Our time in Vancouver

Two weeks ago today the lab began its ten day visit in Vancouver for the SIGGRAPH 2018 convention. As you can see from the posts that have been saturating this page, we came out of it with may new experiences to share with all you who are reading. 

For about five days, I was behind a computer manning the controls for the post-show of the Cave experience which included a mammoth simulator. This simulator was something I had been working on for the past months. The most interesting thing about my time behind the controls was, as new people passed by every hour to watch our experience, I was able to see in real time how they reacted to our characters and to each other.

So here’s a recap of the mammoth simulator: four people sat around a table wearing Vive pro headsets as our networking infrastructure broadcasted the same scene to all four headsets on the table. Also, there were procedurally animated mammoths with procedural behavior walking and dancing on the table. 

Some of the interesting things I noticed was that when the mammoths got to the very edge of the table some people would react by trying to pet the mammoth or kind of sitting up in their seat as it to give the mammoth space. Other groups of people would be involved in social conversation as they talked about the things that they viewed on the table. Since it was an AR experience, people were able to gesture to each other and I easily communicate. It was a type of XR experience that I have never quite seen before.

All in all, SIGGRAPH 2018 Vancouver was an experience I quite enjoyed. 🙂