A legend in the ‘handheld gaming’ hall of fame, the Sega Game Gear is a classic example of a popular retro handheld gaming console.

For those who missed out, Sega’s 8 bit, full color Game Gear was the third ever handheld console and was release back 1991 in competition with perhaps the more popular, Nintendo Game Boy.

The Game Gear was basically a Sega Master System housed in a portable case, boasting a 3.2 inch wide color screen that had a slightly lower resolution than the Master System, but which allowed for a larger color palette.

Gameplay and graphics were certainly hi-tech for it’s time, so much so that the Game Gear is still extremely playable, especially for the those who enjoy classic arcade beat em’ ups, racing games and platform games like Sonic The Hedgehog, Streets Of Rage and Road Rash.

The slower refresh rate of the Game Gear could cause fast moving games to be slightly blurred and the contrast and brightness of the screen made it difficult to play in brightly lit areas. The battery life was also quite low; six AA batteries only provided enough power for 5 hours gameplay. Apart from these points the Game Gear was and still is a lot of fun.

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Touch Screen interfaces are paving way for the new generation of display units. Already featured in many devices such as ATMs, phones and PDAs, the simplicity of touch screen is user-friendly and extremely appealing to most.

A demo at the recent 2008 CeBIT Expo, shows what the future of multi-touch touch-screen displays will look like. The display closely resembles the touch screen display used by Tom Cruise in the popular film Minority Report.

Although it may not be the first attempt at this kind of multi-touch, the demo of a fully working unit on display to the public is certainly a first.CeBIT (Centrum der Büro- und Informationstechnik; German for “Centre of Office and Information technology”) was traditionally the computing part of the Hanover Fair, a big industry trade show held every year in Germany.

In the 1986s the IT and telecommunications section was straining the resources of the industry fair so much that it was given a separate trade show held four weeks earlier than the main Hanover Fair. CeBIT expo’s have since become world renowned and are also held in Shanghai, Sydney and Istanbul.

Another Multi-Touch Display causing a stir has been incorporated into the surface of bar. iBar as the display is know, gives your bar a crazy multi-touch effect which will either provide you with hours of visual entertainment, or make you dizzy after one too many….

Point based motion capture has become the industry standard procedure to capture the movements of the human body and convert the data for use in 3D animations. Reflective markers are placed at many points of the body, as the person moves around the data is recorded and can then be transferred to the animation. Both movies and games use this technology to give characters lifelike movements and actions.

However when it comes to realistic facial work, even setups that use of hundreds of reflective dots leave the developers with rough blocky data the requires a lot of post processing.

Enter motion capture company Mova. Mova’s Contour Reality Capture System uses multiple cameras that create 100,000 polygon facial models that are accurate to within one tenth of a millimeter.

Mova founder, also the man behind Apple’s QuickTime and Microsoft’s WebTV, Steve Perlman said,

“This pushes Unreal Engine 3 to its very limit … it’s about as photo-real as you can get in real time.”

Check out the video of the Unreal Engine 3 running real time on a dual NVIDIA 8800 GTXs with SLI.

Perlman says the company has been working privately with developers for some time to adapt the system for video game use.

“People have never had this kind of data available before in a game context … their heads are spinning,” he said. “What you’re seeing right there is the result of, having time to wrap our heads around this thing and see how we’re going to use it, and yes, we can in fact get a face that looks almost photo-real — you know, not quite, but almost photo-real — running in a game engine today.”

“You can see the difference then between what’s achievable in cinema and what’s achievable right now in video games…….But next generation game machines, they’ll be able to essentially show in real time what we can do currently in non-real-time using renderers. … Next generation, you’re going to have interactive sequences where people think there’s a live person in the game.”

The Unreal Engines abilities doesn’t stop there, the contour system can also create even more detailed animations if real time processing is not necessary. Below is another video of how reality capture data can look when pre-rendered.

Perlman says that the cost of a Contour motion-capture session isn’t much higher than traditional marker-based capture session, somewhere in the region of a few thousand to a few hundred thousand depending on the length and complexity of the shot.

The real savings come in post production, Perlman explains,

“Unlike marker-based capture, which has a big manual clean-up process before you see results, with contour it’s purely computational….
“We’ve talked to people and one of the reasons when they announce delays for complex games is because they’re fighting to try and make the faces look good. With Contour, you send the guy in, he does a shoot, and we send you a face that looks nearly perfect. It’s no longer one of the risk issues for your schedule.”

The Contour system generates so much data, Perlman says, that the full value of the rendering won’t be apparent until hardware speeds improve.

