A Walk In Wonderland

Siggraph wouldn't be complete with getting to see a couple of shots of motion capture in all its guises. This first one is when motion capture is used to enhance animation effects.

This second one is Intersense , where the captured motion is used as a means of interacting, and interfacing, with an application. This notion that the very space around us becomes some sort of giant mouse pad, and we become the mouse, well, it doesn't sound too healthy when you put it that way. However, it's still very much an evolving science, and the military always loves this sort of thing.

My must-have useful thingy at the show was the Wacom tablets, which would go very nicely with my three screen Parhelia setup and combo DVD-RW drive/ cocktail dispenser. You can get more information on the Cintiq display tablets here . Weekend's coming up, what else are you going to do but browse my links?

Didn't get invited to many parties (I wonder why), but I did attend a special luncheon hosted by graphics analyst Jon Peddie, who has written a few things for us in the past, where a panel of industry experts discussed the topic, "Graphics: Are we done yet?"

I'm not normally a fan of panels because they are so difficult to write about. You either say too little or focus on the wrong points, but in this case, if you want to get a feel for how the discussion panned out, make up your own minds by listening to the audio here . Well, that gets me off the hook. But, seriously folks, you don't often get to hear Kurt Akeley, for instance, and the debate was lively and insightful. Weekend's coming up, what else are you going to do?

Finally

It wasn't a wise decision on the part of the organizers to move Siggraph to San Antonio. When the show was lodged in LA, it drew the biggest crowds and packed the exhibit halls, and while Siggraph was once primarily a conference of interest to academics, students, and engineers of computer graphics, it is now as commercial as any other show. A sort of grown-up Game Developer Conference type of thing.

Or, maybe, it's just a sign of the times. Everything that was big is smaller now, and the mighty have fallen or are faltering. That was true of the show, of the big player in graphics hardware, and even in the application space. With Alias/ Wavefront dropping prices to absurd levels, the professional 3D applications market looks like it is being drained of much of its vim and vigour, too.

I have to go find my happy place right now. I really do.