Hi everyone,
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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Hi all,
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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First in the name of everyone at SimplySim, I’d like to wish you a happy new year. In 2011 we wish you success and happiness in your professional and personal life.
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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We believe that 3D on the mobile platform has a lot of to offer for many applications. We’ve clearly been impressed by the Windows Phone 7 platform, and based on the positive feedback on our first Windows Phone 7 application; we’ve decided to port the SimplyCube 3D engine to Windows Phone 7.
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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Today we introduce a new video about the technical capacities of the SimplyCube 3D engine. To benchmark our engine, we’ve asked our graphic designers to create a scene that would require all the real-time 3D techniques available in the SimplyCube. The video bellow is the result of this project.
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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Hello everyone,
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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Hello everyone,
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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About a month ago we launched the beta version of the simulation engine of the SimplyCube. It’s time to make an update on how things are going, what we’ve been doing lately, and what we’ll be doing next.
Microsoft Techdays video
The official launch of the SimplyCube beta was marked by a one hour introduction session at the Microsoft Techdays in Paris. Microsoft has just released the video of this session (embedded here, video in French) and of the other sessions of the TechDays (which I advise you to watch if you have time).
SimplyCube beta
Today a little more than 150 first beta testers have received a copy of the SimplyCube beta, a larger number of you have already registered, but we’re increasing the number of testers slowly to ensure everyone has a great experience. For now the feedback is mostly positive, and for the second month we’ll open the number of testers more freely.
Talking of our website, we have completed a few sections that were missing when we’ve launched it last month. Check out the gallery section and the product description section to see what have changed. These two more detailed sections should give you a better idea of what our product is about.
What’s next? Laval virtual 2010, more demo.
The major next step for SimplySim will be our presence at the Laval Virtual 2010. This tradeshow focused on Virtual Reality, but also simulations, serious games, and 3D marketing applications, will be the occasion for us to unveil the editors of the SimplyCube, more demo of what can be done with our product and to release more stuff in the beta.
One of the main demands about the beta was to get more available demonstrations and examples (I know at least a few of you want to get their hands on our UAV demo). We are currently working on a series of demonstration showing each step of a real project that should be a good addition to the tutorials already included in the demo. Julien Mercier, a student from the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis who has joined us for a six month internship will be responsible for the creation of this series of demo. You can follow his progress day by day on the SimplyCube on his twitter account: @VB_Simply3D. This should be an interesting test for the ease of use of our product, to show what a trainee can achieve in a few weeks.
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Today is an important day for SimplySim, we’re officially launching the beta period of the SimplyCube simulation engine.
SimplyCube Beta
The beta period for the SimplyCube starts today. This first beta package includes the first version of the SimplyCube simulation engine, along with the associated documentation and the Asset Compiler tool. We also include a large number of tutorials to help you get started with this new product. Our first tutorials cover the field of 3D rendering, physics, and sound. They will soon be followed by more tutorials, demo, and learning material (especially on our service oriented architecture).
We’ll open progressively the number of user allowed in, and eventually the beta will be fully public. You can register for the beta on our new website, and we’ll notify you when you have been accepted to the beta. The only thing we ask you, as our first users, is to notify us with any question or problem you encounter so we can help you. Please use our forum for that. You’re also welcome to showcase the project you’re developing on our simulation engine in the forum. And eventually we’d like to give some of you access to our blog to showcase and explain their project.
Microsoft Techdays
For those of you who are in Paris, Microsoft has invited us to launch our product in a session at the Microsoft Techdays. The session is in room 242A at 5:30 pm at the Palais des Congrès de Paris (Porte Maillot). The TechDays are free and I think there is an on-site registration, so it might not be too late even if you haven’t registered yet.
For everyone else, the session are filmed and will be available on the web in a few days (we’ll notify you on this blog when our session is online). We’ll also make our presentation slide available tonight after the presentation.
We’d like to thank Microsoft once again for giving us this opportunity, and especially everyone in the Bizspark and IDEES program of Microsoft. These two programs are really a huge help for a young and innovative startup company !
New website
As some of you may have noticed already, we have recently launched a new website. This website is completely dedicated to our real time 3D simulation product offering. The website will still evolve in the following weeks (with more content in the gallery and the product section), and will eventually be completed with our online store.
