Seminar Reports Back Number 2010

ConferencesEventsSeminarsSeminar Reports

Seminar Reports Back Number
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Up&Coming 2010 Report
Build Live Tokyo 2010 Report
Road Safety Conference
15th National Engineering Design Software Conference
2010 Fall Transportation Conference
SIAS-Paramics User Group Meeting
International VR Symposium-World16 Summer Workshop
Korea "Joint Seminar of VR technology utilization in traffic engineering field"
EV KOREA 2010
Vehicle Dynamics 2010
Modelling World 2010
Car Testing China 2010
ITE Western Distric Annual Meeting(ITE)
9th US National and 10th Canadian Earthquake Engineering Conference
ITS American Annual Meeting and Exposition
Asia Urban Transport Summit 2010
Design Analysis Protective Structures 2010
SimTecT 2010
Smart Software Conference Korea
12d Model International User Conference 2010
Nemetshek International Meeting
ITE Technical Conference
TRANSTEC DELHI
FORUM8 Design Festival 2009-3Days
[Day1] The 3rd Design Conference
Report of Design Festival Customers Specail Lecture
[Day2] 3rd Design Conference / 3rd International VR Symposium
[Day3] 8th 3D VR Simulation Contest
Overseas Event Report (January 2010)
15th Embarcadero Developer Camp



Build Live Tokyo 2010 Report
Overview of event
Date : October 13-15 2010
Organization : IAI Japan
(Up&Coming 2010 Late fall issue)

BIM event with 48 hours
Build Live Tokyo 2010 was held from October 13 to 15 is an architectural design competition with the theme "BIM linkage and 3D modeling". The participants designed the building model and presentation documents in 48 hours based on the site data provided by the organization group IAI Japan. In addition to the planing and design of the buildings, the techniques of using each software including structural and facility design and simulation with BIM method were required.
FORUM8 invited Mr. Yoshihiro Kobayashi who is a member of World16, from Arizona University as a special advisor and we participated as a teamF8W16 with total of 13 members.


Planning concept and BIM linkage theme
The provided site data was an actual site surrounded with greens and located near the Hachioji south station. The theme was the construction of media art center including exhibition hall in this site. The concept of team F8W16 featured an ecological design which allows the unity with the surrounding nature environment and the unified design of building structure, aerial corridor, and surrounding road. The road was drawn in the site and the aerial corridor where people could walk around the building was set for people to gather naturally.The exhibition and restaurants were placed along the flow line and the large roof which allowed the unity with surrounding landscape produced the uniform space. 
As for the theme of BIM linkage, we aimed to represent the process of consensus formation using FORUM8 solutions and the 4D (construction), 5D (cost) simulations based on the actual utilization in real task (Figure 1).

Figure 1: BIM Linkage

Linkage of BIM with VR
FORUM8 is developing the solution to link BIM with VR and we utilized the same type of linkage in this Build Live Tokyo 2010. Thourhg the use of Allplan and UC-win/Road, a variety of linkage types including structural analysis, crowd analysis, traffic analysis, noise analysis, energy analysis, point cloud modeling, 2D rendering, and 3D modeling input were performed. The advantage of VR which allows for visualization of various validation was increased by placing VR in BIM linkage.
The most critical point for this project was that VR data was visualized using our service "UC-win/Road for SaaS". Anyone can share the VR space in real-time by viewing the planning process visualized in VR on the website (Figure 2).


Figure 2:VR data of SaaS project is open

Consideration with VR
Firstly, the surrounding area was measured by the 3D laser scanner and the model was placed in the VR space to represent the site surrounding environment. Mr. Ieiri from the Ieiri laboratory who had commented on FORUM8 during the event was surprised by the ability to replicate data through the use of point cloud measurement. A variety of considerations and visualizations were performed by placing the model created with Allplan in the VR space generated with UC-win/Road Ver.5.

Student BIM&VR Contest
FORUM8 will hold the Student BIM&VR Design Contest next year. We will require participating entries to be designed by using more than two kinds of FORUM8's software from the view of BIM and VR utilization. We will expect that the new method and ideas of BIM&VR to be produced in the participating works.

Consideration of planning and visualization through the linkage of BIM with VR


Model study Bridge pier arrangement Point cloud measurement
The model in volume check stage is arranged and checked. 3ds is imported from Bridge pier design The point cloud in the adjacent area is measured to place in the model
Consideration of parking position Consideration of vehicle trajectory Temporary sheathing work
Center of site
The parking entrance from the east side is considered.
XML is imported from the vehicle trajectory mapping to visualize it. The calculation slip for the building underground part is created with Temporary sheathing work design.
Plant consideration Noise analysis Crowd analysis with EXODUS.
Plant consideration Noise analysis Crowd analysis with EXODUS
Consideration including the tree type and the height Noise analysis of road with the assumed traffic amount The flow line is obtained by moving the elevator from the analysis result.
Bridge arrangement Energy analysis Traffic analysis
The earthquake resistant of corridor is checked using "UC-win/FRAME(3D)" Sash type is determined by checking the amount of CO2 emission The signal phase is optimized by modeling the current condition
Final data 1 Final data 2 3D model
The final model after consideration and modification The final model after consideration and modification 3ds model exported from Allplan was exported


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Road Safety Conference
(Up&Coming 2010 Late Fall issue)

The Australasian Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference (http://www.roadsafetyconference2010.com.au), the most important annual road safety event in Australia, was held this year in Canberra from 31 August to 3 September
The theme of the 2010 conference was : Safe System ? from knowledge to action. This theme highlighted the importance of both the understanding and application of Safe System concepts that underpin the next National Road Safety Strategy. The Safe System approach has been endorsed by the Australian Transport Council (ATC) as the basis for Australia's road safety improvement efforts.
The conference aimed to bring together all people interested in issues of road safety in Australasia, to :-
  • present current research and best practice in road safety, particularly in those areas identified as national road safety priorities;
  • provide a venue for discussion of advances in road safety research and practice including in education, enforcement, engineering and the road environment; and
  • showcase innovation, progress and new directions in road safety policy, planning, research, practice and evaluation.
Around 400 participants came from universities both in Australia and Asia; government at all levels (local, state and federal), police, the education and training sector, engineers and vehicle manufacturers, and private companies.
Keynote speaker at the Conference was Tom Vanderbilt, an American journalist and blogger whose recent book 'Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What it Says About Us)' (http://www.howwedrive.com/) tackles the question of the illusions held by drivers, for example the illusion of control. Tom's talk entitled 'Objects in mirror are more complicated than they appear', discussed the social interactions of drivers; cognitive biases that humans behind the wheel are prone to and the relationship between the built environment and our behaviour. A second keynote speaker, Nel Aland, of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, the Netherlands, presented the reasons for the fall in road fatalities in her country from 3,000 fatalities in the 1970's to only 720 in 2009. She answered the question of what a small country can do in terms of road safety strategies to maintain a permanent improvement in the road toll through to 2020.
Other presentations over the two days were grouped into streams including: speed ? policy, and intelligent speed adaptation; behaviour of young and senior drivers, and drivers under the influence of alcohol and drugs; motorcyclists; vehicles and road engineering, and education programs.
Forum8 was one of a small number of exhibition sponsors, exhibiting its Research drive simulator with 3 panel LCDs and driving scenarios based on UC-win/Road software. Many participants took the opportunity to test-drive the simulator and discuss its possible use in their research, visualization or training activities. Notable was interest by a number of driver training institutes, as well as university researchers who currently do not have a simulator but are looking to install one. Exhibiting at conferences such as the Road Safety Conference, cements Forum8's position as a key supplier of systems for research and education in this area. Local media also picked up the Forum8 booth, with keynote speaker Tom Vanderbilt shown in the Canberra Times driving the Forum8 simulator around a roundabout (Canberra, the location for this year's conference, has a lot of roundabouts).

Forum8 booth Keynote speaker drives Forum8 simulator
(as reported in Canberra Times newspaper,
Friday 3 Sept 2010)
Welcome Reception within the Exhibition Hall Road Safety Conference 2010 Logo


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15th National Engineering Design Software Conference
(Up&Coming 2010 Late Fall issue)

This event is held once every two years in a large city in China. FORUM8 has actively participated in this event since 2008. The themes for this year are "CAD/BIM Design process " and "Process flow project, corporate and corporate information".
In line with the theme "Computer method and CAD/BIM design process", FORUM8 delivered a presentation on "Seismic research of wall type of RC bridge using multi plates simulation". We also shared the latest news regarding FORUM8 including BIM&VR solutions, release information of RC section products supported for Chinese standards, UC-win/Road for SaaS as well as the point cloud plugin.
For the second theme "Process flow project, corporate and corporate information", we delivered a presentation titled "3D Application of 3D virtual reality using cloud system". These two articles are posted in the collection of papers.
Despite a lack of exhibition space as it was held in the university's lecture hall, FORUM8 managed to exhibit in a special space, dedicated solely to us as we were the sole overseas sponsor working in collaboration with the organizers. It drew the attention of a number of visitors.
Halpin is located in the far north of China and it was predicted that there would be a decrease in the number of visitors as compared to previous years. However, we were able to have highly productive discussions with the relevant professionals and were given an opportunity to share the new functions of UC-win/Road for SaaS using cloud system, point cloud plugin, and VR-Studio ?.

Please look forward to the upcoming activities in China!




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2010 Fall Transportation Conference
(Up&Coming 2010 Late Fall issue)

FORUM8 was invited to speak at the 2010 Fall Transportation Conference which was held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from September 30th to October 1st 2010.
Dr Brendan Hafferty the FORUM8 Western Regional General Manager was the only speaker from outside the State of Nevada to be invited to participate at what was the 15th year of this State wide event.
This annual conference of Nevada State transport engineers from both the private and public sectors is co sponsored by The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), The Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS) and The Transportation Research Centre(TRC) of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).
The organising committee is comprised of transportation engineers from seven of Nevada's top transport consultancies including the new FORUM8 Partner Sigma Engineering Solutions Inc. of Las Vegas.
Paul Villaluz of Sigma is in his 9th year as Co-Chair of the committee and invited Dr Hafferty to present a UC-win/Road Case Study to the 150 plus attendees.
In addition FORUM8 established a booth in a small exhibition area which was manned by Chris Grasso and Mike McDeamon from FORUM8's technical support office in Phoenix Arizona.
The booth proved a great hit with the delegates as it was the only one dedicated to 3D Visual Interactive Simulation technology.
The Case Study chosen to demonstrate the power and flexibility of both UC-win/Road the product and FORUM8 the company was the Ourston Roundabout project commissioned by Wisconsin DOT.
The project was to design and build an interactive 3D visualisation of a section of what is the largest roundabout project in North America.
Ourston was tasked with building a 3 roundabout section of the total 41 roundabout network with a view to educating members of the public as to the benefits that roundabouts can deliver, whilst at the same time showing them how to drive such roundabouts safely and hence alleviating any worries or concerns.
After a period of market research into how best to visually represent such a 3 roundabout system and then how could they make such a photorealistic 3D highway environment interactive, Ourston turned to FORUM8 for help.
The result was that the Ourston roundabout engineers built the 3 roundabout section in AutoCAD and then passed it to the FORUM8 data development team to complete the project in line with Wisconsin DOT's specification.
The result was a great success.
The UC-win/Road based 3D environment is currently in use by Wisconsin DOT who are demonstrating the 3D system at a a range of public meetings throughout the State. In addition and through the means of a Logitec steering rack, they are allowing stakeholders to experience at first hand what its like to drive a roundabout in the safety of a photorealistic 3D virtual reality environment.



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SIAS-Paramics User Group Meeting
(Up&Coming 2010 Late Fall issue)

S-Paramics User Group Meeting was held on the 28th of September 2010 in Birmingham, UK, where FORUM8 was invited to introduce the newly-released linkage between UC-win/Road and S-Paramics. FORUM8 was given an exhibition space in the break-out room and a slot in the morning session to give a presentation about how our S-Paramics plug-in works.
S-Paramics is an advanced traffic microsimulation software program from SIAS, based in Edinburgh, UK, with a large user-base in Europe. Many major consultancies and local authorities in the UK and Europe use S-Paramics for strategic traffic modelling, public transport planning, traffic management, public inquiries and consultations, car parking ideas, stadium and event operations, and more.
The meeting was opened by Mr. Stephen Druitt, the Managing Director of SIAS, followed by speakers that included consultants, academics and specialists from local councils from all over Europe. FORUM8's presentation during the first session of the meeting was well received by the audience and UC-win/Road and its 3D Visual Interactive Simulation technology attracted great interests in the meeting, resulting in a accumulation of quite a large crowd around the FORUM8 exhibition area during the coffee breaks and the lunch break, where FORUM8 exhibited the S-Paramics plug-in alongside VR-Drive, the road safety promotion software for school children, which will be launched at the Road Expo Ireland show in Dublin in October.
Many of the attendees, who came to speak to us during these breaks, commented that UC-win/Road, in combination with S-Paramics, will help them illustrate their transportation plans to clients who may lack the technical knowledge to understand the simple visualisation that S-Paramics offers. In particular, local councils, who carry out public inquiries and surveys regularly, could see the benefits that UC-win/Road, with S-Paramics traffic microsimulation, can bring to their work.
Today, as the trend towards visual and interactive 3D technologies intensifies, modern technologies have to adapt to these changes. SIAS, as one of the most progressive software companies, became the first in traffic microsimulation software company to embrace the 3D Visual Interactive Simulation technology from FORUM8. As the trend continues and demand for more visual and interactive 3D simulations increases, we anticipate more cooperation with other transportation software companies. Watch this space!




