nVidia's First Visual Computing Confab Dazzles - Page 2

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Not just nVidia's show

Huang had several guests during the keynote to discuss their own visual computing plans. First up was Peter Stevenson, chief operating officer of RTT, which does automobile design software. Stevenson showed off a virtual prototype of an upcoming Lamborghini. Only 20 units of this 1.5 million Euro car will be built and all were sold just by showing the car off in a real time visual representation of the car that allowed you to move around the car, both inside and outside.

Taehoon Kim, president and founder of Nurien Software from Korea, demonstrated a Second Life-type virtual world, which featured a flat panel TV on the wall playing a music video while an avatar of Huang break danced in the living room of his virtual house. "This is going to be the next Facebook," Huang predicted at the end of the demonstration.

This was followed by SportVision, provided some visuals during the Olympics. Marv White, chief technology officer of the company, showed off things like the on-field movement of football players or the arc of the ball during a pass. It also showed air dynamics of NASCAR cars racing around a track, which looked a little cartoony.

Microsoft was there to show off Photosynth, just launched last week, and how it redraws on the fly. A 3D demo took place, showing how regular videogames can be given the illusion of depth, with the right glasses.

But the most impressive guest, aside from Helfer, was Perceptive Pixel. Founder Jeff Han showed off a 100-inch multitouch TV that took input from all 10 fingers at once to draw, reshape, resize and manipulate. "The graphics have always been there but we didn't have the ability to handle a high bandwidth input device like multitouch before," said Han.

The demo drew a string of "oohs" from the audience as Han drew a circle and a menu came up. No more having to click in the lower left of the screen, Han joked, which the audience appreciated. As fast as he could touch the giant screen, maps came up similar to Google Earth but with an instant load and response to input.

Facing up to problems

It wasn't all pleasantries for nVidia. During the press conference, Huang was asked about notebook GPU failures. He countered that nVidia stepped up and admitted to the problem immediately. "We know of failures with our chips. Most notebooks are fine, but if you have this problem, you either let the consumer work it out with the OEM, or I go to the OEM and say let's just go solve it. We chose to solve it," he said.

Still, a group called "Unite Here" had to crash the party, handing out fliers with large text that said "Find the flawed chip. and you could get the nVidia fail!" Given this was an audience of nVidia fans and consumers, they might find their reception less than welcoming.

NVISION 08 runs through Wednesday in San Jose at the Convention Center and surrounding buildings.