NVISION’s slogan was “The World of Visual Computing”  but could be just as easily titled “All the cool stuff of NVIDIA partners”, because ATI and Matrox was nowhere to be seen.  But don’t get me wrong,it is a top notch event, and I plan on paying my way to attend next year so I can experience everything.

HIPerWall is the first thing you see entering the convention center.

The event truly covered all corners of visual computing, from hardware vendors, cutting edge technologies, famous speakers, to the largest LAN party I have set eyes on.  Any geek will find lots to love here.

GeForce LAN. “The Guinness World Record for the longest continuous LAN party with over 100 participants was set today at NVISION 08. 203 hardcore gamers kept going for 36 straight hours!” – NVISION Highlights

k|ngp|n attempting to break world records right on the showroom floor at the EVGA booth.

Wallace Santos, President & CEO of MAINGEAR, checking out the friendly competition over at the SIM Factory booth.

I met with some of the best case modders in the world including fellow [H]ardForum member craigbru who completed Project: Rogue (on right) which was featured on the HardOCP.com homepage.

Later this week when I return from my trip you can expect full writups from the booths that were MultiMonitor related.

NVIDIA enabled PhysX with their GeForce v177.83 graphics driver, Geforce 8 and higher only, sorry.  This driver package will also install v8.08.01 PhysX System Software.  The PhysX control panel can be accessed through the Windows Start Menu under ‘NVIDIA Corporation’.  In proper celibration they released a ton of free apps, demos, and a full game through The Force Within Site.

The “free” PhysX support plus apps are a pleasant surprise in a world where companies give me the impression that they dont care who they screw to make a buck.

Available for free from this first GeForce Power Pack includes:

• Warmonger — Full free game! Destroy walls, floors, and whole buildings to open up new paths or close existing ones. Destructive power is more than eye candy here-it’s a tactical weapon in this ground-breaking action game.

• Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack-includes three maps with amazing effects that fundamentally change the gameplay (requires full version of Unreal Tournament 3)

• A sneak peek at the upcoming Nurien social networking service, based on the Unreal Engine 3 (with built-in benchmark).

• A sneak peek at the upcoming game Metal Knight Zero (with built-in benchmark).

• All new NVIDIA “The Great Kulu” tech demo that showcases the use of PhysX soft bodies in a real game play environment.

• All new NVIDIA “Fluid” tech demo-a simulation of realistic fluid effects with a variety of liquids.

• Badaboom Media Converter: Beta  -  formats video and audio files for a variety of devices using a process called transcoding. By utilizing a NVIDIA® GeForce® GPU, badaboomâ„¢ enables users to painlessly convert video in multiple formats and view them on their portable media devices – all in a convenient, intuitive application.

• New WHQL-certified drivers that enable PhysX acceleration for all GeForce 8, 9, and GTX 200 Series GPUs. This new driver also adds support for PhysX-accelerated features in the commercially available Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 game.

Upcoming PC titles that incorporate PhysX technology include Cryostasis, Backbreaker, Aliens: Colonial Marines, with close to 20 more PC titles expected before the year-end holiday seasons.

The Official Press Release.

* 1.08beta (rc2)
- Fixed performance with RGB16D mode
- Fixed possible crash with D3D9 GetDepthStencilSurface
- Window rect scaling
- Various minor compatibility fixes

* 1.08beta (rc1)
- Improved Autosquash detection
- Removed cylindrical correction setting
- Added lens correction postprocessing effect
- Depthstencil created by SoftTH now uses discard flag
if application originally requested it
- Pixel shader dithering in RGB16 mode for cards that
do not support dithering (ie. GeForce 80000 series)
- Reduced video memory use and improved compatibility
for antialiasing
- Changed to global mouse hook for better compatiblity
- Automatic screenmode & sideExtraWidth detection
- New faster, simplier, multithread safe win32 api hooks

You can grab it here.

Close to home, Logan Airport, is doing something close to my heart by mimicking a control tower for training new controllers and workers.  In addition to what looks like 7+ rear projected monitors making up the video wall, the interactive simulation has voice recognition so spoken radio commands are translated to moving virtual airplanes for a native feel.

The system, designed by Adacel Systems Inc., will be deployed to 19 locations across North America as part of a $48 million dollar contract.  Logan will begin their instillation this fall.

I can see all the Microsoft Flight Simulator fans wanting a piece of this action, so I don’t know any other way to let  you down easier than saying it would probably cost you $2.5mil ($48mil / 19 locations) unless you do it yourself.

via. Boston.Com

Monitor spanning
Remote Desktop Connection supports high-resolution displays that can be spanned across multiple monitors. However, the total resolution on all monitors must be under 4096 x 2048 pixels. The monitors must have the same resolution. Additionally, the monitors must be aligned side-by-side.

To have the desktop of the remote computer span multiple monitors, type Mstsc /span at a command prompt.

Not exactally riveting news, but every little bit counts right?

Edit: United Media wants $160 to give me the right to copy their comic here, instead Ill just link to it.

Thanks Nick for sending this one my way!

Dell is not affiliated with this site and did not ask me to post this.

Jeff F. adds: “Multiple monitors help me keep things “separate” and I believe much easier to work with than one large wide aspect screen. In fact, I don’t care for the widescreens at all for business apps.”

Check the original here.

And the followup here.