Notes From Siggraph 2004 86
First, steveha writes "As noted on LWN, SGI has announced the OpenGL 2.0 specification, which includes support for programmable shaders. How long will it be before we get native Linux applications using this?"
protohiro1 writes "I just saw this HDR display and it blew me away, it was like looking at a slide on a light table. Is this the future of display tech?"
abacsalmasi wrote about a "nifty little thing called Echo. I, along with two other chaps, have started a company called Stable Research Inc. and we'll be showing our Echo prototype at the Siggraph show. It is essentially live DVD recordings at concert venues where we can have burned DVDs of the concert they just saw, ready minutes after the show for people to pick up on their way out. The cool thing about it is the ability to switch camera angles on the fly, without any lag or stuttering, plus we include another composite ganged feed so you can watch all the cameras simultaneously. A demo will be showing at The Canadian Film Centre's Habitat New Media booth so stop by and check it out. Web Demo coming soon."
Woohoo! (Score:5, Informative)
The new OpenGL spec is something to be excited about, programmable shaders open up some cool stuff, my "official esitmation" on when this stuff will make it into an OS will be early next year.
Expect Quartz Super-Ultra-EXTREME!
Re:Woohoo! (Score:2, Interesting)
Make the package solid, get good reviews, and OpenGL would make a record sprint when you press fire...
Re:Woohoo! (Score:4, Interesting)
Then the dot-com thing ruined it. It was filled with kids with green hair and tounge piercings who wanted to get started in "computer graphics." I was working for a majoe movie studio and we stopped having a booth because we just got swamped with terrible demo reels, etc.
I went last year, just for grins (and because San Diego is nice) and the show was a sad shadow of what it used to be.
Those Darn Kids and Their Rock-n-Roll Music (Score:5, Funny)
"Then the dot-com thing ruined it. It was filled with kids with green hair and tounge piercings who wanted to get started in "computer graphics."
No doubt the suit-and-tie mainframers thought the same thing when "those kids in some garage" started making "toy computers" to sell for personal use. ;-)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Re:Woohoo! (Score:3, Insightful)
You should have gotten involved. SIGGRAPH is what we, the people who do computer graphics, make of it. Every conference is organized by volunteers. If there is something you don't like and you have good ideas about how to improve it, you'll have a chance to participate.
Your post made me think of the people who are inactive politically, don't even vote, and complain about the state of o
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Informative)
sadangel
-- from Siggraph
Re:Woohoo! (Score:3, Funny)
I'm in the uk, and was in an auditarium with about 200 students watching a clip from SIGGRAPH. It had this bit where this small bird falls off a telegraph pole. The bird hits the ground, and the bass rumbling when it hits the ground is loud. Really loud, and the seats and tables start to shake visibile. I'm thinking "shit, this SIGGRAPH stuff is amazing!" and everyone start talking, and the shaking hit again. Turned out to be the first (and last) earthquake I've ever felt...
Re:Woohoo! (Score:2)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:2)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:2)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:2)
Squidball (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Squidball (Score:1, Funny)
Dear Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
Programmable shaders have been exposed (in all major operating systems supporting OpenGL) through extensions for some time now. OpenGL 2.0 moves them into the core specification.
Letter
HDR display (Score:5, Interesting)
The basic idea is simple, the execution is simple, but you do need applications and drivers taking advantage of it.
The future ? I would think so. Right now games, for example, are mimicing very bright objects by putting a glow around it. With such a display, forget the glow - the pixels really *are* that bright
Re:HDR display (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that such a good idea, though, for extended viewing? Monitors (particularly the CRT flavour) are pretty bright as it is
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:HDR display (Score:3, Informative)
Here are the papers [cs.ubc.ca] on this HDR display. I guess you really have to see it in real life to appreciate what it does. In the paper all they can do is show photos with different exposures.
Their first version used a projector to get the required brightness, diffused that image, and then blocked this bright image with an LCD. They measured the dynamic range at 54,000:1! Their second version used a hexagonal grid of LED's as the light source, which made it brighter and more compact than the first. I would ima
Re:HDR display (Score:2)
HDR != display tech (Score:2)
OLEDs are a replacement for, say, LCD, CRT, Plasma and LED displays.
HDR, on the other hand, is not a replacement for any of those - it is a concept (that of a very high range, with implied (though not specified) fidelity equal to or greater than currently used) that can be used -with- all of the above.
