Today we introduce a video of one of the first result following our buy-out by the Optis Group. The application presented bellow was a shared development between Optis and SimplySim for the Laval Virtual tradeshow (which took place at the beginning of April).

The demo is a prototype of a headlamp simulator. The goal of this application is to test and validate car headlamps before production. The Simulator is build on top of the SimplyCube simulation engine and integrates Optis realistic rendering for light and materials, to guarantee that the simulator can be used to take actual production decision on headlamps (in the video bellow, notice the “false color” mode that gives accurate information on the level of lightning of each point in the environment).

The simulator is built around a driving loop that present different situation that can be interesting to test headlamps: different road materials, street lightning (thanks to the simplycube deferred shading technology we have about 200 dynamic light sources in the environment), reflective street furniture, tunnel, bumpers, countryside and city, end of day or night…

Several model of headlamp have been modeled with the ability to easily change between the headlamp model, and set low beam / high beam mode (there is no limit on the number of different headlamp we can test in the application). All the light models, and all the materials used in the environment have been developed by Optis and are based on real measurement with the OMS devices. This technology, also developed by Optis, studies how light behave on a material to guarantee a simulation as accurate as it can be.

In the video above the Simulator runs on a standard PC, with a nice screen and a game interface for controls, however the SimplyCube is fully compatible with more advanced displays (multi-screens, stereo) and controls (full support of VRPN) so this application could be easily deployed in a more immersive virtual reality system.

Finally, you’ll also notice in the video that the headlamp move as the car turns, for this prototype we have modeled a very simple adaptive headlamp simulation, but thanks to the SimplyCube everything is made so that the simulator could be plugged to a real adaptive headlamp control system.

We’re proud to present you the first result of our new collaboration, and we have to thank the Optis team as it was a real pleasure to work together on this first project. Other projects are in progress we’ll showcase them here as soon as we can.

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It’s been way too long since we haven’t updated this blog, but the last months have been kept very busy both by our work on the SimplyCube (which is now technically ready) and some important evolution of the company… We are happy to announce that SimplySim is now becoming a subsidiary of the Optis group.

Optis is a French software editor that specializes on the scientific simulation of light and human vision within virtual reality environment. Its solutions allow designers, ergonomists and engineers to simulate and optimize lighting performance, product appearance as well as the visibility and legibility of information on Human Machine Interfaces, in a fully-immersive environment. With more than 20 years of experience, and more than 1600 customers in 36 countries worldwide and in many industries (automotive, aerospace, electronics, defense…), Optis is a leader in physically correct simulations.

This buy-out makes sense for us for many reasons, first and foremost the technological complementarities. Realism in 3D simulation has been the core of our R&D since the creation of SimplySim, and the basis of the SimplyCube. The physically correct approach developed by Optis for their light simulations was therefore a key point of interest for us. The fact that they have been investing over the past four years in real time 3D versions of their technologies made the link between our innovations even more attractive.

Of course Optis also brings us its stability and its experience as a software editor; this will help us to launch the SimplyCube in the best conditions available. This is also the result of a meeting, when we met Jacques Delacour (CEO and president of Optis) we realized that we shared not only a common history as entrepreneurs but also the same vision for the development of our industry and the same projects for our companies.

This buy out is a very promising opportunity. We’ve already started to integrate our technologies, and the first results were visible last week at the Laval Virtual (we’ll post some video of that soon). We have many projects for the innovations that will come from the meeting our technologies and we will announce some of it in the coming months. Of course this means we’ll continue to develop products and services around the SimplyCube platform. So stay tuned to this blog, where we will continue to announce and showcase our innovations.

Read the full official press release here.

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Today we introduce a new innovation of the SimplyCube: a Kinect controller. The SimplyCube enables you to rapidly and easily create your 3D application, and now you can add a Kinect controller. This new controller enables you to directly control your application with gestures.

The first two prototypes we’re showing in the video above represent only a first preview of the possibilities offered by this technology. From product presentation applications to motion capture, medical applications, education, simulations, or serious games… the possibilities of application are only limited by our imagination.

Stay tuned to our blog, twitter and YouTube channel to discover other innovations in 2011.

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The process of creating a 3D application using the SimplyCube will be exactly the same, regardless of the platform; the difference will only be made at the end of the process, when the scene is exported. Other platform will be added later on (Web browser based version, Xbox360, …).

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Let me give you a bit more details on this video and the 3D techniques available in the SimplyCube and seen in this video:

Deferred Shading

The deferred shading technique enables you to have as many dynamic light sources as you want in a real time 3D application. In fact deferred shading is a way to render the 3D scene (the usual way is called “forward shading”, in the SimplyCube both are available). With the “forward shading” you can render up to 6 lights in a scene, here using “deferred shading” we have more than 500 light sources in the scene, with little to no effect on the performance.

