Blog Assignment #1

So here's the first blog I need to write for my Multimedia Pioneering class.

Today our speaker was Song Ho Ahn, a former employee of the now defunct Immersion Studios. He spoke to us on new technologies that allow mass numbers of people to control and influence what they are shown.

To begin with, we were shown a number of web applications done for learning purposes; one was how to park at a terminal at Pearson International Airport, another was a simulation of what life was like at a viking colony located on the coast of Newfoundland, while a third was a police tutorial on measuring skid mark distance. These quick programs were not much, for they were really only on an individual basis. However, as an edutainment tool, the simulation of a viking colony somewhat succeeded at this (Link to Viking Simulation Info) After that, we were shown a program that allowed a user with a webcam to move the head of a 3D-drawn image. The future intent of this program was to allow facial recognition, so mouth movement and expressions could be detected (Link to Facial Recognition Info). At this time, the program looked rather promising. It could eventually have affects on online gaming, particularly in games like World of Warcraft, where players currently do not have control of facial models (Link to WoW.com).

A lot of the work now being done in the Visualization Design Institute is done using a program called Ogre, an open source 3D graphics engine. The engine can provide some rather decent 3D effects, and being open source it does not really cost anything (Link to Ogre).

After this, we were brought into a studio where we were brain washed... ok, no, we weren't. We were given a much more solid example of a mass of people affecting something through technology. We used tablets to affect an immersive video as we attempted to remove some life-threatening object from within a person. This was one of Immersion Studios museum exhibits and may still exist in some locations. However, one client of this game, the Montréal Science Centre, appears to have dropped this for a new exhibit (Link to Montréal Science Centre's current immersive exhibit).