Call of Guardians is a very fast, adventure game created exclusively for mobile devices. MOBA/CCG hybrid PvP game where players choose sides of one Guardian with assigned unique abilities and special weapons. Logan DeMel from Signal Studios explains the rules and introduces one of the game characters – First Officer Helvia Virika III. More details in the link:
The Global eSports revenue will reach $905 million in 2018, a year over year growth of 38.2% according to a new report published by Newzoo, the leading provider of market intelligence covering global games, eSports and mobile markets. For those who need to catch up with recent electronic sport here are some useful bits of terminology, statistics and predictions.
Esports is competitive video gaming at a professional level and in an organized format (a tournament or league) with specific goal (i.e., winning a champion title or prize money) and a clear distinction between players and teams that are competing against each other. The eSports Audience is all people who watch professional eSports independent of how often: Esports Enthusiasts (people who watch professional eSports content more than once a month) and Occasional Viewers (people who watch professional eSports content less than once a month.
The total prize money of all eSports events held in 2017 reached $112 million, breaking the $100 million mark for the first year. In 2018 eSports Enthusiasts will total 165 million, a year-on-year growth of 15.2% and 215 million of Occasional Viewers what makes 380 million participants worldwide, a year-on-year growth of 13.5%. The global average annual ticket revenue per eSports enthusiast will be $5.49 this year, up by 20% from 4.58 in 2017. In 2017, there were 588 major eSports events that generated and estimated $59 million in ticket revenue, up from $32 million in 2016.
Although 380 million people actively participate in eSports the global awareness of it is much broader. The number of people who hear about it but are not participants in 2017 was almost a billion worldwide.
The majority of $905 million of revenue from eSports that is expected at the end of 2018, 77% will be generated directly from sponsorship and advertising and indirectly from media rights and content licenses. Brands are expected to heavily invest in the eSports industry. They will pour $694 million to the end of 2018, an impressive 48% increase since last year.
In the next 10 years eSports will be the most popular sport in the world – predicts Frank Azor, co-founder of Alienware and vice president & general manager of Gaming & XPS for Dell who made the prediction statement during an exclusive interview at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), the biggest annual gaming conference in North America that took place in the middle of June in Los Angeles. The E3 expo featured 70 thousand attendees from 106 countries. E3 is the preeminent showcase for ground-breaking new games and technology that serves the growing community of gamers.
In March of this year Alienware opened its first professional eSportsTraining Facility in North America, located in Los Angeles. Just minutes from Riot Games LCS Studio, this new location helps Team Liquid, a professional gamer franchise team, improve the way they practice, train and prepare for eSports tournament. Alienware is the largest supplier of the gaming computer systems in the world, as a sponsor of the team, they provide the eSports athletes with access to incredible technology that is currently available. Alienware is also talking to new partners to build relationships that allows eSports to grow on unprecedented scale.
There are no other sports out there, with the exception of motorsports racing, where the athlete’s performance has a dependency on their equipment is as great as it is as esports athletics – elaborates Frank Azor. If you look at traditional sport like football or basketball, the equipment that the athletes use maybe helps in tiny fraction of the amount of their competitiveness. eSports however is more closely related to auto racing, the skill is in using the equipment to compete, so when your PC fails on you, you are out of the game.
The global industry has not completed the statistics, but the rumors are that number of people in the audience watching eSports tournaments has already passed the audience of baseball games.
Here is a full coverage of the interview with Frank Azor:
April 2018 – At the NAB 2018 show in Las Vegas we caught back up with Carol Hess of the HP Workstation group. Carol talks about the new product offerings for the broadcast industry and the associated capabilities that they bring. One of the areas is artificial intelligence and the role the workstations will take in bringing these tools to the content creators.
This interview was included in the Roadway Media coverage of NAB as part of the Executive Interviews episode of Bright Blue Innovation.
April 2018 – At the NAB 2018 show in Las Vegas we caught back up with Harris Morris CEO of Wazee Digital. This is our first interview with Harris since he took a break from the broadcast industry after leading the LBO of Harris Broadcast and its transition to becoming Gate Air and Imagine Communication.
