Vectorform shows off at Microsoft’s “Many Screens and a Cloud” event
Posted by Lindsay Ruthven – August 16, 2010Working with the Microsoft Research Team and Massachusetts General Hospital, Vectorform’s Justin Lankes and Patrick Samona demonstrated the Virtual Colonoscopy Viewer at a recent event in Boston, MA. Virtual Colonoscopy makes it possible to navigate through 3D images of the colon using a multi-touch platform. The goal behind this application is to reduce the time of a typical colonoscopy exam to only 5 minutes. Currently, the procedure takes 40-60 minutes. Virtual Colonoscopy requires a series of clear, high-resolution images to be taken from a CT scanner. Once the pictures are taken, the part of the exam that can be considered by patients to be “invasive” is done! The high-res images are then fed into the application, giving the doctor the opportunity to explore and navigate through the colon, searching for polyps. A standard colonoscopy procedure entails a doctor’s examination of the colon in real time using a fiber optic camera attached to a flexible tube; the tube then gets passed through the rectum. As you can imagine, this can be a long and uncomfortable experience. We hope Virtual Colonoscopy will encourage more people to opt for colon cancer screening, giving us an opportunity to save lives.
Would you like to learn more? Check out Microsoft’s Curt Devlin’s blog post about the application and the demonstration in Boston.
Virtual Colonoscopy will also be demonstrated at the RSNA Conference in November, stay tuned for more updates!
A NEW FRONTIER FOR THE SETTLERS OF CATAN
Posted by Lindsay Ruthven – August 2, 2010Continuing to build its digital game empire, Vectorform re-imagines The Settlers of Catan for Microsoft Surface.
Seattle, WA and Detroit, MI, August 2, 2010—The Settlers of Catan is a classic multiplayer board game, combining economics, strategy and chance, as colonists compete to build settlements from raw commodities. Created in Germany in 1995, and now available in 30 languages, The Settlers of Catan has achieved icon status. Over 15 million copies have been sold worldwide, and an estimated 20 million people play regularly, through a diverse set of traditional and digital game forms.
In partnership with Microsoft, Catan LLC, and Mayfair Games, Vectorform has recreated The Settlers of Catan for Microsoft Surface. Microsoft Surface is an innovative computing platform that responds to touch, natural hand gestures and real-world objects placed on the display. With a large, 360-degree, horizontal user interface, Microsoft Surface offers a unique gathering place where multiple users can come together to interact with content and each other–making it an ideal platform for games like The Settlers of Catan.
Working to maintain an authentic, interpersonal experience of board game play, Vectorform leveraged the social nature of Microsoft Surface. This functionality, defined by Microsoft as “together computing,” provides a distinct advantage and authenticity over games played on traditional PCs or personal devices. “Where a computer game is a solo computing affair, board games are connected experiences. Together computing has its place now, and will be more prominent in the future.” Vectorform Game Studio Executive Director Joe Engalan says.
Vectorform used the artistry of Mayfair Games’ analog version of The Settlers of Catan to illustrate the game elements, including resources, land, and evolving civilization. The digital board is complimented with real-world elements, including an acrylic die set which is seen and recognized by Surface’s built-in cameras. Additionally, an x-ray visor, fabricated specifically for the game, reveals a player’s cards to the player, while shielding the cards from competing colonists. “I’ve never seen real die used in a digital game,” Mollie Harms, Game Producer for Vectorform Game Studios, says. “I think the visors could revolutionize digital card playing. This is a new way to maintain secrecy that doesn’t hinder game play.” The visors, the dice, and the game-play experience on Surface were wildly popular with fans of The Settlers of Catan, who were involved in the design and development process, loaning time and feedback to informal focus groups.
The Settlers of Catan was first shown on Surface at Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio, in July of 2010. The extensive media coverage generated over 15,000 views of a promotional video for the game, within 72 hours of publishing it to YouTube. Vectorform will also show the game at Gen Con Indy, taking place August 5 through August 8, 2010, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Additionally, on September 3 through September 5, 2010, Vectorform will demonstrate Settlers of Catan at PAXWest, the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington.
Vectorform will continue to promote Settlers of Catan at conferences and private events through the summer, and is offering customized, branded versions of the game to a network of clients and partners for use on Microsoft Surface. In the future, Settlers of Catan will be available for purchase through Vectorform’s App Store. Additionally, the Vectorform App Store will sell other titles, including titles for iPhone, iPad, and other platforms. “The future for The Settlers of Catan is very bright, and we are going to push that experience to new markets and communities. But we’ve got quite a few more titles in the queue, and they are all very exciting. Keep watching, because this is just the start of the empire,” Joe Engalan says.
Click this link to view the Press Release
Vectorform on ExtraTV
Posted by Lindsay Ruthven – April 1, 2010Last summer Vectorform collaborated with ExtraTV to develop an application for the Microsoft Surface. Check out the clip below of Vectorform’s Alison Weber, teaching Mario Lopez how to use this unique application, affectionately dubbed the Vectorform Telestrator.
We are thrilled with the spot, and only regret that a special shout-out to the team who worked extra hours to make this debut a success didn’t make the final cut. Clemens Conrad, Justin Bush, Hammam Chamma, and Karl Steckling, you rocked it! To our friends on the Microsoft Surface team, Kyle Warnick and Chris Wojahn, as usual you guys rock too!
Click the link for video: Ali on Extra
Announcing Our New App Portal
Posted by Dominic Espinosa – March 28, 2009
Today marks the first day of our brand new microsite portal Apps.Vectorform. This site will see many new additions and products in the next coming months so bookmark it now and come back soon.
We kicked off 2009 with SurfaceDJ Lite (free), our first consumer iPhone app in the iTunes App Store, and have since followed it with a much more featured-packed paid ($1.99) version of SurfaceDJ. We put hundreds of hours of design and development work into both versions to deliver fans with the choices and features they most requested. It was all worth it as SurfaceDJ is currently featured in the iTunes New & Featured section of the App Store and we couldn’t be happier. We are continuing to design and develop many more consumer apps and have a couple more almost ready to be released (more teasers and screenshots coming soon!)
Apps.Vectorform will be seeing some more enhancements and additions very soon (working on the iPhone optimized version now, and a better support forum). This is just the beginning, but we are excited to finally have a dedicated portal for all of these goodies just waiting to be gobbled up.
Thanks again to everyone who has downloaded SurfaceDJ and given us great valuable feedback. Keep it coming!
Silverlight portal and demos page
Posted by Dan Dobbs – October 12, 2007
We have set up a Silverlight portal showcasing some examples we’ve been working on as well as a demo page listing all the stuff we’ve thrown together. The source code is included so dive in and have look…
http://www.vectorform.com/silverlight/
http://www.vectorform.com/silverlight/demos.html
Silverlight 1.0 is official
Posted by – September 6, 2007
We’ve been playing around with WPF/e Silverlight since the December CTP release but now thats its official with the recent 1.0 release we thought we’d start to throw out some components/examples. The first will be a scrollbar component. It’s supports dynamic content, horizontal/vertical layouts, and animated scrolling, along with other customized parameters such as position and size. Here are a few examples with source code:
Simple Vertical Scrollbar: Example, Source
Vertical Scrollbar with extras (scroller size based on content length and fading text): Example, Source
Horizontal Scroller: Example, Source
Coming up next will be a simple slideshow component, so stay tuned!