Live from SIGGRAPH
Jared Bendis' live coverage from the annual ACM SIGGRAPH conference
 Orlando 1998 |
SIGGRAPH 1998
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| Not one to miss a SIGGRAPH, I met up with Doug Kelly (yes Doug Kelly THE Author) and we stopped for dinner at IHOP. |  |
| Doug is in very good spirits as his new book is out and he is having an signing later in the week. |  |
| Some of the contributors from the book were there to celebrate: Sandra Frame, Steph Greenberg, Ken Cope, and of course Doug. |  |
| The opening celebration include the breaking of a cask of sake which has been a tradition for I am told 11 years by a man whose birthday always (no matter what month) falls at SIGGRAPH. |  |
| The hands-on portions included the weirdest and wildest technologies you could imagine. Instead of being bounced around in a simulation yourself this exhibit has the monitor bounce around while you laid flat. I did not try it. |  |
| There was some virtual control of some dancing computer characters which I also did not try but I love the chroma-key green setup. I want one of these at home. |  |
| Touch technology is always very big and I expect to see more Haptic interfaces during the week. Instead of using a pen or a glove this touch interface allows you to pet this creature and feel it move with the palm of your hand. |  |
| Virtual Air-Hockey. Amazing! No puck,
no air. Using simultaneous view virtual reality headsets the users could
see both the table and their hand & the computer generated puck
from their headsets.
This is what we saw. |
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| This is what they saw. |  |
| I don't have any picture but I did
step on the virtual roaches using the touch feedback phantom slippers. Very weird. |
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| With no control interface but your body this version of pong seemed quite a challenge to master. |  |
| Once again it is amazing what technology can do. Circled on this board is a chip LCD and lens display. This display which is available for development purposes is a 640x480x256 gray scale monitor no bigger than my thumb nail. It was clear and sharp and I want one. Even though they have actual images of the output on their website, I snapped a picture looking trough the viewfinder. Practical wearables are not far off! |   |
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