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International VR Symposium-World16 Summer Workshop
(Up&Coming 2010 Fall issue)

The World 16 group who conducts the international VR symposium held the 3rd summer workshop in US, from July 22 to 24, 2010. The first workshop was held in Phoenix, Arizona from Aug 12-14, 2008, and the second was in Izu/Hakone, Japan, from July 28-31, 2009. The research progress after each seminar was presented in International VR Symposium of that year. The research theme was discussed and considered for FORUM8 Design Festival and the 4th International VR Symposium in this November.
This report includes the lecture in the special seminar and the scheduled research theme of W16 Group members.



Location of workshop, UCSB (University of California, Santa Barbara), US

Location
The location for this year was set in the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB http://www.ucsb.edu/) as a result of the suggestion of Prof. Marcos Novak during the last International VR Symposium. UC (University of California) is one of the largest state university groups, and they are consisted of ten universities such as Barkley. Santa Barbara is located in the Pacific coast, Santa Barbara, California where the coastline is scenic and the climate is very mild throughout the year.
We will now introduce the agenda of the three days workshop held in the conference room of the Media Arts and Technology in University of California Santa Barbara and the meeting room in Best Western hotel.
Opening speech of Prof. Marcos Novak
(Media Arts And Technology USCB)

Schedule
Mr. Kobayashi, a representative of World16, Mr. Ito, President of FORUM8, and Prof. Marcos Novak, Media arts and technology department in UCSB made the opening speech. The research of VR has shown gradual development every year and W16 members expressed their enthusiasm in the workshop and held high expectations of the ideas to be discussed over the span of the three days.
International VR Symposium started with the agenda of spreading VR awareness and technology by reporting the research and project using VR (UC-win/Road). A variety of themes which were developed based on the past studies and approached with brand new ideas were studied and reported.This workshop consisted of six parts:1.World16 member presentation, 2.Guest Speaker Special Lecture,3. FORUM 8 Presentation, 4. Observation tour of AlloSphere VR System, 5.Discussion, 6.W16 Group final presentation. In Day1, thirteen world16 members made a presentation and two guest speakers gave the special lecture.

World 16 VR Summer Workshop 2010 Schedule
Day 1 July 22, Thursday 9:00-18:00 University of California, Santa Barbara
Opening(Opening greeting)-Mr. Kobayashi, President Ito, Mr.Novak
1.World16 member presentation
2.Guest Speaker Special Lecture, Google, TRB
Day 2
July 23, Friday 9:00-23:30 University of California Santa Barbara
Best Western South Coast Inn
3. FORUM 8 Presentation, Demonstration, Discussion
4. Observation tour of AlloSphere VR System (13:40-15:40)
Santa Barbara City&Dinner
5.NightWorkshop/Discussion
Day 3 July 24, Saturday 9:00-12:30 Best Western South Coast Inn
6. W16 Group final presentation
Tour of California Winery


Opening Session
Mr. Novak, a host of World16 who proposed the International VR Symposium checked and reviewed the mission of the symposium since the planning stage. He introduced the screenshots of the presentation of the 2nd in 2008 and explained how and why it started, and the workshop started with confirmation of the schedule.


World16 members presentation and research planning
We will introduce the Day1 presentation, the Day3 presentation after discussion, and the final research planning of World16 members.

1 Mr.Yoshihiko Kobayashi Prism Lab / Arizona State University
He referred to the VR model created in the digital phoenix project of Arizona State University and explained the City Generation and Procedural Modeling related in his own research.
He mentioned the interest of the development of architecture design and city design tool based on the linkage of Allplan, UC-1, DesignBuilder, UC-win/Road for BIM+VR, Visualization of BIM 3D data. He also mentioned the potential would be spread by linking between 3D city creation function of MAX Script and API as the city design tool.
The potential development of a design tool surpassing the existing MAX Script was presented as his research theme in the final presentation.

"City Design Generation without Scripting"
This is to develop a computational design tool for automatic city generation. It is an extension of the tool developed and demonstrated in the last VR symposium in 2009. The current tool needs to edit the code in MaxScript to generate new building facade design, which is very annoying for the people without good programming knowledge. So the new version is updated to generate the building facade design with a set of image files in order to make the user manage the output without writing scripts. 10 different cities generated by this tool will be demonstrated in the next symposium.

2 Mr. Ronald Hawker Zayed University / UAE
His theme was the utilization of Google Earth, the linkage with UC-win/Road, and the reproduction of the historic town of UAE. He made a special request for the linkage with GIS function. He is currently inventing the new function of UC-win/Road which allows linkage by clicking the model.
"Reconstructing Historic Urban Dubai"
The purpose of the project is to simulate the urban fabric of historic Dubai during the reign of Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum, generally acknowledged as the founder of modern Dubai. This recreation focuses on two neighborhoods, simultaneously visualizing a specific regional style of historic architecture, demonstrating the relationship of the buildings with the surrounding maritime and terrestrial environments and integrating dynamic models.

3 Mr. Nik Luka McGill University / Canada
He reviewed the projects of McGill University in the past two years; "Visualization project of tramcar", "Reconstruction project of highway interchange" The high quality of VR utilization has been performed, and the academy encouragement award was given for the last year's project. He mentioned that he would encourage the citizens to join in the Integrated Dissemination Forums for Architecture and Urban Design in future and demonstrated that it was essential to use the interactive website for it. He also mentioned the cloud function will be supported in UC-win/Road Ver.5.
"Using UC-win/Road to support public engagement and participatory design on major city-building projects"
The 2010 McGill World16 project will use UC-win/Road as part of a larger public design study, Integrated Dissemination Forums for Architecture and Urban Design, where targeted publics will participate in a 'choose-your-own-scenario' initiative in Montreal's Sud-Ouest arrondissement. We are using UC-win/Road to build a model of the study area and visualizations of city-building projects and their possible impacts (using imported content developed by design students). These will be made into visualizations and/or scenarios, to which target populations will be directed using a 'chooser' interface on a user-friendly interactive website. The premade VR clips will also include 'pop-up' information concerning secondary impacts (as shown in our 2009 Turcot demonstration video).

4 Mr. Wael Abdelhameed University of Bahrain / Bahrain
His research theme was the schedule and progress management by using micro simulation player. The model attribute is checked in UC-win/Road based on GIS linkage, and it will be reflected in the DB after editing. This function is available for 4D building system. The GIS function will be expanded in UC-win/Road. If a wide range of purpose function can be provided, it will be useful for this research project.
"VR applications in project management : scheduling and reporting"
The research idea I thought of is to use MicroSim or scenario editing and scenario context functions. It is about project management monitoring for a building construction process. The main idea is to change the visualization process according to any changes or modifications in the schedule.
The next step is to establish a link between construction data and VR. The data which are associated to each construction object type (such as for columns: the steel density, geometrical shape, cubic meter, etc.), will be imported from GIS.

5 Mr. Tomohiro Fukuda Osaka University / Japan
Mr. Fukuda who received the academy encouragement award last year presented six case examples including VR project for Osaka and Kobe. Some prospective themes are introduced for the symposium, and the point cloud modeling project supported by UC-win/Road is finally presented.
"Development of optimizing system from 3D laser scanner data to VR for urban design study"
  • For changing a physical model/space into digital model quickly, 3DLS (3D Laser Scanner) has been used instead of 3DCAD modeler.
  • Many polygons are created from 3D point-crowd with attached software of 3DLS, but they are not ideal data and not suitable for real-time rendering like UC-Win/Road.
  • So, our team starts to develop the geometrically-based optimizing software which targets some primitive shapes like cube, pyramid, and so on because many primitive shapes are included in urban SCMOD.
  • After we complete to develop the geometrically-based optimizing part, we develop a file output part for importing UC-Win/Road (.fbx? .wrl?).

6 CMr. Claudio Labarca, Mr.Rodrigo Culagovski Catholic University / Chile
Mr. Rodrigo Culagovski who joined in for the first time presented a variety of visualization projects while Mr. Claudio explained his future research theme via Skype.
"Virtual downtown Santiage : 1810-1910-2010"
We propose a visualization of the historical and morphological changes that have occurred within Santiago's foundational city blocks. This will allow researchers, planners and the general public to have a new understanding of these processes as dynamic and progressive rather than as static, and how its current structure and form preserves traces of its origins.
The simulation will allow users to time-shift it in real time, changing the buildings, vehicles, street furniture and pedestrians, to create a stronger sense of the passage of time.
This will provide a more personal and experimental approach to the data, which can lead to deeper insights than those that would be derived from a traditional animation or rendering.

7 Ms. Ruth Ron University of Florida / USA
She proposed to develop the highway project and tried to express the noise analysis in VR with simulation. FORUM 8 is currently under developing the noise analysis plug-in, and we demonstrated the prototype version. Some also suggested to display the "sound-level contour" in the analysis result.

"Acoustic simulation with UC-win/Road simulation for architectural form generation"
Use UC-win/Road traffic simulation results to create an acoustic simulation, and predict noise levels around the model. Generate future sound samples and position the sound back in UC-win/Road.


8 Mr. Matthew Swarts Georgia Institute of Technology / USA
He presented the utilization of Isovists (Spatial space amount) for architecture and shop design, and the View shed (visible environment element) in GIS. In addition, he proposed the utilization of these spatial analysis functions in UC-win/Road.

"Visual spatial analysis"
The purpose of this project is to introduce spatial analysis to Forum8. The goals are to increase the spatial analysis capabilities of UC-win/Road through a plug-in and to visualize the analysis output within UC-win/Road. The plug-in will be developed in Delphi 2007 using the UC-win/Road SDK. The primary 2D analysis methods will be the isovist, partial-isovist, and e-partition which will be visualized using multiple colored line draw calls and a textual list of numerical shape evaluation. The city model in UC-win/Road will be generated by a city building algorithm which produces specific topological and geometric properties. Different street configurations will be compared.


9 Mr. Paolo Fiamma University of Pisa / Italy
His last year's research theme was the reconstruction planning of the historical town in Pisa, Italy with modeling of leaning tower area. In this year, he would investigate the traffic in the public underground parking with UC-win/Road. This project will be easily conducted if The traffic stream of UC-win/Road and the pedestrian's traffic flow can be simulated. This new function is planned to be developed with Mr. Narahara, and included in UC-win/Road ver.6.
"About interaction between pedestrians and traffic flow"
The research work is about the public car parking that the Municipalities of Pisa has recently built in the south side of the ancient town. We want to simulate the effects on the traffic flows by two different solutions for future pedestrian connections between the train station and the car park. The first one is an underground passage and the second one is a street-level crosswalk.
The critical points are:
1) the impact of the current situation;
2) how to tidy up the chaotic movement of pedestrians and vehicles, and to redirect them towards a more intelligent use of this part of the town.
We can test the current facilities of the software to obtain interaction between traffic flows and pedestrian flows.

10 Mr. Marcos Novak University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara / USA
He introduced the utilization of a variety of concepts such as Shinto, Buddha focused in his contributed article of the book "Manifestos of urban future" (See the following image), which was featured as "The city of future" in Newsweek magazine (*). In addition, he suggested to expand the SDK function of UC-win/Road and allow UDP/TCP to link with external application with basic knowledge of Delphi or the structure of UC-win/Road. This will result in the linkage with other different development language, external machine, and different OS. Some parts may be difficult to actualized but the linkage plug-in of UDT/TCP using current SDK will be developed and provided.

* "Manifestos of urban future"
The article in Newsweek magazine "the future of work LA"
http://www.newsweek.com/feature/2010/future-of-work.html

"Media field navigation"
To navigate through a contemporary urban environment is to navigate through fields of several kinds: external, internal, and interior, natural and artificial, unmediated and mediated, and so on. Aspects of interior psychology and physiology, conversation with others, control information from instruments, media from radios and devices, other vehicles, pedestrians, street signage, dynamic signage and billboards, and buildings as active displays are all competing for attention within a limited perceptual space. In particular, fields are overlapping across the traditional boundaries of building, sign, instrument, and entertainment medium, creating conditions of potential overload. This project examines how these dense information fields may be orchestrated in ways that enhance and do not inhibit effective perception.


11 Mr. Taro Narahara New Jersey Institute of Technology / USA
He presented the research theme for last year: the development of realistic human model with the pedestrians using motion capture, the interactive device.
In this year, he would continue his research the following as the long-term project to the summer workshop in next year.
"Interactive device"
1) Refine the interface between UC-win/Road and a physical environment from last year.
2) Produce a physical interface that allows multiple user interactions in real-time.
3) Provide a platform that can promote collective production by multiple designers.

12 Mr. Amar Bennadji Robert Gordon University / UK
He joined in the workshop for the first time, and he would apply the project to the problems occurred during the relocation of RGU(Robert Gordon University) in Aberdeen, UK. The traffic and pollution issues are anticipated.
"RGU new car park and Dee Bridge decongestion"
The Robert Gordon University is expanding by relocating the city centre campuses to Garthdee campus. The travelling population composed by staff and students will also increase and add to the congestion that already exist around Bridge of Dee; the only access to RGU Garthdee Campus from the south.
To reduce the traffic congestion at Dee Bridge and the travel time of RGU population coming from the south of Aberdeen (A90), I'm suggesting creating a new car park before Dee Bridge and creating a pedestrian bridge to reach the university buildings.
The model will show a much fluent circulation at Dee Bridge and a derivation of the mechanical circulation towards the opposite river bank of Current RGU Garthdee campus, Aberdeen.

13 Mr. Kostas Terzidis Harvard University / USA
He suggested and explained to reproduce the person's memories and recollections in VR. SNS (Location based SNS) based on the location information is presented as his research theme.
"Personal informatics : Life paths"
Recollecting memories are a precious part of a person's sense of identity. Popular media (i.e. novels, movies, songs, posters) are part of one's memory even though they are not directly produced or lived by that person. Personal informatics is a discipline that helps people collects personally relevant information for the purpose of self-reflection and self-monitoring. This project will use personal informatics to convert scenarios taken from popular media into personal memories. Specifically, popular narratives involving roads or paths travelled will be made more personal (i.e. the "motorcycle diaries" movie remade so that you are the main protagonist is you with people you know and places you travelled).

