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AGOCG have received funding from the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Technology Applications Programme for supporting studies in 2 areas: virtual environments, and the area of overlap in interests of computing and audio visual services. We are now firming up our plans for this part of AGOCG's activities.
We have 'just appointed Patrick Costello as the VR (Virtual Reality) Support Officer. Pat will be working with Professor Roy Kalawsky and his team in the Advanced VR Research Centre at Loughborough University. He can be contacted at P.J.Costello@lboro.ac.uk. Pat will be supporting the community following the successful models of the other Support Officers employed to support visualization and multimedia (Steve Larkin and Sue Cunningham) and will be providing the deliverables we are committed to in this first phase of the JTAP (JISC Technology Applications Programme ) project. These include:
World Wide Web (WWW) pages, e-mail support, courses and other reports will be part of Pat's work. Keep an eye on the relevant AGOCG lists for details. Information will be circulated as soon as possible regarding activities.
We are planning to undertake a number of activities in this area. The first of these is to be a survey of the management structures in institutions for these services. Other plans include a one day event in Spring 1997 to consider good practices for equipping teaching facilities with suitable equipment for multimedia presentations. If you have any ideas for this then please let me know. We also intend to look again at digital capture to follow on from the SIMA work in this area.
The following AGOCG Technical Reports are now available:
Please contact Joanne Barradell (j.t.barradell@lboro.ac.uk) if you wish to have a paper copy or see the AGOCG WWW site for an online version.
We have heard that Stanford Graphics is to be frozen and not developed further. CHEST is currently (at the time of writing) investigating the situation regarding development and support. This is a major concern as the product seemed to satisfy a lot of requirements.
Contact CHEST or your local support staff for more details.
As reported last time, this is an initiative between the commercial sector and HE to provide a gateway to image resources. If you think you have any suitable content let me know.
The 50th edition of the Graphics and Visualization (G&V) Newsletter seems a good time to reflect on AGOCG activities. The workshop programme of AGOCG has played a key role in actively engaging with the Higher Education (HE) community and the recommendations have steered the AGOCG programme. Recommendations have also been made to appropriate bodies for action. This article looks at all the AGOCG workshops, considers their recommendations and the resulting actions. When preparing this article I was pleased to see how much activity there has been as a result and how well the workshop programme has worked.
This workshop was concerned with the need for standards for documents and for the way in which pictures could be included in documents. There were 30 participants. Following this workshop, JISC appointed Michael Popham at the University of Exeter who supported and advised the community on the take-up of SGML.
The Support Officer's appointment assisted in the take-up of these recommendations. The Text Encoding Initiative provided DTDs. Some examples were developed at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). In many ways HTML and the WWW took over. AGOCG see the way ahead though!
This workshop started the AGOCG activity in visualisation. It had a lot of preparatory work by an editorial team who produced a substantial input to the workshop which was developed during and after the event to result in a book. An introductory book was also published following the workshop. 31 participants attended the workshop. This workshop steered much of the work of AGOCG for some time and the recommendations have been largely fulfilled, mostly as a result of the appointment and work of Steve Larkin.
JISC, through AGOCG, funded a 3 year post from 1992-1995. Steve Larkin at the University of Manchester put in place many of the recommendations and pushed things forward. The (then) SERC also offered support through its EASE programme. The Support Officer carried out the awareness and training activities in liaison with the EASE Visualization Community Club (VCC) which has run a number of events. Links with industry have been progressed through the VCC and through the Support Officer and Graphics Coordinator. Two evaluations of systems have taken place and the results published. There has been some consideration of graphical and multimedia file formats through various reports and through SIMA (Support Initiative for Multimedia Applications).
Recommendations which have not been progressed have been those with less general appeal which are more specialised and are those relating to: problem solving methods, parallel applications and alternative methods for interaction.
This workshop, which attracted 20 participants, concerned itself with the problems of supporting computer graphics and how AGOCG and other centrally funded agencies might assist this. AGOCG has been successful in fulfilling the recommendations of this workshop.
