IDELIX Technology Update no.9

QUICKLINKS
> Good News
> Technology Update
> New Demos
> Getting Graphic
> Market Spotlight
> IDELIX at Play
> Events

Original images provided by NASA/JPL.

News Flash!
Grabba Java... SDK!
PDT Software Development Kit supporting java platform set for release in Q2 04!!
Read more about the PDT Java SDK.

In this issue:

Good News: JWID Update—Go Team Canada!!, IDELIX "Breaking the Mold" on UI Design, IX3 Inc. speaks out on PDT and Network Centric Operations, and New!! IDELIX Partners and Programs

Technology Update: PDT JAVA Software Development Kit in the works, New IDELIX Academic Partner Program launched

New Demos: Explore Mars with the PDT Layers Demo

Getting Graphic: Gaze-Contingent Displays—A PDT Integration Example

Market Spotlight: PDT Terrain Lenses: A Fly-Through Discussion

IDELIX at Play: Winning Gold is a Family Affair

Events: Dr. Baar to speak at the National Intelligence Symposium 2004 March 10

A Quick Update on the IDELIX Privacy Policy

The IDELIX team would like to thank you for being a loyal and dedicated IDELIX Technical Update reader. Our newsletters are a direct link to you, our business associates, and we hope that they are providing you with valuable and timely information. There have recently been a number of new electronic mail and privacy laws enacted. As a result, IDELIX would like to promptly remove anyone from our mailing list that no longer wishes to receive these informative updates.

To remove your name from our mailing list, simply enter your email address in the unsubscribe form on the IDELIX website. Read more about our Privacy Policy.

Good News

Company news from IDELIX

JWID Update: Go Team Canada!

Members of IDELIX participated in the recent Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration planning event held in Chesapeake, Virginia as part of the Canadian Department of National Defence's "Team Canada". JWID is scheduled to run from June 1-24th, and will give a chance for all the US unified commands to actively participate in 5-day trial demonstrations featuring new technologies such as PDT and Black Coral GIS to assess the new and emerging technologies that are shaping the battlespace of the future.

The 2004 coalitions will also host new JWID partners such as the National Guard Bureau, the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Coast Guard, and the Canadian Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness (PSEP). Other partners include the UK, New Zealand, Australia, SPAWAR, EUCOM, several Nations from NATO, South Korea (sponsored by the US), and Sweden, Austria, and Finland (sponsored by NATO under the Partnership for Peace, PfP, programme)—25 countries in total.

To learn more about this initiative, look out for an article to be published in the March 2004 Issue of Military Geospatial Technology!

IDELIX "Breaking the Mold" on User Interface Design

The February Issue of SD Times featured an article entitled Breaking the Mold: User Interface Innovation, written by Garth Shoemaker, Director of Research for IDELIX. The article guides you through an exploration of the foundation and standards of current User Interface (UI) design, and explores alternative techniques for developing "out of the box" solutions to combat many current UI issues for navigation, viewing, and manipulating data and images. Read the entire article on sdtimes.com

IX3 Speaks Out on PDT and Network Centric Operations

Glenn Ignazio, President of Integrated Intelligent Ideas, IX3 Inc., shares his views in military.com on how PDT can be used to improve Network Centric Operations. Read the entire article on Miltary.com

IDELIX and The HFE Group Announce Partnership

On December 1st, IDELIX Software Inc. entered into a partnership agreement with The HFE Group that will see the PDT visualization interface integrated into The HFE Group's portfolio of situational awareness and simulation solutions for the aerospace and defense industries. Read More.

IDELIX Partner Program Expanding

The IDELIX Partner Program is picking up speed with over 20 OEM's and System Integrators utilizing the Pliable Display Technology SDK in a variety of products and advanced technology prototypes. Projects include PDT for Stereo Digitization, Location-Based Access Control, Image Exploitation, Web Map Clients, Handheld/Wireless Applications, and Situational Awareness Tools for the Warfighter. If you wish to find out more information on the IDELIX Partner Program, please email us at partners@idelix.com.

Local Tidbits

IDELIX "Ready To Rocket"

IDELIX was named as a "One to Watch" by consultants in a recently posted article appearing in the Vancouver Sun. Download a PDF of the article.

New Faces: IDELIX Welcomes Bill Tam of Spring Bank to its Board of Directors!

IDELIX fortifies their industry knowledge and strength in the financial and technology sectors with the addition of Bill Tam of Spring Bank to its Board of Directors. To find out more about Mr. Tam, read his bio!

IDELIX Closes 3rd Round of Financing

IDELIX closed its third round of financing on November 17, 2003. Discovery Capital was the lead investor with participation from Spring Bank and various private investors. "IDELIX welcomes the backing of Discovery Capital, Spring Bank, and our private investors, and views their support as a vote of confidence in our business strategy and ongoing research and development. This financing will help support an aggressive business development and marketing strategy within the defense realm," said Bijan Sanii, President & CEO of IDELIX.