Harris discusses trends in the industry regarding content availability and a philosophy based on the quality of the content and the quality of experience that results.
This interview was included in the Roadway Media coverage of NAB as part of the Executive Interviews episode of Bright Blue Innovation.
April 2018 – At the NAB show in Las Vegas, we had a chance to talk to Neumann CEO Wolfgang Fraissinet about the reissued U67 vocal tube microphone and the rollout to the broadcast community of the Generation 4 Evolution wireless system. The G4 technology is the first major update, primarily to address the spectrum auction impact on audio and wireless, in over 25 years.
The introduction to the reissued microphone and the new wireless technology are summaries in the following interview and demo.
https://vimeo.com/273435715
At the recent NAB show in Las Vegas, I had a chance to sit down and talk to Charlie Vogt, CEO of ATX Networks about the industry, what he has been doing since Imagine Communications and the challenges of video media distribution. He highlights the switching and distribution technology from the ATX product line that support the full range from SD through 4K HDR delivery.
The interview with Charlie Vogt follows :
Just like Superman who disguises himself as a mild-mannered spectacled newspaper reporter from “The Daily Planet” newspaper, easily blending in with the citizens of Metropolis as Clark Kent, the IRIScan Mouse Wifi in comparison seems to be a typical mouse blended in among an all too overcrowded world of accessories.
Clark Kent may “look” somewhat awkward and unintimidating at times to the people around him, but that is just him masquerading as Superman, just like this seven-ounce IRIScan Mouse does well, acting as an all-in-one scanner and wireless mouse with super powers.
When observing the IRIScan mouse side by side next to a laptop, there is nothing extraordinary about it when comparing other wireless mice. It scrolls, like a mouse, it, clicks like a mouse, and moves every which way just like a typical midsize mouse should. With its standard three mouse buttons and dialing wheel, it’s quite mild-mannered, just like Clark Kent, and it functions quite well for an everyday mouse.
Like Superman’s “x-ray vision”, the IRIScan mouse, has similar super powers and can suddenly transform itself to become a scanner within seconds from the touch of a button. Located on the bottom interior, its glass plate is free to roam and glide anywhere due to its wireless capability. It features a 1,500-dpi optical sensor which can create a scan with a resolution of up to 400 dpi for crisp, sharp documents using Slam Scan Technology, which is designed to allow users to scan documents up to A3 (11.7 x 16.5″) in size in a single bound. This IRIScan mouse has super powers that are “out of this world. 
INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE
Without the software, this mouse would have no super powers. It’s the IRIScan and CardIris software and the hardware that makes this lithium chargeable mouse mighty unlike no other.
The first thing you need to do is to insert the dongle into the USB port of your computer and then install the IRIScan Mouse Wi-Fi software. Once the software is installed, you will have some very powerful tools that will make it easy to make to convert and edit into different files. By the touch of the button on the top of the mouse, the software loads the program onto your screen and immediately you are ready to scan.
THE SCANNING PROCESS: FREEHAND VS SCANPAD
To test the initial scanning of the IRIScan mouse, I grabbed a few items around the office; a credit card and credit card receipt, a business card, a film festival program, a political campaign mailer measuring 8.5”x11, as well as a CD jacket cover. I even took a bound music book to see if I could copy a page of music without having to crease the spine.
As I was scanning each of these items by hand, I began to realize that I didn’t have a smooth flat surface to work with, making it difficult to get a good initial scan from my documents. In addition, it was a tricky process, as I had to secure the documents using one hand and scan with the other. If the document was larger than my hand, than it would be difficult to get a good scan because of the documents not being securely held down. 
As it turned out, I was still able to create perfect scans of the credit card receipt, business card, and CD jacket cover. I also was able to take capture a portion of the the film festival program containing a picture from the movie and the corresponding text description of it. However, I found myself having to rescan or “repaint” the spots that I initially missed. Luckily, they were small enough, so it wasn’t too troublesome.
Larger documents, especially if it contained both text and a photo on them, were more involving and definitely tested my patience, though I finally got the results I needed after several attempts keeping the document flat and still. I managed to scan a whole page of piano music from a bounded book perfectly, but that also took some practice to get to get it right.
