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SIGGRAPH Day 2
This morning started with a talk from Intel on Larrabee. The SIGGRAPH paper sessions are scheduled in time blocks with three or four talks put together based on a theme, but having Intel talk about vaporware they are spending lots of money promoting to anyone who will listen in your SIGGRAPH session is a lot like having Paris Hilton giving a keynote: as soon as Intel was done, half or more of a packed room immediately got up and left ignoring the other three talks to follow and the person who was attempting to speak next. They talked about their overall architecture and software algorithms they expect to use on it, but as they were not making product announcements or discussing “implementations details” like the expected clock rates, core counts, cost/performance, or form-factors it’s all pretty theoretical at this point. It could be the best thing to happen since sliced bread or be the next Talisman. Only time will tell, but clearly they have some making up to do for the percieved damage they have done to the PC graphics industry with broad push of extremely low-end Intel Integrated Graphics chipsets.
For lunch I wandered down Figueroa street. I realized pretty quickly that my memories of the food options around the LA Convention Center were mixed up with my memories of food options around the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I found plenty of places, but it takes at least 10 minutes of walking to get to them since the LA Convention Center is a monster—and they are actively building even more crap all around it necessitating going back and forth across the street to keep walking past construction-closed sidewalks.
The exhibition hall opened today, so I did a little wandering around. It’s pretty similar to last year, with SIGGRAPH putting a few of the art installations in the main hall to give it a more crowded feel. There is the usual collection of ‘mo cap booth babes’, art tool live demos, and vendors of all shapes and sizes. Google yet again has a booth on the expo floor showing the same Google Earth stuff they showed the past few years, which is mostly an excuse to gather resumes outside of the job fair--I’m beginning to believe that Google is simply a scheme to commoditize tech recruiting disguised as a search and advertising provider. I did a quick pass through my favorite booths, namely the textbook companies, but need to make a more detailed examination of their offerings later in the show.
The afternoon was spent checking out some cool talks on HDR and another on Hair rendering. The HDR stuff is still pretty much focused on film-industry applications including using some new super-expensive HDR cameras for integrating a real world lighting situation with CG graphics (read, from a set). It seems like this year’s unofficial theme material is human hair, which is at least less disturbing in its implications than last year’s unofficial theme material which was “milky fluids”. Clearly there is one industry that will take advantage of all the SIGGRAPH-fueled advances in rendering and animating realistic skin, human hair, soft jiggly solids, and milky fluids.
Tonight I hope to see the Pixar Studio theater presentation. As I said yesterday, they normally have the same electronic theater presentation repeated a few times, so I’m expecting this new format to result in a massive crowed of people and long queues.
For lunch I wandered down Figueroa street. I realized pretty quickly that my memories of the food options around the LA Convention Center were mixed up with my memories of food options around the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I found plenty of places, but it takes at least 10 minutes of walking to get to them since the LA Convention Center is a monster—and they are actively building even more crap all around it necessitating going back and forth across the street to keep walking past construction-closed sidewalks.
The exhibition hall opened today, so I did a little wandering around. It’s pretty similar to last year, with SIGGRAPH putting a few of the art installations in the main hall to give it a more crowded feel. There is the usual collection of ‘mo cap booth babes’, art tool live demos, and vendors of all shapes and sizes. Google yet again has a booth on the expo floor showing the same Google Earth stuff they showed the past few years, which is mostly an excuse to gather resumes outside of the job fair--I’m beginning to believe that Google is simply a scheme to commoditize tech recruiting disguised as a search and advertising provider. I did a quick pass through my favorite booths, namely the textbook companies, but need to make a more detailed examination of their offerings later in the show.
The afternoon was spent checking out some cool talks on HDR and another on Hair rendering. The HDR stuff is still pretty much focused on film-industry applications including using some new super-expensive HDR cameras for integrating a real world lighting situation with CG graphics (read, from a set). It seems like this year’s unofficial theme material is human hair, which is at least less disturbing in its implications than last year’s unofficial theme material which was “milky fluids”. Clearly there is one industry that will take advantage of all the SIGGRAPH-fueled advances in rendering and animating realistic skin, human hair, soft jiggly solids, and milky fluids.
Tonight I hope to see the Pixar Studio theater presentation. As I said yesterday, they normally have the same electronic theater presentation repeated a few times, so I’m expecting this new format to result in a massive crowed of people and long queues.