Total Immersion in Virtual Reality and Virtual Worlds - this afternoon's program features Jordan Pollack and Bruce Damer, and apparently it's show and tell time.  Pollack shows us a gangly robot that was evolved from software trying to create something.   Damer showed us a virtual world program with weird heads that were actually controlled by real people.  I lack the skills to even attempt to explain what is happening during this session.  

1:31:44 PM    comment []

The Invisible Society: the world of gamers - Dan Gillmor is the moderator of the session on gaming. He opens with a funny line (if you read the previous post about the guy from Pixar): "Forgive me, I'm a bit out of sorts this morning.  I'm only operating at about 50,000 polygons."  Dan apparently is adapting the "Everything I know I learned in Kindergarten" model to gaming.  He says everything he needs to know he learned from gaming.  Such as: if you see food on the floor pick it up and eat it; if you smash some things they have cool and useful stuff inside; if something moves, shoot it.  Later, he remembers another important point: you can run out of hand-grenades, but you can never run out of bullets.

The speakers are Warren Spector and Amy Jo Kim.  Spector is first up to talk about single-person games, which he is committed to develop despite the surging popularity of multi-player games.

Warren Spector - talking about single player games.  Makes single player games, and has created 14 titles.  Doesn't understand the fascination with multi-player games.  Criticism of gaming is that it is passive and doesn't help the user. Not true. The gamer is not some zoned-out teen in his bedroom.  Lots of different types of people game.  People say gaming stifles learning.  Not true.  Gaming can be a useful learning experience.  Success in gaming requires thinking, planning, acting and reacting. 

Let's talk about the process of making games.  He too echoes the idea that creating virtual worlds is expensive and hard.  His last game cost $5 million, and next one will cost more.  The technology needed to create the game world is intricate.  Since we are talking about polygons he uses that metric.  He says game reality starts at a much lower threshold than what Pixar requires (80 million polys).  Says his dream is 300,000 polys, and (looking at Dan Gillmor) says "I would kill for 50,000 polys."  Audience laughs.  Then he adds: "I'm a gamer and I know how to kill."  More laughter.

9:46:51 AM    comment []

Real Music, Imaginary Sights - Noel Paul Stookey and Alvy Ray Smith are up this morning.  I hadn't heard of Noel Paul Stookey (apparently he is the "Paul" of Peter, Paul & Mary fame, and the song Puff the Magic Dragon, and no it isn't about drugs), but he was great!  I can't convey why he was great except to say that he played his guitar, improvised across a few technical difficulties, read a poem that he wrote while affecting a New England accent, and basically had the audience of brainy cognosenti filled with an uplifting spirit of communal love.  Really!  I'm not kidding.  And he even had them singing along, doing the background vocals to one of his songs.

Alvy Ray Smith is talking now.  He's a principal figure at Pixar, the graphics company that creates the fantastic stuff in movies like Toy Story.  His first mission, oddly enough for a guy that creates fantasy at its highest and most believable level, is to debunk the Ray Kurzweil chronicles.  Smith makes fantasy for a living, so he's skeptical of Kurzweil's claims that we will all exponentially progress into a uptopian fantasy world where we will become software and go on to live forever.  Smith has his own mathematical models I suppose.  He says that reality begins at 80 million polygons (per frame).  His point is that creating fantasy requires a lot of computation and is hard work.  So maybe some of Kurzweil's projections are a little optimistic <grin>.

Q&A with these two guys reveals something worth considering.  Pixar creates artificial worlds to entertain us and it is hard work and requires a lot of polygons.  Noel Paul Stokey can create imaginary worlds with his spontaneous antics and childlike wonderment (you'd have to be here to fully understand, but just picture a 50+ year old bearded history professor who acts like Robin Williams).  Technology is great, but connecting with people using the tried and true technique of being down-to-earth is best.

8:39:47 AM    comment []