“With markers, you kind of get the resolution of what those markers are and that’s it……
“When a next-generation game system comes out, or they decide they want to do something for a feature film, you can’t really use the data. With Contour, it’s actually capturing the data at much higher resolutions than any system in the world, even for feature films, can currently use. What we do is we store that data away … and when a next generation video game machine comes out and they want the data at higher resolution, they can.”

Perlman wouldn’t reveal which companies are currently using this technology, but said he expects the first games with Contour captures could come out in 2008, depending on developer schedules. He hopes the system will be in wide use by 2009.

A joint project is developing the Cell Chip from the PS3 to help improve medical Imaging

IBM has recently teamed up with the Mayo Clinic to develop a research facility aimed at advancing medical imaging.The joint venture into improving the way we view medical images is developing the cell chip from the PS3 to hopefully enable doctors and radiologists to track patients’ health and treatment more effectively.

Bradley Erickson, chairman of radiology at the Rochester-based Mayo Clinic said that researchers are specifically looking at how the PS3 Cell chip - which was collaboratively developed by Sony Corp., IBM and Toshiba Corp. - could speed up the imaging process.

“It changes how we think about things…..We are facing significant problems in medical imaging because the number of images produced in CT scanners basically tracks Moore’s Law. My eyes and brain can’t keep up. I see more and more images I have to interpret….

Erickson said,

“The innovation here is to take computer chips and extract the information in these increasing number of images and help present it usefully to the radiologist.”

With the computer the Mayo Clinic is now using, it would take a few minutes to run the algorithm and get the new and old images lined up successfully. Using the PS3 Cell chip, which is extremely efficient at doing raw computations, the process could be done in a second.

This time saved can mean a great deal when it comes to treating patients with life threatening conditions.

“This is focusing on the quality of the medicine” Erickson explains,

“We might take an image of someone’s brain tumor to see if it’s getting better or worse or staying the same. We’re looking for really subtle changes. You might find out after two months of radiation that it’s not working, and you want to switch their treatment. If you have a human interpret that image, they may not see any difference, and the doctor will have them keep on with that same treatment, which in reality is not helping. … We can have a computer take that image and focus more quickly on what areas need attention.”

He added that it’s not unusual to be thinking about using a gaming processor in a medical imaging machine. He noted that a lot of high-powered graphics cards and other gaming technologies are have previously been used in medical imaging.

When it comes to racing simulators the VRX Mach 4 wins hands down. Power by 4 Xbox 360’s – one for each of the 3 Sharp Aquos LCDs, and one for the 7″ LCD rear view mirror – There are hands-on (and feet) controls to mimic the driving experience, a Harmon Kardon surround sound receiver with 10 Bose Acoustimass speakers. There is even a “Virtual Wind System”, consisting of 2 dual Honeywell fans and Tactile Vibration Feedback System for extra realism.

More Pictures And Full Technical Specifications After The Jump!

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With the popularity of last month’s blog post Free Adobe Photoshop Plug-ins and Effects, I wanted to make sure we did a follow up to this.

Now you have the tools to get the job done, but what good are these tools if you don’t know how to use them. We have compiled a list of popular FREE tutorials on how to master Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop is by far the leader in graphic design and photo editing. It is an advance software that has seemingly limitless possibilities. It may be difficult to use at first, but once you start learning you will be able to easily combine, blend, and invent new methods to help capture your photo.

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There isn’t really much left to comment on regarding this neat concept iMac, a picture really does say a thousand words. The concept design by Adam Benton is based on, “current Apple design trends, as well as the previous iMac incarnation” and pitches a 30 inch transparent screen which can be set to different levels of transparency and is totally transparent when switched off. The keyboard, also transparent is ergonomically designed with light sensitive illuminated keys and the whole set-up is of course wireless. No word yet on whether this design will go to production, we’ll just have to wait and see!

View Apple iMac Computers Financed

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In Japan alone, there are more than 5 million people in total who see color differently from ordinary people, due to their genetic types or eye diseases.These days almost all images and texts are displayed in color, everything from newspapers to advertising billboards and ATM’s to Televisions would look rather unprofessional if they were not, bad news for people who are color blind.

However the development of a new technology called new Color Universal Design (CUD) is sure to help those who suffer from being able to distinguish colors properly.

The diagram above shows how people who are color blind may perceive an image. Eizo has incorporated this technology into a new 24”LCD aimed at people who are color blind. The FlexScan SX2461W-U monitor sports the new CUD technology that utilizes different color schemes, shapes and patterns in the colors to help people distinguish different colors where they otherwise would be unable.

The FlexScan monitor priced Â¥136,000 or approx $1,235 USD and supports full HD (1920×1200), with a contrast ratio of 850:1, and a brightness of 300cd/m2.

Photoshop has clearly become the industry standard software for graphic design and digital photography. Those of you who are Photoshop savvy will know that plug-ins and filters can extend Photoshop capabilities by providing new functions and effects. For those of you who aren’t, perhaps its time to explore Photoshop’s expandable features.