Guest Speaker

Mr. Aidan Chopra Evangelist / Google Inc.
He lectured 3D modeling software developed and provided by Google, SketchUp and Building Maker. The functions and advantages of using SketchUp with the historical background. Building Maker is the 3D building modeling tool released on October, 2009, and he explained it with demonstration. Many of the participants have used them and a lot of questions were posed. He will make a special lecture in Design Festival in this year.

Mr. Michael Manore Chair of TRB Visualization in Transportation Committee
Mr. Michael Manore who is currently a consultant with FORUM 8 lectured on the trend, research, and the possibility of traffic visualization. A number of projects such as Federal Highway Administration are presented with his a great deal of experience. Many questions were posed by World16 members.


FORUM 8 Presentation
The latest functions of UC-win/Road Ver.5 including the system development, SDK usage with demonstration were showed. Especially, the new functions which were attracted as the research theme were explained. : "Web released by UC-win/Road for SaaS", "3D laser scan and point cloud modeling function", and "UC-win/Road for RoboCarR" Many questions were asked by the several researchers who would develop SDK during its explanation.
Then each member of FORUM8 AZ - Mike, Reid, and Chris - made a presentation on VR modeling tutorial, the advanced usage. They would support the W16 members for the symposium.
Night workshop


Observation tour of AlloSphere 3D Stereo VR System (www.allosphere.uscb.edu)
We visited two stereo domes called AlloSphere, the research facility of Media Arts and Technology in University of California Santa Barbara. Prof. Novak suggested if the number of screens was not limited up to three, UC-win/Road would be available for it, and then we decided we would develop and investigate for it. In addition, we visited TransLAB, the facility for the sound and image to experience the sound and image interactively.
On the final day, Saturday, the sightseeing tour to the famous California winery took place.
The 4th International VR Symposium will be held on November 18. The workshop ended with high expectations on the outcome of the research projects to be presented in November.



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Korea "Joint Seminar of VR technology utilization in traffic engineering field"
(Up&Coming 2010 Fall issue)
FORUM 8 organized a seminar in Korea jointly with KOTI, KICT, Korean Society of Road Engineers, and Seoul University. The researchers conducted presentations and gave suggestions pertaining to their professional specialties including traffic engineering, road construction, pedestrian environment, traffic management, and driver's condition in the conference room in KICT (Korea Institute of Construction Technology). FORUM 8 delivered a lecture on the latest information of VR technology and UC-win/Road. This seminar was hosted by Mr. Kwan-sub, Noh, researcher of KICT and the researchers who gathered from various fields made the presentation as follow.
  1. VR technology utilization in the traffic engineering field
    KOTI(Korea Transport Institute) Mr. Dong min, Lee Associate Research Fellow
  2. VR technology utilization in the road construction field
    Dasan Consultant Co., Ltd Mr. Gum Ryel, Seo Executive Director
  3. VR technology utilization in the pedestrian environment field
    Seoul National University Ms. Myung-Joo, Han Researcher
  4. VR technology utilization in the traffic management
    Korea Highway Corporation Mr. Seung-Jun, Lee Senior Ersearcher
  5. VR technology utilization in driver's condition studies
    KICT Mr. Jong Min, Kim Senior Researcher

General VR technology and its demand were presented in the traffic engineering field (1) and the project "2+1 driveway" was introduced as the benchmarking case study which defined the new road standards. It was explained in the presentation that the new standard roads created with VR data in UC-win/Road resulted in the smooth approval with the non-professionals such as citizens and local residents.
The design consultant, Mr. Gum Ryel, Seo presented on the road designing field (2), he explained the traffic network consideration of Busan city which was designed by his company. He said that VR data created with UC-win/Road allowed them to decide the design after comparison of the several ideas.
The presentation on the pedestrian environment field (3) was performed by Ms. Myung-Joo, Han the researcher of the graduate school of environmental studies in Seoul National University. She focused on the visualization of the pedestrian flow in the station.
The presentation (4) was on VR technology utilization in traffic management by the Korea Highway Corporation as the opinion of order side. He explained that he would consider keeping the design consistency by reducing the gap of preferable speed between the driver and designer with VR technology.
In the driver's condition studies (5), KICT (Korea Institute of Construction Technology) presented on case example of VR utilization. They have studied the driver's condition with driving simulator. They explained that their theme involved safe road creation by analyzing the characteristics of driver's view and perception and reflecting the results for road construction. They thought VR techniques for driving simulator needed to be advanced for increased realism in simulation.
The experts from various fields included the decision making parties in road construction, consultant companies involved in road design as well as road researchers who conducted high quality and earnest discussions in the post-presentation panel discussions. The seminar ended with high expectations of the increasing applications in the field of VR.



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EV KOREA 2010
(Up&Coming 2010 Fall issue)
EV Korea 2010 was held in COEX in Seoul city, Korea from 14-16 July, 2010. This event was the first electric vehicle exhibition held in South Korea and the participants were very enthusiastic about it. The exhibition was divided into two sections, "electric vehicle" and "auto parts of electric vehicle". Many exhibitors focused on battery in the second section and various utility forms of battery were introduced.
FORUM8 exhibited the driving simulator system linking VR solution, UC-win/Road, and showed the simulation of the electric vehicle and the advantage of using simulation in parts development step. Many visitors experienced our driving simulator, and were impressed with the effectiveness of simulation and UC-win/Road in VR space. We have seen the massive potential in using driving simulator for the research and advertisement in Korea. Please look forward the future activity in South Korea.

Driving Simulator of FORUM 8


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Vehicle Dynamics 2010
(Up&Coming 2010 Fall issue)
Vehicle Dynamics 2010 was held in Stuttgart, Germany, from June 21 to 24. The world's top automotive engineers and manufacturers gathered to learn about the latest technology in the industry.
FORUM8 exhibited its latest drive simulation system linking UC-win/Road with the leading American vehicle dynamics simulation software, CarSim, coupled with a steering rack from German specialists SENSO-Drive. This system to offers automotive experts a desktop solution for realistic 3D visual interactive simulation of vehicles, which can be used for Research and Development projects and many more. Using this combination, driving experience of any vehicle can be simulated accurately, enabling drivers to experience any real or hypothetical vehicles in real or hypothetical environment, before the vehicle has been built, thus, improving efficiency for all involved in automotive engineering.


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Modelling World 2010
(Up&Coming 2010 Fall issue)
Modelling World 2010 was held at the Chelsea F.C. Stadium in London, United Kingdom, on June 17. This event was attended by the leading transportation experts from all over the United Kingdom. FORUM8 exhibited the latest 3D Visual Interactive Simulation (3D VIS) technology, and the General Manager of the Western Region, Brendan Hafferty and Peter Sykes of SIAS gave a joint presentation titled "the essential role for high quality visualisation in microsimulation models". Both the exhibition and the presentation were received with great interest and many transport specialists expressed the importance of visualisation of transport projects.

Chelsea F.C. Stadium Modelling World 2010 Exhibition


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Car Testing China 2010
(Up&Coming 2010 Fall issue)
Car Testing China 2010 was held at Beijing International Convention Center in Beijing, China, from July 21st to 22nd. The focus of this event was the experiment and measurement of vehicle control simulator. It was the first sister event of Car Testing Japan held in China. Some Japanese auto parts supplier also joined in as exhibitors.
Forum 8 exhibited UC-win/Road Ver.5 including RoboCar, highway simulator, experience driving simulator, 3D-VR solution data. We also demonstrated the works of our annual 3D VR contest. The visitors came from different industries ranging from auto parts supplier to manufacturers of parts test equipment such as battery and motor. A maximum of 70 people visited our booth. We showed the total simulation environment for the vehicle and the auto parts test based on UC-win/Road and Driving simulator. The visitors expressed much interest in the driving simulator customization especially for Ministry of Communications in China and TOYOTA.
The suppliers who provided the total solution including the performance test for control unit of carmaker and the assessment showed a great interest in the visualization and they said they would consider using UC-win/Road for the next project. Some other companies also expressed interest in considering future customized projects. In addition, we visited some interested users and companies near Beijing. We would like to continue to promote our products and services to our customers in Beijing area with our Chinese office and distributors.



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ITE Western Distric Annual Meeting(ITE)
(Up&Coming 2010 Fall issue)
ITE Western District Annual Meeting was held in San Francisco, California, from June 27th to 30th. The exhibition was held alongside this meeting, which was attended by transportation experts in academic, private and public sectors from the ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) Western district, which comprises of all US states in the west of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, including Alaska and Hawaii. Experts gave presentations and engaged in academic discussions in these meetings, and then visited exhibition booths during break times. FORUM8 received an award for the most innovative booth and yet again, our 3D VIS attracted great interest from experts.

Cable car in San Francisco ITE Western District Exhibition Hall


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9th US National and 10th Canadian Earthquake Engineering Conference
(Up&Coming 2010 Fall issue)
9th US National and 10th Canadian Earthquake Engineering Conference was held in Toronto, Canada, from July 25 to 29. The world's leading earthquake specialists gathered to introduce new ideas in earthquake engineering. FORUM8 showed our latest achievement in the E-Defense competition during the poster session. We also exhibited UC-win/FRAME(3D), UC-win/Road and Engineer's Studio(TM) all of which attracted great interest. The superior 3D visualisation of structures in UC-win/FRAME(3D) and Engineer's Studio impressed many specialists.
The demand for high quality visualisation is increasing due to the expansion of Information Technology and the advancement in Computer Graphics technology. FORUM8 has always offered innovative and ahead-of-its-time technologies to our customers, and in these shows, we demonstrated our superiority in 3D technologies in three areas of engineering ? transportation engineering, automotive engineering and earthquake engineering. We aim to expand our expertise and offer even more advanced technologies to even more experts, and as an international company, we would like to continue to promote and deliver our top quality products and services to our customers worldwide.
FORUM8 Western office will be participating in more events this winter. Please have a look at www.forum8.com for more information.

Toronto, Canada


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ITS American Annual Meeting and Exposition
(Up&Coming 2010 Midsummer issue)
FORUM8 introduced the latest in 3D Visual Interactive Simulation (3D VIS) at the ITS America Annual Meeting and Exposition, which was held in Houston, Texas between the 3rd and the 5th of May 2010. With a help from FORUM8 AZ, FORUM8 demonstrated to the visitors in Houston, the compact Driving Simulator equipped with a USB steering wheel.

FORUM8 AZ is a proud member of ITS America and this is the second year that FORUM8 has participated in the ITS America annual meeting. Other ITS America's members include departments of transportation at all levels of government (city, county, state and federal), consultancy firms, academic institutions and other organisations in the USA, whose specialism is in the transportation sector.

In America, just like in many other parts of the Western world, the importance of visualisation - especially an interactive visualisation - is only beginning to be understood. Visitors to our booth were highly impressed by the quality of the visualisation and the interactivity that UC-win/Road offers. As one visitor commented, there is no system like UC-win/Road in the market, and the ability to import various data, such as CAD and Micro simulation data, is massively helpful for specialists in the field of ITS.
UC-win/Road was popular with visitors from Departments of Transportation for its usefulness in public consultations, traffic engineers were enthusiastic about its ability to import microsimulation and CAD data and interact with it, and academics found interest in the software's data collection feature.

We expect that 3D Visual Interactive Simulation will become more and more popular in the United States, and with the help from our existing partners in the States, we anticipate greater demand for UC-win/Road.



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Asia Urban Transport Summit 2010
(Up&Coming 2010 Midsummer issue)
Asia Urban Transport Summit 2010 was held in Inter Continental Hotel in Shanghai on April 28th and 29th. FORUM8 Technology Development (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., a FORUM 8 subsidiary in China participated in the conference. Due to intense interest in the latest traffic research and technology prior to the opening of Shanghai Expo, experts in governmental traffic boards, industrial experts and academics from Asian countries gathered at the conference.
Research and solutions to the discussed issues were presented in the field of urban transportation system, public transportation management system, ITS and ecological traffic. These themes were also discussed among presenters and participants. They focused on the various traffic conditions in their respective home countries, future development possibilities, varied implementation cases of GPS and ETC as well as issues after the construction or the implementation. FORUM 8 also demonstrated UC-win/Road Driving Simulator and EcoDrive plug-in option.

Because of UC-win/Road's involvement in various case studies in China pertaining to the field of vehicle system development, ITS traffic research and research of driver-car and road interaction, visitors to our booth gave positive feedback and comments after the drive experience.

Asia Urban Transport Summit 2010 official web site: http://www.globaleaders.com/china/2010/auts/



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Design Analysis Protective Structures 2010
(Up&Coming 2010 Midsummer issue)
The third international conference on Design & Analysis of Protective Structures (DAPS) was held from 10-12 May 2010 at the Novotel Hotel in Singapore. The idea of holding the International Conference on Design and Analysis of Protective Structures against Impact/Impulsive/Shock Loads was conceived in 2003 by the three founding institutes of the conference series, namely, National Defense Academy, Japan, Pennsylvania State University, USA and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

This year, the conference was co-organized by the Defense Science & Technology Agency, Singapore and the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological, Singapore. More than 300 delegates from over 20 countries gathered at Novotel for two days of intense sharing & discussions.

Forum8 is pleased to be invited as one of the sponsors for this event and was one of the six privileged exhibitors at the conference. We showcased our geotechnical and structural solutions from the UC-win and UC-1 series and the validation experiments gathered much interest and attention. The participants were impressed at the accuracy of the predictions depicted in Forum8s software and were keen to find out more information about the software. We look forward to the next conference and newer software developments in the near future.