AGOCG have advised JISC on various proposals, e.g. provision of video facilities (RAL and the University of Manchester) and recently MPEG storage. Bureau service for 3D capture and for large format output have been publicised. AGOCG have offered ongoing support for this concept and are investigating the use of links to sites with spare capacity on output and input devices to enable other sites to take advantage of this.
Training and awareness is a major strength of AGOCG through reports, on-line materials, courses for support staff and the encouragement of other agencies to consider training, e.g. CHEST when negotiating software prices. AGOCG have continued to play a "technology watch" role and to offer advice to the community This strength has become particularly visible through SIMA.
AGOCG held a workshop to get people from computing and AV services together (see later). This is still an issue and is being taken up by AGOCG under JTAP (JISC Technology Applications Programme). The issue of distributed computing has not been taken up by AGOCG, but has been part of the considerations by other groups, e.g. under the New Technologies Initiative (NTI).
AGOCG allocates some of its budget to standards activities and has conducted developments where appropriate.
This workshop attracted 55 participants reflecting the concern about this topic. Many of the issues and recommendations seem to be similar to today's problems. The recommendations are only now being realised in many instances through the JTAP Supporting Studies.
The concern about lecture room provision is still an issue and is being addressed only now by the JTAP Supporting Studies which will also survey management models. Continuing contact has had limited success through mailings and via the G&V Newsletter.
The issue of file formats has been taken up through AGOCG reports and, along with advice on new technologies, under the SIMA Programme.
A data sheet was produced which advertised services and a discount was offered to users if they wrote a report on use. This is being updated under JTAP Supporting Studies which will use links from the AGOCG WWW pages.
Evaluations of authoring packages took place through ITTI and also through TLTP A SIMA Report on Toolbook was produced.
This workshop attracted 34 participants many concerned with the use of multimedia in teaching. The recommendations led to the initial proposal for NTI funding which was refined in a subsequent workshop.
Good tools have taken some time to emerge. The problem has been solved to some extent by the adoption of certain tools for ITTI and TLTP.
Various SIMA reports have addressed the issues raised by this workshop. Sue Cunningham, who was appointed at the Support Officer's post, has also provided surveys and advice through the AGOCG WWW pages and in reports.
This workshop attracted 34 participants. It effectively designed the submission for NTI funding which led to the SIMA project.
All the recommendations (and more!) have been followed through by the SIMA Programme and by Sue Cunningham.
This workshop was attended by 18 participants and started the AGOCG activities to support art and design. The event was remarkably successful as a starting point for the work of AGOCG in this area which led to the CTI Centre being set up as well as support for Computers in Art and Design Education (CADE) dissemination activities and improved software prices.
AGOCG have liaised with the JISC activity in this area. Colin Beardon of the University of Plymouth is to undertake a survey of strategies in 1996/7 and to link with the JISC considerations of IS strategies.
Improved software prices are hard to come by especially on the Mac platform, which is popular. However we have worked with the community and with CHEST to establish the software which is used and prices have improved considerably.
Improved contact has been made possible by the CADE Conference in 1995 (second one to be held in Derby at Easter 1997). AGOCG have assisted CADE by supporting the start up costs of the newsletter. A set of case studies gave institutions some feel for the activities around in HE.
The main impact has been the work of AGOCG in gaining support for a CTI Centre. The CTI Centre for Art and Design at the University of Brighton was launched in the summer of 1996.
This workshop attracted 28 participants and was the first workshop under the SIMA label. File formats and standards in general have always been a concern of AGOCG and this workshop built on other AGOCG work.
The recommendations have been realised to some extent through the on-line database (available via the AGOCG WWW pages) and also through work involving the coordinator to establish standards suitable for eLib. Several SIMA projects address the topic of good design.
This workshop was attended by 80 participants. It was a two day event with presentations on the first day covering a wide range of issues including the impact of WWW on networks, national caching and indexing strategies, legal issues, teaching and learning opportunities, using WWW as an information resource, institutional WWW strategies. In depth discussions on the issues raised followed on the second day leading to a number of recommendations which have been taken up as part of the SIMA project programme as well as by other organisations (JISC, UCISA).
