Autodesk
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I received an email from a development partner yesterday checking in on Autodesk's VR offerings. It occurred to me that while I've spoken about them at the DevDays in the US and Europe, I haven't posted anything here. So here's some fairly up-do-date information on what technologies Autodesk has in the VR space. The way I've been tending to classify VR offerings in general is around the "distance from the metal": i.e. how much (relatively speaking) of the software stack does the executing code need to go through to get down to the display hardware. This is a somewhat arbitrary…
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The big news of the last week or so is that the Forge DevCon – which was held at Fort Mason in San Francisco in 2016 – is moving to Las Vegas for 2017. It will take place on November 13 & 14, i.e. Monday and Tuesday of the Autodesk University week (which in recent years has been when the DevDay and DevLab has happened). This is a good thing, in my opinion. Somewhat selfishly it'll mean less travel for those of us coming across from Europe, but it will also make AU a more compelling, developer-centric event. I've been…
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I'm once again across in the fine city of Munich. I flew again from Bern's local airport, this time with a couple of colleagues from other parts of Autodesk. Here's a quick photo I took from the window as the sun was setting over the Alps. It was nice to be above the fog for a while! We're attending an internal training called ABLE – the Autodesk Business Leadership Experience – which educates employees about competitive strategy and how it is used by – and impacts – companies such as Autodesk. Here's Jon Pittman, our VP of Corporate Strategy, talking…
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Happy New Year, everyone! This is my first day back after two full fantastic weeks off. We were up in the Bernese Oberland for the full 16 days and even managed to ski (or – in my case – snowboard) for 13 of them, despite an initial lack of snow. At the beginning of the break the conditions were like this: But thankfully by the end it was more like this: As a bit of an experiment, I've started to use the place where we stay in the mountains as a small-scale test-bed for home automation: as a holiday place…
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It's foggy and grey here in Switzerland, but thanks to the joy of mixed reality it's always snowing when you want it to be. If only it worked on the slopes! All the very best to this blog's readers for the festive season. Have a wonderful, relaxing break – those of you who are taking time off – and I'll see you back here in 2017!
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My biggest session from this year's Autodesk University – and the only one that was recorded – has just gone live on the AU website. The segment I'm part of starts 53 minutes into the recording, while I personally start talking at around the 1 hour mark, going through to 1h10. It was an interesting experience, talking to 1,000 people in a single session. While the lead up was a little stressful, I'm certainly happy I did it and – looking back at the recording – feel pretty good about managing to get the main points across reasonably…
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Noble Studios, the contractor who helped develop AutodeskResearch.com, has won a Platinum MarCom Award for the project. The site is indeed really cool: head on over if you haven't been there in a while. I have on my list of things to do – let's now call it a New Year's Resolution for 2017 – to start blogging over there, too. But there are plenty of interesting things to see even before that happens. 😉 Just for instance, check out some of the publications listed for the awesome Jos Stam, as well as some of his own entertaining…
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Things are moving ahead regarding the VR room we're building at Autodesk in Neuchatel. Come mid-January we'll be ready to welcome guests to the Neuchatel office and get them excited about the potential of applying Virtual Reality technology in the design space. This week we had Joel Pennington visit from the Autodesk LIVE team in San Francisco: he trained a number of people from the Neuchatel office on how to use the VR system and went through demos that showcase a variety of Autodesk tools and technologies. The breadth of demos we now have available is impressive and getting bigger…
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I was just sent this video (thanks, Aurelia!) featuring scenes from the amazing Design Nights Autodesk has held around the world. Yes, including the one we organised here in Neuchatel, Switzerland. I've had a pretty hectic start to the week, so this is (unusually, as it's Wednesday) my first post. But I have quite a bit to talk about, so it won't be my last. Right now I'm heading off to see Rogue One at the cinema: once again a Star Wars film is being released in French-speaking Switzerland two full days ahead of its US release date,…
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It turns there is a downside to choosing a small airline based in a small airport. My happiness at discovering both the Bern airport and the airline flying out of it was considerably lessened when my flight home was cancelled without explanation, last night. After much shared confusion with my fellow travellers, I ended up being offered a room in airport hotel and an 8am flight out today. So it was that I got back on the phone with Peter Schlipf and ended up joining the Forge Accelerator attendees for one last dinner at Fugazi No. 15. After the initial…