—Here are the pictures with descriptions of the the wonderful things I saw.

—

Not one to miss a SIGGRAPH I met up with Doug Kelly (yes Doug Kelly THE Author) and we stopped for dinner at IHOP.

—

Doug is in very good spirits as his new book is out and he is having an signing later in the week.

—

Some of the contributors from the book were there to celebrate: Sandra Frame, Steph Greenberg, Ken Cope, and of course Doug.

—

The opening celebration include the breaking of a cask of sake which has been a tradition for I am told 11 years by a man whose birthday always (no matter what month) falls at SIGGRAPH.

—

The hands-on portions included the weirdest and wildest technologies you could imagine. Instead of being bounced around in a simulation yourself this exhibit has the monitor bounce around while you laid flat. I did not try it.

—

There was some virtual control of some dancing computer characters which I also did not try but I love the chroma-key green setup. I want one of these at home.

—

Touch technology is always very big and I expect to see more Haptic interfaces during the week. Instead of using a pen or a glove this touch interface allows you to pet this creature and feel it move with the palm of your hand.

—

Virtual Air-Hockey. Amazing! No puck, no air. Using simultaneous view virtual reality headsets the users could see both the table and their hand & the computer generated puck from their headsets.

This is what we saw.

—

This is what they saw.

—

I don’t have any picture but I did step on the virtual roaches using the touch feedback phantom slippers. Very weird.

—

With no control interface but your body this version of pong seemed quite a challenge to master.

—

Once again it is amazing what technology can do. Circled on this board is a chip LCD and lens display. This display which is available for development purposes is a 640x480x256 gray scale monitor no bigger than my thumb nail. It was clear and sharp and I want one. Even though they have actual images of the output on their website, I snapped a picture looking trough the viewfinder. Practical wearables are not far off!

—

I am off to the exhibits and some classes.