If you can get a CRT to display at stupendously bright levels, it could qualify for a HDR display - assuming it would still keep the same or better fidelity than a
It's a scam!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:HDR display (Score:2)
Biggest problem is that it runs hot, which shortens the life of the lcd and led's. According to the guy there it actually detects degradation of the LED's and increases the voltage as they age so the brightness remains constant.
Monitor is the size of a 17" LCD screen. The actual working parts seem to be 2" thick, but behind it is a 4" thick box t
Re:HDR display (Score:2)
Re:HDR display (Score:2)
If a normal display uses 8bits per channel (256 levels) for regular black to white, and we can still see banding (if you look closely at something like a wide gradient)...
Alternatively, the display could just go from superbright to not superbright at all, a
Re:HDR display (Score:2)
Siggraph advances (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~tor/ [brown.edu]
Has an index of the papers of Siggraph for several years (including this one), as well as for Eurographics.
A *lot* of GPU-(ab)use now that they can more easily be used for general calculations (be it scientific or off-loading rendering - lots of new dynamics, fluids, fires, fracturing, mapping methods, low-discrepancy sampling patterns, etc. etc.
You have to dig this sort of stuff to enjoy reading the papers, but if you're a programmer or just interested in CG advances - I highly recommend them.
Disclaimer : I work for a company attending Siggraph
Online Animations: At www,archive.org (Score:1, Informative)
Anything revolutionary left? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was browsing eBay and ran across auctions for some Quantum3D pro graphics cards, and it reminded me that "wow" moments used to happen every year at these expos. Like, 3dfx demonstrated its huge Voodoo5 6000 and its FSAA capabilities first at SIGGRAPH using special hardware from sister company Quantum3D. In retrospect the Voodoo5 6000 didn't even get in production, but the FSAA and other effects demonstrated by them at SIGGRAPH impressed everyone and changed the industry--now they're standard on even low-end 3D cards
I've been reading about this year's SIGGRAPH and I don't see any real "wow" moments. In fact, when was the last time any of the major computer graphics expos really had something new and revolutionary and not just incremental? Even though these conventions skew towards professional equipment and uses, it used to be that every year something truly exciting for the consumer would be demonstrated and trickle its way down to everyone. Are there any revolutions in the industry left, or are we advanced to the point that it's all incremental steps toward realism from here?
Re:Anything revolutionary left? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, without making any actual prognostications, what with predictions about the future being the hardest to make, let me look to the rear and try to predict the past.
The first 90% of development always advances the quickest and with the highest density of "wow" moments per unit time.
The Bleriot monoplane of 1909 establishing the basic layout of the aeroplane and the 1912 Peugot establishing the double overhead cam four valve head for instance.
Obviously there was still a lot of room for improvement ( and a lot of blind alleys to follow), but one could argue that after that things became largely incremental in the aero and automotive fields ( at least until, say, the AVRO Arrow and the Lotus 25).
Don't worry though, just as obviously incremental development adds up over a decade or three and there's often another "wow" or three out there.
KFG
Re:Anything revolutionary left? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're just concentrating on the exhibition, which is what usually gets reported, then no; there isn't much that's great.
However, that's because we've had a lackluster couple of years for research, for fairly obvious reasons.
But the research is picking up. I've seen a couple of wow things in software, but it takes a few years for these to make it to market. For instance, there are the high-contrast displays and techniques, which were in prototype phase last year and are almost to market now. They'll
Re:Anything revolutionary left? (Score:2)
Yes. It's harder and harder to wow people. Running out of new stuff to make people 'holy shit!' with. In all honesty, short of a truely innovative 3d modelling/painting program (ZBrush 2.0 if any of you are curious) I didn't see anything that made me gasp. Nearly everything I saw in an earlier generation in 01. They didn't even have as many booth babes.
Re:Anything revolutionary left? (Score:1)
Hehe, I though E3 was where the best booth babes lived.
Revolutionary? OpenGL2.0 is Che bloody Guevara (Score:2)
Maybe it's less interesting if you're not a coder, but personally this has got me seriously stoked - it is a big, big, big step forward. Huge. Really.
I can't wait to get playing with this; I've been revisiting all those old papers I mentally flagged as 'not realtime friendly', and a big proportion of them suddenly become possible.
Anyw
On a somewhat related note: Assembly 2004 (Score:5, Interesting)
Assembly 2004 [assembly.org] just got out a couple days ago - check it out if you're at all interesting in the graphics "Demo/Intro Scene" or just really cool computer art of all sorts.
