SPEC’s Graphics and Workstation Performance Group (SPEC/GWPG) announced a wide range of upcoming benchmarks at the Siggraph 2008 conference in Los Angeles.

The new offerings will include a power-performance benchmark for workstations, a new version of SPECviewperf, and new and updated application benchmarks. All are slated for release before spring of next year.

“Under our expanded charter announced last year, we are branching out in new directions such as power consumption, while continuing to move ahead with our graphics and workstation application benchmarks,” says George Chaltas, SPEC/GWPG chair. “The overriding objective is to apply SPEC’s expertise and proven methodologies in areas that provide the most value to users, vendors and testing labs worldwide.” Read on at The Briefing Room

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SPHERON-VR AG has attracted one of the UK’s VFX industry leaders, The Mill London, an Oscar and multi-award winning company with offices in L.A and New York. The Mill selected the innovative SpheroCam HDR.

Jordi Bares, Joint Head of 3D at The Mill, said “The Mill has invested in the SpheroCam HDR to further improve the output of our work by bringing the latest photographic technology to our projects, which will benefit on all aspects of lighting.” Read on at The Briefing Room

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mental images, a global leader in rendering software and visualization tools, unveiled RealityServer 2.2, the server-based, highly-scalable 3D web application and services platform available to developers and system integrators. The new version is particularly geared towards providers of 3D web application services, including Software-as-a-Service solutions.

RealityServer software platform was designed from the ground up to be the web application services platform for achieving the highest-quality renderings for large large-model visualization in 3D. It allows users to create and deploy 3D interactive web services and applications across numerous disciplines including aerospace, automotive, architecture, product design, product showcasing and product configuration. Ideal for geographically dispersed collaboration, RealityServer enables real-time viewing and interaction with high image quality across the web without the need for downloads or client side viewer applications. Read on at The Briefing Room

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IRIDAS, the world leader in RAW playback technologies, is drawing crowds to the PNY booth (#747) at Siggraph 2008. Visitors are experiencing first-hand the image fidelity of IRIDAS’ RealTime RAW 2.0 in SpeedGrade and FrameCycler. By leveraging the power of the new graphics cards from NVIDIA by PNY, IRIDAS provides real-time de-Bayering of RAW content allowing filmmakers to review and color correct content at up to 4K resolution straight from the digital cinema camera. Read on at The Briefing Room

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mental images, a global leader in rendering software and visualization tools today announced that the latest version of their industry-leading rendering software, mental ray 3.7, is now integrated as part of the recently announced Autodesk Maya 2009 software digital content creation package. The release of Maya 2009 will mark the first availability of mental ray 3.7, which will subsequently be integrated by other key mental images customers.

Many of the new features and improvements in Maya 2009 and mental ray 3.7 are intended to provide considerable speed and memory usage performance gains over previous versions. Read on at The Briefing Room

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Autodesk announced Autodesk Toxik 2009 procedural compositing software. Toxik 2009 offers high-performance compositing and visual effects capabilities, particularly for large-format digital film and television projects. When combined with the new Autodesk Maya 2009 modeling software, the two products provide an accelerated and iterative 3D-to-2D workflow. Both products are being showcased at Siggraph 2008 in Los Angeles, California, August 12-14 at Autodesk booth #501. Read on at The Briefing Room

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Sony Electronics is unveiling a new workflow solution for faster processing of high-resolution effects and computer graphics. This new technology platform, named ZEGO, is based on the Cell/B.E. (Cell Broadband Engine) and RSX technologies, and is designed to eliminate bottlenecks that can occur during post production, especially during the creation and rendering of visual effects. Read on at The Briefing Room

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Allegorithmic, an emerging technology company developing advanced procedural texturing tools for real-time 3D content, today announced that game development studio Ready At Dawn Studios has chosen ProFX to create its very first title for new-generation platforms. Ready At Dawn, acclaimed for its famous PSP game titles God of War: Chains of Olympus and Daxter, selected ProFX for its ability to quickly produce extremely small texture files while keeping the highest visual quality intact. Read on at The Briefing Room

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Suddenly it seems there’s a graphics card horserace again: At the show, ATI jumped back into the race with Nvidia, announcing two strong contenders in its pro line of graphics cards (Radeon is the consumer/gamer card line), the ATI FirePro V5700 and ATI FirePro V3700.

Also new: a re-branded name, from FireGL—the name kept from the purchase by ATI of the pro card line from a German graphics card manufacturer in 2001—to ATI FirePro.

For quite some time, ATI had made graphics cards that other manufacturers could take aim at as the best of the bunch. Most card makers dropped off though in the tough economics of that market, leaving Nvidia and ATI to challenge and leapfrog each other throughout the late 1990s and into the new millennium. Things got a little shaky after AMD’s purchase of ATI in 2006, however, with AMD’s troubles threatening to pull ATI down. more

Frantic Films Software, the R&D arm of award-winning visual effects studio Frantic Films VFX and a division of Prime Focus Group, announced that its high-volume point-based particle renderer Krakatoa was used by The Syndicate throughout director James Frost’s groundbreaking “House of Cards” music video for the band Radiohead. Read on at The Briefing Room

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