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Last April AGOCG held a workshop to consider the support needs of researchers and teachers in art and design departments in their use of IT. AGOCG have agreed that this will be a focus area of activity during the next year. We are currently putting together a series of case studies which will come out as an AGOCG Technical Report (to be advertised in this Newsletter). We are also looking to promote centrally funded activities to art and design departments. These include services funded through the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils, such as Mailbase, CHEST and NISS. Some details of these services are given inside this Newsletter together with contact details. I would welcome further ideas regarding activities in the art and design areas which fall within the remit (and budget!) of AGOCG.
The Support Initiative for Multimedia Applications (SIMA) is funded under the JISC New Technologies Initiative. As reported in the last Newsletter you can sign-up for the output. If you have not yet done so and have lost the form then get in touch. The output will provide timely advice for your multimedia work. Current projects include: evaluation of methods for delivering training materials across the network; network solutions for multimedia; image capture; good practices for video conferencing; and guidance on running a World Wide Web service. Can you afford to miss this information?
Workshops are being planned for January and February as part of the SIMA project. One of these will look at the nature of the projects for the second year of project funding and the other will address the strategic role of the WWW in UK Higher Education (see below). These will be advertised but to ensure you get the call to contribute, please email me.
Current AGOCG projects which are under way include: review of visualization systems; evaluation of HyperGraph which is a resource of teaching materials collected through Siggraph; report on virtual reality research and application activities in the UK and an evaluation of image database products. All will result in reports which will be advertised in this Newsletter.
AGOCG information will be available on the WWW via the following URL: http://www.agocg.ac.uk:8080/agocg/. We will be looking to mount more information using online sources such as WWW and NISS-WAIS in the future.
The WWW is becoming an important tool for UK Higher Education. AGOCG as part of their SIMA project are going to run a workshop in January 1995 to consider the WWW as an enabling tool for many activities. This will look at how the WWW can and should be used in UK Higher Education and will make the conclusions widely available.
In this issue we focus on software for support of the use of the Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM). Further details are available from CHEST (chest@chest.ac.uk) or via the chest-cgm@mailbase.ac.uk list.
This software tests metafiles for conformance and reports back on the contents. It will take as input a CGM in any encoding which claims to be written to the CGM standard. It also allows you to have a trace of the contents of the metafile and a summary of the contents. This is supplied by CGM Technology Software.
This package provides a general purpose interface for Apple Macintosh software to allow import and export of CGM files from software which does not otherwise support CGM. MetaPICT translates CGM into PICT or PICT2 files. Graphporter enables CGMs to be created from Macintosh software. This is supplied by GSC Associates.
For details of prices, use the NISS service or contact CHEST directly.
The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils, funds a number of national information services and initiatives which benefit the higher education and research community in the UK. These include online bibliographic databases, bulletin boards, software archives, data archives, electronic mail discussion lists, the Advisory Group on Computer Graphics (AGOCG), arranging discount offers on quality commercial software, and more. Brief details and email contacts are given below. For more information on JISC services contact the ISSC Coordinator, Shirleen Craig.
CHEST obtains quality software and datasets for the UK Higher Education and Research Community at low prices and attractive terms. CHEST also negotiates for the provision of training materials, hardware and other products to meet community needs. (chest@chest.ac.uk).
NISS serves the academic community by promoting an electronic information culture through providing access to useful collections of information. It does this by acting as a focus for computer disseminated information for the academic community via services including NISS Gateway, NISS Bulletin Board and NISS Wide Area Information Server. The telnet address is niss.ac.uk (niss@niss.ac.uk).
Mailbase allows users to exchange ideas with other workers in their field in other institutions. AGOCG use the service and have a number of mailing lists set up.
For information about the available lists send a message containing only the text:
lists
tomailbase@mailbase.ac.uk. To receive more information send a mail message containing only the word help.
HENSA/micros at Lancaster University and HENSA/unix at the University of Kent provide software archives for the community on micros and unix respectively. These involve shadowing major resource banks overseas, providing a source for HE-produced software, e.g. RALCGM and a source of public domain and shareware software.
