Channel 9 - Entries tagged with 3D

Silverlight TV 77: Exploring 3D

John Papa — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:00:00 GMT

This week Aaron Oneal, program manager of the Silverlight 3D efforts, joins John to discuss the 3D APIs in Silverlight 5 beta. Aaron was instrumental in working on the 3D features and helped to create the 3D Solar Wind and 3D HouseBuilder demos. Aaron reviews the features and explores how they all work by demoing the Solar Wind sample application. This is a great walk through of a nice app that you can apply to your own 3D efforts.

Relevant links:

John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa)
Aaron's blog and on Twitter (@aaron_oneal)
Shawn Hargreaves' blog on game programming with XNA
Solar Wind sample app
Housebuilder demo
Babylon Engine and Toolkit
Balder 3D engine

Silverlight.net

Silverlight TV 65: 3D Graphics

John Papa — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Do 3D and graphics get you going? The folks at Archetype created an amazing 3D application that we first showed in the keynote at the Silverlight Firestarter in December, 2010. In this episode, Danny Riddell, CEO of Archetype, joins John to discuss their recent work with Silverlight 5, 3D, and graphics. Watch as Danny dives into how they built the 3D medical application and takes John through a detailed tour of the application.

Relevant links:

John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa)
Silverlight.net

Calvin Klein Brings the Catwalk to Consumer Electronics

Terry Walsh — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:58:56 GMT

Say what you like about the image quality and immersive experience delivered by 3D TV & Movies, but it’s near impossible to look good whilst wearing 3D glasses. Whilst the engineers at the major consumer electronics companies continue to toil away improving the tech, I wonder who’s improving the aesthetics?

If you’ve been feeling sartorially challenged when getting your 3D on, then a more fashionable option may not be too far away. Last week, Hot Hardware featured new eyeware from Calvin Klein, who have teamed up with Marchon3D to bring fresh style to 3D specs. According to the PR, these are not mere 3D glasses, but are 3D-enabled sunglasses infusing technology with “sleek, fashion-forward design.” So there.

The specs are certified to protect against UVA, UVB and UVC rays (although you’d actually need to be an astronaut to run the risk of natural UVC damage, as it gets filtered by the atmosphere before it lands here on planet Earth) and has photochromic lens technology, so you can wear them indoors or out.

If you want to enjoy your next 3D experience without being stopped by the fashion police, then these may well be for you. Or maybe not.

Will You Buy Your Next TV From Your Optometrist?

Terry Walsh — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 07:51:08 GMT

Whilst the experience of wearing 3D glasses certainly feels a little strange to most of us, spare a thought for those who already wear glasses and have to wear the 3D goggles over their existing eyewear. The result? Headaches, pain behind the ears and worst of all, you look pretty silly too.

Samsung have spotted the problem, and have launched the world’s first prescription 3D glasses over in Korea (reports Akihabara News). The glasses are custom made to your prescription by an optometrist, and take around a week to manufacture.

There’s no word on price, but given you never see a poor optometrist out there, I’m sure there’ll be a healthy premium for the specs. It’s a potentially lucrative new line for your local optical professional though – who knows, maybe they’ll take on the big box retailers and throw in some decent service for once. Forget hours of online research, given we spend so much time looking at our TVs, a eyecare professional may well offer the best advice on which model to buy with those glasses.

Feel the Rain As If You Were There, With Europe’s First 3D TV Channel

Terry Walsh — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:41:26 GMT

Here in the UK, Sky used Golf’s Ryder Cup to launch Europe’s first 3D TV channel, unsurprisingly named Sky 3D. The tournament itself was a bit of a wash out (although a gripping end saw the Cup retained by the Europeans) with heavy rain limiting much of the action. Still, goggle-eyed viewers had the chance to view undulating greens, wide open fairways and a more than healthy amount of raindrops failing from the moody Welsh skies.

3D is all the rage right now, with millions of marketing dollars being employed to convince to you switch your TV and Blu-ray player and pop on those 3D glasses every night. Right now, I wonder just how much of the noise is translating into sales, but of course, that conversion will almost certainly be driven by content.

Certainly Sky believe that Sport is a big winner in 3D, with Golf, Football and Rugby on offer in the new format. That’s a view shared by ESPN in the US, who have launched their own 3D Sports Channel showing College Football. DirecTV, Channel + and Discovery Channel have all announced plans to launch 3D Channels in the next 12 months.

That said, it still feels like it’s a little early for the 3D revolution, but with a lot more TV, Movie and Gaming content on the way, I wonder just how long it’ll be before you upgrade?

