Live from SIGGRAPH
We're in Los Angeles covering (and speaking at) at SIGGRAPH, the 31st International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and there were a few things that caught our camera's eye.
Many of the exhibitors are really extending the amount of raw human input which goes in to character design and movement. Some are full body suits, others are robotic arm or sketch helper devices that will render objects in 3d as you "trace them" in the physical world.
One thing saw a lot of was "augmented reality". Below you can see an empty train track in the physical world, but once you look at the track through a Dell Pocket PC you see there are "virtual trains" running around the track, and as you walk around the tracks, the display shows where the trains are in real-time. It's quite creepy, like that kid who could see dead people.
And perhaps the coolest of all, a series of three robots that always keep you walking in the same spot, as you get close to the edge of the last one, the one behind you swoops around to start the whole thing over again. We tried it, staying in one place hasn't been this fun in years.
Click here to view video (Windows Media).
If you wanted to see more, go check out the SIGGRAPH blog.
