Monaco in the south of France is an attractive venue especially this time of the year when people living in places further north are hungry for some Mediterranean sun beams.

During my one day here I not only was able to see trees filled with oranges during what elsewhere is called winter (see my iPhone shot for a proof), I also had the pleasure to visit the Imagina 2011 event and exhibition, and to get updated on the latest news in 3D simulation and visualization solutions.

I wanted to share with you my personal impression and what stood out for me during my technofair walk-around:

1.) Convergence of the Physical and Virtual Content

During the visit of the vendor exhibition I’ve seen solutions targeted to digitize real objects, and to transfer them into a virtual environment – for augmenting the value of such application.

Objects range from whole  landscapes (for geo localization systems), houses to whole cities (in architecture and construction, city development), any industrial object (for reverse engineering) and also living objects (for health care applications).

To illustrate the point I choose a company called Topcon. They offer scanning solutions to digitize physical objects up to the size of a mountain range with an equipment in a fixed position.

In contrast to the statical use above, the equipment also can be mounted on a car and thus become a mobile data acquisition unit.

When cruising a city the whole environment can be digitized in 360° (other than Google’s service which consists of patch-worked 2D images) and the data are used to create a full 3D model of the recordings.

Imagine how a digitized environment of real 3D can add value to a virtual experience. It just gets more real.

See the video to understand how that works:

Looking at the the digital environments and virtual worlds presented to visitors at Imagina I have seen many efforts to let the 3D scenarios and characters show a maximum of realism. 3D geometries, colors and surfaces, human-like movements. Everything is done to convey the perception that the “virtual is real“, to draw the user into the scenario.

Most realistic presentation of virtual content makes use of  stereoscopic projection (needs glasses) and 3D screens (without glasses, and more and more convenient to look at), enabling power of graphics accelerators, innovative combination of standard hardware components to accomplish user immersion (AMD/ATI Eyefinity, can be visited at Dassault Systèmes Campus in Vélizy), and finally immersion by multi-touch navigation or full body use.

Dassault Systèmes runs a partnership program with leading manufacturers of devices and technologies which helps to drive this integration of physical and virtual environments. Lifelike experience needs the means to accomplish interaction of users and virtual applications.

2.) 3D Industry Applications

Imagina, as I was told, used to be a show for artists, designers and movie makers. Now my impression is that those are outnumbered by people who are interested in solving challenges in key industrial processes, such as design, simulation, manufacturing – with the help of 3D virtual environments.

Further, there is the application area of 3D simulation which allows for behavioral studies of objects in environments. Examples are traffic simulation in urban environments, or the analysis of panic scenarios in underground transportation for security optimization.

Applications in virtual learning, also called serious gaming, are used for service simulation and enable the use of products before they are physically available. Trainees are able to experience an environment which is not yet real, in a distant location or not readily accessible. Instead, trainees can visit the virtual copy.

As an example I’ll show an example for such a learning experience on an oil rig (built with 3DVIA) where the crew can be prepared for what awaits them there:

3.) Dedicated Solutions

This may be neither surprising nor new – but generally good news:  there is no general “one size fits all” 3D solution to meet all objectives at once. With the increasing capabilities of today’s 3D applications there is an increasing focus on users: what they need, what they can handle, what they do not want.

It’s all about using 3D as a media. But applications are very different dependent on which industry segment is served, which are the application domains (ranging from engineering to marketing communication to artistic use) and last but not least who are the people who become users.  As people are vastly different there is a rich variety of solutions specializing on different uses of 3D. Clients need good guidance to find what is right for them.

Dassault Systèmes has been at Imagina 2011 as a platinum sponsor with our 3D solutions to support human-centered sustainable innovation and development. Some of our alliances partners were present too: AMD, ESI, Immersion, Noomeo, nVidia, Optis and Wacom.

P’tit bonbon for you: Trailer of the TRON legacy movie which was projected during the Wednesday evening party at Imagina. Unfortunately you’ll not have it in 3D (yet).

The original TRON dates from 28 years ago and presented this crazy idea of bringing a guy, via laser scan, into the virtual environment created by a “computer system”. At Imagina 2011 I could see that we are not so far away from making this a reality.

Thanks for stopping by.

