My goodness, where did the time go? My last post to this blog was in December, 2022. Actually, there were five posts that month, the only ones for 2022. And NONE for 2023. Have you nothing to say?
Well, in truth, there is plenty to say, but seemingly 'no time to say it'. Ever have that problem? People in the middle of crisis don't generally take time out to describe it or write a book about it--they just ACT.
Well, we've been acting. My partner, Scott Futryk, and I formed a corporation last year, to little fanfare but with a lot of enthusiasm and hope for a couple of elder citizens. Its name--AstroVirtual--says much. It aspires to be "heavenly" or "star-struck" or whatever you'd imagine with an "ASTRO" prefix. No, not the baseball team, although they've had some remarkable records over the past few years. (Yes, Nolan did pitch for the Houston Astros, and serve them as an advisor years later). More about Ryan and baseball in another post; this one is about our new company.
The posts of December 2022 describe our fledgling prototypes in modest detail. Those have been updated, and some signal events have occurred along the way. Here's a quick unverified chronology:
1. We filed a slew of patent claims early in 2023; these were 'fast-tracked' by the USPTO (US Patent and Tranemark Office), with the happy result last week that we've received advance notice of a major patent award for a sizable number of claims, along with encouragement to file additional materials (as funding permits, we'll certainly do this). I don't know about you, but we've discovered that patent work is often a bit of an expensive hobby all by itself, and start-ups are usually lean mean machines (meaning cash starved--"oh, really?").
2. In July, Chuck was invited to SIGGRAPH '23, which was actually the 50th anniversary for SIGGRAPH. He went as a "pioneer" thanks to his pioneering computer Display, the HP 1300A, from 1966, eight years before SIGGRAPH began. It was heady, sitting alongside Don Greenberg, Andy van Dam, Jim Blinn, and Alvy Ray Smith in the "Memories" sessons. And Don and I were invited to have the 'front row seats' for Nvidia's keynote by founder Jensen Huang, and then escorted by his aide to see him privately at the end. WOW!!!
3. Huang's talk was amazing, and it is up on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2VBKerS63A. Because it is on YouTube, we have permission to 'play with it', and we took the opportunity to post it into our "Network Control Diorama environment". Here's our AstroVirtual four minute extract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv--Why9LLo&t=244s This extract essentially indexes multiple speaking points within his talk with separate video screens in the diorama--try that with your standard YouTube version!
4. We added two new environments to our "Standard" repertoire, raising the number of screens for an environment from 22 in the Standard Diorama model to 55 for an Exposition Center, and more than 100 in an EIS (Executive Information Center). Every screen is dynamic, interactive, synchronous, with real-time pixel streaming. The compute power to deliver this performance is stunning, but amazingly available at reasonable cost from compute streaming services (we're using a bank of top-end Nvidia servers to make all this run seamlessly).
5. We unveiled the Exposition Center at the United Nations General Assembly in NYC on September 27. This was an unexpected and terrific opportunity to showcase both the AstroVirtual environment and its visual power, with the three year COVID-19 Dashboard analytics that InnovaScapes Institute pioneered with the complex Dashboard designed earlier by Scott Futryk's "AnywhereAnytime" LLC. The UN General Assembly, held twice a year with multiple focused workshops, has included a focus on Digital Health for the past three years. For InnovaScapes to be invited to speak was a real privilege. Here's the key talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z63I88yOUIc
There were other highlights, but this list is adequate for now to give you a taste of our progress. Thanks again for taking time to read and comment. All the best for 2024
Chuck
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