To login to the services: machine name unix.hensa.ac.uk, username anonymous, your email address as the password, machine name micros.hensa.ac.uk, username hensa, password hensa.
BIDS provides network access to several frequently updated bibliographic databases containing full details of articles published in a wide range of journals, (http://www.bids.ac.uk/).
MIDAS provides on-line access to, and support for, many large and complex datasets, including the UK Census of Population, continuous government surveys, macroeconomic time series databanks, and scientific datasets, (gopher://cs6400.mcc.ac.uk/).
UKOLN's main areas of interest are the use of networks by the library and information community (they host BUBL and maintain the UK gopher National entry point), and the management of bibliographic data, (http://www.ukoln.bath).
The BUBL Information Service provides organised, user-friendly, access to Internet Resources and a specialist service to the Library and Information Services community (http://www.bubl.bath).
Regular readers of G&V will need no reminding about AGOCG Library but there may be one or two new readers at this time of year who are unaware of its existence. The project was set up to try to capture all those hard-to-get computer-generated graphics. We now have over 250 animation clips which can be borrowed to illustrate various techniques and results. The index to the clips runs to over 30 pages when printed. The full index is available in the file index.txt associated with the agocg-resources list on mailbase.
Speaking of mailbase, we would like to encourage as many people as possible to make use of the list to share their expertise (and pick the brains of colleagues!) on locating and using resources and in putting forward any ideas they might have on how the library should develop. We would also be interested to know how you use our material (and other material like it) and to hear about any resources you might like to offer for wider access.
You can join the list by sending the message
join agocg-resources <firstname> <lastname>to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk.
Comments, hints, suggestions are also very welcome and can be sent to agocg_library@dmu.ac.uk
There will be an Introduction to Multimedia seminar at the Computer Graphics Unit, University of Manchester in November. This will provide a broad overview of multimedia, with discussion about each part - image, video, sound, text, the formats they use and how they are put together. I will also be covering what hardware is required, and what kind of specification you should be looking for when buying hardware. There will also be some demonstrations of multimedia software, such as multimedia CAL, World Wide Web (WWW) and video conferencing. If you are interested in attending the seminar, which is free of charge, please contact me at the address below.
Online support is now available via the WWW and a mailbase list. The WWW pages contain assorted documents and pointers to other sites to get you started using multimedia. There is an introduction/FAQ to multimedia, information about relevant documentation produced elsewhere and pointers to other multimedia related web sites. There are several pages giving details of public domain and shareware conversion utilities, with links to the software or sites which carry it. You should be able to find a utility to convert almost any image, sound or video format to any other on a range of platforms. Actually the video side of this is still a bit sparse, so if you have any favourite utilities please let me know. I will also be using these pages to provide details of any courses, seminars and training materials that we produce. These pages are still under development, and if you have any comments or suggestions, please get in touch. These pages can be found on the AGOCG web server http://www.agocg.ac.uk:8080/agocg/ alternatively you can access them directly at http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/staff/cunningham/mmsup.html.
The mailbase list is called agocg-mm. This is intended as a general discussion list for anything to do with multimedia, and again course announcements etc. will be made here. To join this list send a message to: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the following in the body of the message:
join agocg-mm (firstname) (lastname)
To post to this group once you have joined post your message to: agocg-mm@mailbase.ac.uk Only post messages for the group to this address, everything else, joining, leaving etc. post to: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk
If you are interested in attending the seminar, or require any other information, please contact me.
