3DUI Gamasutra Article: From a Research Perspective

One of my advisors, Dr. Joseph LaViola Jr., was asked to write an article for Gamasutra on 3D interaction in games. We’ve experienced some serious troubles trying to communicate between industry folk and academia and this is one way that he is trying to increase awareness of what has been going on in research over the years.

You can read it here.

If you enjoy the article, he has appended a reading list with some related papers from our ISUE lab, including my first SIGGRAPH Sandbox paper on dance game interfaces.

SIGGRAPH impressions (thus far)

Here are some quick impressions regarding what I’ve experienced in the first two days of SIGGRAPH.

• GameJams seem pretty cool, if you have the stamina. One of the sessions on Monday morning, “From Indie Jams to Professional Pipelines,” had a nice overview of the Global Game Jam project. The idea is simple; you get a short amount of time and a set of constraints, then you are let loose with your team to get the job done. SIGGRAPH itself is holding a GameJam which I’m hoping to see. It’s not for me, at least not during the conference, but I can see how this format nurtures teamwork and quick decision making, two skills which can really help small development teams.
• Spore is amazing, and its creators give great talks. I’m thrilled that I was able to hear Will Wright speak in person during today’s keynote speech. He is one of my game design heroes and the talk lived up to my expectations. Aside from being entertaining, I agree with many of his points. But I won’t list them here because it was a long, dense talk that may be impossible to summarize. Monday’s Spore API talk was equally captivating.
• I need to go back to math class. Working in user interfaces for the last couple years has been incredibly satisfying, but I have forgotten how captivating real-time computer graphics research can be. Not that I have any grand ideas or anything, but it could help out in ways I don’t expect…
• Information Aesthetics seems relevant to my life. The exhibit on this had some new ideas that could be really helpful in research, but it also seems like the solution to the knowledge overload I’ve been feeling lately. Especially I can see this being useful for museum exhibits.

Now I’m going to go to the gym for half an hour and spend the next couple hours working on my talk for SIGGRAPH Sandbox tomorrow morning, during this session:

Kinesthetic Movement in Games I
WEDNESDAY, 5 AUGUST | 8:30 AM – 10:15 AM | AUDITORIUM A

I hope it goes well