SIMA projects have taken up these recommendations, e.g. Running a WWW Server, Good Design for the WWW, Review of Software Tools, legal issues for the WWW.
SIMA reports can be used as training and awareness materials. Links have been built with UCoSDA to try and promote awareness and briefing papers have been produced for staff development use. JISC have been working to develop and improve caching strategies. NISS pages offer site links.
The recommendation to have good design awards has been taken up by UCISA.
JISC agreed to join W3C and part funded with SIMA the membership fee and initial period of representation through Chris Lilley. This representation is now part of the Web Focus post. Brian Kelly is to be based at UKOLN.
This workshop took the JISC Issues paper as its starting point and considered the potential of virtual environments as a technology capable of offering some solutions. The workshop attracted 31 people. The recommendations of the workshop are being taken forward as part of the JTAP Supporting Studies being funded through AGOCG.
As mentioned in the Co-ordinator's report, Pat Costello has been appointed as VR Support Officer and will be helping to realise the recommendations above.
A meeting has been organised by Ken Brodlie at Leeds which is coordinating UK input to the VRML standardisation process.
The EPSRC VCC has added VR and virtual environments to its remit and is now the Visualization and Virtual Environments Community Club.
This workshop addressed the issues concerning the capabilities and potential of multimedia presentations and the problems of accessing suitable presentation equipment. Some of the recommendations of this workshop, particularly those concerned with exchanging good practice and advising on equipment, are being taken forward by AGOCG. The workshop attracted 28 participants.
These recommendations are being taken forward by two major initiatives. The first being the JTAP Supporting Studies mentioned in the Co-ordinator's report. The second is through the provision of image related information through the Knowledge Gallery (see the last newsletter).
This workshop attracted 22 people including two representatives from SIGGRAPH.
The liaison with SIGGRAPH is ongoing. We are considering mirroring sites. A pilot study looking at materials for visualization techniques is being undertaken at the University of Leeds. The JISC are looking at content policy in general and at image collections in particular.
The SIMA (Support Initiative for Multimedia Applications) has funded 30 projects over the last two years to look into a wide variety of multimedia applications and issues. Eight of these projects, relating to the WWW and video conferencing, gathered in Manchester to present their work and describe some ongoing follow up work to over fifty participants. The day was very well received, and a short term mailing list has been set-up to allow discussion to continue of various issues raised on the day.
The first speaker was Stuart Lee, University of Oxford, who described his work in developing an on-line tutorial aimed at teaching First World War poetry. A hypermedia version of Isaac Rosenberg's poem "Break of Day in the Trenches" was prepared (http://info.ox.ac.uk/oucs/humanities/rose/ ), with forms for users to provide comments and discuss the poem. The work in this area is now continuing with a new project which will develop on-line versions of three other poems.
Oleg Liber continued the discussion of using the WWW for teaching, looking at how the English Department at the University of Wales provided course material online. Initially this Department hat very little technical experience, ant the people involved with it provided the WWW service had no previous experience of using HTML or managing a WWW server. Ole; felt the study showed that it was possible for non-technical people to learn to use the WWW and provide a valuable service with a relatively small amount of training.
Terry Hewitt from the CGI University of Manchester, then stepped in at short notice to look at some of the recent developments in multimedia standards, looking at existing standards and newer standards, such as PREMO (Presentations Environment for Multimedia Objects), that were still under development.
The final talk of the morning was given by Tony McDonald of the University of Newcastle, who described a survey of WWW Tools that took place last year. The survey looked at 33 servers, 38 browsers, 82 HTML tools and 61 other tools such as web management software and helper applications (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/wwwtools/) Tony stressed that these tools are regularly being updated and new tools appearing, so this should not be taken as a definitive list.
