TeraGrid ‘08 gallery showcases the beauty of scientific 3D visualization
Posted by
Tony DeYoung on July 18, 2008
The 3D Digital Visualization Gallery from the June TeraGrid ‘08 conference in Las Vegas highlights a wide variety of scientific and engineering domains in computational science. The gallery of static images and QuickTime movies showcases the “Beauty of Science” with simulations ranging from seismic activity and volume rendering to superovae and toroidal magnetic fields. All of the imagery was created from science and engineering results related to some aspect of the TeraGrid. The TeraGrid, sponsored by the National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure, provide high-performance network connections and resources to handle massive datasets in science and engineering.
BMW Gina - a re-interpretation of familiar functionality and structure
Posted by
Tony DeYoung on July 10, 2008
BMW's new GINA concept car offers incredibly complex design by incorporating a lightweight, durable, flexible, cloth skin pulled taut around a frame of aluminum and carbon fiber wires. Electro-hydraulic controls can actually move and change shape of the car beneath the fabric skin to adjust for current conditions such as speed and weather. The most striking example are the headlights. When the headlights are not active, they are smoothly hidden under the fabric skin. When the driver turns on the lights, the fabric "blinks" opens and reveals the BMW head-lights. Even the interior is skinned with flexible, Neoprene, only revealing the dash components that are needed.
Check out the sculptural aesthetics of the convex-concave elements in this video. Would be interesting to see the original CAD.
