I'm excited to give you guys a review of the recent NVision convention from a special correspondent, Amy Silva! If you guys like it, make sure to comment. Maybe we can get her to stick around and write some more from us.

NVISION 08 : An Outsider’s Review.

I don’t know about the rest of you PCB fans, but I’m not a huge expert on computers. Sure, I know how to turn one on, adjust the volume, install a game or two, and surf the web. But when it comes to the insides – the elements that make that computer unique from the other ones - I’m completely lost. So, when a friend of mine suggested that my boyfriend and I should go to this convention sponsored by NVIDIA, I was a bit hesitant. I knew my friends were in it for the LAN (local area networks) aspect of the convention. They were planning on bringing their own computers and playing online games with about 800 other players in the same room. Now, I’m not completely brain dead when it comes to PC gaming: I’ve beaten Bioshock three times, know the lyrics to “Still Alive,” (badly) played hours upon hours of Team Fortress 2, am a proud owner of a level 43 undead warrior and a level 28 blood elf hunter on World of Warcraft, have caused a few headshots on Battlefield 2, and have played a mean game of Civilization IV. This doesn’t even include my skills on the PS2, so I would consider myself a girl gamer. However, I didn’t feel completely comfortable hooking up my laptop and playing a cheap version of Rodent’s Revenge. So, I opt out on bringing my own computer and let the guys go to their LAN. Instead, I bought a $10 general admission ticket and went along for the ride.

NVISION 08 was a convention and computer expo to all fans of the computer. It was hosted by NVIDIA and was the first of its kind. It took place in the downtown San Jose Convention Center from August 25 –27. It appealed to the gamers, designers, developers, and builders and the everyday lovers of computers. It explored the numerous possibilities that one graphics card can provide, the depths that one design can take, and that with the sheer power of one computer, anything is possible and the limits are endless.

DAY ONE – August 25^th

Early Bird Promotions And Registration @ Convention Center –

Just because I was only general admission, didn’t mean I was going to miss out on all that they had in store. We got to the convention center at about 5:45am. At 6:30, they were going to give out prizes and free stuff to those who were willing to wake up early (or stay up all night) and join in the festivities. Now, these weren’t just measly little prizes like mouse pads, lanyards, or t-shirts (they gave those out willingly for free). These prizes were high powered graphics cards, sound cards, motherboards, laptops, and whole computer sets – the cheapest being over $200 in value. It was only later that I realized that they just gave these away, most of my friends coming away with all the needed components to building a high powered computer.

Once we were allowed to enter, we were able to register and get our color-coded badges.

White was general admission; Black was GeForce Lan, Club SLI, and Guinness World Record players; Green was staff, and I believe blue was press. Registration for me was a bit on the unorganized side. It seemed that they had just hired these people and were still slow and confused with some of the questions that I had. However, they had helpful guides, maps, and schedules for anyone who was lost.

NVISION Keynote And Opening Ceremony @ Center For Performing Arts –

While my friends were busying themselves carrying, positioning, and hooking up their computers, I went over to the Center For Performing Arts, a theatre a few blocks away, to watch the opening ceremonies. We were welcomed by Mayor Chuck Reed and hosted by Jen-Hsun Huang, the co-founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA. We were shown demos of cutting-edge technologies that spanned over all aspects of visual computing. They showed the next step to buying a new car, the next wave technology in sports broadcasts, as well as the new age of gaming. 3D stereoscopic gaming technology from NVIDIA showed that gaming could now become 3D, giving a whole new look at some of everyone’s favorites. They gave a free demo at the Keynote as well as in the LAN area where I got my hands on a 3d version of Devil May Cry 4 and Guitar Hero. Joshua Edwards of Microsoft Live Labs showed us the next step in photographs in Photosyth, which uses multiple photographs of one particular site in order to create a 3D model and display a 360-degree perspective of that particular place. The most stunning event was Jeff Han showing us a demo of Perceptive Pixel. It was a multitouch user interface for computers. Think of a large computer monitor that you can touch with your own fingers to explore the vast of interactions. Instead of having to move your mouse all the way over to “Start,” a simple drawn circle with you finger can pop up the menu wherever you want on the screen. Maps and windows can be zoomed in and tilted with just the move of two fingers. It was amazing. Lastly, Tricia Helfer visited us. She is best known as her role of Cylon #6 on SciFi’s Battlestar Galactica. She mostly talked about her role on the show and how she was able to act around CG cylons and in front of blue screens.

