From: Mike Bevan <mike@vrnews.demon.co.uk>
Subject: ONLINE: Virtual Humans email group
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 12:27:32 +0000
Message-ID: <837775486.11020.0@vrnews.demon.co.uk>


At the recent Virtual Humans '96 conference in Anaheim, Dr Sandra
Helsel, our US Editor announced that VR NEWS was making arrangements
to set up and sponsor a Virtual Humans email group. This message is to
let you know that the group now exists. Anyone interested in the
subject is warmly invited to subscribe, by sending an email to:

majordomo@ece.uwaterloo.ca

with the words 'subscribe v-humans' in the body of the message.

The v-humans co-moderators are Bernie Roehl, who is hosting the
service at the University of Waterloo; Prof. Norm Badler (who created
and developed 'Jack') at the University of Pennsylvania; and
Prof. Nadia Thalmann (who with her husband, Prof. Daniel Thalmann,
created and developed 'Marilyn') at the University of Geneva. Nadia
will be assisted by Elwyn Lee, who was one of her students when she
was a Professor at the National University of Singapore last year, and
has joined her laboratory in Geneva to undertake a Ph.D course in VR
and Virtual Humans.

The broad initial objectives of the group are threefold:

- First, to provide a forum for the exchange of information between people
interested in the topic of virtual humans. 

- Second, to see what scope there is for the development of a common
architecture and application-independent standards for virtual humans
software technology. The aim here will be to try to ensure that
subsystems and plug-ins and helper applications developed by different
groups can be brought together as required to suit different
applications. It looks likely that the virtual humans 'industry' is
going to experience very rapid growth towards the end of the 90s: now
is not too soon to start to experiment with ideas about a common
software framework for research and commercialisation.

- Third, and closely linked with the standardisation issue, to carry
out Internet-visible reference implementations and demonstrations
involving the interconnection of different subsystems. This will also
help to raise market and media awareness of what is happening and what
is available. It should be possible in due course to visit the
v-humans web site, download experimental software, and observe and
interact with state-of-the-art autonomous virtual humans.

Perhaps I could take this opportunity to mention that edited
proceedings of Virtual Humans '96 are in course of preparation, and
their availability will notified on v-humans. Also, following the
success of the '96 event, we are already working with EDS, our US
conference partners, on plans for an enlarged Virtual Humans '97, for
which I shall be assembling a preliminary program over the next few
months.

Mike Bevan
Editor - VR NEWS
mike@vrnews.demon.co.uk