Another hero : Ken Perlin.
According to this page (by him he invented the first shading language. He also created the widely used Perlin noise, and some other cool stuff.

I had some wrong facts about HDR images, so here’s the truth :

( http://www.highpoly3d.com/writer/tutorials/hdri/hdri.htm )
“an HDRI image contains much more information than a 24 or 32 bit one. In fact, not only can you have floating point (fraction) values for each channel, you can also have numbers that greatly exceed 255. Hence a channel value of 942.32 is perfectly legal. Thus, even though your eye may not be able to see this, the image itself may contain many bright areas which your eyes do not detect. Also, conversely in the dark areas, there may still be valuable information there, however you can not currently see it.”

An article and photos at pixelcreation.com.

In french.

Virtual Training for SNCF Freight Agents

SNCF Innovation and Research Department just received the LAVAL VIRTUAL 2005 Award in “Automotive, Aeronautical and Transportation” for SIMURAT : simulator to teach how to inspect freight wagons. This system is a big step forward in inspector training, which allows them to use virutal techniques instead of a real train. Several training platforms are expected to be in service by the end of the year.

Laval Virtual 2005, is the seventh edition of this european exhibition on virtual reality, which has become the annual meeting for all the specialists. SNCF participates regularly: in 2000, it already had received an award in the “Industry” domain, for another simulator for the training of train drivers to control and operate points blades on high speed lines.

(yes, that’s our baby

The interview. The discussion