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SimTecT 2010
(Up&Coming 2010 Midsummer issue)
Recently FORUM 8 participated in SimTecT 2010, which was held at the Brisbane Convention Centre, in Australia from May 31 - June 3 2010. SimTect is held annually in Australia, to explore the latest developments in simulation technology. The theme of the conference this year was "Improving Capability and Reducing the Cost of Ownership".
More details on the conference are available at: http://www.siaa.asn.au/simtect/2010/2010.htm

Forum8 exhibited and demonstrated our Drive Simulator system with 3-panel screen and sound system, running VR models developed with UC-win/Road. We also presented a paper entitled "Driving Simulation To Assist Safer Road Design" at the 3 day conference.

Many of the attendees at SimTect are involved in defense work, but there is a move to take simulation beyond training in defense and mining to broader application areas, including civil engineering and transport.
Forum8 was the only company to exhibit a driving simulator and hence attracted much interest from potential users in government and industry. Other simulators included flight simulators and heavy machinery simulators, and software simulation for mining and warfare. People interested in driving simulation often ask about tank / army vehicle / ambulance / fire truck driver training.

At the paper session, FORUM 8 presented the advantages of UC-win/Road, via a case study of the use of UC-win/Road model and driving simulators in the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway project. Typical advantages of the Forum8 solution include:
  • Link with simulators and other hardware for interactive driving
  • Availability of the software package for the user to do his/her own modeling,
  • SDK/ customization,
  • Technical accuracy for roads and traffic,
  • Plug-ins that import analysis results like EXODUS for evacuation simulation, etc
FORUM8 will continue to be active in promoting its VR/simulation solution through SimTect and participation in simulation-related events. We will also exhibit at the AITPM (Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management) conference and exhibition, to be held in Brisbane again, July 20-23. See http://www.aitpm.com/conf-upcoming.html for details.



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Smart Software Conference Korea
(Up&Coming 2010 Midsummer issue)
"2010 Smart Software Conference" was held in Daegu, Korea on May 19th, 2010. FORUM8 was pleased to be invited by the organizer to the conference. The theme for this event was "Smart convergence between IT and other field" and FORUM 8 participated in the international disaster protection session of SSC.

In Daegu, "Daegu international Embedded system Conference", DEC, which was held from 2003 to 2009 was subsequently renamed it self as SSC. SSC (DEC) is a national-supported event, jointly organized by Ministry of Knowledge Economy, or MKE and Daegu City to promote industry, accelerate employment and improve technology, We can see that Korea is focusing on information and communication technology. The organizer introduced some Daegu-based IT venture enterprises to us. It showed their enthusiasm to promote their local IT industries.

In the International Disaster protection session, FORUM 8 a presentation involved "Current status in Japanese fire evacuation and VR technology ". The sample model for Takaraduka Karaoke Box fire in 2007, made using "buildingEXODUS" and "SMARTFIRE", developed by Fire Safety Engineering of Greenwich University and UC-win/Road, a VR software, gathered much interest in the field of VR simulation and analysis among those who participated in the session.
We discussed with Professor Young-Sang Choi of Daegu Health College and Associate Professor Sung-Chan Kim of Kyungil University after the session.



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12d Model International User Conference 2010
(Up&Coming 2010 fresh green leaves issue)
12d Model International User Conference 2010 was held in Brisbane, the 3rd largest city in Australia, for 3 days from March 7th to 9th.
12d Model is a CAD system developed by 12d Solutions, with which users can easily produce 3D digital terrain models by importing data from surveillance devices, design road, and calculate the soil volume of cuttings and mounds at the time of excavating work.
Other than UC-win/Road, users can simulate flood in a 3D digital terrain model using flood analysis software, xpswmm.
FORUM 8 began distribution of this software in Japan last December, and although 12d has a short history in Japan, we are aware of the existing interest in 12d software in Japan, and it has already proved to be a popular software program.
Once every 2 or 3 years, 12d Solutions invites their users and partners to a meeting, where 12d introduces features that are not well known, and this meeting helps to improve relationship between users and distributors and 12d staff.
This year, FORUM 8, as one of the overseas distributor, joined the event for the first time. About 400 people attended the event - although two thirds of participants were users from Australia and New Zealand, and there were also others from South East Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Apart from the keynote speeches and presentations, one of the main features of the event was "Birds of a Feather" which enabled attendees to visit exhibits from participating companies and have discussions.
FORUM 8 participated in the "Birds of a Feather" exhibition to demonstrate UC-win/Road for 12d Model plug-in option which enables terrain and road alignment data exchange between UC-win/Road and 12d Model, which was completed just before the event.
At the FORUM 8 exhibition at the Birds of a Feather, visitors experienced driving on UC-win/Road sample models using a steering wheel. It received positive feedback from the visitors.
Software houses, such as XP Software, who are likely to become distributors like FORUM 8, and surveillance devices manufacturers whose data is imported by 12d model were among exhibitors.
In the presentation in the main hall, various case studies were introduced, including a project by the Queensland Road Construction Authority, the largest customer of 12d, and also the Dubai project.
At the distributors meeting held on the following day after the meeting, 12d announced the vision of expanding the 12d marketing activities in East Asia, the Americas and Africa and we were made to understand 12d's expectations in the marketing activity of 12d model.
Birds of a Feather space
FORUM 8 exhibition booth
Relaxed environment at the meeting

Case study from the London Olympics sites and the surrounding area Case studies from the Abu Dhabi artery road

Features of 12d Model
12d can accommodate up to 5 million coordinates and supports TXT file editing and imports of coordinate points as CSV files.
12d can export in various file types just like GIS software. In the soil volume calculation, PAD, GRUND etc. are required for the terrain.
12d also has 3D view, texture overlay and the automatic aerial view functions.
Plan view, longitudinal section view and section view are created simultaneously. Linking added data on other drawings is also possible.
The new version updates automatically when the program is started. Program options can be selected according to the user's budget.
English version (with Japanese manual) available. Open price.

About UC-win/Road for 12D Model
Here, we are going to introduce UC-win/Road for 12d Model which we exhibited at the conference.
It enables import of terrain data, road alignment and cross section profile from 12d Model into UC-win/Road with graphically rich, two-way operation.
The data import allows you to reproduce the data made with 12d in UC-win/Road, place objects, create traffic and render the data. And in return, you can easily calculate the mass volume of cutting or mounds of the roads made with UC-win/Road in 12d model.
Terrain and road data in 12d Model Data settings of road cross section
Terrain and road data imported to UC-win/Road Imported property of road cross section

FORUM 8 and 12d UK have agreed on the joint marketing

FORUM 8 and 12d UK Limited have signed a joint marketing agreement. FORUM8 provides VR to 12D Model customers in Europe. In turn, modeling and designing technology of 12D Model will be introduced to UC-win/Road customers.




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Nemetshek International Meeting
(Up&Coming 2010 fresh green leaves issue)
Nemetshek International Meeting
Nemetshek International Meeting was held at Nemetshek HQ in Munich, Germany for 2 days, from March 18th till the 19th.
This is an annual meeting where Allplan's annual sales report is announced, but it is also a place where Nemetshek's global network of subsidiaries and distributors from Europe, Russia and Asia can come together and exchange information.

Figure 2 shows the European countries where Allplan is marketed. Blue is where Nemetchek sells directly and light green is where sales are made through distributors. In Asia, Allplan is sold in Japan (through FORUM 8) and in South Korea.
Allplan has more than 1000 customers in Russia and Germany; Allplan has a large user-base in Europe and Russia and the number of Nemetshek users in AEC reaches is 270,000.
1 Nemetshek HQs Figure2 Marketing in Europe

Allplan brand
At the first day of the meeting, CEO Mr. Peter Mehlstaebler gave a keynote speech about the Allplan brand.
So, what does the Allplan brand entail?
  • Not a mere software product, but a premium product augmented by support service including the web.
  • Open BIM platform allowing data exchange with/through a wide variety of software/file formats.
  • Localization: the localization of Allplan in each European country has established reputation.
Figure3 CEO Mr. Peter Mehlstaebler
Secondly, as the topic for 2010, Mr. Mehlstaebler talked about inter-regional collaboration, development work focused on Allplan 2011 and enhanced customer service.

In addition, in the PR campaign meeting, the "Key Message" for the slogan was announced, together with the new poster.
FORUM8 will use this key message in East Asia, since we believe that it reflects the features of Allplan well.
The message was: "Allplan provides tools suited to your work process in 2D and 3D in one single program!".

In Allplan BIM tool, customers work process comprises of creating 3D models with properties and carving figures from isometric and cross sections
Allplan is a software program that is rich in technology from Nemetschek, a company full of history, in which customers can use various 2D or 3D tools.
Another interesting point was a report on Allplan Campus. Allplan Campus is the Allplan website exclusively for academic customers and students. Users can use a free academic license for 1 year. Users can download more than 150 tutorial movies or sample data and take E-learning course..

8 months have passed since the inception of Allplan Campus, and it has more than 10,000 registered users worldwide and more than 8,000 licensed registration and its forums have more than 3, 000 comments. Allplan Campus is becoming important for the customers as a channel for communication.

Below is a Allplan Campus URL for English speakers.
http://www.allplan-campus.com/en/

Marketing in Japan
We discussed the sales activity in Japan at the individual meeting with Nemetshcek key members of sales and technical division.
We mainly discussed the soon-to be released Allplan Japanese, participation in last year's BIM related events, such as Build Live Tokyo and Build London Live, participation in construction field conferences and development of data linkage by IFC.

Figure4 Tool window of Allplan Japanese version Figure5 Plane manager of Japanese version

We are going to introduce here the model of RC rigid frame pier made by FROUM 8.
This model in which 3D bars are arranged according to "Standard design codes of structures" and modeled using the bar arrangement function in Allplan2009 Engineer.
Bar arrangement function in Allplan2009 includes bar shaping tool, which allows bar arrangement by entering covering and bending bar arrangement to bars such as free form and open stirrup and mesh bar arrangement tool, with which users can create a mesh.
This model is made using bar shaping tool. Processing figure, dimension lines and leader lines are generated automatically by clicking on the bar arrangement.
These are only few of the Allplan functions and users can create 3D models of buildings, carry out basic design and detailed mapping, and perform quantity calculation and animation within one package.

Figure6 RC rigid frame pier model Figure7 Processing figure is generated
by clicking the bar arrangement.

Finally..
FORUM8 technology, which has been developed over many years, is comparable to that of Nemetschek's. We will continue to provide our technical expertise in the BIM field, including the linkage between Allplan and UC-win/Road and UC-1 Series product and 3D drawings service with the collaboration with Nemetshek
3D drawing service is a BIM-oriented service that is planned as our new analysis service.
This service provides customers with the final result of 3D data output of Allplan with the free viewer software.
In addition 2D figure is delivered as usual with the technical support from our staff in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka.




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ITE Technical Conference
(Up&Coming 2010 fresh green leaves issue)
UCwin/Road on show at ITE Technical Conference
14th March 2010 saw the opening of this year's Institute of Transportation Engineers Technical Conference and Exhibition in the Convention Centre in Savannah Georgia USA.
The conference was attended by many hundreds of delegates from throughout North America including representatives of the US Department of Transport Federal Highway Authority as well as other transport professionals from within the industry.
The Forum8 exhibition booth was well attended with many delegates showing great interest in our interactive 3D visual simulation technology and our low cost Drive Simulators.



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TRANSTEC DELHI
(Up&Coming 2010 fresh green leaves issue)
TRANSTEC congress 2010, held in New Delhi, 5-6April 2010
The 3rd TRANSTEC congress 2010, held in New Delhi this year is an international event coinciding with the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.Academics and experts from all over the world gather at this event to explore new directions in the field of sustainable transport, advanced systems for transport operations, transport modeling and simulation.
Forum8 is pleased to be one of the 6 sponsors for this event, which took place from the 5-6April 2010. TRANSTEC 2010 was the perfect platform for global exchange of ideas, aimed at bringing closer research collaboration between the universities and industries in the field of transport science.
Forum8 took the opportunity to network with key decision makers and introduce Japan's cutting-edge technology UC-win/Road. Many governmental officials & consultants were impressed with the technology and Forum8 will work closely with our representative & distributors in New Delhi to propose UC-win/Road in various upcoming projects in India.



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FORUM8 Design Festival 2009-3Days
(Up&Coming 2010 New Year Special Issue)
A Variety of Advanced Solutions for Civil Engineering and Construction Design and Global Research on VR Gathered Together at the Festival

FORUM8 held "FORUM8 Design Festival 2009 - 3 Days" from November 18th to 20th, 2009 at Tokyo Conference Center Shinagawa.
President Yuji Ito


The year of 2009 was a memorable year for us with "Engineer's Studio", 3 dimensional (3D) plate dynamic nonlinear analysis program which we had been developing with emphasis for these years, released in February, and "VR-Studio", a multifunctional VR system that supports large scale projects, also released in October. We integrated "International VR Symposium" and "3D VR Simulation Contest" that had been held annually at this time of the year, and "Design Conference" that had been held separately so far into "Design Festival" to introduce these new solutions as well as our latest technologies and tendencies of related research in and outside Japan on a larger scale.

One of the three events that comprise "Design Festival" is "Design Conference". This is based on "UC-win/FRAME (3D) Conference" that started in October 2003, following the release of UC-win/FRAME(3D), 3 Dimensional Analysis Program for Space-Framed Structures in 2002. Since 2007, the conference has been expanded into "Design Conference" by holding it simultaneously with "UC-win/UC-1 User Conference", and it is the 3rd time to have this form of conference this year.

