From rick@cs.arizona.edu Sun Oct 9 20:10:34 1994 Return-Path: Received: from mx5.u.washington.edu by stein2.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW94.4/UW-NDC Revision: 2.30 ) id AA26495; Sun, 9 Oct 94 20:10:34 -0700 Received: from hitl-new.hitl.washington.edu by mx5.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW94.9/UW-NDC Revision: 2.30 ) id AA28294; Sun, 9 Oct 94 20:10:28 -0700 Received: by hitl.hitl.washington.edu; id AA27290; Sun, 9 Oct 1994 20:08:04 -0700 Received: from relay1.UU.NET by rodan.UU.NET with SMTP id QQxkym00763; Sun, 9 Oct 1994 23:10:24 -0400 Received: from optima.cs.arizona.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP id QQxkym05784; Sun, 9 Oct 1994 23:10:20 -0400 Received: by optima.cs.arizona.edu (5.65c/15) id AA26887; Sun, 9 Oct 1994 20:10:18 MST To: sci-virtual-worlds@uunet.uu.net Path: not-for-mail From: rick@cs.arizona.edu (Rick Schlichting) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: Kahaner Report: Virtual Reality & Software Technology, 8/94 Singapore Followup-To: comp.research.japan Date: 9 Oct 1994 20:10:15 -0700 Organization: University of Arizona CS Department, Tucson AZ Lines: 348 Sender: rick@cs.arizona.edu Distribution: world Message-Id: <37aban$q84@optima.cs.arizona.edu> Status: OR [Dr. David Kahaner is a numerical analyst on sabbatical to the Office of Naval Research-Asia (ONR Asia) in Tokyo from NIST. The following is the professional opinion of David Kahaner and in no way has the blessing of the US Government or any agency of it. All information is dated and of limited life time. This disclaimer should be noted on ANY attribution.] [Copies of previous reports written by Kahaner can be obtained using anonymous FTP from host cs.arizona.edu, directory japan/kahaner.reports.] From: Dr. David K. Kahaner US Office of Naval Research Asia (From outside US): 23-17, 7-chome, Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106 Japan (From within US): Unit 45002, APO AP 96337-0007 Tel: +81 3 3401-8924, Fax: +81 3 3403-9670 Email: kahaner@cs.titech.ac.jp Re: Virtual Reality & Software Technology, 8/94 Singapore 10/04/04 (MM/DD/YY) This file is named "vrst.94" ABSTRACT. Summary of the conference, Virtual Reality & Software Technology (VRST'94), held at the Institute for Systems Science (ISS), Singapore, 22-26 August 1994, is presented. This report contains text and general comments on the conference. An accompanying report (vrst-abs.94) contains abstracts of the papers that were presented. This report was prepared jointly with Dr. Thomas Davis of the USAROSR Tokyo office (Email: daviste@emh.yokota.af.mil). I am also grateful for comments from Dr. Tim Poston at ISS (Email: tim@iss.nus.sg) and Dr Hugh L. Applewhite of Piltdown Inc, (Email: hugha@teleport.com), which have been included. Virtual Reality Software and Technology '94 Event Organization and Background. Virtual Reality Software and Technology '94 (VRST '94), which is intended as the first in a series of annual VR conferences, was conducted at the Institute of Systems Science (ISS) of the National University of Singapore on 23-26 August, 1994. VRST '94 was co-sponsored by ISS and the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group for Computer-Human Interaction (ACM/SIGCHI). The General Chair for the conference was Dr. Juzar Motiwalla, Director ISS. His contact information, along with that of Dr. Steve Feiner from Columbia University, who served as co-chair of the Program Committee, appears below. Dr. Juzar Motiwalla Director, Institute of Systems Science National University of Singapore Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511 Tel: +65 772-2075; Fax: +65 775-0938 Email: JUZAR@ISS.NUS.SG Dr. Steve Feiner Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 Tel: (212) 939-7083 Email: FEINER@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU The VRST '94 technical program is summarized below. As noted there, the first day of the event (Tuesday morning, 23 August) was devoted to a collection of parallel tutorial sessions. The primary conference technical program began the following morning (Wednesday, 24 August) with the program co-chair opening remarks, guest speech and keynote address. The remainder of the conference technical program consisted of paper, demonstration/video and panel sessions. Abstracts of all presented papers are also attached along with as author contact information. For copies of papers contact the authors directly or Dr Motiwalla at ISS. A Proceedings of the conference was published by World Scientific Publishing PO Box 128, Farrer Road, Singapore 9128 ISBN 981-02-1867-2 (G.Singh, S.Feiner, D.Thalmann, ed) About 120 conference registrants