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Electronic future glimpsed at Siggraph
August 7, 1997
Web posted at: 5:10 a.m. EDT (0910 GMT)From Correspondent Dennis Michael
LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Computer graphics have brought toys and dinosaurs to life on the big screen. But to 40,000 artists, engineers and computer experts gathered in Los Angeles this week, that's the past and not the future.
This is Siggraph '97, the Special Interest Group Graphics' annual conference, where computers and visual arts collide.
"You have mathematicians, computer scientists, architects, engineers, artists, commercial artists, fine artists, all gathered together to synergistically create something that's wonderful," says G. Scott Owen, a Siggraph conference chair.
Researchers like the people behind "Big Head Racing," where you steer your race car with head movements, can work right next to the U.S. Air Force's Virtual Airfield Trainer for Air Traffic Controllers.
The 1997 Siggraph computer and visual arts conference.
3 MB/25 sec. QuickTime movie
At Siggraph, people can also visit a mad tea party in virtual reality and have some fun before the fire breathing Jabberwocky attacks. This isn't some think tank's multi-million dollar project, it's available to the public for free.
"'Alice' is a 3D graphics system that lets non-programmers, non-geeks, get in and make little critters that run around in virtual worlds. It runs on Windows PCs so you can have a $1,000 computer (and) actually create things that you can interact with," says Randy Pausch, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon.
'Let's do television'
Multi-million dollar computer applications are still astound the computer community and public alike. But the future isn't in penthouse; it's on the street.
The power of computer graphics is no longer going to be held in the hands of so called 'Wizards.' The motion at this Siggraph conference is toward making this available to the general public
For instance, realistic animation used to tax powerful computers. Now a laptop can casually download a 3-D animated dancer from the web with ease.
One of this year's hot technologies is motion capture, software used to drive real time animation. No longer are elaborate systems needed, animators can achieve realistic real time animation with a garden variety Pentium computer.
Doing TV is also much more open. A $5,000 box called "Trinity" is ready to replace a $250,000 dollar television control room.
"It's going to open up television applications world-wide," says Chris Walker, president of Modern Cartoons. "People who couldn't afford very expensive equipment can now say, 'Great, let's do a television show.'"
The artists and visionaries at Siggraph are blazing the trail, but the message of this year's conference is that the new computing power is for the people.
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