Virtual Reality
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I've been waiting for this piece of news for months: Autodesk LIVE – the "one-click" publishing workflow from Revit to high-quality, interactive 3D visualization courtesy of Stingray – now supports VR via the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via a public beta. Admittedly it's more like two (or even three!) clicks, but the clicking does seem altogether painless. Here's a video showing what's what: This is great timing, as I've just heard that my Demons are at the doorstep (well, Zurich airport). I'll for sure be kicking the tyres on this workflow over the coming weeks. If you're…
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At Autodesk we're in the process of equipping a number of our offices around the world with high-end VR showrooms. San Francisco and Boston are already set-up with a number of others currently in progress. It seems likely that Autodesk Neuchatel is going to be one of the next ones to come online, which is a source of great excitement to me, at least. As part of that effort, we've placed orders for two Silverdraft Demon systems as well as two HTC Vive Business Editions. The first Vive arrived yesterday: If you were at the Forge DevCon, you'll already have…
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On Saturday I gave a couple of VR presentations at Micro16, an exhibition and conference held at Microcity, a (relatively) new technical hub in Neuchatel that houses part of EPFL. [I always pronounce Microcity with stress on the second syllable, much as Will Ferrel does when pronouncing "Metrocity" in the movie Megamind (so that it rhymes with "atrocity"). Anyway – it's just a (formerly) private joke shared with my wife and kids.] I'd been invited by a local organisation called Enigma & Indicium, which organises vocational workshops for young adults. The two sessions were attended by people aged from about…
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There's a new WebGL-based technology being developed by Autodesk and it's completely awesome. And you can request access to it today. Project Play has been in development for some time. It has some shared lineage with the Smithsonian X 3D Explorer – although I'm not sure to what extent, if any, they share code – and it's the viewing technology used by millions (?) around the world to explore the ReCapped Apollo 11 Command Module. But this technology is about way more than just viewing static models. It's a full node-based editor that allows you to create rich 3D experiences…
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This was a fun piece of functionality and super easy to add. I'd seen a few HoloLens demos where you can scale the model up and down using "bigger" and "smaller" voice commands. There's even some code in the HoloLens Toolkit that does it. But until I'd actually added it to our robot application, I hadn't really understood how interesting it was. You can scale a model down and have it sit on your desktop… …or you can scale it up to 10x its realworld size and inspect it in unbelievable close-up mode. From the inside! (Although in fairness the…
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After the first two parts of this series, where we looked at items 1 & 2 on the below list, it's time to tackle item 3: A single sound is assigned to our robot When the robot stops completely, so does the sound The same sound is assigned to each of the robot's parts When each part stops moving, so does the sound for that part A different sound is assigned to each of the robot's parts When each part stops moving, so does the sound for that part As I mentioned last time, I was fairly happy with the…
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Some of you may have heard about the launch of a new Autodesk product, last week, that's focused on generating interactive 3D environments from Revit models. It's called Autodesk LIVE and is part of the Autodesk LIVE Design umbrella (at least I think I have that the right way around). Autodesk LIVE Design is all about making it easier to apply best-in-class visualization technology from our Media & Entertainment division – who collectively know a few things about high-end rendering and animation, admittedly – to the world of design and engineering. Here's a video describing how Autodesk LIVE –…
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Today has been a strange day, to say the least. Waking up to the results of the UK's EU referendum (also known as the "Brexit" vote) was a complete shock, and I'm yet to recover. The world has certainly changed but it's going to be some time before the full impact is felt. Last week in SF I felt a little bit of this, although in a much more positive direction: that we were at a moment in time where things were about to change. Not immediately, and not for everyone, but I definitely came away with the sense that…
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After a hectic week in SF, I was looking forward to some relaxation, back in Switzerland, despite having a few visits planned for this week. It didn't quite work out that way, but it was all for the best. On Tuesday I spent most of the day with Hurni Engineering, a very close partner based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the centre of the watchmaking industry – and the home of Le Corbusier and Louis Chevrolet – in Switzerland. I visited alongside Martin von Wartburg (our manufacturing industry salesperson for Switzerland) and Peter Schlipf (the Forge Partner Development Manager for EMEA). It…
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With such a great first day at the Forge DevCon, how would the second (and final) day compare? Here it is, in pictures. 🙂 As for the first day, Jim Quanci, my long-time friend and former boss, acted as Master of Ceremonies. The first external presenter was Chris Anderson – who I mentioned yesterday. Chris is a very entertaining presenter, and talked about the evolution of the UAV industry. I love Chris's vision for how drones should evolve: it aligns perfectly with mine. I was very happy to see Thiago da Costa speaking next. Thiago was co-founder of Lagoa, a…