Australian Highway Project Aided by Forum8AZ Iterative Design Approach

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Roads and Maritime Services of New South Wales worked with Forum8AZ to develop iterations of a highway alignment near the town of Berry. Changes to the alignment location as well as features like a noise barrier and highway landscaping were based on an ongoing dialogue with nearby residents. At key points in the highway design phase, residents of Berry were given the opportunity to see the virtual model of the alignment and contribute their opinions. The process embodies a new standard in community-oriented infrastructure design.

Check out the project overview and animated output of the Berry bypass alignment HERE

Berry Bypass Aerial

Berry Drive
























The virtual model of Berry and the new highway alignment gave residents and engineers alike an intuitive tool for collaborative design.

ITS World Congress 2011

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Forum8AZ will be attending this year’s Intelligent Transportation Society’s world congress, a gathering of innovative transportation engineering firms from around the world. Forum8′s exhibit will feature our latest driving simulation technology and virtual reality software. The ITS World Congress will take place October 16-20 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. For more information, please visit the conference website HERE

ITSOrlandoBooth



















Look for our booth at ITS Orlando 2011!

Valley of the Sunflowers

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A large parcel of vacant land in Phoenix’s urban core will soon be transformed into a vibrant garden and a source of local bio fuel. Valley of the Sunflowers is a collaborative effort between downtown Phoenix’s Adaptive Reuse of Temporary Space project (ARTS), Intel, the Phoenix Bio Science High School, and dozens of volunteers. The urban farming project will be tended by volunteers and students from the Bio Science High School, who will then harvest seeds twice a year and transform the yield into bio fuel. Valley of the Sunflowers broke ground on Friday, September 9th – just in time for fall growing season.

Forum8AZ used the real-time 3D graphics software UC-win/Road to visualize the incredible transformation of the project site:

Valley of the Sunflowers

Thousands of sunflowers will soon transform this lot that has been left vacant for years in a project that coordinators hope to ultimately spread to other lots throughout the city.

Forum8AZ to Showcase at ITS AZ 2011 Conference

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Forum8AZ will be exhibiting real-time transportation and design technologies at this year’s Intelligent Transportation Society of Arizona’s 18th Annual Conference. The event will take place on September 29, 2011 at the Mesa Convention Center in Mesa, Arizona. Please swing by our exhibit! More information about ITS AZ and the 2011 conference is available HERE

ITSAZ Logo

World16 2011 Summer Workshop in Italy

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Forum8′s World16 project is a global research group working to develop innovative virtual reality technologies in architecture, civil engineering, driving simulation, urban design, construction, and a variety of other fields. Researchers are based at universities around the world and use Forum8′s virtual reality software UC-win/Road as a common platform to share and present their research.

This year, the research group held its VR summer workshop at the Università di Pisa, home of host professor and World16 member Paolo Fiamma. Professor Fiamma teaches in the department of Civil Engineering and organized this year’s VR workshop.

This year’s workshop included presentations on real-time 3D graphics technology by guest speakers Simon Mabey from ARUP in Manchester, UK, and professor Fumio Seki from Nihon University, Japan.

Simon Mabey ARUP














Simon Mabey presents VR and 3D modeling technologies used by ARUP.

Other sessions included presentations by each research team representative, new product demonstrations, and a collaborative workshop for all current projects.

2011 RESEARCH PROJECTS

The on-going research listed below and featured at last week’s workshop will be presented at the upcoming International VR Symposium this November in Tokyo, Japan:

Implementing “Traffic Derivation Protocol” to UC/win/Road to Avoid Traffic Jams While Visualizing VR Models.
Prof. Amar Bennadji, Robert Gordon University

Two “Cloud” Technologies: Point Cloud Optimization and VR Cloud Application for Townscape Design
Prof. Tomohiro Fukuda, Osaka University

eParkingSim
Prof. Kostas Terzidis, Harvard University

Digital Manga in UC-win/Road
Prof. Marc Aurel Schnabel and Dr. Inge Yingge Qu,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Media Field Navigation
Prof. Marcos Novak, University of California SB

Shader Graphs for UC-win/Road
Matthew Swarts, Georgia Institute of Technology

Multiple Stakeholders in the Shadows of the Datascape
Prof. Michael Jemtrud, Jason Crow, and Andrew Chung, McGill University

Visualizing Wadi Madaiq
Prof. Ron Hawker, Zayed University

From Acoustic Simulation to Form Generation ::
a Case Study in Noise Simulation and Visualization
Prof. Ruth Ron, University of Florida

Extreme Interaction with UC-win/Road using a Lightweight Character Representation Method
Prof. Taro Narahara, New Jersey Institute of Technology

VR in Construction Monitoring
Prof. Wael Abdelhameed, University of Bahrain

Character Development
Prof. Thomas Tucker, Winston-Salem State University

CityDesign Tool for Japanese Castle
Prof. Yoshihiro Kobayashi, Arizona State University

SIM Lucca – VR for Italian Cities
Prof. Paolo Fiamma and Pierluigi D’Acunto, University of Pisa