A decade or so ago it appeared that there might be emerging a series of ISO standards for graphics programming that would cover the majority of applications which required pictures to be drawn and which would ease support problems by constraining graphics programming to a handful of systems. In the event, the widespread adoption of windowing systems with indigenous graphics systems has broadened the scope for graphics programmers. At the same time, new graphics libraries have appeared and there is a steady stream of books which explain how to create graphics programs from first principles. Amidst all of this, proprietary graphics libraries remain available in the marketplace. Rather than seeing a more coherent, standard set of facilities emerge, the graphics programmer has witnessed a growth in the range and diversity of graphics funtionality available. Potential support requirements have increased. To some extent, the advent of distributed computing via the client/server approach has mitigated support requirements in that the graphics application need not necessarily run on the user's system; but this only generally applies if the user does not need the graphics integrated into a native application. The upshot of all of this is that graphics programming has become a potentially problematic support area for computing services. This seminar examines the implications and suggests some ways forward to improve support arrangements.
Computing Services in Higher Education are faced with the issue of which programming tools to support. On the one hand, the number of users requiring graphics programming facilities has dropped substantially in the past decade due to the ever increasing sophistication of graphics applications packages On the other hand, for those users who do require programming facilities to create pictures, it is becoming increasingly complex to make use of the facilities. It is thus important that they are aware of the functionality available, as well as the level of educational investment that is potentially involved, and can make sensible choices about which tools to use. Another factor is that the implementation of software will increasingly be required to run under a windowing system; if such software requires graphics, what's the best way to proceed?
In order to attempt to provide some guidelines for computing services in the area of graphics programming tools, it is planned to run a seminar, under the auspices of AGOCG, at which important issues relating to the support of graphics programming can be discussed. It is the purpose of this seminar to both outline the choice of major graphics programming tools available to programmers and to provide guidance as to which tools to use.
The seminar will concentrate on defining the areas in which the particular tools are designed to be used, and seek to answer questions such as:
The seminar is intended to deal specifically with graphics programming systems, not interactive paint or draw packages, GUI systems, or packaged software generally.
The seminar details have not been finalised, but sessions in the following areas are planned:
Further details will be circulated via the usual em ail lists closer to the seminar date.
As part of the national SuperJANET project 14 sites are trialling Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) technology. One of the advantages of this technology is that it can support audio and video communications as well as traditional data communications. A number of experimental projects are exercising the technology, but it was also felt that some early services should be deployed. The first such service is conference room/seminar room video conferencing involving multiple sites.
At the time of writing (early May) 12 of the 14 sites have ATM technology connected to the intersite ATM network and have the required analogue to digital video equipment (known as a codec) on site. It is necessary to connect the relevant cameras, monitors, microphones and speakers in a suitable room to offer a service. At the present time the following sites have at least one studio or seminar room that has been involved in meetings over the network:
The other sites that have ATM and video codecs are: Birmingham University, University of Wales College of Cardiff, Glasgow University, Imperial College London and Leeds University. It is hoped that they will also offer video facilities by next academic year. Daresbury Laboratory should also be connected to the video network in July.
The equipment used allows for open audio ie each site can hear everything being said at all the other sites. For a 2-site conference each site obviously sees the other site. For more than 2 sites the conference can be voice switched, ie you see the site where the person is talking (or where the person who is talking the loudest is!) and this is the normal method for meetings. Otherwise one site can always be seen by the other sites irrespective of who is talking, this is an alternative method for lectures.
It is necessary to book the facilities required, both the use of intersite links and the local facilities. A central booking system for the SuperJANET intersite facilities has been set up at the lead site for this part of the project, Edinburgh University Computing Services. In order to help users, the first version of a guide has been produced, which includes details of the local facilities at each site, how to make bookings bye-mail, phone and FAX, etc. To get an electronic copy of the guide send an e-mail message to: sjvidguide@edinburgh.ac.uk
No subject or contents in the message are needed. Alternatively if you want a paper copy of the guide send a message to: E.Neail@ukerna.ac.uk and ask for a copy of The SuperJANET Video Network Users Guide.
The pilot service, which can be used by ANY member of the UK academic and research community not just people at the ATM sites (but subject to the availability of rooms etc), commenced on 1 June 1994 and bookings are now being taken. If the pilot is successful it is hoped to make the video pilot service into a full service in time for the next academic year.
