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Visual Retailing version 4.40 was unveiled at a user group meeting held in the newly refurbished conference facilities of the "Laboratory Institute of Merchandising" (LIM) in New York.

It was wonderful to see former students of LIM in the audience as employees of local companies such as VR users "Macy's" and VR partner "Applied Retail Technology". This is a brilliant example of partnerships delivering real value to each party involved; college, vendor, student and employer.

The users were impressed with the improved speed, image quality and productivity of the new Visual Retailing tools. Anti-aliased images and shadows in the virtual store provided the WOW! factor but the productivity gains in vrStore, vrFixture, vrCapture and vrStoryboard put smiles on everyones faces.

Version 4.40 also saw the introcution of vrExport. A whole new application that exports processed images out of the Visual Retailing database for use in reporting and web stores. vrExport and all of the other new features are outlined below.

Version 4.40 delivers upon a number of key goals for new and existing users. There are two themes running through the new enhancements; Productivity and Image Quality.

• Productivity is at the forefront of everyone's mind and 4.40 delivers improved rendering speed and increases throughput in a number of areas. The image acquisition process has been streamlined and made more accessible whilst the creation of an “all-in-one” fixture planogram reduces the time required setting up stores and planogram documents.
  
• Image quality has been dramatically improved through the introduction of anti-aliasing, 3D shadows and a host of new tools in vrShape and vrStoryboard.

For more details on these features, please see the headlines below, or download the What's new in 4.40 document from here.

• Fixture planograms can now contain 3D views of the Fixture. This makes it possible to layout the whole page when the Fixture is being created in vrFixture.
• The 3D Fixture views are automatically added to a new "Fixture Views" section of the vrStore "Views list" when a Fixture is placed in a store.
• Fixtures are automatically numbered when they are inserted into vrStore
• A new "Renumber all Fixtures" function makes it fast and easy to number all, or just some, of the Fixtures without needing to open and close Properties dialogue boxes.

• A new "High Contrast" rendering style has been added to make it fast and easy to produce easy to read floor plans complete with numbered fixtures.
• vrStore now includes a shadow mode that can produce highly realistic 3D images.
• vrStore has improved lighting which produces more realistic images.
• Fixture views and 3D views can now have a transparent background and planograms are anti-aliased to produce smoother edges. 

• vrStoryboard now includes headers and footers with improved page numbering.
• Objects embedded within a storyboard can now be rotated, cropped and moved using the cursor keys.
• Storyboards can be saved directly as PDF files.
• Storyboards can be previewed or presented as a slide presentation.
• The jaggy edges have been eliminated now that images and planograms are anti-aliased in vrStore and vrStoryboard.

• “vrExport” is a new application introduced in version 4.40
• It provides the ability to export masked PNG images of merchandise directly from the Visual Retailing database.
• vrExport isn't restricted to PNG as it can also export; JPG and BMP file types.
• It can export images to any specified size.
• It is ideal for users who want to add images to their financial reporting systems.
• The processed images, with the eliminated backgrounds, are ideal for populating web site catalogues.
• Please Note: This is a new application, existing users need to purchase an additional license.

• vrStore rendering has been significantly speeded up making it faster to walk the store and render linked documents.
• The memory footprint of vrStore has been significantly reduced, which means that more can be achieved before hitting the 2Gb process limits of Windows XP.

We believe version 4.40 addresses a lot of user requests and introduces some innovations that will eliminate many repetitive processes. It's another big step forward and we hope you enjoy the new features.

We are now heavily involved in the development of both version 4.5 and 5.0 and, as ever, we look forward to receiving your feedback on what's good and bad about the new features in 4.40 together with your requests for new features and enhancements.

Best regards,

The VR Development and Support teams.