TE 2006 (TE)
FLUIDS Bulletin - 23rd Issue
FLUIDS Project Partners:
MIZAR Automazione S.p.A. (Co-ordinator)
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
DFKI German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH
Consorzio 5T
A central application field for knowledge-based graphics generation
lies in the area of information visualization.
A new groundbreaking book by Card et al. defines the emerging
field of information visualization which has its roots in diverse
areas like statistical graphics, information design, scientific
visualization, and human-computer interaction.
Card et al. [1998] offers a detailed insight into the current
state-of-the-art through its carefully edited collection of the
classic source papers and important cutting edge work.
Focussing on major themes like spatial aspects, interaction, focus and
context, mapping of textual data, higher-level visualization, and
applications and innovations, the book provides also introductions and
analytical discussion of each topic and paper.
An important intention of the book is to inspire commercialization of
the results obtained so far.
Given the steady increase of graphics power of mass PC platforms
techniques of information visualization that were the province of
research laboratories can now appear in the mass market.
PuppetTime
is a novel approach towards an open architecture for digital actors,
built on top of
Apple Computer's QuickTime
multimedia software architecture.
PuppetTime
,
which is currently under development, constitutes a new media type for
QuickTime
and defines a standard Application Programmer's Interface for digital
puppets and avatars that can be controlled via a pre-recorded or
realtime event stream, called a PuppetScript.
An important feature of the approach is the fact that digital actors
are rendered on the user's computer instead of preparing a complete
video sequence in advance.
PuppetTime
has many applications, including broadcast Virtual Reality, netplay
interactive games, and other 3D simulations that require camera
freedom, low bandwidth thruput, and high visual fidelity.
QuickTime
,
which forms the basis for
PuppetTime
,
has established itself as a market-leading digital media architecture.
The
QuickTime
file format has recently been adopted by the International Standards
Organization (ISO) as the starting point for the development of a
unified digital media storage format for the MPEG-4 specification.
MPEG-4 is an emerging digital media standard currently being defined
by ISO's Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) that will enable users to
select, view and manipulate audio, video and other forms of digital
content.
The
1998 International
Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces
AVI-98 reveals interesting new trends in knowledge-based
graphics generation and intelligent user interfaces.
The conference program reflects a particular interest in Augmented
Reality which enables novel applications with user interfaces that
provide a linking of the real environment with virtual worlds.
The demo presentations given by European researchers showed a broad
variety of research protoypes operating in various application
domains.
A specific focus of the numerous contributions from Europe lay on the
visualization of information spaces as well as interacting through
different modalities.
Furthermore, it turns out that aspects of usability constitute a
salient issue in the area of advanced visual user interfaces.
AVI-98, which constitutes one of the leading conferences
specifically devoted to advanced visual user interfaces, attracted
many contributions from the USA.
Compared with European research activities presented at the
Advanced Visual Interfaces Conference
current research in this field in the USA seems to focus more on themes
like navigation in information spaces and multimedia design.
However, similar to the trend in Europe it can be observed that the
general field of advanced visual user interfaces is strongly
influenced through Artifical Intelligence approaches like
knowledge-based graphics generation and intelligent interfaces.
-
IT&KNOWS/IFIP'98:
-
Information Technology and Knowledge Systems
(as part of the 15th IFIP World Computer Congress)
,
Vienna, Austria and Budapest, Hungary, August 31 - September 4, 1998.
Focusing on knowledge-based techniques, the conference will also be
concerned with human-computer interaction.
-
EUROGRAPHICS'98:
-
19th Annual Conference of the European
Association for Computer Graphics
,
Lisbon, Portugal, August 31 - September 4, 1998.
The leading international computer graphics conference in Europe is a
forum for the latest developments in graphics technology, for case
studies in advanced graphics systems and applications, and surveying
of current trends.
-
HCI'98:
-
British HCI Group Conference on
Human-Computer Interaction
,
Sheffield, UK, September 1-4, 1998.
The HCI annual conference is the primary European conference on
human-computer interaction.
Various aspects related to intelligent user interfaces will also
be addressed.
-
IDMS'98:
-
Fifth International Workshop on Interactive
Distributed Multimedia Systems and
Telecommunication Services
,
Oslo, Norway, September 8-11, 1998.
The conference will also be concerned with multimedia-specific
intelligent agents and distributed virtual reality systems.
-
DEUMS'98:
-
IFIP Working Conference on Designing
Effective and Usable Multimedia Systems
,
Stuttgart, Germany, September 9-11, 1998.
The conference focusses on design aspects of (intelligent and
conventional) multimedia-based user interfaces.
The
PuppetTime
Web site provides detailed information about the new
QuickTime
media type for digital actors.
It offers free download of the latest documentation, runtime
environment, and Software Development Kit.
The
PuppetTime
homepage is located at:
Official reference information concerning
QuickTime
is available from
Apple Computer, Inc.
under the following address:
- AVI-98.
- Proc. of AVI'98: Int. Workshop on Advanced Visual Interfaces, L'Aquila, Italy, 1998.
- S. Card, J. Mackinley, B. Shneiderman, eds.
- Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think
. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 1998.
Gerd Herzog
Last update: Fri Jul 31 20:34:22 MET DST 1998
Send comments to herzog@acm.org© DFKI GmbH, 1996-1998
Reproduction is authorized, except for commercial purposes, provided the source is acknowledged.