During the pilot period there may be some unexpected service interruptions but these will obviously be kept to a minimum. If you have any comments on the service (positive or negative) please could you send them to atmops@jnt. ac. uk since this e-mail distribution list covers the people who are involved in delivering the ATM and video services. We hope that some of you will be willing to act to some extent as guinea pigs in this exciting new development associated with the SuperJANET project.
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC24, the Computer Graphics and Image Processing standards committee, held its 1994 meeting in June in Bordeaux, France. The social event included a tour of a vineyard and the sampling of local produce! Sixty five experts from twelve countries took part in the meeting. SC24 has four Working Groups, WGs 1, 4, 6 and 7. These cover WG1, Architecture, WG4, Language Bindings and Registration, WG6, Multimedia Presentation and Interchange, and WG7, Image Processing and Interchange. The BSI committee IST/31 shadows ISO's SC24 and has a similar structure of working groups. As well as the plenary sessions of SC24 and WG meetings there were many liaison meetings between WGs.
As of 1st October 1993 the BSI had taken over the Secretariat of SC24. Jean Stride is the Secretary to the Committee. She is also the Secretary for IST /31. Barry Shepherd, the former chair of SC24, has left IBM in the USA and has had to resign from standards work due to lack of support facilities. The meeting was chaired by G S Steve Carson from the USA. At the meeting he was acting chairman but it is expected that ANSI will nominate him formally at their next meeting and that he will then become chair of SC24. The next meeting of SC24 will be held in Ottawa, Canada in July 1995. At the plenary session of SC24 it resolved to encourage ISO to make JTC1 standards available electronically and to use JTC1 standards, such as SGML and CGM, for this purpose. It is accepted that there are issues of copyright and charging to be sorted out but it was felt that we should practice what we preach and make standards available electronically as well as on paper.
This group was disbanded at the meeting. Following the resignation of Peter Bono as the convener and with no replacement coming forward, it was decided to disband the working group re-allocate its responsibilities to either individuals or to SC24 itself.
The ISO Procedures for the Registration of Graphical Items (IS 9973) was approved for publication as an International Standard (IS). A number of graphical items were approved for registration.
The (GKS, IS 7942) became a standard in 1985. It provides a set of functions for computer graphics programming that can be used by a range of applications. There are language bindings for Ada, C, Fortran and Pascal. Each standard is reviewed after 5 years and consequently a review of GKS was commenced in 1990. A new version, to be known as GKS-94 was approved as an IS at an editing meeting earlier this year. GKS-94 will provide a larger set of basic graphics elements, increased selection and editing facilities and improved input control. Language bindings for C and Fortran 90 will be completed in the next 18 months. When a new version of a standard is published this normally supersedes the previous version. However, it had been proposed that for GKS there should be an overlap period, possibly 5 years, where both versions would be valid. This proposal had been very controversial.
At this meeting it was finally resolved not to have an overlap period. The earlier version of the standard will be known as GKS-85 and will now be superseded by the new version, GKS-94. The major area of concern was whether applications which had been written to use the old version would still be able to run using the new version. Assurances were given that there would be backwards compatibility. The new GKS-94 C is a superset of the old GKS-85 C. The situation for Fortran is slightly more complicated because the language binding for GKS-85 was to Fortran 77 and that for GKS-94 is to Fortran 90. The old and new bindings can be mixed but it is preferable to use the Fortran 90 language binding with GKS-94. Although the work on GKS-94 is now complete and the language bindings are well under way work is now starting on metafiles, audit trails and archives for GKS-94. This is likely to be completed in 1996 or 1997.
The Programmers Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS, IS 9592) and PHIGS Extensions for Lighting and Surfaces (PHIGS PLUS) provide a set of functions for displaying, manipulating and interacting with a 3D geometric graphics model. PHIGS became a standard in 1990 and so would be due for review in 1995. At the previous meeting it was decided to reaffirm PHIGS and not to do a full review but instead to develop some amendments. These amendments would be split into 5 areas: input, control, non-retained data, text, and registration. This has resulted in ten amendments being proposed to the various parts of the PHIGS standard. Three of these amendments were progressed as Draft Amendments at the meeting and the remainder will be progressed as Draft Amendments during the next six months as the resolutions made at the meeting are incorporated.