Volumetric lighting

Volumetric lighting is a technique that gives more relief to a light source, by showing beams of light shinning threw the environment. This technique (used in the video above for the projectors of the helicoters or the fire inside the barrels) can also be used to show the sunbeams for example in an indoor environment or even the dust in a room.

The scene with (right) and without (left) volumetric lighting

Global illumination

Another important lighting technique used here: global illumination enables indirect lighting. This means that any object in the environment reflects a part of the light that it receives to all the objects nearby. The lighting of the scene is therefore a lot closer to reality.

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion is a shading technique used to add realism to models by taking into account the attenuation of light due to occlusion (corners of a room, irregularity of meshes …). A lot of 3D engines need baked ambient occlusion maps (generated by authoring tools). Here we use screen space techniques which allow ambient occlusion to be fully dynamic with absolutely no pre-computations.

A view of the ambient occlusion generated (right)

Gamma correctness

One of the most important things if you want realistic rendering is to manage lighting as close to reality as possible. But the nonlinear properties of almost all capture and display devices make it hard to achieve (the picture you take with your camera and you display on your LCD screen necessarily has biased color curves). To correct this behavior, the SimplyCube automatically rectifies the gamma of input textures and render target to perform lighting in linear space resulting in a more realistic rendering.

A view of the scene with (right) and without (left) the gamma correction

Glow, distorter, color correction, depth of field…

As you see in the video a lot of other 3D techniques are used in this environment, each one should deserve an entire blog post just to explain what it is and how it can be used. For example we’ve used the “Glow” technique to enhance the neon effects on the sign in the street, we’ve used “Distorters” to simulate the heat wave coming from the fire and thus distorting the image, and we’ve used “color correction” to change the whole ambiance of the scene by adjusting the colors (high/medium/low tones, hue, saturation and contrast).

Physics

It’s also important to note that this scene is not only graphic, it also use physics. Any object that you see moving in the environment is subject to the laws of physics, and can collide with other objects. Several physics engine can be used indifferently (the choice of the physics engine is made at runtime) with the SimplyCube. Here we’re using Nvidia PhysX.

Curves and Controllers

An easy way to create movements in a scene (moving objects, camera scrolling) is to define curves and attach objects to it. That’s exactly what we did for this demo:
- The camera is moving along a curve, looking at another curve
- The helicopters and other flying objects are following their own curve
- We even have procedurally generated curves for the background cars running on the highway

Hardware configuration

Finally a few words on the hardware configuration used to render this scene in real-time 3D. For this video the scene was running on a Core2 Duo E7600, 4GoRam, GeForce 260GTX at ~21Fps. Of course the SimplyCube can be used with lower (or upper) hardware configurations, depending on the complexity of the scene.

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Today we’re introducing something a bit different from what we usually see on this blog: a Windows Phone 7 3D application:

Microsoft France recently launched a challenge of Windows Phone 7 applications (the prize is an occasion to demo the application in front of Steve Ballmer and a few other high profile CEOs). As we thought that such a meeting could be interesting and as we had an idea of a potential application, we decided to give it a try. This was also a good occasion to see what was possible on this new platform.

Our “Interactive 3D assembly manual” is designed to replace furniture assembly instructions. 3D gives a real advantage in this kind of application as you can really see the instructions from the exact angle you need; and the fact that the application runs on a phone makes it very accessible. This is of course only a first prototype (which was developed in a few days), a more complete application would probably include the ability to directly download the 3D model from the internet by just scanning the barcode of the furniture you’ve just bought.

If you like this application and want to vote for it, the contest is on facebook (Please click the “like” button under the facebook video). As said before, this was only a first try, but we do believe in the potential of these new platforms (phones, tablets…), and eventually we plan to make SimplyCube applications compatible with them.

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As you can see in the video above most of the basic features of a 3D marketing application are available in this sample. The real-time 3D presentation enables the customer to get a better understanding of what the product looks like and how it behaves. The application also allows showing several configurations on the product (color / features) which can be more convenient to show through a 3D application than with a real product. If at first, this kind of application seems most interesting for products that are highly customizable and difficult to show (cars, boats, luxury products, large furniture, household electrical appliances…) it could be in fact adapted to any kind of product.

An interesting aspect of this application is that, thanks to the SimplyCube, it is easily customizable to any product with little to no programming needed. Once you have a 3D model of the product, you just have to import it in the toolbox to define the possibilities of interaction using the “SimplyPhysics” module, so the application is able to use it! What you may want to do is to design the graphic interface to present the product in the right color chart. As the application is based on Microsoft WPF this is easily done even for a non programmer using Expression Blend.

This is of course just a rapid case study on an application developed in only a few days, but it demonstrates interesting possibility in this field. A more advanced version of the application would probably include new ways of interaction: touch screen interface (ideal for presenting the product on a booth in a store), stereoscopic 3D vision (for a better grasp of the product), or for example a Wii-like based controller (a good way to present the application in front of an audience). The SimplyCube is designed to make all these possibilities available.

