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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Hello everyone,
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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Dear readers,
Welcome to our new Blog, which more looks like SimplySim, with an easier navigation and improved features. We have added new things such as a “recommended posts” category, a dynamic 3D tag cloud, a site map, and better sharing options.
Please note that the this is just and upgrade and that our bloggers and articles won’t change. We have already moved the content of our old blog here so you can find all our old posts.
Thank you for reading us on “simplysim.wordpress.com” earlier. We hope you will now enjoy this blog as well !
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Since we’ve created the company, about two years ago now, we’ve learned a lot through experience and advise from all those that believed in our project and supported us. As we’re now aiming at new developments for our company (including the release of our first product), we have decided to strengthen our team with a small group of experts in our field who will support us with advices. The advisory board will meet every quarter to talk about our company strategy. This is an important step in the growth of our company, and therefore I’d like to introduce the members of our advisory board:
Annie Blandel
Annie Blandel is a strategy adviser to European and international SMEs and a professor in marketing for Master’s in IT & Project Management at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis (France). She has also contributed to the formation of a services incubator in France.
The cornerstones of Annie Blandel 25 year’s career in technology marketing have been to support entrepreneurship, recognise and drive forward innovative new products and services, and enable international expansion.
Annie started her career in 1982 as a software engineer, before becoming European Business Development Manager in 1993 at Digital. She then joined Shiva, leader in remote access technologies, as their International Marketing Director. In 1997 she founded CARNAC, her own international marketing agency with offices in London (UK) and Sophia-Antipolis (France).
Annie is a member of Sophia Business Angels, Initmarketing, and the Institute of Directors (IOD, London UK).
We met Annie about a year ago at a Sophia Business Angels meeting, and since then she has been regularly following our project, and supporting us with her advice.
Julien Codorniou
Julien Cordorniou is Director of Development and Partnerships at Microsoft France.
After being a consultant for Ernst and Young, focusing on software companies, and working with ETF Group, a Swiss VC firm. Julien joined Microsoft France in 2005 to launch emerging businesses activities, partnering with VCs and ISV. He launched the IDEES program designed to identify and help high potential software companies in France. In 2008, Julien moved to Microsoft Corp to replicate the French program success and direct Microsoft Corp’s efforts to partner with hi-potential software companies around the world (through the BizSpark Program). Julien came back to France in 2010 to take the lead of the Development and Partnerships team.
Julien is co-author of the book “Ils ont réussi leur start-up! Les dessous de la success story Kelkoo”. Edited by Pearson, October 2005.
We met Julien in September 2007 at the final of the « Challenge Jeunes Pousses ». This was the first step toward the creation of SimplySim, and Julien was the first to recognize the potential of our innovations. We quickly joined the Microsoft IDEES program, and he invited us to Microsoft Corp headquarters in Redmond to meet with the Microsoft teams.
Dan Newman
Dan Newman is Managing Partner at Cross Atlantic Advisory and Cross Atlantic Ventures. In addition, he is also a Venture Partner within the Technology Team at Sofinnova Partners (Paris).
He serves as a Board member and member of various Advisory Boards in a range of technology sectors in both the US and France. Prior to Cross Atlantic, Dan was a Consultant and Project Leader with several international consulting firms including Lochridge & Company (1986-91), Tenex Consulting (1992-93) and SMG (1994-97). He brings more than 25 years of venture capital, strategy consulting, and hands-on management experience to his portfolio companies and Advisory Boards
We’ve recently been introduced to Dan thanks to Annie Blandel.
Dominique Pouliquen
Dominique Pouliquen, is currently Product Manager for reality capture technologies inside Autodesk, the worldwide leader in 2D and 3D CAD software, with its headquarters in California, USA. M. Pouliquen is also acting as the site manager for Autodesk R&D center in Sophia Antipolis, France.
Autodesk bought REALVIZ in May 2008, a company that Dominique co-founded in March 1998 from a technology transfer with INRIA (National Research Institute for Computer Sciences and Automatics). He was CEO of this company for 10 years, developing its image-based content creation software business in the special effects and digital imaging markets all over the world.
Dominique has spent his career in the computer graphics industry after graduating as an Engineer from Ecole Superieure d’Electronique de l’Ouest, Angers, France in 1986.
We’ve met Dominique for the first time in early 2008 thanks to the Incubateur Paca Est, and since then we’ve met in many local events.
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As announced before, SimplySim will be present at the Laval Virtual 2010. The Laval Virtual is the first European event dedicated to enhanced and virtual reality, real time 3D and interactive techniques and takes place in Laval France (1 hour and a half from Paris in TGV) from April 7th to April 11th 2010. This year is the 12th edition of the tradeshow, and SimplySim first participation. The entrance is free during the professional day as long you have an invitation … invitation that we are happy to provide right here.