As with the 8 ½“x 11” campaign flyer that included a slogan in the picture, I had absolutely no luck in scanning it in successfully. IRIScan even attempted to correct it through its OCR recognition, but as I rescanned the spots I had missed, it ran out of memory before completion of the image. It’s as though I was re-painting over the painted picture over and over without ever getting it just right.
Even with IRIScan’s capability to scan up to A3, it was very difficult to get the output to perfection, even with its OCR capability. My initial impression after freehand scanning was that this was way too much trouble for what it is worth, even for small documents, but that was before I realized that IRIScan included a ScanPad in the packaging.
IRIScan ScanPad
The 4”x7” ScanPad includes a clear plastic cover that you can use to place over your document before scanning, allowing the mouse to scan over the documents with ease while holding the documents securely. This was the perfect solution making scanning very simple and quick for smaller documents. The ScanPad was a pure “life saver” and was a joy to re-scan all of those documents that I previously did freehand, which was finished in seconds.
I suggest this ScanPad should always be used with the IRIScan mouse scanner.
It even scanned a credit card that wasn’t completely flat because of the numbers protruding, which made the scan a little bumpy. The results were still perfect as it just took two swipes. Impressive indeed.
For larger documents that do not fit in the ScanPad, I was curious to know if a larger size ScanPad would have taken care of this issue had IRIScan included it in their package. If so, I gladly would have paid for the extra cost.
THE CONVERSION, EDIT, AND SHARING PROCESS
Once you have captured what you needed to have scanned with the touch of the button, it will automatically capture it and convert it by straightening it and applying a suggested crop that you can resize. It does a wonderful job allowing you to crop off the excess that you don’t need. Usually there is no need to rotate the document, as well. The software is very intuitive and user friendly during the editing process.
As soon as you are ready to save the editable document, it uses an embedded OCR (Optical Character Recognition) solution that supports well over 130 different languages that will identify text and allow users to easily copy and paste it into their most used applications, such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, or even Apple. You can convert your scanned document into a TXT, XLS, or even an PDF, and since OCR is being utilized by the software, you can fully edit your text, whether it’s a Word, Notepad, Excel, or an Acrobat reader document. 
Also, if you are scanning business cards, through CardIris, it will convert into digital contacts filling out the regular fields through OCR. Though not 100% perfect, you will still save a massive amount of time, since they are all editable fields. From there, you can save them into your Outlook, Gmail, etc.
If you are scanning a picture, you have your choice of choosing a JPG, TIFF, or even BMP format you can export it as a fully editable PDF or text file compatible with popular text and spreadsheet editors. Once saved, you can also have it backed easily on to your personal cloud hosting service (Dropbox, Evernote, Google Translate.) with just a click. This mouse scanner also lets you share pictures or drawings from your children with friends and families on Facebook and/or Twitter.
This must be one of the most ingenious innovative ideas in quite a while and this mouse has some super powers that no other mouse has ever seen.
CONCLUSION:
While the IRIScan Mouse WiFi may not replace your scanning equipment, it will supplement them by being able to scan documents that would not normally be used by a typical flatbed or feedable scanner, such as pages from bound magazines, books or music scores, due to its bulkiness. It will also make scanning smaller documents much easier and convenient, especially when on the road with your MousePad. However, if you have two-sided scanning to do, I would recommend a portable scanner.
A wonderful selling point of this mouse is its’ mobility features. This will appeal to those who travel for work and who collects many business cards and needs to update his contacts frequently onto his computer, as well as scanning receipts for his expense reports for a timely reimbursement from his employer. If you bring your MousePad with you to scan documents, everything will scan perfectly and it will be much quicker to edit, if needed. No longer will you need to type in text from a document.
If you have items larger than 4”x7”, you may have probably issues with it by not being able to scan perfectly the first time, though it might help to find a a completely smooth non-glare surface such as a clear deskpad that you can put documents under to scan so there wouldn’t be any movement. One of the challenges that I face is that paper moves, and it is difficult for the scanner to “paint” the document. It is best if the documents don’t move and stay as flat on the surface as possible. It also helps if the surface holds the paper down and is on a blank white neutral background.