The Rapporteur for PHIGS, William Clifford, has resigned and a new rapporteur is being sought. PHIGS will need to be republished because more than two amendments have been approved. UK experts are likely to become the editors for this work.
The Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM, IS 8632) standard was published in 1987 as an ISO standard. It standardizes the storage of pictures on computer systems. This allows pictures to be transferred between different applications in a standard way across networks. The standard has been a popular one and is supported by a wide range of graphics software today. It is also used in other standards such as CALS, ODA and SGML.
Some extensions have already been made to the standard (CGM:1987 Amendment 1). CGM:1987 Amendment 3 further extended CGM to handle more recent technological advances in software and hardware. In 1992, ISO published a new version of the document, IS8632-1992 (CGM:1992), which includes amendments 1 and 3 to the 1987 version and the defect reports which have been approved. This has recently been published by BSI as EN28632:1994 Parts 1-4.
In order to aid inter-operability a need for profiles of CGM has been identified. Amendment 1 is a set of rules for such profiles, a Model profile and Profile Conformance requirements for metafiles, generators and interpreters. This amendment was agreed at the previous meeting in Steamboat Springs last year. The necessary editing of the document to implement the resolutions made at the meeting has continued during the year. A draft of the final text was discussed and final changes agreed. The IS text will be sent to ISO in August and should be published before the end of this year. This amendment will enable conformance testing services to verify the conformance of CGM generators and interpreters as well as of CGM files themselves. There were also discussions about existing profiles and what International Standardised Profiles (ISPs) are required. Work on 4 ISPs is being progressed within EWOS to satisfy the requirements of different application areas. These are for Basic and Advanced Scientific and Technical Graphics and Basic and Advanced Presentation and Visualisation. The Draft ISPs will be ballotted prior to the SC24 meeting next year.
This Draft Amendment (DAM) 2 adds application structure into the metafile. There are only a few elements defined for this work. These identify the start and end of structures in the metafile, give attribute details about the structure in an application-dependent way and provide for a directory of pictures and structures. This amendment will enable CGM to be used more effectively by other standards, particularly objectoriented ones. The ballot for CGM DAM 2 was not scheduled to close until the end of June, two weeks after the close of the meeting. However the nations who were expected to comment had all managed to do so prior to the meeting. These comments were all resolved to the the satisfaction of those present. A further meeting was set for October 1994 in the USA. This would only take place if there were any extra comments received before the ballot closed at the end of the month. The final IS text is expected to be published late in 1994.
A new amendment has been proposed to specify how to use CGM with the MHS (Message Handling Systems)/MOTIS standard. This will be a very short amendment to allow CGM to be used as a body part in electronic mail messages. CGM experts also intend to investigate the use of CGM in network tools such as MIME and World Wide Web. The aim is to enable CGM to be used as a content type in those network tools. Work has begun within ANSI to register JPEG as a compression type for the Tile Array elements of CGM. JPEG was not itself an IS in 1991 when technical work on the new version of CGM was completed and so reference to it could not be included at that time. This work is widely supported and should result in JPEG being a registered compression type for CGM sometime next year.
The Presentation Environment for Multimedia Objects (PREMO) has now been approved as a New Work Item. PREMO specifies a programming environment for the presentation of, construction of, and interaction with simple as well as complex multidimensional entities. It will allow related and integrated presentation using a variety of media including still and moving computer graphics, audio, text and images. PREMO is specified using object-oriented programming techniques but can be bound to object-oriented and non-object-oriented languages.