Another event, "International VR Symposium", aims to discuss and utilize excellent research, technologies, and ideas related to VR. In 2007, "World 8", an international academic group for 3D VR was organized with researchers in architecture and construction fields. The Symposium was started as a place to publish the research products. The number of participating researchers of the group was almost doubled for the activities in 2009, when the symposium was to be held for the third time. The group has been led by Dr. Yoshihiro Kobayashi, Ph.D., Arizona State University Prism Lab. Research Faculty (FORUM8 AZ LLC. CEO & President) from the beginning. It was reorganized as "World 16" with Dr. Kobayashi as its core. At the symposium, each member gave a presentation of the research outcome, reflecting even more various specialties than before.

Still another event, "3D VR Simulation Contest" was established when "UC-win/Road", a 3D real-time VR product won "Software Product of the Year" prize in 2002.It is for the 8th time to hold the contest, having more advanced and diversified entry products year by year. Submissions come from not only inside Japan but also from abroad in broader areas.

This year's Design Festival comprised 3 days: [Day1] included <Design/Analysis>, <Architecture/BIM>, and <Water Engineering> sessions of "the 3rd Design Conference"; [Day 2] included the rest <CAD & VR>, <Technical Support>, session of the Conference and "the 3rd International VR Symposium"; and [Day 3] included "the 8th 3D VR Simulation Contest". Especially in consideration of welcoming many speakers and users from abroad, we integrated these related events as well as prepared simultaneous interpretation for 4 languages of Japanese / English / Chinese / Korean at the main hall. In addition, regarding the presentations given at the main hall, we provided TV conference system to connect with the sites at Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Beijing, and Shanghai for the participants there.

We report the Design Festival in a two-part serial: this issue (Vol. 83: Day 1 & 2) and the next issue (Vol. 84: Day 2)


[Day1] The 3rd Design Conference

At the 1st day of the 3-day Design Festival, the 3rd Design Conference opened with the sponsor's address by Yuji Ito, President of FORUM8.

The 1st speaker was Prof. Koichi Maekawa, Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo. He gave a special lecture entitled "Nonlinear Analysis of Deteriorated RC Structure and Method of Structurizing Knowledge". He explained on the latest information about multi-scale and multi-phase physiochemical coupled analysis, modeling of deteriorated structure and response analysis, high cycle fatigue loading and life estimation by direct integration method, and response analysis and life of composite deck slab for a highway bridge.

Then from 1:00 pm, the conference was divided into <Design/Analysis> session of the Main Stream and technical sessions of <Architecture/BIM>, and <Water Engineering>, which continued over 4 hours.

Professor Koichi Maekawa, Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo

Design/Analysis Session (Stream-1)

Our staff made the first presentation of this session, entitled "Engineer's Studio(TM) and its Future Development". He presented on the product overview of Engineer's Studio(TM) and UC-win/FRAME(3D), their new functions, and the future development plan. He also explained some features under development, showing their operation procedures.

FORUM8 Brent Fleming

Then, Mr. Hiroki Aoto, Researcher at Tokyo City University gave a special lecture entitled "Analysis Cases with FRAME3D and Challenges of Engineer's Studio". Taking steel arch bridge as an example, he explained the difference of initial stress conditions of arch lib that was confirmed using UC-win/FRAME(3D), or the effect of slab deck stiffness on the result of dynamic analysis. He also gave advice based on them, and mentioned his request towards the future development of Engineer's Studio as well as his evaluation and points to note as a user.
>> See report on special lecture2

Mr. Hiroki Aoto, Tokyo City University

Then, our staff made a presentation entitled "Analysis Cases with FRAME3D and Analysis Competition Report". His explanation included transition of UC-win/FRAME(3D) Analysis Support Service, Revision of aseismic Construction Method for Waterworks Guideline and Commentary, and a modeling method of the analysis model used at the analysis contest for a large bridge aseismic experiment conducted in National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention with its analysis results.

Yoshitaka Kai, FORUM8

In the latter part of the session, Prof. Keizo Ugai, Professor of School of Engineering, Gunma University, gave a special lecture entitled "Present Situation of Ground Analysis and Future Development". He explained on evaluation of safety factor of slope with elasto-plastic FEM, a method of estimating and deciding countermeasures with FEM for ground liquefaction, solution of mechanism of large-scale landslide caused by a great earthquake with dynamic elasto-plastic FEM. He emphasized the effectiveness of FEM applied in these situations.

Professor Keizo Ugai, Gunma University

Following this, Mr. Toshihiro Hanada, President of Bulld Geotechno Co.,Ltd. gave a special lecture entitled "Customer's Case of Ground Analysis: Overview and Challenges of Design". He presented analysis cases using GeoFEAS in issues such as the whole stability problem of land prepared for housing development including cliffs, problems of ground deformation in reservoir refurbishment, and quake resistance testing of a built retaining wall.
>> See report on special lecture4

Mr. Toshihiro Hanada, Bulld Geotechno

Finally, our staff made a presentation entitled "the Latest Functions of Ground Analysis Series and 'Slope Stability Analysis' Supporting New Earthwork Guideline". He described linkage of Ground Analysis Series such as GeoFEAS and VGFlow with UC-1 Design Calculation, points in revision of earthwork guidelines, and how they are supported by Slope Stability Analysis Ver.8.

Atsushi Nakamura, FORUM8


Architecture/BIM Session (Stream-2)

This session started with a special lecture given by Mr. Ryota Ieiri, Ieiri Laboratory, Nikkei BP, entitled "Beyond World Class! Advancing BIM in Japan with Japanese Spirit and Western Learning".
He mentioned positioning of BIM in JAPAN that is seen through Build Live Tokyo, overview of BIM and example applications in foreign countries, and innovation using BIM, describing his expectation towards its spread.

Mr. Ryota Ieiri, Ieiri Laboratory, NikkeiBP

The subsequent lecture comprised two parts. The first part, entitled "Allplan (Architecture) Japanese Version", was given by Mr. Sven Elbl, Director of Product Management of Nemetschek Allplan Gmbh. He talked about the overview of the NEMETSCHEK and Allplan software suite products, the company's view about BIM, and the functions of Allplan in there. The second part, entitled "Application cases of Allplan to Architecture in Korea", given by Mr. Kim Gibom, Basissoft Inc. Taking BIM-applied projects using Allplan as examples, he introduced various functions and advantages of Allplan.

Mr. Sven Elbl, Nemetchek

Mr. Kim Gibom, Basissoft

Following this, our staff made a presentation entitled "BIM Solution at Build Live Tokyo 2009 II". He reviewed how we worked on the competition sponsored by IAI Japan "Build Live Tokyo 2009 II", BIM solutions applied there through analysis and simulation using FORUM8 tools including Allplan, and award winning of Engineering Award.

The latter half of the session was started by a special lecture by Mr. Jake Hannah, Formation Design Systems, Australia, entitled "Multiframe Ver. 12 supporting plate element". Firstly, he introduced the features of Multiframe software and its related products and so on. Based on this, he talked about its application examples to plate models and other flat items, focusing on plate element analysis that is the greatest feature of Multiframe Ver. 12.

Mr. Jake HannahFormation Design Systems

Our staff made the following presentations. "Energy Analysis Design Builder Ver. 2" showed the procedure to simulate thermal environment or CO2 emissions of a building by linking Design Builder that performs architecture simulation and EnergyPlus that performs architecture energy simulation. The speaker mentioned possibilities brought about by linkage between Design Builder and other FORUM8 products.

Next presentation, "Example Cases and Proposal of Exodus: Fire Evacuation Analysis" introduced features and functions of EXODUS that performs evacuation simulation and SMARTFIRE that performs fire simulation, as well as application cases of EXODUS to examination of evacuation from a housing complex, fire drill for a high-rise building, and examination of evacuation from tunnel-vehicle fire.

In addition, "Analysis Functions provided by UC-win/Road: Noise & Wind Analysis and Lighting simulation" showed the features of the noise analysis function that is a new optional function of UC-win/Road, concept of sound propagation, procedures from pre-processing to input, analytical calculation, output, and post-processing. The presenter also mentioned development situation of wind analysis function and simulation of lighting calculation.



Water Engineering Session (Stream-3)

This session was jointly held with xpswmm Customer Meeting, which is organized by SWMM User Group and supported by NPO Water Environment Construction Club, FORUM8 and XP Software with a topic of "Flood Seminar: Latest Information on anti-inundation measure and run off analysis model.

Professor Yoshihisa Kawahara, Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University made opening remarks of the session. He then gave a special lecture entitled "Challenge for Using Flood Analysis Technology for Multiple Purposes". He discussed analysis method of combining aero laser survey data with non-structural grids, modeling building-fluid interaction and phenomenon smaller than a calculation grid, and a method of estimating flood discharge from a river.

Professor Yosihisa Kawahara, Hiroshima University

Next, Mr. Takateru Ishikawa, Water Environment Construction Club (NPO), gave a special lecture entitled "Utilization of Runoff Analysis Model in Response to Climate Change in the Future". He talked about how the runoff analysis model came into wide use, change of precipitation caused by climate change, conversion into an effective design method, analysis cases using 1D and 1D/2D models, hazard maps for inland waters, how to use runoff analysis model in the future and the functions to be expected.

Mr. Ishikawa Takateru

It was followed by a special lecture given by Professor Masaru Morita, College of Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, entitled "Quantification of Flood Risk of Urban Rain Water Drainage and Application to Flood Risk Management". He discussed what is flood risk management, a predictive model for inundation damage, approach to flood risk assessment, and application to flood risk assessment.

Professor Masaru Morita, Shibaura Institute of Technology

The latter half of the session started with special lectures by 3 speakers in a relay form. First, Mr. Tatsuo Yamada, Nihon Suikou Sekkei Co.,Ltd. gave a lecture entitled "About CommnMP: Common Platform of Water and Material Circulation Analysis". He presented on the aims of developing CommonMP promoted by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and its feature, the policy of developing and operating it, establishment of the consortium based on the policy, advantages of developing it, present situations of development, and a road map.

Mr. Tatsuo Yamada, Nihon Suikou Sekkei

Then, Mr. Shigenori Kawasaki, also Nihon Suikou Sekkei Co., Ltd. gave a lecture entitled "Measures to Mitigate Flood Risk Using Ground Surface Runoff Analysis". He showed a concept of mitigating risk through anti-inundation measure with residential zones in flood-prone areas as key zones.

Mr. Shigenori Kawasaki, Nihon Suikou Sekkei

Next, Mr. Kiyotaka Naganawa, Nakanihon Engineering Consultants made a presentation entitled "Integrated Analysis of Rivers and Water Channel Networks in an Area using xpswmm". Taking hydraulic analysis of a class B river having a tunnel part and channel network in a low-lying area having river water flooding as examples, he discussed investigation into flooding mechanism and anti-inundation measure.

Mr. Kiyotaka Naganawa, Nakanihon Engineering Consultants

Following this, Mr. Ashis Dey, XP-Software Pty Ltd, Australia made a presentation entitled "Lecture by the Developer: Modeling of Overland Flooding in Urban Areas - A 1D/2D Integrated Modeling Case Study". After explaining the basics of hydrology and hydraulics as well as the functions and potential of xpswmm in them, he introduced analysis cases of 1D/2D-integrated modeling.

Mr. Ashis Dey, XP-software Pty Ltd.

The final presentation of the session was made by our staff, entitled "3 Dimensional VR of Flood Analysis: Collaborative Functions for xpswmm Provided by UC-win/Road and Development of Water Engineering Design Series".
He explained the functions and examples of UC-win/Road for xpswmm plug-ins, development schedule of software for UC-1 series water and sewage/river design, and the overview of the revision of the guideline for aseismic construction method for waterworks and its explanation.

Report of Design Festival Customers Specail Lecture

Special Lecture 2 FRAME3D Analysis Case and Engineer's Studio(TM)'s Challenge
 Mr. Hiroki Aoto Researcher, Tokyo City University


Mr. Hiroki Aoto Researcher, Tokyo City University gave Special Lecture, titled"FRAME3D Analysis Case and Engineer's Studio(TM)'s Challenge" on November 18th, the 1st day of the festival.


Mr. Aoto presented the anlysis result of 2 cases by using UC-win/FRAME(3D).
Regarding the metal arch bridge, 1.Influence of the difference of initial stress conditions and 2. Influence of floor slab rigidity to the dynamic analysisi result. Mr. Aoto has proposed the future developmnet of Engineer's Studio(TM), with the comparison with existing products.


Like UC-win/WCOMD, Engineer's Studio(TM) supports reinforced concrete guideline.
Engineer's Studio(TM) is applicable to large scale deformation analysis and has improved user interface compared with UC-win/WCOMD. Engineer's Studio(TM) has merits to UC-win/WCOMD customer.


Mr. Aoto suggested the introduction of ground element enables Engineer's Studio(TM) to perform coupling analysis of FEM and FRAME. It will allow customers to use it for many different purposes.
Mr. Aoto suggeted the development of non-linear analysis version. Mr. Aoto stressed that the analysis program can be used not only by civil engineers, but also by architects and construction engineers.FORUM8 will continue to improve Engineer's Studio(TM) with the partnership with Mr. Aoto.



Special Lecture 4 "Ground Analysis Customer Case:Design Overview and Challenge"
 Mr. Toshihiro Hanada President, Bulld Geotechno


Mr. Toshihiro Hanada President, Bulld Geotechno gave a special lecture, titled "Ground Analysis Customer Case:Design Overview and Challenge.
Mr. Hanada introduced the application of FEM analysis to design work by showing 3 sample cases of GeoFEAS 2D. He also suggested themes and difficluties of ground analysis from the business point of view.


The 1st case was developed land including cliff for housing complex.
The 2nd case was deformation of land at the time of repair of pond.
The 3rd case was earthquake resistance check of existing retaining walls


Mr. Hanada says that for customers, the major issues are the fact that "results depend on modeling", "the time constraint" and "the endless needs for accuracy". He says different result comes from the changed range of analysis and that check and verification sometimes requires 500-1000 analysis cases. He stresses that analysis is always time consuming and requires customers experience.