Sony Reveals 3D Vaio Laptop

Sarah Perez — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 04:16:00 GMT

Sony revealed its first 3D Vaio laptop at the recent IFA trade show. Although the laptop was only a prototype, a Sony rep told TechRadar that he expects the new laptop will arrive next year. So what makes it 3D? The laptop has a 16” screen that uses 3D technology similar to that found in Sony Bravia TVs, which inserts black frames in between color images to separate them. The notebook also uses the same “Active Shutter” glasses as those that are used with Bravia TVs. As for why you would need a 3D laptop, a couple of things immediately come to mind: PC gaming and watching 3D movies. The Sony laptop has a switch that turns the 3D on, since you obviously don’t need to see 3D all the time. Will consumers want 3D computers, though? Only time will tell, I guess. But I’m sure this year’s CES will see a lot more of them.

Image credit: We Got Served

NAB: Silverlight in 3D

Larry Larsen — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:43:00 GMT

While at NAB this year, Alex Zambelli showed us 3D streaming with Smooth Streaming. NAB this year was all about 3D and we had several announcements of our own for that. It's only a matter of time until Channel 9 is in 3D. Also announced at NAB this year was IIS Media Services 4.0 support for Smooth Streaming over multicast networks which supports transmuxing for adaptive streaming on iPhones. Apologies for how dark the video is, it was very dark on the floor this year and it looked brighter on the monitor than it does now.

NAB: Silverlight in 3D

Larry Larsen — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:38:00 GMT

Silverlight Coming to the TV via Partnerships with Intel, Broadcom

Sarah Perez — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:58:00 GMT

Microsoft announced at the 2010 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show that it’s working with Intel and Broadcom to port the Silverlight platform to set-top boxes, connected TVs, Blu-ray players and other consumer devices. Using system-on-a-chip (SOC) technology, consumer electronics manufacturers will be able to deliver HD programming to TV sets via connected devices while taking advantage of Silverlight’s adaptive bitrate streaming and DVR-like control mechanisms that allow you to pause, rewind and fast-forward a live video stream.

Also announced at the show was the next version of IIS Media Services, the media delivery platform that delivers live and on-demand media across an enterprise or from telcos and cable providers to their customers. One of the most notable new features in this version of IIS is the ability for broadcasters to “encode once” and then deliver content-protected media to both Silverlight and non-Silverlight devices.

Microsoft demoed these technologies at the show, in conjunction with Inlet Technologies, Level 3 Communications, THX Ltd. and TVN. Together, they were able to create a demonstration of live, high-definition 3D content using IIS’s Smooth Streaming and Silverlight.

Pete at PDC09: WPF 3d Awesomeness with Tor and Robby

Pete Brown — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:09:00 GMT

While at PDC09, I met up with Tor Langlo and Robby Ingebretsen who had just built a really cool closet configuration application using WPF and 3D.

Think about going to a high-end home store, where the consultant sits down with you and helps configure a walk-in or other type of closet for your house. They help you do everything from pick materials to structural layout to deciding where you might want drawers vs. hanging baskets. Now imagine that they're doing this all in 3d instead of an old pad of white paper with all the options listed and a little spot of graph paper in the corner.

This is not your typical business application, but it still does the things business apps all do including some nice forms over data parts shown near the end of the video. If you're looking for a little inspiration for your own apps, check this out.

Zune HD Gets New Games

Sarah Perez — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:14:00 GMT

On Wednesday, Zune HD owners got a nice surprise: new 3D games! According to a post on Zune Insider, there are now six new titles available, including Project Gotham Racing, Audiosurf Tilt, Vans SK8: Pool Service, Lucky Lanes Bowling, Piano, and Checkers. This addition brings the number of Zune games to a little over a dozen now. Best of all, the new games are entirely free.

If you want to see the games in action, Crunchgear has posted a video demonstrating some of the more interesting titles on their Zune HD device. And on the Mobility Site, they’ve reviewed a few of the new games including PGR, Lucky Lanes, and Audiosurf Tilt.

In order to download the new games to your device, you’ll need to do the following:

Connect your Zune HD to your computer and sign into the Zune software.
Click on Marketplace, Apps.
Select the game or app you want, then click Download.
Go to Collection, Apps, and drag the games and apps that you want to the Zune player icon to sync them.

Finally, to access games and apps on your Zune HD, on the home screen tap Apps, then tap the game or app you want.

You can learn more about each individual game by reading the descriptions provided here.

Behind the PDC 3D Video - A How-To

Larry Larsen — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:56:00 GMT

As promised I give you a quick walk-through of how we did the PDC Countdown video in 3D. Hardware used included a pair of Flip Ultra HD cameras, a bracket and connector, and an affordable little tripod -- Total cost: $340. The software I use is Stereo Movie Maker, which is freeware and can be downloaded here.

Let us know if you'd like to see more content in 3D (probably in addition to 2D video rather than instead of). And post a link in the coffeehouse if you end up doing some of your own.

Behind the PDC 3D Video - A How-To

Larry Larsen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:40:00 GMT

Countdown to PDC09: Developers Go 3D!

