http://www.AVLcon.blogspot.com

IEEE VR 2009 - Mike's Thoughts

Sunday, March 15, 2009 - I spent the whole day in the 3D UI sessions. Overall I found the material very interesting. The best paper award went to Arch-Explore. The best poster award went to a woman from George Mason who had an application using the Phantom to train ADD kids to do handwriting tasks (but the poster was taken down before I had a chance to see it; I’ll check the proceedings when I can).

Of particular interest was the keynote talk by the Director of Autodesk research. He spoke to the concept of making UI “fun” – that is the missing ingredient. He references this through the joy of physically building things. He wants to consider combining virtual and physical objects. These combinations could be the key to the next great UI. He presented a bunch of ideas related to real-world technologies that might enable this: multi-touch, 3D printing, 3D scanner (he called it 3D sampling), and real deformable materials.

Examples worth looking up include:

· This guy really liked multi-touch. He didn’t say too much other than he thinks it is the next big thing for UI.
· The life-size Chopper (the motorcycle). This started as an Inventory digital model and ended up being the hit of the Autodesk customer center. It is a life-size replica created through 3D printing (and pieced together very carefully). He had video of people sitting on it. I think he said Stratus (is that correct?) was the printing company.
· Contour crafting (3D printing with concrete to build large structures like houses).
· Check out the BMW future car that uses deformable materials. It was unbelievable. Dave and I had lunch with some folks from UCF and none of us have ever seen anything like that.
· Autodesk’s PenLight prototype (AR meets the Perceptable for blueprints). It will be presented at SIGCHI next month.

I also listened to Margaret Dolinsky present some of her thoughts on perception for immersive environments. It was really good to hear her talk about her own work. I think everyone in our group should hear her perspective in a more formal setting. And, of course, it's always good to hear "Indiana University" from a speaker (especially when the room is packed; it was standing room only, literally).