distributed as follows. Singapore 67 Japan 11 USA 9 UK 7 Germany 5 Korea 4 Sweden 2 Canada 2 India 2 Netherlands 1 Switzerland 1 Belgium 1 Thailand 1 Spain 1 Austria 1 Participation would have been greater, but a large IEEE conference was also being held in Singapore at the same time. As noted above, VRST '94 is intended as the first in a series of annual virtual reality workshops. During the opening session, Tokyo and Switzerland were announced as the venues for VRST '95 and VRST '96 respectively, however no specific dates were established for either event. >From Dr Hugh L. Applewhite... Piltdown, Inc. 4470 SW Hall Blvd, M/S 154 Beaverton, OR 97005 USA Tel: 503.641.8575, Email: hugha@teleport.com In general, it was a productive meeting. There were enough people representing sufficiently diverse areas that it wasn't three days of esoterica, but rather a general sweep across the set of VR disciplines. And there were experts in most of the areas, so that it didn't turn into a 'wouldn't it be nice if ...' gabfest, unburdened by any facts or figures. A nice balance, I think. Position tracking, a subject of perennial complaint, played a minor role. The practical reason for this is that most VR applications have been designed to take place within quite restricted working volumes. Short cables and interaction metaphors such as walk-in-place (Slater, Usoh & Steed) and hand gestures (Wexelblat; Quek) ensure that existing magnetic and ultrasonic trackers are adequate to the task. Nevertheless, many participants wistfully looked forward to the development of more capable large-volume trackers. Particularly interesting was the widespread agreement between both application developers and tracker designers that the 'ultimate' tracker is a combination of a short-range, accurate technique (e.g. ultrasonic) and a large-volume, untethered system (inertial). Two tracker designers presented systems: E. Foxlin *showed* a relatively small (7 cm cube) that is light enough for head tracking. H. Applewhite presented a new ultrasonic phase coherent approach that promises absolute positioning as well as high data rates. >From Prof Timothy Poston.... Institute of Systems Science National University of Singapore Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511 Email: TIM@ISS.NUS.SG As its title suggests, VR Software and Technology '94 was concentrated strongly on concrete work towards bringing out the goals of VR, rather than discussion of its psychological aspects. Regrettably but unsurprisingly, this produced a heavy gender imbalance; of the two scheduled talks by women, the more technical (on a fuzzy logic analysis of human motion) was pre-empted by a honeymoon, and delivered by a male stand-in. The other concerned schemata for interactive drama, in general as well as in VR. The other imbalance common in VR meetings, between Asia and the North Atlantic, was much better addressed by the siting of VRST'94 in Singapore. About a third of the presentations (counting either by country of origin, or location of lab) were from Asia, in contrast to the very thin Asian presence common in US meetings in VR. The single presentation of VR as an already-functioning element of commerce, in fact, was Nomura's talk on a kitchen (and now house) planning system. A major point of interest there was the retreat from the use of a head mounted display, and even from stereo: the new system uses a curved semi- surround screen, big enough that the problems of coexistence in a virtual space -- much discussed at the meeting -- can be solved simply by putting married potential customers together in the middle of it. This lacks the futuristic appeal of the total-immersionist approaches suggested from experimental laboratories, but it will make serious money for Matsushita, in a practical context. The same will not be true of head mounted immersion until the field of view is that of the archers who won the battle of Agincourt, rather than the narrow helmet slot of the French knights who lost it. (Could there be a game here? Jousting is the only sport where real vision is blinkered enough to be easily modelled in a 1994 electronic helmet.) Much of the work presented involved particular 3D interfaces, but none addressed the general issues of 3D interface design; how should the choice of tools and actions be made clean, intuitive, and unfatiguing in long sessions? It may be that through the current helmet slot, no interface can achieve this; at a conference that included a system for constructing behavioral circuits by walking yards between the nodes, it was easy to doubt that the VR community would yet recognize an interface that did. For me the most interesting