Quantum3D Announces IData 3.0 — Enhanced, Cross-Platform Visual Computing Framework for FAA DO-178B Certified HMIs

SAN JOSE, CA, Embedded Systems Conference SV–April 2, 2007–Quantum3D®, Inc., a leading provider of Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) open-architecture, realtime visual computing solutions for the Visual and Sensor Simulation and Training (VSST) and Embedded Visual Computing (EVC) markets, today announced the release of IData® 3.0, the latest version of Quantum3D’s innovative Human-Machine Interface (HMI) development toolset and visual computing framework. IData is a suite of powerful, cost-effective, PC-based HMI tools that enables developers to rapidly prototype, develop and deploy dynamic and interactive cross-platform 2D and 3D HMIs for high-performance graphics and video-intensive applications such as avionics, vehicle electronics, unmanned vehicle control, C4ISR systems, industrial automation, medical systems and embedded training. The IData product family will be featured in the SYSGO/Quantum3D booth (no. 732) at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, CA, April 3-5, 2007.

IData 3.0 uniquely enables model-based HMI engineering across an entire product lifecycle—from system engineering through rapid prototyping, development, testing, training and deployment across multiple embedded target platforms. IData 3.0 extends IData’s Dynamic Bytecode™ technology with powerful integrated logic-modeling capabilities, enabling graphics developers to rapidly and easily create optimized HMI models that encapsulate all required graphical and logical information for the display with minimum supporting code. The resulting Dynamic Bytecode HMI databases work with the enhanced IData 3.0 Renderer and port directly to a wide variety of platforms and operating systems for both desktop and embedded computing environments without subsequent code generation. IData 3.0 also includes TrueStroke™ lines, a new feature for generating platform-independent anti-aliased lines. In addition, IData 3.0 supports powerful new development and deployment modules, including IDataMap™ for displaying scalable geospatial data in deeply embedded environments and the IDataMotif™ widget library, which provides extensible, built-in GUI widgets for rapid creation of user-interactive content that is portable to any operating environment.

"IData 3.0 builds upon IData’s unique, patent-pending model-based development technology for HMIs," said Ross Q. Smith, Quantum3D president and co-founder. "With its new Logic Engine and modules like IDataMAP and IDataMotif, IData 3.0 allows development teams to rapidly create and test advanced new concepts and implement the best designs and the functionality beneath them. These new capabilities allow engineers at all levels of HMI development to collaborate in making effective HMIs in record time that incorporate advanced features demanded by today’s complex visual computing systems."

New IData Logic Engine
IData 3.0 includes a powerful new Logic Engine that provides comprehensive logic modeling capabilities. With IData 3.0, HMI developers can graphically construct logic models that specify the dynamic behavior of each element of the HMI in a user-friendly graphical modeling environment. Developers can specify complex conditional expressions, mathematical expressions, calls to user-specified external routines or state logic, allowing the dynamic behavior of the HMI to be captured in the model itself, rather than in third-party tools or source code. The logical specification thus captured by the modeling process is encoded along with the visual specification within the IData Dynamic Bytecode database. At runtime, the IData cross-platform Render Engine efficiently processes the logic model in realtime on any IData platform and OS without code generation, compilation or linking.

New IDataMotif™ Widget Library
HMI developers increasingly rely on powerful user-interface (UI) features in their designs. IData 3.0 is compatible with Quantum3D’s new IDataMotif Widget Library. The IDataMotif library features a powerful and extensive set of widgets supporting key UI features such as popup menus, tabular data displays, tabbed panels, combo boxes, list boxes, radio groups, text entries and others. These widgets are portable to any IData supported platform, enabling small-footprint HMI applications with sophisticated UIs to be deployed in virtually any embedded environment.

New IDataMap™
IData newest add-on module, IDataMap, is available as an option for IData 3.0 customers. IDataMap enables HMI developers to incorporate a fully featured global, geospatial digital map or map set for navigation, C4ISR mission planning and other applications. With support for both 2D and 3D maps, IDataMap allows developers to choose the best view consistent with the application type and processing power available and enables fusion of terrain, raster and vector data from multiple sources. IDataMap includes a complete MIL-STD-2525B compliant symbology set and leverages IData’s powerful customer-specific symbology capabilities to allow development of custom geospatial overlays to present stored or dynamically changing data. Using IData 3.0’s new picking capabilities, HMI developers can design custom map layers in any shape that are cursor selectable, allowing powerful map applications to be easily developed and deployed anywhere. IDataMap, when combined with IData3D for high-performance realtime 3D-scene management, provides the most complete solution for deeply embedded, certifiable 2D and 3D geospatial visual computing applications on the market today.


New IData TrueStroke™ Lines
In mission-critical applications such as primary flight displays, C4ISR applications and C2 applications, image quality is of vital importance to minimize artifacts and potential mistakes. IData 3.0 includes a new TrueStroke Line capability that allows an IData HMI to achieve superior and consistent anti-aliased line quality on any platform, even those platforms with limited or no support for anti-aliased lines. IData TrueStroke Lines are rendered using user-defined line profiles, allowing the HMI developer to tune line quality to match the intended display. TrueStroke lines support virtually any desired line width and feature single pass haloing and high-quality vertex joins for optimum performance and image quality at any line width or display resolution.

IData178 Cert Kit for FAA DO-178B Level-A Applications
Quantum3D IData178 is a complete FAA DO-178B Certification Package for the production of Level-A safety-critical certified HMI applications using the IData advanced HMI toolset. Developed to exacting DO-178B standards by adherence to strict processes with the oversight of FAA Designated Engineering Representatives (DERs), the IData178 Cert Kit includes source code for the IData Render Engine, which is the foundation for IData, along with a complete set of reusable “certification artifacts” for the IData Render Engine that are essential for certification efforts. In addition, the IData178 Cert Kit includes a qualifiable automated HMI Verification Tool, and a comprehensive Test Harness that achieves complete MC/DC structural coverage of the IData Render Engine code.

Availability and Pricing
IData’s cross-platform runtime allows applications to be deployed under Windows, Linux, VxWorks and PikeOS operating systems as well as other realtime operating systems on platforms that range from 3D-enabled PDAs and cell phones to embedded avionics and vetronics computers to powerful desktop workstations. Since all of IData’s GUI functionality is achieved without the use of any underlying OS-specific systems support, the tool suite allows complete portability of IData HMIs to small-footprint embedded environments. IData 3.0 Pro Development Toolkit, which includes unlimited, royalty-free runtimes for Linux- and Windows-based OpenGL® platforms, is available immediately, with international pricing starting at $30,000 USD.

About Quantum3D
Quantum3D develops and markets COTS realtime, open-architecture Image Generation (IG) solutions, Embedded Visual Computing (EVC) systems and subsystems, development software and support services for the synthetic environment visual and sensor simulation and training and tactical and industrial visual computing markets. Quantum3D is a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, California, with development centers located in Phoenix, AZ, Huntsville, AL, and Orlando, FL and with sales and logistics in Europe via Quantum3D, Ltd., located in Reading, UK. For more information about Quantum3D real-time visual computing solutions, please visit www.quantum3d.com.

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Quantum3D, the Quantum3D logo, IData, IData Logic, IData TrueStroke, IDataMap and IDataMotif are registered trademarks and TrueStroke, IDataMotif, Dynamic Bytecode and IDataMAP are trademarks of Quantum3D, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners

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