This is simply not just a regular mouse, but supplemented by its useful software is a powerful all-in-one wireless mighty mouse scanner.
Faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive, able to jump tall buildings in A single bound
… It’s a mouse…Its a scanner, It’s “IRIScan Mouse!
Though, I’m not sure why they didn’t provide the IRIScan Mouse with a cape.
Article by Marcus Siu
Just like Superman who disguises himself as a mild-mannered spectacled newspaper reporter from “The Daily Planet” newspaper, easily blending in with the citizens of Metropolis as Clark Kent, the IRIScan Mouse Wifi in comparison seems to be a typical mouse blended in among an all too overcrowded world of accessories.
Clark Kent may “look” somewhat awkward and unintimidating at times to the people around him, but that is just him masquerading as Superman, just like this seven-ounce IRIScan Mouse does well, acting as an all-in-one scanner and wireless mouse with super powers.
When observing the IRIScan mouse side by side next to a laptop, there is nothing extraordinary about it when comparing other wireless mice. It scrolls, like a mouse, it, clicks like a mouse, and moves every which way just like a typical midsize mouse should. With its standard three mouse buttons and dialing wheel, it’s quite mild-mannered, just like Clark Kent, and it functions quite well for an everyday mouse.
Like Superman’s “x-ray vision”, the IRIScan mouse, has similar super powers and can suddenly transform itself to become a scanner within seconds from the touch of a button. Located on the bottom interior, its glass plate is free to roam and glide anywhere due to its wireless capability. It features a 1,500-dpi optical sensor which can create a scan with a resolution of up to 400 dpi for crisp, sharp documents using Slam Scan Technology, which is designed to allow users to scan documents up to A3 (11.7 x 16.5″) in size in a single bound. This IRIScan mouse has super powers that are “out of this world.
INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE
Without the software, this mouse would have no super powers. It’s the IRIScan and CardIris software and the hardware that makes this lithium chargeable mouse mighty unlike no other.
The first thing you need to do is to insert the dongle into the USB port of your computer and then install the IRIScan Mouse Wi-Fi software. Once the software is installed, you will have some very powerful tools that will make it easy to make to convert and edit into different files. By the touch of the button on the top of the mouse, the software loads the program onto your screen and immediately you are ready to scan.
THE SCANNING PROCESS: FREEHAND VS SCANPAD
To test the initial scanning of the IRIScan mouse, I grabbed a few items around the office; a credit card and credit card receipt, a business card, a film festival program, a political campaign mailer measuring 8.5”x11, as well as a CD jacket cover. I even took a bound music book to see if I could copy a page of music without having to crease the spine.
As I was scanning each of these items by hand, I began to realize that I didn’t have a smooth flat surface to work with, making it difficult to get a good initial scan from my documents. In addition, it was a tricky process, as I had to secure the documents using one hand and scan with the other. If the document was larger than my hand, than it would be difficult to get a good scan because of the documents not being securely held down.
As it turned out, I was still able to create perfect scans of the credit card receipt, business card, and CD jacket cover. I also was able to take capture a portion of the the film festival program containing a picture from the movie and the corresponding text description of it. However, I found myself having to rescan or “repaint” the spots that I initially missed. Luckily, they were small enough, so it wasn’t too troublesome.
Larger documents, especially if it contained both text and a photo on them, were more involving and definitely tested my patience, though I finally got the results I needed after several attempts keeping the document flat and still. I managed to scan a whole page of piano music from a bounded book perfectly, but that also took some practice to get to get it right.
As with the 8 ½“x 11” campaign flyer that included a slogan in the picture, I had absolutely no luck in scanning it in successfully. IRIScan even attempted to correct it through its OCR recognition, but as I rescanned the spots I had missed, it ran out of memory before completion of the image. It’s as though I was re-painting over the painted picture over and over without ever getting it just right.
Even with IRIScan’s capability to scan up to A3, it was very difficult to get the output to perfection, even with its OCR capability. My initial impression after freehand scanning was that this was way too much trouble for what it is worth, even for small documents, but that was before I realized that IRIScan included a ScanPad in the packaging.
