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Hosted by the St. Augustine Yacht Club, the 29th annual event will feature a nighttime parade of sailboats, trawlers, fishing boats and recreational boats aglitter with brilliant lighted displays ranging from patriotic to whimsical. Boat owners will try to out-dazzle the competition in a spirited contest featuring prizes in a variety of categories featuring boats from 15 to 85 feet in length.

The Regatta of Lights gets underway at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 12th, as the boats enter Matanzas Bay, pass the Castillo de San Marcos and sail single file for the Bridge of Lions.

The regatta will then circle the bay to allow spectators and regatta judges to appreciate the illuminated ingenuity of each contestant.

Videogames Help Real CSI Solve Crimes

11.27.09

Soon, real criminal investigation teams will be using videogame technology to help forensic scientists collaborate virtually to re-create what happened at the scene of the crime.

by Reuters  

RALEIGH, North Carolina - In hit TV crime drama show "C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation," and its two spin-offs, the criminologists use the latest technology to solve grisly murders and other crimes.

Soon, real criminal investigation teams will be using videogame technology to help forensic scientists collaborate virtually to re-create what happened at the scene of the crime.

"The problem is that while there have been major advancements in the field of forensic science technology, how investigative teams come together to collaborate has not changed over the years," said Dr. Mitzi Montoya, Zelnak Professor of Marketing and Innovation Management at North Carolina State University (NC State).

NC State recently received a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program to help lay a foundation that promotes greater collaboration in the field of forensic science - a platform they call IC-CRIME (interdisciplinary, cyber-enabled crime reconstruction through innovative methodology and engagement).

The IC-CRIME platform will employ the latest in 3-D laser scanning technologies and run on the Unity game engine technology, which powers over 50 commercial games like "FusionFall" and "VooDude."

The laser scanner technology, developed by Research Triangle Park company 3rdTech, will allow investigators to accurately record room and object dimensions, as well as the placement of every piece of evidence in a crime scene.

 

GAMING TO CRIME

The scanners can capture millions of data points at a crime scene within a few minutes and recreate highly detailed virtual crime scenes.

"The game world will be embedded within a Web page also containing data in the form of text and 2D graphics," said Dr. Michael Young, associate professor of computer science and an expert in serious gaming at NC State...

Lasers were fired at the town from the ground and from the air to capture the height of buildings, trees and other features, using a technique called Lidar. Adding information from aerial photos and traditional surveys produced a full-colour 3D map, built up from more than 700 million points. The map is accurate to 4 centimetres in x, y and z - by comparison 3D structures in Google Earth are accurate to about 15 metres. "It's almost what you'd see if you flew around the area," says Hart. See a video of the map, above.