omegalib 3.5 released

Major Changes

• Reorganized source: all c++ and python examples are now under /examples.
• (3.5.1) omicron and omegalib use double precision math by default.

omega

• Improvements to python API
• Camera.focusOn
• clip plane control
• (3.5.1) fixes to SceneNode? bounding box
• NodeComponent? API slightly changed to support more functionality for objects attached to scene nodes.
• (3.5.1) ImageUtils::loadImageFromStream()
• (3.5.1) Keyboard service generates button left/right/up/down events when keyboard arrows are used.

omegaOsg

• fixed bounding box generation
• fixes to clipping
• (3.5.1) Added auto near / far Z computation toggle (:setautonearfar [on|off])
• (3.5.1) Added support for PagedLOD and DatabasePager?
• (3.5.1) FBX support can be optionally disabled

omegaVtk

• re-added support for vtk python scripting
• added support for vtk lights.
• added support for depth peeling

cyclops

• Context menus can be attached to entities using a simpler API that does not require custom scripting.
• Added support for custom model loaders
• GPU Program assets are now fully configurable through python (using the ProgramAsset class). Programs can be reloaded at runtime using a simple command (SceneManager.updateProgram) allowing users to experiment with different shaders.

orun

• configurable startup script and application start function. The startup script can be used as a 'boot' script to modify applications depending on the system they are running on. The application start function (typically defined in the init script) is launched every time a new application starts and can be used to inject cutom functions (like system menus) into the application.

omegaToolkit

• (3.5.1) added Container:isEventInside, other improvements and fixes to ui Container class
• (3.5.1) improved AppDrawer
• (3.5.1) custom user data can be attached to Widget
• (3.5.1) Button icons

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Playing an actual game with Oculus Rift: hands-on with Valve's Team Fortress 2 'VR Mode

This is a good article on videogames and VR.
Oculus Rift sounds like an interesting platform for games in the future (assuming it solves a bunch of problems with previous generation HMDs, like making people sick after 10 minutes of use). But taking an existing game and throwing in a 'VR mode' is not enough to create a truly engaging experience.

Read full article on Engadget

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Distributed Sum on a 2D mesh using MPI

For a recent class project, we had to implement an algorithm to sum an array of integers on a computer cluster. This problem is one of the easiest applications of the map-reduce approach: Since a sum is an associative operation, we can simply assign a portion of the array to each of our processing resources, and incrementally collect and merge all the partial sums until we get the final result. The Message Passing Interface (MPI) actually has primitives that support map-reduce algorithms directly.

To make the project a little more challenging, we had to implement our distributed algorithm considering this additional requirements:

• We could only use MPI_Send and MPI_Recv primitives: in other words, all communication needed to be explicit, point-to-point messaging.
• We had to assume our computational resources were organized as a 2D mesh: each computation element would have an index (i, j) and could only communicate with elements on its same row or column.
• We wanted to minimize  the total distance traveled by messages (assuming each hop would have a cost): for instance, sending all partial sums in a row to the first element in the row is less efficient that summing neighbor nodes together iteratively (recursive halving)

We had to run the algorithm on a 16-node system and collect a few performance measures. An interesting (and expected) result is that depending on how many numbers we have to sum, distribution may or may not be convenient, due to message passing costs.

Read the full project report here!

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Mechdyne Corporation Licenses CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment from the University of Illinois at Chicago

Mechdyne Corporation announced that it has licensed the CAVE2™ hybrid reality environment developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois at Chicago. The licensing agreement was signed in January of 2013, and continues the strong working relationship that began in 1994 when Mechdyne licensed the EVL-designed original CAVE™ technology.

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Railsim

 
An example of another CAVE2 application developed by EVL graduate student Vaibhav Govilkar:
Railsim is a visualization tool for railway simulation data developed in collaboration with the UIC Mechanical Engineering department.
Railsim is developed using the omegalib cyclops toolkit and custom shaders to apply and animate deformation attributes to a railway model generated from simulation shapes.

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omegalib 3.4 released

omegalib 3.4 Improves a few existing functionalities (3D widgets, runtime application switching) and fixes a few shader and transparency bugs in cyclops.
It also introduces mcserver, a mission control server that allows multiple omegalib instances to connect and share scripting commands, allowing the creation of collaborative instances.
See full release notes here:
https://code.google.com/p/omegalib/wiki/ReleaseNotes

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