Quote of the Month

"The linkages between industry and government is crucial in order to expose warfighters to the bleeding edge of technology."

—Paul Morin
J2 Information Technology Manager
Canadian Department of National Defence

Technology Update

PDT Java Software Development Kit Release Scheduled for Q2 '04!!

You asked for it and we've built it. IDELIX developers have been hard at work for several months on the design and implementation of the Java version of the PDT Software Development Kit, which provides the same functionality and capabilities available in our core C++ SDK.

IDELIX's commitment to meeting customer demand has led to the development of the Java version of its award winning PDT SDK. The PDT Java SDK will allow customers to integrate PDT technology into Java stand-alone and web applications, further pushing the boundaries of viewing high-resolution images and datasets. The PDT Java SDK offers the same functionalities as its C++ counterpart, which allows the user to view layers of vector or raster data with a real-time PDT lens. Standard PDT features such as detail-in-context magnification, editing through a lens, single lens capabilities, and real-time lens controls are available in the PDT Java SDK and have been all developed utilizing the Java 2 Platform standard libraries.

The PDT Java SDK expands the platform independence of the PDT family, which includes an SDK written in C++, .NET and COM support. The PDT Java SDK is hitting beta shortly and is scheduled for full release in Q2 '04. To find out more information on how to become a beta tester or to obtain the PDT Java or C++ SDK, contact us at partners@idelix.com.

IDELIX Academic Partner Program Launched

The IDELIX Academic Partner Program was recently launched with the goal of building a collaborative bridge between IDELIX and academic researchers in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Visualization. The successful program includes a variety of participants that are exploring and developing new and innovative uses for PDT. The program's commitment to bringing together academic research labs with state of the art technology and support has grown to include over a dozen participants, such as Dr. Maria Lantin at the Banff Centre, Dr. Carl Gutwin at the University of Saskatchewan, and Dr. Andy Cockburn at the University of Canterbury.

If you are interested in participating in the IDELIX Academic Partner Program, contact our Director of Research, Garth Shoemaker at academic@idelix.com.

New Demos

Play time! PDT Mars Demo

New! PDT Mars Layers Demo

Use the PDT Layers Demo to explore how PDT can enhance data fusion! This demo shows how a data layer taken from a panoramic camera on one of the Mars rovers and an infrared data layer collected by NASA from the Thermal Imager can be viewed simultaneously. The images depict how data can either be blended (top picture in demo) or simply toggled (bottom picture in demo) within the PDT lens. The blended case provides a direct presentation of the visible features that are at a given temperature in a local area, and provides remarkable delineation of features such as what appear to be rocks. The switched case gives a more direct presentation of the Thermal or visible data, depending on which is selected. In both cases, utilizing PDT's Undisplace algorithm, simple markup can also be performed within the lens to spatially correlate or compare features of interest across the visible and infrared layers.

[Download the demo]

New! Hyper Jump Demo Video:
PDT-Enabled Rapid Search

The PDT-Enabled Rapid Search video provides a demonstration of PDT's new Hyper Jump navigational technique. The demo illustrates how the lens can be utilized to navigate to an area of interest by a simple click and release of the mouse, providing you with the ability to focus in on the area of interest while remaining in context with the rest of the image.

[Download the video]

For more detailed information, visit the previous issue of the IDELIX Technology Update.

Getting Graphic

PDT Terrain Lenses: Fly-Through Discussion

Aviators know well that the world is not flat, either on a global or local scale. When travelling at altitude, the global curvature of the earth is made obvious, but in addition, natural terrain features such as mountains, valleys, and dunes, and man-made objects such as buildings and bridges near runways, can be of principal interest in mission planning and navigation, and generally in operational situations. Flyers need to be able to see local detail to be able to prevent collateral damage and perform adequate target verification, but in high velocity flight they also need to be aware simultaneously of high elevation entities in the theatre such that they can be avoided in time. Mission planners of both land and airborne operations require terrain information for route selection, and need to see local detail for purposes such as hazard and threat assessment over a given route, and for establishing endpoint locations to satisfy mission objectives.

Based on preliminary research efforts, IDELIX has demonstrated the applicability of its unique Pliable Display Technology (PDT) to terrain data such as DTED and other elevation data, and to curved surfaces such as spheres and standard reference ellipsoids. PDT Terrain Lenses are terrain specific lenses that enhance the user's interaction with the visualization of terrain data. PDT Terrain Lenses take normal 2D images and alter them in such a way that terrain elevations can be viewed in 3D. With a normal PDT lens, topographical data is viewed from top-down or from an aerial view and changes in elevation are indicated by variations in colors or shading. With the PDT Terrain Lenses, data is taken and rendered into a 3D perspective, utilizing the colors or shades as building blocks for the 3D renderings. PDT Terrain lenses can be roamed over standard globe/ellipsoidal data presentations to explore local detail in a natural global context, and can be moved over terrain so as to bring out important local detail in the context of the surroundings. Mission planners will want to move PDT lenses over prescribed paths over terrain for rehearsal and simulation purposes.