The afternoon session, devoted to video conferencing, was started by Sue Pomfrett, who discussed the results of a survey into video conferencing use. She felt that there was a need to recognise the high level of support required to implement a successful video conference, and particularly the wide variety of skills necessary, which could only be achieved by collaboration between academic departments.
Chris Schnurr, now at the Glasgow Caledonian University, looked at the variety of training resources available to support video conferencing in education. As part of this project he and Carmel Smith designed a prototype minimal manual which can be found at http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/SIMA/video4/ann4.html.
Steve Morgan from the University of Liverpool presented his experiences in using video conferencing in a practical situation, for supporting helpdesk/advisory activities. He and his colleague Mary Thorp used the SUN showme suite of video conferencing software over a LAN at Liverpool. They felt that although the system has potential and the shared applications, such as a whiteboard, were useful, at that time network performance was too poor to allow the video and audio components to be useful, a standard telephone providing better communication.
The final presentation of the day was given by John Martin, University of Wales College of Cardiff, who looked at the University of Wales Video Network. This studio based system was originally set up in 1990 to connect sites at Bangor, Aberystwyth, Lampeter, Cardiff and Swansea, over a high speed network, specifically to assist in teaching classes in all subject areas in Welsh. Much of the network use now is for committees and meetings, with savings in travel time being a major plus point. Although teaching accounts for only about one quarter of its use, it was felt the system had enabled courses to be run which could not otherwise take place, for example specialised courses to a limited number of students.
All these and other SIMA reports can be found on the SIMA WWW pages at:
http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/ SIMA/simapj.html
EASI is a CD-ROM aimed at academics who are thinking about including multimedia courseware, but are new to multimedia. Produced under the JISC New Technologies Initiative (NTI), it is designed to give new and potential authors a feel for the strengths and weakness of multimedia authoring. It is divided into a number of sections, from why and where multimedia courseware is used, to looking at a real example of multimedia courseware.
Initially the user is taken through a series of questions to determine their degree of multimedia experience. This information is then used to tailor the next section, in which they are presented with a series of questions. The object is not to answer the questions, but to categorise them within the framework provided, so encouraging the user to think about the issues involved more clearly. At the end of the session the framework, with the questions you answered and the original allocations can be saved to a file or printed for future reference.
The next sections provide an overview of some of the fundamentals of multimedia, including why multimedia may be a valuable teaching tool and legal issues. The basic components of a multimedia package, text, graphics, sound and video are then introduced in an interactive section demonstrating some basic design principles.
Finally, the multimedia exemplar looks at a real example of part of a multimedia course on Sociology. The text that the lecturer gave to the multimedia courseware developer is included, and you are encouraged to read the text, work through the course and then view the course for a second time. In the second run through, some of the discussion between the academic author and the developer which arose during conversion of the course, is also displayed, showing some of the problems encountered.
For information please contact: Dr David Gerrett School of Health & Community Studies University of Derby d.gerrett@derby.ac.uk
VISTA European Commission Project, ESPRIT HPCN Programme VISTA (Virtual Studio Applications Using Networked Graphical Supercomputers) has received 3.6m ECUS for 2.5 years which started 1 July 1996
The main objective of the project is the integration and demonstration of a generic and extensible telematics platform that supports the execution of scenarios in the domain of real-time interactive television. This can be regarded as the realisation of a Virtual Studio and offers the capability of mixing real and synthetic objects and characters in any combination controlled remotely by TV viewers.
The networked platform to be implemented will enable the realisation of innovative interactive teleservices for homes. These will take the form of television programmes broadcast over conventional television channels, with the important difference that viewers at home will be able to direct and interact with the programme being viewed. The image content of the programme will be generated (and transmitted) in real-time by high-end graphics computers and networks. As the viewers at home need a cost-effective way of interacting with the programmes, the existing and affordable infrastructure of the traditional telephone networks will be utilised for feeding the viewers' interaction back to the programme being transmitted which is controlled by servers. The number of simultaneous viewers that actively can take part in the interaction will depend upon the programme (i.e. the application) at issue, and will vary from just a few to several hundreds.
