Siggraph returns to the West Coast and cuts costs
on everything from food, to panels, to signs
Hey! Where are we? In order
to recover from the fiasco that was Siggraph 2002 in San Antonio, the
Siggraph Conference group cut back on a day of the conference, workers,
and signage. Also, longtime stalwarts like SGI and Sun failed to have
a booth on the floor. However, the conference felt pretty lively with
new exhibitors, papers, and a crowd still in love with graphics.
Some of the notable events we’ll be covering are the dramatic
changes coming as a result of programmable graphics chips, new plug-ins
that bring artificial intelligence to the party, and the steady march
of embedded graphics as Khronos gathers the ABM&I crowd (Anyone But
Microsoft and, oh yeah, Intel too). The group has strong backing from
Nokia, Sun, TI, and Symbian giving Khronos and OpenGL ES real momentum
in the handheld market.
In other news we hear Tony Parisi, a VRML vet, has sold
yet another company. This time he’s sold Media Machines to the ManyOne
Network. They’re building 3D interfaces to Web-based information and
they think Media Machines’s Flux is just the ticket.
Siggraph was also the site of new displays from 3D monitors
(stereo display with passive viewing) and OLEDs. New input devices including
Immersion’s two handed haptic feedback device, and advanced motion capture.
AMD had a talking soccer ball and we had a luncheon with a panel that
had considerably more to say than a soccer ball.
There’s more and we’re still trying to make sense of it
all. It’ll all be in next week’s Tech Watch.