webGL – As Seen Through PeriVision

Samsung Gear VR Internet is out. And here are 10 things that would make it even better

perivision — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 07:30:10 +0000

So VR Internet, called ‘Samsung Internet’ for some reason, just came out today. It is a Beta so some things we are going to overlook, like youtube not always loading and playing and drift; instead lets focus on the things I think will make it a great 1.0. Before we start, PLEASE SUPPORT .GIFV. If you cant, then expose the URL bar so we can change .gifv to .gif. I’m guessing this is a Beta thing too. OK, lets start the list of things to make Gear VR Internet great!

1) Increase the fonts!

Until we get 4 k screens, we are going to have to deal with the screen door effect and our current 2K’s are not great for reading. Increasing the font will help, but remember to let us choose it. And while we are at it, let us change the font itself.

2) Now once we increase the fonts, we need a bigger CURVED screen.

I’m glad I can zoom in, but I will want to zoom in even more, but the more we zoom in, the worse a flat screen looks. Check out Oculus VR desktop. Learn from that.

3) Now lets talk UI. Let me edit the URL bar. PLEASE!

4) It does not make sense to go to ‘TABS’ to create a new window.

I understand we are creating a new ‘tab’ but its not intuitive. I should have that option at home as well.

5) And speaking of Home, where did the recommended list go?

Now its filled with stuff I was testing out. If I wanted to save it I would have created a bookmark. Please provide a way to get that back if we choose.

6) I really like the Void theater mode when viewing Videos.

I can haz?

7) Speaking of video, lets sideload into MilkVR

I like MilkVR, its my preferred video viewer. When selecting a video, provide an option to send that URL to MilkVR. Even better, remember where we came from and when done watching in MilkVR, send us back to VR interwebs.

8) Swipe keyboard input would be great here.

9) Something seems to be off trying to find the tag and zoom to it.

Reddit is my test case. Zooms in way too much. I have to back out each time. BTW, title font on Reddit reads really well on the gear. Clue!

10) and finally … WebGL! And Web3D while we are at it.

11) Rename this to VR Interwebs. No reason.

BTW, Streetview would be nice.

Now, I think I’m going to make a version of Newssnacker.com just for the Gear! Keep your eyes open.

REAL 2015 – Where the Sensor meets the Maker

Damon — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 00:31:57 +0000

This past week was the REAL conference, an event organized mainly by Autodesk to explore the convergence of the professional 3D sensing, making & visualization industries.

From the website:
“REAL is both an exclusive executive summit, REAL TALK, & a world’s fair of cutting-edge 3D demos, REAL LIVE.

REAL is new and different: an immersive, hands-on, high-level gathering in a historic venue with a unique program.

REAL is real people, doing real-world work with reality tech.

REAL is Reality Computing.

WHO
REAL is 500+ leaders and innovators — professionals from across industry, investing, research, and media.

REAL brings together real work spanning disciplines from:
Architecture to Art,
Engineering to Entertainment,
Manufacturing to Media,
Heritage to Health, and
Sports to Science…
REAL is executives & engineers, developers & designers, inventors & investors, architects & artists, makers & meteorologists, surveyors & scientists, entrepreneurs & educators.

WHY
From drones to autonomous cars, industrial robots to major engineering works, and game consoles to tomorrow’s mobile phones, 3D sensors are suddenly everywhere. And several decades after first grabbing headlines, VR and 3D printing are hot again, attracting billions in investment, and moving beyond early adopters to professionals. But it is the sum total, where sensing meets making, where big change is brewing.

While the ‘Internet of Things’ grabs headlines, a 3D revolution is quietly building.”

Although I only was there for one day, this was quite the event and I rank it among the best I have ever attended. Yes it had cool exhibitors and great speakers, but my high marks come from it bringing together communities that normally don’t mix, even though they are complementary and or share technologies. Most parts of the ‘3D life cycle’ were present.

Autodesk pretty much owns the 3D modeling tools space, so 3D creation from that standpoint was in the house if not directly represented on the expo floor. Most, if not all, of the 3D creation was from scanning and capture technologies and companies like Leica, Matterport, Occipital, and Floored.

Companies like Arup and Autodesk showed off interactive 3D and VR applications while immersive technology companies including IrisVR and Metaio dazzled folks with virtual and augmented reality demos.

A little light on the ‘Make’ side, the event did showcase some digital fabrication art installations with Fathom and a few other companies demonstrating how 3D and scanned data can be used for digital fabrication (mainly 3D printing).

Topping things off on the last day, Matt Sonic and the San Francisco Virtual Reality Meetup group had their eighth meeting at the close of the REAL event that included thought provoking presentations and VR devs showing off some VR demos (unfortunately none related to the theme of the conference).

