At the conclusion of the SIGGRAPH 2023 event, several key companies offered a profound number of product launches, research, insights, and keynote speeches for attendees.
Thousands of people gathered for the annual event, which included some of the world’s top tech companies. Heavyweights like Meta Platforms, the Metaverse Standards Forum, IBM, Vicon, NVIDIA, and others joined the stellar event, with many sharing their knowledge and product innovations with the global tech community.
Here are a few top takeaways from the event, complete with key summaries of what took place in California’s largest city, Los Angeles.
Varjo Backs NVIDIA Omniverse for Ray-Tracing XR Tools
Varjo, the Finnish producer of the world’s most advanced headsets, announced on Tuesday it would back the use of NVIDIA’s Omniverse and CloudXR platforms to develop the industrial metaverse.
Building on the Open Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) file format, the mainstay for many spatial computing files, Varjo expects to build interoperability across the industrial metaverse. The company will deepen its collaboration with NVIDIA, leveraging its XR-3 headsets for unrivalled XR experiences.
One of the key takeaways from Varjo’s announcement after the SIGGRAPH 2023 was the adaptation of real-time ray-tracing, which will allow the company to produce photorealistic images for enterprises.
However, the new platform will produce them in the cloud, accessible to all connected firms, organisations, and others collaborating on the platform.
According to Marcus Olssen, Director of Software Partnerships, Varjo, the ray-tracing upgrade was “the holy grail of 3D visualisations.”
Adding, he said that support for the NVIDIA Omniverse would allow MR developers to “render photorealistic scenes in Varjo XR-3 and unlock ray tracing in mixed reality.”
Speaking further on the Varjo-NVIDIA collaboration, he concluded: “The combination of Varjo’s human-eye resolution hardware with the Omniverse platform’s ray-tracing capabilities and next-generation GPUs is a game-changer for mixed reality developers in design, engineering, entertainment, and virtual collaboration.”
NVIDIA Announces CloudXR Updates at SIGGRAPH 2023
At the SIGGRAPH 2023, NVIDIA delivered a riveting keynote speech on a trove of updates for its CloudXR technologies, including upgrades to its software developer kit (SDK).
With the changes, coders and developers can create scalable, bespoke XR experiences.
Jensen Huang, Chief Executive, NVIDIA, explained in his speech how the upgrades would revolutionise the industrial XR sector, leading to major shifts in hardware and software technical capabilities.
In his speech, he told audiences of the benefits of expanding use cases for industrial XR, using the Omniverse platform. He explained the waste produced by poor planning, developing facilitates, and mismanaging product development cycles.
He said at the time: “There’s just enormous amounts of waste [among] $50 trillion worth of dollars of new electric vehicle factories, battery factories, and new chip fabs that are going to be built all over the world.
However, companies like Amazon, Deutsche Bank, Ericsson, and BYD leveraged the platform to develop digital twins, virtual simulations, and other systems to utilise the groundbreaking platform fully.
Furthermore, the platform added several key application programme interfaces (APIs) like ChatUSD, RunUSD, DeepSearch, USD-GDN Publisher, and others to fully enhance the developer experience.
Finally, NVIDIA CloudXR Suite will back the world’s leading standalone MR headsets and mobile XR devices. With the device-agnostic toolkit, coders across the world will soon empower their business operations with one of the world’s most advanced cloud-based streaming platforms.
Brilliant Labs Unveils arGPT Monocle for iOS
A rising star in the XR world, Brilliant Labs unveiled earlier this week that it had released its arGPT smart glass Monocle for Apple’s iOS operating system.
The wearable solution will load ChatGPT-backed artificial intelligence (AI), with plans to develop human-computer interfaces (HCIs) capable of instantaneous access to data pools across the internet.
With the device’s heads-up display (HUD), arGPT will provide offices, workplaces, and individuals with real-time translations, summaries, teleprompters, and other major features.
The Monocle platform will also include location-based ChatGPT responses for fully spatial interactions with generative AI content. Users can put on the monocle and receive real-time fact-checking, travel information, and teleprompters for communicating with audiences.
Vicon, Dreamscape to Debut SIGGRAPH 2023 Markerless Mocap Demo
Vicon, a regular attendee of the SIGGRAPH 2023 event, debuted its latest partnership — an ethereal immersive experience with visual effects (VFX) firm Artanium.
Leveraging Vicon’s markerless motion capturing (mocap) camera technologies, Dreamscape Immersive, the parent company of Artanium, will allow audiences to join the prolific XR experience.
Following three years of research and development (R&D) into markerless mocap technologies, Vicon has integrated machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) into its solution.
With the new infrastructure, Vicon will deepen immersion for audiences while reducing its technological footprint with fewer devices and greater freedom of movement for participants.
