 – Nvidia’s 3D Future Showcased
Nvidia’s first NVISION08 was held in San Jose’s convention center in California, very close to their headquarters in Santa Clara. Their goal was 10,000 in attendance and in the final address they stated that over 9,200 attended; later figures on Nvidia’s own site gives it as “over 8,000”. Weather was perfect for all three days of their event, generally sunny and remaining in the low-80s F for the day, which made it a pleasure to walk between the buildings that Nvidia used for their trade show. They divided their event into – partly for the general public, partly for the professional and also for the gamer. One big event highlight had over 200 hardcore gamers from all over the world set the new Guinness World Record for the longest continuous LAN party with over 100 participants. They kept gaming for 36 straight hours and it was a very nice award ceremony at the end with a lot of really cool prizes for everyone who participated; no one dropped out! Free coffee – and food – too, for the players during their marathon.
Here are the happy but exhausted new Guinness World Record holders at the closing ceremony:
In their press releases prior to the show, Nvidia described NVISION08 as Art, Technology and Passion. I would say that they mostly succeeded with their goals. Nvidia arranged interesting events for the general public, including several “meet and greets” with celebrities. This editor managed to get two autographs from the very gracious and beautiful actress Tricia Helfer, Cylon Number Six on the SciFi Channel’s show Battlestar Galactica. She was on hand at the Center for Performing Arts, across the street from the main convention center, to meet fans of her show and to sign autographs on the first afternoon of the event. I joined well over 200 of her fans to meet her and speak with her for just a moment. She is quite tall and towered over Jensen in his opening presentation that included her. Later guests included Kyle Busch of NASCAR and Jayme Hyneman and Adam Savage of Mythbusters.
Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Eileen Collins were on hand the second day to meet, greet, and also take photos with the NVISION attendees. Buzz is the second man to walk on the moon and he is a veteran of the Gemini and Apollo space programs. Buzz was also on hand later that night to introduce a free showing of the film, Fly Me to the Moon in 3D, using the newer circular polarized glasses. It is the first film to be created from its beginning to be stereo 3D. Sadly the film is very lacking in entertainment value – even for children, i think – but the 3D is less annoying and gimmicky than earlier 3D films.
Eileen Collins is the first woman to pilot and command the space shuttle. Eileen was also part of the keynote address where she talked about how visual computing is shaping the future of the space program. I also got to meet and greet with the astronauts and I was also able to quickly ask Eileen Collins if she agreed with fellow astronaut Dr. Mitchell’s recently stated belief that space aliens are in contact with us. She hadn’t heard about his statements evidently, and dismissed it as sensationalism, “You know how people are”.
Here is your editor with the two Astronauts
Well, for a better 3D effect than in most 3D movies which use really really shallow 3D, check out this movie “Mouldpenny at Schwimmbadclub” at : http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-3d-movies.html