Expo Hall @ Convention Center –

The Expo Hall was another huge event at NVISION. This was where creators and developers were able to show off what they’ve been working on for years. It was anything from graphics/sound cards to new PC games that have yet to be released, to computer technology in the latest automotives and simple websites to help meet other gamers. This was a great place to try out the new games, watching demos of new technology that was in its early stages, and getting more swag than I could have ever dreamed of. I walked away with more t-shirts and lanyards then I actually packed for the trip. I loved playing new demos of games, including first-person shooters, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, and your general hack and slash action adventures. I wasn’t too interested it looking at the new graphics cards or motherboards, however. I was thrown lingo and vocabulary that I couldn’t keep up. I was drowning in “XP”s, “GT”s, and numbers that just kept getting higher. I have to say that I did learn a little something while I was there and didn’t walk away with nothing. They had several workshops at the Expo Hall that included how to’s of everything from beating Team Fortress 2 to using Adobe and building your first PC. We attended a workshop on how to Mod your PC, hosted by Modders-Inc.com. Modding a PC is like hot rodding a car, it gives a certain unique flare and personality to your PC case. I was surprisingly fascinated by it and came out of it deeply wanting to mod my own PC. Then again, that would mean I would have to build a new PC from scratch. It was a challenge I would gladly accept.

Buzz Aldrin and “Fly Me To The Moon” @ Center For Performing Arts –

NVISION took this opportunity to show off their variety of 3D by having a viewing of the movie, “Fly Me To The Moon,” an animated film that was specifically made for 3D. The movie was about three flies hitching a ride aboard the Apollo 11 flight to the moon. Before the film, Buzz Aldrin came on stage to talk about his memories of that landing as well as the future of space exploration. He hopes that man will start to colonize upon other planets, in particular Mars, and expand the land that humans live on. When asked about the film, he gave it a high review and mentioned his small role at the end. Writer of the film, Dominic Paris also came on to talk about the great technologies that the movie industry has in this day. He discussed that writing a script for 3D films are different than normal scripts and mentions that not all films should be made in 3D. However, Paris did hope that more animated films will be made in 3D and plugged that he is currently working on another 3D animation about a sea turtle traveling around the world in 50 years.

I was interested to see the film, but not too excited. It was more of an after thought – knowing that my friends would all be LANing, I had nothing better to do. The only thing I really enjoyed about the film was the use of Bart Howard’s classic song “Fly Me To The Moon,” popularized by Frank Sinatra. For being a 3D animated film, the acting and story seemed flat. The voice acting was cheesy and the dialogue was cliché. The story seemed a bit choppy and unrealistic. Three flies that just happened to want to go to space the same time the Apollo 11 was going to launch seemed a bit far-fetched. The transitions were sloppy; the way they got to the next scene was bluntly mentioned that they had to be somewhere else. The moment right before the credits role, a real life Buzz Aldrin walks into view to assure audiences that flies would never be able to fly into a space shuttle. He confidently spoke that NASA would never let such a contamination happen. The audience laughed at what he said, thinking that he was being sarcastic. Surely we would assume that flies, or any insect, wouldn’t be able to even last in a tight container, much less fly into outer space. Surely, we would just take this movie as a work of pure fiction based on small bits of history. Sadly, I think Aldrin was being serious and wanted to get his point across so badly that he repeated this sentiment during his interview prior to the film.

DAY TWO – August 26^th

Video Games Live Concert @ Civic Auditorium –

Like I mentioned before, I was hesitant to come to NVISION. When I thought that $10 seemed like a cheap price just to walk around, I caved in and bought a ticket. However, I noticed that during the convention, they would have a concert called Video Games Live. It was popularly known and boasts the fact that almost every performance is sold out. I knew that while I was attending NVISION, I had to go see this concert. I was not disappointed. Tommy Tallarico, video game composer and former host on G4, hosted the event. With Jack wall conducting the concert, they played music from some of the newest and memorable video games. They began with a melody of old arcade games, including Pong, Frogger, and Tetris. They then moved onto such popular games as Metal Gear Solid, Civilization IV, Zelda, Crysis, The Halo Series, Castlevania, World of Warcraft, and Kingdom Hearts. They also had a guest appearance by Martin Leung, the famous blindfolded pianist. He was there to play a piano melody of 14 Final Fantasy songs as well as his famous blindfolded Super Mario Brothers piano solo. To make the concert livelier, Tommy had people come up on stage to interact with songs from games such as Space Invaders and Guitar Hero. Also, they decided to play all new music from unreleased games such as Diablo III and Starcraft II. Some of the games were ones I never played, or never wanted to even touch. However, when it came to just listening to the score, accompanied by video and lighting effects, I was drawn into every musical segment they played. Even though they played songs I almost knew by heart (“One-Winged Angel”), I was still drawn into it, enjoying the music fresh, new, and alive. My only disappointment was that they didn’t play music from one of my favorite games, Bioshock. Nevertheless, I figured that every concert is different and they try to play some new and exciting songs to keep the audience entertained. I would defiantly go again in a heartbeat.