The 4”x7” ScanPad includes a clear plastic cover that you can use to place over your document before scanning, allowing the mouse to scan over the documents with ease while holding the documents securely. This was the perfect solution making scanning very simple and quick for smaller documents. The ScanPad was a pure “life saver” and was a joy to re-scan all of those documents that I previously did freehand, which was finished in seconds.
I suggest this ScanPad should always be used with the IRIScan mouse scanner.
It even scanned a credit card that wasn’t completely flat because of the numbers protruding, which made the scan a little bumpy. The results were still perfect as it just took two swipes. Impressive indeed.
For larger documents that do not fit in the ScanPad, I was curious to know if a larger size ScanPad would have taken care of this issue had IRIScan included it in their package. If so, I gladly would have paid for the extra cost.
THE CONVERSION, EDIT, AND SHARING PROCESS
Once you have captured what you needed to have scanned with the touch of the button, it will automatically capture it and convert it by straightening it and applying a suggested crop that you can resize. It does a wonderful job allowing you to crop off the excess that you don’t need. Usually there is no need to rotate the document, as well. The software is very intuitive and user friendly during the editing process.
As soon as you are ready to save the editable document, it uses an embedded OCR (Optical Character Recognition) solution that supports well over 130 different languages that will identify text and allow users to easily copy and paste it into their most used applications, such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, or even Apple. You can convert your scanned document into a TXT, XLS, or even an PDF, and since OCR is being utilized by the software, you can fully edit your text, whether it’s a Word, Notepad, Excel, or an Acrobat reader document.
Also, if you are scanning business cards, through CardIris, it will convert into digital contacts filling out the regular fields through OCR. Though not 100% perfect, you will still save a massive amount of time, since they are all editable fields. From there, you can save them into your Outlook, Gmail, etc.
If you are scanning a picture, you have your choice of choosing a JPG, TIFF, or even BMP format you can export it as a fully editable PDF or text file compatible with popular text and spreadsheet editors. Once saved, you can also have it backed easily on to your personal cloud hosting service (Dropbox, Evernote, Google Translate.) with just a click. This mouse scanner also lets you share pictures or drawings from your children with friends and families on Facebook and/or Twitter.
This must be one of the most ingenious innovative ideas in quite a while and this mouse has some super powers that no other mouse has ever seen.
CONCLUSION:
While the IRIScan Mouse WiFi may not replace your scanning equipment, it will supplement them by being able to scan documents that would not normally be used by a typical flatbed or feedable scanner, such as pages from bound magazines, books or music scores, due to its bulkiness. It will also make scanning smaller documents much easier and convenient, especially when on the road with your MousePad. However, if you have two-sided scanning to do, I would recommend a portable scanner.
A wonderful selling point of this mouse is its’ mobility features. This will appeal to those who travel for work and who collects many business cards and needs to update his contacts frequently onto his computer, as well as scanning receipts for his expense reports for a timely reimbursement from his employer. If you bring your MousePad with you to scan documents, everything will scan perfectly and it will be much quicker to edit, if needed. No longer will you need to type in text from a document.
If you have items larger than 4”x7”, you may have probably issues with it by not being able to scan perfectly the first time, though it might help to find a a completely smooth non-glare surface such as a clear deskpad that you can put documents under to scan so there wouldn’t be any movement. One of the challenges that I face is that paper moves, and it is difficult for the scanner to “paint” the document. It is best if the documents don’t move and stay as flat on the surface as possible. It also helps if the surface holds the paper down and is on a blank white neutral background.
This is simply not just a regular mouse, but supplemented by its useful software is a powerful all-in-one wireless mighty mouse scanner.
Faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive, able to jump tall buildings in A single bound
… It’s a mouse…Its a scanner, It’s “IRIScan Mouse!
Though, I’m not sure why they didn’t provide the IRIScan Mouse with a cape.
Not surprising, an International flavor permeated this year’s computer Game Developers’ Conference (held at the Moscone Convention Center March 18 and 19, here in San Francisco). Delegations from Europe and parts of Asia included dozens of new game titles, and literarily hundreds of people. First-person shooting games remain popular, as were puzzles — fail to solve them at your peril.
