Events

• Virtual Humans 3 happened in June 1998
  • even less participation, fewer companies, less progress than last year
  • it appears that nearly all innovation is occuring in proprietary, non-leveraged ways
  • H-ANIM is still where it was a year ago

• Virtual Humans 2 conference was June 1997 in LA
  • it was mostly lofty academics, with a small handful of specialized and military apps
  • biodynamic simulation was mentioned in several presentations, but never elaborated
  • there was no indication that the field is moving toward home/hobbyist exposure
  • the Thalmann's example application showed networked motion capture, with a complete lack of physics, most noticeably wildly inaccurate gripping
  • overall, there was a frustrating lack of depth - primarily fluffy overview presentations.

• Press reports and descriptions of Virtual Humans '96
  • virtual-humans.txt at www.hitl
  • Virtual Humans '96
  • Special Report on The First Virtual Humans Conference: Evolution in Cyberspace (can't find any living links to this any more)

• Lots of great simulation papers were submitted at the Workshop on Simulation and Interaction in Virtual Environments (SIVE) in 1995.

• Lifelike Computer Characters (LCC) (1994, 1995, 1998?)
  • has focused more on human interaction, high-level behavior and AI - which i find quite premature, given the lack of progress on basic human modelling and rendering
  • all trace has vanished from the Microsoft Research website which used to host the LCC material
  • although Bruce's Sterling's speech (1995) was still there (until 2004..)