Within the VISTA project, the objective is to develop and test three concrete and specific applications on the platform:
These applications can be considered as being supported within a Virtual Studio Environment which is capable of being interacted with, and changed by, remote users.
The public broadcasting companies BRT-N (Belgium) and VPRO (Netherlands) are the broadcasting users in VISTA and have excellent links to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the ideal user group for the project. For the first time in history, broadcasting companies will be able to develop and execute truly interactive TV-programs where the images are an integral part of virtual environments and in which the viewers can actively participate and direct the programme being transmitted. The actual way in which the television medium is experienced will change through platforms such as the one to be implemented in the VISTA project.
From a technical point of view, VISTA will build on the expertise and software technology of the academic partners in the consortium within the area of virtual humans and virtual environments in the European projects HUMANOID, HUMANOID-2 and CHARM. Furthermore, the project will build on the experience gained by the consortium partners on interlinking high-end graphics computers over ATM-networks in the European RACE TEN-IBC project VISINET.
BRTN (BE) and VPRO (NL) have the role of users, being the broadcasting companies, and will drive the project objectives. Alcatel Bell (BE), University of Bradford (GB), EPFL (CH), NOB (NL), Limburgs Universitair Centrum (B) and University of Geneva (CH) are acting as suppliers. As developers in the domain of 3D computer graphics, interactive multimedia and virtual environments, they are very interested in collaborating with the broadcasting companies, as this opens up excellent opportunities for future collaboration.
Can graphical interchange with CGM be guaranteed?
The specification for CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) IS8632:1992 describes conformance only in terms of syntactic conformance and encoding conformance for the CGM. It does not contain conformance criteria for generators and interpreters. Interchange could not be guaranteed because/ for example, there is no limit to the number of points in a polygon. Thus, however many points in a polygon that an interpreter can handle, a valid CGM could exceed that limit and not be capable of being handled by that interpreter. Or a CGM might specify a font which the interpreter did not have.
The designers of CGM deliberately put no limits on these factors so that CGM would be flexible. However, this has caused problems for another of its design goals, interpretability. In order to be able to guarantee interchange, profiles have been developed. These profiles include limits, such as a maximum number of points in a polygon and a set of fonts, and specify the behaviour for generators and interpreters. CGMs can than be checked for conformance to the profile and generators and interpreters can be tested to check their ability to handle CGMs which conform to the profile. By using generators and interpreters which conform to a profile interchange can be guaranteed.
Amendment 1 to CGM specifies the rules for profiles and a Model Profile. Four International Standardised Profiles (ISPs) have now been registered with ISO. These four core profiles have been designed to satisfy most graphical requirements. BST is intended for business graphics and simple desk-top publishing. AST is intended for CAD, mapping and earth sciences. BPV is intended for graphic arts and high end desk top publishing. APV is intended for imaging and scientific visualisation.
They are specified in ISP 12071-1 Basic Scientific and Technical (BST), ISP 12071-2 Advanced Scientific and Technical (AST), ISP 12071-3 Basic Presentation and Visualisation (BPV)(Model Profile), ISP 12071-4 Advanced Presentation and Visualisation (APV).
Suppliers of applications which generate and interpret CGM files should be encouraged to conform to one or more of these ISPs.
Queries about CGM can be posted to the CHEST-CGM list at Mailbase.
The svLis solid modeller now includes a ray-tracer and is available free. svLis makes the robustness of a full-strength CSG solid modeller accessible as a kernel through a well-defined C++ API. Features include excellent performance on large models, non-manifold models, user-defined primitives, and attributes with inheritance.
An inbuilt faceter converts CSG models to polygons for display. Now, we have added a full ray-tracing renderer, working directly on the CSG and supporting a wide range of effects, including multiple lights, refraction, translucency, fog, etc.
