From diderot@hitl.washington.edu Mon Jul 3 12:35:13 1995 Return-Path: Received: from mx5.u.washington.edu by saul5.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.05/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA29420; Mon, 3 Jul 95 12:35:13 -0700 Received: from hitl-new.hitl.washington.edu by mx5.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.05/UW-NDC Revision: 2.31 ) id AA07810; Mon, 3 Jul 95 12:35:12 -0700 Received: from [128.95.74.170] (diderot.hitl.washington.edu [128.95.74.170]) by hitl.hitl.washington.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id MAA18553 for ; Mon, 3 Jul 1995 12:35:09 -0700 X-Sender: diderot@hitl.washington.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 12:39:13 -0700 To: scivw@hitl.washington.edu From: Steven Feiner (by way of diderot@hitl.washington.edu (Toni Emerson)) Subject: Columbia blurb to post on sci.vritual-worlds and add to the directory X-Status: Status: OR Columbia University (USA) Institution: Department of Computer Science Columbia University 500 West 120th St., 450 CS Building New York, NY 10027 Contact(s): Prof. Steven Feiner feiner@cs.columbia.edu (212) 939-7083 (212) 666-0140 (fax) http://www.cs.columbia.edu/graphics/ Program(s): B.A., B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science Specialties: Augmented reality, in which a see-through HMD is used to overlay a virtual world on the user's view of the physical world. Application areas that we are exploring include: * maintenance and repair documentation that is integrated with the equipment being maintained; * personal information spaces that embed arbitrary X11 applications within the 3D environment; and * architectural "see-throughs" that allow a user to examine a real building's hidden infrastructure. Virtual worlds for data visualization, including knowledge-based design of effective worlds for visualizing and exploring multivariate scientific and business data, and for representing computer network topologies and interactions. Knowledge-based generation of 3D multimedia presentations that combine speech, text, and 3D graphics to communicate medical data. Resources: Virtual worlds projects are conducted within the Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab in the Department of Computer Science. We have research relationships with the Department's Natural Language Processing Lab, Knowledge Representation Lab, and Mobile Computing Lab; the Center for Telecommunications Research; the Building Technologies Group in the Graduate School of Architecture; and the Medical Informatics Department in the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. The Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab has HP, SGI, and Sun workstations with 3D graphics accelerators; Pentium PCs and PowerPC Macs; 3D interaction devices (a VPL DataGlove, a Digital Image Design Cricket, and several Logitech 3D mice); 3D tracking systems (including a four-receiver extended range Ascension Flock of Birds and eight Logitech ultrasonic trackers); 3D displays (StereoGraphics CrystalEyes stereo eyewear, locally-built and Virtual i.O see-through head-mounted displays); and 3D audio (Crystal River Beachtron sound processor). Students also have shared access to a 4-processor SGI Onyx with Reality Engine 2 and an 8-processor HP 9000/735 cluster with FDDI interconnect. Prerequisites: C.S. background and the inquiring mind of an experimentalist. We are particularly interested in students with a strong background in AI, who would like to explore the knowledge-based generation of graphics, text, speech, and audio in virtual worlds.