Convex Hull Simplification With Containment By Successive Plane Removal
A fairly short overview of an interesting, and immensely handy simplification method, with the potential to reduce the number of calculations needed in a scene.

"I liked that other place. There was a God there."
This is a whimsical tale of a journey into an as yet uncreated virtual sim world, an Earth in its entirety, which has been created to test the hypothesis of an Earth ?spinning with its axis of rotation in the plane of its ecliptic around the sun, its south pole always pointing at the sun.? The article goes into great depth and hilarity, but ends with a poignant note on the nature of VR worlds, which you would do well to remember.

Indoor Totally-Autonomous UAV Plane
Researchers working at MIT have cracked one of the most difficult challenges in autonomous aircraft sensing and AI to crop up since self-piloting aircraft first came about. They have devised a method whereby fast-flying UAV planes can detect their environment and react swiftly enough to be able to fly indoors, dodging both static and moving obstacles as effortlessly as any human pilot could.

Using UAVs to Ramp up Development of Aerial Sensor Webs
In concept it is quite brilliant – using a small, cheap, practically 3D printable unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to greatly accelerate the development of aerial sensors, by allowing them to quickly and easily be fitted to the UAV, and launched into the air without a moment's hesitation. Something needs tweaking, the small plane is landed, the sensor detached, tweaked, reattached and the whole thing lifts again.

Combating Noise and Distortion When Linking Aircraft to the wider Sensor Net
Commercial aircraft are a problem when it comes to linking them to the wider sensor net - all external electronic communication flows through a single part of the nose of the plane. This must be precision manufactured to be defect-free, or moisture and heat can tear the signal apart. How then, do you guarantee it is defect-free?

Large Image Display: Animatrix: Final Flight of the Osiris: Initial Fight
This frame is from the widescreen version of ?Final Flight of the Osiris?, one of the Animatrix animated shorts. It has been considerably scaled back from the original material. However, you can clearly see the detail and realistic motion the CG figures possess. This is easily equal to any passive CG sequence created today. Yet, it was actually created back in 2003. It is here to remind us that the technologies developed for interactive CG, do in fact scale to passives, just fine.

Large Image Display: Animatrix: Final Flight of the Osiris: Facial Detail
This frame is from the widescreen version of ?Final Flight of the Osiris?, one of the Animatrix animated shorts. It has been considerably scaled back from the original material. Still, it exists to showcase the state of CG faces back in 2003. At least the CG possible when interactive VR techniques are applied to a passive VR production. In the years since this animation short came out, normal passive CG specialists have caught up. The question we ask here is, how come it took four years for them to catch up?

Three-Dot Issues
A look at two types of non-PCworlds; a nostalgic look back at the Apple computers, and a look forward at the possibilities of utilising consoles for online worlds.

As a game designer or new media storyteller, you know that the story is everything. However, figuring out how to tell it interactively-and in a way that keeps your audience coming back for more-can be challenging.

(16/05/2006)
A robot plane with no wires or mechanical connections between its engine, navigation system and onboard computers has been built and flown by engineers in Portugal.

The 3-metre-long uncrewed plane "AIVA" relies entirely upo...

(17/05/2009)
Just when you thought invisibility cloaks couldn't get any weirder, researchers come up with this: a way to make one object look like any other.

The illusion is a two-step process, and to see how it works, imagine making a m...

(14/03/2008)
A six-inch robotic spy plane modeled after a bat would gather data from sights, sounds and smells in urban combat zones and transmit information back to a soldier in real time.

That's the Army's concept, and it has awarded...

(21/11/2003)
Marlin Studios has released a new offering of some 115 royalty-free inages for $239. The images each come with an 8 bit clipping mask, and 32bit main channel, and produce seamless alpha blending....

(06/08/2007)
Tiny microplanes with unique morphing wings have been developed by engineering students in the Netherlands, based directly on the design of the humble swift ? a mere bird.

The RoboSwifts, which have a wingspan of 50cm mimic t...