In order to build up the user-base for later releases of svLis, we are offering 1996/97 leases for svLis ^without charge*, and making Sun, SGI, Windows and Linux versions freely available by FTP. For full details, please see the svLis WWW home Page http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ensab/G_mod/Svlis/svlis.html
Fifth International Conference on Computational Graphics and Visualization Techniques, 15-19 December 1996, Nogentel, Nogent-sur-Marne, Paris, France
The Fifth International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics and Visualization 97 In co-operation with IFIP working group 5.10 on Computer Graphics and Virtual Worlds 10 -14 February 1997 University of West Bohemia Plzen, Prague, Czech Republic
24 - 26 March 1997 University of East Anglia, UK
The conference will be held at University of East Anglia, Norwich which is situated three miles west of the city centre. UEA is one of the purpose-built universities founded in the 1960s and is based on the idea of interdisciplinary schools of study. Computer Graphics and its applications have been a theme of research in the School of Information Systems for over 20 years, with the themes of this conference reflecting some of the current interests.
Papers describing completed work, work in progress or commercial applications are invited. Papers which address the conference themes are particularly welcome. This years themes are:
There is increasing use of Virtual Reality for simulation and entertainment. An exciting development of these trends is to bring the simulation and entertainment together and allow VR to be used in tourist attractions to bring to life the historic environment. Work related to this is being undertaken in Virtual Set building, Character Animation, Immersive VR, Motion Simulation and the related areas of VR in computer games. Other developments in the use of WWW and the Internet are attempting to make downloadable machine independent graphics programmes available over the Internet.
Interest in all the areas is growing rapidly and being fuelled by a spate of bids to Lottery funds which use VR for Edutainment in visitor attractions, e.g. the Lowry Centre in Salford. A Millennium Landmark bid for Norwich is currently under review and, if successful, will make extensive use of these technologies. The bid includes a proposed visitor attraction using VR to simulate life in Norwich and cities in Western Europe over 1000 years, as well as an enhanced county library with 250 CD-ROMs available to networked access. An underlying theme to all of this is the aspect of interactive network and internet access especially for educational purposes including the VR heritage exhibits.
BCS International Conference 14 -17 April 1997 Pictureville, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television Bradford, UK
Today the Internet - Tomorrow the World"
"In the last year, we've started to hear some awful gnashing sounds coming from Redmond, as Microsoft grinds off a few gear teeth trying to keep up with the paradigm shift toward the Web", Mark Schlack, BYTE, p!4, November 1996 "Microsoft has won the desktop battle. Now it has got a Web war in mind", Kevin Wilson, Guardian OnLine, p2, 17 October 1996.
The British Computer Society Computer Graphics & Displays Group will hold an international four day meeting on this theme to take place in the UK, 14 - 17 April 1997 There is a lot of current interest in tools and techniques for generating, exploring and displaying graphics and multimedia via the network and WWW New approaches for accessing, analysing, and collaborating on virtual environments over networks are being developed. Types of data include real-time, dynamic and static scientific, medical, environmental, sociological, scholastic, industrial and financial data, and 3D objects. VRML and Java are supporting new types of environment on the Web which are extending the uses and applications of networks, and are generating a lot of excitement about the future. Aspects of current work include animation, behaviours, dynamic Webs, distributed virtual worlds, virtual humans, multimedia, and remote applications.
The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television is close to the University of Bradford and is a collaborator in the Electronic Imaging and Media Communications degree courses run by the University It is a national facility with a prime city centre position. It has an IMAX theatre and a Pictureville Cinema. Galleries are devoted to the history, science and art of photography, film and television, and feature special exhibitions, including artists such as Bradford-born David Hockney. The Museum has become a major tourist attraction with nearly one million visitors per year. It is a fascinating resource, a Video Reference Library, and is currently planning the migration of current materials into digital form for access over Internet. Recently it has been awarded £13.5 Million in funding from the Heritage and Arts Lottery Funds, the Foundation for Sports and the Arts, and the European Regional Development Fund. This will be used to implement a major building and exhibit expansion for interactive digital media called "Imaging Frontiers"
4-8 September 1997 Budapest, Hungary