ESWC and Ultimate Case Mod Challenge @ Geforce Lan -

It was close, but I watched as Poland beat out Korea in overtime. France beat China and the USA girls’ team came out on top. This may seem like the Olympics, but it’s actually the ESWC. The Electronic World Cup pins teams from around the world against each other to see who comes out as the best. They played games such as Counterstrike, Quake 3, DOTA, Warcraft 3, and Trackmania. With enthusiastic commentators and several monitors to see all the action, the tournaments made me feel like I was back watching the Olympics. The action was intense and the look of victory (or defeat) was real on all the player’s faces. This was serious business and gave me a new look on PC gaming tournaments.

I believed that cases were only good for holding the wires and hardware of the computer. When I saw the contenders for the Ultimate Case Mod Challenge, I found out that cases were so much more. People took normal bland computer cases and made them into things no one could even dream. One case wasn’t a case at all, but a plastic model of a human being; it’s veins being the wires and the heart, the processor. Two cases were modeled after Battlestar Galactica and several were made with extra glow and flare. One case in particular awed me the most. It was a monitor made out of the dispenser from Team Fortress 2. The computer case itself was made into the turret. Equipped with its own Electro Sapper, I had a feeling that the creator really loved being an engineer. The whole table of displays inspired me more to create something unique. I’m currently drawing out a plan for my own modded case.

DAY THREE – August 27^th

Closing Ceremonies with GWR Players and Adam Savage/Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters @ Center For Performing Arts –

As soon as the ceremonies began, the host brought onto stage 203 hardcore gamers. They players were awarded medals and plaques. They were there to be awarded the Guinness World Record fro the longest continuous LAN party with over 100 people. Not only did these 203 people beat it in numbers, they beat it in hours. They continued their LAN party 36 hours straight from 11pm the first night till 11am the last morning. They had very strict rules for this record; including only 10-minute breaks can be collected every one hour of play. They couldn’t just surf the web or play solitaire, but instead they had to play PC online co-op, including Team Fortress 2, Counterstrike, and Battlefield, plus many others. For a perk, besides winning the medal and title, they were given free food and drink throughout the whole event, plus a refunded ticket and NVIDIA costumed Nike shoes.

As the event was coming to a close, NVIDIA wanted to show the audience the difference between the normal CPU and a powered up GPU. Instead of telling us the difference, NVISION had Adam and Jamie from Mythubusters to show us. A random side note that I have to mention, surprisingly (or not) Jamie and Adam were given a standing ovation and louder applause than Buzz Aldrin himself. In Mythbusters fashion, they combined robotics and paintball guns to show us their interpretation. For the CPU, a small robot came gliding in, shooting one paintball gun, in one color, in rapid speed to make the shape of a happy face. The audience clapped and roared, thinking this was the most they would do, then they raised the curtain. Underneath a large sheet was a huge machine making up of 1,102 paint ball guns. This was the metaphor for the GPU; a higher-powered machine that could create more complex works of art. Several paint balls were different colors and when fired simultaneously, created a representation of the Mona Lisa. It was a spectacular, awe-inspiring closing to a spectacular, awe-inspiring event. This is defiantly something has to be seen, so I recommend going onto youtube.com and search for “Mythbusters” and “Nvision.” You will not be sorry. The instant replay still makes my jaw drop.

ONE WEEK LATER – The Aftermath

As I’m finishing this review, I’m currently wearing my Video Games Live shirt and watching clips from Adam and Jamie’s Mona Lisa “painting class.” I’ve been trying to keep up with all the latest news on some of the games and demos I saw at the Keynotes and looking into parts for my new computer. No modding yet, but I have already bought an e-GeForce 8800Ultra Superclocked 768MB graphics card as well as an nForce 680i LT SLI 775 A1 motherboard. I’m still not sure what all that lingo means, but I’m still learning. I’m already awaiting registration for next year and plan to bring my newly built computer. Overall, I loved the event and had an awesome experience. Anyone who is a fan of PCs, whether it just is for gaming or surfing, should consider going next year. $10 and three days are completely worth just a simple browse around and experience the new wave of visual computing.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see and review on everything. For more highlights and photos, please visit http://www.nvision08.com/ to read what went on and see some better quality pictures. For more of my pictures (I took about 100) please visit my Myspace page, www.myspace.com/amysb and click on the folder labeled “Nvision 2008.” I tired to take as many pictures as I could, with this review in mind.