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New job, new country, and OpenCL/CUDA

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With the launch of this new website I promised to post updates more often… and I have no excuse given that WordPress makes blogging so easy. So what’s the latest news?

Well, I’m excited to say that I’ve recently landed a new job in the Netherlands. In a couple of weeks time I’ll be starting work at the University of Groningen, doing post-doctorate research in OpenCL/CUDA. I’ll be moving from the UK so I have a lot of organising to do, but I’m really looking forward to working with this state-of-the-art technology.

Of course, there have been requests in the past for some kind of OpenCL/CUDA support within PolyVox. It seems that I will now be gaining the expertise and experience to decide whether this is a good idea, and to implement it if desired. It won’t be for several months as I have a lot to do in the mean time, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

We are also getting very close to announcing our first game. The only reason it isn’t being announced right now is that I want to complete the move first, so that I have time to respond to any interest which the game generates. That puts an announcement about three weeks away… so watch this space!

Groningen, The Netherlands

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New forums are now live

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I’ve spent most of today moving the forums from the old domain to the new one. Actually moving the files and data wasn’t too difficult, but of course I also wanted some kind of visual continuity between the main site and the forums.

There are some bridges available to connect WordPress and PhpBB together, but they seemed more focused on maintaining a common user database rather than allowing PhpBB to be directly embedded in a WordPress page. Truly embedding PhpBB  appears to be quite complex and beyond my limited web skills, so in the end I settled for keeping them as separate sites and just matching up the styles.

It’s not seamless but I think it’s pretty good, and keeping them separate should also make maintenance easier. You can check out the new forums here:

http://www.volumesoffun.com/phpBB3/

Let us know what you think, and/or if you have any problems since the move.

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Welcome to Volumes Of Fun

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Volumes Of Fun is the new home for the PolyVox voxel terrain library. If you were a member of our community at our previous location (Thermite3D) then you will already be familiar with PolyVox and what it can do. If not, then you can get an overview of the system here.

There are a few reasons for the new website, domain, and image:

  • Over the last few years we have been developing two related technologies – PolyVox and Thermite3D. Of these, PolyVox shows the greatest potential to exist as a stand alone Open Source system and Thermite3D has increasingly been pushed to the background. The old domain name implied that Thermite3D was the most important component, and this led to some confusion. The new name does not reference any particular project.
  • We would like the option of using the new website to promote and distribute our own games, built on the PolyVox library. This means tapping into the existing interest surrounding PolyVox, and using our Open Source work to promote our commercial ambitions.
  • The new site is more modern and supports a blog, options for Facebook/Twitter integration, etc. These will be useful for promoting the project in the future..

PolyVox will continue to exist as Open Source and will still be actively developed on Gitorious. Thermite3D will also remain on Gitorious, but it faces an uncertain future in that development may tail off.

Over the coming weeks we will be shutting down various services related to the old domain (FaceBook, Twitter, etc) and in some cases opening corresponding services for the new domain. Much of the static information has already been moved across and the forums will also follow.

We would very much like to hear you opinion on these developments, and please report any problems or issues which you find with the new site.

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