Program Co-chairs: James Cremer (Iowa), Dinesh Manocha (UNC), George Vanecek (Purdue)
Program committee: N. Badler (Penn), D. Baraff (CMU), P. Fishwick (Florida),
J. Helman (SGI),
L. Hodges (Ga. Tech), J. Kearney (Iowa), H. Ko (Iowa)
M. Lin (NPS), D. Pai (UBC), Y. Papelis (Iowa), M. Raibert (MIT),
A. Witkin (CMU), M. Zyda (NPS), D. Zeltzer (MIT)
Virtual worlds should be rich, dynamic environments populated with objects that exhibit realistic (or at least interesting) behaviors and that interact convincingly with each other and human participants. Remarkable progress in graphics technology has not been paralleled by developments in real-time simulation and interaction software necessary to support many VE applications. Existing systems are often visually compelling but behaviorally dull; the underlying physical and behavioral models are simplistic and the user's freedom of interaction is severely restricted. Even simple everyday interactions - grasping, opening and closing, and moving or knocking over things - cannot be performed in ways people are accustomed to. Many potential VE applications will not be realized without fundamental advances in efficient and robust software for simulation, geometry, behavior and scenario authoring, and basic virtual environment ``backplanes''.
This workshop will be a technical forum examining the state of the art and open research problems in simulation, geometry, scenario, and other supporting software technologies for virtual environments.
One focus will be real-time interactive simulation. Virtual environments demand a new style of simulation software that adheres to real-time constraints but is also structured to respond to user-interaction, and to detect and resolve collisions and other on-line events.
A second focus of the workshop will be the modeling, control, and authoring of action and scenarios within VEs. In training and entertainment applications, developers must be able to ``program the action'' - to populate a VE with interesting entities and to specify scenarios that meet designers' expectations. VEs require both passive behavior, based on real-time simulation with collision and contact handling, and active behavior - motor, task, and scenario control of complex entities such as humans, robots and animals. Tools for active behavior must facilitate creating and directing scenarios of interacting human and computer controlled agents, typically combining both reactive and orchestrated behavior components.
The two-and-a-half day workshop will include two keynote speeches, presentations by approximately sixteen of the invited participants, and panel-led discussions. Facilities for demonstrations will be available. Workshop proceedings will be distributed to all participants and also placed in a widely accessible ACM World Wide Web on-line proceedings repository.
Participants will be given a demonstration of and an opportunity to drive the Iowa Driving Simulator - an immersive driving environment incorporating real-time dynamics, advanced image generation, motion platform with dome and interchangeable auto cabs, force feedback, audio, very high resolution terrain databases, and reactive scenario traffic.
Please submit 3-6 pages summarizing your relevant research or activities in the area. Include email and U.S. mail address, and telephone and fax numbers. Not all invited participants will have a formal opportunity to speak. However, the workshop will be organized to provide ample opportunities for discussion.
A limited amount of travel funds will be available to invited participants.
A registration fee of $100 ($50 for graduate students, $125 for non-ACM members) will be charged. Included in this fee: catered lunch on the first day, informal reception/barbecue during the first evening, and workshop proceedings.
We prefer electronic submission of either Postscript (preferred) or plain unformatted text to:
cremer@cs.uiowa.edu
If you prefer, you may send hard copy to
James Cremer Computer Science Department MacLean Hall University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 (telephone: 319-335-0736, fax: 319-335-3624)
Submissions must be received by April 20, 1995.
April 20, 1995 deadline for the submission of abstracts May 15, 1995 notification of acceptance for the workshop
Updated meeting information, tentative schedule, registration details, and
further information about the organizers and participants will be available via
the World Wide Web at URL:
~cremer/sive95.html