From root@nntp5.u.washington.edu Wed May 17 23:59:57 1995 Return-Path: Received: from mx5.u.washington.edu by stein2.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.05/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA22879; Wed, 17 May 95 23:59:57 -0700 Received: from hitl-new.hitl.washington.edu by mx5.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.05/UW-NDC Revision: 2.31 ) id AA11407; Wed, 17 May 95 23:59:57 -0700 Received: from beaver.cs.washington.edu (beaver.cs.washington.edu [128.95.1.1]) by hitl.hitl.washington.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id XAA20390 for ; Wed, 17 May 1995 23:55:18 -0700 Received: from nntp5.u.washington.edu (root@nntp5.u.washington.edu [140.142.64.6]) by beaver.cs.washington.edu (8.6.12/7.1be+) with SMTP id XAA04969 for ; Wed, 17 May 1995 23:59:37 -0700 Received: by nntp5.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.02/UW-NDC Revision: 2.32 ) id AA27608; Wed, 17 May 95 23:59:49 -0700 X-Sender: root@nntp5.u.washington.edu To: sci-virtual-worlds@cs.washington.edu Path: cyberoid From: cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: ATIP Report: Virtual Environment R&D in Hong Kong & Korea Followup-To: comp.research.japan Date: 16 May 1995 11:21:18 -0700 Organization: University of Arizona CS Department, Tucson AZ Lines: 294 Message-Id: <3per95$qum@nntp5.u.washington.edu> Nntp-Posting-Host: nntp3.u.washington.edu Status: OR [Reposted from comp.research.japan] [Copies of previous ATIP reports can be obtained using anonymous FTP from host ftp.cs.arizona.edu, directory japan/ATIP.reports. Copies of earlier reports written by David Kahaner under ONR auspices can be found on the same host, directory japan/kahaner.reports or on the World Wide Web (WWW) at URL http://www.cs.arizona.edu/japan/www/kahaner_reports.html Web pages for the ATIP reports will be forthcoming. ] ======================================================================== ASIAN TECHNOLOGY INFORMATION PROGRAM (ATIP) REPORT: ATIP95.19 : Virtual Environment R&D in Hong Kong & Korea To: Distribution From: D.K.Kahaner, ATIP-Tokyo [kahaner@atip.or.jp] 05/11/95 [MM/DD/YY] This is file name "ATIP95.19" Tokyo Office: Asian Technology Information Program (ATIP) Harks Roppongi Building 1F 6-15-21 Roppongi Minato-ku, Tokyo 106 Tel: +81 3 5411-6670; Fax: +81 3 5411-6671 U.S. Office: Asian Technology Information Program (ATIP) c/o Univeristy of New Mexico US-Japan Center Mechanical Engineering Building, Rm #432 Albuquerque, New Mexico 87113 Tel: (505) 277-1490; Fax: (505) 277-1425 For further information Send email to : info@atip.or.jp Access WorldWideWeb Site : http://www.atip.or.jp/ (on-line June 1 1995) ATIP: A collaboration between US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) University of New Mexico (UNM) ======================================================================== [Complete ATIP reports on Asian Science and Technology are available to sponsors and collaborating organizations by direct distribution, or via electronic access. Full reports contain text and (when available) charts, graphs and pictures. Reports for general public distribution may contain summarized, abstracted, or partial contents of full reports. Organizations wishing specific sole-use follow-up information, including updates, translations, query searches, etc., are also encouraged to contact ATIP directly at info@atip.or.jp] REPORT: ATIP95.19 : Virtual Environment R&D in Hong Kong & Korea ABSTRACT: Virtual Environment R&D in Hong Kong & Korea -- observations by Robin Bargar. Virtual Environment Research and Development in Hong Kong & Korea An informal report of observations in Hong Kong and Korea March 10-26, 1995. Mr Robin Bargar Audio Development, Virtual Environment Group National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Univ of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 5225 Beckman Institute of Advanced Science & Technology 405 S. Mathews Ave Urbana IL 61801 Tel: (217) 244-4692; Fax: (217) 244-2909 Email: RBARGAR@NCSA.UIUC.EDU --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hong Kong During March 10-17, 1995, I was the guest of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Department of Computer Science. At that time I presented a seminar and continued a collaboration with Herbert Edelsbrunner and Ping Fu, visitors on the HKUST faculty on leave from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My contact with VE research and development occurred at HKUST and HKITC, the Hong Kong Industrial Technology Centre, where I learned of VE-related efforts at other Hong Kong institutions. HKUST is a newly-founded university with a large number of faculty recently hired from North America and Europe. The campus is a well-designed facility in a beautiful coastal setting, about 45 minutes by public transportation >from downtown Hong Kong. Faculty residences are within a few minutes' walk of classrooms and offices. Many students also live on campus, though all of them are Hong Kong natives and the majority of students commute. Libraries, lecture facilities, audiovisual resources and computing hardware are abundant, and rival that of the best North American universities. Students have ample access to the latest computing platforms, including Silicon Graphics workstations. [See my reports on HKUST, for example "hongkong.492" 8 