This event was a great #1 and I can’t wait to participate in the whole event next year to see what 3D technologies they invite next. This is definitely an event that as it grows, the world of 3D is going to get very REAL.

AEC Hackathon – Where Techies and Builders Change the World

Damon — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 04:12:09 +0000

I feel it right to be upfront and say we are about to go on a journey. The matter at hand is something that has become very close to me and it directly affects anyone that lives and works in a house or building. In a few weeks there is going to be a first of its kind event called the AEC Hackathon. This event will break new ground in how we think about design, construction and communication about our built environment. But before we talk about this, lets step back and see how I got here.

It all begins seven years back to when I was working in downtown San Francisco with one of the legends in my field. On a day like any other, I see our boss come into the office chatting with another guy that introduces himself as a home builder. This builder goes on to share how he is using game-like technology and robotic manufacturing to improve the home building process. Wait, did he say video games and robots to build houses?

Before SF, I spent 15 years in Dallas, Texas. Here is where I got bombarded with construction sites due to the ongoing suburban sprawl, constant road construction, and land redevelopment. I am among the ranks of many that have become familiar with how construction is done solely through observation.

It didn’t take long to see the theme in what I know can’t be only the Lone Star State. Sure what I am about to say could be construed by some as an extreme generalization. I saw job sites of low wage day labor, crews of various races though the majority I swear only speak Spanish, shovels that help prop people up, the occasional ‘2/3 watching while 1/3 working’ rule, and a number of other ‘?’s that are a part of how things get built. So here’s this builder in our office saying things can get built this way. Only in SF I am thinking, but yeah how can I help.

That decision started me into the new world of where web3D meets digital fabrication for building in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction Industry. Over the years I’ve worked on the development of various applications that provide services to our team, partners, and future home owners. I have been around the world and seen the latest in AEC technology from R&D labs, practitioners in the field, startups, and colleagues at work.

I have also been educated to and exposed to inefficiencies and problems that confront the industry in residential and commercial. The industry is super wasteful (materials and data), projects usually are over time and budget, it’s hyper litigious, and the list goes on. I will never forget the moment I learned that the norm is to low bid a project and make up costs and margin in the inevitable change orders due to the ambiguity of the design. Yes there are plenty of honest professionals out there and projects that come in on time and even under budget, but take your own poll with home and building owners. Needless to say, there is plenty of room for improvement.

Luckily, this multi-trillion dollar industry is approaching an interesting point in its evolution heavily influenced by technology, economics, the need to be more sustainable, and a cultural shift as it welcomes in the next wave of AEC professionals. Technology is changing the way structures are designed, fabricated, built, marketed, and run. A quick visit to AEC-Apps will provide numerous examples of how software is being integrated throughout a building’s life cycle while groups like the Digital Fabrication Alliance are using tech to improve manufacturing and building processes. Buildings and even cities are becoming ‘smart’ as more networked systems connect with them and the Internet of Things. There are even events like McGraw Hill Construction ENR’s Future Tech conference that focus on the intersection of technology and AEC.

Yet technology integration has its own challenges. For both small and large firms it is a serious investment of time and resources. Steep software learning curves, problems with data exchange, solutions that don’t perform to expectation, and a growing number of new problems make going back to the old ways not a hard thing to consider. At least there one knows what to expect to go wrong and how to fix it quickly. It also doesn’t help that the industry is constantly approached by technologist and startups selling services and products with no knowledge of industry problems or sensitivity to industry data standards. Plus where are the futuristic building apps that I see in movies or those that use innovative tech like augmented reality or interactive 3D?

It is these reasons and more that prompted me to act upon the idea of a hackathon for the AEC Industry. I can’t think of a better environment where AEC professionals and technologists can come together to build community and create solutions for the industry by those in the industry. And not just as a one time event or to build another iPhone app, but take it up a notch.

Let’s provide hackers with access to the Oculus Rift, Google Glass, LEAP Motion, Kinect, and other innovative hardware. Offer them workshops to learn the latest in API’s, SDK’s (e.g. Intel), web, and interactive 3D standards. We’re raising the bar to ‘AEC goes Iron Man/Tony Stark’ type applications and all tailored to solve real problems.

Thus began my quest to round up a posse and it didn’t take long to get great people on board. Initially stepping up to the challenge were Greg Howes (builder & fabricator), Christopher Peri (architect turned techie), Justin Quimby (game developer rockstar now in AEC), Paul Doherty (architect & smart cities guru) and Michael Shaw (The Digit Group). We have grown into a bigger team of all stars and what an event it is going to be.

