The two-hour speech was more of a rally for the larger visual computing sector, which incorporates computer graphics, games development and design. Huang served as a ring leader, taking people through the possibilities of visual computing, based on, of course, chips like Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
It was an impressive show, explaining in real terms how the power of the GPU is unlocking a lot of different eye-popping uses. With the ability to program the GPU now through Nvidia’s CUDA environment, artists, engineers and designers are finding inventive ways to use the parallel computing of the GPU.
“Let the era of visual computing begin,” Huang said.
Here are some of the on-stage demos that I liked:
Jeff Han, founder of Perceptive Pixel, showed off a large 100-inch touch screen that allowed multiple people to work on it together. The display ran multiple applications at one time and even allowed Han to “cut out” a picture of Huang and manipulate it like an animated rag doll using only his hands.
Huang made a point of talking about how 3-D would change our entertainment experience much the way color did so many years ago. To that end, he showed off a couple of game demos that featured 3-D technology from Dolby. The Age of Empire III demo in 3-D was stunning, giving you this cool look at a castle siege from a floating perspective.
Sportvision’s demo showed off some cool television tools that make watching contests on TV more visually stimulating. The company that brought you the first-and-ten markers are also enabling individual player or ball tracking, creating a visual path following the progress of an individual player or the ball.
Microsoft’s new Photosynth technology also made an appearance. It was the first time seeing it in action and it’s really cool. As you take dozens of pictures of one location, the software stitches the images together into a 3-D model that you can explore shot by shot. It’ll require a lot of pictures but when it’s done, you feel like you’re actually walking into the scene you captured.
Huang also had some fun with a new virtual reality game developed out of Korea. And he enjoyed talking to actress Tricia Helfer, the Battlestar Galactica babe who talked about how computer graphics and the digital insertion of actors and robots has changed the way she does her job.
Nvision 08 continues today and tomorrow down in San Jose.