A New Work Item Proposal for PREMO had been balloted prior to the previous meeting and had received many negative comments. During that meeting it was redrafted to everyones satisfaction and was resubmitted for balloting. It was approved in the second ballot and is now in the SC24 programme of work. PREMO will be developed in four parts with the first expected to be published as an IS in 1996. The first two parts, Fundamentals, and Foundation Components, are at Committee Draft stage. PREMO complements the facilities of other ISO standards for multimedia document structures, such as HyTime and HyperODA, and exchange formats, such as MHEG, MPEG and JPEG. The project is liaising closely with other interested bodies including the Interactive Multimedia Association (IMA) and the Object Management Group (OMG) in order to co-operate with the work being done by those bodies.
The Image Processing and Interchange (IPI, IS 12087) standard is being progressed in three parts. Part 1 describes the basic data types which can be used to represent images and a general model for the action of operators on images. The image data can be multi-dimensional. Part 2, Programmers Imaging Kernel System (PIKS), provides a rich set of operators for processing images. Part 3, Image Interchange Facility (IIF), specifies a data format for storing and exchanging image data. IPI has applications in many areas including satellite imaging and medical imaging. At the last meeting, all three parts were approved for publication as an International Standard. Part 3 is now ready to be published and the other two parts are expected to be ready for publication by the end of this year.
Further work is continuing on an amendment, a fourth part and two related standards. DAM 1 to Part 3 (IIF) is concerned with Type Definition, Scoping and Logical Views. The comments on the DAM ballot will be discussed at a meeting in October and that meeting has been given delegated power to approve the amendment for publication as an IS early next year. That meeting has also been delegated to approve the ASN.1 encoding for IIF (12089-2) for publication as an IS early next year and to register the binary encoding as a Committee Draft. Part 4 will standardize an external data type representation for the PIKS data types. It is expected to be registered as a Committee Draft at the October meeting referred to above.
This year's ACM SIGGRAPH Congress took place at Orlando, Florida, near a variety of theme parks. The weather was Wet and Wild, the sun giving way to a thunderstorm every day, high gloss renderings and animations on display related to 'Disney World', and many simulations involved Sea World fantasies. Queues (lines in American) formed another theme park feature, particularly at registration, where delegates shuffled through to get tickets which gave them the right to wait for other tickets.
This first timer soon got to understand the SIGGRAPH modus operandi, and settled down to explore the huge event, with 25000 delegates from 70 countries, three exhibition halls with 107,000 square feet of floor space and an auditorium with seating for 4500. Attendance at technical paper presentations, panel discussions, the exhibition, special group meetings and art and video displays had to be planned carefully.
The 57 technical papers (chosen by blind review this year from 243 submissions) contained the usual crop of glossy advanced rendering and animation algorithms. Two papers from the University of Washington bucked this trend. Computer Generated Pen-and-Ink Illustration by Winkenbach and Salesin (Proceedings pp 91-100) and Interactive Pen-and-Ink Illustration (pp 101-108) by Salisbury et al, were hailed as highly innovative and fresh by the American session chair Ken Perlin. Excellent as they are, they are no further advanced than earlier British developments, for example the methods for expressive rendering created by Simon Schofield at Middlesex University and the Martin Centre, Cambridge. The University of Calgary showed Synthetic Topiary (Prusinkiewicz et aI, pp 351-358), with soft models being used to prune L-systems trees to amusing effect. Karl Sims of Thinking Machines in Evolving Virtual Creatures (pp 15-22) created 3D hinged shapes given simple motor controls to move their joints. Those that moved fastest on land or in water were mutated and cross bred, with slow objects eliminated. After several stages, survival of the fittest created effective walking or swimming objects, such as a convincing water snake which became a side-winder when placed on land. Even more impressively, the constructions bent the rules. One evolution to produce the fastest horizontal motion created a tall object with a heavy head, which fell and curled up to produce a fast rolling motion. The near successes were appealing enough, in a Chaplinesque sense, to reduce the audience to laughter.
