Neil Trevett, President of the Khronos Group, VP of Mobile Graphics, NVIDIA, will be talking at Pacific Graphics 2009. Pacific Graphic is an annual international conference on computer graphics and applications and provides a premium forum for researchers, developers, practitioners in the Pacific Rim and around the world to present and discuss new problems, solutions, and technologies in computer graphics and related areas.

DMP has announced two OpenGL ES training courses. OpenGL ES Programming training course (getting started) September 14th - 15th, 2009, and OpenGL ES Programming training course (advanced course) September 24th - 25th, 2009. The curriculum has changed for the September course.

Bitmanagement introduces the new release of BS Contact 7.2 Stereo for Windows at Siggraph 2009. BS Contact enables the visualization of applications in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality through integration of interactive realtime 3D technology. Supporting all 25 main features of the BS Contact 7.2 Web3D and including significant improvement in quality and appropriate software for major 3D-hardware manufacturers. In BS Contact Stereo OpenGL (GLSL) dynamic shaders can be used.

As reported by The Khronos Group, Spore now provides a cheat that allows Creators export their models in COLLADA file format. NaviCAD accurately displays the mesh and texture-mapping elements of the Spore COLLADA files. The NaviCAD developers are working on an update to handle all the COLLADA elements generated by the Spore COLLADA export cheat and have posted a slightly-modified Spore creature Hyla-Test in the Sample Models Search section of the app. NaviCAD is the only iPhone application that allows users to view COLLADA files including models from the Google 3D Warehouse.

Creative Labs announced their anticipated Zii Plaszma StemCell computing platform. The Zii Plaszma Platform is comprised of the Zii EGG StemCell Computer, ZMS-05 System Module, ZMS-05 Media Rich Applications Processor, Plaszma OS and Plaszma SDK. Features include 1080HD output, the ZMS Media Rich Applications Processor using ARM cores and enables OpenGL ES, an SDHC card slot, front facing VGA camera, rear facing HD camera, ten point Multi Gesture touch screen and a GPS receiver.

Mentor Graphics announced the integration of its Nucleus® Graphics User Interface (GUI) with the ARM Mali graphics processing unit (GPU) family of acceleration solutions. Integrating the Nucleus Graphics GUI solution with the Mali-200 GPU makes it possible for graphic artists and usability specialists to exploit the potential of this advanced 3D accelerator. The Nucleus Graphics product abstracts the complexity of the OpenGL ES API to enable anyone to incorporate sophisticated 3D effects such as lighting, spinning, fading, twisting and zooming into their GUI designs without any programming knowledge.

The Champion the 3D Web using COLLADA Contest is quickly coming to end. With only three days left until it closing July 31st at midnight. If you are interested in entering, you should do so now. The Khronos Group has posted the BOF schedules for Siggraph 2009, which includes the time and date for announcing the winner. In addition to a Grand Prize of $5000, there are also First place, Second place and runner up prizes which include cash and additional prizes from the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative and Electric Rain Inc. A complete list of prizes is available on the COLLADA Contest website.

Jon Peddie Research just released their most recent MarketWatch report. According to the press release available online here, JPR shows AMD had 41.5% growth from Q1 to Q2 of 2009. Intel and NVIDIA also showed respectable gains in this most recent quarter to quarter change. Read the press release online, or purchase the complete Market Watch report at the Jon Peddie Research online store.

Evolver is a web-based interface compatible with COLLADA which allows you to create your own avatars quickly and easily. Using the intuitive web interface anyone can create their own avatar. The interface supports full body avatars which can be women, men, children or creatures. You can even upload your own photo to create a close of yourself. There are several ways to share your creation built into the online interface such as MySpace, Facebook, online movie and more. There is an introductory price of $39USD to export your avatar so that you can use it in a 3D application such os Maya.

The BlockMap data structure is an efficient and compact representation which stores in a small texture all the information to render city blocks. Developed at the Visual Computing Laboratory - CNR, it encodes color, normal and ambient occlusion term for the vertical facades and sloped roofs of the buildings. Using modern OpenGL and GLSL for preprocessing and ray-casted visualization, the BlockMap and its evolution are used to build a realtime multiresolution renderer for large urban models.

Two new IPhone Apps show the power of OpenGL ES 2.0 shaders on the PowerVR SGX graphics chip in the new IPhone 3GS. Quaternion Julia Raytracer is the first real-time GPU raytracer for the IPhone 3GS. It renders the quaternion Julia fractal with high accuracy. By modifying the fractal parameters, an unlimited number of complex shapes can be generated. iGPUTrace creates fully interactive photorealistic images of shiny spheres in photographed environments. The compass and accelerometer controls the camera movement in 3D space.

The Khronos Group has posted the outline for all three of their BOFs. Representatives from AMD, Intel and NVIDIA will be presenting at the OpenCL BOF. COLLADA has a large line-up of presenters covering many topics. The OpenGL BOF will have OpenGL news from Barthold Lichtenbelt, ARB / NVIDIA, a presenter from Mozilla will talk about ‘3D on the Web, OpenGL ES in JavaScript’, as well as an Open GL ES update and much more. All the details are available online.

NaviCAD is the only way to see Collada models—specifically models from the Google 3D Warehouse—on the iPhone/iPod Touch. NaviCAD has been approved for sale by Apple and is available for download immediately.

Spore, the multi-genre massively single-player metaverse god game developed by Maxis and available as a download from Electronic Arts has released a new patch. This patch allows people who agree to a EULA the ability to download creatures and vehicles in the COLLADA format for use in Maya and other applications that support the COLLADA format. With almost 113 million different creatures and vehicles available, this makes for possibly the largest model repository available. There is a short preview of Spore available on YouTube.

The Khronos Group has announced that the “Champion the 3D Web using COLLADA” contest has been extended to midnight July 31st 2009. For all you artists out there that either missed the contest first time round, or just didn’t have time to create and submit your artwork, now is the time to enter! The contest has also been opened up to people in any country. So if you are not within the United States, you can now enter the contest. Winners will be announced during Siggraph 2009 in New Orleans.