Keynote address: Jaron Lanier

1st signs of maturation in industry: real applications are in the
field. Trend in applications: e.g. where data exists and too much
time is spent managing it. AI = Assistive Intelligence; software
making choices in ways of displaying data & user accepting/rejecting.
For the next 10 years, software will be the rate-limiting step.
Don't expect VR to explode like PCs did: PCs had a ready-made,
efficiently manipulable world of symbols to operate on. It takes a
year per virtual world model. Level of hype is counterproductive -
shares blame - too much time spent educating users on the limits vs.
what their expectations are. E.g. sex w/ VR: so far from what VR can
do & what sex is. Project w/ MCA: VR theater w/ standup MC who changes
into lots of creatures along the way - an opportunity to embed VR in
culture & create a market for it. That & surgical & endoscopic stuff
is hugely software intensive. But clients want their applications
done rather than tools for building applications faster.

Q: What to tell people back at med school in Arkansas?
A: Fields are: endoscopy, physiotherapy, diagnosis, handicapped.
6 months per model of a procedure, hope to eventually auto-import
imaging data. Phys therapy: learning how things work, slowing down
gravity to learn juggling. Sign language -> synthesized speech.
Maybe phobic desensitization.

Q: Tools for VR object creation?
A: sometime next year

Q: Programming language for VR generation?
A: expect in 5 years a mixture of manual & automatic; key is how combined.

Q: Standards?
A: infuriating necessity: more inadequate => more easily adopted. Expect
to learn a lot in next few years. 3D & texture is easy, dynamics is hard.

Why we aren't exhibiting here: can only do so many conferences a year;
business decision.

Q: will you publish your in-house standard?
A: no one has burningly asked; don't know.

Q: ..Swivel 3D?
A: porting to other machines than Mac, working on "Swivelocity"

Q: # of VPL VR systems sold?
A: 550-570. expect high end market is ~10,000; low end could sell
millions & then they'd be gone

Q: real time radiosity, improvements in visuals?
A: will charge extra .. what you need depends on the application.

Q: breakdown of 6 months spent on surgical case
A: multiple iteration & adjudication individual users' ideas.
Turnarond time for small changes is the critical factor.

Q: who does the development on your systems in the field
A: us (contract), customer (in-house) or 3rd party

Q: your dreams
A: shared VR: replace phone; shared dreams: starting ~50 years from now.
Hope it kills tv. Hope it suggests a paradigm for people/technology
relation; nowadays technology improvements tend to be cultural rather
than survival oriented.

[[local TV cameraman blocks my view at this point, filming into another
audience member's face ~5' from lens, then points it at person sitting
behind me]]

...
Q: glove?
A: not the universal interface; maybe as tactile feedback improves -
now selling low-tac pneumatic system from England: you can tell what
object you picked up behind you.

Q: can you identify any basic perceptual research that would help
A: used to try to keep track of this. In part it's been isolated,
specific studies, but not how it all integrates. HITL, NASA Ames
should advance field a bit.

Q: sound
A: more advanced than visual, not included as a standard. Audiosphere
cased on Convolvotron w/ reflections & material types coming up this
year.