The Laval Virtual will be the first public presentation of the editors of the SimplyCube. The SimplyEdit, SimplyPhysic and SimplyShader are easy to use tools designed to help you create rapidly any professional 3D application: simulations, serious games, marketing applications, video games…
First preview of the SimplyEdit, SimplyCube's 3D scene edition tool
We will also present our latest demo created using the SimplyCube 3D simulation engine and editors: our UAV Demo, our robotics simulation demo, our underwater demo, and a new “Nanorobot demo” (if you follow @VB_Simply3D you only have an idea of what to expect for this one…).
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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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First, in the name of everyone working at SimplySim, I’d like to wish a happy new year to all our readers. All the best for 2010 
For SimplySim, 2010 will be the year we release our products. So in today’s post we will give you a first view of our roadmap for this year.
February 2010
February will be an important month for us as it is the month we release the first version of our simulation engine and participate to two important conferences. We’ll also start the month by releasing a new website that better present our products and company.
From February 3rd to 5th we will be at Imagina 2010 in Monaco to present our products. We’ll have a booth in the exhibition hall, so if you’re nearby take the time to visit us; the access to the exhibition hall is free for all professionals, students, and education personnel (you’ll just have to register).
From February 8th to 10th we will be in Paris for Microsoft TechDays. I have attended the TechDays twice and it’s a really great conference for anyone interested in software, the access to the conferences and exhibition hall is free (you just have to register). I highly recommend everyone to attend (note that most of the conferences are in French). We have a session there where we’ll present our product (in the “Enjeux”, “Innovation et Recherche” thematic).
Product release
During the first months, the product will be in beta version, first to a limited number of users and then in an open beta. The exact duration of the beta period is not yet defined but probably around 2 – 3 months, this should give us time to get some good feedback on the product. We’ll open the registration for the closed beta soon, so stay tuned (we’ll announce it on this blog).
apartment simulation environment in the SimplyEngine
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Since the beginning of 2009, we’ve been busy working on a new product to increase dramatically the realism of real time 3D simulations. I think it is now time to start showing the first preview of this new product… In today’s post we’ll talk about the driving ideas behind the product, why we created it, and the early conception choices we have made.
Realism is more than just nice looking 3D
Since we have launched our company, our mission has been to bring the most realistic 3D simulations to our customers. 3D simulation consists of creating a virtual model of a real life (or hypothetical) situation, usually to study it (there are other uses of 3D simulation technologies that we will discuss in another post). Realism is of course the goal of anyone who develops or uses a simulation.
3D graphic realism can be stunning nowadays but it represents only one element of realism. 3D is only a tool, which should be made as useful as possible for the real aims of the software application. When we decided to create our simulation engine, we had of course graphic realism in mind (and I think the screenshots tells enough of what we have done on that point) but more importantly we had identified other essential aspects of realism for our product.
The SimplyEngine is what we like to call a “3D simulation engine”, that is the core software on which any real time 3D simulation can be built. We decided to call it a “simulation engine”, because it is not only a nice looking 3D engine, but it includes important elements for physic realism and for software and hardware interactions.
Physic simulation
Our first 3D simulations were made for robotic simulation. Testing and validating the behavior of a robot in a 3D software application is a challenging task. One essential aspect of this challenge is physics realism: creating a simulation where objects behave realistically, where they are liable to physic laws.
When we created our product, physic realism was one of the key priorities. We have created a full software library dedicated to it, with among other thing the ability to use any of the physic engines available on the market (NVidia PhysX, Newton Game Dynamics, Havok, ODE…).
Interactions with software and hardware
As I was saying above, we really consider that 3D technologies should be a tool. A tool that can be applied to many problems and that therefore should have the ability to interact easily with many other elements (software, hardware or human beings) to create a solution.
Our 3D simulation engine is based on a service oriented software architecture that has been designed to make every part of our product easily compatible with any other software application. We’ll discuss in an upcoming post the benefits of our service oriented software architecture.
Ease of use
Finally, we believe that the user should always be the main focus of any software application. That’s why our developments are focused on the ease of use of our products. Our goal is that any software developer should be able to use 3D technologies in his applications, and in ways relevant to his business needs, without any specific formation. Again it will take another post to tell you more about the efforts we made on the ease of use… stay tuned!
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Welcome everyone,
This is the corporate blog of SimplySim, a software startup company based in France and specialized in real time 3D technologies. This blog is dedicated to showcase the many interesting uses of real time 3D technologies, and how it can solve real life problems. Of course we’ll also talk about our corporate actuality and our products, but the main focus of this blog shall remain on how our customers and partners use our technologies to solve problems and make this world better.
This blog is also designed to be a place of dialog with anyone interested by real time 3D technologies; we welcome your views and comments.
