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From: bobr@zeus.UUCP (Robert Reed)
Newsgroups: net.graphics
Subject: Re: Dvorak and SIGGRAPH
Message-ID: <40@zeus.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 01:17:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: zeus.40
Posted: Mon Aug  5 01:17:47 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Aug-85 01:34:03 EDT
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> I have to agree with the gist of this, even though I posted the
> original negative article. The presentations were not that great, 
> but I have seen much worse also. The art show was admittedly
> an aside. And with vendor exhibits, you normally should not 
> expect too much more than a heavy sales pitch, since that is what 
> the people are there for....
> 
> But I do still agree with the contention that the exhibits were 
> disappointing, and the vendors (at least the so-called 'well-known' ones - 
> many of the smaller companies, presumably `hungrier' were more
> affable) were much more obnoxious than is called for. It is nice 
> if the show is primarily for graphics people, and it is lovely that 
> various ideas got presented, but if you can't turn it into a product 
> that you can sell, what good is it to anyone but acedemians? And THAT 
> is what I think the vendor exhibit should be all about. Not pushing
> products that are little different from what has been around.
> But maybe I misunderstand trade shows. I won't argue that most of 
> them, at whatever the show, miss this mark.

Having attended SIGGRAPH for at least the last couple of years, I was
neither terribly surprised nor disappointed at this year's showing.
SIGGRAPH has been the premiere exhibition for advances in computer graphics,
but as with any engineering field, it works in cycles.  This has been a
polishing year, making refinements on work previously published.  Many
people knew about PIXAR and Amiga last year--this year they were on the
floor.  The same can be said of many of the technical sessions, from the
Cornell radiosity work to Geof Gardner's amazing clouds and the new
applications of Ken Perlin's texture mapping work.  These were all based on
closely related work seen in Minneapolis.

This year did have its breakthroughs, though, as anyone familiar with
previous computer graphic film work would admit on seeing "Tony de Peltrie,"
the last film of the evening show.  It was a technical amazement, but more
than that, it transcended the technique to make an emotional and artistic
statement unexcelled by anything I've seen in computer graphics.  

Expect next year more groundbreaking, as the refinements and polishing give
way to new ideas and the typical 2-3 year product design cycles blossom into
newer, cheaper, faster displays and systems.

-- 
Robert Reed, CAE Systems Division, tektronix!teklds!bobr