So lets start this off with Sunday night when team member Kevin and I got into our super sweet Holiday Inn. We quickly unloaded our gear to jump on the FREE WIFI. To explain our frustration quickly we could have gone back to Santa Sruz, skated derby a bit and went to K-mart to check the ole facebook. Monday morning starting at 6:30am raffles, swag and free coffee got the GeForce gamers pumped for a huge event. NVISION's signage around the city really stood out, they werent messing around painting the city green. No effort was spared at the entrance to the San Jose Covention Center with a green carpet rolled out and a neon green fountain. After the awesome lines waiting to get into the tiny elevator and hardware check-in, we finally entered the lan center. EPIC. Just as it should be; amazing lighting, sound and visual effects to set the atmosphere. Nvidia's focus on NVISION this year was to be concious of our current situation with global warming and energy problems. To "offset carbon emmisions" small charges (as a donation) were added to the fee for attending NVISION. Inside the GeForce lan they are using massive L.E.D. bricks, floods, wall lights, and moving lights specially in the ESWC arena. We have a very rich green and blue glow over all the personal computers. The only problem I see in the whole event is that the power these computers are consuming could power Scotts Valley for a few weeks! So speaking of awesome computers... One of the coolest things to see at large lan parties like GeForce or NewEgg LanFest 2k7 is the case mods. Countless hours are spent making the most colorful, technical, flashy, eye popping boxes to put their crack inside. Ill post more pictures tommrow but the few I have on here are spectacular and are even more intricate than the pictures illustrate. 1970's clunker: Completely gutted then modded with a flat screen to replace the old tube. If you look closely im pretty sure the monitor is being held in by electrical tape. The dust that is all over it is from 1970 as well. Blue Lagoooon: Very nicely modded case with a round Koolance reservoir. Clear tubing and clearly very blue. One of the cleanest looking from the display. Battlestar Galactica rig: Not only is this case extremely modded with hand carved attachments it has one large screen so you can watch Battlestar Galatica when ever you please. On top of that... actually in front of that (hahahah ahahahahfhah o my god its 3:30am! im funny!) he has installed three micro lcd screens so the computer can announce it has intense viruses and needs attention. A very nice use of bright white L.E.D.s in the runway area (on the top of the case) gives it a very sexy touch.
Moving on to other parts of the LAN center... The main stage is where the PMS clan stands and throws candy and swag to the crowd that forms around them. One of the first events two groups arm wrestled for a GFX card and one guy went so far out that it looked like he snapped his arm off. Knarly enough that the lovely paramedics came to check it out. To my knowledge he is back and playing at the Guinness World Record section. The ESWC has the nicest looking set up out of the whole GeForce center. Huge HD projectors at every angle and plenty of strobing, moving lights that im sure the teams enjoyed while they were concentrating. Talking to the crew their favorite things are working for a union and filming the people who move there fingers very quickly. The big guy incharge over there didn't have much to say except he maintains all the equipment around the arena but does not like the games. Tough luck. Sitting through the overclocking workshop was great becides some of the questions people ask. Are the people who go to LAN parties coming here for something else? Do they knw what a computer is? Why are they sitting in seats that I could have been sitting in?... To sum up the workshop, its all luck how much you can overclock and if it gets to hot, it wont work. What really blew my mind was the overclocking done by Kingpin. This guy is one of the best overclockers in the world breaking many 3dmark scores. To even get close to the speeds he is getting (up towards 6ghz) one of your only options is liquid nitrogen in a liquid nitrogen "pot". Amazing to watch, and looks like a cool hobby just like tweaking a car... the parts for overclocking are a little bit cheaper and arent used for regular ues. One of these liquid nitrogen pots cost around 400 bucks and weigh around five pounds with some good copper. An alternative to liquid nitrogen is dry ice but im going to assume its harder to keep it cooler because of the surface area dry ice would not cover. Check out Kingpin's records and products at www.overclockingpin.com. It's about to hit 4am and I need 2 or three hours of sleep before the next keynotes so i will just write my notes quickly then touch up on them in a few hours... The NVISION keynotes had some amazing new products offered and has a very promising look into the future for new levels of visual computing including multi dimensional experiences and multi-touch screens. So here's our notes.... Quality is not the focus anymore for digital imaging, instead more dimentions. Image processing: augmented reality, parallel computing. Automotive design is almost completely digital bypassing the clay work and sketching. This speeds up the manufacturing process greatly. Digital prototyping is changing all of manufactuing in general giving us the potential to create a product with out actually creating it. This majorly cuts cost and time down big time. Peter Steneson (car guy) Hybrid rendering reason: much faster and the potential to swap different options in real time. This makes the product competelly customizable so a company can give a manufacturer multiple designs and tell them to do each one differently. "no coffee cup holder?" reply "it will go in your face" Using the same hybrid rendering idea: aerospace, TV, frig makers, GOOGLE MAPS: 400 million downloads directly from the site. More potential to figure out where to go faster with street views. Chinas version of "second life" much more serious with more money spent in game. game is free to download, im pretty sure you will be naked. SPORTS VISION- MARV WHITE ceo-sport vision. adds the things that are hard to see in sports. first down mark, clean and dirty air passing by a race car, strke zones... "when stadium is filled the concrete sags and the cameras for the first down mark need to be readjusted" about a 15 minute process. The green bay packers dont need to worry about turning invisiable because their technology can distinguish different colors even if very similar. HDR and PhotoSYNTH- Josh Ednalias Keeping photography useful to make more vibrant images and 3d images. Multi touch is the new thing... Bottle neck? the mouse. Demo: two people one screen both using both hands to manipulate, open and discuss different windows and objects. The definition of a good actor has now changed for some actors that have to get good at talking to blank space that will be filled in with a CG image in post. Some who fail can use a tennis ball on a string. The key is to anticipate something moving that is never there. Have fun kids!
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