For attending tech devs and UX/UI designers, it will be an opportunity to connect and create solutions for those building our real world. For AEC professionals it is a chance to have their voice heard and paint the bullseye for what tech solutions are needed. For those that don’t want to participate in the hack but want to learn something new, we have workshops for them also. Workshops for AEC will cover geo-design, digital fabrication, big data, ‘smart‘ buildings, and other design-build processes and technologies that are changing the industry.

We also have the team at VRcade that has proposed coming down from Seattle to demonstrate some relevant applications in immersive virtual reality for all to experience first hand!

But what would an AEC hackathon be without actually building something? So with that said, there is planned a digital fabrication project that will be happening during the hackathon. The DF Project, as it is currently named, is a showcase project that combines different forms of digital fabrication (including 3D printing and robotic manufacturing) with the latest in web and mobile technology.

This project will be located at Laney College in Oakland and serve as an educational resource that showcases a digitally fabricated structure in addition to digitally fabricated objects housed inside the structure. This project will be a demonstration of how these technologies and others complimentary to the design/build process work together for event attendees and serve as a learning resource for students and AEC professionals both at the college and online. The digital assets of this structure and objects will be available data sets to tech designers and developers at the event to hack with.

Additional proceeds from the event will go to the Wounded Warriors Project and Vets in Tech as we believe in supporting our veterans however we can. Extra proceeds from the Digital Fabrication Project will go to Laney College to support their new digital fabrication course coming next year. What good is having an event like this if you can’t help others along the way?

While it is still a work in progress, the AEC Hackathon is shaping up nicely. We have some great sponsors already (Khronos & Web3D Consortium) and more coming on board that will be announced soon. I truly am honored to be working with such a great team and sponsors to be a part of an industry first that is long overdue. If you would like to support what we are doing, there are ways to get involved. We still need assistance getting the word out to the tech and AEC communities, and additional sponsors means we can have a better event, provide the community with the digital fabrication learning resource project, and have more to contribute to very worthwhile causes we are supporting.

So if you’re a tech developer, UX/UI designer, game programmer, building owner, land developer, city/government official, AEC professional in the office or in the field, and interested in improving the built environment come join us. We need your passion and talent on this journey for creating better tools for those building us a better world. Where will you be Nov 8-10 when the world watches AEC get hacked?

Build with Chrome brings Legos to WebGL

Damon — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 06:30:48 +0000

The Chrome Experiments site is packed with WebGL goodies like this one that came across my radar again today and it is too much fun not to share. This past summer Google Australia announced the release of the Build with Chrome online tool. Build with Chrome lets you explore and build a new world of LEGO creations online.

Just select on the map where you want to build and zoom in to get a grid.

Once your creation is published it is viewable by all and may be featured in promotional material by Google and the LEGO Group.

Here is a 14.5 million triangle model paged to an iPad…

Damon — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:28:35 +0000

…with a smooth frame rate and built on open web technologies. The IGD team at Fraunhofer, a German research institute, is doing some really amazing things regarding delivering high polygon count web3d scenes on mobile devices using WebGL and X3Dom. X3Dom is a framework for integrating and manipulating X3D scenes as HTML5/DOM elements. Pat yourself on the back if you knew X3D is the current ISO web3d standard. For those that want to dive into X3Dom beyond this, enjoy.

Okay so their Youtube channel is a trip to the future, but back to the point. An impressive display of a detailed interactive 3D scene on a mobile device via a browser on open and standards based web technologies. Well done team IGD.

A City in a Browser with CityEngine

Damon — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 05:18:58 +0000

Esri, a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System (GIS) software and geodatabase management applications, announced the availability of CityEngine Web Viewer in their ArcGIS Online product this week. For the bonus, the viewer leverages WebGL. Yes, this means anyone with a WebGL-enabled browser (Chrome, Safari, Opera, FireFox) can navigate and explore uploaded 3D cities and environments created in CityEngine 2012.

CityEngine is the software Esri acquired when they bought Switzerland based Procedural last year. CityEngine allows for rapid creation of 3D city models and is used in everything from movies and games (I first met the Procedural team at GDC) to architectural and proposed development visualizations. I have watched people create rather detailed cities in a matter of minutes with this powerful tool. Since CityEngine is a desktop solution, these models were only able to be viewed within the software until now with the release of this web player. Check out the CityEngine video below.

Beyond web3D scene basics like free navigation and zoom, CityEngine Web Viewer’s features include searching tagged content, turning on/off creator defined layers (trees, streets, buildings), and adjusting the lighting to reflect the sun’s position on a specific time of day on a specific day.