Larry Larsen — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:37:00 GMT

Watch out James Cameron, the PDC team has done their first ever show in 3D, and that’s because we’ve got the width, the depth, and the length. And how do we have those? Well, check out the dozens of new sessions just announced (with tons more content still to come), that include SQL, WCF, Silverlight, and lots of goodness on Azure including a session on how Azure has changed since Microsoft first described it. But don’t feel left out! You can give a community talk at the PDC via our Birds of a Feather sessions. Check out the PDC09 BOF site that includes instructions on how you can submit a session for consideration. Now go get your 3D on, and don’t forget, the red lens goes over the left eye, and the blue one over the right eye!

PS: This works best in highest quality (so, choose WMV(High) from the Formats dropdown under the inline player)

Microsoft Research Summit: WWT in 3D

Laura Foy — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:00:00 GMT

I had to stop by and try on the 3D glasses at the WWT booth during this years Faculty Research Summit. If you think the WWT is cool- just wait till you see it in 3D.

WorldWide Telescope (WWT) enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky.

A web-based version of WorldWide Telescope is also now available for preview. This version enables seamless, guided explorations of the universe from within a web browser on PC and Intel Mac OS X by using the power of Microsoft Silverlight 2.0.

Silverlight PlaneProjection (perspective transform) tutorial

Adam Kinney — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:11:00 GMT

Jaime Rodriguez has written a great tutorial on PlaneProjection in Silverlight 3. Jaime explains how to relate common 3D concepts to PlaneProjection in Silverlight. You can see the transforms in action by playing around with parameters on his Sandbox page. Or you can download the sample app source code and jump right in.

A Motion Capture Viewer written in Silverlight

Adam Kinney — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:49:00 GMT

Nikola, previously on showing his Shock game, is back with a new interesting project, a Motion Capture Viewer written in Silverlight. Along with entertaining us with dancing stick figures, Nikola is also sharing the code, what he's learned and a primer on Motion Capture. Real 3D in action!

Integrating 3D into Expression Blend with ZAM 3D Tutorial

Adam Kinney — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:10:00 GMT

Nick Petterssen from Electric Rain demonstrates how to use ZAM 3D with Blend to create true 3D content for WPF. Once the 3D object is then added to the scene he shows how to animate it using the familiar Storyboard objects used for animating 2D objects.

Druckbetankung - Die Show :: Silverlight 3 Teil VI

Jan Schenk — Mon, 18 May 2009 08:42:00 GMT

In Teil fünf der Staffel Silverlight 3 aus der Serie "Druckbetankung - Die Show" dreht sich alles um die Plane Projection, die 3D-Projektion in Silverlight 3. Diese Projektion lässt sich sowohl in Expression Blend 3 verändern, als auch an Eingabefelder, beispielsweise Slider, binden und so in der Anwendung selber interaktiv verändern. Oliver Scheer und ich programmieren uns explorativ durch die Möglichkeiten der 3D-Projektion.

TCSWeekly 002 - Obama, Silverlight 3, 3D Models and Virtual Earth

Adam Kinney — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:05:00 GMT

The biggest news from last week in the Microsoft Client World is tied to the biggest news of January, possibly of the year 2009. If you haven't already heard it echoed on twitter and blogs, last week the Presidential Inauguration Committee announced the event will be streamed in Silverlight. If you missed the ceremony you're in luck, they will also be making the video available on demand in the future.

Other Stories mentioned in this episode include:


<-- Episode 1		Episode 3 -->

Creating 3D Models for WPF Pt4 - Smooth texture to WPF application

Mike Ormond — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:33:00 GMT

3D has traditionally been complex and challenging but with the advent of WPF, incorporating 3D into your applications is much more realistic. These 4 videos walk through the process of building a very simple 3D application.

I start by creating a re-usable 3D model of a yoghurt pot in Blender with textured surfaces representing interchangeable product artwork. This model is then imported into a WPF application via Expression Blend. I add some animation and user interaction via the 3D tools library on CodePlex and show how easy it is to switch the imagery to represent different products.

For an idea of what the final application looks like, visit my blog post or click here for the xbap.

Links to other parts:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Creating 3D Models for WPF Pt3 -Colourful model to smooth textures

Mike Ormond — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:31:00 GMT

Creating 3D Models for WPF Pt2 - Blocky model to colourful model

Mike Ormond — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:09:00 GMT

Creating 3D Models for WPF Pt1 - Blank paper to blocky outline

Mike Ormond — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:56:00 GMT

Dynamic 3D Charts with Telerik

Adam Kinney — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:16:00 GMT

Vladimir Milev and Todd Anglin show us the new Charting and Gauge controls from Telerik. The Charts are very flexible and run in 2D and 3D mode, you can even use your own custom models for the 3D Charts.

The Gauges shown in the video are also now available in Silverlight. Same API for both WPF and Silverlight versions, which should definitely make the life of the developer easier when using them.