Mr. Hanada gave us a comment saying GeoFEAS is superior in accuracy of calculation and that papers by Gunma University researchers and our trainig for CPD are helpful. We will continue trying to meet customers needs.



[Day2] 3rd Design Conference / 3rd International VR Symposium
(Up&Coming 2010 Early spring issue)

Day 2 Comprised the Latter Part of Design Conference and the International VR Symposium

FORUM8 held "FORUM8 Design Festival 2009 - 3 Days" from November 18th to 20th, 2009 at Tokyo Conference Center Shinagawa. We integrated "Design Conference", "the International VR Symposium", and "3D VR Simulation Contest" which had been held separately in two events before, into a festival with a new concept.
In 2009, we released "Engineer's Studio", 3 dimensional (3D) plate dynamic nonlinear analysis program, and "VR-Studio", VR system that supports large-scale and multifunctional projects, both of which we had been developing as new flagship products of each series. As the year of 2009 was a memorable year for us, we decided to introduce these new solutions as well as our latest technologies and the related research movements in and outside Japan on a larger scale.

As the first attempt, this year's Design Festival comprised 3 days: [Day1] included <Design/Analysis>, <Architecture/BIM>, and <Water Engineering> sessions of "the 3rd Design Conference"; [Day 2] included the rest the sessions of the Conference <CAD & VR> and <Technical Support>, and "the 3rd International VR Symposium"; and [Day 3] included "the 8th 3D VR Simulation Contest".

We report the Design Festival in a serial; the previous issue (Vol. 83) reported Day 1 & 3, and this issue (Vol. 84) focuses on Day 2.

[Day2] The 3rd Design Conference

For the latter part of the 3rd Design Conference on the 2nd day of the 3-day Design Festival, Main Hall was divided into two rooms, one of which was used for <CAD & VR> session. <Technical Support> session was held at the same time in still another room, where the development staff and engineers of FORUM8 were stationed all the time. They responded to various questions and demands from the users of UC-1/UC-win products and our solutions.

CAD & VR Session

This session was opened up by Mr. Junichi Yamashita, Vice Chair, IAI Japan Chapter. He delivered Special Lecture entitled "Build Live Tokyo 2009, a Live Building Design Competition, and Innovation of Design and Production Process". He talked about IAI's international efforts to promote standardization of 3D building models for the purpose of mutual operation through data sharing. He also presented as a part of this "Build Live Tokyo 2009" that published the situation of participating teams to implement BIM (building information modeling) while collaborating on the Internet in real time. Then he explained the context of why BIM was required, the influences that BIM has on building design and production processes and so on.

Mr. Junichi Yamashita, Vice Chair, IAI Japan Chapter

The next special lecture comprised two parts. The first part, "Announcement of Allplan (Engineering) Japanese Version", was delivered by Mr. Sven Elbl, Director of Product Management, Nemetschek Allplan Gmbh (Germany). After introducing the overview of Nemetschek company and its Allplan family products, he explained improvement in productivity by 3D reinforcement based on BIM with case studies. The latter part the lecture was entitled "Case Study of Allplan in Civil Engineering Field in Korea" given by Mr. Chris Kim, Senior Manager of Basissoft Inc., Korea, discussing what is BIM, Allplan as BIM software, and its advantages and examples.

Mr. Sven Elbl, Nemetschek Allplan Gmbh, Germany

Mr. Chris Kim, Basissoft Inc., Korea

The last special lecture in the morning was "Integrated Construction Process by Graitec from Modeling to Design" by Mr. Alexandre Tartas, COO, Graitec France. With an eye on various issues in the 21st century including environment and energy, he talked about responses that the construction industry is required to give, different BIM solutions offered by Graitec in relation to them, and specific approaches to improving productivity through one of these solutions, Advance Steel.

Mr. Alexandre Tartas, COO, Graitec France

The first presentation of the latter part of the session was made in two parts, each by our staff. Entitled "VR-Studio(TM)", "UC-win/Road Ver.4", the staff made a presentation of the latest information about UC-win/Road. He explained the main features and basic functions of VR-studio, its functions under development, new functions of UC-win/Road Ver.4 and its functions under development. The second part, entitled "The Latest Cases of VR System Development and Our Proposal", introduced examples of setting up the 3D stereo view system, MR (mixed reality) / AR (augmented reality) system, different drive simulators (DS), and their application systems.

Prof. Shigenori Tanaka, Faculty of Informatics, Kansai University

Then, Prof. Shigenori Tanaka, Faculty of Informatics, Kansai University gave Special Lecture "Development of Made-in-Japan 3 Dimensional CAD Engine". He mentioned about "SXF", standard foundation for 2-dimensional CAD data exchange and said that specifications for SXF is fixed and that some software programs that support it have been provided so far. He further focused on the present situation that there is no low-cost general-purpose 3 dimensional CAD offered in the field of construction leading to little progress in use. He then described the idea of developing "Made-in-Japan 3 Dimensional CAD Engine designed for the construction field", and its core project named "Kansai University Kaiser Project" the entire overview of the 3-D CAD Engine, and its future vision.

Next, our staff made a presentation entitled "Introducing Pier Design Ver. 7.0.1, which supports 3D Bar Arrangement simulation". He explained its new function of making a visual inspection of bar arrangement in a 3D space with ease in comparison with the conventional method using only 2D drawings. Then he demonstrated the function using the new version of "UC-1 Pier Design" that implements the function first.

After the break, our staff made a presentation "Survey and Civil Engineering CAD, 12d Model and Link with UC-win/Road". First, he talked about the basic functions and future development of the integrated software of survey and civil engineering "12d Model". Then he introduced how to use it and concrete cases, its link with UC-win/Road, as well as its development status while showing demonstration.

Furthermore, another stuff of us made a presentation entitled "Development of Verification System for Civil-Engineering Structural Design". He explained the background and conditions of developing the system, which was adopted for 2009 "Project for Promoting Innovation (Subsidy Program for Developing Practical Industrial Technologies) "of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), then outlined the concept, functions, features, and makeup of the system and the developing procedure of the system. Then he mentioned individual systems (A, B, C, and D) that compose the entire system, referring to the overviews of the system A and B that are the targets for the time being and the images of system C and D that are planned to be developed after that.

The last special lecture of the session was "Education for Engineers / The Role and Utilization of Software in University Education - Structural Analysis is Such an Exciting Technology!" by Prof. Hiromichi Yoshikawa, Advanced Research Laboratories of Tokyo City University. He first explained the drastic advancement of commercial software products in structural analysis or aseismic design. He continued that he was looking for structural engineers to make further progress through utilizing them. Based on this, he showed various cases of analysis with UC-win/FRAME (3D), explaining the points. He also introduced the procedure of an exercise in three steps that he devised after attempting to use a commercial software product (UC-win/Section) and a mobile tool for civil engineering calculation (Mobile UC-1) at the same time.

Prof. Hiromichi Yoshikawa, Advanced Research Laboratories of Tokyo City University


[Day2] The 3rd International VR Symposium "New Age VR Simulation"

VR-related Technologies Progressing in Architecture and Construction Fields in the World: The Latest Research that Draws Attention by the International Academic Group that Expanded in the 2nd Term

Another event of "FORUM8 Design Festival 2009-3days" day 2 (November 19, 2009), "the 3rd International VR Symposium" was held in the room next to Design Conference in the Large Hall, Tokyo Conference Center Shinagawa.

FORUM8 released the large-scale multi-VR "VR-Studio" in October 2009 as a new strategic VR product, and the latest version of the conventional product "UC-win/Road Ver.4" in December. This symposium linked the meantime, showing emerging directions and possibilities in wide-ranging areas related mainly to building and construction as well as to urban development, transport, and energy.

Proposed by Dr. Yoshihiro Kobayashi, currently Research Associate at Prism Lab, School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, who has also been serving as Representative for FORUM8 AZ since early 2009, FORUM8 organized "World 8" as a framework for global collaboration among researchers in the field of architecture and construction related to 3D VR modeling in 2007. In November that year, the first International VR symposium was held in the form of declaring its activities widely. Then related events had been held including "VR workshop at ASU" (August in 2008) with the core members from "World 8", and "The 2nd International VR Symposium" (November 2008) for summarizing and presenting the results of World 8's activities for one year.

In 2009, partly because release of the above-mentioned "VR-Studio" was expected, the international academic group was doubled in scale and reorganized as "World 16". It was succeeded to a new project. In May in the same year, the overview of "World 16" and some of the new members were introduced at the "10th UC-win/Road Conference and the Inaugural VR-Studio Conference". Then after holding "Summer Workshop in Japan" (in September), it has been led to this International VR Symposium, where its research products were presented.


 VR Use in the Fields of Transport and Energy in Europe, and the Latest Research Movement of "World 16"

In the morning part of the "3rd International VR Symposium", Mr. Pete Sykes, Director of Development, SIAS Limited, U.K., and Prof. Nashwan Dawood, Director, Center for Construction, Innovation & Research (CCIR), School of Science & Technology, University of Teesside, U.K. delivered special lectures. Subsequently in the afternoon, members of "World 16" made research presentations, and FORUM8 Europe staff made a presentation. Finally, Announcement of Academy Encouragement Prize was held for the World 16 members.

 Special Lecture 1

The speaker of the first special lecture of the symposium, "Application and Case Study of Traffic Micro Simulation" was Mr. Pete Sykes, Director of Development, SIAS, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. As SIAS provides consultancy in traffic planning and urban issues as well as development, sales, and support of microsimulation software (S-Paramics Microsimulation), he talked about traffic planning software and innovation of tools with focus on the difference between the conventional approach and microsimulation. Next, he mentioned several project cases actually using microsimulation and gave detailed explanation about them respectively. He further focused on each function of animation and simulation by microsimulation, discussing the idea that they are essential for performing traffic evaluation while considering various elements in line with the current circumstances.

Mr. Pete Sykes, SIAS Limited



 Special Lecture 2

Prof. Nashwan Dawood, Director, CCIR, School of Science & Technology, University of Teesside, U.K. gave a lecture entitled "Simulation and Optimization Technology 4EE Building". As a specific case of simulation and optimization technologies towards realization of energy-efficient buildings, he presented an EU funded project, "IntUBE", that explores intelligent use of energy information related to buildings, with his own activities in it. He first talked about EU's plan to improve energy efficiency as the background, and moved to the overview and outline of IntUBE aiming to develop solutions towards EU's goal of 20% reduction of energy consumption by 2020. He then explained the business model to be required and related tools, as well as the developed products so far and the future efforts.
Prof. Nashwan Dawood, University of Teesside, U.K.


 Presentations by "World 16"

Dr. Yoshihiro Kobayashi, who has been leading the activities of World 8 from its start as a representative, chaired the presentations of "World 16" in the afternoon.

Prof. Tomohiro Fukuda, Associate Professor of Environmental Design & Information Technology, Division of Sustainable Energy & Environmental Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University made the first presentation of "World 16", entitled "Development of a City Presentation Method by Linking a Viewpoint Between Physical Model and VR". He developed a mechanism of linking a 1/300 scale physical model of Nakanoshima with VR model, Osaka, pointing the physical model with a laser pointer, having a sensor to read it and displaying in VR. He introduced the system of connecting advantages of a physical model and VR while demonstrating the prototype.
Associate Prof. Tomohiro Fukuda, Environmental Design & Information Technology, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"Development of Presentation Method of Urban Area by Using Physical Model and VR"
 Tomohiro Fukuda, Associate Professor, Osaka University


A group project by several researchers in Taiwan, "Next-GENE of Virtual World" was presented by Prof. Sheng-Cheng Shih, Assistant Professor, Department of Digital Design, MingDao University on behalf of the group. In the project of designing houses with more than 20 architects in and out of Taiwan participating, they created simulation of villages and traffic, and representation of buildings, in VR environment built up with UC-win/Road for proposing a house design imitating calligraphy. He said that the effectiveness of VR was accepted.
Assistant Prof. Sheng-Cheng Shin, Department of Digital Design, MingDao University
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"NEXT-GENE of Virtual World"
UC-win/Road Movie
"Assessment of Housing Designs in a VR Environment"
 Yen-Liang Wu (Aw), Lecturer, National Chiao Tung University


Prof. Michael Jemtrud, Associate Professor of Architecture, Director, School of Architecture, McGill University made a presentation "VR Model of Repair Improvement of Turcotte Highway Interchange". He used UC-win/Road for creating a platform to build consensus among state and city governments and stakeholders across various areas in rehabilitating an important interchange in Montreal. Setting up three scales for the city scale, view from the road, and neighborhood / human scales, he introduced animation as a product of visualization by inputting all the required information. He also mentioned the next step.
Associate Prof. Michael Jemtrud, Director, School of Architecture, McGill University
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"VR Model of Repair Improvement of Turcotte Highway Interchange"
 Michael Jemtrud, Associate Professor, McGill University,
 Nik Luka, Associate Professor, McGill University, Canada


Research Scientist Matthew Swarts, College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, made a presentation of a group project by several researchers in the U.S. "Noise Analysis and Combined Form of Highway Bridge in Orlando" on behalf of the group. This is a research project with focus on redevelopment of the Bridge District along I-4 in the downtown of Orlando. He talked about the process of creating 3D models based on various pieces of information about the site collected by the group researchers and their students, importing them into UC-win/Road, and performing different traffic simulations. He also mentioned their efforts such as visualizing noises through the products.
Research Scientist Matthew Swarts, College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"Noise Analysis and Combined Form of Highway Bridge in Orlando"
UC-win/Road Movie
"Orlando Noise Pollution Simulation and Visualization"
 Ruth Ron Professor, Florida University
 Matthew Swarts, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology


Next presentation was also made for a group project "VR Model of Reproduction of Historic Streets in 18th Century in UAE". First, Prof. Ronald Hawker, Associate Professor, Department of Art & Design, College of Arts & Sciences, Dubai Campus, Zayed University, UAE introduced their activities for the historical areas in the north-east part of UAE including Ras al-Khaimah, e.g. creating 3D models from pieces of information on the areas with UC-win/Road and applying them to various research. Then Prof. Thomas Tucker, Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Winston Salem State University in the U.S. explained the process of creating models from a technological aspect. In addition, a student who performed actual operation talked in the video about more detailed technique.
Associate Prof. Ronald Hawker, Department of Art & Design, College of Arts & Sciences, Dubai Campus, Zayed University Assistant Prof. Thomas Tucker, Department of Fine Arts, Winston Salem State University
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"VR Model of Reproduction of Historic Streets in 18th Century in UAE"
 Thomas Tucker, Professor Winston Salem State University
 Ronald Hawker, Professor, Zayed University, UAE


Speakers from Graduate School of Harvard University made next presentations. First, Mr. Taro Narahara, Doctor of Design Student, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University spoke under the title of "Development of Linking System for VR and Interactive Devices" While he reviewed his work including visualization of human behavior models, he mentioned a project in which he introduced actions captured from real people into motions of figures, and represented more realistic figures on UC-win/Road. This time, he explained the mechanism that enabled real-time interaction by linking simulation and UC-win/Road on a real time basis through joint development of plug-ins with FORUM8. He showed his expectation towards a new possibility that the mechanism would bring about.
Mr. Taro Narahara, Doctor of Design Student, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"Development of Linking System to Interactive Devices in Boston, U.S.A." (1)
 Taro Narahara, Researcher, Harvard University


Then Prof. Kostas Terzidis, Associate Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Design, Harvard Univ. discussed the design approach of obtaining a final solution through repeating random search. In the mean time, various solutions are applied to UC-win/Road, making evaluation while exploring potentials, and choosing the best one. For optimizing, he explained a procedure of stratifying problems, performing parallel processing, and displaying them with UC-win/Road, using examples of simplified shapes, houses, and a road network.
Associate Prof. Kostas Terzidis, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"Development of Linking System to Interactive Devices in Boston, U.S.A." (2)
 Kostas Terzidis, Professor, Harvard University


The first speaker after the break was Prof. Paolo Fiamma, Assistant Professor of Technical Architecture, Civil Engineering Department, University of Pisa, Italy, who presented on "VR Model Creation of New Development Plan in Pisa". In terms of the restructuring plan of the area including historical towns near the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he created 3D models of the area. Then based on them, he simulated landscape and traffic flow in the urban area brought about by the plan. With evaluation of the results, he showed his idea of further promoting their use.
Assistant Prof. Paolo Fiamma, Civil Engineering Department, University of Pisa
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"VR Model Creation of New Development Plan in Pisa"
UC-win/Road Movie
"Pisa 3D City Model and Miracle Square Renewal"
 Paolo Fiamma, Professor University of Pisa, Italy


Prof. Wael Abdelhameed, Assistant Professor, College of Engineering, University of Bahrain, Bahrain / Faculty of fine Arts at Luxor, South Valley University, Egypt made a presentation on behalf of the group for the group project "VR Model Creation of Insulation Material and Insulation Effect in British Houses". When many of buildings of historical value in U.K. are required to renovate for improving energy efficiency, they are trying scientific and holistic approach through creating VR with UC-win/Road as well as microsimulation of construction in regard to various restrictions, as he discussed.
Assistant Prof. Wael Abdelhameed, College of Engineering, University of Bahrain
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"VR Model Creation of Insulation Material and Insulation Effect in British Houses"
UC-win/Road Movie
"3D Visualization of Building De-construction"
 Wael Abdelhameed, Professor, University of Bahrain, Bahrain
 Amar Bennadji, Assistant Professor, The Robert Gordon University


Prof. Claudio Labarca Montoya, Associate Professor, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile presented a project he is currently working on for a TV program of weather forecasting under the title of "City Modeling and VR Walk-throughs". This is a kind of advertisement, representing popular cities among tourists in all parts of the country in 3D models and providing them on real time basis. He explained a series of working process and the program structure in concrete with demonstration. He mentioned that he was using UC-win/Road for creating base models and such, and also hoping to explore possibility of utilizing it more continuously.
Associate Prof. Claudio Labarca Montoya, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"Digital Design and Utilization of VR" (1)
UC-win/Road Movie
"Dynamic Weather and Traffic Visualization"
 Carlos Labarca Professor, Catholic University, Chile


Prof. Marcos Novak, Professor, Media Arts & Technology Graduate Program, University of California, Santa Barbara presented under the title of "Cities of Bridges". He first stated that he was just starting to learn about UC-win/Road, expecting towards the potentials of its diversified functions. He showed some examples including his attempt to create traffic pattern on his own, and proposed an approach of using UC-win/Road as a design tool.
Prof. Marcos Novak, Media Arts & Technology Graduate Program, University of California, Santa Barbara
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"Digital Design and Utilization of VR" (2)
UC-win/Road Movie
"Automatically Generated City"
 Marcos Novak University of California, Santa Barbara


Dr. Yoshihiro Kobayashi, World 16 Chair, made its last presentation. First, he reviewed the vision of "World 16" project and its activities over a year, and showed his view that this project has led steadily to highly qualified result of the research. He further mentioned the project's new direction of development based on the emerging issues out of the results. Then he talked about his own study under the title of "Development of Data Exchange Tool of VR Modeling", explaining the functions and mechanics of the plug-ins for 3DSMax that was developed this time, as well as its operation procedure and application examples.
Dr. Yoshihiro Kobayashi, World 16 Chair
YouTube
Lecture Movie
"Development of Data Exchange Tool of VR Modeling"
 Yoshihiro Kobayashi Prism Laboratory, Arizona State University, FORUM8 AZ


After that, Dr. Brendan Hafferty, General Manager, FORUM8 Europe made the closing presentation of this symposium, speaking about marketing of 3D-VR. He showed the way of future marketing and how to look at the matter to be found there.

When all the lectures were over, Academy Encouragement Prizes were granted to Prof. Tomohiro Fukuda, Prof. Michael Jemtrud, Mr. Matthew Swarts (as a group project), and Mr. Taro Narahara for the research findings of "World 16".

Moreover, after the symposium was over, a networking party was held partly to celebrate the publication of a book "STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS - Case Studies and Numerical Simulation -", having a lot of attendants. We would like to express our hearty thanks again to have an invaluable opportunity.


[Day3] 8th 3D VR Simulation Contest

Diversification and Advancement of VR Application

FORUM8 held the 8th 3D VR Simulation Contest in November 20, 2009, the last day of FORUM8 Design Festival 2009-3 Days, at the main hall of Tokyo Conference Center Shinagawa.
Established after UC-win/Road won "Software Products of the Year" Award in 2002, this contest actually shows the potential of UC-win/Road for application every time. This 8th contest also provided competition of advanced technologies as well as unique ideas through varied application cases.

Specifically this time, the contest was held between the release dates of the latest strategic VR product "VR-Studio" (October 26) and the latest version of 3D real-time VR "UC-win/Road Ver.4" (December 9). Consequently, the latest information on each product was also presented. It is expected to have the contest on a more advanced stage with these products from the next time.



Tokyo Conference Center Shinagawa November 20th, 2009

In this contest, we commissioned Mr. Hiroo Kasagi, Workshop for Sustainable Community; Mr. Fumio Seki, Taisei Corporation; and Mr. Shinsuke Kitagawa, Yachiyo Engineering Co., Ltd. to be judges. Prior to the final selection, a qualifying competition was held with these three judge members. Among many entries, the top 11 works were nominated including 5 domestic works and 6 from overseas.

On the day of the contest, each presenter of the nominated work made a presentation for 15 minutes. Based on the presentation, the contest participants and judges voted to decide prize winners for each prize. In announcing the result of the final selection, Mr. Seki made a comment on behalf of the judges. According to him, usages of UC-win/Road has advanced and diversified. He pays a special attention to the approaches to the influences that the user's point of view and roads have on the society.

The prize winners and their works of the 8th 3D VR Simulation Contest are as follows:

Results Announcement

The animation movie of the prize winner
vr.forum8.jp(UC-win/Road site)UC-win/Road Video Gallery
GRAND PRIX
"VR Data for Ohashi Junction of Metropolitan Expressway"
Metropolitan Expressway Company Limited
AVI-DivX AVI [118,537KB 2:00] YouTube
The Metropolitan Expressway Co., Ltd. is performing an experiment with a driving simulator (UC-win/Road Drive Simulator) to verify effectiveness of cruise-assist and traffic safety measures at Ohashi Junction, which connects Central Circular Shinjuku Route (under construction), Central Circular Shinagawa Route, and Route 3 (Shibuya Line).

VR Data of Ohashi Junction used for traffic safety and effectiveness Overcrossing 4 rods in limited space
Ensuring the effectiveness in traffic safety at Ohashi Junction, Double loop line to connect roads with 70m height difference
Rooftop of the junction is going to be used as a planted park
Planned as the second longest tunnel in the world
Tunnel between Shinjuku Central Circular Route and Shinagawa Central Circular Route
Examining the best position for the road signs
Will be used to explain and display the evacuation route Examining the optimization of evacuation guiding signs
EXCELLENCE AWARD
"VR simulation of Design Change of Korea Namhae Highway "
Korea Road Agency (Korea)
AVI-DivX AVI [91,390KB 1:30] YouTube
UC-win/Road was used as a means of consensus building with the local residents at Korea Namhae Highway, which is under construction. The original design was changed in midstream, invoking objections from the local residents. In response to them, the influences of the highway on the residents were simulated in various ways. The simulation was effectively used for explanation to the public, public relations about the project, and materials for consulting with related agencies.

DAEDONG JCT Revised plan due to LRT construction plan
Namhae Highway between Naengjeong and Pusan
Tunnel used for evacuation
Aiming to ease the traffic congestion Noise barrier (over 10m high)
Canal from freight yard to sewage (treatment) plant The data was used effectively as discussion material for the consensus with residents and related agencies.
IDEA AWARD
"Simulation of Railway Bridge Beam Construction Work"
Noda Engineering Co., Ltd.
AVI-DivX AVI [50,069KB 1:30] YouTube
This work represents the procedure of overpass reconstruction for doubling track of a single rail track territory in order to boost the capacity of the railway. In the case of a railway girder, works must be finished at midnight between the last train and the first train. In addition, the impact of works on the road below should be minimized. Reflecting these needs, the company has planned a speedy and economical construction method and performs simulation of construction.

Simulation of Railway Bridge Beam Construction Work Removed beam is hanged by crane and crane rotates
Modeled surroundings including temporary stockyard
Old beam is removed by sliding jack The installation work must be finished at midnight
ESSENCE AWARD
"Simulation of Traffic in Kyoto City"
Graduate School of Informatics Kyoto University
AVI-DivX AVI [85,321KB 1:30] YouTube
Aiming to collect driving data for building a calculation model that represents human driving behavior, the driving environment in the urban area in Kyoto city is build up on UC-win/Road Drive Simulator. In order to acquire realistic driving data, it was designated to build environment of which quality is high enough to give a feeling of driving in the urban area of Kyoto. Using this environment, they are planning to perform an experiment with subjects to collect large amount of data.

Simulation of Traffic in Kyoto City Reproduces the traffic condition in Shijo Kawaramachi, the busiest area
Aim is to collect data to build human driving behavior model
Modeling of the route from the Kyoto Station to Kyoto University
Modeling of traditional buildings and streets of Kyoto
OVERSEAS AWARD
"VR Data of Roundabouts in US 41 Project"
Ourston Roundabout Engineering, Inc.(USA)
AVI-DivX AVI [87,210KB 1:30] YouTube
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) plans to reconstruct and expand US 41. This work is made for a driving simulator that helps WisDOT to learn about roundabouts in detail and also supports public people in understanding how to drive in roundabouts correctly.

VR Data of Roundabouts in US 41 Project This work was made to educate people on the correct way to negotiate roundabouts.
Appearance of the 3 adjacent roundabouts
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation plans to construct 44 roundabouts in US41.
Roundabouts produce efficient traffic flow. The important thing is to educate the drivers.

HONORABLE JUDGE'S AWARD

Judges
Mr. Hiroo Kasagi, NPO Chiiki Zukuri Kobou
Mr. Fumio Seki, Taisei Engineering Co., Ltd.
Mr. Sinsuke Kitagawa, Yachiyo Engineering Co., Ltd.

HONORABLE JUDGE'S AWARD  Regional Construction Award
 Mr. Hiroo Kasagi, NPO Chiiki Zukuri Kobou
"Proposal of Reproducing Environmentally-friendly Waterland City Hino"
Hosei University
AVI-DivX AVI [85,244KB 1:30] YouTube
Hino City used to be one of the largest granaries in Tokyo. Irrigation channel networks developed along the Tama River and the Asakawa River. The city, on the other hand, has promoted land readjustment projects since 1960's in response to a rapid increase in population in the suburban areas of the metropolitan region. Currently, while 50% of the city area is occupied by land readjustment area, irrigation networks have been integrated and many of the tributaries have been abolished. As a result, although the city was designated as "Water Town" by National Land Agency in 1995, actually both rural landscape and irrigation networks have decreased. In this context, they propose a land readjustment concept that is environmentally sound utilizing irrigation networks and waterside spaces.