Check it out for yourself here with this 3D scene of a redevelopment in Philadelphia. Another cool example of a WebGL application and truly a great testament to the convergence of GIS data and web3D.

Opera 12 releases with WebGL support, webcam APIs, & more!

Damon — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 20:13:05 +0000

Opera released version 12 of its web browser today with a number of new features, improved performance, and enhanced support for modern web standards.

Feature Adds:

– Support for better personalization and wallpaper-like themes. A variety of browser wallpapers can be selected from the Opera public gallery.

– Support for CSS3 animations and transitions.

– Preliminary support for WebRTC, an emerging standard that is being drafted by the W3C Web Real-Time Communications Working Group. WebRTC will eventually enable standards-based audio and video chat in Web applications. There is also support for the WebRTC media capture APIs, which allow Web content to capture live media streams from the user’s microphone and webcam. Due to the potential privacy and security implications, the user is automatically prompted by the browser before the feature is allowed to be activated.

– Support for the Do Not Track header. When the user enables the Do Not Track feature, the browser will append a flag to every HTTP request to inform servers that the user wants to opt out of behavioral tracking. Opera users can enable the header by clicking the “Ask websites not to track me” checkbox in the Security section of the browser’s preference dialog. The feature is a welcome addition for privacy-conscious users.

– Process isolation for plugins that will considerably boost the browser’s stability. According to Opera, plugins like Flash account for approximately one-third of the browser’s crashes. Moving the plugins into a separate process will help address that issue.

– Hardware acceleration rendering to the entire browser, including the user interface and preliminary support for WebGL. Both features must be enabled in the opera:config panel in order to work.

Features Axed:

– Opera Unite and support for HTML desktop widgets that float over the user’s desktop.

Vector Maps via webGL finally make it to Google maps on the desktop

perivision — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:23:57 +0000

Not sure why this took so long. Perhaps dealing with the satellite view. Regardless, its pretty nice. You need to have a desktop with a good graphics card and a browser that supports webGL. The latest Firefox and Chrome should be fine.

The two nice points, is VERY fast refresh, smooth transition from 2D to 3D and much nicer rendering of buildings when zoomed in. I tried this on my laptop, that does not have graphics acceleration, and only Chrome would offer me the chance to access the mode. Nice. Sure it slows down a bit when zoomed out and making new calls, but once those vectors are cached, its pretty quick even in software rendering mode. Now if I can only get this on my iPhone!

Check the Vid from Google…

Google Body Browser is shutting down.

perivision — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 06:12:56 +0000

Google Body Browser

Shame. I really liked this little bit if HTML 5 demo code. Ellie K left a comment our original post when it first went public. https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2010/12/google-body-browser/
They did say in the post that the project would be open sourced somewhere else, but not details as to where and when. Seems Google is shutting down quite a few ‘Labs’ projects. I guess they finally decided to clean house and try to really focus on core projects. Which is fair, and Google is normally pretty good about sharing code out, so I’m pretty confident it will have a future life, but they did point to a partner that promises to continue the project and make it free on the interwebs,

… We are also working with our partner, Zygote Media Group, on an application called Zygote Body. This application will be free, available on the web and on Android, and will enable students, teachers, and others using Google Body to continue to have access to a human anatomy browser.

but Zygote Media Group has not updated their site in awhile, so whether this is a good partner or not remains to be seen. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

Microsoft Kinect gives a face to a 3D avatar

Damon — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:38:29 +0000

Here is a rather cool hack that connects a Microsoft Kinect device to a 3D avatar by German based Bitmanagement Software.

Bitmanagement Software GmbH is a developer of real-time 3D rendering, augmented reality, and 2D/3D/video multimedia software and tools for interactive online capable applications on crossplatform consumer hardware, based on the international Web 3D standards X3D, VRML, COLLADA, kmz and CAD/GIS formats.

Wonder if this was done in an X3D scene graph? Now I have to find out.

webGL – As Seen Through PeriVision

Samsung Gear VR Internet is out. And here are 10 things that would make it even better

Share and Enjoy !

REAL 2015 – Where the Sensor meets the Maker

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AEC Hackathon – Where Techies and Builders Change the World

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Build with Chrome brings Legos to WebGL

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Here is a 14.5 million triangle model paged to an iPad…

Share and Enjoy !

A City in a Browser with CityEngine

Share and Enjoy !

Opera 12 releases with WebGL support, webcam APIs, & more!

Share and Enjoy !

Vector Maps via webGL finally make it to Google maps on the desktop

Share and Enjoy !

Google Body Browser is shutting down.

Share and Enjoy !

Microsoft Kinect gives a face to a 3D avatar

Share and Enjoy !