One of the most amazing things to come out of these parties/competitions has been the rather amazing 64k intros. If you have any modern 3d hardware, and haven't heard of them - definetly have a look. The things these folks can pack in under 65536 bytes is nothing short of amazing. Even if you don't have the hardware, you can download the
Ryan Fenton
Distributed Streaming Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Bittorrent that would allow a distributed
nearly-live stream. I realize that conferences
like SIGGRAPH don't have the bandwidth funds
to stream their presentations, but is there a
tech that would enable them to seed a stream
and then have other people pick it up and
help distribute the broadcast costs?
If there isn't such a thing, get to work, guys!
I've got too much stuff to do
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
That's not the major problem (Score:5, Informative)
Now, ideally, they'd get the rights first. That hasn't happened yet, but I just got back from the Pioneers' party, and from what the organizers said, it sounds like they're working on it.
Re:That's not the major problem (Score:1)
This is *almost* all of the content, but expect to get pretty much everything that is cutting edge in these talks. Use your ACM Portal membership to also read the paper on the side.
In short, if you're serious about doing work in this industry as a programmer and you don't have an ACM portal membership, I'd suggest getting one.
Re:Distributed Streaming Question (Score:2, Informative)
And yeah, it can stream video too...
Re:Distributed Streaming Question (Score:3, Informative)
It's called SplitStream, and you can find it here [microsoft.com]. Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, cites it in his BitTorrent economics paper [bitconjurer.org].
Unfortunately, the research on it was sponsored by Microsoft, and so you must swear an oath to Satan every time you use it.
- shadowmatter
Emerging Technologies (Score:5, Informative)
I just got back from the SIGGRAPH conference myself, and a couple of the items that impressed me the most were new monitor technologies.
First, there were 3-D monitors. There was a demonstration of 3D TV yesterday, but I actually found that to be unimpressive; it suffered from a double image that I couldn't get away from no matter where I stood. However, there were several companies that were using monitors with the label X3D which were very impressive! It almost looks like a regular LCD monitor, full color and brightness, but it displays a stereoscopic image that you can view without any special glasses. It seems to have an optimal viewing angle is within around ninety degrees, but in that range the illusion of depth is quite convincing. The major drawback to it is that it appears finely honeycombed, as if looking through the eyes of an insect (with several tens of thousands of lenses). There was also another display (I didn't get the name of the company that made the monitor) which used polarized light to achieve the 3D effect with a very high resolution, but the down side to that of course is you need polarized shades to see it.
The other item I found very interesting was a couple of new displays which combine LED lighting with an LCD display to achieve 300 times the contrast ratio of standard LCD monitors (that's right -- three hundred). 40,000:1! Viewing images of sunsets and light shining through stained glass windows on this monitor was simply breathtaking. They had it sitting next to a regular LCD monitor showing the same image so you could compare the difference, but even if they didn't have that, the quality of the lighting is enough to amaze you. It's much more true to life than a photograph can capture. One of the manufacturers was NEC, and the other was Sunnybrook Technologies. They said that these units would be ready for commercial production within a year.
And of course there were the companies like ATI and nVidia showing off their latest hardware, and Apple, Alias, Adobe, etc. demonstrating their latest software. Disney Feature Animation had clips of their new upcoming movie. But IMHO the above monitors had the biggest "wow" factor of all the exhibits I saw.
Re:Emerging Technologies (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Emerging Technologies (Score:2)
The demo of the doors that were only visible as open when looking through glasses was much cooler. If that's what
5k competition? (Score:5, Interesting)
ExtremeTech is covering the show, too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ExtremeTech is covering the show, too (Score:1)
CG Networks has their coverage ( day 1 [cgnetworks.com], day 2 [cgnetworks.com]).
CG Networks is also noteworthy because it's part of Ballistic Media, the company that brings you fine digital art like EXPOSÉ [ballisticpublishing.com], paired up with discreet to do a combined art book called Elemental [ballisticpublishing.com], and is bringing out d'artiste [ballisticpublishing.com], a tutorial book on digital painting.