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With the SimplyCube, one of our main goals is to make 3D applications’ creation as easy as it can be for all kind of users from developers to casual hobbyists without any programming experience. This is why we have chosen Microsoft C# .NET to develop our software (Blogpost). Nevertheless, C# could remain complicated for non-developer users. That’s why we also provide an alternative for novice users through the Microsoft Visual Programming Language (VPL) included in the free Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio programming environment. Combined with the SimplyCube, VPL allows users to create a 3D application and interact with it without writing a single code line. The only thing the user has to do is to drag and drop boxes (each one is a service with a specific functionality) and link them together.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of services you will find in the SimplyCube. Each of these services will be an easy to use “box” that you can drag and drop in your VPL diagram. Of course the SimplyCube will also provide some tutorials explaining how to use these services in different types of applications:

- A simulation engine service which allows loading a 3D scene and configuring it.

- Graphic services:

• Node Translation Applicator: Apply translations on scene nodes.
• Node Rotation Applicator: Apply rotations on scene nodes.
• Node Scale Applicator: Apply scales changes on scene nodes.
• Node Visibility Manipulator: Set nodes visible or invisible.
• Global Emissive Manipulator: Changes the global emissive power (lightning) of a scene.
• Situation Manipulator: Changes the date and the location of the scene.
• HUD Text Manipulator: Manages an on-screen Text.
• HUD Image Manipulator: Manages an on-screen image.
• Weather Manipulator: Changes the scene weather configuration.
• Window Inputs Notifier: Sends notifications on mouse and key interactions.

- Physic services:

• Torque Applicator: Applies a force on one or more dynamic actors.
• Motorized Hinge Manipulator: Changes the velocity and maximum torque of one or more motorized hinge joints (hinge joint = rotation joint).
• Motorized Slider Manipulator: Changes the velocity and maximum force of one or more motorized slider joints (slider joint = translation joint).
• Collision Detector: Sends a notification when a collision is detected with one or more actors.
• Pair Collision Detector: Detects collisions between two actors list.
• Actor Pose Tracker: Get the position and the orientation of a dynamic actor.
• Actor Velocity Tracker: Get the angular and linear velocity of a dynamic actor.
• Ray caster: Cast a “ray” from a 3D point in a direction and returns a list of actors hit by the rays.

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We are happy to introduce you today in this article a few words about interfacing between third-party programs and the SimplyCube.

First of all, let me introduce you Christian Barat, who is a robotics specialist (PhD) working at SimplySim at part time and who is also a researcher and teacher at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. He is specialized in robotics and image processing. His scientific expertise is a significant asset in our team as he advises us on many issues, from image processing to artificial intelligence, and more globally on the whole robotics simulation domain. His contribution has been crucial to the quality and realism of the SimplyCube. His research job at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis often leads him to use MATLAB in order to solve scientific problems, and he was interested in seeing how could interact and work together the SimplyCube and MATLAB. Lately he worked on a project where the objective was to control the UAVs from our Drone Simulation Pack with MATLAB.

This project has been made in two steps:

First, Christian created a controller for MATLAB, using its different libraries. In other words, he did a MATLAB workspace in C# to interface with the SimplyCube.

Then, he has implemented a MATLAB code that gets variables from the C#, treats them and sends them back to the C# code. For each of the three drones, this MATLAB code has:

• An input variable, which is the drone pose (position + orientation) from the DroneLibrary of the Drone Simulation Pack.
• An output variable, which is a table of double values containing flight instructions for the UAV (demand signals).
• A 3D plot of the trajectory of the drone.

As a result, visible in this video, the three drones fly in a SimplyCube simulation with a MATLAB PID Controller:

You will be able to find the MATLAB interfacing controller in a few months in the SimplyCube official release.

If you have any questions or feedbacks about this feature, feel free to post it on our forum and we will be happy to answer you in the shortest delays.

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After your many feedbacks and requests about our UAV simulation, we are happy to release today a Drone Simulation pack designed for the SimplyCube beta version.

For the last four months, you may have experienced the SimplySim real time 3D simulation engine and you can now go deeper in your SimplyCube experience with this UAV pack.

Nowadays, real time 3D simulation is the best way to test real life hardware and software, especially UAVs. This Drone Simulation pack offers to you a free library for creating your own UAV. It also provides a basic environment for trying it with realistic physic behaviors.

The simulation is delivered with three ready-to-use UAV samples and all the things you need to easily create your own one. You will also find fly controllers such as one using keyboard and a another allowing you to see your drone flying through the environment by following pre-defined points.

Please note that in this demo we only focused on the physic realism with no special effort provided for the graphic quality. For a more complete idea on what can be achieved with the SimplyCube, check out our NanoConcept demo series.

We invite you to take a look at the SimplySim forum if you have any questions about this simulation or drones. Feedbacks and suggestions are also welcome !

Furthermore, improvements will be added as extensions later, such as wind simulation in the environment or drone’s engine breakdown scenarios.

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