From: "Pat (P.) O'Shaughnessey" Subject: REV-EVENT: RTVRSIG September meeting. Research Triangle Virtual Reality Special Interest Group September Meeting Minutes Location: Bell-Northern Research Inc, Research Triangle Park, NC, RTP Room. Date: September 16, 1993. Presenting: Warren Robinett, John Twomey People began to congregate at the meeting room around 6pm for refreshments, which were provided by BNR for our event. The meeting itself began a little before 6:30, with approximately 60 people attending. First to speak was Warren Robinett, formerly of Atari, The Learning Company, NASA Ames, and UNC-Chapel Hill. Warren's talk was entitled "Progress in Virtual Reality Systems, 1987-1993." Warren showed a number of videos during his presentation. The first video showed Virtual Reality technology from 1987 (NASA's VIEW Workstation), 1990 (UNC's Pixel-Planes 4), and 1993 (UNC's Pixel-Planes 5). After a discussion of the leaps and bounds made in the technology as evidenced by this video, Warren leaped over to talking about VR applications. A number of applications were discussed, including telecommuting, sensory translation (using VR to visualize environment information that is not normally in the visible spectrum, such as infrared), entertainment, design and manufacturing, education and training, scientific visualization, and hazard operations usage. The second video shown was from SRI, on their telepresence surgery workstation. Phillip Green from SRI showed off the accuracy of the system by threading needles, slicing grapes, and sewing up hunks of beef. The system has great potential for being used by surgeons who for some reason can not be near their patient-- due to an emergency situation or long distances (a patient in a space station, for instance.) A major difficulty to be overcome with the telepresence surgery workstation, however, is the time lag. Several seconds of lag when in the midst of a life-threatening operation can be a dangerously long time. Assumedly, this system's main use currently would be for expert surgeons to get to their patients, as a surgeon with less expertise should certainly be on hand just in case something happens, anyway. The third video showed some of the work being done at the University of Tokyo. The tele-existence master/slave system consists of a counter-balanced 6-DOF Head-Mounted Display with stereo video and audio, as well as a robot slaved to the movements of the user wearing this HMD. Images of the robot stacking blocks and picking up eggs testified to the accuracy of the forces which the master transmits to the slave robot. After the third video, some more applications were discussed, including the potential of VR to be used to augment the news (tour the Branch Davidian compound yourself!), Boeing's use of computers to design the 777, ASIM's use of VR to allow people to try on virtual clothing, and the possibility of using VR as personal communications device (much like the telephone is used today.) The fourth (and last) video shown gave some idea of the work being done at CMU on computing models of an environment based on images obtained from a camera. Models of the side of a house given a fifteen-second film clip of it, as well as a ping-pong ball model computed by observation of its sides showed impressive results. Could this process be made fast enough so that entire environments can be read into a computer for later exploration? Or physical events recorded as virtual environment movies for viewing later? After Warren's talk we took some time to go around the room and have each person introduce themselves. This took about 20 minutes, as there were a significant number of people present. Most people merely stated their name, current affiliation, and why they were interested in Virtual Reality. A few people put in plugs for their particular interest organizations, as well. When introductions were completed, John Twomey from SGI came to the front of the room and gave a presentation on the Onyx machine and Performer system running on it. John had brought with him an Onyx, which was hooked to a projector so that we could see its screen on the front wall of the room. He ran through a number of demos, showing the Onyx's real-time texturing and high-speed polygon processing capabilities. Meeting adjourned around 8:40pm, with the next meeting tentatively planned for mid-November. A second administration meeting will doubtless be held in mid-October. Mark A. DeLoura deloura@cs.unc.edu Patrick O'Shaughnessey shags@bnr.ca Received: + from mcenroe.cs.unc.edu by x400gate.bnr.ca id <19931008203416-0@x400gate.bnr. + ca>; Fri, 8 Oct 1993 16:34:17 -0400 Received: from discus by mcenroe.cs.unc.edu (5.65/UNC_08_21_92) id AA06421; Fri, 8 Oct 93 16:33:54 -0400 Received: by discus.cs.unc.edu (5.65/UNC_02-28-90) id AA20016; Fri, 8 Oct 93 16:33:53 -0400 Date: Fri, 8 Oct 93 16:33:53 -0400 From: Mark A. DeLoura Message-Id: <9310082033.AA20016@discus.cs.unc.edu> To: shags@bnr.ca