Active and visible were offerings from the Polish delegation. Games sampled, along with sausage and kielbasas, at the “Polish Party,” included Game titles include “Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,” a 2015 medieval combat scenario, “Monarchs and Mountains.” Many of these titles include impressive realistic imagery. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=polish+video+games&chips=q:polish+video+games,g_1:poland&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCxtqokpDaAhVJwmMKHSMrA7YQ4lYIKCgA&biw=1280&bih=615&dpr=1.5#imgrc=JJ1YCmcKC7MRLM:
The goal is to promote the uniqueness of the Polish gaming industry, says Lukasz Plesnowicz, a spokesperson for the delegation. Polish game developers are very “integrated” the designer says. He cites a B2B award in 2014 for “This War of Mine,” a game demonstrating the sense of despair (the decreasing number of choices) of residents in a war-torn city. http://store.steampowered.com/app/282070/This_War_of_Mine/
In fact, Poland has its own independent games festival, says Jan Kleszcgski The country’s support for the video gaming industry has paid off: The segment was worth an estimated $279.6 million in 2014, according the investors’ newsletter VentureBeat. https://venturebeat.com/2014/11/22/the-birth-and-growth-of-the-polish-game-industry/
Jakub Marszalkowski “head geek” for the Polish Gaming authority cites the “deep story lines” of many Polish games, in contrast with intensive graphics supporting the on-screen runners or shooters. Popular Polish game titles like “Witcher” are easy to play, says Marszalkowski. The experiment with games as a “story-telling form” is recent.
But the experiments with intensive story telling is hardly peculiar to Polish games. The GDC also highlighted games from Europe (Swiss Nex), whose promoted title features a time-travel journey (“All We have is Time), Norway, Scotland Pavilion at GDC, and Korea, among others. Countries and multi-country consortiums touting products and infrastructure at GDC include:
A European consortium called “Swiss Nex” enables monetization for games with a block chain ecosystem for creators. In one game, a user brandishing a digital wallet hunts for “digital collectables.” A branch the Swiss arts council, Swiss Nex operates from San Francisco. https://www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org/event/swissgames/
The German Games Industry Compendium reported over 659 million Euros in game sales for 2017. And 43.9 million units in 2016. That’s 173 million users 2016 — up from 124 million users 2012. Success stories include “Angry Birds Evolution,” “Angry Birds Epic,” and “Drone Swarm” which runs on PCS.
The virtual reality “Eye of the Temple,” puts the play on the ramparts of an ancient castle, climbing on brick steps which may-or-may-not be real. Try not to fall over. Sanctum Dreams, the game’s creator, is based in Denmark. Its software runs on Macs, Linux, and PCs (but not consoles).
Norwegian Games are published by Innovation Norway, a subsidiary of the Norwegian Film Institute. Promoted titles include “Mosaic,” a tale of loneliness in an urban environment, “oVRshot,” a virtual reality game for multiple shooters, and “Trolls vs. Vikings 2,” a war game with trolls and dragons
Products of the Korean Pavilion (KOCCA) Korean Creative Content Agency include “Mad World,” in which a player fights multiple demons, and “Transformers” with augmented reality. KOCCA supports a wide range of creative industries in Korea, including gaming, animation, character licensing, music, fashion, and broadcasting. http://eng.kocca.kr/en/contents.do?menuNo=201433
“Fight the Horror” is a multi-monster attack uses an Unreal processing engine to depict attacking Zombies. The game’s main character, reminiscent of Laura Croft in “Tomb Raider,” must “fight, kill and resolve puzzles” according to the creator Lam Kai Wa (“Tony”) of 4DMacau. The first product out of Macau, “Fight the Horror” is slowly making its way into Hong Kong and Taiwan, where a government bans made it illegal to promote the horror game category. (No exploding heads here.)
San Francisco, March 25, 2018. At this year’s GDC 2018 (Game Developer’s Conference), there were a couple of demos that stood out that strongly reinforced my thoughts about the eventual futuristic merging of computer gaming and movies.