The books are all available at the SIGGRAPH expo - if you can't get there, you'll have to get them ordered ordered on the website and wait a fe
Linux in FX meeting at Siggraph (Score:5, Informative)
The main issue that he wanted to address was the need for visual effects studios to present as united a front as possible, so that people who write the software that we use (typically called ISVs) will be able to do Linux ports with some confidence. Greg points out that historically people had used Red Hat 7.x, and that companies like Nothing Real and Alias were able to make Linux versions of their programs without too much trouble. But now, most studios find Red Hat Enterprise licenseing unattractive, and everybody is choosing a different platform. Greg's poll found some companies running Fedora Core 2 (Pixar is doing this, as is my company,) others are using Suse and some are using RHE 3.0.
The problem we face is that if we balkanize too much, it will be impossible for ISVs to support us. Even though all the big visual effects and animation studios use Linux extensively, it is still a very small part of the market for these tools. Alias says that Linux is a distant third place in the number of licenses, after Windows and OS X. (Interestingly, the second place Linux distribution for Alias customers is TurboLinux, because of its strong Asian language support.)
Several vendors were present at the meeting. NVidia said that they really try hard to qualify on every Linux distribution -- they test on dozens of different distributions (some don't work). Intel, on the other hand, said that any past the top two or three just cannot be supported. In particular, because Linux is so customizable, it is often impossible to replicate bugs and problems, because it's unknown what the customer's environment is.
A general solution presented by Greg, which seemed reasonable, was to suggest to the ISVs and IHVs that they qualify for two systems, say RHE and Suse 9.1. Studios would have a stock system of one of those systems, and would test support issues on those stock systems to see if the problem was with the vendors stuff or was due to customization done at the studio. There would be a need to adjust what these two systems might be, over time, as things evolve. Greg suggested that Pixar would be happy to sponsor a web site and discussions on an ongoing (every six month, say) basis to update these reference systems.
John Carey gave a talk on the differnce between a distribution and a operating system -- basically presenting the challenge that ISVs face when trying to write to the Linux market.
The guy from Intel (I forget his name) suggested that Linux Standards Base (LSB) 2.0 is an attempt to address these problems -- after all, they are not unique to the visual effects industry. While he recognizes that LSB 2.0 is not a panacea, it will go a significant part of the way to help standardize Linux from the ISVs point of view.
Dan Wexler of NVidia noted that it's even harder than other people thought. He is working on abusing graphics cards in unconventional ways, and has found that he has significant problems with combinations of motherboards, graphics cards, and memory. Perhaps the reference systems mentioned above will have to specify hardware as well as software configurations.
Andy Maltz from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made a presentation as well, talking about the Academy's revivified Science and Technical Council. He suggested that the Academy was very interested in helping solve technical problems, and providing a forum to share solutions between studios.
All in all, it was a good meeting. My thanks to Greg for putting it together, and maintaining relentless good cheer through some difficult questions and issues.
Thad Beier
Pull your -ing finger out, Intel! (Score:1, Insightful)
Phillip Twiss is running dozens of different distros on each hard disk at Western Australia's Open Source demo labs, and he's a one-man band.
If Phill can install and test so much by himself, just how much manpower has Intel thrown at Linux? One body? Two? For a company as large as Intel, that's pathetic. If they take it seriously, who knows? They may even get serious results.
Slick OpenGL 2.0 based Image Manager (Score:2, Informative)
Apparently, it uses OpenGL [opengl.org] shaders or GLSL [opengl.org], which is now part of the recently announced OpenGL 2.0, to do real time image filtering. It's pretty neat. The user interface is kinda space age and nothing like what you would expect to see in an image manager. It can search images based on color and shape and the results were very accurate. Definitely worth a look.
The stonybrook moni
Frame Thrower at SIGGRAPH (Score:4, Interesting)
SIGGRAPH, right (Score:2, Interesting)
I've never been to SIGGRAPH myself, which I very much regret, but I hope I can be there next year.
From what I experienced is smaller conferences can often be more useful, often very interesting ideas can be born
direct x (Score:1)
Re:direct x (Score:1)
sunnybrook display (Score:3, Insightful)
This is exactly what I've been waiting for! Up until now, I haven't found a monitor capable of producing a dark enough black to really show off Doom 3 in all its glory.
Siggraph 2004 (Score:1)
I was encouraged by them picking up the job fair once again. Of course, my current employer couldn't afford to send me out there...
I've been to 5 SIGgraphs over the last 7 years and had an awesome time at all of them!!!
X3D!
hiring at SIGGRAPH (Score:2)
Unofficially much of the hiring is backdoor through connections, smallish studio parties, etc. There seems to be a fair amount of F/X business for F/X houses of all sizes.