Environmentally-friendly land readjustment plan of Waterland City Hino Electric power generation by the use of small water channel
Apartment area, separate house area and plantation area
Small scale part-time farmers to produce foods for local consumers
HONORABLE JUDGE'S AWARD  Design Award
 Mr. Fumio Seki, Taisei Engineering Co., Ltd
"VR Project of Beijing Guomian Group (Jingmian Second Factory)''
Beijing Water Cube Digital Technology Co.,Ltd. (China)
AVI-DivX AVI [91,535KB 1:30] YouTube
Located to the east of Beijing CBD, Guomian Group is overlooking from its main gate the landmark buildings in Beijing, including CCTV, China International Trade Center, and Huamao. Designed by a designer in the former Soviet Union and constructed in 1950's, its interior decoration reflects the style of the past time. Using UC-win/Road, the work represents in VR the old plant of the Guomian second plant and the new plant, which was relocated and changed into Cultural and Creative Industrial Park in recent years.

Beijing Guomian Group Jingmian 2nd Factory- office room and an old made-in- China fan Appearance of Jingmian second plant
Building front and its surroundings- the plant will change to Cultural and Creative Industrial Park.
Try to record the old plant by VR as a conserving material Arbors for the rest can also be seen by VR
HONORABLE JUDGE'S AWARD  Artistic Award
 Mr. Sinsuke Kitagawa, Yachiyo Engineering Co., Ltd.
"Creation of Road Which Is Suitable for Aso Kuju National Park"
Nishitetsu C.E.Consultant Co.,Ltd
AVI-DivX AVI [65,733KB 1:08] YouTube
This VR data shows planned four-lane road of the national highway that passes through Aso-Kuju National Park (Scenic Byways). As this route not only passes through steep landforms but also have large structures alongside accompanied by the railway running in parallel with it, it was required to take into consideration not only driving simulation (internal environment) but also external environment. Thus, using VR data, they propose to examine landscape as well as to mitigate congestion.

1-Aiming to create a road which is suitable for the Aso Kuju National Park Planned model of 4-lane "Scenic Byway"
Aiming to ease traffic congestion and preserve natural landscape
Modeling of Aso Kuju National Park and surrounding landscape
Expression of the coloured leaves in autumn Five mountains (Aso Gotake) which makes Mt. Aso

NOMINATION AWARD
"Road Monitoring System"
Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore)
AVI-DivX AVI [121,632KB 1:30] YouTube
The road monitoring system is a system that acts as a virtual driving simulator to assist drivers in rehabilitation and assessment. Therefore the simulator will be able to test the users physical condition and problem solving skills in order to rate their condition.

Road monitoring system Training simulator for physical rehabilitation for stroke patients
Signal settings and avoiding obstacles Physical balance check for the drivers
Proposal of a rehabilitation supporting system

NOMINATION AWARD
"Transfer VR simulation at Junjon Service Area in Korea"
GTSM Inc. (Korea)
AVI-DivX AVI [86,059KB 1:30] YouTube
VR simulation by using UC-win/Road was conducted for Junjon Service Area, which is managed by Seoul Regional Land Management Office. To ease traffic jams on the roads to the neighbouring cities, the simulation by UC-win/Road was used to support decision making of 3 plans including creation of bus-lane and rotary intersection.

VR simulation for transfer at Junjon Service Area Plan to construct a bridge at the intersection
The 2nd plan: Highway bus lane separated from city bus lane The 3rd plan: Making rotary
VR accelerated the decision making of the project

NOMINATION AWARD
"VR Simulation of Pedestrian Behavior at Pedestrian Bridge Construction"
Shanghai Chikushi Construction Design Co., Ltd. (China)
AVI-DivX AVI [89,153KB 1:30] YouTube
VR model shows the pedestrian behavior and flow at the time of renovation and construction of a pedestrian bridge in the United Kingdom (about 150m). Results of the data from the crowd analysis software have been linked to UC-win/Road, and the intuitive presentation has become possible. The data was used for reproducing the planned completed construction and for further safety as well as simulating the pedestrian flow.

VR Simulation of Pedestrian Behavior Results of the data from the crowd analysis software have been linked to Micro Simulation Player
Result of the regulated Pedestrian flow Pedestrian flow on the shopping streets




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Overseas Event Report (January 2010)
(Up&Coming 2010 New Year Special Issue)
2nd World Roads Conference Singapore Singapore

The 2nd World Roads Conference was held in Singapore from the 26-28 October 2009. This event, jointly organized by the Land Transport Academy, Association of Consulting Engineers Singapore, MSI Global Pte Ltd and supported by Singapore's Ministry of Transport, Public Utilities Board, National Environment Agency, Cities Development Initiative for Asia, Centre for Livable Cities and the Singapore Exhibition and Convention Bureau was a huge success and Forum 8 is proud to be one of the sponsors of this event.
The Minister of Transport & 2nd Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr. Raymond Lim visited Forum8 at our booth jointly organized by Advance Contech, our premier partner in Singapore, to experience driving in the UC-win/Road 3D virtual reality environment. He was pleased to know that Forum8 also exhibited at the 1st World Conference 2 years ago. There were a total of around 500 attendees over the 3 day show and many were thrilled and impressed with our technology. There was interest from governmental authorities to tap on such technology for educational purposes & using realistic representations to illustrate the past, present and future.



Korea ITS Academic Conference Seoul, Korea

ITS Academic Conference was held in Korea on November the 3rd, 2009.
About 200 academic researchers took part in the conference where many academic papers ware presented.
Alongside the conference, an exhibition was held, where a handful of construction consultancy firms and software houses had set up stands to demonstrate their traffic analysis programs and their ITS applications.
Together with Basissoft, our partner in Korea, FORUM8 occupied a stand in the exhibition, where the visitors could experience the UC-win/Road Driving Simulator, its communication plug-in option and the 3D stereo function.
We introduced the latest case studies of how driving simulators were used with VR in Japan, and proposed the utilization of VR in ITS. The visitors were highly impressed with the exhibits.
One visitor form the Graduate School of Environment in Seoul University purchased UC-win/Road to simulate pedestrian behavior.



CODE2009(2009 International Conference on Computational Design in Engineering) Seoul, Korea

FORUM8 jointly exhibited with our Korean partner Basissoft, at CODE2009, a two-day academic conference which began on November 4th.
FORUM8 exhibited our structural analysis solutions including UC-win/FRAME(3D), WCOMD and Engineer's Studio(TM) and also introduced UC-win/Road at the structural analysis event.
Visitors came from all over the world including Japan, USA, Taiwan and various European countries, and Professor Yabuki of Osaka University, one of our customers, gave a lecture at the conference. Many visitors showed interest in the use of VR in modeling of structures using UC-win/Road.
The experience from this conference showed that our outstanding Japanese technology can also be applicable internationally.



The SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association)Show 2009 Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.

Forum 8 exhibited our Drive Simulator at the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) Convention held from November 2nd to 5th 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The SEMA Show is the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world, which is not open to the general public. The show features almost 1,500 of the newest auto parts, tools and components. It is said that the annual event draws more than 100,000 industry leaders from more than 100 countries. At the FORUM 8 booth, jointly set up with the Mechanical Simulation Corporation (based in Ann Arbor, Michigan) , the simulator was running a UC-win/Road "proving ground" model using accurate vehicle dynamics provided through a new link with CarSim software. The SEMA sponsored booth space was set up to showcase emerging simulation technologies in the auto industry. We are expecting that more and more customers will be using our UC-win/Road Driving Simulator to enhance their productivity and efficiency.



2009 China International Industry Expo Shanghai, China

2009 China Industry Expo was held at New International Conference Center in Shanghai from November the 3rd to the 7th 2009. This event was co-organized by such organizations as the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China Council for Promotion of International Trade and Shanghai Municipal People's Government, and this was the 11th event of the kind that provides a space for interaction between national and international economic and technological partners. FORUM8 took part in the "Environment Protection Technology and Equipment Show" at the Japan pavilion with UC-win/Road Driving Simulator and ECO-Drive plug-in option as our main exhibits. There were 1,869 exhibitors from all over the world at the event and 118,325 visited the exhibitions from 73 countries.
FORUM8 exhibition stand was visited by many specialists from Chinese and international companies, researchers from various universities, including Fudan University and University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, and people from various design institutes and research centers, and they showed great interest in the VR environment created in UC-win/Road.
More than 300 visitors had a try on the driving simulator during the 4 days and we received positive feedback about how accurate the driving environment is and how realistic the driving itself feels. It was a great opportunity to promote FORUM8 products to people from information technology and automotive sectors. The next expo is scheduled to be from November the 9th to the 13th, 2010 in Shanghai.



9th CONVR(Conferencess on Construction Apprications of Virtual Reality) Sydney, Australia

FORUM8 joined the the 9th CONVR2009 at Sydney University in Australia from November 5th to 6th.
The aim of CONVR(Conferencess on Construction Apprications of Virtual Reality) is to bring together researchers and practitioners in all areas of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industry to promote the exchange of ideas for applying Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Forum8 is one of the sponsors of the conferences.
The conference had 4 sessions as below.
 1. DESIGN COLLABORATION
 2. AUTOMATION AND INTERACTION
 3. SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS
 4. BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING
39 papers and 4 keynote speech were presented at the 2-day conference.
Presenters include Mr. Yoshihiro Kobayashi, CEO of FORUM8 Arizona and researcher of Arizona State University, Mr. Tomohiro Fukuda of Osaka University and Mr. Nashwan Dawood of The University of Teeside. FORUM8 presented a paper titled "Integration of Urban Development and 5D Planning", in which FORUM8 introduced a construction simulation case using Micro Simulation Plug-in option of UC-win/Road.
We also had a chance to demonstrate UC-win/Road on screen. In addition, we were given an opportunirty to give an hands-on seminar of UC-win/Road at the lobby of theSydney University Construction Faculty building. We could draw attention from a lot of researchers.
Next CONVR is scheduled to take place at Miyagi Prefecture in Japan.


Road Safety Research and Policing Conference Sydney, Australia

Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference, which was held in Sydney from November 11th to 13th, 2009 brought together over 500 delegates not only from across Australia but also visiting from Indonesia, India, New Zealand, China, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates and Canada. During the first day, the International Conference on Intelligent Speed Adaptation was held. FORUM 8 joined the conference by exhibiting UC-win/Road. The year 2008 showed a record reduction in fatal road crashes in Australia and everyone gathered to discuss future improvements in road safety technology, the designing and maintaining of safer roads and implementing policy to encourage good road user behavior.


The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) Orlando, Florida, U.S.A
FORUM 8 exhibited our drive simulator technology paired with UC-win/Road software at the ITSEC 2009 conference in Orlando Florida from November 30th to December 3rd. Mostly the expo, (which has more than a 40 year history) is mainly for military training and simulation. However Forum8 was present to demonstrate the flexibility of our virtual reality environment for both civilian and military applications. At the event, Virtual Simulation and Training, Inc. (VSAT) from Beavercreek, Ohio, purchased both a drive simulator and the UC-win/Road software.VSAT is also the newest addition to the Forum8 Premium Partners global network.


Training in Taiwan and ITS Taiwan VR workshop Taiwan

ITS Taiwan, Civlil Engineering IT Simulation Research Center of National Taiwan University, Forum 8 and Junesun Digital Information Service Corporation, which has joined FORUM 8 distributor network, jointly organized a series of marketing events for 3 days from November 25-27 2009, including a hands-on experience seminar for UC-win/Road on the last day. Due to overwhelming response, we had to double the seminar grounds & rent an additional room for the seminar. Approximately 40 professionals from transport, architectural, engineering, construction, defense industries and governmental institutions attended this event and had a chance to experience the ease of data creation in UC-win/Road. At the workshop, we introduced the product overview and the case study of UC-win/Road and Micro Simulation Player and also introduced the awarded works of the 3D VR Simulation Contest. Apart from UC-win/Road, attendees were also keen in the driving simulator and were keen to incorporate the use of 3D visualization tools in their work process for enhanced productivity and efficiency. There was a good level of interest generated from this seminar and we hope for this to be the first step in penetrating the Taiwanese market. More events of similar nature are planned to be organized in the coming year.


Civils2009 London, U.K.
FORUM8 exhibited UC-win/Road at Civils 2009 from November 25th to 26th in London. Civils 2009 is an annual event which is organized by emap, who specializes in b2b Exhibitions, Events, Magazines, Conferences and Data, and publishes a magazine called New Civil Engineer in the UK. Our main exhibit was UC-win/Road and we also had steering wheel and pedals for people to experience driving. In total, about 50 visitors experienced driving by UC-win/Road. Some visitors including an civil engineering organization from Africa have become our hopeful prospects and we planning to develop partnership with them. FORUM8 is talking with them for possible collaboration in a bid for a project. Others are interested in using 3D VR in their marketing and very impressed by our interactive simulation or see a lot of potential in using UC-win/Road for transport planning.




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15th Embarcadero Developer Camp
(Up&Coming 2010 New Year Special Issue)
The 15th Embarcadero Developer Camp was held at Tokyo International Forum on December 2th, 2009. Many of our programs are developed in Dephi, which is a software development environment from Embarcadero Technologies.
"Embarcadero Developer Camp" is a technology event that is regularly held by Embarcadero Technologies. We were given an opportunity to present at case study session, titled "Use Delphi! To make 3D VR simulation - VR-Studio , UC-win/Road, UC-win/Road SDK-", where our technical staff presented case studies. In the session, we introduced the overviews of "VR-Studio" and "UC-win/Road", and its applications in driving simulators for railway and road vehicles, as well as in landscape design. We also demonstrated our software development kit which utilizes Delphi. According to questionnaire results, there was a participant who was hoping to discover how to build 3D VR using only Delphi, but majority of the audience said that the session was very informative. We are very pleased that many participants told us that they acquired some interest in UC-win/Road after the session.
FORUM8 will continue developing "VR-Studio", "UC-win/Road" and the UC-win/Road Software Development Kit to help other developers realize the world of 3D VR simulation. We would like to thank the staff at Embarcadero Technologies for giving us an opportunity to take part in the session.



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Seminar Reports Back Number
2011201020092008200720062005


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