Nvision08 – Nvidia’s 3D Future Showcased

The star of the keynote address on Monday was Nvidia’s CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang.  Just about everyone at Nvidia refers to him as “Jensen” and in my opinion, he is the heart and soul of Nvidia.  After being introduced by San Jose’s Mayor, Jensen took the stage, and with the help of several special guests, gave us a taste of what to expect from the rest of NVISION08. His keynote speech demonstrated and explained Nvidia’s vision for our 3-D future.  Massive computational power, recently unleashed by the GPU, will deliver ever-increasingly realistic graphics which will in turn, enhance our own experiences in entertainment and how we interact with each other in Nvidia’s brave new world of 3D.

Of course the basis for Nvidia’s visual computing revolution is the GPU, the graphics processor which is the basic technology driving the industry. To give an example of how the GPU is changing the world of high-performance computing is Stanford University’s Folding@home program. Folding@home is a distributed computing project where people from all over the world download and run software which when banded together creates some of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer in use takes the project closer to their goals of understanding of how proteins grow and perhaps helping us conquer diseases like Alzheimer’s and many types of cancer. Folding@home uses computational methods tied to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

Currently, Foh uses over two and one half million PCs, comprising nearly 300 teraflops of total processing power. In just a few months since the CUDA-accelerated version of Folding@home was released for Nvidia 8800 series and newer GPUs, less than 25,000 GeForce GPUs have been added to working on the Foh problem. What is amazing, is that these relatively few GPUs – less than 1% of the total used by Folding@home, provide almost five times the processing power, of all the CPUs in use by Folding@home!! The Stanford researchers are confident that the use of GPUs in their Foh application will significantly speed up the time required to find cures for their target diseases. So Nvidia began to draw a contrast between the GPU and the CPU that will remain as a theme throughout NVISION08.

If you are interested in joining the Folding@home effort, you can put your GPU’s spare cycles to work in helping Stanford researchers understand and cure diseases:

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Next, Peter Stevenson of Realtime Technologies (RTT) joined Jensen on the stage and described and demonstrated how visual computing is being applied to automotive design and styling. Stevenson showed us a digital prototype of a new Lamborghini model which was detailed down to the grain of the fabric and to every nut, bolt and screw in the automobile. This technology debuted mostly in aerospace design, but it is now filtering down to all types of products. It allows designers to design much better – and also make certain every part is in “tune” with every other before the manufacturing ever begins. It allows the designer to completely visualize the automobile – or any other product being designed – in 3D far better than ever before.

Next Jensen took us into the 3D virtual worlds of massively multi-player online (MMO) games. He was joined on stage by Taehoon Kim, co-founder of Nurien Software. Nurien is introducing a new type of MMO game that charges players only for “customizations” which he called micro-upgrades that should cost only a few cents each. This next-generation MMORPG – massivly multiplayer role-playing – type game from Nurien blends MMO gaming with social networking. This is actually very much in line with our own vision for AlienBabelTech’s forums – which will eventually be powered by a 3D game engine to allow for a degree of social interaction not found anywhere – yet. I must admit that I was surprised to see that ABT is also working toward a brave new future of virtual 3-D interaction as also envisioned the same way by Nvidia and we also found excellent tools at the event that will bring us closer to our own goal of entertainment and education for our members.

Next, Marv White of Sportvision gave some demos of relatively new technologies that have changed the way we watch sports on television. He showed how the line of scrimmage is projected onto a football field. Later he demonstrated how computational graphics are used to show the effects of “drafting” in a NASCAR race.  Sportvision uses the GPU to calculate the fluid dynamics of the air surrounding the race cars and they show the viewer what is invisible to the naked eye – something the race car drivers “feel” and what Kyle Busch of NASCAR later attested to the following day.

Jensen then moved on to digital photography and showed that consumer photo apps are now able to combine multiple exposures – from different photographers and cameras – to create high dynamic range images which completely eliminate the problem of contrast in exposure; they are able to refocus the image after it has been shot! One such app is Photosynth, recently released by Microsoft Live Labs which uses multiple photos of a site or object to create a 3D model and then it displays a 360 degree perspective of the object which can be manipulated and interacted with by the viewer.  Joshua Edwards of Microsoft Live Labs demonstrated how hundreds of photos of Stonehenge were assembled to display a 360 degree perspective of the site that could be interacted with.  A very nice illusion of depth is possible for a viewer to achieve on the Internet.  Jensen also pointed out that true 3-D dimensionalization of graphics is also possible in real time. Then he moved on to 3D gaming.

All 3D games are programmed with depth built into the program, so Jensen showed us a rather impressive demonstration of the latest 3D stereoscopic gaming technology from NVIDIA. After we put on our glasses, he showed us 3D stereo clips from NVIDIA’s new Medusa demo as well as an existing game, Age of Empires, that was easily converted to 3D by a GeForce GPU. Evidently over 350 existing games work well with this system which only requires the new 3D glasses.  These glasses are rumored to cost less than $200 for each pair.  Also required is LCD technology that uses 120hz for its displays, which are said to have no price premium over existing comparable screens. Of course, this is targeted at television gaming also. This technology was on display in the main exhibitor area and also in the LAN area so you could experience it for yourself. This editor likes gaming in 3D as the depth can be adjusted to provide the level of 3D immersion one desires.

Jan Huff of Perceptive Pixel’s was next on stage to give us a demo of his new multi-touch user interface.  He used a 100-inch multi-touch display to show us what a likely large typical user interface of the future will look like. Currently, he said the mouse and the cursor are too limiting, with only a few inputs possible at a time. On the other hand, with multi-touch technology, amazing interactions of more than one hundred inputs at a time are possible – using literally ‘hands on’ and allowing for several users to collaborate simultaneously. Of course high-end design will use this multi-touch first, but this technology should eventually be available to the business and home user.

Finally, Jensen was joined on stage by Tricia Helfer, Cylon #6 of Battlestar Galactica and more recently of Burn Notice. Tricia talked about her challenges of acting with virtual characters – including her fear of being replaced by a virtual actress. I would say there is no danger to her career. She then took us through the stages of how filming some of the scenes from the hit Sci-Fi Channel series were done.  It was a very entertaining 90 minutes and it certainly set the stage for the rest of NVISION08.  We were free to attend the exhibits, or do what I did and I walked through historic and rather beautiful downtown San Jose back to my room to take a nap as I had driven all night to get there.

By 6:30 PM I was back and in line at the Performing Arts Center to greet astronauts Buzz Aldren and Eileen Collins.  And at 9:00 PM Buzz introduced the Stereo Animated 3D “Fly Me to the Moon”.  I really didn’t know what to expect, having been rendered nauseous by previous 3D movies.  Well, although the movie was awful, centering around a silly plot to have 3 young flies journey to the moon with the USA astronauts and somehow foil a plot by Russian flies to sabotage the mission,  the 3D effects weren’t so bad.  Although the 3D was often overdone – just for the sake of showcasing the technology – the 3D glasses and the process have much improved.  I was glad when the movie was over, however.

Day One is also over.  An excellent start and the bar was set high by Jensen for the rest of the NVISION08 to meet.