Best,
Michael

You all know about TED – Technology, Enterntainement & Design – right? TED, the annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about?

Well, in the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx was created as a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Before this year’s event in Paris, a virtual visit of the prestigious “Espace Pierre Cardin” was available online on TEDxParis’ website and let anyone discover the place were the event would be hold.

The global set of conferences was once again very impressive and we at Dassault Systèmes all enjoyed the diversity of the speakers and areas of expertise.

Now that all videos are available (in French), we are happy to invite everyone to relive some of the best moment of the 2011 event in 3DVIA Scenes, directly through your Internet brownser:

• Sylvain Ordureau – Le voyage fantastique (The fantastic journey, 3D body)
• Jean-François Noubel – Après l’argent (After Money)
• Etienne Parizot – Voir en 4D (See in 4D)
• Eric Brun Sanglard – Designing blind
• Francine Leca – La chirurgie cardiaque au service des enfants du monde (Cardiac surgery to help children)
• Jean Louis Servant Schreiber – Les 4 paradoxes de la vitesse (The 4 paradoxes of speed)
• Bernard Werber – L’arbre des possibles (The tree of possibilities)
• Patrick Chappatte – Un nouveau modèle de reportage (A new reporting model)

All the best,

Victorien

Victorien Miniere, 3DVIA Digital Content

The Great Pyramid of Giza is not only in Egypt.  It’s in the classroom, our dreams, picture frames, and even the Parisian metro.   But do we really know it? 

Today thanks to an architect and 3D scientific simulation software, I feel like I know Cheops better. 

Building on his internal ramp for construction theory, Jean-Pierre Houdin thinks he has cleared an intuitive itch that something was missing. And his friends Mehdi Tayoubi and Richard Brietner from Dassault Systèmes have helped him do it. 

Most people believe the King’s Chamber was closed from the inside.  But then that would have left a dozen workmen corpses with the deceased.  No skeletons other than the king’s were found in the chamber.  Jean-Pierre believes the room was closed from the outside, through a passageway that has never been physically located or explored.  A passageway that leads to the two funeral antechambers.

What funeral antechambers!? 

It’s true that when I was in 5th grade and made a foam bisection of Cheops, the result looked something like this:

Note the only places indicated are the King’s Chamber, Grand Gallery, Queen’s Chamber and Unfinished Subterranean Chamber. 

Jean-Pierre had the genius idea to study how Khufu’s father designed and built his burial place, the Red Pyramid.  The day his father died, Khufu needed to start planning for his own pyramid.  So it’s logical to think Khufu hired the same architects who’d acquired solid expertise by building his father’s.  And the Red Pyramid contained evidence of something not thought to be associated with Khufu’s: two funeral antechambers and their corridors.

The funeral corridors and antechambers were necessary to carry in and stock furniture and ritualistic objects employed during the ceremony.  Impossible to predict when the king would die, they needed to have everything in place before death. 

The locations of the antechambers, just beside the King’s Chamber, were logistically strategic for slipping the items into the King’s Chamber for the ceremony.  After the ceremony they were moved back to the antechambers, and from the joining corridor, the last granite stone was placed, enclosing the king in the afterlife, forever. 

How did Jean-Pierre verify his theory? 

Only physical proof would provide conclusive evidence, but I was persuaded by the software simulation. 

By taking the same antechamber architectural elements and dimensions from the Red Pyramid and including them in the Cheops 3D model, Jean-Pierre, Richard and Mehdi found answers to questions.  For example, the peculiar twists and directions of the already-explored corridors are justified because they are avoiding the antechamber components. You can see these in the French language news video here (great 3D footage). 

Internal architecture imagined by Jean-Pierre Houdin

Close up view of the funeral antechambers

While I learned many other interesting things today, this tops my list.     

Were the Egyptians so focused on the afterlife that they forgot to pass down the knowledge of how real-life royal funerals were performed?  You know, the “boring” logistical details. 

Do the Cheops antechambers still contain the furniture and objects used to perform Khufu’s funeral? 

I’d like to find out, wouldn’t you? 

Best,

Kate

P.S.   This morning’s conference presented a lot to digest, and all kinds of fun anecdotes and information to share.  Stay tuned . . .