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Many are still hesitant to upgrade to the new Windows Vista, perhaps the negative buzz and the massive system requirements have made Vista less desirable than Microsoft had hoped. Vista promised to integrate not only a 3D-interface or other exciting technologies but also a new file system, called WinFS, as well as the communication subsystem Indigo. Unfortunately the release of the WinFS File system has been postponed and Indigo is now available for Windows XP, so some may be asking why they would want to upgrade to Vista at all? Well, Microsoft has promised that there will be huge steps toward a secure environment which is virtually impossible to integrate into today’s Windows XP.

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Electronic Paper Display is due to shape the future of how we display text and graphics. The new display technology is designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper and possess a high contrast appearance, ultra-low power consumption, and a thin, light form.

The EPD reflects light like ordinary paper and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely without drawing electricity, while allowing the image to be changed later. The images are displayed in black on a whitish-gray background with a resolution similar to that of a typical laptop computer screen.

Check out this video of a new prototype PDA from Phillips that incorporates the new E-paper.

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This 360-degree ultra-high-definition military simulator allows you to drive a Humvee and fire real weapons including machine guns and rocket launchers, anywhere you want, with absolute precision.

The 10-projector system achieves a seamless panorama thanks to Mersive’s Sol system; a calibration, warping and sub-pixel image blending technology that may soon be adapted from military sims to your living room gaming.

Watch The Video and check the Halo 3-like scenario

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In the past these types of industrial and large format printers have mainly been reserved for businesses rarely available on the consumer market. Despite the fact that oversized prints appeal to a rather small group of target customers, HP has released their Scitex TJ8300 and TJ8500 for anyone who has the money….. And the space!

These monsters are capable of printing 140 posters 1.5m X 1.8m per hour, that’s approx 400sqm/hr at 336 dpi or 100sqm/hr in apparent 600dpi. They can print on just about anything including paper, self-adhesive vinyl, banner, canvas and paperback flag. The TJ8500 also prints on uncoated synthetic media (uncoated Yupo, Tyvekâ„¢ etc.). They print on both coated and uncoated materials up to a maximum size of 165 x 370cm (65 x 145″).The difference between the TJ8300 and the TJ8500 is the ink they use. The TJ8300 opts for high quality, solvent based inks specially formulated for high productivity and high quality printing. The TJ8500 uses environmentally friendly UV inks with an internal dryer that meets regulatory requirements. The TJ8500 also prints on uncoated specialized synthetic media (uncoated Yupo, Tyvekâ„¢ etc.) but apart from these differences the specifications of both models remain the same.

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The digital age is here and has been for some time now. The computer interface we have come to know has become boring and in my opinion out-dated. It no longer gives a sense of high tech or advanced. It is a 2-D mundane layout that has me missing the days of old when my desk was in a chaotic and cryptic mess that only I understood. Well, programmers feel the same and they are taking this boring interface to the next level!

This is a great idea and a fun interface. Some problems with it however is you do not see the file names that distinguish file types from one another and you are not able to see a thumbnail preview of a picture or document like in new Windows environment. I am sure these bugs can be worked out and the program will be much better once it gets to the serious stage.

If you remember the Photosync Technology and Microsoft Surface environment, this interface is quickly adapting and evolving. I am ready for the change now - hopefully it becomes mainstream soon.

The Transformers was an American cartoon series depicting a war between giant robots who could transform into vehicles, animals, and other objects.In Japan, the series was called Fight! Super Robot Life Form Transformers (??! ?????????????????, Tatakae! Cho Robotto Seimeitai Toransuf?m?). The Transformers toy-line and cartoon series owed their existence to the Japanese toyline, Microman (an Eastern descendant of the 12 inch G.I. Joe action figure series). For many, like myself, Transformers were a huge part of their childhood and this movie was long awaited. The technology and computer graphics in the 80s or even 90s were not advance enough to accurately portray the concept behind Transformers. Today’s CGI technology has finally caught up and Steven Spielberg’s and Dream Works team went all out!

Transformers quickly grossed astronomical amounts attributing to Steven Spielberg’s and Dream Works continued success. Anyone who has seen Transformers knows why this movie is in the Top 20 at theaters and already grossed over $70-Million USD! The most realistic computer graphics in movie productions yet, with an action packed video that featured a bunch of military high tech equipment and military men and women (both active duty and former) as extras and speaking roles.

More than 300 Airmen and numerous aircraft were featured in the July 4th released film to help make this movie possible. Backed by the Defense Department, the movie was more factual and realistic than most movies that portray the military are. Many 80s movies were notoriously incorrect with their cast, ranks, equipment, and protocol.

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