“50 Years of Changes — How to Brace Yourself!” by Blinn, Foley, van Dam, Whitted and Greenberg
Conference:
Type(s):
Interest Area:
- Art / Design, Gaming & Interactive, New Technologies, Production & Animation, and Research / Education
Title:
- 50 Years of Changes — How to Brace Yourself!
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
- James (Jim) F. Blinn
- James D. Foley
- Andries van Dam
- John Turner Whitted
- Donald P. Greenberg
- Alvy Ray Smith
Moderator(s):
Abstract:
We panelists, long-timers all, collectively probe the pre-Siggraph period–Sketchpad, DAC-1, formation of Siggraph, etc. (van Dam), document and measure actual changes in 50 years of Siggraph–vectors to rasters, few people to hordes, hard to easy, expensive to cheap, CAD vs CG, workstation wars, UI revolution, applications vs pretty pictures, head-mounted display to VR/AR, etc. (Blinn and Foley), put the changes in historical perspective–Moore’s Law supernova, vector detour, evolution of shading language and standards, the Central Dogma, etc. (Smith), and paint the dramatic future beyond Moore’s Law, the role of parallelism and platform sophistication (Whitted). Greenberg will end with a message to Siggraph. We’ve ridden the supernova explosion so far, so here’s a hint of how it might feel to you–a sort of guide to the future.
