Extreme Makeover: Windows 8 Edition
Posted by Lindsay Ruthven – September 28, 2011
This past week Joe Engalan, Woody Floyd, and Frances Calandra of Vectorform attended the 2011 BUILD conference in Anaheim, California. Accompanied with a plethora of swag, those in attendance received a Samsung prototype PC running the Windows 8 Developer Preview.
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Fast Company covers TRON: Legacy
Posted by Lindsay Ruthven – June 3, 2011
That’s right. We did TRON: Legacy online, in HTML5. Here’s an excerpt from Fast Company:
The roughly $680 million comic book and graphic novel industry is still heavily reliant on sales and advertising from print–unlike its fellow publishers in the newspaper and magazine worlds, where the transition to digital is farther along. Sure, there are plenty of apps for comics out there, from startups like ComicZeal4 to big players like Marvel’s iPad reader. But when it comes to taking full advantage of its digital potential, “most online comics are stagnant,” says Disney’s Dario Di Zanni. To reverse that trend, Disney has partnered with Microsoft and tech-design firm Vectorform to create the Tron: Legacy graphic novel, one of the first HTML5 graphic novels made by a major brand… Read the rest of Austin Carr’s article over on Fast Company here or visit http://disneydigitalbooks.go.com/tron/
James Brolin, Dean Cain get hands on with Vectorform app
Posted by Administrator – March 31, 2011
Vectorform’s work hits the big screen on the high seas! Our digital postcard application for Royal Caribbean made its debut in Royal Reunion, a short film directed by James Brolin, and got prime placement on the Royal Caribbean Ocean View Films site. The Windows 7, multi-touch enabled video postcard creator is featured in the first scene, but keep your eyes peeled for additional cameos from Dean Cain, Shrek, and the director–who plays the family patriarch celebrating a 40th wedding anniversary at sea.
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Support green innovation from Vectorform and others, at the GE ecomagination Challenge
Posted by Administrator – March 22, 2011
We are very pleased to join the ranks in General Electric’s ecomagination challenge, a $200 million innovation experiment where businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students share their best ideas on how to improve our energy future… There’s some brilliant stuff going on over there. A solar-panel roadway? External window guards from recycled materials? Drop by and see ideas, work and progress toward a more sustainable future, and let us know what you think about our submisison, A Green Austin (AGA).
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The big digital ticket: Vectorform does The FADER FORT by FIAT
Posted by Administrator – March 19, 2011
Thank you, Austin! We did virtual worlds. A South by Southwest Interactive Award. And as our final act, a mixed media installation at the FADER FORT by FIAT.
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Virtual Colonoscopy Viewer at TechFest, experts weigh in
Posted by Administrator – March 17, 2011Colon cancer is the third leading cause of cancer related deaths, but the death rate is impacted by the ability to quickly and efficiently screen for polyps before they can develop. The Virtual Colonoscopy (VC) Viewer is a revolutionary collaboration between Microsoft, Intel, Vectorform and Massachusetts General Hospital, winning top honors at RSNA 2010.
Vectorform’s multi-touch user interface allows physicians to view and manipulate a 3D rendering of a patient’s colon. Using software to translate a series of CT scans into a 3D representation, the VC Viewer provides physicians with life-like imagery and seamless navigation using natural gestures including pan, zoom, pinch, traverse and rotate. This Natural User Interface (NUI) solution was highlighted at TechFest 2011, which brings Microsoft researchers and Microsoft product teams together in Redmond, WA for an event where attendees see the innovative technologies emerging from Microsoft’s research efforts.
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Vectorform wins SXSW Interactive Award for AP Timeline Reader
Posted by Administrator – March 15, 2011We heard it from our guys on the ground at South by Southwest as they were walking offstage. The AP Timeline Reader created by Vectorform won the SXSW Interactive Award for Technical Achievement.This means our work is officially the digital experience that is “re-inventing and re-defining the technical parameters of our online experience,” according to SXSW.
The HTML5/CSS3 experience is a revolutionary way to visualize, customize, and consume the news. We were anticipating a win, as were our friends over at Business 2 Community, but it is always a great feeling to have an award in-hand. Dominic Espinosa, Vectorform’s man on the ground, picked up the award. Fitting, as he was lead interaction designer on The AP Timeline Reader, and also because he also led the all-new, much-loved Vectorform project Foursquare Playground, which debuted yesterday to celebrate the launch of Internet Explorer 9 . Our entire team is thrilled by the win. “Yea, that’s right, baby!” Espinosa says.
Watch Vectorform’s SXSW teaser video, or check out the great projects from each SXSW award catagory.
We’re proud to be recognized with this award, and delighted to take some time to recognize the amazing work being done by our team. But now its back to work, because the thing about re-invention is that it never, ever stops.
#bestjobever!
The Surface Team
Posted by Vectorform – June 20, 2008The members of Vectorform Labs newly minted Surface team are starting to get their hands dirty and make some really sweet stuff. Our assembled A-list includes Joe, Dan and Brad, the genius minds driving new technology and interactive development, and Florin, Clemens, Aaron and John, masters in user experience, interface design and motion graphics. Today, the guys are exploring the capabilities of the Microsoft Surface SDK, as well as the applications that came preloaded on our unit, including:
• Data Visualizer
• Controls Box
• Finger Fountain
• Grand Piano
• Paddleball
• Photopaint
• Scatter Puzzle
• Shopping Cart
• Virtual Concierge
And many more…
Silverlight Viewports
Posted by Dan Dobbs – November 14, 2007One thing you usually recognize about web-based games is that they generally have a fixed view. With a fixed view, your game world matches the web control 1:1. What if you want the game to take place in a larger space, like an entire world, or a galaxy. In the game world, you’d create a viewport or a camera that only displays a portion of the world. Unfortunately, Silverlight doesn’t have native support for viewports into a larger space. We decided to make it.
Source: CanvasViewport C# class
The CanvasViewport is a simple plugin class that can be used to create a viewport on any Canvas (it doesn’t have to be the main page). It works by manipulating the Canvas’ RenderTransform in response to programmed parameters.
Usage:
// Create a viewport on this canvas.
CanvasViewport _Viewport = new CanvasViewport(this);
// Create a viewport that is 320x240 in logical (original canvas) units
_Viewport.Size = new Size(320, 240);
// Set the center of this viewport to 500, 800 on the canvas
_Viewport.Center = new Point(500, 800);
// In a game, you can have the viewport track a player like this:
void Update()
{
_Player.Update();
_Viewport.Center = _Player.Position;
}
An added advantage to using viewports in XAML is that since XAML graphics are all vector based, zooming in and out dosen’t have all of the pixelation problems that working with raster graphics has. Here’s the orignal game without the viewport.
Here’s the game with a smaller viewport into the original world. (Notice that the UI and the Reticle doesn’t change size).
Have fun with your viewports.
Silverlight Flyout Navigation
Posted by Dan Dobbs – September 18, 2007
This example leans a little more towards traditional web site navigation with the tried and true flyout menu. I didn’t really have a need to make one of these but I thought it might come in handy in the future. I’ll also have to write an N-level version but I’ll put that off til later as the need for that rarley seems come up any more. 3 versions including source.
Flyout nav, hide/show – Example, Source
Flyout nav, fade in/out – Example, Source
Flyout nav, animate up/down – Example, Source
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