Our YVision team has been pretty busy these last few months replacing some of the engines to make sure YVision is executable on as many platforms as possible. The work’s paid off! This latest release brings better support for Silverlight 5 and mobile devices in the near future.

Check out the features for the latest release:

• Support for Silverlight 5 final (RTW) – Now you can run your 3D interactive applications in the browser. Extensive work has been done to make sure you app compiles for .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 5 with minimal code changes. Check out a couple of demos on our cases page.
• SLARToolKit on .NET 4.0 – Now you can take advantage of the popular augmented-reality engine on other platforms other than Silverlight. SLARToolKit is now included in the SDK, you don’t need a separate download. Be sure to check the SLARToolKit license to make sure it fits your needs.
• Steering behaviors – These allow you to apply behaviors (defined by Craig Reynolds) like seek, flee, pursue, evade, wander, arrival, obstacle avoidance, containment, wall following, path following and flow field following to your objects. These can be combined in behavior trees to achieve complex behaviors like flocking, queuing and many more.
• Settings and visualizers – You can now easily expose settings to users so that they can customize/calibrate the application.
• New project templates, item templates and code snippets – In our continuous effort to simplify your work, we added many more templates.  The samples are provided as templates so that you can mess around with them as much as possible. All the samples work on Silverlight and Windows.
• Multiple bug fixes – The framework has proven to be very robust but not without a few issues. If you find any new issue, please report it to us.

This release is only for Windows but we hope to have the Mac OS X release soon. We are working on optimizing the ‘build process’ so we can have simultaneous and more frequent releases in the future.

Go to our download page to get this latest version. We hope you have as much fun trying it out as we did developing it!

Associação Salvador realiza hoje cerimónia de entrega de Prémios

A Associação Salvador, com o objetivo de estimular a investigação no domínio da reabilitação psicomotora, promove anualmente o Prémio “Ser Capaz – Investigação e Tecnologia” que tem um valor de 10.000 euros. A cerimónia pública de entrega dos galardões realiza-se hoje, às 18h30, no Espaço BES Arte & Finança na Praça Marquês de Pombal, 3, em Lisboa.

A atribuição deste prémio prevê o financiamento de projetos que contribuam para o desenvolvimento de produtos, instrumentos, tecnologias, metodologias, equipamentos ou sistemas técnicos que previnam, compensem, atenuem ou neutralizem a incapacidade de uma pessoa portadora de deficiência motora.

O período de candidaturas da segunda edição do prémio decorreu entre 23 de maio e 14 de outubro de 2011, tendo o júri, composto por Salvador Mendes de Almeida, fundador e presidente da Associação Salvador, por António Câmara, presidente da YDreams e por Fernando Lobo, professor -DEEI-FCT– Universidade do Algarve, selecionado três vencedores de 22 candidaturas rececionadas.

Declarações de Salvador Mendes de Almeida, presidente da Associação Salvador: “Faço um balanço muito positivo desta segunda edição do Prémio Ser Capaz pois recebemos um elevado número de candidaturas de projetos com elevada qualidade, que espero virem a contribuir para o desenvolvimento de novas soluções que favoreçam a vida das pessoas com deficiência motora na sociedade.”

Prémios

1º Prémio – Valor € 5.000 – Miguel Silva /Jorge Martins/Paulo Melo/Carlos Vasconcelos
Projeto “DACHOR – lntegrated Design and COntrol of Hybrid Active Orthoses”

Menção Honrosa 1 – Valor € 3.500 – Projeto IntellWheels
Luis Reis/António Moreira/Marcelo Prety/Brigida Faria /Sergio Vasconcelos

Menção Honrosa 2 – Valor € 1.500 – Projeto Living Home Center
Carlos Pires/Fernando Pinto /Victor Teixeira (Microsoft)

In our continued effort to make sure our interfaces are easy to use and visually appealing, we’ve recently launched these in the Lisbon area. Have a look

A tactile shopping center directory for Forum Sintra (on the outskirts of Lisbon) and tablets for accessing additional info about l’Oreal products at Perfumes & Companhia shops in Portugal.

Forum Sintra Shopping Directory

Consulting info on shopping directory

Tactile Tablet for L'Oreal Products

An amazing Virtual World, fueled by YDreams technology and design, recently opened to the public at Istanbul’s Marmara Forum on December 15, 2011. YDreams conceived and developed an enchanted realm inhabited by friendly eccentric creatures called Marmarians for the Multi Mall Management Group shopping center, whose aim was to offer young guests a space for creative expression while simultaneously connecting with shoppers, and enhancing customer loyalty.

Young guests to the center are invited and encouraged to let their imaginations run wild and “give life” to their own exotic creations. Two touch consoles, located at each end of the video wall, comprised of fifteen 40” monitors, invite shoppers to create and customize creatures that ultimately become a type of virtual pet. Guests use the touch screens to create their new Marmarian from scratch – they decide on the shape of the body, its texture and color as well as the color of its eyes and stripes or spots. The variables available enable guests to create up to 30.000 distinct creatures, so the risk that any two will be identical is minimal! After determining what their new Marmarian looks like, guests name it and release it into the brand new Virtual World!

Creating their new pet creature is only half the fun; to make sure they grow into happy, healthy Marmarians, they need to be fed and visited, a task that can only be accomplished by checking in at the touch consoles at Marmara Forum. The more you visit your virtual pet, the bigger and happier it grows, and the more you are able to further customize it by adding new features.

In addition, a dedicated website (http://www.virtualworldmf.com/front/web/index.php) is also available so that guests can regularly check up on their Marmarian from home to see how it’s doing. Furthermore, a point system which gives way to discounts at selected Marmara Forum stores and restaurants has been implemented, so by checking in at the center to feed and visit their pets, guests are also increasing their eligibility to win great discounts.