You have to admit they know how to cut some extreme sports sequences. This is the promotional video for the GoPro camera, shown on their front page. Checking their Youtube page, they also have some 3D video in case you have a way to watch it.
This post is a topic a bit different from the usual on this blog, but I thought the following video to be really worth sharing. Made back in 2003, it was featured on the Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday (if you want your daily delivery of stunning pictures, just subscribe to their feed) and shows a visualization of the DNA, including the incredible replication process.
I wanted to put here a couple of links on SIGGRAPH 2012 material, but as the Real-Time Rendering blog points out, somebody has already made a comprehensive list of what can be found. So wait no more, go there and pick up your commuting time reading for the next weeks: SIGGRAPH 2012 Links.
Crytek has published a video showing the rendering technology used in the CryEngine, more specifically in Crysis 3. While I don’t really dig the artistic choices (I find the overall image to be messy due to the high contrast and not that appealing, aesthetically speaking), the technical side is impressive. I especially like the use displacement mapping and tessellation for the vegetation (by the way, see how great that leaf looks; they got the material completely right). The reflexions visible at 1’52 make me think they also implemented the cone tracing technique, just like Unreal did. On the downside, all the parts with falling water felt unrealistic to me.
Last but not least, Toad Technology! :)
It is impressive how much a carefully directed video can convey in as little as four minutes. Give this one the screen real estate it deserves: watch it full screen.
I already mentioned the camera built by a team in the MIT Media Lab, allowing with its trillions of frame per second, to capture the propagation of light or to see around corners.
TED published a video of the talk given by Ramesh Raskar, where he presents this work and the new possibilities it opens.
Here are two roughly 90mn long resources on these CPU details you always wanted to know but never asked:
An article giving an up to date, dense and well explained overview of microprocessors architecture: Modern Microprocessors – A 90 minutes guide!
A talk by Scott Meyers on CPU cache: CPU Caches and Why You Care. Although the recording could be much better to say the least, the talk is very worth watching, starting with very simple considerations and getting pretty far while staying crystal clear. The slides can be found here.
Update: the Scott Meyers talk referenced in the above link has been put behind a paywall. However he gave his talk again in 2014 at a conference, and the video is available. The new talk contains a few differences, and all in all I find it a bit harder to follow and a bit less entertaining (for some reason, the jokes don’t work as well as they did previously), but the recording quality is also much better.