The underlying PDT transformation without texture map data (left). The PDT Terrain Lens transformation with texture mapped data (centre). What you see onscreen—magnified 3D detail-in-context (right).

Market Spotlight

Gaze-Contingent Displays: A PDT Integration Example

PDT, An Eye-Catching Display! Dr. Andrew Duchowski, an Associate Professor at the University of Clemson and a key member of their Virtual Reality Eye Tracking Laboratory, has been investigating gaze-contingent systems and conducted a short "pilot study" on the feasibility of the Pliable Display Technology lenses an alternative gaze-based control.

Gaze-Contingent Displays (GCDs) experience degraded resolution around the peripheral image regions in order to decrease the processing power required during image transmission, retrieval, or display. In gaze-contingent applications, the high-resolution region moves with the user's focal point, which is monitored by an eye tracker. GCDs increase the display speed for the focal point by compressing the peripheral area of the image, which the user's eye cannot resolve. Current applications for GCDs include flight and driving simulators, virtual reality, infrared and indirect vision, remote piloting, robotics and automation, teleoperation and telemedicine, image transmission and retrieval, and video teleconferencing [Baudisch et al. 2003].

During his pilot study, Dr. Duchowski explored and developed a variety of examples of suitable hardware and software solutions, which demonstrate the ease of development for a PDT based gaze-contingent application. PDT provided an appealing alternative to traditional GCDs because of its ability to magnify the underlying fovea region.

To enable PDT as a gaze-contingent control, all that was necessary was to equip the main rendering loop with a code that obtains the user's Point Of Regard (POR) x, y coordinates and applies those to the required translation of the PDT lens. The textures and PDT lens are rendered once the current gaze point has been calculated and the PDT lens has been moved to those coordinates. Substituting coordinates of the gaze point as mouse coordinates simulated control movements of the PDT lens, such as mouse presses and drag and release events.

Once integrated, the PDT lens appeared to move sufficiently quicker than previous methods implemented, giving the illusion of real-time gaze-contingent control. In fact, the PDT lens was so accurate that it exhibited slight tremors under gaze-contingent control. Eye movement due to the normal jitters caused during fixation (the eyes are never perfectly still). This problem was alleviated in two ways. First, the eye tracking validity status was checked-this is a feature provided by the eye tracker; if the gaze coordinates were reported to be "invalid" by the eye tracker, the PDT lens location was not updated. Second, jerky PDT lens movement was smoothed out by averaging 5 gaze point coordinates. This provided smooth lens motion at the expense of a slight delay. Different buffering schemes may also provide smooth motion with shorter delays.

Dr. Duchowski's short pilot study has raised questions and generated ideas for future research. The study has shown that PDT provides an exciting paradigm for gaze-contingent display research, and IDELIX hopes to work with Dr. Duchowski on future research and testing being conducted on performance, timing, and usability measures.

Runway image with PDT lens (L). The same image without PDT (R).

IDELIX at Play

Work hard, play hard... The family that skis together.

Winning Gold is a Family Affair

IDELIX Vice President of Business Development Doug Fraser and his son Andrew recently made winning gold a family affair. They participated in the NASTAR ski race series held over the February 14th weekend at the Sun Peaks Resort in Kamloops, British Columbia. Doug and his son's outstanding effort and enthusiasm for ski racing was rewarded with a gold medal for each of them in their respective age groups. Doug's time of 24.12 seconds placed him at the top of his age group's pack of 55 racers, while Andrew competed against 25 talented young ski racers and finished with an amazing time of 30.02 seconds, bringing home the family's second gold. The NASTAR race series was developed by SKI Magazine in 1968 and is the largest recreational ski race program in the world.

Events

The IDELIX road show

March 10-11, 2004
National Intelligence Symposium 2004
Booz | Allen | Hamilton Corporate Conference Centre
McLean, VA
www.nmia.org/symposia/

The NIS Symposium�s focus for this year will be on "The Role of Science and Technology in the Transformation of Intelligence." As part of this focus, Dr. David Baar, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of IDELIX has been invited to speak at the event. He will be delivering a presentation entitled "Pliable Display Technology by IDELIX: Improving Your Warning and Response Action Cycles Through Improved Data Visualization Tools," at 4pm on March 10, 2004.

IDELIX invites you to join Dr. Baar for this informative presentation. For more information, read the presentation abstract.

March 8-12, 2004
BAE Systems
Combined User's Conference 2004
SOCET SET, VITec & MATRIX
DoubleTree Hotel San Diego Mission Valley
San Diego, CA
www.vitec.com/conference/2004conference.html

March 9-11, 2004
DARPATech 2004 Symposium
Marriott Hotel
Anaheim, California
www.arpa.gov/DARPAtech2004/index.html

March 9, 2004
ASI Exchange
Plaza of Nations
Vancouver, British Columbia
www.asiexchange.com

If you are interested in arranging a meeting with our IDELIX representatives at any of these events, contact Chantal-Marie Stark, Communications Coordinator, at 604-484-2891.