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In the first post of this blog we’ve introduced briefly our simulation engine. Now we are moving closer to the release of the first beta version of this engine and it’s time start talking about what’s coming next. And this is the SimplyCube.
The SimplyCube
The SimplyCube is the real commercial name of our product offer; it is composed of two elements: the simulation engine, and a set of editors. The SimplyEngine is for software developers, and though we’ve made it as simple and easy to use as possible, creating a full simulation scene is always much easier with graphical edition tools. Each of these editors addresses a specific aspect of creating a 3D application. Used independently they allow precise tuning and customization of each element of a real time 3D scene. Used together they allow quick editing of a complete simulation scene, with no specific knowledge of 3D software development. Today we’ll present the first four editors we’ll release:
The SimplyEdit
The SimplyEdit, is our 3D scene editor. This is the central tool where you can set up the 3D scene. From the definition of the basic setting of the scene (ground, water, sky) to arranging objects and light sources in the scene to finally setting up the last details before importing the scene in your application.
Here’s a quick list of things you can use in this tool to define the scene:
- Terrain (ground, water, underwater, sky)
- Objects (we can import any model created by Autodesk software, more detail in “asset compiler”)
- Lights and shadows (several lights and shadow type available)
- Sounds (2D or 3D sound sources)
- Post processing effect (for advanced rendering)
The edition possibilities of SimplyEdit are however kept simple, to keep the user interface understandable, pleasant and easy to use. For most of the simulation elements, you’ll simply have to choose between different options in a list. For example the 3D model are not created or modified by the SimplyEdit, you can just choose which model to import and where to set them up in the scene. Of course we leave you the possibility to control and edit things more in depth, but this is done separately in the other editors (to keep our example, to define in detail how a specific 3D model should look, how it should react to lights, you’ll have to use the SimplyShader editor).
The Asset Compiler
The Asset Compiler is an essential tool to import assets in our simulation engine (a first version of the Asset Compiler will be available in the beta of the Simulation Engine). It can process any 3D model file in the .FBX file format, which mean you can import any 3D model created by Autodesk 3D edition tools (Maya, 3DS Max …). We are also compatible with the .X file format so you can import any XNA compatible 3D model. The asset compiler can also import textures files (images in BMP, JPG, DDS…) and shaders (.fx) created by FX Composer (Nvidia) or Render Monkey. This ensures two important things:
- You can rely on the high quality creation tools of other software editors (Autodesk, Nvidia, AMD…)
- If you have already existing libraries of 3D models, you can easily import them in our tools.
The SimplyPhysics
The SimplyPhysics editor is a unique tool to define every physic property of a 3D object. As we’ve seen before, accurate physic simulation is essential, as it guarantee the realistic behavior of objects in a 3D scene. To ensure this accurate physic simulation, it is essential to define the properties of every 3D objects. With the SimplyPhysics, you can define:
- The mass/or density of any object
- Simple collision shapes for accurate and efficient physic collisions
- The physics properties of objects (damping, inertia, force and torque)
- The material properties of objects (friction, elasticity)
- Joints (to create complex physics objects)
It is important to note that thanks to our multi physic engine support, the properties of the objects are defined for every physic engine in a single editor. Of course, the 3D models we provide with our simulations are already set up with correct physic settings, so if you’re a novice user you can create simulation without having to bother about physic concepts.
The SimplyShader
The SimplyShader is an edition tool where you can define and configure the “shaders” that affects a 3D object. “Shaders” are advanced 3D graphics techniques that enable very realistic 3D rendering in real time. In the SimplyShader you can add details and texture to an existing 3D model, set up the way the object react to light, or the reflection of an object. Here is a list of the type of “Shader” you can define in this editor:
- Multi layered surface
- Normal and Parallax mapping (add relief to an object)
- Self illumination (for object that are also light sources)
- Reflections
- Specular mapping (define the way the object react to light)
Upcoming editors
We have several other editors planned for 2010, 2011 and 2012, they will bring new easy edition capabilities and give you more control on the simulation. We’ll announce them on this blog.
Real time 3D simulation scene created with the SimplyCube
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