May 1992, DKK] The charter and development plan of the university, and the caliber of faculty are ideally suited to support advanced VE research. However at this time there is little VE research in progress at HKUST. The absence of active VE research at HKUST appears to be determined by two factors: the relatively short history most faculty have with HKUST, and the quality and maturity of students attending HKUST. There is interest on the part of faculty but most have not been present long enough to establish the collaborative groundwork and the equipment acquisitions necessary for a comprehensive program of VE research. Support systems and administrative intentions are also still stabilizing. For example, Fu indicated her original role at HKUST was to help establish a supercomputing and visualization facility modeled after the NCSA. This facility was to be under the auspices of the university's computing services office, and was a high-priority of that office's director. His departure for a position outside of HKUST created a significant slowdown in the progress toward establishing a supercomputing support facility. Hong Kong families traditionally send their best students abroad for education, a trend which HKUST must now reverse in order to build strong graduate programs necessary to support advanced research faculty. I observed enthusiastic students and a large number of student organizations holding activities in the central meeting point of the campus. Most students were undergraduates. I did not observe many graduate students in advanced stages of research. Though such research may exist I did not observe a focused forum for disseminating ongoing research and coupling individual projects into more visible collaborative ventures. This final step is often critical for establishing multifaceted projects such as VE. The largest single source of advanced and competitive students for HKUST is certainly mainland China. I participated in conversations with faculty who remarked the high performance of students from major Chinese universities who are hand-picked by HKUST faculty and invited to attend HKUST. The presence of quota systems in Hong Kong and China, for regulating the distribution of students to universities of different districts, poses significant complications for Chinese student relocation to Hong Kong. Until recently the traditional industries of Hong Kong were not those that provided local graduates with high technology engineering and management positions. If Hong Kong is able to convert from its role as a free port and shipping center into a production and management center, we can expect the availability of jobs in these newer fields to influence the motivations of students in local university programs. At HKUST the richness of campus resources and faculty talents are such that, given a technological reorientation of the industrial/economic climate of Hong Kong we can expect the absence of dedicated VE research to turn around in a few year's time. HKITC, the Hong Kong Industrial Technology Centre, is an aggressive advocate of new high-tech industry. Established by the government in 1991 with a land grant of 5,700 square meters, a $250 million start-up grant and $188 million for low-interest loans, the goal is to become a self-financing support center in four industrial target areas: multimedia and networking, telecommunications, software and systems, and microelectronics and components. None of these have a strong foothold in the traditional Hong Kong industrial base. A hoped-for trend is to move labor-intensive manufacturing out of Hong Kong and into China or other periphery where wages are less expensive, and establish higher value-added technology-intensive production in Hong Kong. [See my reports on HKITC, for example 05/24/94 "hk-tc.94" Reports published by HKITC indicate the trend is already underway. Information technology products were the only manufacturing sector to increase in productivity over the past 10 years. This field nearly tripled in production while all other manufacturing reduced. To further this process, for the four target industries listed above HKITC provides three types of assistance: an Incubation program which currently hosts ten fledgling companies (assistance via low-rate office space and support services), R & D support and services, and a Technology Transfer program, which includes a technical journal (see below) and regular Technology Forum Exchange Seminars. My visit corresponded to the official opening week of the Centre's five-story office complex, 70 percent of which is currently leased. Non-incubatee tenants include Silicon Graphics Ltd., TUV Rheinland and CENTRO Digital Pictures. The building provides optic-fiber, raised-flooring, and extensive internal networking and database services. On site I was greeted by an ample supply of literature about the program. In addition to high-gloss, low-information brochures and a publicity newspaper, the center publishes "Tech Centre News," a quarterly news magazine, and "Business and Technology Information Quarterly," providing more substantial technical and research information, including abstracts, research reviews and full research articles equal in caliber to those published by IEEE and other North American professional journals. The week of my visit saw the inaugural Technology