After just a few demos on the GDC expo floor, I was not be able to discern the difference between the computer game graphics and the live action from movies anymore. Realism for game developers have never looked so real.
On the first day of GDC, NVIDIA announced their latest RTX technology of Real time-Cinematic rendering. Nvidia’s RTX technology, alongside Microsoft’s new DirectX® Raytracing (DXR) API, has been an intensive work-in-progress for the last ten years. It’s ray tracing renders lifelike and realistic lighting, along with reflections and shadows that make it nearly impossible to distinguish what is real and what is not, in terms of computer graphics. It brings real-time, cinematic-quality rendering to content creators and game developers.
Yes, you read right: “real time”.
This new technology is a milestone for not just gaming developers and filmmakers, but any creator who needs to render an object as realistic as can be. The computer graphics of tomorrow will make computer graphics of today look like a lifeless imitation.
Nvidia had Project Spotlight “Reflections” at their booth at GDC, which looks more like a teaser trailer for the next Star Wars feature film, but in reality, it’s a real time tracing demo, which Epic’s team along with ILMxLAB and NVIDIA’s DGX Station, equipped with four Tesla V100 GPUs, Epic’s Unreal Engine and NVIDIA’s RTX ray-tracing technology.
It definitely wowed the enthusiastic GDC crowd as it was hard to believe that there were no actual actors used in the storm troopers costumes. It was all computer graphics being rendered.
At GDC, game developers will have access to ray-tracing denoiser module, part of the GameWorks SDK from Nvidia. Photo by Marcus Siu.
NVIDIA has also announced that the GameWorks SDK will add a ray-tracing denoiser module, helping game developers take advantage of new capabilities. This updated SDK, which is coming soon, includes support for ray-traced area light shadows, glossy reflections and ambient occlusion. This will help save a huge amount of time for creators.
Imagine how the Screen Actor’s will feel after they realize that computer graphics characters may jeopardize their career in the near future. One of those actors will
Motion capture performance artist, Andy Serkis, known for playing “Gollum” in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “Caesar” in the “Planet of the Apes” trilogy may not have problems finding work. Just a few sections away from the Nvidia booth, I saw a computer generated “digital” Andy Serkis acting out his lines as his alien creature character was being rendered in real time at the Unreal booth.
Unreal indeed.
Just unreal – Andy Serkis’s character talks as Andy talks in real time at the GDC 2018. Photo by Marcus Siu
Maybe in the near distant future, we can just get rid of the entire Screen Actor’s Guild with the exception of performance capture or voice-over actors. Or perhaps one day we can just clone the actors so there wouldn’t be any need for them to come in and perform on a sound stage.
Imagine at the Academy Awards…, “and the nominees for “Best Clone Actor in Supporting Role are”…
In addition with the progress of computer graphics coming from ray tracing in the visual sides, audio will also be just as important for content creators. End user consumers are continuously looking for an immersive experience with their gaming, so many are reaching out to THX certified equipment for their PC gaming.
THX demonstrated their spatial audio platform, using the latest audio standard, MPEG-H, as well as UHD. They were using the game trailer for “Helblade”, which ironically, was one of the first live motion capture technology for Epic Games in 2006. It was in a way, ahead of its time. Coming from a 2.1 THX certified Logitech speakers and a sub-woofer, it was quite sonically immersive. I felt that I was right in the middle of the soundscape.
There was also a demo of it using headphones, but I still preferred the speakers.
Certified THX Logitech Speakers at GDC. Photo by Marcus Siu.
In addition, they utilize personalized audio profiles using HRTS’s (Head-Related Transfer Functions), which are optimized and customized for each listener, based on user’s unique hearing anatomy.
Long associated with the Lucasfilm movie sound in movie theatres in the 80’s, it seems that THX is staging a comeback into the public eye in the marketplace. In addition to its traditional THX certified products such as home entertainment products over the years, such as projectors, pre-amps, receivers and speakers, they have been gaining momentum into the gaming world by introducing THX certified products, such as laptops, headsets and satellite speakers.
The audience is listening…again.
Article and photos by Marcus Siu
(originally published on mlsentertainment)
National Association of Broadcasters NVIDIA