talks were those that addressed the myriad technical problems of VR, whether matters that should be handled transparently (like tracking or collision detection, which the user only notices when they fail) or how very specific tasks in virtual space are being achieved -- the star here being Steve Bryson's boom-displayed virtual wind tunnel at NASA. This uses resources that other participants can only dream of (Cray computation, a gigabyte of RAM, one Reality Engine per eye for the display...), pressing the envelope everywhere with tightly optimized code, and achieves results not possible without the virtual environment. That must be the real test of VR; mere immersion in an unreal environment can be achieved far more cheaply by chemical means or anaerobic exercise. "The point, however, is to change it." [Poston and colleagues' work on "reach in" VR technologies might be of particular interest in areas related to precision manufacturing. I felt that this was one of the more interesting original contributions from Singapore at this conference, DKK.] Technical Program Synopsis. The VRST '94 technical program included a full day (Tuesday, 23 August) devoted to virtual reality tutorial sessions. The tutorials were conducted in parallel with one full day and four one half day programs. The titles, instructors and durations of the tutorial sessions are listed below. Tutorial number 2, titled Three Dimensional Graphics Hardware, was cancelled at the conference site, but all others were conducted as scheduled. Tutorial 1 (Full Day): Introduction to Virtual Reality Design Steve Bryson, NASA Ames, USA Steven Feiner, Columbia University, USA Tutorial 2 (Half Day): Three Dimensional Graphics Hardware (Cancelled) Tai-cker Chiueh, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA Tutorial 3 (Half Day): dVise - Using the Virtual Design Environment(tm) with your Existing CAD Models Pierre duPont, Division Limited, UK Tutorial 4 (Half Day): Geometrical Modeling and Animation for VR Mark Green, University of Alberta, Canada Tutorial 5 (Half Day): Graphical and Acoustical Rendering for VR Peter Astheimer and Stephan Muller, Fraunhofer-Institute for Computer Graphics, Germany The full day tutorial, titled Introduction to Virtual Reality Design and conducted by Bryson and Feiner, was a very comprehensive survey of the field. It included sessions on interface technology, human factors, performance issues, architectures and case studies. The emphasis throught was on state of the art developments. The course handout material consists of some 84 pages of viewgraph hardcopy (two per page). The main conference program began on Wednesday morning, 24 August with an opening speech by Radm. Teo Chee Hean, Singapore Minister of State for Finance and Communications. Adm. Hean addressed the conference in the context of virtual reality as a component of Singapore's Information Technology national research and development objectives. He indicated that Singapore considers information technology to be a key to its long term competitiveness and intends to vigorously pursue international linkage opportunities such as VRST '94 in the future. The Minister cited several examples of the use of VR in Singapore, including architecural walkthroughs of the Performing Arts Center using WaveVisions, a product partially developed at the National Computer Board's Information Technology Institute and also via collaborations with ISS. He also cited use of VR at the Singapore General Hospital for surgery preparation, at the Ministry of Defence and the Port of Singapore for training of military personnel and operations staff such as crane operators. Repeatedly, I have heard Singaporean speakers emphasize that the country cannot afford to devote its limited resources to opportunities that will not offer significant payback, and the Minister made the same comments here. He specifically mentioned five thrusts related to Information Technology R&D, and I have attached those remarks below. "First, anchor IT R&D to support IT2000. IT2000 is the IT response to the Government's vision articulated in "The Next Lap". IT2000 aims to transform Singapore into an Intelligent Island where IT is pervasively used in both businesses and homes. Business competitiveness would be greatly enhanced by IT and so will the quality of life enjoyed by every Singaporeen. IT R&D is important to help make this vision a reality. Many technological breakthroughs have already been made in laboratories worldwide. The challenge to bring forth a new generation of leading IT applications and break this bottleneck from laboratories to real applications must be made a priority. The IT2000 effort will offer