Exchange Forum, which devoted a half-day to each of the Centre's four target areas. Two talks specifically concerned VE. "Virtual Reality - Current Fantasy and Future Reality" by Dr. Chi Chi-Hung, Chinese University of Hong Kong presented the broad brushstrokes of VE technology, explaining basic devices, applications, expected market growth and machine advances. "Advances in Image Generators for Virtual Reality" by Dr. Goh Eng Lim of Silicon Graphics, focused on hardware support systems manufactured by SGI. Dr. Goh offered a number of details concerning benchmarks, hardware performance - both speed and hardware rendering capability, and subsystem architecture. The full proceedings from this Forum, and other information regarding HKITC are available through Johnny K. T. Leung, HKITC, 72 Tat Chee Ave., Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, HK. Fax: (852)27884261; electronic mail: johnnyl@hk.super.net. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Korea During a brief visit to South Korea I was able to present a seminar and tour the facilities in the Digital Signal Processing program at Yonsei University, in Seoul. Yonsei is generally considered with Seoul National University to be one of the best Korean centers of higher education and research. The Digital Signal Processing program is a new and comprehensive research program that incorporates new media, multimedia, speech and image processing, networking, artificial intelligence, VLSI design, medical technology and control technology. The groups are organized as a foundation for research with an eye toward promoting the international competitiveness of Korean industry. The program resides in a new physical facility on the Yonsei campus; laboratories were Spartan but fairly well-equipped with workstations and included visualization-type software analysis tools. 37 faculty affiliates represent 17 universities, 11 industrial corporations and 4 national research institutes. Most of the junior faculty (Ph.D. since 1985) trained in the United States or Europe . Though there are no VE facilities at Yonsei, most of the native fields are well-suited to contribute to VE-type investigations. My presentation on VE Research at NCSA was very well-attended (notably better than at HKUST) by faculty, students and affiliates some of whom traveled several hours one way to attend. The majority of questions focused on practical application and real-world limits of the technology. Representatives of two affiliated labs indicated VE research was in startup mode at their locations: the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Korean Research Institute of Standards and Science in Taejon (KRISS). I was unable to visit either site so I cannot do their programs justice in this report. A publication from the Kriss Ergonomics lab indicates a strong tendency of research applied to short-term improvements in manufacturing and product design. This is a good approach for the introduction of VE technologies under the auspices of market-motivated support. To summarize my brief impressions, Korean engineering research appears to be well-versed with advanced computational tools current within the past 5 years, but are not in the process of creating new tools, particularly where VE is concerned. I also noted a lack of hands-on familiarity with massively-parallel computing. I am not sure where and how many supercomputers are available to Korean researchers. Apparently the available hardware are traditional vector-processor architectures. Difficult access to high compute-power casts a subtle shadow on this level of research which is quite recognizable to someone accustomed to a supercomputing research environment. [For some discussion of the situation regarding high performance computing in Korea, see my report, 10/07/94 "hpcc.94a", DKK] The most notable barrier to a rapid ascension to levels of western research, is the language barrier among Korean undergraduate and graduate students. Though English is learned in secondary school, spoken English is not a part of Korean daily life. Even written English is not a living, functional language in Korea. Students are not able to communicate in English unless they have lived in the United States. Until the practice of English improves, university research competitive with western technology will be hampered by the English-to-Korean translation bottleneck that must go through junior faculty. The best path for introducing high-end VE research in South Korea appears to me to be as an evaluation method for shortening the time-to-market for the manufacturing sector of Korean private industry. My impression in general is that research efforts are required to be closely tied to short-term market application in order to receive attention in the third-world industrialization climate that pervades the Korean economy. However, if the Koreans are able to establish an industrial VE foothold it remains to be seen the degree to which the facilities could obtain suport for more advanced "pure" VE research. It will be important to argue for longer-term research goals in order to raise Korean high-tech industry to internationally competitive levels, thus rely less on inherited western technologies that will always be a few years out of date. =====================END OF REPORT ATIP95.19r===========================