Amusement was a major feature of the Electronic Theater show, with extracts from feature film blockbusters taking much attention. Electronic Light and Magic's effects for The Mask, where computer generated fantasy effects are seamlessly linked with cine film, were most impressive. The same company's insertion of recently filmed footage into film of historical characters for Forrest Gump will make it more difficult for newsreels to retain credibility. The Flintstones (again ILM) snippets were brash, the flocking algorithm used for the wildebeest stampede in Disney's Lion King worked well, but the scene was too sentimental for this viewer. Several 3D movies and interactive pieces were shown, viewed through polarised glasses. The audience of 4,000 interacted with a simulated underwater 3D environment, steering a submarine by waving coloured bats in the air. Cameras behind the audiorium sensed whether the red or green sides of bats faced them, with a preponderance of one colour over the other giving rudimentary control over the steering. First shown two years ago, powered by Evans and Sutherland equipment and created by CINEMA TRIX, this was technically innovative, but too low in narrative content to keep this participant amused for long. A most accomplished piece from the University of Minnesota Geometry Center showed how to turn a sphere inside out without creasing the surface, a demonstration of the potential of computer graphics for illustrating mathematical concepts which enthralled the audience.
Five remote supercomputers and rows of high grade Silicon Graphics equipment drove three Caves, 3 metre cube rooms each having two adjacent walls and the floor acting as 3D display screens. Using LCD shutter glasses, participants stood within the environment of the display, getting a near wrap around 3D view. One participant wore a head set to control the direction of view, taking the others for a ride around the synthetic environment, which could represent , for example, a molecular or astronomical model or a fluid flow simulation. A hand held device allowed manipulation of environmental features.
A range of forty Cave environments and other immersive 3D developments from Boeing, NASA and Sandia National Labs were shown in the VROOM (VR room), separately from the conference exhibition, where 3D was also a major feature. Almost every stand had some form of immersive display, using large screens which engulfed participants in a driver's eye view of a Grand Prix race, or through stereoscopic displays using head sets, booms, LCD shutter glasses, polarised glasses or lenticular lenses. Autostereograms also proliferated, including an animated version from Caltech. A number of interesting David and Goliath collaborations were announced, that may bring 3D capabilities down in price. Fast 3D rendering software by Rendermorphics, a six person London based company, has been adopted by Autodesk and Matrox for use with and on their products. UK Virtual Reality developers Division and Virtuality are not so small, but they separately announced collaborations with hyper-large partners. A system developed by Division with Hewlett Packard has an impressive 300,000 Gouraud shaded polygons per second capability in a 3D headset display. Virtuality and IBM have developed a range of products, whose top end VR system comes in a carry case like a portable PC, has a lightweight stereographic headset with adjustable eye separation and a novel hand held interaction device which senses, through soft pads, the locations of all four fingers and has interchangeable thumb tools, such as a tracker-ball or button. Entry level prices for both ranges are below $10,000, with top end systems at around $70,000 to $100,000.
As is apt in the home of Disneyland, SIGGRAPH was glossy, but much of the surface gloss wrapped up less convincing contents. At a panel for computer graphics educators, the American presenters showed how their students had practiced software development skills to create high quality renderers. These were used to make ever more shiny pictures of balls and checkerboards. The only British presenter, John Lansdown from my own institution, showed perhaps less shiny images and animations of a more imaginative variety of shapes. There was some resistance from the American presenters at the suggestion that it is more interesting to concentrate on developing interesting geometric models, using standard rendering methods to depict them. High technical presentation seemed to take precedence over narrative content, but it was encouraging to be spoken to by members of the audience who were sympathetic to the alternative view. The SIGkids room showed a number of down to earth graphical applications used as learning environments in American schools (primary and secondary) and the Edge exhibition had some fun environments with simulated surfing, scuba diving and a whale experience being enthralling enough to keep a user interested.
ACM SIGGRAPH's simulated environments were occasionally convincingly immersive, sometimes appealing, often stunningly fantastic, but nothing could compare with the real Florida outside the conference hall. Watching pelican, egret and ibis fish, schnorkelling over a coral reef that makes screensaver imitations seem colourless and seeing an alligator cross the road are experiences that cannot yet be equalled in a Virtual Reality headset.