tremendous opportunities to experiment and use new technologies for advanced applications. "Second, focus on market driven IR R&D. IT R&D efforts must co-evolvewith application needs. There is increasing pressure favouring application driven R&D. The early experience of lead users of new R&D ideas can help guide and influence research direction and new product.innovation. In the IT2000 study carried out by the National ComputerBoard, over 60 strategic sector wide applications were identified to help support our nation building efforts. One example is CORENET to link the construction and real estate sector in Singapore. This collection of sector-wide driven applications can provide a good starting point for identifying impactful projects to spur national development. Apart from contributing to national competitiveness and better quality of life,these applications can also be resold and contribute to national wealth. "Third, Intensify efforts to develop new competencies. Certain key technologies may dominate the industry. When such critical technologies are identified, new programs must be quickly developed to build up core competencies in them. For example, the digital media revolution is changing the IT Industry as we know it today. It is therefore imperative that new initiatives are quickly implemented to build competency in exploiting digital technologies. I am pleased to note that as a start, a Singapore Digital Media Consortium, comprising four local companies, namely, Aztech Systems, Creative Technology, IPC and iMedia Singapore,and three local research institutes, has already been formed to work on upstream digital media R&D. Research collaborators will include the renowned Media Lab from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Fourth, Invest In training. In atiticipation of the Industry needs for the new digital media industry and information superhighways, more preactive training must be developed and introduced. The tertiary institutions must ensure that new graduates are equipped with the core skills needed to support advanced IT innovations. Equally important, the pool of existing IT professionals must be continually re-trained in new technologies and be kept abreast of IT-developments worldwide. "Finally, capltalize on international linkages. As a small nation, we do not have the resources to effectively undertake all the IT R&Dchallenges identified. Therefore, we must work with intertiationalpartners and leverage on their capabilities and resources to helpsupport our IT aspirations. The collaboration with internationallyrenowned R&D centres would help transfer much needed skills andexpertise to the country. Singapore also adopts a liberal policy wheretalented individuals from abroad can easily settle here to participatein high value added activities. "I am glad to note that the National Computer Board and the National Science and Technology Board are working closely together to implement these thrusts and create a vibrant IT R&D environment in Singapore. I am told that discussions are already underway to implement many of the initiatives identified. "The implementation of the IT2000 master plan would generate many opportunities for new technologies to be used. Virtual Realitytechnology is already making an impact here and I am sure the demand forit will continue to grow. To all VR evangelists who are attending thisconference, I hope that you will have useful discussions and find newways of using the technology meaningfully." The next event on the conference agenda was the keynote address (an abstract is attached below), delivered by Michael Deering from Sun Microsystems. A central theme of his address was a concern that the VR research communuity might allow expectations to exceed what can be delivered. He noted that about a decade ago the Artifical Intelligence community allowed something of the sort to happen to its discipline, with adverse consequences. Other key points in his address were that (1) successful commercialization of VR will require somethingh on the order of a $10K system which provides about 1.5 times productivity improvement at about 2hrs/day utilization and allows a 2 year capital recovery period, and (2) that the VR research community needs to quickly answer the question "What is the killer application?" The remainder of the conference technical program was divided into a series of paper, panel and demonstration/video sessions. Abstracts of all presented papers, demonstrations/videos and panel session opening remarks, collected by session title are available in the companion report "vrst-abs.94". ------------------------------END OF REPORT------------------------------