Notes From Siggraph 2004

juan_buhler writes "SIGGRAPH 2004 started Sunday in the Los Angeles Convention Center. I am chairing the Sketches program for 2005, and along with Nishant Kothary, who is chairing the Web program in 2005, Danah Boyd and others, we are running a pilot with a blog and a wiki. Check them out. The blog has almost real time posting of what's going on at SIGGRAPH, so it's a great way to see it if you couldn't make it this year" Read on for a few more notes from Siggraph.

First, steveha writes "As noted on LWN, SGI has announced the OpenGL 2.0 specification, which includes support for programmable shaders. How long will it be before we get native Linux applications using this?"

protohiro1 writes "I just saw this HDR display and it blew me away, it was like looking at a slide on a light table. Is this the future of display tech?"

abacsalmasi wrote about a "nifty little thing called Echo. I, along with two other chaps, have started a company called Stable Research Inc. and we'll be showing our Echo prototype at the Siggraph show. It is essentially live DVD recordings at concert venues where we can have burned DVDs of the concert they just saw, ready minutes after the show for people to pick up on their way out. The cool thing about it is the ability to switch camera angles on the fly, without any lag or stuttering, plus we include another composite ganged feed so you can watch all the cameras simultaneously. A demo will be showing at The Canadian Film Centre's Habitat New Media booth so stop by and check it out. Web Demo coming soon."

Comments

Re:Anything revolutionary left?

[kfg]

. . .are we advanced to the point that it's all incremental steps toward realism from here?

Well, without making any actual prognostications, what with predictions about the future being the hardest to make, let me look to the rear and try to predict the past.

The first 90% of development always advances the quickest and with the highest density of "wow" moments per unit time.

The Bleriot monoplane of 1909 establishing the basic layout of the aeroplane and the 1912 Peugot establishing the double overhead cam four valve head for instance.

Obviously there was still a lot of room for improvement ( and a lot of blind alleys to follow), but one could argue that after that things became largely incremental in the aero and automotive fields ( at least until, say, the AVRO Arrow and the Lotus 25).

Don't worry though, just as obviously incremental development adds up over a decade or three and there's often another "wow" or three out there.

KFG

Re:Woohoo!

[juan_buhler]

So you went to all SIGGRAPHs until about 6 years ago, *and then stopped going because you thought it wasn't good anymore*?

You should have gotten involved. SIGGRAPH is what we, the people who do computer graphics, make of it. Every conference is organized by volunteers. If there is something you don't like and you have good ideas about how to improve it, you'll have a chance to participate.

Your post made me think of the people who are inactive politically, don't even vote, and complain about the state of our democracy.

j (writing from my 12th SIGGRAPH)